LA: How To PARCC Up Parents

One of the ongoing challenges of selling the Big Standardized Test is trying to convince folks that the BS Tests are generating some sort of real data. With that in mind, the Louisiana Department of Education has whipped up an awesome video to model how teachers should try to convince parents that the PARCC exam wasn't a huge waste of everyone's time and money.

Emily Martin will be our teacher exemplar; some poor uncredited woman plays the part of Jonah's mom. Emily will show us how to have "an effective parent conversation" about the upcoming PARCC scores (hey-- that must mean they're finally being released! cool!).

Martin opens with a cheerful greeting and delivers some small talk about really enjoyinghavingjohnnyinclasshe'salotoffunokayletsjustetonwithit. Her delivery needs some work, but hey-- she has the highly complex PARCC data on her mind.

Martin says that she wants to be sure that Mom understands the information in the PARCC report from the test that Jonah took last year. She has a packet!! With her name and email on it. The packet looks to be actually a file folder, and the contents would be about two pieces of paper. But Martin has included her name and e-mail on a card. Plus the URL for the Louisiana Believes website.

Jonah's mom starts working her line, because in this "conversation," the parent part seems to be saying "Um-hmm" many, many times. I will report when Mom gets to say her first actual word.

Martin is going to warm Mom up with a sample test result sheet, because we need to warm Mom up for the moment she see's her child's scores and her brain explodes. Also, we need to pad this conversation out because presenting BS Test results is all about trying to make a grain of sand look like the Rock of Gibraltar.

Because here's the thing about the PARCC results. They are bupkus. They are the hair on the pimple on the butt of the world's smallest flea. It is absolutely astonishing that so much testing can result in so little actual information. It's as if somebody chopped down a redwood to make a toothpick.

Now, I hope I didn't get your hopes up-- Jonah's Mom is not here to get Jonah's scores. Not yet. Jonah's Mom is here so that Martin can start the process of managing Mom's reaction to the scores, and to do that, Martin has dragged this parent into school in order to walk her through the state's parent guide to the score.

This is our toothpick guide, and as Martin tries hard to make it look like something, I want you to remember that, according to the guide, the PARCC report will give the following information:

* the student's overall score, rated 1 through 5
* a reading score (1-3)
* a literary text score (1-3)
* a non-fiction reading score (1-3)
* a vocab score (1-3)
* a writing score (1-3)
* a written language score (1-3)
* a writing conventions score (1-3)

That's the rich data we're looking at. But back to Ms. Martin.

Martin is now explaining how the "breakdown" will be super valuable to her because it will show her where the students need extra support. I believe that "where" can best be described as a vague wave accompanied by "somewhere over in that general direction, ish" Remember-- those breakdown scores are just a matter of poor, okay, or swell ratings. So if you tell me, as a teacher, that Jonah is doing okay at reading non-fiction, I know... what? There is literally not a single assessment which I use that does not provide more data depth than this PARCC report.

Martin slips in that the emphasis of all these new standards is college and career readiness, also a bicycle, because a vest has no sleeves. Mom has been upgraded to repeating, "Okay," and I wonder if parents will also be shown this helpful modeling video so that they understand that they aren't supposed to be asking questions or pointing out foolishness or generally doing anything in this conversation except nodding cheerfully. Because it may turn out that some parents are not committed to that script.

Anyway, Martin is "very excited" about the "detailed information" that she's going to be receiving about Jonah and his friends, which is an odd thing to throw in-- "I'll be watching your kid and all the kids." Martin points at the page (she does this a lot) to show where the comparison of school, district and state will be, so that Mom can see if she's keeping up with Jones.

"What I want to prepare you for-" Uh-oh. Time for Martin to let Jonah's mom know that his scores may have tanked this year. But Jonah is a strong student, and Martin would guess that in the past he's done well-- wait! Guess?? Does Martin not have access to Jonah's previous scores? That seems like a huge mistake. Anyway, it may be possible that with the increased rigor and the new standards, his score might not be as great this year. Martin doesn't know because she hasn't seen Jonah's scores yet, so although it's October and he's been in her class for a while, she still hasn't seen the state data that would give her the straight poop on what kind of student he is. He's been awesome and doing great work and meeting a\or exceeding all her expectations, but still-- his scores could suck.

But Martin assures her that the low test score she may see doesn't mean that Jonah is less smart or has learned less or that he's not progressing the way he's supposed to be and I'm pretty sure at this point a real parent is not saying "okay" so much as they're saying "then what the hell is the point of looking at this score if you already know how my son is doing in school??" But the low score is just a reflection of the new standards, and as teachers and students get more comfortable, the scores will go up. So the PARCC measures comfort?? Maybe instead of strong, moderate and weak, student areas should be marked Serta Perfect Sleeper, comfy old couch, and pile of rocks.

Now Martin is on to the specific example scores, as I listed them above. She says these will give us very specific ideas about where Jonah needs work, and now I think the real parent is trying not to laugh, but Jonah's mom nods and says "okay." Martin tries to make hay out of saying that a strong in literary text paired with a weak in non-fiction would give her an instructional brainstorm, what with all the rich, deep information included in those two ratings.

And now she give Mom a quiz, and looking at the second column, asks Mom to show her where the strengths are, because Louisiana feels an important part of this is to be condescending to parents and treat them as if they are nine-year-old students in your classroom??!! I am happy for Jonah's Mom though, who know gets to speak a whole sentence of words to give her answer. "Excellent," says Martin. And Martin again pretends to think these star ratings are a really powerful tool for instruction, because if a person came into my room and said, "Hey, that student there is pretty okayish in writing stuff," that would give me a very powerful sense of exactly what lessons I needed to craft for that child. I could individualize instruction-- and the good news there is that since there are only three possible ratings, I only need three possible lessons to cover all my personalized instruction. Awesome.

Martin will now, and not for the last time, reassure Mom that Jonah's score will not have a big effect on his future or cause him to be held back a grade. This is just part of a "body of work that describes your student's accomplishments" and "it's really designed to be tailored information" and I have no idea what the hell that is supposed to mean, and from the look on Martin's face, neither does she. Jonah's mom says. "This is great" and Martin replies, "Yeah, great" in a tone that suggests "Shut up and stop going off script, you loose cannon." I'm pretty sure that real live parents are going to be rough on this "conversation" model.

Martin is going to send this parents guide home with Mom, who might want to stick it on her refrigerator. Maybe right next to the instructions on How To Read a Thermometer and How To Operate a Light Switch. Martin also directs us to where there are questions about stuff, which basically seems to lead to a discussion of things your student will do next year irregardless of this PARCC nonsense.

Now Martin will provide a specific plug for a specific activity-- the writing journal. Oh, and here's an old favorite-- she used to do crappy journals, but now that they have the standards and the PARCC, the journal will do awesome things. Evidence. Critical thinking. Unicorns. And Martin never heard of how to teach before the new high standards came along. She cheerfully indicts herself-- "In the past, I would have accepted any lazy crap, but now the standards make me do more." Also, the standards magically increase what students can do. Hurray, the standards.

This journal baloney is supposed to be an example of how the PARCC helps her design instruction, because a fish has no feet.

One last thing-- results on the test will not be used to determine student promotion. Want to be clear on that. Scores are part of larger process, because students and teachers are still getting used to the standards. Also, check out the website. With sample test items. Here at the end, Mom asks her first question (Do I need a user name or password?) for the entire "conversation." Jonah's mom is very grateful, and Martin remembers to thank her for taking time off from work so that Martin can read her a printout from a website that Mom could read at home.

I do wonder how many parents will show up for these sessions, and how many of them will leave the session with the feeling that PARCC is a huge waste of everyone's time, as exemplified by the meeting that just wasted their time. I'm sure somebody at LDE thinks they're being clever and proactive about managing expectations, but it's hard to manage people to be excited and grateful about a big poop sandwich.

Gates Says Some Stuff

Like many teachers, I could not tune in to Bill and Melinda Gates' trip down Ed Reform Memory Lane because I was busy doing my actual job. This seems metaphorically perfect-- Gates talks about schools while, meanwhile, teachers are in schools doing actual work. However, I've scanned some accounts of the speech from this afternoon, and I think I've piece together the general drift of his gist. So let me channel my faux Gates voice to summarize what you, I and all of us missed today.

So, hey there.

It's been fifteen years since we started trying to beat public education into submission with giant stacks of money, and it turns out that it's a hell of a lot harder than curing major diseases. Turns out teachers are not nearly as compliant as bacteria. Who knew?

Actually, there's a whole long list of things that came as a surprise to us. Teachers and politicians and parents all had ideas about what ought or ought not to be happening in schools, and damned if they would just not shut up about it. At first stuff was going great and we were getting everyone to do just what we wanted them to, but then it was like they finally noticed that a bunch of clueless amateurs were trying to run the whole system, and they freaked out.

I have to tell you. Right now as I'm sitting here, it still doesn't occur to me that all the pushback might be related to the fact that I have no educational expertise at all, and yet I want to rewrite the whole US school system to my own specs. Why should that be a problem? I still don't understand why I shouldn't be able to just redo the whole mess without having to deal with unions or professional employees or elected officials. Of course nobody elected me to do this! I don't mind, really-- happy to take over this entire sector of the government anyway, you're welcome.

I have noticed that when you give teachers really shitty feedback based on crappy tests, they prefer that you just shut up and leave them alone. This is bad. How will they know whether they're crappy teachers or not, or whether they're doing well or not. Surely they don't think by just using their professional judgment and paying attention to their students they'll be able to figure out how they're doing all by themselves? Where are the numbers and the charts and the data? I tell you-- it's almost as if they think they understand things about teaching and education that I do not, and that surely can't be right.

I'll admit-- we were a bit naive about rolling all our ideas out, and by "we" I mean various state governments that we spent our money on. Those guys just screwed up the implementation. I know the ideas themselves were sound because, you know, I do. I mean, not everybody messed it up. In Kentucky they stayed the course on using standards to prep for those tests, and damned if that test prep didn't pay off in higher test scores. What else could anyone possibly want.

And resistance to Common Core. Well, some of that was just crazy people telling internet lies. And the rest was people who just wanted to assert their autonomy, like all the people who work in public education wanted to make a point that they don't actually work for me. My bad. Sometimes I forget that there are people like that. Although Melinda will tell you that teachers actually all love the Common Core. Love it.

Look, I'm a simple man. I had some ideas about how the entire US education system should work, and like any other citizen, I used my giant pile of money to impose my will on everyone else. It's okay, because I just want to help. We're not done yet-- I'm going to keep trying to fix the entire teaching profession, even if nobody in the country actually asked me to do it. And no, I don't intend to talk to anybody actually in the profession. What do they know about teaching? Besides, when you know you're right, you don't have to listen to anybody else.

Common Schools vs. Diversity

Over at redefinED, a reliable source of reformy pro-school choice arguments, Patrick Gibbons (also a reliable source of pro-school choice arguments) has posted a pretty thoughtful response to the can of worms opened by the Washington state smackdown of charter schools.

In "Common schools and the feat of diversity," Gibbons takes a look back at the actual history of common schools in the US, in particular focusing on how many ways those schools have failed to live up to the promise of public education in this country.

Yet Mann’s common school concept remains a source of conflict today. The ethical and moral lessons of students in a one-size-fits all environment have created a battleground in the American culture wars, from book banning, to the fight against communism in the 1950s, to the fights over textbooks and the Common Core standards.

In this, and in shared criticism that common schools have to often (and still in some places today) reflect the racism and classism of their communities, Gibbons has a point. 

But in his suggestion that charters are the solution, he is indulging in a  fantasy far more reality-deficient that any "romantic vision of free, universal public education."

Gibbons repeatedly slides in the notion that public schools are one-size-fits-all. That's hugely arguable-- most public schools allow a wide variety of students with a wide variety of interests and skills to pursue a wide variety of goals. It is precisely because public schools are NOT one size fits all that the one size fits all reformster ideas one size fits all standards and one size measures all testing have been such fruitless failures.

But even if we were to stipulate to public schools being one size fits all, how can charters possibly be held up as an alternative? Charters are frequently constructed as one size fits some, and only those some are welcome to attend. Nor do they make educational options available to all-- not even close. Charter school systems have been constructed in such a way as to abandon many students to the schools that have, in the process, been stripped of resources. Meanwhile, charter students must select one and only one alternative with little or no room for diversity under their roofs.

A public school is like a department store where students can select a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Do you want to play sports, sing in a choir, prepare to become a doctor, and develop your love for literature while finding your way to teachers whose temperament and style matches your own? You can do that, or any other number of combinations, in a public school. But charter schools are often conceived as boutique shops that sell one product, and one product only, while serving only one narrow kind of customer. Part of the point of diversity in schools is to bring together students from many backgrounds. Some urban schools fail to move toward this goal, but charters are deliberately designed to move away from it.

Gibbons and charter advocates may argue that the sheer number and variety of charters provides the diversity, but in practice that's simply not true. Because it's hard to stay in business as a boutique, many charters don't offer anything other than the same general education as a public school-- just in a charter setting. But only for certain students.

Not all public schools have successfully embraced pluralism and diversity, but neither have charters, and while public schools have been steadily over the years changing and growing and working to embrace those qualities-- because that's what they're expected to and by law required to do-- there is no similar path forward for charters. Those fights that Gibbons references are the result of communities standing up to demand that their public schools reflect community values, while charters answer to nobody, not even the taxpayers who pay the bills.

Gibbons diagnosis of the problem is not entirely wrong, but his solution is no solution at all. Charters have accelerated segregation, drained resources from public schools serving the larger population, and tried to sort students into isolated, homogeneous silos. Common schools have not done a great job embracing diversity, but whatever value charters may add to a school system, it is certainly not their fostering of diversity.

GA: Smiles

This post is not a rant, and I've set aside the snark for the moment.

We don't have cable, so I miss some things until I stumble across them on line. This one in particular struck me somewhere around the left ventricle. I know these are often heavily massaged and we don't get the whole story, but this seems pretty straightforward to me.

It speaks to the resilience of children, who are often way tougher than we give them credit for. It also speaks to the wisdom that says you deal with your own troubles best by helping other people with theirs.

Here is a six year old who, without benefit of recess consultants or carefully scripted curriculum or professional behavior engineering, worked his way out of one of life's lowest spots.

FL: Another Charter Scam

This week news channel Local 10 in Florida has been reporting on the latest charter school to just take the money and run.

On Monday, the station reported on a mass firing at Paramount Charter School in Broward County. About a month into the school year, one by one, the teachers at the freshly launched charter were called into the office of administrator Maia Williams (sister of the school's owner, Kimika Williams Mason) and fired. Well, not all of them-- a few were offered the opportunity to keep their job is they took a pay cut (from $36K to $30K) along with a loss of all benefits.

The news channel has been relentless in noting that Paramount, like all charters, is paid for with taxpayer dollars, but privately owned. Tax dollars sucked up by Paramount so far? Over $740,000, with more to come.

The school has been through three principals, and the teachers complained of a lack of direction, policy, supplies, schedules, locks on the door-- this school is a mess. At the moment, the building is staffed with substitutes, and students complain of spending all day drawing pictures and learning nothing.

Local 10 dug a bit more, and on the second night of coverage rattled off more problems with the charter:

* on the application, Mason's only listed experience is six years with an unsecured home loan service (which is its own brand of scamster baloney). I looked-- Kimika Williams Mason is an online ghost, without so much as a the cheesy LinkdIn profile beloved by corporate reformsters.

* the listed vice-president of the company is a 22-year-old student who did not know she was listed as vp

* the corporate office is actually a virtual office, with just a phone line and e-mail address

There's more-- all bad. [Update: If you want to wallow in the deep and long-standing mess, the indispensable Mercedes Schneider has dug through the records. It's amazingly awful.] The school's honchos were given the chance to comment; Williams led off by grabbing the reporter's camera and demanding he leave. It didn't get much better from there, with a claim that the whole staff had to be fired because of bullying. Or maybe because they were too tight with the last principal to leave.

Paramount has a facebook page and a website, neither of which note the current turmoil (the facebook page hasn't been touched since August). The website does have a nice embedded video from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

As usual, parents have been blindsided and thrown for a loop. The main marketing tool for charters continues to be the use of the word "school" which still comes with all sorts of expectations-- permanence, competence, state oversight so that a parent has the reasonable assurance that nothing too terrible can happen, and if it does, they have a recourse.

But as Paramount demonstrates, charter schools are under no obligation to provide any of those things-- particularly in Florida, where oversight is nearly non-existent. Local 10 talked to Broward School Board member Laurie Levinson, who expressed her frustration over the whole mess. Even though the local board has theoretical oversight of Paramount, unless there is a long-established pattern of bad attendance or a clear and present health risk, they can't do squat.

"Everything is a free-for-all basically," said Levinson. "And the sad part is we're going to find this generation of kids, many of them, who are not educated properly in these schools."

Four charters have folded in the area in the last two years. Millions tax dollars have been wasted and thousands of students have had their educations disrupted (and not that cool, profitable kind of disruption, either). In the meantime, Paramount is one more scam that is perfectly okay under Floroda's Anyone Can Play School charter laws. 

Campbell Brown's charter-loving website just ran a piece calling for tougher policing of bad charters because they sully the name of charters. I'd argue that scams like Paramount sully the name of "schools," and that states like Florida ought to stop letting charter money-sucking scam acts call themselves 'schools" at all. 

Recess Consultants. Seriously.

Kids these days. They just can't be trusted to do anything on their own. We've done our best to structure the hell out of their day, making sure that every answer, every move, every activity is built around a specific uniform required response on their part. By controlling every classroom moment, right down to what books they're allowed to read and what they're supposed to say (stick to the script, kid), we've managed to suck all of that damaging fun out of school.

But what about recess? Granted, some schools have solved the problem by simply getting rid of recess, but what about schools where students just go out there are and run around and interact and play games like Tag or Jumprope or Climbing Dirt or How Fast Can I Run With My Tongue Hanging out. Is there some way that we could step in to make recess less fun and more in keeping with the goal of Making Kids Do What We Want Them To?

Turns out there is. Meet the recess consultants.

Playground consultation has hit the internet lately because of this story from Minnesota in the Star-Tribune. Two schools in Edina are trying out the program from Playworks that replaces all that sloppy, disorderly free play with structured activities and offerings like the "Game of the Week." Not everyone was exactly digging the new structured "adult-facilitated" activity time.

On a day last week, a kindergartner said he wanted to play basketball. A recess coach explained that wasn’t a choice at the time; he decided to play another game.

Playworks can be hired for varying levels of meddling with children's playtime, from a "coach" who "operates" recess to an occasional drop-in meddling coordinator down to training staff how to meddle with recess on their own.

The Star-Tribune piece was followed up by a response, direct from the PR Department of Shut Up You're Not Really Helping. Here are some of the things Shauna McDonald says in support of Playworks' program:

Playworks is the leading nonprofit in our community leveraging the power of play to transform children’s social and emotional health.

Playworks has found that the best way to get all kids in a game or in a variety of games is to create an environment where all participants share the same language, vocabulary, understanding and strategies that they can use to solve conflicts on their own.

It’s about helping schools create an environment where every child has a supported choice and is empowered to be a contributing member of their community.

And I actually find this one the creepiest:

If a child is happiest at recess while engaging in imaginative or free play, this play is encouraged. 

It just conjures up visions of the recess consultant asking a six year old to stop and consider, "Is this running circles really making you happy, Chris? Could you please rate your happiness on a scale from one to ten?"

Playworks wants you to know that their program has been studied by Stanford and Mathematica, and those studies have determined that students learn more, have fewer discipline problems, less bullying and "a greater perception of safety." And there are plenty of schools that say they are happy with how the recess consultants have brought order out of chaos and helped with bullying and inclusion issues.

Maybe I'm just naive. After all, I'm a high school teacher, not an elementary one (I'm not remotely tough enough). I know that bullying and getting left out can make recess suck. But am I supposed to believe that there are elementary staffs out there that don't know how to handle those issues without turning recess into one more adult-controlled part of a kid's day?

Sure, no kid should dread recess because he'll spend it all alone or be the target of bullying. And some of what the Playworks site describes sounds suspiciously like a plain old phys ed class. I'm just not sure this sort of exercise in Borgian assimilation into the adult-facilitated hive mind is a good answer. The Playworks website is loaded with this sort of language:

At Playworks, our goal is to create an environment where safe, healthy play is accessible to everyone. To achieve this, we train adults to create fun, safe, and inclusive playgrounds through games and positive group management techniques. At a Playworks recess, children enjoy fun and interesting games playing alongside engaging adult role models and often student leaders.

That's from a blog post in which Playworks insists that they aren't structuring some sort of robotic playground hell. Just a place where adults call the shots, design the activities, make sure the kids don't play on their own, and talk about "positive group management techniques" like that's a good thing. Where do these people come from? At which college does one get a degree in playground consultancy, and do they also offer degrees in walking in the hall supervision and note-writing oversight?

Maybe we just need helmet cams for every kid, so that monitors can watch the child's every move and make sure nothing goes wrong. "Alert! Alert! Chris is about to pet an unauthorized puppy!" "Call in the napkin consultants-- Pat just drank from the water fountain and left some water dribbling chinward"


At this point I almost looked up some links to research showing the free play is good, but no-- it just depresses me to imagine that we've reached the point where we have to make academic and research-based arguments to support the notion of letting children play, on their own, doing whatever-the-hell they want, free of any adult intervention except when they are veering toward Really Wrong Stuff. Granted, this is not just a school problem-- parents increasingly schedule their children into adult-directed sports and activities for a zillion hours every week. Is it any wonder that by the time they get to me and I ask them to do things like pick an essay topic, develop their own argument, and write about it in their own voices, that some of my students look at me like they've been asked to sing a few choruses in "Puttin on the Ritz" in Sanskirit?

And just in case you think this is some strange Minnesota thing, here's a map of where Playworks has already landed:

So there may be one near you. In the meantime, you may want to set your school up with a recess consultant, as well as a lunch-eating consultant, a nap consultant, and a shoe-tying consultant. If we want to grow the leaders and independent thinkers of tomorrow, we'd better start supervising their every waking moment today.

Stopping Bad Charters

Over at Campbell Brown's Reformsters R Us PR site, charter fan Richard Whitmire addresses the question of how to handle terrible awful no good very bad charter schools. It's an important question, and his five answers are worth discussing. But it's also worth discussing how his answers direct attention to some fundamental charter issues.

Whitmire starts out by acknowledging that the charter movement keeps getting shot in the foot by its own friends. He drops the ball by characterizing charter opponents as either unions or competition-hating superintendents, skipping right past other opposition from groups like "people who care about public education" or "people who don't want schools to be used primarily as money-making tools for investors" or even "people who think the whole charter-choice approach is grossly inefficient and over-expensive." But he does nail his central point-- when charter foes ask why anyone should approve more charters when "so many crappy charters remain in business," they have a point.

Whitmire offers five ways that charter fans can sweep away the junk that is making Charterville look kind of shady and run-down.

Advocates Need To Change Their Mindset

Whitmire argues for quality over popularity. Filled seats and a waiting list don't prove that a school is good. He notes that CREDO research indicates that struggling charter schools can rarely be turned around. Which I would expect-- a public school has external pressures to answer to, while the board of a charter often answers to nobody. And he says this:

"And never justify keeping lousy charters open just because equally bad district schools never get closed. This is not the same thing. “Charter schools are meant to be an improvement over (traditional) public schools,” said [Scott] Pearson. “If not, why are we bothering? If we’re not delivering quality, I don’t think we have a business being in this game.”

It's a good point. Too many charters base their marketing on "the pubic schools here suck" and not "we can do things well."

Charter Advocates Need To Name Names

Yup. It's understandable to want to avoid calling out your own people when you're already under attack. But Whitmire says only California's charter association has the nerve to put charters on a "should close" list. But California's charter association chief says not calling them out is a threat to growth and autonomy.

But this is a great idea. I look forward to when the 74, which promised to follow the stories wherever they lead, starts naming names of bad charter actors.

Identify the Low Bar and Enforce It

Whitmire says states should set a minimum and close charters that fall below it. Good and great can take many forms, Whitmire says, but the bare minimum should be an enforceable universal standard.

Start Advocating-- Loudly-- For Changes In Mushy Laws That Allow Bad Charters To Stay In Business

Whitmire cites two Philly groups for doing so, and really, it's a surprise that more don't do so, because the next phase of the charter market will inevitably be the big players getting rules passed that make it harder to survive the market as a small fish. Charters used political connections and leverage to get the market pried open in the first place, but the next step for any evolving market is for the winners to enlist government help in maintaining their dominance.

The trick is in how the laws are written. If states set a true low standard below which charters can't fall, that's one challenge (particularly if it's test-based-- congratulations Test Prep Academy). But if legislators turn to industry insiders for a little help, we could see standards such as "Good charter schools have a combination of the letter K and a number in their title."

But there's certainly room for better laws in places like Ohio, Charter Junkyard of the East, or North Carolina, where charters are now assumed to be worthy unless someone proves they deserve to be shut down.

Improve Charter Authorizing 

Whitmire correctly notes that in some places (e.g. Kansas City) the incentives are in place to encourage authorizers to open as many charters as possible (Hmmm... wonder how the law ended up being written that way). Whitmire cites Arizona as a state where the charter board was "an embarrassment," but eventually figured things out (he comes just short of calling Ohio an embarrassment today).

There’s a dangerous notion out there that little can be done about weak authorizers. But that’s just wrong. What’s needed is for state politicians to insist that the job gets done.

So there are Whitmire's five thoughts. And if we assume for the moment that I'm not going to get my druthers regarding charters or their mission, then these are not bad thoughts. But for me, it raises  issues.

Embracing Churn

Whitmire's model is at least honest in its assumption that a charter system will involve schools regularly being shut down. And if I'm an economist looking down on a free market sector from high up on a cloud somewhere, that is normal and natural and not at all troubling. But if I'm a family on the ground, where schools are opening and closing and churning and burning-- well, that's not so great. Uprooting children on a regular basis? Not so great.

This is one of the many ways in which a market approach is incompatible with public education-- the free market does not provide a great deal of stability on the individual level (well, at least not until some market leader emerges to turn it into a not-so-free market). Children and their families deserve a stable system, and they benefit from not having to shift and change and retool and re-adjust every fall (and especially not during the year).

When it comes to schools, having a bunch of schools closing every year is not a desirable feature. But with a free charter market, it's not only a feature, but as Whitmire righly suggests, it's a necessity.

Meet the New Boss

Whitmire's article is shot through with calls, some direct and some not-so, for state regulation of charters.


Now, I don't have a problem with that. I would absolutely love to see states regulate the hell out of charters. But it doesn't really make sense for charteristas to like the idea, because it underlines a flaw in their whole premise.

After all-- the whole point of charters is to operate outside the heavy hand of government regulation and interference. Except that outside the hand of government regulation, we find lots of crappy charters. So we bring in the hand of government regulation to keep tings in line. Which means now we have two alternatives-- public schools that are locally run but regulated by the state, or charter schools that are locally run but regulated by the state. And if the charter regulations are going to be different in ways that are supposedly good for education, then why not use those better regulations for public schools.

It's possible that the long game is, as with many industries, to capture the controls of the regulatory agencies so that the regulations are just what charter operators would like them to be. But for that to happen the charter biz would have to be far more unified than it is now.

If ultimately we've got to call in the state to make sure that charters are accountable and run right and aren't corrupt crappy cons-- well, what's the point of having charters in the first place?

So I don't disagree with what Whitmire has to say, but it leads me back to the same old conclusion that charter schools as currently practiced don't do anything new or different except channel public tax dollars to private corporate pockets while increasing the total cost of education to a community (and suck the blood out of public schools in the process). More carefully regulating charters will just make charters less different from public schools.