The Hijacking of the Charter School Movement, revisited

(The responses were very informative.)

As my handful of fans will recall, several months ago I wrote about how the charter school movement – conceived as an opportunity for teacher empowerment and educational innovation – had been “hijacked” by those who recognized in Pennsylvania’s charter school law an opportunity to make money.

I thought it would be enlightening to also examine some of the responses to that article.

Tellingly, there were two very quick responses (here’s one) from outside our local community, from two men who just happen to be employees of the state charter school industry. It is their job, quite literally, to scan newspapers from across the state each morning, to see if anyone has popped their head up to challenge their highly lucrative business model, and then ‘rapidly-respond’ in their version of whack-a-mole. (In this metaphor, I am the mole.)

The great irony is that you, dear taxpayer, are paying their salaries! (Albeit, indirectly)  This happens because Pennsylvania’s charter school industry makes so much money that they can afford to hire lobbyists! To protect their business model!  One almost has to admire the evil beauty of it.

Now, let me ask: how much of what they said did you understand? I would guess not much, because that’s not the point. Their entire goal is to sow enough confusion so that the average reader doesn’t know what to think. (Well, this guy says “A” and these other guys say “not A”. I’m not an expert, so who am I supposed to believe?) And they live to fight another day.

The other point to be made here is this rhetoric is what our legislators hear every day.  Money, mostly in the form of campaign contributions, buys access. So it should be no surprise that they were able to gut the proposed charter school reform legislation in the final days preceding the vote.

I bring up the third letter of interest mostly for comic relief. It came from our local “I’m against everything,” curmudgeon. (Every community has one.) The irony is that for many years this gentlemen has promoted himself as “the friend of the taxpayer”, so I naively anticipated having him weigh in. Ha!  Apparently, “curmudgeon” carries more weight than “friend of taxpayers.”  

Did you understand a word of what he said, either?  I didn’t think so.

The fourth letter was the most disappointing. Written by the leadership of one of our pretty good local charters, their message was essentially “we would never do that!”; which misses the point entirely. As for what’s happening in the rest of the Commonwealth, our heads are firmly buried in the sand.  But as I pointed out to them, the hundreds of millions of dollars that the charter school chains skim from taxpayers aren’t being used to educate anyone’s children – theirs or ours.  We ought to be on the same side, as advocates of good public policy - but then, they’re also afraid of a disruption to the business model. Don’t rock the boat! 

Well, this boat needs rocking.

The Contradiction of the Keystone exams

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”

A column in EdWeekly this summer wisely made this point in regards to the new, incredibly complex, unreliable - yet state-mandated - teacher evaluations, suggesting that we should have first asked the question, “What is it that we're trying to measure?”  Indeed, that question should have been asked before the state Board of Education voted to mandate ‘Keystone exams’ in English literature, Algebra and Biology as high school graduation requirements.

Here’s the essence of the issue, as I see it: the Keystone exams are fundamentally incompatible with the set of knowledge and skills that students need for success in the modern world.  Mandating them as high school graduation requirements only serves to institutionalize a program of education more appropriate for the middle of the last century. It will reduce opportunities for students, who instead of taking electives in their areas of interest, will be required to take remedial courses in order to pass an exam that measures their ability to memorize and regurgitate information they are unlikely to ever need or use.

I often ask, half in jest, how much of high school biology do you remember? Then how important was it?  Do you know the answer to this sample Keystone Biology exam question: which characteristic is common to prokaryotes & eukaryotes?  If not, why do we now require every high school student to know this?

An important insight I gleaned from my time in business school: a business executive doesn’t need to be an expert on anything; rather, he or she needs to know enough about everything to understand what the experts are saying. This strikes me as a pretty good model for education: develop an expertise in one or two areas of passion, but understand the principles of everything else well enough to see the connections.

So, instead of requiring temporary proficiency in the algorithms of algebra, we should make sure that students understand the basic principles - as well as those of statistics, probability, compound interest, and ‘present-value’ - maybe even how calculus ‘works’, even if you don’t know how to find a derivative. (I once asked my sister, who has been a successful civil engineer for over three decades, how often she used calculus at her job. Her answer: once. Once, in over thirty years! – and that was to solve a brain-teaser heard on the office radio.)

In other words, when students graduate high school, they should have a toolbox for solving real-world problems – as well as some actual experience in doing so. That toolbox would include not only knowledge in the core areas mentioned above, but also well-developed communication and research skills, the capacity for critical-thinking and creativity, and the civic skills that come from years of collaborating with others.

Some years ago, when the Partnership for 21st-century skills began asking college presidents and business leaders what their new students and hires were lacking, that was the list they came up with.  Proficiency in Algebra and Biology were not on the list. This is what we should mean when we say “college and career ready”.  It’s what the unfortunately maligned Common Core standards tries to address.  But that’s a column for another day.

Whenever I talk to parents about what they want in their child’s education, they understand this. Why don’t the policy-makers in Harrisburg get it?

The Common Core: good idea, disastrous execution

Most of us in the field of education have come around to the view that it’s no longer appropriate for students to spend the bulk of their time on the memorization of facts and the rote use of math and science algorithms. In  large part, the Common Core standards were an attempt to address this, by refocusing classroom instruction on conceptual understanding and the development of higher-order thinking skills - something the better teachers have always tried to do.

The other rationale for the Common Core is that in a highly mobile society, we should have some measure of consistency from one region of the country to another. The parents of a reasonably successful 5th-grader in Mississippi should not be shocked to discover that their child is reading at only a 3rd-grade level in Pennsylvania. (A recent, true story.) Though far from perfect, and despite the fact that there was almost no input from actual teachers in the development of these standards, the majority of educators are of the opinion that the Common Core reasonably meets these two objectives.

So, what’s the problem?  Well, there are several.

First, the corresponding student assessments are still being developed.  We have no idea how well these assessments will measure what we want them to measure – the tests have yet to be tested!  Plus, how can you assess a student’s  ability to “construct arguments and cite evidence” – key components of the Common Core -  with a standardized,  multiple-choice test? 

Nevertheless, we are already attaching high stakes, such as high school graduation requirements and teacher evaluations, to the results of these untested tests!  In Pennsylvania, the new Keystone exams were developed independently of, and are in many respects, incompatible with, the new “PA Core” standards. Even the Gates Foundation, an early and enthusiastic proponent of the standards, has called for a delay in the implementation of these high-stakes assessments.

In spite of all this, I believe the new standards provide a potentially useful framework for teaching “21st-centrury” skills, and there are good examples of what that might look like: (For an example, see: A Classroom View on Implementing Common-Core Math.)  But they are not a panacea. The key to any new education practice: the teachers. And this is where the implementation fails miserably.

For some teachers, adjusting to the spirit of the new standards will require a significant change in practice. (more ‘coaching’; less ‘sage on the stage’ direct instruction). This is not the sort of thing that can be accomplished in one or two days of ‘drive-by’ professional development. As with any meaningful change, a successful, system-wide implementation will require time and commitment.

Meanwhile, little in the way of resources have been committed at either the national or state level towards helping teachers make this transition. In addition, there are many, many new standards – but no guidance as to which ones should be emphasized. (One consequence of not involving teachers from the beginning.)  Perhaps most astonishingly, many of our teaching colleges have yet to even acknowledge the existence of the Common Core standards.

We’re trying to fly a plane that we haven’t finished building.

Finally, the principals who have the responsibility for administering the new state-required teacher evaluations have not received much more than ‘drive-by’ professional development, themselves. How are teachers supposed to have confidence in this – let alone the other major component of the new evaluations: student test scores, which are a notoriously unreliable way of measuring teacher ‘effectiveness’?  If teachers don’t have confidence in the evaluation model, it’s almost guaranteed to fail.  Ironically, but not surprisingly, PDE’s solution is to have principals use a “check-the-box” approach - which puts us right back where we started, while pretending to have made great progress.

State College is probably ahead of the curve. The District has embraced the Danielson model for effective teaching, and our superintendent has made it clear that our teachers will not be held accountable for things over which they have no control. Even so, this is going to be a challenge.

If we want our students to benefit from the Common Core standards,  we have to disconnect them from the current high-stakes assessments; involve the teachers(!), and take the time to do it right.

The hijacking of the charter school movement

(or, Why School Board Members Roll their Eyes when the Subject is Brought Up)

The concept of the charter school was first articulated back in the 1980s by Albert Shanker, the head of the New York City teachers’ union. Charter schools were conceived as an extension of the public school system – “incubators of experimentation” – to be run by public school teachers, but having the flexibility to try out new ideas, which, if successful, could be templates for school improvement. In State College, our alternative school, the Delta Program, is the closest to matching Shanker’s original vision.

But  there are some other pretty good local examples. One of our charter schools was built on the small learning community model; another emphasizes project-based learning; yet another, instruction in multiple languages. These models have value to students and their parents, and they could provide us with useful insight. But any value we receive from these ‘experiments’ comes in spite of state policy, not because of it.

First, Pennsylvania law allows for little meaningful oversight of charter schools, and there’s no mechanism for closing an ineffective one. There is neither accountability nor transparency; it is next to impossible to find out how charter schools spend their money. And while the local school district technically has the authority to deny a charter school application, the PA Dept. of Education has made it quite clear that it is willing to overrule local decisions.

Second, nearly all charter school funding comes from the pocket of the ‘hosting’ school district. This wasn’t always the case. The district’s ‘average per pupil expenditure’ is the amount that charter schools receive for each student they enroll. But recognizing that school districts have certain ‘fixed’ costs (construction debt, for example) that don’t disappear when students transfer to a charter school, the Commonwealth initially promised to pick up 30% of the tab - a promise that was never kept.  In recent years, state reimbursement has dropped to zero. Guess who picks up the tab now?  (In State College, that amounts to about $5 million/year.)

But it’s worse than that. Here are two examples that taxpayers should find outrageous.

On average, the cost for educating a special education student is about double that of a regular student, and charter schools receive that higher amount for each special education student they enroll. The actual cost of educating these students, however, varies considerably. So, some charter schools have learned to ‘cherry pick’ the less expensive students, and pocket the difference. Alternatively, many students have magically received a special ed designation only upon enrolling in a charter school.  

As a result, last year $350 million dollars flowed from public schools (and their taxpayers) into charter schools for special education purposes. But charter schools spent only $150 million. That’s a $200 million dollar profit, at taxpayer expense.

Then there’s the pension ‘double-dip’. School districts are required to contribute a percentage of teacher salaries into the state pension fund, and that amount is part of the calculation of per pupil expenses that charter schools receive. But the state reimburses charter schools for that very expense so, in effect, they receive the money twice.  The cost to taxpayers: close to $1 billion dollars over the next six years!

Addressing these two issues alone would have gone a long way towards plugging the hole in the current state budget.

One might assume that these are simple oversights, relatively easy to fix legislatively. In fact, “charter school reform” legislation was recently introduced that would have addressed these issues. You might ask, who would oppose it?  Well, the for-profit charter schools, of course! - who just happen to be major campaign contributors to many of our legislators in Harrisburg. (In fact, as a result of intense charter school lobbying, said provisions were removed from the aforementioned legislation.)

The others who opposed it see charter schools as a way to slowly erode support for the entire public school system. But years of research have demonstrated that charter schools, on average, perform no better than ‘regular’ public schools - and because there’s so little oversight, sometimes quite worse. More disturbing: Pennsylvania ranks third from the bottom nationally in charter school performance. Is the current system a defensible use of taxpayer money? The answer seems obvious.

Public needs clarity on Common Core Standards; Brooks isn’t helping

David Brooks’ main premise - that the public’s understanding  of  the merits of the new Common Core standards is becoming yet another victim of the current political environment – is one I agree with.  Unfortunately, by failing to accurately articulate the objections of the “left” from his pulpit at the Times, Brooks is only adding to the public’s confusion.  

As Brooks himself points out, over 75% of teachers are generally in favor of the new standards (in spite of the fact that teachers were minimally consulted in their creation, but that’s an argument for another day.)  So what’s the issue? Teachers’ unions in New York, for example, are objecting to the fact that teachers haven't received adequate time, proper training, financial resources, curricula, and the other support that will be needed in order to successfully bring the standards into their classrooms.

Most teachers have yet to receive training on what, for many, would be a significant shift in their practice.  Further, we have no baseline of evidence on how well the new ‘Common-Core-aligned’ tests will actually do in terms of assessing the new standards -  the tests are still being written, for God’s sake!  (In fact, I would argue that with its greater emphasis on critical-thinking, and the ability to articulate that thinking, the Common Core may not be compatible with high-stakes, standardized testing.)  And yet, in many states,  how well students perform on these untested tests is going to impact performance reviews, pay and even careers, starting as early as the next school year. Elsewhere, states are implementing the new standards – but measuring it with the old non-aligned tests!  Are you kidding me??

For anyone who actually cares about education, these would be very reasonable and important concerns. Using the new state tests (based, theoretically, on the standards) to evaluate educators and schools may well destroy the benefits the standards might have provided before we even get off the ground. The fact that these concerns are essentially being brushed off as ‘whining’ is what leads one to question motives.

Some of this I attribute to the arrogance of policy-makers who fail to understand that  large-scale change cannot come all at once, nor solely from the top down. (See my reference above to the lack of teacher input.)  And some of this, frankly, is opportunism on the part of those who really do want to undermine the basic principle of public education. (“Just because you’re paranoid…”)

But let’s be optimistic! I’ve been making the case for some time that the standards, by and large, are pretty good, and that the implementation, by and large, has been pretty awful. Let’s keep the former and fix the latter. And take time to do it right.

Preparing our Students for the Future – Intentionally

There’s a danger when a phrase becomes so common that it begins to lose its meaning. With that risk in mind, this post will be about “21^st-century skills”, the educational framework that includes critical-thinking, collaboration, creativity, communication (beyond reading and writing), and to which I’ve added a 5^th ‘C’: ‘citizenship’

There’s an increasing recognition that the skills today’s students will need to live successful lives are not entirely the same as they were thirty or forty years ago. Information that once would have required a trip to the library and hours of research can now be obtained in a matter of minutes, or even seconds. It is now no harder to communicate with someone on the other side of the world as it is with your next-door neighbor. There are far fewer jobs that require only an ability to read and follow instructions. Just doing what we did in education forty years ago, only harder and faster (more ‘rigorously!’) is not going to get us where we need to go.

And yes, the so-called 21^st-century skills have always been a part of a good education; (typically in the better schools, taught by the better teachers). If that was your experience you should feel privileged, because equipping every student with higher-order thinking skills has never been an intentional goal of our education system. Which perhaps was ok when a relatively small percentage of the population went on to college and/or professional jobs (and you could make a decent living even if you didn’t). 

Which brings me to the  Eighth Grade Academic Literacy Course Proposal which our Board approved last week. Here are some of the highlights of the proposal, with some paraphrasing on my part, (and my comments). Boldface is mine.

What is the Rationale for this Course?

Academic Literacy 8 will offer inquiry-based learning through extensive reading, thinking, collaboration, and communication in an effort to prepare students for success in high school and beyond… <recognizing that>  teaching and learning in the 21st century requires a blending of specific skills, content knowledge, expertise and digital literacy. (I think it’s a big deal that this is an intentional goal.)

We believe this course will assist our students in meeting the following benchmarks and expectations:

• All students demonstrate acquisition of 21st Century Skills (including creativity & innovation; critical thinking & problem solving; communication & collaboration; and information, media and technology skills) via authentic learning experiences; (We’ll have to develop ways to measure this; standardized tests probably won’t do it.)

• All graduates are equipped with the knowledge, skills, and understanding to participate as active citizens in a global society. (I see citizenship as an essential 21^st-century skill. This has been a district goal for a long time – we just haven’t been very intentional about it.)

As Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening are an integrated part of every content area, teachers will support each student’s development with the following learning experiences: (Especially in terms of what is tested, ‘speaking and listening’ are essential, but almost completely overlooked. The recognition of the importance of these skills in every subject area – not just ‘English’ - is another big deal.)

• Read and comprehend complex literary and informational text independently and proficiently;

• Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects based on focused questions, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation; (“Demonstration of understanding”, not regurgitation of facts, should be the preferred means of assessing our students’ learning.)

Effective reading has become a cognitive science that requires students to interact with texts in an effort to construct meaning. Throughout this course, students will be explicitly taught to:

• Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source, and integrate information while avoiding plagiarism. (That’s not something we paid a lot of attention to forty years ago; the encyclopedia was pretty much authoritative.)

• Draw evidence from literary and informational text to support analysis, reflection, and research. (Reflection is an essential, often overlooked, component of learning.)

• Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations. (I am particularly excited by this last item because it recognizes that having good communication skills goes beyond the ability to write a 5-paragraph essay, and that the arts are a key component of communication literacy.)

Some examples of content related activities may include:  

• English: research, non-fiction text, literary works, writing;

• Social Studies: research, non-fiction text, investigation of historic documents and cultural awareness; (You cannot communicate effectively in a global society if you do not understand culture.)

• Mathematics: Critical thinking and real world application of research and statistics; (Everyone has the capacity to become mathematically ‘literate’; this is how you do it. An understanding of statistics is essential in the modern world – and an important component of citizenship.)

• Science and Technology: Inquiry-based learning through thinking, writing and communication. (It’s no longer “just the facts, ma’am”; even scientists must be able to communicate effectively. Also important: self-directed inquiry.)

As part of the district’s literacy initiative, teachers and administrators will continue to be provided with professional development in the area of academic literacy. (This might seem obvious, but as we speak, the Common Core is being implemented in 46 states, asking teachers to make significant changes in their practice, yet with minimal professional development. This is a recipe for disaster.)

Having the opportunity for teachers to plan collaboratively within the school day will provide students with more frequent integrated learning experiences. (If there was one thing we could learn from Finland, it would be the value of giving teachers time to collaborate. If teachers don’t collaborate, how can we expect students to?)

Now, all of this sounds great in theory, but the most exciting part of this proposal is that we have already seen the 7^th-grade Academic Literacy course in action – and the demonstration of higher-order thinking skills by these students, and their enthusiasm, is just astonishing.

Finally, if high school is going to evolve into a highly individualized experience, as it should, than middle school is precisely the time and place to do this.

School Climate, locally owned and operated

Is it possible to teach and learn in a dysfunctional school environment? Certainly, anything is possible – but it’s like swimming against the current. It’s just common sense that, long-term, teachers are more effective if they’re in a school in which they feel respected and supported, where collaboration and innovation are encouraged, and where teachers are not held accountable for things beyond their control. In a time when resources are at such a premium, one would think that we would jump at an opportunity to make our educational system more effective - yet many ‘reformers’ have been pushing us in exactly the opposite direction.  

How did this happen?  It’s a vicious cycle that began with policies (i.e., NCLB)  that relied on the threat of sanctions to make them ‘work’ (although they didn’t work), and that have continued (well-intentioned or not) with Race to the Top. So we have the DoE twisting the arms of state education departments, who threaten school administrators, who intimidate principals, who then – whether consciously or unconsciously - bully their teachers into ‘doing what they’re told’. And what the teachers experience inevitably affects the students. (It takes a lot of courage to break the chain. See: Are You Stuck With Their Mindset?)   

Here’s one example: we’re beginning to see some pushback from parents and educators against the misuse of standardized tests; tests that consume significant resources in time and money with little value in return.  But testing abuse is only a symptom of the larger problem: education policies that have tried to ‘reform’ the system through coercion. This runs counter to everything we know about human nature.

It is true that ‘fear’ can be an effective motivator – in the short term, maybe. But you can’t live that way. Education is a marathon, not a sprint - living in an atmosphere of high tension will quickly exhaust everyone. 

This is the great overlooked issue of ‘low-performing’ schools. Leadership turns over constantly, so there’s no continuity of expectation. Instead of a culture of collaboration and innovation, teachers bunker down and try to stay out of sight. (As Debra Meier recently noted: “teachers are treated differently in low-income schools.") Just being in a school that is ‘low-performing’ places everyone under greater scrutiny and stress. Why would anyone want to work there?

Unsurprisingly, this results in high turnover, which means you don’t have the luxury of filling open positions with the ‘best’ candidates; instead, you get a lot of kids just out of college, who typically have no idea how to survive, let alone thrive, in such an environment. 

Yet, we continue to believe in the fictional “To Sir, with Love”: the superstar teacher. (Key word: fictional.) But how many superstar teachers did you encounter in school?  Is this really a viable model?  Besides, in today’s environment, Poitier’s character would burn out in three years (or be fired for insufficient test scores) and wouldn’t be given enough autonomy to make much difference, anyway. The reality is that teachers want an opportunity “to serve with kindred spirits” – a key ingredient to ‘retaining teachers in high-need schools’  - where they can collectively make a difference. 

So the only viable alternative is to build a ‘virtuous’ cycle. This takes time and cannot be done from a thousand miles away in Washington. (That’s not to say Washington shouldn’t have a role in providing resources, training, best practices, etc.)  It begins with school leaders who consider the long-term impact of their decisions. They see the annual budget as a tool for getting where they want to be ten years from now. They measure student success not by a one-time test score, but by the quality of life their students have twenty years from now. 

They expect competence, professionalism and improvement - but they know that mistakes are inevitable, and view them as opportunities to learn. And so, people do. Over time, teachers and staff of similar disposition are hired, until a ‘culture’ develops – one in which quality teachers want to stay and build careers, turnover is low, experience is valued – and there is a healthy competition for the relatively few positions that become available each year. Only then is it possible to create an environment that is  emotionally and intellectually safe for students, where everyone feels they are part of something important.

Ultimately, this is the choice: education policies that are based primarily in fear, or those based primarily in, well, love. One works, the other doesn’t.