Much ado is being made about the new California legislation that’s designed to put the state in the running for the troubling “Race to the Top” money that the Obama administration is requiring school systems to compete for.
Pitting school systems against each other is harmful to begin with, for the record. Public education is not only not President Obama’s area of expertise, it’s unfortunately not his Education Secretary’s area of expertise either. (Ed Sec Arne Duncan was a businessman plopped cold into the leadership of the Chicago school district, and whose claimed successes running that district have fallen apart under scrutiny.)
The most eye-catching pieces of the California legislation are the part specifying that families have the right to transfer to another school if their school is at a certain low level of performance, and the “parent trigger,” in which the signatures of a certain number of parents can cause a school to be turned over to a charter operator, shut down or be subjected to a complete forcible overhaul of administration, faculty and staff.
I’m not taking either of those provisions terribly seriously, and here’s why:
Under the No Child Left Behind law, parents nationwide already have the right to transfer their kids out of a school at a certain low achievement point, and must be notified of that right. It has been widely reported that very few families have exercised the option. (I haven’t seen figures; I’m looking for them.)
The NCLB language limits parents’ options to other schools within the same district, but the new California law would theoretically allow them to transfer to another district. But to me, the fact that almost nobody has exercised this option under NCLB is fairly definitive. Surveys and anecdotes both tell us often that many people will agree with generalized statements that public schools are failing, but that parents overwhelmingly like their own kids’ schools – even low-performing schools. It’s no wonder that not many parents would want to bail out of a school, a disruptive thing to the child, in favor of an unknown quantity.
And it’s unclear how the mechanism of transferring to a school in another district would work. It seems obvious that schools in high-income (white) suburbs won’t be rolling out the welcome mat to high-need, at-risk students (of color) from disadvantaged locales, and happily taking on all the costs and challenges those students tend to bring with them. Safe bet that Orinda schools aren’t eagerly gearing up to recruit students from Richmond, in other words. If you’re a parent in a Richmond school that meets the criteria and you really do want to send your child to an amply resourced, high-performing suburban school, what path do you follow? That doesn’t seem clear at all. How many parents will want to? That’s not clear either, but based on the NCLB experience, very few anyway.
The “parent trigger” situation is stranger. Apparently, if 50% of the parents in an elementary school, or 50% of the total parents in a middle or high school and that school’s feeder schools, sign a petition, destruction is wrought on the target school.
(Point of information: The Los Angeles organization Parent Revolution, which is behind this provision, is not an actual parent group. It’s an “Astroturf” (fake grassroots) organization run by a group of charter school operators, with a paid “organizer” in charge.)
This provision raises lots of questions:
- If parents, as described above, tend to like their own kids’ schools, are they likely to sign to begin with, or is this whole notion just likely to fizzle due to non-participation?
- Who exactly decides what parents and what schools qualify as the pool of legit voters? If a situation is close, the likelihood of chicanery, bullying, threats and so forth seems sky-high.
- What happens if this trigger is pulled and there isn’t a charter operator waiting in the wings (that’s the purpose of this provision, of course) to take over the school?
- What kind of ugliness and divisiveness would be unleashed during the campaign to gather signatures? The potential is horrible – for kids most of all.
- Would the ultimate outcome improve the school at all? That seems extremely iffy. One of the primary forces behind this provision, charter operator Green Dot, gets glowing press but actually has a lackluster record running its own schools (making me wonder yet again if these charter operators’ real skill isn’t PR rather than education).
- Would the disruption help or harm the students? That seems pretty iffy too.
In Los Angeles, a variation on this “parent trigger” option has recently been put into place. Parent Revolution has launched campaigns against five public schools and currently tracks the progress on its website, listing two as successful.
As displayed in this video, word is that those organizers are paying for signatures on those petitions. In my opinion, just the fact that those rumors are flying fatally taints this process.
The website shows that Parent Revolution has collected enough signatures to take over Garfield High in East L.A. and Mark Twain Middle School in Venice, in the western part of L.A. As of this Jan. 10 writing, Parent Revolution says it has gathered 119 of 2,537 needed signatures to take over Emerson Middle School in West L.A., 423 of 2,704 needed to take over Peary Middle School in Gardena, and 106 of 1,000 needed to take over Mount Gleason Middle School in Sunland. It remains to be seen where those three campaigns will go, and how often – if ever – more will be launched.
By the way, I need to call out the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board here for supporting these provisions based on severely deficient understanding of urban public education issues. (In the nearly 30 years that I've been connected with the Chronicle, I have known precisely one member of the editorial page staff -- now long retired -- who actually was a San Francisco public school parent.) The editorial writers are not paying attention to the findings of the Chronicle’s own education reporters on these issues, and that’s leading them badly astray. Disdaining the views of experienced educators -- and the reporting of the Chron editorial board members' better-informed colleagues -- and listening to whoever has the best-funded PR is an unsound basis for forming opinions, let alone making pronouncements on complex issues.
Comments
Thanks for this article. I agree with some of your concerns, not others.
1. It isn't that parents are pleased to send their kids to low performing schools. It's self-serving of you to think failure suffices for them to suit your purpose of advocating against their need for other options, i.e. charters, SOTAs, etc.
2. Parents are perenially under-informed, especially at T1 schools, so it is no wonder that they do not take advantage of choice.
3. If they don't want to leave the neighborhood,it is very unlikely they will leave the district.Even if they could, with more affluent districts categorized as "basic aid" (90 last year, 110 this year) they have no incentive to enroll out of district to get the ADA as they have already reached the revenue limit with property taxes alone. This means districts foot the bill fot the rest.
4. The number of schools that can be closed under this provision is small- 60 or 70 at the present.
continued
5. Until recently SFUSD did not have a district advisory council. This is mandated under T1 and I suspect that parents were not well informed about their right as well. SFUSD is one of few districts that totally abdicated its responsibilities in this regard.That speaks volumes. Even if parents were notified, many do not have the resources to leave the school, especially going forward as SFUSD winds down transportation.
6. It is reasonable to have parents weigh in with a vote of confidence in the school even if it takes some doing.Elections can be problematic. Should we abolish democracy?
7. Just because the editorial staff disagrees with your take, that doesn't mean they are poorly informed.
It is clear to me that much of the legislation is crafted hastily without regard for the complexities of the issues. But it is also true that people are fed up with the complexities as excuses for lack of reform and there is sentiment growing for radical change for better or worse.
It could be that some parents don't transfer their kids because they're "under-informed," though NCLB requires parents to be notified that they are qualified to transfer their kids to other schools. My speculation is that even though on paper their kid's school may be "failing," many parents do feel positively about the school.
While it's true that I'm taking on the Chron's editorial board because I disagree with them, it's also true that I'm a 14-year veteran urban public school parent, while only one editorial board member (and he wasn't on it for long) in living memory has been an SFUSD parent rather than a suburban commuter or a private-school parent. But also, their fervent belief in these education reform panaceas does not reflect the far more clear-eyed news coverage by their own education reporters in the front and Bay Area sections. Normally an editorial board would consult with reporters covering the issue to ensure that they had all the info, but not at the Chron.
I suspect you're right - that the editorial board at Chron is about as informed as the legislators that passed the bill. And that would not be very informed. I doubt that many understand the complexities of these issue. I talked with Leland Yee's office awhile back. I don't consider myself any kind of expert, but they reminded me of wide-eyed kindergarten parents.
Take the case of closing a school. The very idea of replacing one for another is not like swapping out a dishwasher. Well, the legislators would say - students can go to another school until the new school is established. Right! Just drop in.
And getting authorized as a charter isn't like going to get a marriage license. So the kids are supposedly off to some other schoolthat just happens to have lots of room
(another underenrolled low-performing school)while the adults are busy jumping through hoops. In the meantime, the staff is in limbo. They haven't thought this through at all. Let the districts deal with it.
Also, the idea of allowing parents to transfer if the school is low-performing is based on the assumption that families are mandated to attend their school of assignment. It doesn't make sense in SFUSD, since it's an all-choice district. If you want to transfer your child out of his/her school tomorrow, SFUSD WILL have an opening for him/her elsewhere, though not necessarily at the school of your choice.
I mean to say that the legislators are making bad law on the fly, and leaving it to the districts to clean up one school at a time. The rushed RTTT state compliance legislation aptly demonstrates the need for local control. The shifting of categorical funds is a plus.
I have mixed feelings in general because I'm not opposed to charters in theory. I am dead against the federal government making education policy. Even if states do not have to opt in, the financial meltdown has provided just the right backdrop to allow privitization to piggyback onto the sense of fiscal and moral urgency that has always bubbled under the surface until recently. And with Carlos Garcia, Al Sharpton, Joel Klein and other claiming that the achievement gap is a civil rights issue, any reform that is billed as a remedy is justified. This is BS. Rights and civil rights have to do with equal opportunity, not equal performance. Ex. Not voting is not the moral or legal equivalent of lacking the right to vote.
If charters are not allowed to operate we certainly won't find out if they can be a positive force. Is it experimental? Yes.But we are historically a country of innovators. Education has become stale. We have a moral imperative to try to reform. And the answers are not coming fast enough from the education bureaucracy that is, like all bureaucracies (and the unions), vested in the status quo.
I don't believe the charter concept is hairbrained to begin with and that it doesn't deserve a chance just because of some failure. All experimentation is apt to a high initial failure rate. We have diversified education now. It just isn't is a diversified public education system. I heard somewhere - we need a system of education, not an education system.
The fact that some charter operaters haven't performed well is not reason enough to deny their existence. If it were, then it would also only be reasonable to deny operation to the equivalent in the traditional school system.
Re "Ed Sec Arne Duncan was a businessman..." But he never was.
Duncan graduated from Harvard in 1987 with a bachelors in sociology. From 1987 to 1991 he played basketball in Australia. When he returned to the US he needed a job. This was arranged for him by John Rogers, a wealthy local Chicago businessman who was also a childhood basketball buddy. Rogers had just formed a non-profit educational program and needed someone to run it.
Duncan worked for Rogers from 1992 to 1998. This was how he got his foot in the door of local education programs, then Chicago Public Schools.
Rogers was on the Princeton basketball team with Craig Robinson, Michelle Obama's brother. When Michelle started dating Obama, she introduced him to Craig and Rogers on the court. Of course, Duncan regularly played in those pickup games, too, so they all became one big, comfy, happy family.
Duncan attended an elite private school in Chicago, the Chicago Lab School, as did Rogers and the Obama children.
Wow, I stand corrected about Duncan's background. There should be a term for resumes like that -- people with no actual job qualifications and friends who create make-work jobs for them -- but I don't know what it is.
There i s a term for it - President of the United States.
“There are two highlights of my life so far,” Inslee said. “One was winning the state championship in ‘69. The other is shooting hoops at the White House.”
On the campaign trail in 2008, Obama, 48, had a ritual of playing a pick-up game on the days of nominating primaries and caucuses. He broke with that practice by not playing in New Hampshire and Nevada; he lost the contests in those states.
Obama met earlier this year with the Cleveland Cavaliers’ James, the National Basketball Association’s Most Valuable Player last season. In a June Bloomberg News interview, Obama said James would be on the list for an invitation to play at the White House court, repurposed from tennis at a cost of $4,995.
“As soon as we get the basketball nets up we’re going to have some of these guys over for a game,” Obama said.
Caroline, you are downplaying the school closure provisions. These ought to be an ominous sign for anti-charter activists. I support these closures, based on the grassroots will of the people. Obviously the closure regimen cannot be corrupted, as you have expressed, although it is clear that you would prefer if closures didn't happen at all.
With Democrats For Education Reform (DFER) and Parent Revolution working to make the most of this bill, they will not allow it to go underutilized.
I genuinely believe you are behind the curve here on your advocacy. As a general you are underestimating the strength of the opposition. A fatal error. You need to go for compliance/accountability for charters. You are losing the battle and still hoping for a knockout.
Charters proponents are gaining in strength. Meanwhile, you appear as representing the inertia of the old guard.
Use your knowledge better ends. There is no point in going down with the ship. Help steer it for calmer waters.
I'm saying that the closure regimen CAN be corrupted.
Of course the war metaphor you're using is apt, Don. It is a war against public education. I understand that you're telling me to give up and go with the flow.
I'm not telling you to give up. I'm saying fighting an existential battle is counterproductive - that it seems more useful at this stage to insure that charters are accountable and non-profit. We have had more education law passed in the last ten months than in the least ten years and it is overwhelmingly procharter. This is a juggernaut that has the rare distinction of drawing support from the left, right and center. Only the unions stand in the way and I don't think that even they have the power to stop it. So it is a question of evaluating the situation and deciding on the best strategy at present.I will say that the 500 point RTTT state evaluation system does give some preference to the unions so the battle isn't over. But I would not bet against the ultimate implementation of these reforms. The fact is that education funding topped out at an all time high 2 years ago just before the meltdown. Education spending had never been relatively higher. Reform must come cheap if at all.
I suppose the war metaphor is apt, but not because there is a war against public education. Charter schools are public education. It is a war in the sense of competition. I suppose you will say I'm naive for making this statement.
For me the fundamental question is why public investment in education must be only spent within the established governmental bureacracy or whether outside private entities should also participate. We spend billions on healthcare, Medicare/Medicaid and most of it is paid out to private providers. We don't question whether we should have these programs just because there is fraud in the system. We have to root it out or else we shouldn't waste the public's money.We should make sure that charter also does't waste it. But it would be disingenuous to say that charters must adher to a standard that is higher than that with which they are intended to compete.
We have to work through this so as not to continue the same old failed policies. Bold but smart.
The blogger is an avowed charter antagonist. Nothing uttered here will change her mind about the evil plot to destroy public education by businessmen posing as educators. Gee, that has has a familiar ring. Obama calling.
The big question here is whether RTTT legislation is just shelf art or whether implementation will be enforced from DC. Since it is a one time payment, there seems to be little future leverage that ED can apply once the grants go out. That's why they have to get as much as they can out of this one-time shot at federally-guided reform.
It is interesting to note that charter provisions only receive 40 points in the 500 point system. That indicates to me that California was fairly agressive in going beyond RTTT requirements in its emphasis to promote new governance over the tranformation models for turnarounds, given the relatively minor reward for charter promotion.
Teacher and principal professional development was awarded 28% of the pie chart. I'm not entirely clear how to analyze the bias here. But it seems to me this gives unions more opportunity for the kind of buy-in for reform that they like.
From your former employer SJMN:
"The trigger is likely to increase parental involvement and to push administrators and school boards to act before parents demand it. If it leads to real improvement, it will increase public confidence in schools and perhaps persuade voters to pay more in school taxes.
The law applies to schools in the third year or more of federal "program improvement" status.
No matter the scale, the adoption of the parent trigger is a watershed moment. It's an unmistakable message to ineffective school boards, turf-protecting administrators and intransigent teachers unions: Listen to parents, or they'll bowl you over."
She may be an anticharter antagonist, but she's an informed anticharter antagonist.
Anonymous@10:38,
Yes, she's informed, but she has clear biases. For example in Beyond Chron in '05 she said:
"..conservative public school opponents seized on charters as a weapon. Backed by the right-wing think-tank industry, those forces use debatable claims about charter schools' successes to attack public education. Charter advocates who aren't conservatives unwittingly ally themselves with public-school opponents."
This is another way of saying that liberals who support charters and don't agree with her are stupid.
She also said:
"It hurts kids when charters take district funding from other schools and when the charter movement aims to harm public schools."
Weighted Student Formula takes money from some students and gives it to others and she supports that approach to per pupil funding. It is also generally untrue that charters cost more. She just recently said that Creative Arts charter is about in the middle cost-wise.
She's entitled to her opinions.
Where does she get the idea that charters supporters are public school opponents?
From the book "Keeping the Promise? The debate over charter schools," published by Rethinking Schools in collaboration with the Center for Community Change.
‘The charter school movement has roots in a progressive agenda that ... viewed charters as “an important opportunity for educators to fulfill their dreams, to empower the powerless, and to help encourage a bureaucratic system to be more responsive and effective. …
Unfortunately, the charter concept also appealed to conservatives wedded to a free-market, privatization agenda. And it is they who, over the past decade, have taken advantage of the conservative domination of national politics to seize the upper hand in the charter school movement.
… [Some charter insiders] view charters as a way to get rid of public schools altogether. ... the charter school concept, as a movement, has been hijacked by individuals, groups, and corporations who are guided by free-market principles, often with a hostility to unions..." & s
Most charters are not run by corporate interests, even if those interests have the resources to be the voice for the movement. There is no widespread conspiracy to destroy traditional public schools. Caroline, you might as well work for the teacher's union or the School Board Association with the hard line you are taking.Would you close CACS if you could? How about KIPP? Having dealt with the SFUSD on many occasions I can tell you that they are not interested in being transparent and accountable. If charters have a less than stellar record in this regard, so do the traditional schools and districts.
Bureaurocracy is the enemy, not competition. Only 5 of the 9 thousand goes to kids and classrooms.
Just for the record, I would be proud to work for the teachers' union or the California School Boards Assn. (We are a UESF family, though only since last June, and I've been speaking out about the issues with charter schools for many years before that.)
You ARE working for the union, just not getting paid for it. In fact you are doing the same kind of service for them that charter voices are doing for that movement. Now that HFCS is going to be taken out of milk, you are not going to suggest that milk be removed from cafeterias altogether, are you? For that is the logic you are employing with charters - that they clean up their act, then disappear entirely. What about the nonfat in chocolate milk? You know kids need that fat and should not be drinking nonfat. All brains need saturated fat.
FYI- I too support union causes. But that doesn't mean I am in lock step and agree with all of their causes. I hope that when the cuts come teachers will understand that it is more important to keep class sizes as is and take a modest pay cut like so many others have had to do during this crisis, rather than increase class sizes and lay off hundred of teachers, many of whom would no doubt be the up and coming stars of tomorrow's classrooms.
Well, I wouldn't mind being a tool of the teachers' unions! But actually I did not support their full slate in the last Board of Ed election (I RESOUNDINGLY did not support their full slate), and they did not support the candidate I put most of my energy into, so if I'm in lockstep with them, it's a new development. It would be a contradiction in terms to say I'm in lockstep with them only sometimes.
Grannan marches with the teacher's unions. Now we know once and for all why she excoriates charters at every opportunity. The jig is up. Berating KIPP and Green Dot for their admissions and promotions policies all the while your own children go to an exclusive public school - that is a contradiction in terms. But it's more than that. It's downright ridiculous.
I suspect that a lot of Caroline's writing is a thinly disguised application for a job with the teachers union. She does hew to the party line (or at least the party line of some of the fringier unionists) quite closely. Then again, maybe if the teachers union had someone doing PR for them with actual newspaper experience, the CFT president would not be calling parents a lynch mob.
Well, actually, if I wanted to apply for a job with the teachers' union, I would have sent them a non-thinly disguised application. And if I were structuring my advocacy around thinly disguised applications for jobs, I would be promoting charter schools, since the charter industry is rolling in money and has jobs galore to offer -- certainly far more than the teachers' unions.
The CTA employs 500 people. Where are the jobs galore in the charter industry?
while i agree with many of your arguments, i do want to point out that the data on students applying for out-of-district transfers is truly unreliable. in my years teaching at berkeley high school, i worked with many students who lived in oakland, richmond, and hayward. very very few of them had out of district transfers - most simply used the address of a relative or friend in berkeley. they were careful to conceal where they lived until they were sure they could trust me with the information. i know this is anecdotal, but i think that's the point. it's not really possible to get hard data on the number of students who currently "unofficially" transfer to new districts.
True enough, Alex -- though in this case I'm referring to students/families who choose to officially exercise their right to transfer out of low-performing schools under the relevant provision of No Child Left Behind.
9:09, I'm referring to the likes of jobs in the charter industry that continue to entice former education reporters like Jonathan Schorr (former Oakland Tribune), Nick Driver (former S.F. Examiner, under previous management) and Naush Boghossian (former L.A. Daily News) -- and those are just the ones I'm aware of and just in California.
Anyway, the notion that I don't truly believe the positions I'm taking and am doing it for some sneaky ulterior purpose is just a little absurd, especially since I've held the same positions for years (and they have cost me paid work, by the way). Why even trouble with such a silly tack?
One reason people might mistrust your motives is that you base a lot of what you say on mistrust of other people's motives. Not to mention that you have a financial stake in the education status quo.
I have a financial stake in the status quo? How so? My husband is a substitute teacher, but the all-charterized or even all-privatized system that you envision would still be hiring substitute teachers. In fact, since he doesn't have a regular credential, he could get a full-time teaching job in an all-charterized or all-privatized system. So, au contraire, my family would potentially benefit financially from an all-charterized or all-privatized system.
I don't see how mistrusting others' motives -- which in some cases I indeed do -- implies that I'm not sincere in my beliefs, either. Are you indicating that I'm really pro-charter and am misrepresenting my own views? Why would I choose not to say what I really think? Also,the conservative management of examiner.com promotes its right-wing education examiners to national status, so I would be shooting myself in the foot by concealing my true conservative pro-privatization views.
You have a financial stake in the status quo because your husband teaches in the public schools. Whether or not he could get a job in a charter school or a private school is speculation.
Even if that were valid, 10:52, I have been a public school advocate since the '90s, and increasingly a charter critic for 8 or 9 years. My husband has been a substitute teacher only beginning this fall, and we had no notion before March '09 that he would ever become one. So that bizarre claim doesn't hold up anyway. Plus, again, as he doesn't have a regular credential, he would be at an advantage in a charterized/privatized system, which probably wouldn't require teacher credentialing and thus would give him a shot at a full-time teaching job. (Sure, no guarantee, but he'd have a shot that he doesn't have under the current system.)
For what it's worth, I don't think Caroline's views on charters have changed in relation to her husband's job, despite declaration as a EUSF family. She has been quite clear where she stands over a number of years. Being pro union and charter resistent are not mutually exclusive.
What I meant to say is that you don't have to be anti-union to accept the idea of charters in some accountable form, if education above all is your intention.
"She may be an anticharter antagonist, but she's an informed anticharter antagonist."---yes Caroloine's one who sends her kids to the only public high school in SF that handpicks their students and cynically and undeservedly leaves out minority, underprivileged and struggling students under the sham of we only pick 12 and 13 year olds who parents have been able to afford private lessons, or who know one of the teachers who handpicks, or if a brother or sister attended previously and the parent "got involved"..affirmative action for the well healed or well connected Arts education. How many SOTA grads become professional artists? 2% of the graduates..Caroline is a hypocrite
Why is there such hostility to an arts school? Aside from being entirely off-topic, that's just a mystery.
Anonymous, she's pretnding not to 'get it' so she doesn't have to face up to her dual standard on this issue. All I'm saying is that, for me personally, it doesn't necessarily invalidate in hers words. People cannot always live up to their own standards. And when it comes to your kids you have to make some tough decisions and do what is best for them. That is a point I have tried to make on many occasions - idealism is a form of mental mastubation (pardon the expression) when it conflicts with one's own practices. It becomes a glaring dichotomy when that practitioner is also the trumpeter of a contradictory and utopian vision, particularly so if that vision is for the supposed betterment of man. But not in my neighborhood.
As you have probably noticed,it is very difficult to compartmentalize discussion on education. We don't all think like bureaucrats. Some do try to look at the big picture.
I have nothing against an art school. I wish there were more schools like SOTA. The only suggestion I would make is that some of them have less strict admission requirements allowing for greater participation by those without the resources needed to pass an audition like the ones at SOTA. That would be equity, don't you think?
What do you have against the K8 Creative Arts Charter School? And why have you avoided answering my other posts?
I thought you like the "give and take".
Who is she kidding? A mystery? There's no mystery here. Only subterfuge. This has nothing whatsoever to do with an art school. This has to do with actions and words.
I enjoy the give and take, but I'm not online every minute, and I'm also not willing to keep the same discussion going in circles forever and ever and ever when our points have been made.
I don't have anything specific against Creative Arts Charter. I am a critic of the charter school movement in general, but not of that school specifically.
American government is founded on the notion that the will of a majority of citizens must be respected (not entirely but to large degree). So why should this principle not apply when a majority of parents want a school to be organized differently? Should we just meekly defer to the "experts" running the schools or to the teachers unions?
We don't have to be meek, but I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that professional educators have a better idea of how to run a school than novices do. Do we have the same attitude about hospitals -- that angry citizens can do a better job running them than medical professionals? It's a measure of our contempt for education and intelligence in general -- the stupidification of our society -- that we hold teachers in such contempt.
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