The in-your-face organizer of Green Dot charter schools, Steve Barr, is putting together what’s basically a fake parents’ movement down in Los Angeles – or at least it’s a top-down alleged parents’ movement, created by Barr and run by paid organizer Ben Austin. The common term for a fake grassroots organization like this is “Astroturf.”
“Barr envisioned” the Astroturf organization “as an independent, assertive alternative to the PTA,” according to the L.A. Times.
“The plan,” says the Times, “is for parents to form chapters all over town and improve schools, one by one, using the growing leverage of the charter school movement. The goal is to unite a city of overworked and isolated parents with a brash promise:
“If more than half of the parents at a school sign up, Barr's organizers say they will guarantee an excellent campus within three years. They call it the Parent Revolution.
“… Funding for the parent groups has come from Green Dot, philanthropist Eli Broad, the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and the Service Employees International Union.” (Barr is a rare charter operator with union ties – though he made the entire faculty at his recent takeover school reapply for their jobs and kept only a fraction, a strategy that’s normally viewed as heavy-handedly anti-labor.)
Needless to say, it's not hard to win plenty of converts with a convincing pitch selling parents on a “guarantee” of making sweeping improvements at their kids’ schools. It’ll be interesting to see how the promise plays out.
I took a look at the fake parent group's website and noted this line in the bio of hired-gun leader Ben Austin, parent of a preschooler:
“Ben is looking forward to sending Fiona to their wonderful neighborhood elementary school, Warner; and is currently working on a Parent Revolution at their failing middle school, Emerson.”
I object on principle to referring to schools as "failing" – that’s a simplistic and sweeping condemnation. There are children attending the schools damned as “failing,” and to me that amounts to telling them, “You’re failures.”
But forget my opinion; we want data. So I looked up the most recent Academic Performance Index score for Emerson (Ralph Waldo Emerson Middle School, Los Angeles Unified). (The API is California’s accountability reporting system for school achievement; it ranks schools based on a compilation of standardized test scores into a score on a 200-1000 scale, with 800 and up viewed as excellent.)
The 2008 API for “failing” Emerson is 701 – neither stellar nor disgraceful. SFUSD has some very highly regarded and sought-after schools with APIs well below 701.
I thought I’d see how the schools Green Dot runs – which are hailed far and wide as successful nationwide models – compare. Turns out the API of the 11 Green Dot schools averages 678.64. Hmm.
Four of Green Dot’s 12 schools have APIs far below Emerson’s 701:
Animo Jackie Robinson 597
Animo Justice 569
Animo Ralph Bunche 636
Animo Watts 614
Two more of Green Dot's "successful" schools have APIs of 705 (Animo Film & Theater and Animo South Los Angeles), which hardly leaves "failing" Emerson in the dust either. (All the listed Green Dot schools are in L.A. Unified.)
The rest of the Green Dot schools range from 715 to 749. (This tally excludes Locke, the highly publicized Watts high school newly taken over by Green Dot, which doesn’t yet have test scores from the Green Dot era.)
And by the way, even the L.A. Times, which has generally been starry-eyed about Green Dot, cops to the big advantage its schools have in terms of creaming more-motivated students (prior to the Locke takeover, which includes a commitment to accepting the students from the neighborhood).
"Green Dot charters, opened as alternatives to failing public schools, attracted motivated families that came from far-flung communities to place their children on waiting lists. As a result, enrollment was predictable and stable. ... The charter operator normally requires a certain amount of parent involvement."
Yet it appears that non-charter Emerson achieves its 701 API without the creaming advantage that the lower-performing Green Dot schools enjoy.
So I’m curious how Mr. Austin sees Emerson as “failing” and views Green Dot as its path to success.
I already know the answer will be some variation on “test scores are only part of the picture,” a view I agree with. Yet to the charter folks, test scores are THE picture when they’re blasting public schools as “failing.” They allow lots more nuance and margin for flexibility when it comes to their own schools.
I’ll post this information, share it with Mr. Austin and report on the response.
Follow me on Twitter @CarolineSF
Comments
I looked up the LAUSD school that Ben Austin characterizes as "wonderful," Warner Avenue Elementary in Westwood. To say it's not representative of LAUSD is putting it mildly -- I had no idea that such a school even existed in the district. Its 948 API is indeed pretty wonderful, though its diversity isn't. This also includes demographics for Emerson, which Austin characterized as "failing."
African-American students
Warner Avenue 1.8%
Emerson Middle School 20.9%
LAUSD 10.8%
Asian students
Warner Avenue 13%
Emerson Middle 5.4%
LAUSD 3.7%
English-language learners:
Warner Avenue 2%
Emerson Middle 20.5%
LAUSD 34.3%
Latino students
Warner Avenue 6.5%
Emerson Middle 58.9%
LAUSD 73%
Low-income students (based on whether they qualify for free or reduced-price school lunch):
Warner Avenue 3%
Emerson Middle School 70.8%
LAUSD 69.3%
White students
Warner Avenue 77%
Emerson Middle 11.7%
LAUSD 8.8%
Oh, for those new to these discussions: Asian students, white students and affluent students -- overall, on average -- tend to be on the high-achieving side of the "achievement gap." The students who tend to be on the low-achieving side -- overall, on average -- are low-income, English-language learners, African-Americans and Latinos. The major challenge facing U.S. public education is eliminating that achievement gap.
Ben Austin has now responded to point out to me that Emerson Middle School is in Program Improvement, a status created by the state to provide supports to low-performing schools that also carries threats of sanctions if goals aren't met.
Emerson met and exceeded its growth targets for 2007 and 2007 but not its subgroup targets (considered a trap that penalizes schools for being diverse by many educators). Many would also object -- often indignantly -- to describing a school as "failing" because it's in PI.
Dear Ms. Grannan-
I am a bit dismayed to read your ill-informed shot at my school, Animo Film and Theatre Arts. Unlike Emerson and Warner, AFTA is located in South Central L.A., has a population of over 90% free and reduced lunch kids, with not a white or asian kid in sight. While I do not disagree with your article in its entirety, your cursory analysis betrays a lack of knowledge of the local landscape.
Our school, along with Jackie Robinson, Justice, and Ralph Bunche, forms part of a Green Dot initiative aimed at providing positive alternatives for families in this community, one of the most notorious in the state.
State law precludes us from "creaming" students and all 4 schools admit locally-based applicants by lottery. My staff and all of our kids work incredibly hard to instill pride and hope in every corner of our school, and our API is 150 points higher than neighboring LAUSD schools.
If you are interested in honest dialogue, please print this comment in its entirety.
Hi Mr. Bachrach. I didn't take a shot at your school at all. I simply printed info on the APIs of Green Dot schools and pointed out that Ben Austin assailed a non-charter school as "failing" when it has a higher API than the average Green Dot school. Yes, I understand very well how demographics impact API, but Mr. Austin is not taking that into account when (speaking on behalf of Green Dot and its cousins) he praises a mostly-white, mostly-privileged school for ITS high API, is he? You can't have it both ways. Either you consider demographics or you don't. And, as noted, the L.A. Times has described how self-selection (aka creaming) takes place: "Green Dot charters, opened as alternatives to failing public schools, attracted motivated families that came from far-flung communities to place their children on waiting lists. As a result, enrollment was predictable and stable. ... The charter operator normally requires a certain amount of parent involvement." That's creaming.
Given that Ben Austin lives quite opulently in Beverly Hills, there shouldn't be much trouble for him to find an adequate school for his daughter. Thank you Caroline Grannan, for exposing all Green Dot's and their astroturf front groups' lies for what they are.
Ever since the Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes report on charters came out, Steve Barr, Marco Petruzzi, Ben Austin, Yolie Flores Aguilar, and Monica Garcia have had to work overtime justifying their CHARTER CASH COWS. Good to see we can add a Mr. Steve Bachrach to that list.
Don't worry Ben Austin, your cronies didn't cut Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills, Bel Air, or Silverlake schools like they did in our neighborhoods. Where were all these so called "parent advocates" when we were trying to prevent the massive cuts to John Liechty Middle School and Miguel Contreras Learning Complex? Maybe Messrs. Barr, Petruzzi, and Austin were too busy endorsing fat checks from William Gates and Eli Broad.
As a teacher at an LAUSD high school, I am wondering what is motivating all the various players in this escalating drama. Regarding Emerson, it is interesting to note that the school is also part of a program, called "Together In Education In Neighborhood Schools" (TIE-INS), to attract UCLA faculty and staff to send their children to neighborhood public schools. The elementary school involved is not Warner Avenue, but Nora Sterry, which is high performing, but has a demographic that is more representative of LAUSD.
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