Year-Round Schools Are Not a Magic Answer

Recently on Real Time, The Daily Caller's Matt Lewis couldn't resist taking a dig at teachers and unions,

What about the teacher's unions, who wanna... the teacher's unions who insist on this 19th century educational process, I mean, we take summers off because that's when people used to farm and stuff, 'cause they, 'cause the teachers want to go on vacation.

The statement itself is far from a monument to good logic, but more than that, given how short the statement is, it's remarkable for its inaccuracy.

What about the teacher's unions, who wanna... the teacher's unions who insist on this 19th century educational process...

Teacher's unions? As Lewis should know, not every state has teacher's unions, and the states that ban teacher unions have terrible educational records. Although teacher's unions can complicate some experiments, due to such factors as contractually negotiated rules about the treatment of teachers and assignments to schools, many public schools have experimented with different educational models - open schools, Montessori, extra school hours, year-round school, and the like. It's not the teacher's unions that have been attempting to dictate and micromanage the classroom, or impose more and more standardized tests with higher and higher stakes, the sort of approaches that stifle classroom innovation and entrench the "19th century educational process". If administrators come up with innovations that they believe will move their schools out of the "19th century educational process", they are free to propose those ideas to teacher's unions and, to the extent that a collective bargaining agreement interferes with their proposals, negotiate for changes in the contract. Where would Lewis suggest that I look for these reform ideas that are being stifled by teacher's unions? When I try to find proposed innovations in pedagogy from school administrators, the silence is deafening - and I seem to instead find administrators trying to force schools that aren't following the standard model to get back with the program.

...this 19th century educational process, I mean, we take summers off because that's when people used to farm and stuff...

It's somewhat amazing to me that Lewis can both recognize that what is often referenced as the "factory school" model is a "19th century educational process" and then attribute it to farming - As if we used to be a fully industrialized society until the "agricultural revolution" pushed us into agriculture. Lewis might look at major cities within the United States, where even in the 19th century few to no students would have been involved in agriculture, and ask himself, "Why would those nations and cities have adopted an agricultural calendar?" As for agriculture, does Lewis truly believe that the summers were the busy season for 19th century farms? Plant in the spring, harvest in the fall, and... what am I missing? And why do most other nations, including those with little connection with agriculture, offer summer recesses.

As it turns out, the summer recess is a product of industrialization. Once you move significantly past the one room schoolhouse, schools needed to start standardizing grades and admission dates. Urban schools evolved from a year-round schedule (because factory workers didn't want to have to worry about child care) to one that better facilitated the administration of schools and the standardization of educational materials, textbooks and curricula across a district. As should be no surprise, prior to this "19th century educational process", schools in agricultural areas would often have breaks in spring and fall instead of the summer.

...'cause they, 'cause the teachers want to go on vacation.

I can almost imagine young Matt Lewis, teary-eyed at the thought of leaving his school for a couple of months, and absolutely perplexed by the joy of his peers at having the summer off. I nonetheless suspect that he may have noticed that it was not only teachers who were happy to get a couple of months off during the summer. As much as parents can find it difficult to arrange for day camps during the summer break, it's also nice to have a period of time when you can schedule a vacation without having to worry about the kids missing school.

Lewis is implying that the biggest problem with our (non-)farm based school calendar is the summer vacation, and that year-round schooling would be a miracle cure for all that ails public education but for those pesky teacher's unions. (He is apparently not aware that the summer camp industry has lobbied hard, for decades, against year-round schooling.) But look around: Where can I find any people or groups who are actively trying to make schools run year-round? When I look at charter schools, I see some that have expanded the number of classroom hours, but even KIPP schools take a summer recess. When I look at private schools, those who are most beholden to the wishes of parents, I again see them offering a summer recess. When I look at international schools in the southern hemisphere, where the public schools have a summer recess over our winter months, I find that many follow the schedule of the northern nations from which their students hail. As previously mentioned, states that ban teacher's unions have summer vacations. Very few people are actively seeking to change the status quo, so there's virtually nothing for teacher's unions to oppose.

Why don't more schools follow a year-round calendar? From an educational standpoint, the first question is whether that "year-round calendar" will involve more days of classroom instruction or if it will instead mean having more frequent, longer holidays during non-summer months and a shorter recess in the summer. As it turns out, kids backslide over any holiday. While there's going to be more backsliding over a long holiday than over a short holiday, the important consideration is the cumulative effect, as well as how much classroom time it takes to bring students back up to speed after a holiday. Were Lewis to investigate, he would find that experiments with year-round schooling have not improved student performance, with the most likely explanation being that the cumulative effect of longer vacations spread throughout the year roughly equals the impact of the longer summer break. Year-round schools also report higher problems with absenteeism - a problem that echoes some of the concerns that led to the "19th century educational process" in the first place, as absenteeism was higher prior to the standardization of the school year.

If you shift the subject to "more classroom hours", that's really not a discussion of summer vacations - it's a discussion of how many days per year and hours per day a student should spend in school. Programs like KIPP and similar experiments by public schools suggest that, particularly with a vulnerable student population, more hours in school will boost performance. The picture gets more complicated, though, when you start looking at pedagogy, or looking beyond those disadvantaged populations, and you find that there are nations with high performing students who receive no more hours of classroom instruction, and perhaps less classroom instruction, than students in a typical U.S. school.

When you increase the number of hours of classroom instruction, or expand the number of days in the school year, costs go up. And no, contrary to Lewis's suggestion it's not about greedy teachers who insist upon getting a pay increase merely because we want them to work more days and hours (can you imagine such a thing?), but it also means that you must provide support staff, transportation, utilities and supplies, and administration for those extra hours and days of education. If you want to expand school into the summer months you may have to add air conditioning, as well as construct shaded areas in playgrounds while installing additional water fountains. School administrators often schedule building maintenance over the summer, and having students present complicates scheduling as well as creating issues with exposure to construction areas, building materials, paint fumes, and the like.

In short, Lewis is wrong that the primary impediment to year-round schooling is teacher's unions, is wrong that we have summer holidays because of an agricultural calendar, and is wrong in his implication that year-round schooling would remedy the problems with our nation's schools. He's correct that teachers like their summer vacations, but... who doesn't? At the end, is that what we're really talking about - jealousy that teaching is one of the few professions in this nation that enjoys a significant amount of vacation time? If not, assuming that they see their public role as involving more than just teacher-bashing, people like Lewis should learn the facts before they attempt to influence the debate.

Who Attends KIPP's Schools, and Why

Elliott Witney, a former leader of a KIPP charter school, claims,

Finally, I want to address your question of whether or not KIPP leaders send their children to KIPP. The answer is yes, absolutely, they do. But KIPP's mission is not educating the children of their leaders, but educating the children of their communities. KIPP's #1 Essential Question is, Are we serving the students that need us? With hundreds of families on waiting lists at KIPP schools across the country, the focus is on making progress toward that goal.

I have a few problems with that statement. First, KIPP uses the term "leader" pretty loosely, and it's not clear if the statement relates to categories of worker who would normally be regarded as teachers, school principals and school administrators. I would like to see Witney give his statement some meaning - break down "leaders" into meaningful categories, and tell us what percentage of them have children and, of those, what percentage of the children actually attend KIPP schools. Please note, I have no problem with KIPP teachers taking the position that I would expect most middle class parents to take - that KIPP schools follow a model and offer an experience that is inferior to that available to their children in their own, local schools - but to the extent that Witney is suggesting that KIPP teachers and administrators believe KIPP to be an appropriate or superior choice for their own children I would like him to substantiate his claim.

Second, doesn't KIPP take the position that children are children? That it's not a question of community or home environment, but what the school can offer any child from any background? If so, why cavil with a statement like, "KIPP's mission is not educating the children of their leaders"? What is different about the children of KIPP leaders? If there are significant differences between the children served by KIPP and the children of KIPP leaders, what are those differences and how do they play out in an educational environment? If there are no significant differences, why make the statement?

Similarly, when Witney speaks of KIPP Schools "educating the children of their communities", how is that relevant? Is he stating that the KIPP model is tailored to a certain type of community, and would be unnecessary or perhaps even harmful in other communities? If so, what are the elements of a community that make the KIPP approach appropriate or desirable, and what are the elements of a community in which KIPP would not bring anything to the table or would be inferior to the presently existing options?

What are the factors that, for a given child or community, translate into what Witney describes as a "need" for KIPP? The thing is, we know the answers, or at least what KIPP and its backers implicitly believe to be the answers , so why is it so difficult for them to state those answers out loud?

Let's Get "Elitist" With Our Schools

A lawyer I know used to quip that, in a lawsuit, every lawyer added to the case would double the amount of time it took to resolve the litigation. A similar concept appears to apply to classrooms - each disruptive student added to a classroom doubles the amount of time a teacher must spend on classroom management instead of teaching. I saw that effect when I was in fifth grade and my classroom was split between neighborhood students and kids with emotional disabilities. I saw it in my high school, which had voluntary academic streaming, whenever I was in a class that was not academically streamed. I saw it during my brief stint as a substitute teacher. I will add the caveat that some teachers are much better than others at managing and redirecting classroom disruptions, but the multiplier appears to nonetheless be the same.

When people point to charter schools and argue, "This school is a great success," and I see a school that looks more like a juvenile detention center, with children subject to intensive behavior codes, required to march silently from class to class, squaring off their corners as they turn down another hallway, I see three things: First, the rigidity will almost certainly reduce the amount of time any given teacher has to spend on classroom management, even if they otherwise have weak skills. Why? Because the schools have a clear escalation schedule for behavior issues and clear consequences for repeated infractions. Second, even without considering the accusation that some of these schools actively "counsel out" kids who cannot adhere to their behavior codes, I see how the codes become a mechanism for discouraging problem students from enrolling and in ensuring that many or most who do enroll won't stay. Third, I see a school environment that most middle class parents would find unacceptable for their own children.

And when I hear how "success" is defined by many of these schools, with the trumpeting of any modest improvement over the performance of an average school in the district, I can't help but note that there are often public schools in the same district that perform as well or better, but are largely ignored. There are instances of public schools being hailed as significantly better than others in the district, and when politics enter that process the touted school can turn out to be as overblown in its success as a typical charter. But for the most part charter school advocates and the media portray this as a battle between successful charters and failing public school, whatever the facts.'

When I hear proposals for school reform, I am reminded not only of the failure of one reform after another, I'm reminded of the partial success of the British grammar school model. That model, in very simple terms, involved testing children at age 11 and, on the basis of the result, tracking them into technical, 'modern', or intensely academically oriented grammar schools. In the following passage, George Orwell made observations that suggest that he, like everybody else, can form opinions based upon the passions of the time:

The time was when I used to lament over quite imaginary pictures of lads of fourteen dragged protesting from their lessons and set to work at dismal jobs. It seemed to me dreadful that the doom of a 'job' should descend upon anyone at fourteen. Of course I know now that there is not one working-class boy in a thousand who does not pine for the day when he will leave school. He wants to be doing real work, not wasting his time on ridiculous rubbish like history and geography. To the working class, the notion of staying at school till you are nearly grown-up seems merely contemptible and unmanly. The idea of a great big boy of eighteen, who ought to be bringing a pound a week home to his parents, going to school in a ridiculous uniform and even being caned for not doing his lessons! Just fancy a working-class boy of eighteen allowing himself to be caned!

I'm also reminded of visiting my stepfather's home town in the north of England, seeing two towering schools built side-by-side to respectively educate the boys and girls of a very working class region, and of the fact that for my stepfather and his brother that project was an undeniable success. A critic of the grammar school era who has come to soften his tone observes,

For a considerable time now, however, I have been in the process of changing my mind: did people like me, both a beneficiary of a grammar school education and also a vociferous critic of it at the time, make a grave error?

My thoughts coalesced when I was questioned while taking part in a BBC4 documentary, The Grammar School – A Secret History (to be next screened on Thursday at 9pm). This was a much more difficult U-turn for me than many because I wrote a book in 1975 about my former school, Dagenham County High (now defunct), entitled Goodbye to the Working Class. I was extremely critical of the school specifically and grammar schools in general. Though I do not recant everything, including the book's overall thesis, I now concede that I totally underplayed the value of the education itself.

The atmosphere of the grammar school, or of British schools in general, of the post-WWII period was critiqued, in a manner of speaking, in the movie and song, The Wall.

The concern was not on creating a warm, caring environment for the children, but for those who were lucky enough to make the cut at age 11, and took advantage of what was offered to them, there was the opportunity to advance through education: Getting not only a very strong (for lack of a better term) K-12 education, but also passage into top universities with very low tuition. When I heard my stepfather describe his experiences I had mixed feelings: Fist that I would have appreciated that type of academic opportunity myself and second, even as a student who didn't often get into trouble, that I would not have enjoyed the rule-driven authoritarian structure of his school. (I started school in the U.K., so I had a taste of the tail end of that authoritarianism, and I didn't like the taste even then.)

My stepfather once commented on high school reunions, that his grammar school had never held a reunion? Why? Because by the time he graduated, there were only about twenty students left in his class. There was some truth to what Orwell had to say about the clash of cultures in grammar school. That attrition rate, no doubt, was a significant factor in the winding down of that particular social experiment, but at a cost:

Indeed, when I bump into old boys and girls, the majority of them extol the virtues of the school and the education system which gave them – the sons and daughters of largely blue-collar workers – the chance to take a step on the ladder to a better life....

I supported the transformation to comprehensive schooling in the egalitarian belief that we should dispense with a two-tier state system (the third tier, technical schools, never worked anyway). But I now accept that we should not have rejected the educational ethos of grammar schools. As the testimonies in the documentary illustrate, they did a fine job. In phasing them out, we dumbed down instead of smarting up. And those grammars that have managed to survive prove the point.

The author also notes that although "only 1% of the children of semi-skilled or unskilled workers went on to higher education"

There were economic reasons for many not going on to university, allied to the fact that obtaining a place was difficult because there were fewer universities at the time. Most significantly, the schooling itself provided a springboard to the professions and led many to go to university later, as mature students.

The author concludes that grammar schools, "and particularly the disciplined culture they cultivated", worked, and that the present need is to reinvent them, not to dismiss them. But here's the thing: that takes us back to academic tracking.

I recently discussed tracking with a professor who spent a good part of his career helping K-12 teachers learn to better teach English, and he commented on how different a school environment could be within a large school district, with some schools under pretty good control and others largely out of control. He expressed sympathy for teachers who oppose tracking, as the net result can be that they're left with a classroom full of kids who don't see much or any value in learning. But he seemed to accept that in many school districts, tracking was pretty much the only way you would get the more academically capable students into a learning environment where they were challenged. The conceit of the public school is that smart kids will take care of themselves. Some will, but others will meander or drop out.

The best solution we seem to have developed for students with special aptitude is to offer magnet schools - to allow kids to voluntarily funnel themselves into schools that support academics, the arts, or even specific career training. It's an imperfect solution and, in my opinion, generally starts later than would be ideal. Like British comprehensive schools, even academically focused magnet schools are dumbed down as compared to the historic British grammar schools, but at least students have a shot at being not only prepared for college, but prepared to do well.

To the extent that the British once operated under the conceit that if you identified bright children and gave them the opportunity for a top quality education, albeit in a setting that was too rigid and authoritarian for many kids who were channeled into it, you could make them all college quality and they would all attend college. The reality did not meet that expectation, but when you look at what was accomplished you have to acknowledge a transformation of culture and the economic elevation of a great many kids who were otherwise unlikely to have moved beyond working class employment and wages. Their rise was buoyed by a number of factors, including the post-WWII economic expansion, the increased need for educated workers, and the fact that traditional class structures arguably contributed to a larger-than-otherwise-likely population of bright young people with supportive families who were nonetheless pretty much locked into the bottom end of the nation's class structure. But a valid takeaway is that you do help achieve social mobility, better society, and better the lives of individual young people when you give them the opportunity to pursue academically rigorous education.

Our nation presently operates under the conceit that schools can turn anybody into "college material" and that everybody will benefit from having a college degree. I disagree on both counts. In terms of the value of a college degree, a strong case can be made that an excessive population of college graduates, emerging from colleges that have dumbed down degree programs to ensure high completion rates, makes a college degree less valuable. When employers can no longer safely make assumptions about the academic abilities of a college graduate based upon their degree, and when there are many underqualified or lightly qualified graduates who look pretty much the same on paper as the ones who would be a good hire, the hiring decision is apt to turn on other factors. That's not new - the elite colleges that have traditionally served society's scions still carry intense brand value that is arguably in gross disproportion to their comparative academic rigor - but it puts many college graduates back in the position that high school graduates enjoyed back in the 1950's and 60's. A college degree is in some ways analogous to a union card - it doesn't necessarily show that you can do the job, but at least it opens the door for your application. A "college for all" attitude dilutes that value.

Also, even for some highly capable or highly intelligent students, completing college can consume years and money that would be better invested in other pursuits, such as jumping into a challenging field based upon a display of ability, or starting a business. Also, some students benefit from taking time between high school and college, as they lack the interest or motivation to study. (Think: the entire phenomenon of the "party school".)

I would like to see educational reform focus on helping students identify their aptitudes, and maximize the development of their skills. I would try to provide a structure in which a student whose interests changed, or whose aptitudes shifted, move from one track to another - or perhaps be the equivalent of a "dual major" - rather than locking kids into a track based upon choices made or test results from too young an age. And while I would try to provide equal opportunity for all, and to give all kids safe schools with competent teachers, I would not concern myself with notions of "elitism" when I allowed kids to choose academically tracked programs. It may well have been an "elitist" system that allowed my stepfather and his brother to leave a small, working class town, get Oxbridge educations, and pursue successful careers in business, but our nation's "reforms" of the past decade seem more likely to have kept them in under-performing schools while the nation's resources were poured into trying to bring sub-average students up to average and pretend that would make them all "college ready". If you pretend that the smart kids, or those who excel vocationally or artistically, in failing schools (or the mediocre charters we pretend are fantastic) will take care of themselves, you'll disadvantage those kids and deprive society of the full extent of their gifts.

Zero Tolerance Idiocy

It's not just for public schools, it would seem.

Calling "Shenanigans" on Charter School Rental Schemes?

Indiana is questioning whether companies that rent school buildings to nonprofit charter schools can claim a tax exemption, bringing to mind some of the dubious rental agreements charters have been shown to have entered.

Statewide, a lot of money is spent. Taxpayers will spend more than $3.2 million in rent this year on just four Indiana charter schools. Most of the dollars are flowing to a Kansas City, Mo., real estate company that earned $84.7 million in profits last year. And while the Allen County board is scrutinizing the property tax exemption sought for the company’s property on North Wells Street, Entertainment Properties Trust can’t lose: Its triple net lease agreement makes the tenant – Indiana taxpayers – responsible for maintenance costs, utilities, insurance and taxes.

It's inevitable that when you bring private businesses into the field of education, some of them will bend and break the rules. Corruption occurs even in public school boards, so why should we not expect the same or worse when we increase the number of players, add a 'right' to extract profits, and reduce the amount of oversight? That said, it is in no small part the advancement of charter schools on ideological grounds that opens the door to this type of looting of the public purse. When legislators care about the quality of education and the responsible use of public funds, they provide checks against windfall profits for those who are supposedly stepping in to help educate children.

In Indiana, the four Imagine charter schools have budgeted $4.3 million for rent and operating costs. At the Imagine Life Sciences Academy West in Indianapolis, those expenses amount to more than 22 percent of the school’s total budget. The common guideline recommended for charter school organizers is 15 percent for facility costs....

Gov. Mitch Daniels has criticized traditional public schools for spending too much on buildings, while bills he supports targeting teacher seniority are clearly aimed at driving down education salaries. But in his zeal to open more charter schools, he appears to give them a pass on education management agreements and real estate deals that collectively shift millions in tax dollars from classrooms to out-of-state interests.

When can we expect Daniels to push legislation capping what charter schools can pay in rent, at least to the level he has already deemed excessive for public schools, and prohibiting the "heads we win, tails you lose" lease arrangements that JERIT CS Fund LLC was able to 'negotiate' with Imagine Schools?

Charter Schools Aren't a Magic Bullet

You would think from Arnold Schwarzenegger's editorial in the Washington Post that all you need to do to fix a failing school is have a charter school organization take it over. Job done, wipe your hands and go home. Schwarzenegger speaks of a troubled elementary school in Compton, California that is being converted to a charter school based upon a law that provides for reorganization "if 51 percent of parents sign a petition."

The thing is, as of right now nothing has changed. The charter school organization has not taken over. The students... well, they have shown improvement over the past couple of years, albeit not to a level that's going to satisfy concerned parents, but obviously the charter that hasn't yet taken over can't claim any credit for that. Saying, "The school was failing so a charter is taking over" isn't a success story - it's a preamble. The story starts next year (assuming the petition drive is determined to have been properly conducted).

And although I wish it were otherwise, there is nothing magical about charter schools or the formula applied by the modest percentage (about 17%) that outperform matched public schools (as compared to the 37% of public schools that outperform matched charters - but we're not supposed to mention that in polite company). The charter schools being offered to the inner city seem either to follow a model of rigid discipline crossed with rote learning and an extended school day, or they perform no better or worse than their matched public counterparts. And unfortunately, even when we speak of improvement we're not speaking of bringing the kids up to the level you would find in a typical middle class public school.

Maybe Celerity Educational Group, the charter school organization selected to take over the elementary school, is exceptional. Maybe they have a superior model to the much ballyhooed "long school days with lots of group chanting" model that is usually held up as the solution to inner city schools - they say that their "curriculum progressively deepens students' understanding of core concepts while avoiding needless repetition", so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they can achieve parity with schools that perform at a level acceptable to middle class Americans. I'm happy to give them a chance.

But despite Schwarzenegger's bravado, I'm not prepared to declare this a victory for the children until I actually see the school improve.

Because teaching is really easy, I'll close with this example of the pedagogical style demonstrated by the governor in his past life as the star of Kindergarten Cop:

The Weakness of the "Charter School" Industry

An editorial by Mike Feinberg, superintendent of KIPP Houston, admits that charter schools "are not the 'magic bullet' for education", but argues for additional subsidies to help "high-performing" charter schools expand. To his credit, Feinberg also calls for holding charters accountable and closing "low-performing charter schools". But while I understand his zeal for expanding the charters offered by organizations whose schools typically offer better performance, his argument is not compelling either as to why those organizations need to be subsidized or why the same (or better) results could not be achieved by redirecting the funding that would go toward subsidies back into the public system. As he notes, even with the existing level of subsidization, abuse is rampant:

The charter school movement was based on a simple premise: freedom to innovate, in exchange for accountability around results. Unfortunately, not all charter schools are living up to this promise. Even more upsetting, loopholes in the current charter law are allowing low-performing and fiscally irresponsible schools to stay open, which casts a pall on the majority of charter schools in Houston and across Texas that are keeping their promises to their students and families.

Creating massive new subsidies seems likely to either exaggerate that problem, resulting in even more public money being siphoned off by opportunists and scam artists, or to insure to the benefit of a handful of privileged charter school organizations, giving their schools significant subsidies that new, innovative charters won't enjoy. Further, beyond their desire to rapidly expand, it isn't clear why organizations like KIPP require additional public funding. Between funds paid on a per-pupil basis and the large donations their parent organization has amassed from various corporations and foundations, Houston's KIPP schools reportedly already spend more per pupil than their public school counterparts.

So when the proposal is made,

The government needs to [give] districts incentives to open up unused spaces for charters to use.... The government should also back bond offerings for public charter schools, as it does for their traditional counterparts, so that the competition for buildings is fair.

In relation to KIPP it seems to be more about budget priorities - it doesn't have to choose between spending more per pupil and having a brand, spanking new, state-of-the-art school facility - than it is about budgetary fairness. And, as I previously noted, when it comes to schools and organizations that are less established or less philanthropic than KIPP, particularly in the for-profit sector where abuses already seem rampant, it sounds like a recipe for disaster. I will grant, if school districts have unused space that's suitable for charter schools, making those facilities available for charters to rent or purchase does seem fair. But let's not pretend that granting new subsidies so that charters can construct new facilities, even as public schools in the same districts continue to crumble, is about leveling the playing field.

Also, when we start talking about closing underperforming charters, we need to recognize that there's already push-back against that idea particularly in the for-profit sector. Testing and standards? They're for public schools. It's difficult to see where this proposal leads, except to exceptional taxpayer subsidy and lemon capitalism that will largely benefits for-profit charter school organizations who will happily leave the taxpayer holding the bag in the event of default, and will actively lobby for exemptions from any standards applicable to public schools or for their receipt of subsidies even though they don't meet those standards based upon their professed "innovations".

Feinberg also suggests that the one big "innovation" offered by charters serving the inner city is the extended school day - something borne out by research - and that it can easily be replicated within the public schools.

HISD has taken some promising steps in this direction, including its Apollo 20 initiative, which is working with 20 historically underperforming Houston schools to pilot innovations adapted from successful charters, including the extended day and year.

But Feinberg can't resist suggesting that teacher job protections should be undermined, and suggests that public schools need "freedom to innovate", whatever that means. (What "freedom to innovate" do public schools current lack and which freedoms, if any, are not imposed by administrators?)

Here's something that puzzles me: Whatever wars public school administrators want to wage with public school teachers, why does Feinberg care if public school teachers can be easily fired by a principal? If I were cynical, I would wonder if he felt that it would make it easier for charter schools to poach quality teachers out of the public school system - after all, if they no longer enjoy tenure and are expected to work longer hours without additional compensation, why not switch over to a better funded charter school - particularly one in a brand spanking new, taxpayer subsidized facility? I don't recall ever hearing the administrator of a quality, fully private school complaining about public school teachers, save perhaps to note the importance of offering competitive pay packages. Is Feinberg's complaint really about competition? Burned out KIPP teachers move to public schools, and quality teachers in the public school system aren't interested in KIPP?¹

The Wall Street Journal offers, through SmartMoney, a remarkably candid take on charter schools.² Charters aren't significantly outperforming public schools - to the contrary, only 17% outperform their public counterparts, whereas 37% produce worse results. They rely upon non-certified teachers and have high teacher turnover. They find ways to exclude students with learning and behavioral disabilities, particularly those with severe disabilities, shifting the higher cost of their education back onto the public system. In relation to KIPP,

The Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools have been criticized for high rates of student attrition, in part because it’s the struggling students who are more likely to leave schools mid-year – so if more students leave charters, that churn could boost a school’s scores. A KIPP study released in June found students leaving at rates comparable to the rate at which students leave traditional public schools – but, according to Miron, that study ignored the fact that KIPP schools don’t then fill empty slots with other weak, transient students the way traditional public schools do. “Traditional public schools have to take everybody,” Miron explains. “Charter schools can determine the number they want to take and when they want to take them, and then they can close the door.”

Miron found there was a 19% drop in enrollment in KIPP schools from grades 6 to 7, and a 24% drop from grades 7 to 8. Some charter schools lose 50% of a cohort each year, Miron says. And in some cases, students can be explicitly pushed out of a charter school for failing to meet the school’s academic or behavioral standards – an option that’s not available to a traditional public school.

And the biggest (non-)secret of all? “The single biggest predictor of student performance is family income". I've stated before that it's perfectly reasonable for a school to regard teachers as the most significant in-school factor in a child's education, and that it makes sense to recruit the best teachers you can and to provide them with the support they need to succeed in the classroom. But you cannot disregard the effects of poverty. Part of KIPP's success can reasonably be inferred to come from the fact that its students are more removed, both by virtue of additional school hours and by virtue of the fact that children with behavioral issues won't last long in a KIPP school, from the chaos that otherwise prevails in many of their lives.

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1. With no disrespect intended to KIPP's accomplishments or to the teachers who work long hours teaching KIPP's students, I'm certainly not interested their pedagogical model, either as a parent or a former public school student, and find it difficult to believe I would enjoy working in one of their schools. I'm also not personally sold on the idea that the "cure" for inner city schools should be a model of instruction that would be rejected, out-of-hand, if proposed for a middle class school. I hope that KIPP's graduates achieve long-term success.

2. They have a counterpart for public schools which raises some valid issues, but it seems like they scrambled to come up with the same number of points.

The Hardships of For-Profit Education

The President of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities complains about a recent New York Times article on the sorry performance of private educational institutions,

The Education Trust report you cite unfairly criticizes the career education sector and devalues the education and commitment of its 3.2 million students. Comparing private-sector colleges and universities to other types of institutions does not consider the larger percentages of high-risk students we serve.

I recently irked a company that operates for-profit charter schools by suggesting,

Stop and think about that for a minute. If you're wealthy, your kids don't go to the University of Phoenix, and your kids certainly won't be attending the "charter school" equivalent of the University of Phoenix. It's quaint to pretend that if only corporations are permitted to pull profits out of the per-student fees allocated to charters we'll suddenly have thousands of schools across the country offering rich curricula and pedagogical choices. But if you look at the for-profit college industry you can see what you actually get - bottom feeders. No kidding, the advocates of that system are encouraging people to ignore test scores.

But here's the thing: if privatizing education is supposed to be a miracle cure for K-12 education, why is "our students are harder to teach" supposed to be an acceptable excuse for the performance of for-profit institutions of higher education? Their students want to go to school and, either with cash or student loan money, are paying for the privilege - you can assume some degree of motivation. Why is it only appropriate to blame schools and teachers for poor outcomes, and insist that the composition of the student body should be irrelevant, when they're part of the public sector?

Also, let's be honest - we're largely talking about diploma mills that churn out degrees that few believe hold any real value, or encourage students to pursue certification for jobs that traditionally have not required any formal education beyond high school, where the same certification can be achieved for a lot less money through a community college, or both. And where the certification obtained may not even be valued by employers.

The author's best attempt at a defense of the Association's members is,

At least the Education Trust concedes that graduation rates at two-year career colleges are much higher than those of community colleges.

Except that "concession" is footnoted,

Caution should be used when comparing graduation rates at for-profits and public community colleges because of differences in the length of academic programs. See Christopher M. Mullins, “Just How Similar? Community Colleges and the For-Profit Sector,” American Association of Community Colleges, AACC Policy Brief 2010-04PBL, November 2010.

Notably,

About 89% of students at 2-year for-profit, 86% at less-than-2-year for-profit, and 73% at 4-year for-profit institutions enroll full time, compared with about 40% of students at community colleges. This fundamental difference in enrollment intensity, in addition to the many short-term programs offered at for-profit institutions, substantially increases for-profits’ completion rates.

When transfer rates are included in graduation rate analyses, community colleges and 2-year for-profit institutions have completion rates of 40% and 61%, respectively.

If somebody is going to drop out of college, doing so as a part-time community college student would be far less of an economic detriment than doing so as a full-time private college student; I thought that was one of the reasons for community college - to let people supplement their skills without worrying about whether or not they might get a degree, and to let others see if they have the interest or aptitude to pursue a college degree without necessarily quitting their day job or making a large financial commitment.

If for-profits become big players in the charter school world, displacing public schools in the inner cities, how much doubt do you have that once they're established we'll hear the same complaint offered in the defense of private colleges: "Our performance issues aren't our fault - our students are hard to teach."

The Big Bucks in School Privatization (f/k/a Charter Schools)

It's been interesting to me to see the intense interest that some very wealth Americans have been giving to the charter school movement. Some (e.g., Bill Gates) appear to be genuinely interested in school reform, others (e.g., Mark Zuckerberg) seem interested in improving their public image, and many may see it as a fashionable social activity. But when hedge fund managers start sniffing around the perimeter you know that there has to be big money involved... somehow.

Well, here's an example of the big money.

Wealthy investors and major banks have been making windfall profits by using a little-known federal tax break to finance new charter-school construction.

The program, the New Markets Tax Credit, is so lucrative that a lender who uses it can almost double his money in seven years.

The article explains how some charter schools have seen their rent skyrocket, but with little interest from regulators or state auditors. And the charters aren't making much noise about it, even as rent doubles or triples over a couple of years because.... at least according to the article, it appears that they're in bed with the companies that are building the properties and leasing them to the schools.

In Albany, which boasts the state's highest percentage of charter school enrollments, a nonprofit called the Brighter Choice Foundation has employed the New Markets Tax Credit to arrange private financing for five of the city's nine charter schools.

But many of those same schools are now straining to pay escalating rents, which are going toward the debt service that Brighter Choice incurred during construction.

The Henry Johnson Charter School, for example, saw the rent for its 31,000-square-foot building skyrocket from $170,000 in 2008 to $560,000 last year.

The Albany Community School's rent jumped from $195,000 to $350,000.

Green Tech High Charter School rents went from $443,000 to $487,000....

And key officers of Albany's charter school boards are themselves board members, employees or former employees of the Brighter Choice Foundation or its affiliates.

Christian Bender, for example, executive director of the foundation, is chairman or vice chairman of four of the Albany charters.

So is this catching anybody's attention?

No wonder JPMorgan Chase announced this week it was creating a new $325 million pool to invest in charter schools and take advantage of the New Markets Tax Credit.

Who else is seeing opportunity here?

The Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. today announced the formation of a $25 million charter school facility that will finance the development of approximately 16 charter schools over the next two years.

The Goldman Sachs Charter School Loan Facility will be capitalized by Goldman Sachs and credit-enhanced by funds awarded by the US Department of Education to LISC, which will also manage the facility and its lending program. LISC currently supports 130 charter schools nationwide. This facility will be focused on the greater New York City and New Jersey areas. In total, the fund is expected to leverage approximately $100 million in additional capital to support high-quality charter school facilities.

How might more money be squeezed out of charter schools? How about allowing them to operate as for-profit businesses (in the model of the University of Phoenix and Kaplan)? The AEI's on the case:

The Obama administration has been particularly guilty on this count, enthusiastically championing charter-school expansion even as its Department of Education radiates hostility toward for-profits in K-12 and higher education. The result is entrenched funding arrangements, policies, and political currents that stifle for-profit operators — organizations such as National Heritage Academies, which operates 67 charter schools in eight states, or EdisonLearning, which operates schools and provides supplemental education services across the United States and overseas. If choice-based reform is to yield more than boutique solutions, for-profits are a critical piece of the puzzle.

Meanwhile, even as they admit that charter schools are effectively doing nothing to improve school performance, with the help of their mainstream media stenographers they hope to create a funding structure that shifts more money to charters and out of the public system - in a manner that appears designed to benefit large commercial ventures:

A real marketplace in education, he suggests, probably wouldn’t fund schools directly at all. It would only fund students, tying a school’s budget to the number of children seeking to enroll. If there are 150 applicants for a charter school, they should all bring their funding with them — and take it away from the failing schools they’re trying to escape.

A "real marketplace" in which you defund the public school in favor of a for-profit charter school that doesn't actually get better results, but pays a lot of rent to the property investors who sit on its board, operates a large number of schools so that it can justify CEO-sized salaries to its management, doesn't offer amenities such as music, gym, art, libraries (all a "waste of money"), avoids public oversight, and leaves special education to what's left of the public school system. And if the public becomes concerned that you're scrapping the public system in favor of something that may not be better - may in fact be worse - and that these corporations are interested not only in the inner city but in extending their reach into successful school districts? Lecture them that results don't matter - what counts is "freedom of choice". Oops, sorry Ross - I mean being "Free to Choose".

As I've indicates, my initial hope for the charter school movement was that it would bring about more choice for parents. I would like to see charters offer parents a real choice of educational model with less focus on standardized testing. But with few exceptions the charter school movement has not lived up to that promise and, sorry, exceptions do not prove the rule. The charter schools that show the most promise in the inner city receive grants and other subsidies that expand their budgets well beyond the standard level of funding per pupil, while advancing an educational model that would be quickly and firmly rejected by most middle class parents. We're to extrapolate from that limited success to believe that if those charters not only operated without that additional grant money, but were operated by corporations that were also pulling out 10-20% of the school's money to satisfy investors and shareholders on top of oversized rents, we would be happy with the results? Why stop there? Let's push the argument right over the top.

And a world where more parents and kids have access to a fraction of the educational choices available to, say, Sasha and Malia Obama seems a like a better world by definition, no matter what happens to America’s average S.A.T. score.

First, while it's nice to pretend that we're talking about average SAT scores, the larger discussion of charter schools involves bringing children up to grade level in math and reading. We're not talking about a trade-off between "history, science, foreign languages, classic literature, mathematics and English composition" and "test scores" that a typical parent would find acceptable. If you're lagging two or three years behind grade level, it's absurd to pretend you can simultaneously hold an advantage in mathematics, literature and composition. Second, the school attended by the President's children is not in any way average, nor would the public have any interest in funding a school at @$35,000 per student per year. If it were, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Third, the school is a non-profit. As are most of the private schools to which those with the money to choose presently send their children.

Stop and think about that for a minute. If you're wealthy, your kids don't go to the University of Phoenix, and your kids certainly won't be attending the "charter school" equivalent of the University of Phoenix. It's quaint to pretend that if only corporations are permitted to pull profits out of the per-student fees allocated to charters we'll suddenly have thousands of schools across the country offering rich curricula and pedagogical choices. But if you look at the for-profit college industry you can see what you actually get - bottom feeders. No kidding, the advocates of that system are encouraging people to ignore test scores.

As for the conceit that "costs of educating kids who took vouchers were lower than for kids who stayed in the existing public schools", well, no kidding. Because public schools offer libraries (and librarians), sports programs, gymnasiums, school cafeterias, and other amenities, the cost of providing "alternative schools" for students with behavioral problems, as well as bearing the cost of medical support and special education services for special needs students even if those students are in charter schools and private schools. The money paid to charters reflects the fact that they don't offer that full set of services - not even close.

Yes, by all means, come up with systems that create true choice for parents, and let them pick a program that suits their child. But let's not pretend that the monied interests who are hungrily eyeing public school dollars are any more interested in education than private prisons are in reducing recidivism. Those who truly want to help charters offer a wider set of choices can follow the model of Clonlara, and develop curricula and teaching methods that can be employed by interested charter schools. If they do a good job, they should even be able to sell such a curriculum at a profit. And those who truly want to help kids can do so through smaller nonprofits that remain answerable to parents and the community.

Let's not offer up the elementary school equivalent of the University of Phoenix, and defend it by claiming that we're giving its students "a fraction of the educational choices available to" parents who can afford the elementary school equivalent of Yale.

The Difficulty of Education Reform

I missed this editorial from a few days ago, in which Robert Samuelson takes on the current conceptions of school reform. His statistical arguments are a bit misleading, but I'll cut him a break and skip to his substantive criticism of reforms:¹

"Reforms" have disappointed for two reasons. First, no one has yet discovered transformative changes in curriculum or pedagogy, especially for inner-city schools, that are (in business lingo) "scalable" -- easily transferable to other schools, where they would predictably produce achievement gains. Efforts in New York and the District to raise educational standards involve contentious and precarious school-by-school campaigns to purge "ineffective" teachers and principals. Charter schools might break this pattern, though there are grounds for skepticism. In 2009, the 4,700 charter schools enrolled about 3 percent of students and did not uniformly show achievement gains.

I've mentioned before that what Samuelson describes is one of my biggest disappointments from the charter school movement. With few exceptions, the schools follow the same educational model as traditional public schools, perhaps modified by "more is better" - longer school days and more hours of instruction. That latter idea has some common sense promise, but comes at a price - you either overwork your teachers for the same pay they can get elsewhere, overwork your teachers for more pay to try to reduce attrition, or hire more teachers. That is, it's more expensive while offering nothing by way of innovation. It's not just that nobody has yet discovered transformative changes - it's that few are even looking.

The larger cause of failure is almost unmentionable: shrunken student motivation. Students, after all, have to do the work. If they aren't motivated, even capable teachers may fail.

There is some discussion of student motivation, and the role of parents and community, in this recent thread and its comments. I don't want to get into the conceit of "We had it tough in my childhood; kids these days are soft, spoiled and selfish", as that has been pretty much a constant criticism of "kids these days" from the dawn of civilization. But I have heard the lament from many educators that parental expectations have shifted (it's the school's problem, not theirs, if their kids misbehave or don't perform well), and that the culture of "It's cool to be stupid" has crept from high school into college classrooms. To the extent that problems arise outside of the classroom, the current generation of reformers make things more difficult for the classroom teacher by in essence saying "So what? It is your problem, and yours alone, if your students don't flourish." Samuelson's impressions aren't much different from mine in that regard:

Motivation comes from many sources: curiosity and ambition; parental expectations; the desire to get into a "good" college; inspiring or intimidating teachers; peer pressure. The unstated assumption of much school "reform" is that if students aren't motivated, it's mainly the fault of schools and teachers. The reality is that, as high schools have become more inclusive (in 1950, 40 percent of 17-year-olds had dropped out, compared with about 25 percent today) and adolescent culture has strengthened,² the authority of teachers and schools has eroded. That applies more to high schools than to elementary schools, helping explain why early achievement gains evaporate.

Samuelson also reports that students "don't like school, don't work hard and [consequently] don't do well", which, it's fair to say, is simply a reflection of human nature. If you don't see value or reward in your work, it's an unpleasant chore to be avoided. How can a teacher, alone, overcome a community's general indifference to education?

Proponents of school reform are aware that there are kids and parents in failing school districts who desperately want a better educational environment for their children. There's some validity to the concept that better order in the halls and classrooms, and better maintenance of school buildings, will help to a degree. But if your goal is to markedly improve educational performance within a school, that degree is small.

Although to read the New York Times and Washington Post, school reform is a tiny footnote in relation to D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty's recent loss - that the real problem was his style of management. I'm more convinced by those who perceive his loss as a referendum on his school reform initiatives. That is, parents most affected by those initiatives turned up in large numbers to declare, "We're tired of having you rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic and call it 'reform'. Where are the results? Why does my child still have to play the lottery to get a chance to be in a decent school?" It might not be unreasonable for him to respond that reforms take time, that his actions (including his mistakes) are well-intentioned. But how long are parents supposed to wait?

I'm not the only one who sees the centrality of school reform in Fenty's loss. Consider, for exmaple, Tim Pawlenty's whine,

“Mayor Fenty lost after the teachers' unions led a campaign against him and Michelle Rhee. Fenty's loss is further evidence that despite all their rhetoric about 'the children,' what the teachers’ unions really care about is getting more money for jobs they can't lose at schools that produce students who are not prepared to compete,” Pawlenty said in a statement.

D.C. parents didn't turn out to vote because the teacher's union told them that D.C. school reform wasn't living up to its promise - Pawlenty is offering them a version of, "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes". Is Pawlenty as contemptuous of the voters of his own state as he is of those in D.C.? (Perhaps so.)

Update: Worth mentioning, the possibility that Rhee and Fenty "hurt their cause by overstating their success" and by "pushing forward some reforms that make no sense". I suspect that Rhee's venom, directed toward those who voted against Fenty, is a microcosm of why she's unpopular with parents who want reform - whatever her intentions, they want results, not complaints about how hard her work is or by implication that they're too lazy to support reform.

Update II: Eugene Robinson comments on Rhee's self-absorbed reaction to Fenty's loss. And some similar thoughts from Valerie Strauss,

[Rhee's comment was] the equivalent of saying that there is no use for anybody to hope that she and presumptive mayor Vincent Gray can come to some compromise to keep her here. The only question is when she’ll leave.

The problem is that she said it to an audience who watched a one-sided film that adores public charter schools and demonizes traditional public schools, (which still and always will educate the vast majority of the country’s kids).

The audience was packed with people who affect millions of kids and teachers and parents by passing laws, advising the president, shaping public opinion. And those people gave her an ovation.

Ignored was the fact that there is no scientific basis for her reforms, and some evidence to suggest that some of her key initiatives, such as tying teacher pay to standardized test scores, is counterproductive.

Forget the fact that the film’s assault on teachers unions is unfair; even Education Secretary Arne Duncan, a true believer in Rhee, has noted that it is silly to blame unions, pointing out that the problems exist in states without teachers unions

(I'll note, however, that union job protections likely do make it harder to address the issue of underperforming teachers, as compared to whatever job protections are offered in non-union states and districts.)
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1. I do want to mention that a reasonable measure of student-teacher ratios should focus on the ratio of students and classroom teachers; when you include staff members who have no classroom role you distort the figure. And that suggesting that two teacher households are wealthy because they would be a six figure household doesn't address the issue of attracting and retaining teachers who have other professional job prospects.

2. I'm not sure what Samuelson is trying to get at with this bare claim.

Competing Visions for Schools

Via Schools Matter, a documentary that looks at a public school that rejects the rote memory and structured behavioral rules that the many in the charter schools movement appear to see as the solution to inner city school performance:

We seem to be operating under the concept that this type of education is a luxury that inner city schools cannot afford. But as I've previously noted, among schools outside of the inner cities there is a wholesale rejection of the "solutions" that are being pushed on inner city schools - uncertified teachers, rote memorization, lengthened school days, gender segregation, teaching to the test, etc., and the rejection is magnified among elite private schools.

Via AVC, an upcoming movie that champions charter schools and demonizes teachers unions.

It fascinates me that school administrators take no responsibility for their role in negotiating and agreeing to teacher contracts, hiring bad teachers, or in failing to act before they get tenure, but teachers unions are faulted for expecting that the union contracts they have negotiated will in fact govern their employment. It is worth noting that among the leading beneficiaries of generous contracts are the managers who negotiate them, as the contract becomes a convenient excuse to grant themselves even more favorable compensation and benefits packages than they agreed to extend to the union. I have considerable respect for Geoffrey Canada and his work in Harlem, but to the extent that he would have preferred public schools to starting charters and while recognizing why he didn't want to have his project impaired by many years of mismanagement of the public school system, it's a bit stunning to me that he expected that he would be able to employ teachers within specially created public schools on an at-will basis.

Finally, via An Urban Teacher's Education, a short film presenting the views of Professor Yong Zhao, in which he expresses gratitude that he received a "bad" education in rural China rather than being processed through the system more typical of that nation, and expresses concern that recent education reforms are pushing this nation's schools in the direction of China's instead of focusing on an approach to teaching children that is consistent with our nation's future needs, including "giving kids room to innovate by following their passions, not subscribing to a set of rules and interests dictated to them from the outside".

The point is not that inner city schools don't need reform, or that schools cannot be improved by offering better teachers and instruction. The point is that our nation consistently wants to approach the problem "on the cheap", repeatedly embraces as new versions of reforms that aren't much different from those used in past, failed efforts, and fails to look at why schools that contain the same basic elements (right down to evil, unionized teachers) manage to successfully educate kids outside of the inner city.

I am reminded of some discussion, a few years ago, about how certain school districts were responding to college early admission by turning the senior year of high school into a joke. At one end you had such measures as not having final examinations for the last semester of school - study for the midterm and coast. At the other you had teachers and school administrators offering classes that involved little to no academic effort, describing how the kids had worked hard for eleven years and deserved a break before college. The conceit was that the kids were college material such that it didn't much matter what happened in school - they would go to college and succeed. I disapprove of that extreme, but I similarly disapprove of the opposite - that the only thing that matters is what happens in school, as measured by standardized tests. With middle and upper class schools the presumption behind letting seniors slack off is that home life and parental expectation will drive success no matter what schools do. Yet for inner city schools we've entered an era of blaming the teacher - the quality of home life, the community and parental expectations are excluded from the equation.

One partially successful model to look at are the British grammar schools of the post-WWII era. They were far from perfect, often being rigid, authoritarian, and even oppressive, and can reasonably be accused of being too fast and too rapid in their sorting of students into academic versus vocational categories. Sure, some of the teachers and administrators fit the caricature presented in The Wall, but no small number of working class kids with uneducated parents emerged from that system amply prepared for college. But let's face it, to the extent that we can identify and replicate the best elements of that system, incorporating them into a more egalitarian educational model, we're not prepared to make the infrastructure investment or pay the teacher salaries it would require, and perhaps not even the extend to which parental expectations drove the phenomenon.

We could also look at our nation's affluent schools, which do "just fine, thank you very much" as compared to their international peers, and ask "Why can't we do something similar in the inner cities", or "Why are we doing pretty much the opposite?"

Now Why Would Civil Rights Groups Have Reservations About Charter Schools....

If you read the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, you will read that the only possible explanation for civil rights groups' reservations in relation to charter schools is that they're in bed with the teacher's unions.

By casting their lot firmly with teachers unions, the leadership of the NAACP and the Urban League hope to preserve their power and safeguard their traditional sources of financial support.

That's presented by the authors of the editorial, Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West, both of Harvard, as a conclusory statement. A non sequitur. As if the only possible reason in the world why civil rights groups might express

"reservations" about the Obama administration's "extensive reliance on charter schools." They specifically voiced concern about "the overrepresentation of charter schools in low-income and predominantly minority communities."

Is that taking a different position might alienate teacher's unions.

The editorial also presents an argument that's all-too-typical, these days - that public policy should follow opinion polls:

Someone should remind these leaders who they represent. The truth is that support for charters among ordinary African-Americans and Hispanics is strong and has only increased dramatically in the past two years. Opposition along the lines expressed by the NAACP and the Urban League is articulated by a small minority.

* * *

Support for charters among African Americans rose to 49% in 2009, up from 42% in 2008. This year it leapt upward to no less than 64%. Among Hispanics support jumped to 47% in 2010, from 37% in 2008.

So by the authors' logic, whatever the facts and whatever their concerns, civil rights groups should have adamantly opposed charter schools a mere three years ago but now, with shifts in the result of opinion polls, they are obligated to support them. For that matter, what if next year's survey shows a significant drop in popular support for charter schools?

Even if you accept that public policy should follow the polls, and further assuming that the author's methodology was sound, the authors' logic falls flat:

Each year we provided respondents the same, neutral description of charter schools, followed by the question: "Do you support or oppose the formation of charter schools?" Those interviewed were also given the choice of saying they "neither support or oppose" charters.

That survey result is not, on its face, inconsistent with the position of civil rights groups. Quite obviously it is possible to favor the formation of charter schools while simultaneously having reservations about those schools, both generally and as a solution to the problems of inner city schools. To see an example of why, the authors could have turned to the news section of the very paper in which they're published.

The Equity Project Charter School garnered headlines and accolades when it opened last September with an unusual plan: recruit top teachers and pay them $125,000—substantially more than the average teacher salary anywhere in the country.

Its test scores did not match the hoopla: Only 37.4% of the students were proficient in math and 24% were proficient in English. On average, the other public schools in Equity Project's Washington Heights district performed better, the test scores released last week showed.

"It's not unexpected" for a first-year school, said Zeke Vanderhoek, founder and principal of the middle school. "I'm very confident in the vision of the school and the teachers we have, but we're not there yet."

Further,

Two weeks ago, the New York State Department of Education renewed the charter of Opportunity Charter School, the city and state's worst-performing charter school. Eight percent of the students were proficient in English and 7% were proficient in math. In the district in which Opportunity competes, proficiency scores in both subjects were above 50%.

I do expect the performance of the Equality Project to improve, and there are charters that are achieving results on par with, and sometimes better than, their public school counterparts. But the questionable performance of some schools based upon assumptions of what will improve school performance, and the terrible performance of other schools based upon what very well could be opportunism and profiteering by the private interests behind those operations, should inspire political, civil rights and opinion leaders to exercise caution.

Further, when the lessons of the charter school movement seem to boil down to "student performance improves with a longer school day", the question is raised: why is it necessary to have charter schools to lengthen the school day? For that matter, it may be that the same results can be achieved with the same length and number of school days, but with a shorter summer vacation.

The results of four-year pilot study, obtained by The Globe and Mail, show that children who have only a one-month summer break do better in math, retain more of their lessons and need less time for review.

This study rides on the tail of a 20-year investigation in the U.S. by researchers at Johns Hopkins University that found children from low-income families fell nearly three grade levels behind their higher-income peers.

The culprit? Summer vacation. The learning advantages families can offer their children during non-school months – like lessons, camp and parents who can afford to stay home with their children – are often only available to an elite few from high-income homes.

I think that last sentence incorporates a great deal of assumption and overgeneralization, but the results of the studies are not surprising.

Beyond the question of quality and opportunism, and the question of what they actually bring to the table, there are additional reasons why civil rights leaders may be skeptical of charter schools. First, charter schools tend to be segregated. Second, they tend to adopt policies toward children and classroom instruction that would not be acceptable in middle or upper class public schools. Third, the major "franchise" charter schools, such as KIPP schools, are not on the whole self-sustaining, but instead rely upon outside grants to balance their books, raising questions both of their long-tern sustainability and of whether that money might be better directed at public schools. Fourth, when you put education in the hands of a private organization, even if it's a well-meaning nonprofit, you diminish the oversight of state and local government. It's a fair retort that a lot of inner city governments and school boards have failed to do their job, or became hopelessly corrupt, but abandoning reform in favor of charter schools leaves a lot of children behind. Fifth, charter schools often rely upon the public schools for a significant amount of educational support, as their facilities often lack the amenities of public schools - sports facilities, cafeterias, libraries, art rooms, etc.

So there are many valid reasons why a civil rights leader might have reservations about an emphasis on charter schools. But wait, there's more. Let's hear what some unabashed racists have to say about the editorial and charter schools:

Even though the teachers unions oppose “charter schools”, I wonder if a lot of black teachers secret love them so that they can teach the few students who have more than a room temperature IQ. While many may be scams, I personally don’t have a problem with smarter than average blacks being separated from the dim bulbs when it comes to school. Since black teachers can no longer keep baseball bats on their desks, this is the next best option.

A nice display of loving concern, right? So how about vouchers instead of charter schools?

The main reason Whites send their children to private or Catholic schools is so their children don’t get beat up, terrorized by Black students in the public schools. Give these same Black students “Vouchers” to go to White private schools and the same process happens there.

Nope, nothing that might concern a civil rights leader there....

The Secret to Improving Inner City Education....

Is not much of a secret? Seriously, if the answer to educational deficits is a longer school day, what can be achieved by charter schools that cannot be accomplished simply by extending the school day in troubled public schools? Assuming taxpayers are willing to pay the price.

I personally don't think the answer is that simple, but in a world in which school innovation often seems to translate into "more of the same", I can't profess surprise that the most significant factor affecting the performance of inner city schools boils down to classroom hours.

Premature Triumphalism

The Washington Post comments on a study about the performance of charter schools in New York City,

Researchers were careful not to draw conclusions, but they highlighted a correlation to practices such as a longer school day, performance pay for teachers, more time spent on English and effective discipline policies.

That's perfectly reasonable - and hardly surprising. More specifically, the study states,

We are cautious about all of the associations with achievement that we describe above. First, these associations may change as more data are added or more New York City charter schools open. Second, the associations can be difficult to interpret because some policies are routinely found together in packages: an example is the package of a long school year and long school day. It is difficult to disentangle the role played by each part of a package. Third, it is essential to remember that none of the associations we have described is a causal effect. We are not asserting that if a school adopts a certain policy, its achievement effects will rise. One must have causal effects to make such assertions. We cannot tell whether the policies themselves make the difference or whether the policies are merely correlated with factors that do make the difference (great leadership and so on). We strongly discourage readers from treating the associations as though they were causal effects--for instance, by changing a policy based on the estimates shown.

With all these caveats, the positive associations are with a long school year (this is especially strong), the number of minutes spent on English per day, a small rewards/small punishments disciplinary strategy, teacher pay based on performance or duties, and a mission statement that emphasizes academic performance.

None of that's a surprise and, given funding, many of those ideas could be implemented in public schools. So, having acknowledged that the study's authors warn against hasty assumptions or conclusions, how does Fred Hiatt's editorial board respond to these preliminary, and largely intuitive, findings?

Poor children learn. Teachers unions are not pleased.

Um... okay. Well, perhaps that's just a catchy little tagline meant to attract more readers. What else do you have, Fred?

A rigorous new study of charter schools in New York City demolishes the argument that charter schools outperform traditional public schools only because they get the "best students."

You know, the study is worthy of discussion. It introduces an element to the comparison of charter schools and public schools that has been missing from prior studies - an attempt to compare students who have been lotteried in versus those who lost the lotteries and remained in public schools. Not one of the correlations highlighted by the study relate to teaching technique, and not one of the correlations couldn't be implemented in public schools... given increased funding and, in some circumstances (e.g., with increasing the school day or year, or implementing merit pay), following the next union contract. The hardest factor is discipline - charter schools can do things to discipline students and maintain order that public schools cannot - but steps can be taken to improve order in schools and classrooms. It's hardly a surprise that students who are in a distracting, poorly disciplined school or classroom environment fall behind their peers who enjoy calm, orderly learning environments.

What this, the Post's "rigorous new study", highlights is how little research has been done into charter schools, what they contribute, how they compare to public schools, and what techniques can be translated from one set of schools to another. If this is to be taken as proof that underperforming schools should be closed in favor of more charter schools, the Post should be making a perfectly reasonable associated demand: that underperforming charter schools have their charters pulled. I have to tell you, the top performing charter schools posted impressive gains for their students. The Post's case would be much better if they were all performing at that level. We must also remember that we're talking about a school system that's pretty bad; when closing "about 86 percent of the 'Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap' in math and 66 percent of the achievement gap in English" is trumpeted a great success, you know that the baseline is way below standard.

The study itself is worth reading, and its actual findings are definitely worthy of consideration and additional study. I would go so far as to say, with due respect to the study's caution against "changing a policy based on the estimates shown", underperforming school districts should be contemplating how to implement the factors identified as improving student performance (and newspapers like the Post, if they're going to offer more than words in support of education reform, should back their receiving the necessary funding to do so), and perhaps even implementing them as common sense reforms while we wait for further data. It doesn't seem to me that a whole lot of bad can come out of, for example, a longer school day or school year (assuming infrastructure, compensation and staffing issues are adequately addressed).

Nobody Wants To Know The Truth

I'm an advocate of premising social policy on sound research and analysis. You try to find out what's working in other places, and build on those ideas. You monitor your own implementations of those ideas to be sure that your policies are, in fact, working. Ideally, you can build on working ideas, revise or eliminate ideas that aren't working, and make things better.

But what happens when those who implement policies, and those who are affected by those policies or by potential changes in those policies, either don't care about implementing the best public policy solutions or are afraid of what they will uncover if they shine a spotlight on existing policies or the alternatives? One of the most obvious contexts where you can see this phenomenon at work is in K-12 education. When "reforms" come, they're often ad hoc, seat-of-the-pants, "this sounds good"-type reforms, that may or may not last. But most of the time, there appears to be little to no interest in achieving actual reform or improvement. Sometimes you get the worst of both worlds - a reform agenda that doesn't appear to be concerned with quality, and which may in fact be rooted in a political agenda that is something quite apart from ensuring quality public education.

For example, advocates of charter schools are often strong advocates of standardized testing of children in public schools, but they often seek to exempt charter schools from those testing requirements. That prevents a direct, side-by-side evaluation of charter schools and public schools in the same district. Ideally you would be able to track individual student performance, year by year, through their entire progress through the grades. That allows you to compare schools and classes not only by the performance of students at the end of a year, but also to compare the quality of students going in. If schools accept public funding, why shouldn't they have at least that much accountability? For that matter, shouldn't we be taking a similarly hard view at this type of data that already should be available in public school settings?

It isn't just the supporters of charter schools who don't get behind mandating across-the-board testing. It's also many proponents of the status quo. When you don't have the data that supports a side-by-side comparison, it's easier to argue that the status quo is better than (or at least as good as) the alternative. Teaching schools don't appear interested in collecting and analyzing data that might suggest that teaching certificates aren't superior to accelerated or alternative certification programs, or even in comparison to uncertified teachers. Teacher's unions don't necessarily want to see data that suggests that contract standards for hiring, promotion, and assignment to schools and classrooms aren't optimal or may impede good classroom learning.

A related example of this phenomenon in action comes from Teach for America. TFA has been around for about two decades, so there's been ample opportunity to develop good data. To some degree that could be done internally - TFA could develop performance tests to be administered at the start and end of the school year, to help gauge student needs, performance, and improvement in performance over the course of a school year. A school district interested in comparing general teacher performance to TFA corps member performance could administer those tests in its regular classes - or, conversely, it could develop or license tests and require their use across the district. Instead, even when students are being tested and it appears that performance could easily be tracked down to an individual level, that seems to be regarded as something to avoid.

Thus, TFA can announce on its website that a study "confirms... that corps members have a positive effect on student achievement relative to other teachers, including experienced teachers, traditionally prepared teachers, and those fully certified in their field", based on weak data from a single state, North Carolina. Skeptics can point to the amount of guesswork involved, trying to connect students to classroom teachers by who proctored an exam, trying to gauge what happened in a classroom based upon a year-end test with no start-of-year data, the exceptionally small sample size of TFA teachers, the omission of any schools below the high school level, the differences between North Carolina's demographics and those of the most vexing school districts, such as DC or New Orleans....

My point here is not to criticize TFA or corps members. With the résumé of a corps member, not a certified teacher, I've substitute taught in public schools. I've seen some terrific teachers, and others who (despite "years of experience") sleepwalk through their workday. I've seen how different a classroom experience can be between schools, and the role SES, parental involvement, and administrative competence can make. I've also seen how much easier it can be to teach high school than to teach middle school. With no wish to make this an excessively broad generalization, as some schools have severe order and discipline problems that continue through high school, I found teaching grades 10-12 to be a relative cakewalk as compared to teaching middle school, with ninth grade being something of a transition.

I found it to be at times quite difficult to explain what, to me, was an elementary math concept to a seventh grader. I didn't have a similar problem communicating with kids in tenth or eleventh grade. That is to say, when I was out of the context where teaching skills were most crucial, where I had lesser concerns about maintaining classroom order, where the kids understood their lessons at a more adult level, I could be highly effective. I didn't necessarily feel ineffective at other grade levels, but there were times when it was obvious that I lacked the skill set necessary to be more effective. Ideally, had I been a professional teacher, I would have learned some of those skills during my coursework and teacher training. (I say "ideally" because I've had certified teachers tell that, at least in the programs they attended, training in classroom management came almost as an afterthought.) Oh, sure, I would likely have also developed my own set of skills "on the job", had I continued to teach in a classroom for the next few years, but I have no illusions that, for me, it would have been a particularly easy or natural process. Given my druthers, I would have stuck with grades 10-12.

So again, here, I see TFA demonstrating a strong interest in claiming credit based upon weak data and analysis, but not trying to collect strong data or facilitate compelling analysis. I see school districts employing TFA corps members doing nothing to evaluate how the corps members compare to certified teachers. I see advocates of teacher certification and tenure suggesting that reliance upon TFA results a high level of churn among entry level teachers, causing harm to students who would benefit from having experienced teachers. But I don't see anybody advocating the type of study that would sort out and answer some of the persistent questions about TFA, teacher certification, and teacher effectiveness.

It really does amaze me sometimes that, with all of the money this nation pours into education (not to mention the combined spending of the world's other nations), there's so little apparent interest in determining which curricula, classroom management techniques, and approaches to teaching particular subjects (e.g., reading, foreign language, math) are the most effective. I once crazily hoped that having teacher colleges sponsor charter schools might provide a laboratory for education innovation and reform. Oh well.