For a second year in a row, schools across Colorado are back in session and principals are empty-handed.
Somehow the Colorado Department of Education has statewide results, but districts and schools and teachers will have to wait a few more months, because those results will be released "later." And how is that even possible?
The article quotes both a public school principal and a charter CEO, and I guess we can credit PAARC with putting them on the same page, that page being, "Well, in a few months when those results get here, we'll have already set our instructional sales for this year. Maybe someday PAARC data will actually be useful. In the meantime, we're depending on other stuff."
Man, where is the invisible hand of the free market when you need it. Isn't PARCC supposed to be convulsing in paroxysms of excellence, working their butts off to make sure they keep their test-crunching job in one of the nine states (if you count DC) that are still PAARCkified. But no-- Colorado will once again get whatever meager data PARCC can offer months too late to be of any real use.
Why does anybody bother with this test, again?
The state's comment-- "Well, at least the test results won't arrive as hugely unspeakably late as they did last year." The state's chief testing officer blames the delay on the 6% of the tests taken with paper and pencil. Let's see. Colorado has a little under 900,000 students pre-K through 12. PARCC covers testing for grades 3 through 9. So, very roughly, 450,000.About 10% of Colorado students opted out. Six percent gets us very roughly 24,000. 24,000 paper tests take months to correct. Does PARCC have only one scantron machine? Is it broken? How did they think they were going to manage all the tests involved if a dozen other states hadn't dropped out of the consortium?
The last line of the story is just as telling as the first:
A spokesman from PARCC declined to comment.
There are so many things wrong with the PARCC test, so many things wrong with the whole business of using a large, narrow standardized test to determine whether students are learning or teachers are teaching or schools are any good. But if we are going to maintain the fiction that PARCC somehow yields data that teachers and schools can use to adjust instruction (which they probably can, if by "instruction" you mean "test prep"), then the whizzes at PARCC need to get the data to schools before the school year is largely over. PARCC, you have one job-- to get useful data to schools within a useful time frame. And you blew it again.
There's a new documentary out dealing with the history of the Cabrini Green project in Chicago. 70 Acres in Chicago deals with the many complicated issues of race and urban poverty. But as the Slate article about the documentary notes, it underlines another huge issue with the "improvement" of some urban neighborhoods.
Cabrini building demolition. (Photo: MJ Rizk)
The idea behind these housing project upgrades is always pretty simple. Here comes the city to say to the poor folks living in the projects, "Aren't you tired of living like this? We are going to knock these projects down and replace them with something better. Yes, you are going to have to find another place to live, but when we've finished, you'll be eligible to come back here and live in the newer better place."
That seems like a great idea, a straightforward way to improve quality of live for those living in public-assistance housing.
But as writer Dianna Douglas notes, that's not how it works. Mostly, the people who have been displaced by the new project do not come back. The most successful such project in the country was in Atlanta, and that project brought back a whopping 25% of the original residents. The national average "hovers below 19 percent."
Some of this is simply circumstance. Moving is expensive. Doing it twice is way expensive. But some of this is also design. The Cabrini-Green redevelopment will follow the new model of mixing low-cost housing with higher SES models for a mixed neighborhood. But there's a problem.
The decrepit, infamous Cabrini-Green had 3,600 public housing units. When the rebuilding is complete in 2019, there will be around 2,830 units. Only 30 percent are for families in public housing. Got that? Fewer than 900 units.
And as Douglas notes, the rules for getting into those limited units can be pretty strict.
The message for the urban poor when it comes to gentrification is simple-- we're going to make this neighborhood better by moving you out of it. Meanwhile the actual humans who have been moved out may find themselves in a rougher situation, an equally bad neighborhood, but now without the neighborhood ties, the little bit of social capital that they had previously worked up in the original (now "improved") neighborhood.
As a mother of four whose children attend public schools and charter schools, I can tell you exactly what's occurring in both public and public charter schools.
I live in a neighborhood in Washington,DC that is undergoing regentrification. It is still prodominately African American but Whites have moved in within the last five years. The Washington Latin Public Charter School which opened about four years ago has a predominately White student body in a predominately African American neighborhood. I have two children that are in Middle School and High School and they are not allowed to attend the school that is in walking distance ( school sits at the end of my block). They have been wait listed for years. I finally just enrolled them in another charter school that has a predominately African American and Hispanic student body. When we drive past the school every morning we see White kids being bused from outside the neighborhood. My kids now know what segregation looks like in 2016. These white students are coming from Eastern market, Tenley Town, and Logan Circle. All of those white kids live outside the neighborhood. I brought it to the attention of the Charter School board here in Washington and nothing changed. As stated in the article the members of Washington Latin School Board are predominately all Attorneys from Georgetown, Yale and Harvard Law School. This means that trying to change the policies on how students are selected will be extremely difficult. It's as if the Charter School Board is afraid of the elected members at this school.
The save the village, we have to lose the villagers.
But what good does it do to save a neighborhood or a school if we throw away the people? What good does it do to "fix" a neighborhood school when the neighbors are gone and the students come from some other neighborhood? If the actual problem was that the neighborhood or the school were not meeting the needs of the people, how have we solved that problem? The same people who were not served before are still not being served-- they're just not being served somewhere else. Of all the wrong ways to do charter schools, this is the wrongest.
For the next couple of weeks, as the beginning of my school year approaches. I'm going to write to renew my resolve to keep focus in my practice. This is one of that series of posts.
Years ago, when I would take a long trip either by myself or with family, my focus stayed on the destination, the goal. Drive-through restaurants so that we wouldn't "lose" time stopping to eat. No more restroom stops that were absolutely necessary. Eyes ahead, foot to the floor-- let's get to where we are going.
It's easy to start teaching like that. You've got that list, whether it's in your curriculum or your pacing guide or just in your head, and by God, you are going to get through that journey before the sands of the school year clock run out. And then before you know it, you're designing units based not on effectiveness or engagement or possible usefulness to the students, but based on speed. "If I cover the major aspects of Romanticism like this, I can polish that off in a day."
Worse, you start to roll over the students. Hopefully it just stays in your head, but there's a voice saying, "Dammit, kids-- stop asking questions and trying to discuss this stuff. We've got material to get through and we don't have time to waste on your yakkity-yak." You're getting unreasonably irritated with that student who doesn't understand something and makes you go back and re-explain a concept when in your head, you know you're supposed to be moving forward.
When you reach that point, you know you have completely lost your sense of what you're supposed to be doing. You've lost the thread, missed the point.
It's time to breathe.
First, there is no pedagogical value in ripping past a bunch of material at high speeds, turning the passing landscape into a blur that nobody can discern or make sense of. Sure, there's such a thing as going too slow, of boring the brains out of everyone in the room. But that's not really a danger at the moment, is it.
Second, and I think this is way more important to remember, this is your students' lives.
At some point, I came to understand that the journey was not a chore to get through so that the adventure, the vacation could begin. The trip was part of it, and it could be enjoyed and savored and experienced just like whatever awaited at the destination.
Our students are not putting in time in school to stock up on knowledge and skills in anticipation of the day, somewhere off in the future, when their lives will actually start. Their lives are not going to start later. Their lives are going on right now. This, while they're sitting in my classroom, right now-- this is their life.
Primary teachers have perhaps the hugest level of responsibility in all of education. Sure, they are teaching the fundamentals of reading and writing and art and science and all the rest. But those primary kids are babies. Their lives have been so short (particularly if you only count what they remember) and they have seen so little, and so the subtext of every single day in class is "This is how the world work. This is what life is like."
That is perhaps less true for my high school students, but still-- this is part of their journey, and there's no reason, no excuse for it to be a senseless breathless blur. When I drag them through high-speed instruction, piling lesson on lesson like a berserk tennis-ball cannon, I'm wasting a day of their life. I'm not teaching reading or writing or literature and I'm certainly not teaching speaking or learning-- I'm teaching that education and life are about keeping your head down, holding on, and waiting for it all to be over.
I fall into this trap with the best of intentions. Over the past decade, my teaching periods have been literally shortened, and my teaching year has been virtually reduced, with days given up to testing, test prep, the rest. One of my colleagues ran the numbers, and my teaching year is essentially about eight weeks shorter than it was a decade ago, and every year it seems I have to grieve those lost weeks again, fight against giving up the instruction that would have filled those dear, departed hours.
But what's gone is gone, and while I try hard to be efficient and clever, I only have the hours I have. I need to breathe, to remember that the pace in my room is sometimes set by my students. When the teachable moment comes, I can't just drive the car over it because, dammit, we've got places to go. When the students need to talk, to process, to ask, my job is to respond to that. My content is important, and every year I promise on Day One that I will do my best to never, ever waste their time. But ultimately I don't serve my content-- I serve my students, and I must remember not to get so caught up to driving to the destination that I treat my students like cargo instead of fellow travelers on a long road through rich and beautiful country.
Florida's test fetish became so advanced, so completely divorced from any understanding of the actual mission of schools and education and, hell, behaving like a grown human adult with responsibility for looking after children, that some district leaders interpreted state law to mean that a student who had opted out of the Big Standardized test could not be passed on to the next grade-- even if that student had a straight A report card.
Yes, I'm going to explain that again because it's so completely senseless that you might think it's just another bad typo on this blog.
Meet Chris. Chris was a third grader last year. According to Chris's report card, Chris earned passing grades in every single class. But Chris's parents said that Chris would not be taking the state test. Now Chris must repeat third grade.
Last spring some Florida education leaders took some heat over this, which is only fair because this is a decision that can only be taken as evidence that the adults in question should never be given responsibility over children ever, ever again. Gah! Look, in the world of education there are many debatable issues, many points on which I can see the other side's point of view even as I disagree vehemently with it. But what possible justification can there be for this? What possible purpose is served by forcing an otherwise successful eight year old to repeat a grade simply because that child's parents refused to comply with the state's demand to take a test? Florida has gone to the trouble of creating rules about what constitutes "participation" which it then can't explain. It is almost-- almost-- as if state education officials are mostly and only concerned that the test manufacturers have an uninterrupted revenue stream. They certainly don't give a tinker's damn about education.
On top of all that, Florida has rules in place for alternative assessments, but some edublockheads decided that those rules only apply if you have actually failed the BS Test.
So then the state and superintendents tried throwing each other under whatever buslike structures they could find. And everybody had a full summer to sort out the highly challenging puzzle of what to do with third grade students who had passed every damn class on their report cards. Because, damn, that is a puzzler there.
Too big a puzzler, apparently, because the new school year has arrived, and a whole bunch of third graders are still expected to return to third grade so they can sit through all the lessons that they already successfully completed last year. If they keep refusing to take the test, will their districts just keep them in third grade until they are twenty-one?
We may not have to find out, because now the whole slab of baloney is in court.
Fourteen parents have taken the state, Ed honcho Pam Stewart, and several local districts to court, claiming that their rights were violated.
“The negative behaviors associated with retention are exacerbated here because each of the plaintiffs’ children received a report card with passing grades, some earning straight A’s and Honor Roll for their hard work throughout the school year, but yet they will be retained in the third grade despite having no reading deficiency,” the suit says.
The suit names seven county districts ( Orange, Hernando, Osceola, Sarasota, Broward, Seminole and Pasco counties) but hopes to overturn the entire retention rule, which is so "confusing" that only some districts retained opt out children. And calling it confusing is unkind-- what seems more apparent is that, having stuck themselves with a stupid, unjust rule, the state education department doesn't have the cojones to either enforce it or scuttle it, leaving local superintendents to try to read the state tea leaves through the fog of their own intentions. You can almost hear the panicked conversation in Pam Stewart's office-- "Oh, shit!! Did we say we'd fail every single eight year old who wouldn't take the test! Well, I'm not going on television to demand eight-year-olds be forced to repeat a grade they actually passed, but I'm not going to say somneone screwed up by making such a stupid law in the first place. Just dance around it and let the superintendents take the heat."
And take heat they all will. The full text of the lawsuit is here, along with a link for anyone who wants to contribute. Because that's where we are now, folks-- parent groups have to take up a collection to go to court so that third graders who passed all their classes can be promoted to fourth grade.
Massachusetts is heating up. Perhaps no state has better exemplified the fierce debate between public school advocates and fans of modern education reform. Ed reformers captured the governor's seat, the mayoral position of Boston, commissioner of education, and the secretary of education offices, and yet have consistently run into trouble since the day they convinced the commonwealth to abandon its previous education standards in favor of the Common Core Standards-- which were rated inferior to the Massachusetts standards even by the guys paid to promote the Core.
These days the debate has shifted to the issue of charter schools. Specifically, the charter cap. Currently Massachusetts has a limit on how many charter schools can operate in the Pilgrim state. The people who make a living in the charter biz would like to see that cap lifted, and the whole business will be put to a public referendum in November.
So well-heeled charter fans have collected a few million dollars, and they have hired DC-based SRCP Media, most famous for the Swift Boat campaign that sank John Kerry's candidacy. The Swift Boat campaign was also a demonstration of the fine old political rule, "When the truth is not on your side, construct a new truth."
So is SRCP manufacturing truth in Massachusetts?
Spoiler alert: Yes.
It appears that the multi-million dollar ad buy will lean on that old favorite-- charter schools are public schools. And when I say "favorite," what I actually mean is "lie." But let's look at the whole thirty seconds.
We open with a Mrs. Ingall, who is listed as a "public school teacher." That would be Dana Ingall, a teacher at the Match Charter School, whose bio says that she attended University of Michigan, joined Teach for America in 2011, was sent to Delaware and Harlem, and earned an Elementary Ed Degree from Wilmington University. She hasn't been in Boston long.
"Our charter schools are public," says Ingall. And she seems like a nice person, so I will assume that someone at SRCP handed her a script and told her to repeat that lie. We'll come back to it in a bit. She goes on to note that charters have longer school days and a "proven record" of helping students in underperforming areas "succeed" which, again, doesn't mean anything except "get a good test score." I also like the careful distinction of helping students in underperforming areas, which is less impressive than helping students from underperforming areas or, since we're claiming to be a public school, helping ALL students from that area.
Then Voice Over Man comes on to tell us that Question 2 will expand charter school access and "result in more funding for public school" which probably refers to the state funding formula. When Chris goes to a charter, the per-pupil money follows Chris, but an amount is paid to Chris's public school, to soften the financial blow. Massachusetts' formula is probably the best in the nation-- but that "increase in education spending" would be on the order of a billion dollar. Which means one of a couple of things would happen-- either the taxpayers would be asked to cover that billion-dollar payout by raising taxes, or the state would find the billion in charter cost coverage by cutting some other part of education spending. So, for instance, Pat doesn't get to go to pre-school because the state has to pay to send Chris to a charter. Any way you cut it, the cost of sending Chris to a private school will be felt by taxpayers and public education.
Oh, and Chapter 46, the law under which all that reimbursing happens-- it has never not been fully funded in the past several years*, so local districts have to make up the difference. When Chris goes to charter school, the local taxpayers have to kick in to pay for it. [Update: Courtesy of Save Our Public Schools MA, here's a more detailed look at just how underfunded charter reimbursement of public schools is-- and will be]
Ingall returns to say "Every parent should be able to choose the school that's best for their child," but all the charter expansion in the world will not result in that scenario. It is already clear that Massachusetts' system of charterizing allows charters to choose which students they would like. Parents are no more able to choose any school they'd like their child to attend than high school graduates are able to choose any college they'd like to attend.
Finally, the tag line-- Vote yes on 2 for stronger public schools.
Peruse the Great Schools Massachusetts site and see other examples of Totally Not Grass Roots in action. Here's the professionally filmed and staged launch of the site, featuring an appearance by Governor Baker, who talks about students stuck in bad schools in bad neighborhoods as if he had no idea, no power, no say in getting state resources to those schools in order to improve them. But no-- the only hope is to open a charter schools so that a favored few of those students can be rescued in a lifeboat made with planks from the hull of the ship that's carrying everyone else.
Or listen to Dawn tell the story of how her son was rejected by a dozen charter schools until KIPP finally accepted him. The solution to this, somehow, is more charters and not a better investment in public schools.
The Big Charter Lie
The big lie in all of this push is the suggestion, hint, or sometimes outright statement that charters are public schools.
Public schools must take-- and keep-- all students-- at any time. Charters do not. Look at the attrition rates. Look at the limited population of special needs students. Look at the suspension rates (a good way to communicate that a student is not welcome). Look at the dismal charter graduation rate for young black men.
Public schools must operate with transparency and accountability. All board meetings must be public. All financial records must be readily available to any taxpayer who asks to see them. Charters have repeatedly gone to court to assert that, like any private business, they do not have to share financial information with anyone.
Public schools must follow certain laws in dealing with employees and students. Charters do not and, again, have gone to court repeatedly to assert that they are not subject to the same rules as public schools. And while they love being able to work without a union or a contract, they are also happy to avoid following any protections for student rights. In fact, these two "freedoms" can result in teachers being fired for standing up for student rights.
Public schools must stay open and operating as long as the public demands it. Charters can close at any time they wish, and because they are businesses, they will close at times that make business sense, not times that make educational sense, or that most weigh the needs of the students.
And the thing is, virtually everybody knows this. Public school supporters, charter advocates-- virtually everyone knows that charters and public schools are not the same thing.
In fact, in the last year we've seen a rise in charter fans pushing a "Can't we all get along?" narrative. The director of Philadelphia Charters for Excellence last fall said "It is time to move past the adversarial position of 'traditional vs. charter' schools and work to create an environment where both sectors can flourish." In March, Massachusett's SouthCoast Today joined some charter chiefs in asking, "Can charter and district schools be partners in education?"
It's a change from the older trope that free market competition would drive everyone to excellence. But the two approaches have one thing in common-- they recognize that charter schools are not public schools.
Nor are they treated the same by Massachusetts, which makes sure that the charter gets every cent coming to it, but looks at the public school system and shrugs, "Talk to your local taxpayers."
Nor will things be sorted out by the free market. Charter operators already know this-- several brick and mortar charter folks have spoken up to say that the government needs to clamp down on all the crappy cyber-charters. But by their own theory, such intervention shouldn't be needed because parents will vote for quality with their feet-- but the free market doesn't work for charter schools at all, even when it is tilted to treat them one way and public schools another.
So when a long-time charter booster like Peter Cunningham, former spokesmouth for Arne Duncan's Department of Education and current word-ronin for well-heeled reform investors, writes something like "First of all, charter schools are public schools. Arguing that charters take money from traditional schools is like arguing that a younger sibling takes parental attention away from an older sibling." He knows he's shoveling baloney. It was far more honest when he tweeted
By definition charters supplant public schools. We don't have infinite number of kids. Can't protect schools parents don't want. @kombiz
Not add to or support or enhance. Supplant. Replace.
Replace a school system with democratically-elected leadership, a system that must teach all students, a system in which taxpayers have a say, a system that comes with a long-term commitment-- replace that with a system that entitles some students to attend any private school that they can convince to accept them. And keep them. And stay open.
Are public schools perfect as is? Not even close. But the solution is not to rescue a favored few at the cost of making things worse for the many left behind. If charter advocates wanted to approach this honestly, here's what their proposal would say--
Vote to have your taxes raised to finance a new entitlement for every child to have the option of attending private school at taxpayer expense. Vote to shut down public schools and replace them with schools that aren't any better, won't serve some of your children, and aren't accountable to you, ever.
Let the swift boaters make an ad to sell that.
*Corrected from original version once I found the actual information.
The ACLU recently issued a report outlining a variety of widespread illegal practices among California charter schools. The report is worth reading in detail because it gives an impression of just how widespread these practices of restricting student enrollment are, creating one more situation in which "school choice" means that schools get to choose students.
California law is pretty clear that charters may not "enact admissions requirements or other barriers to enrollment and must admit all students who apply, just as traditional public schools cannot turn away students." How do California charters violate those rules? Let's count the ways. Deny admission to academically struggling students. Charters are not allowed to bar students because of academic requirements, but at least twenty-two do, with everything from requiring particular coursework to a cut-off grade at their previous public school.
Deny extra chances to struggling students.
Charters should give struggling students more chances to succeed, but some penalize students for failing to keep up academically.
Barriers to English Language Learners.
While some charters work hard to assist ELL students, others have policies in place to make it harder for such students, some as transparent as requiring a minimum score on a language arts assessment (one school requires the applicant to be no more than one year behind grade level). Others use more subtle techniques, like including no Spanish on applications and school materials. But charters may not legally bar ELL students, and they must provide appropriate programs. No, you can't just say, "We do all our instruction in English, chico. You'll just have to stay with us. Catch up or get out."
Use interviews and essays.
Charters may not use interviews or admissions essays to determine what students they will accept. Some do it anyway. Some work around the law by having interviews and essays but claiming not to use them. A) Nobody actually believes that. B) The very presence of such a process intimidates some students with less academically-swell backgrounds. Example:
In a 2 to 3 paragraph essay (minimum 5 sentences per paragraph), tell us why you want to come to OCEAA – what interests you most about the school? You must use proper grammar and punctuation. Requiring SSN and birth certificate.
Not allowed to do that. Some do anyway. One more hurdle that discourages the Wrong Sort of Student from even applying. Requiring donations of time from parents.
Some charters require parents to donate time and sweat equity to the school. It's a handy way to avoid costs like janitorial and other simple positions. That's illegal, and of course, a problem for working parents. Some schools helpfully allow that parents who don't have the time can contribute money instead. Again, even the appearance of such policies is enough to scare some parents away.
Pushing out students with low grades.
Flat out illegal. Charters cannot, for instance, expel students for having a low GPA, or even threaten to. Yet many do.
The report includes many, many examples, most of which fall into the "I know this is only a single anecdote, but if this happens even once that's one time too many, and why didn't someone get in big trouble over it?!"
California has written charter school law that says just what charter law should say-- that a charter school must accept every student that shows up at its door, and can deny them only for no reason other than being out of space. That's what the law should say. But having the law say that is not enough if charters can get away with choosing not to follow it. Will shining light on these illegal practices end them? We can only hope.
Of course, we're all on different schedules across the country, but here in NW PA, it's a little under three weeks till school gets started. (Boy, shouldn't we do something about that? I mean, a student moving from PA to TN would find themselves suddenly several days behind, or one moving the other way would have to do the first day all over again, so we probably need a Common Core School Calendar so that we are all always on the same page on the same day. But I digress.)
In the weeks before school starts, I try to focus on my personal big picture to get myself cranked back up for school.
You know how it is. In the back of your head, you have ideas about big important concepts and respecting and building on the humanity of every student and over-arching themes that you want to thread through the whole year's instruction. And then before you know it, it's October and your thoughts about the many important domains of student learning and growth are being pushed aside by concerns like if Chris laughs that annoying laugh at some inappropriate moment one more time, you are going to bust a gut.
There is a dailiness to teaching that can get in the way of our highest, best intentions. I want to stay focused on global objectives about language use, but right now I have to make sure I have enough scissors that work safely. I want to make sure each class starts with a warm welcome, but I just found out that the copy room didn't send down all my copies. I want to have a full and open discussion of the readings, but today the period was cut short and interrupted three times.
So it's an important part of my work to try to keep my focus, remember what I'm doing and why. It has become even more important for me since I've spent so much time staring into the maw of education reform and the many forces intent on breaking down public education in this country (and others).
When you first learn to drive, you have to learn where to look. If you get so scared of the telephone pole that you stare at it, you will then drive straight toward it. You can't ignore the obstacles, and you have to pay attention so you can react if some hazard throws itself in your path, but first and foremost you have to keep your eyes on the road, keep your gaze focused on the place you want to go.
So that is my August practice. Get out the stack of education books that I've been meaning to read. Spend some time being mindful of why I do it, and what it is I want to do. Refresh my resolve.
This year, I'm going to extend the exercise to this space with a series of essays to help me keep my focus where it needs to be. because no matter how many years I have done this, there's always more to work on, and some of the work is better done on days when I'm not trying to get copies made.
