On the surface, school politics in Houston, Texas looks much like the rest of urban America. Its superintendent and school board are pushing more accountability for teachers, and charter schools are growing in number.
But Houston business leaders, now that Bush is out of office, are preparing a surprise for the nation by launching a new wave of school reform. The first wave was making former Houston Superintendent Rod Paige the Secretary of Education and passing No Child Left Behind.
While current Superintendent Terry Grier, fresh from San Diego where his supporters lost school-board seats to union-backed candidates, has launched Apollo 20, a turnaround strategy at twenty schools, this effort, which has some value, is really a side show to charter school expansion because Apollo 20 serves too few schools and lacks the kind of additional private monies given by corporate leaders to charters.
The business elite has rallied around two charter networks, KIPP and Yes Prep, which are led by two former roommates. They plan to recruit 20,000 students out of the public schools. By contrast with other cities where charter schools are popping up, in Houston, KIPP and YES Prep are seeking to establish a monopoly, rather than an open marketplace with an array of competing small providers. KIPP and Yes Prep will form, in effect, rival school systems governed by private boards consisting of influential figures in the business community. They will have the clout to raid the public schools.
Charter backers are creating an education marketplace in Houston that looks a lot like the industries from which they draw support: oil, natural gas, and politically influential big construction firms.
Given all of KIPP's advantages--getting the best students, more time in class, and higher per pupil spending--its actual performance seems lackluster. Only twenty-four percent of its Houston students passed Advanced Placement exams last year, if Spanish Language is not counted. But this is really about politics, not education, and represents, from the sponsors' perspective, an effort to strip public employees of any rights the way they have done previously to private sector workers.
Given KIPP's model, and the kind of kids they recruit, their students will easily score better than the average in the Houston Independent School District (HISD) on state minimum skills tests. When the Houston experiment is concluded, and once Republicans are returned to power, Houston businessmen will want to take this show on the road the way they did after fabricating the phony "Houston Miracle" under Rod Paige. Perhaps Mike Fineberg, the KIPP CEO who endorsed Bush at the 2000 Republican Convention, will become Secretary of Education in a Sarah Palin administration. That endorsement was the gift that keeps on giving.
Embroiled in a wrestling match with Superintendent Grier, dubbed "Rocket Man" here locally, the Houston Federation of Teachers and its wily president, Gayle Fallon, are not saying a lot publicly about charter schools, perhaps because the union cannot do much about them. This city is a plutocracy, and while its not hard to fight city hall, what businessmen say here goes.
Since KIPP's paymasters helped two candidates win HISD school board seats last November, creating a faction of four who partially owed KIPP their elections, Mr. Fineberg has hired away five highly regarded HISD principals.
Houston's conservative business leaders are an infection on the national polity that will not go away. Is there a doctor in the house? What do we need to do to get these sort of people to pay their fair share of taxes and stop trying to manipulate the governments that belong to all of us? What political toxins do we use to drive away this disease on the body politic? Call it affluenza, the notion that rich people should have the only or final say on our public policies.
You would think that having put Bush in the White House, launched two expensive wars leading nowhere for oil and Israel, sunk our economy, expanded the debt beyond anything in our history, and tarnished our national reputation, these people would take some time off for reflection rather than coming back home and turning our public schools into something that most Americans, in our suburbs, small towns and rural communities, cannot recognize.
Comments
Apollo 20 is a bold HISD strategy designed to turnaround nine failing/unsatisfactory secondary schools. HISD could have sat by, done nothing, and watch the state take over the high schools. Or, it could have turned the schools over to Charter or private school networks, asking them to do what the district had failed to do--adequately educate the students in those schools. Both options were included in the district's legal remedies identified by the state. Instead, HISD chose to 'step-up' and implement a longer day and school year, place quality teachers and principals in those schools, use tutors to work with students during the school day, and insist on a no excuses culture of academic improvement. Hats off to the HISD school board and administration.
With all due respect, what does the 'business elite' (your words) have to do with HISD's effort to turnaround these schools?
Response to anonymous:
Except for the teacher purge, I agree Apollo 20 is a pretty good thing, but it needs to apply to many more schools so we can compete with the charters.
You mean "race to the BANK" These schools are getting away with money laundering, embezzlement and racketeering. This is public funds!! Charters schools are publically funded yet privately managed. They are only as good as the ethics, organization and agenda of the management company. The Gulen Movement out of Turkey, manages over 140 charter schools in the USA. The schools in Texas are called Harmony Science Academy and Bluebonnet (day care for profit) . They are under a layer of foundations and instutitues that ping pong money back and forth. The Gulen schools are bringing uncredentialed teachers from Turkey under HB-1 Visas (paid for by taxpayers) principals are always Turkish and male. over 1,100+ Visas have been issued for Harmony aka Cosmos Foundation since 2001 (this is over $2 million to tax payers) these are unallowable educational expenses.
They have their own contests either owned or sponsored by a Gulen foundation/institutes: Cosmos Foundation, Accord Institute, Raindrop Turkish House, et al and then there is the Turkish Olympiads where American Children showcase their "Turkish" skills. Dancing, singing, reciting poetry in Turkish complete with elaborate costumes and they are flown to Turkey (taxpayers) to entertain Turkey's politicians. America get smart and quite outsourcing your children's education to a knuckleheads who claim they are "scholars"
http://www.charterschoolwatchdog.com
http://www.charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-08-17-turkishfinal17_CV_N.htm
If the millions in corporate donations already set aside for charter expansion in Houston were invested in this Apollo effort, we could create KIPP like school days and years in fifty more schools. That would avoid wasteful duplication. That would improve the public schools belonging to all Houstonians, and not just the charters that a group of rich men have taken on as their pets.
"Given all of KIPP's advantages--getting the best students, more time in class, and higher per pupil spending--its actual performance seems lackluster." Check your facts: http://www.kipp.org/mathematica. KIPP most often recruits students that are not doing well academically at their local districts. The study shows that student gains while at KIPP are significant.
If KIPP spends more per pupil it is because they have a lean back office staff; in Texas, charter schools receive less per pupil than the school districts and do not receive funding for facilities.
Last year I looked at KIPP admin salaries, and they had more $100,000 admin.s than HISD per student. Maybe because its model is corporate not civil service.
I need to add that KIPP and YES Prep do have a good model. They take discipline issues seriously and give homework every night. They train students to be students. Longer school days and years--all good stuff.
My point is ABSOLUTELY NOT to defend the way neighborhood schools work now. We need to adopt what works from their model, and we need those resources. To the extent HISD just tries to blame teachers, and not redesign their models, it may be some folks want a lot of conflict wiith teachers--so the charters can recruit more, IT IS OUTRAGEOUS THAT CHARTER BACKERS ARE HELPING PEOPLE GET ON OUR SCHOOL BOARD WHEN THEY ARE RAIDING US.
Twenty-four percent is not very good. Could that be right? Everything I read about them suggests they are better than that. I would hate to be a surgeon that lost 76% of my patients.
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