NJ Charters Play Hardball

A week ago I brought the story of an attempt by the New Jersey Charter School Association to shut down Dr. Julia Sass Rubin (a Rutgers professor) and Mark Weber (grad student and prominent blogger Jersey Jazzman). Rubin and Weber have done research which has produced an assortment of facts which the NJCSA find inconvenient. Rather than try to dispute the facts or their interpretation, NJCSA instead chose to gin up some state ethics charges against Rubin, suppress the report, and force her to keep her qualifications a secret every time she talked about the research.

Now from New Jersey blogger Marie Corfield comes news that the charter association hired a PR specialist, a Darth Vader who has experience in smearing opponents. Michael Turner actually has a history of working for folks in the toxic waste business, so the NJ Charter School Association is really asking for extra mockery here. Exactly who made the connection. Did someone in the NJCSA officed say, "A toxic waste expert would be the perfect guy to make the case for charter schools." Or does somebody working for NJCSA think of Turner because they had previously worked with him back when they were in the toxic sludge business themselves.

Either way, making a direct connection between standing up for charter schools and defending polluters seems like a bad first PR step.

Turner has been part of some great NJ stories. When the Diamond Shamrock Chemical Company was found guilty of two decades of deliberately, intentionally, and illegally polluting the Passaic River, it was Michael Turner who, twelve years later, was leading the PR battle to make sure they never had to do a thing about it.

In 2006, Alexander Lane at the Star-Ledger wrote a profile of Turner (despite the fact that Turner's boss twice tried to talk the Star-Ledger out of writing it). It's not easily locatable on line-- if you've got a Yahoo account, you can get to a copy of it here. The article (which starts with the now oft-quoted characterization of Turner as Darth Vader) is pretty thorough. I'm just going to hit some highlights.

After graduating from Roger Williams University in 1992 with a poli sci/history degree, Turner went to work in political campaigns before landing at MWW. He rose to become the head of their brownfield redevelopment business (a brownfield is a contaminated site; redevelopers like them for being cheap to acquire, but work to keep their cleanup costs down while making sure the public feels secure). Brownfield developments sites in NJ include a golf course and a mall. Turner is quoted in the story saying that he truly believes in his clients, and will not work for clients in whose goals he does not believe. Lane notes that on a board from earlier brainstorming are the words "No fear... destroy opposition."

Jeff Tittel, state head of the Sierra Club, characterized Turner as "very pushy, very aggressive and very arrogant." Joe Morris of the Interfaith Community Organization, another Turner opponent, "said it's difficult to know how effective Turner's advocacy is, but it's certainly aggressive." Another Turner foe ultimately cut a deal, with a company handing over some land to the Meadowlands Conservative Trust in exchange for an endorsement of a development elsewhere.

MWW is also in the new in NJ because they were the creators of the "Stronger than the Storm" ad campaign, which has become part of the federal audit of Christie's NJ because it looks (and without any great deal of squinting) as if Hurricane Sandy relief money bought Christie a nice ad campaign promoting the governor in an election year.

MWW itself is a full-sized operation. They have "full-service" offices in LA, Seattle, DC, and New York, and an impressive list of clients including Continental Airlines, Bethlehem Steel, Kaiser Aluminum, and Verizon/New Jersey. Many websites will tell you that, "the MWW Group is among the top 20 public affairs and strategic communications agencies in the U.S. and is known for its results-driven approach to public relations."

So that's what the New Jersey Charter Schools Association hired to take care of a college professor and a school teacher. My first thought is that, wow, they must have a pile of money if they can just up and hire an outfit like MWW. My second thought is that Rubin and Weber must really scare the crap out of them.

I mean, think of how much cheaper and easier it would have been to just pop up saying, "We believe that Rubin and Weber have their facts wrong, and here are the numbers to prove it" or "We believe their reasoning is incorrect and here's where they made a mistake" or even, "Here's a picture of a cat riding a unicycle; your argument is invalid." I mean, if NJ charters were magically successful, there would be oodles of just-plain-factual material to mount a counter-argument instead of having to throw a bunch of money at a high-powered shark-attack PR firm. So much for magical charter school success.

Bullying in New Jersey

I've been staring into the reformy abyss for over a year, and that involves such a general ongoing background level of outrage that it takes something special to really tweak the rage-o-meter. But this week, it happened, as reported by Adam Clark at nj.com:

Contending that a Rutgers professor and public schools advocate has used her position, title and state university resources to wage a personally driven campaign against them, a group representing the state’s charter schools has filed an ethics complaint against the Save Our Schools NJ co-founder.

Yes, confronted by clear scientific data that conflicted with their position, the New Jersey Charter Schools Association did the only thing that reasonable, ethical, intelligent human beings can do in that situation-- they went after the bearer of bad tidings with a switchblade and brass knuckles. Not since Tonya Harding tried to have Nancy Kerrigan kneecapped have we seen such a reasoned and rational approach to conflicting views.

Dr. Julia Sass Rubin is the target of this baldfaced attempt at intimidation and character assassination, and she earned that privilege for her work with Mark Weber (aka Jersey Jazzman) in breaking down the demographics and achievement numbers for New Jersey charters.

The findings are, to students of charter schools, completely unsurprising. NJ charter success rests largely on enrolling fewer very poor students, fewer non-English speaking students, and fewer students with special needs. But putting that out there and backing it up with actual facts was really crimping NJCSA's style (and marketing). On top of that, Dr. Rubin has been active with Save Our Schools New Jersey, which has also upset the sad, delicate sensibilities of NJCSA (because, you know, no college professor in the history of ever has ever become involved in advocacy groups related to their field of expertise).

So, something had to be done.

You might think that "something" could include any one of the following:

* responding to Rubin's facts and analyses with facts and analyses
* sitting down with Rubin to discuss the implications and analyses of her work
* mounting a spirited response to her work, including using the data to tweak and improve the NJCSA business model

But no. We skipped right past that to, "Somebody has to shut that woman up." And so NJCSA has tried to attack Rubin professionally by bringing ethics charges against her. Her alleged unethical behavior is, as near as I can tell:

1) Saying things that the NJCSA doesn't like
2) Telling people what her job is when she speaks.

The complaint seriously seeks the remedy of having Rubin stop identifying herself as a Rutgers professor when she says these things that make the NJ Charter operators look like lying liars who lie. From philly.com coverage:

"The paper's conclusion and recommendations are identical to - and clearly intended to provide the appearance of legitimate academic support for - the lobbying positions that Dr. Rubin and SOSNJ have zealously promoted for years," the Charter Schools Association wrote in its complaint.

So, as a citizen, she's not allowed to believe what she believes as an academic? When her research as an academic leads her to certain conclusions, she must never talk about them outside of school? Or when she's speaking as a citizen, she is not allowed to note that she has professional training and skills that qualify her to make certain conclusions?

I can understand their confusion to a point. It is, of course, standard operating procedure in the reformster world to NOT identify who you actually work for, get money from, or otherwise are affiliated with. It's SOP to put out a slick "report" without actually explaining why anyone should believe you know what you're talking about, but Rubin and Weber go ahead and list their actual credentials. Apparently NJCSA's argument is that it's unethical to let people know why your work is credible.

The irony here is that Rubin and Weber's work is simply collecting and crunching numbers, and so is completely checkable. It wouldn't really member if they were a couple of garbage collectors-- their work would still stand up. But NJCSA wants to make sure that Rubin never again invokes the magic title of Rutgers professor, and they don't want SOSNJ to have the credibility of being connected to an actual certified professional with a university job. Oh, and they also want Rubin to stop "embarrassing" Rutgers.

This is bullying, and not even very impressive bullying, at that.

“We cannot sit back and allow our accomplishments, our achievements, to be questioned in the way that they have been questioned by Dr. Sass Rubin,” said Michael Turner, spokesperson for the New Jersey Charter Schools Association.

What way is that, exactly, Mr. Turner? If you think her facts are wrong, present your facts. If you think her analyses is wrong, present your analyses. If you think her reasoning is wrong, explain why.

"If you can silence academics that easily, then basically you have no freedom of speech for a lot of people who are often the only ones who can speak up," Rubin said. "And that's the whole idea of an academic institution, is, you have the ability to speak. No one assumes you're speaking for the university."

Exactly. The NJCSA is behaving like a punk, and like a weak punk at that who lacks the tools or the skills to come at Rubin and Weber directly. And they have more work to do, because as Weber points out on his own blog, the conclusions have already been acknowledged as the truth but Cami Anderson and Paymon Rouhanifard, so NJCSA better start ginning up a full scale job-threatening division for the entire state.

Rubin and Weber have been remarkably good sports. In the face of attack, Weber has written things like this:

If these fine, reformy fellows want to have a serious debate about charter school proliferation, that's cool with me. I'm not anti-charter; as I've said many times before, I started my K-12 teaching career in a charter school. There are some very good people working in charters, and many of these schools serve their students well. Good for them. 

And in an op-ed response, Rubin wrapped up with this:

We need to bring all the stakeholders together to discuss these and other solutions instead of wasting time on useless personal attacks. 

So, given the opportunity to let loose a "neener neener" or "so's your old man" on attackers who had shown no sign of being interested in actual dialogue, both Weber and Rubin kept their eyes on the real point-- the question of how best to serve the educational needs of students in New Jersey-- and acted like grown-ups.. If NJCSA has an ounce of class, they will put down their brass knuckles, put on their big girls pants, and deal with reality honestly and productively instead of trying to bully Rubin into silence.

100% Charter Fail

Writer-researcher Mark Weber published a piece about charters on NJSpotlight this week that deals with charter schools in New Jersey, but which has implications for the charter movement all across the US.

Weber is perhaps better known in the edubloggoverse as Jersey Jazzman, and his research prowess (coupled with that of Julia Sass Rubin of Ruthers) is highly respected. This piece brings together much work that he's published in the past; a trip through the pages of his blog will reveal considerable more detail for those who want it.

The bottom line is that New Jersey charters do not serve the same population as the districts that house them. Specifically, they serve a smaller percentage of poor students and students with extra learning challenges.

As Weber reports, even Cami Anderson has admitted this in public. And the numbers, readily available from public sources, fully support this conclusion. There really are no grounds on which to dispute it. And yet many charteristas continue to do so.

Why? The most obvious reason would be that the numbers explain away what little success some charters can claim. It raises the bar of expectations of charters-- if you've creamed all the better students, why aren't you doing any better than you are?

But more importantly, it reveals the limits of the charter business model.

New Jersey can never be a 100% charter state system. At least not with the current charter operating system. Let's sort students into two groups-- let's call students who come from better economic backgrounds and have no special needs Low Cost Students, and students from lower economic backgrounds or with special needs will be called High Cost Students. If the state wide ratio of LCS to HCS is 3:1, but the ratio inside charters is 12:1, we cannot get all the students in New Jersey into a charter school. Somewhere we're going to have a big old pile of leftover High Cost Students.

In the meantime, it would also be nice to have Condoleeza Rice visit NJ and see how charters provide the machinery for de facto segregation. Charter opponents are racist, my ass.

Plenty of folks have always assumed that this was the end game: a private system for the best and the-- well, if not brightest, at least the least poor and problematic-- and an underfunded remnant of the public system to warehouse the students that the charter system didn't want.

But those folks may have underestimated the greed, ambition and delusions of some charter backers. "Why stop at the icing," operators say, "when we can have the whole cake?" And chartercrats like Arne Duncan, with dreams of scaleability dancing in their sugarplum heads, may really think that full-scale charter systems can work because A) they don't understand that most charter "success" is illusory and B) they don't know why.

It's telling that while chartercrats are cheering on complete charter conversions for cities from York, PA to Memphis, TN, no charter chains have (as far as I know) expressed a desire to have a whole city to themselves. The preferred model is an urban broker like Tennessee's ASD or the bureaucratic clusterfarfegnugen that is Philadelphia schools-- charter operators can jostle for the juiciest slice of the steak and try to leave the gristle for some other poor sucker.

It's not even that charters are worried about how successful they will look. The business model is still evolving, and charters are learning how to spin and market almost anything that comes out in their numbers. They do need good numbers, and they have gotten better at getting them. But the numbers that they are most attentive to are the ones on the bottom line, and that's why no charter operators in their right minds would want a 100% charter system that they had to be responsible for.

I sorted students into High Cost and Low Cost because that's how charter operators see them. It's not that it's easier to get good numbers out of a smart, rich kid. It's that it's cheaper. Students with special needs, students from poor backgrounds, students who have behavioral issues-- these students cost more money. And never forget-- every dollar that a charter operator has to spend on s student is a dollar the charter operator doesn't get to put in his pocket.

Here's one more reason that free market economics do not belong in public education-- in the free market, all customers are NOT created equal. All customers are NOT equally desirable to businesses. And the free market deals with these undesirable customers very simply-- it doesn't serve them. (This is why, for instance, when you hire FEDex or UPS to deliver a package to your uncle on some back road in Bumfargel, PA, FEDex and UPS turn around and hire the United States Postal Service to deliver it for them.) In a charter system, those High Cost Students become human hot potatoes.

"Well, we'll just require charters to serve a certain segment of the population in our 100% charter system," you say. And I will remind you of one other critical difference between charters and true public schools. True traditional public schools do not say, "It's too hard to turn a profit in this business environment, so we are just going to close our doors." Traditional public schools are in it for the long haul. Charter operators are in it as long as it makes business sense to be in it. If they don't like the deal you're offering them, they don't have to stay.

A effective total charter system is not going to happen. If you're not convinced by the ongoing slow-motion disaster in New Orleans, just look at the number from New Jersey. It's unsustainable and unscaleable.