When a Charter Closes (and Choice Is Not Choice)

The free market acolytes, lovers of the modern charter school, have a pretty neat and clean vision of the future. Well-informed parents choose from within a wide array of charter schools, and at appropriate moments, the market sloughs off those schools that either do a lousy job or are just not providing something that a large slice of the market wants.The whole process should be as tidy and bloodless as shopping at Wal-Mart.

But a piece from KPCC (Southern California Public Radio) last month shows how messy the actual function of the charter school market is.

Kyle Stokes reports on the story of a West Los Angeles charter that shut down three weeks into the school year. Thirteen months after opening, the fragile City Charter Schools high school hit a financial bump that ended them.

The article points at several issues that led to the school's demise.

One was that it simply didn't dent the market. Even though it was intended to receive students from the chain's elementary and middle schools, that didn't happen. And the insight offered about that under-enrollment highlights one of the paradoxes of "choice."

"Some kids just want the bigger school," Braimah said. "They want the football field, the marching band and all of those trappings; lots and lots of elective choices."

Yes-- if you want your child to have choices, one of the best ways to get those choices is by enrolling at a full-sized public school, where students can have their choice of many different programs under one roof. Want to start out as a band geek who also plays a sport, but then later decide to switch to art and science without completely changing schools? A full-sized public high school can do that. City Charter's high school, with less than half of its hoped-for 540 student enrollment, could not.

City Charter also highlights the problems of the infamous waiting list. City Charter had hopes for higher numbers this fall, noting that there are 41,000 students on waiting lists. But there aren't. There are 41,000 seats that are wait-listed, and when one student is on six wait lists, that means that five schools are not going to be enrolling that student.

City Charter also suffered from lacking a distinct marketing pitch, a clear brand identity.

"Our story’s a little harder to tell," said [executive director Valerie] Braimah. "It's like, 'We love kids!' Well, everybody says they love kids."

The school's still-up website underlines the rather undistinct mission of the school:

Our school provides an educational experience on par with the best schools in the country while emphasizing a mixed-socioeconomic, mixed-ethnicity student body that is truly reflective of Los Angeles. Our supportive community of learners propels students to express concerns and ask for help, develop character and lead.

They had hoped that this fall would see an increase in enrollment, but instead, they were losing steam and students. City Charter didn't have a real sales angle, a clear picture of what they were offering that was different from the public system. Which raises the question of why they ever needed to exist in the first place. What exactly was the point of opening the school if it was indistinguishable from public offerings? And isn't there something wrong with a system that requires a school to have a clear marketing brand to succeed?

The last thing to note about City Charter high school is that it could have limped along much longer than it did, except that an electrical fire led to the discovery that the building had "deep-seated" problems with wiring and air conditioning, and it was going to take a battle with the landlord to get them fixed. Which serves as yet one more example of what happens when the school system becomes infected with groups for whom business missions, not educational ones, are the driving force.

The students who found themselves cut loose managed, mostly, to find a new school to take them in, and I suppose they were at least a little fortunate in that they were cast adrift close to the beginning of the school year and not in January. But in the meantime a whole bunch of taxpayer money and resources have been wasted on a school that not much of anybody wanted and which didn't provide anything special other than a chance for charter operators to expand their brand vertically.

This is not the neat, efficient system that charter fans promised-- just a wasteful mess that has destabilized the education of a hundred-or-so families. What exactly is the point of the charter revolution, again?

OK: Teach Like a Robot

This week Tulsa news outlets were covering an exciting non-innovation innovation arriving in local classrooms-- real time coaching.

See, in normal coaching, a principal watches a teacher and then it is hours, or even days, before the teacher gets the feedback. But in real time coaching, the coach directs the teacher through an earpiece, presumably because the technology to simply control her body from a distance does not yet exist.

One more example of real time coaching about to go badly

This piece follows poor second-year teacher Krystal Medina who goes through this process. Perhaps that teacher should talk to Amy Berard, a Massachusetts teacher who has been dragged through this particular corner of ed reform hell, as she wrote at Edushyster.

The students were also perplexed by my new earpiece accessory. "Um, Miss, what’s that in your ear?" they asked. I looked over to the three adults in the far back corner of the room for my scripted answer. "Tell them you are like Tom Brady. Tom Brady wears an earpiece to be coached remotely and so do you," was the response. I never would have said that, and mumbled instead: "But I’m not Tom Brady. No, I’m not Tom Brady." The students, who could hear me, but not what I was hearing through my earpiece, were more confused than ever.

The press were there to watch Remote Control Scripting in action because they had been invited there by Tulsa Public Schools and the company TPS hired to provide this program. It's the same company that put Berard through her paces-- CT3 (The Center for Transformative Teacher Training). They are partners with all the cool kids-- Success Academies, Teach for America, Aspire, and many other charter schools.

CT3 has two co-founders. Co-founder Kristyn Klei Borrero is also CEO. Borrero did at least start out with an education degree from Miami (1995). Borrero was a principal at age 27 and running turnaround charter schools in Oakland and Palo Alto, California. She was also a honcho at Aspire charters in California, the charter chain set up by Don Shalvey (Gates Foundation) and Reed "Elected School Boards Suck" Hastings (Netflix). Aspire is also in the Build Your Own Teachers business.

The other co-founder's name is familiar to most teachers Of A Certain Age. Lee Canter made a name for himself on the professional development circuit with Assertive Discipline, an approach based on taking control of your classroom. But for CT3 Cantor has also developed the No-Nonsense Nurturer program and the Real-Time Coaching model. Both NNN and RTC are registered trademarks, because there's no point in repackaging well-worn materials with a little twist unless you can call it proprietary information. It's a hoot, isn't it, that Jonas Salk never patented the polio vaccine; in fact, when asked about the patent he said, "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?" Nowadays that would be considered certified crazy person talk. If you develop something people need, of course you patent it and make a mint. And if you "discover" something that is not actually new, you just tweak it a little so that you can patent it. You may not yet be able to get a patent on a pig, but put lipstick on the pig, and you've got yourself a proprietary product. Ka-ching.

But I digress.

No Nonsense Nurturing has been around forever, but previously we've called it "tough love" or "taking a hard line" or even "acting like an emotionally-withholding, borderline-abusive jerk." I have never seen nor read of an example of it that doesn't make me immediately think "this is no way to treat human beings."

Real-Time Coaching, the part that got all the press attention in Tulsa, is actually Real-Time Scripting, and like scripting, it has no place in a classroom. Ever. No child should ever, ever have a teacher whose answer to, "Why are we doing this?" is "Because the voices in my head tell me to."

The real time nature of the coaching is actually a bug, not a feature. If I'm coaching another teacher, after I've watched the lesson, I'll need at least a few minutes to reflect. In the real time moment, I'm pretty much limited to the instant thought of What I Would Do, or, if I've been trained in a particular method, the One Correct Response to that situation. Either response devalues and dismisses that teacher's own teaching voice.

It's just silly to say that there is One Correct Way to teach a particular lesson, irregardless of the teacher or the class involved. It makes no more sense than saying there is One Correct Way to be a spouse, irregardless of who is your partner.

Borrero defends CT3 practices by saying, "Our programs were developed through careful analysis of high performing teachers’ practices in schools serving traditionally disenfranchised communities across the country; all of our work is rooted in building positive life-altering relationships with youth and their families." But it is hard for me to imagine how Real Time Coaching could possibly help accomplish any such thing.

Standardizing and human behavior is the worst kind of folly. To fit in such a system requires the practitioners to be less themselves, less real, less human. It is a favored dream of people who are too small to comprehend the vast variety of human experience and behavior, too scared to face anything but the narrow sliver of possibilities they feel prepared to master, or too morally impaired to respect the independence and autonomy of other human beings.

Good teaching exists at the intersection of the material, the humanity of the teacher, and the humanity of the students in the room. Additionally, that intersection is influenced by a background of previous experience, current events, and the feelings of the moment. It cannot be standardized any more than a marriage or a child or a pancake or a planet can be standardized. And it can't be attempted because it shouldn't be attempted.

I have no doubt that buried here in there in the real-time scripting and the no-nurturing nonsense, there are occasional nuggets of useful information or technique. But it is saddening to see CT3 still successfully peddling their wares. Nobody needs to teach like a robot.

NC: Charters Get Their More-Than-Fair Share

The North Carolina Justice Center has just released a study of charter school funding, and if anyone was worried that poor NC charters were not getting sufficient support, they can relax.

"Fair Funding for Charter Schools: Mission Accomplished" comes from Kris Nordstrom. Nordstrom is a NC economist who has worked in government before joining NCJC. He's no anti-charter zealot; witness this quote from a piece about the report:

Charter schools are public schools, and North Carolina’s students deserve equal funding whether they attend a public charter school or a "traditional" public school operated by a local school district. Luckily, "fair funding" already exists.

As regular readers know, I'm in complete disagreement with him on this point-- charters are private schools run with public tax dollars. But I mention this so that it's clear I'm not simply cherry-picking from the work of someone who already agrees with me.

Nordstrom's report has some simple but important findings, but first, he makes this observation about "fairness."

It is worth noting that under both current law and HB 539, the sharing of local funds only flows in one direction: from the school district, to the charter school. Under neither scenario is the charter school required to share local funding – which includes grant funding and private donations – with the traditional public school system.

Yeah, you know, it is worth noting. In fact, that's one more way in which charter schools really aren't public schools at all. But let's get on to the findings.

These findings are important, because charter advocates in NC have been advocating for "fair funding" by making claims such as "On average, our state’s public charter schools get less than 75 cents for every dollar given to traditional public schools." First of all, that's a pretty clear abandonment of the old charter claim that they could spend tax dollars more wisely and efficiently than stupid, bloated public schools.

"We will only spend 75 cents compared to every public school dollar," used to be a proud charter boast. Now it's their sad complaint.

But it turns out that it's also a big fat Thing That Is Not Exactly True.

Nordstrom is looking at data from fiscal 2014-15, and what his data says is that charters actually spend more local tax dollars per student than public schools. That's about $215 more local dollars being spent by charters, per student, than at public schools.

To put it another way, charter advocates claim they are getting 75% of the local funding that public schools get, when they are actually getting 110%.

There are lots of twists and turns to this data. For one, NC bases payments to charters on the per-pupil spending in the student's district of origin, so there's some averaging and slack in those figures. Nordstrom tries correcting for that and still finds charters spending $40 more per pupil than public schools. His analysis is that charters have a higher population of students from districts with higher-than-average per pupil spending. That would be consistent with the findings that wealthier white parents are using the charter system to get their kids away from Those People's Children

Nordstrom does a few more rounds of number-crunching, concluding that under a truly fair system, charters would owe the public system about $3 million. Probably not going to happen. But his conclusion is pretty clear:

No matter how you cut it, local funding of North Carolina's charter schools looks awfully fair.

And then some. 

Outsourcing College

The Education Management Corporation is based right up the road from me in Pittsburgh, PA. They're a for-profit education provider whose best-known outlet is the Art Institute chain. (They should not be confused with the Education Credit Management Corporation, an outfit that is also in the for-profit college biz, having bought up the pieces of the Corinthian empire.)

They've had their problems. You know a company has been struggling when its website proudly announces front and center that it has struck a deal with thirty-nine states, the District of Columbia, and the Department of Justice to end the many, many, many state and federal suits, investigations,  and charges against it for fraud and bad recruiting practices.

Mock my hair all you want. It cost more than your house.

Now this morning's Politico includes other shenanigans-flavored news:

The latest downsizing move by one of the nation's largest for-profit college chains — the cash-strapped Education Management Corporation — may be selling off campuses to a company in India.

The company in question appears to be Ritman Balved Education Foundation, a non-profit that runs the relatively huge Amity International School chain. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (one of the thirty-nine attorney generals involved with EDMC's other shenanigans) describes the sale as a "plan to outsource the remainder of its teach-out obligations to an unlicensed foreign entity."

Amity is part of a rising trend in India of private universities, a trend that attracted attention from the Wall Street Journal in 2007. That story notes that India was having trouble adjusting to the rise of private businesses in education, and that while Indian law required schools of higher learning to be non-profit, they were still plenty expensive and making some folks mighty rich. There are concerns they are "blurring the lines between philanthropy and business." Go figure. It all sounds familiar:

While the private universities are adding much-needed capacity, they are also raising questions about the quality of their degrees and the motives of some wealthy backers.

RBEF is one philanthropy-flavored foundation behind this movement, though it does have some features that don't immediately resemble our US brand of edu-philanthropic-profiteering. For instance, their website touts their educational commitment, but notes that RBEF

also supports nation building through initiatives like military training, environment & energy research, corporate social responsibility, youth empowerment activities like hosting world youth forums, sporting academies and extensive support for the underprivileged sections of the society.

Nation building through military training. Well, then. That's one thing that Gates and Walton don't do, as far as I know.

RBEF was founded by Dr Ashok K Chauhan, an international corporate billionaire who decided in 1986 to get into the edubusiness. His main business is the AKC Group of Companies, which includes a bit of everything, now including the RBEF. He has done very very well for himself, with a chain that includes five universities and hundreds of schools at other levels. Chauhan is pushing 75, but his son is already in place to take over the family business.

So I'm torn here. On the one hand, EDMC's Bob Greenlee offers what are clearly weasel words (EDMC "remains committed to providing current students with the resources on-site to meet their educational and career needs" which of course means that once the current crop is outta here, all bets are off). Meanwhile, Politico reports that current students are being vigorously pushed toward the door. EDMC is already has its boarding pass and its luggage tagged for a trip on Outsource Airlines.

On the other hand, RBEF appears to have a hell of a lot more positive experience than EDMC, a group that is admittedly older (1962) but has spent the last decade hemorrhaging money and picking up lawsuits. They may be one more money-grubbing corporation in education to make a buck, but at least they're a stable one.

We've seen the pattern with private business universities before-- ultimately the revenue matters more than taking care of the students, corners are cut, false promises are made, more corners are cut, and soon the school has polluted its own business so badly that it can't be sustained. Outsourcing is one more logical evolution of a model that is bad business and worse education.

TX: Denying Special Education

You must read this piece of investigative reporting from the Houston Chronicle.

In "Denied:How Texas keeps tens of thousands of children out of special education,"
reporter Brian M. Rosenthal lays out the secret of yet another Texas miracle-- getting special education numbers down by systematically denying support and services to the students who need them.

The bottom line is simple-- and chilling:

Over a decade ago, the [unelected Texas Education Agency] officials arbitrarily decided what percentage of students should get special education services — 8.5 percent — and since then they have forced school districts to comply by strictly auditing those serving too many kids.

It is a system that has worked remarkably well at getting state expenses down, but as the story of one child denied support and services heartbreakingly lays out, it has not been very successful for the children of Texas. The denial of services has reached every sort of special need students can have, from learning disabilities to speech impediments to orthopedic impairments to visual problems. And it is worst in the cities, where need is arguably highest:

In all, among the 100 largest school districts in the U.S., only 10 serve fewer than 8.5 percent of their students. All 10 are in Texas.

The "target" of 8.5% was set in 2004, and it was based on nothing--

Four agency officials set the benchmark, former employees said: special education director Eugene Lenz; his deputies, Laura Taylor and Kathy Clayton; and accountability chief Criss Cloudt.

The only one who agreed to speak with the Chronicle, Clayton, said the choice of 8.5 percent was not based on research. Instead, she said, it was driven by the statewide average special education enrollment.

Reminded that the statewide average was nearly 12 percent at the time, Clayton paused.

"Well, it was set at a little bit of a reach," she said. "Any time you set a goal, you want to make it a bit of a reach because you're trying to move the number."

The story strongly suggests that what Texas has done is illegal, but it's worth remembering that its very much in line with thinking of reformsters like Former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who argued that students with special needs could be cured of any problems by having teachers with high expectations for them and that the Department of Education has repeatedly taken shots at special education programs while insisting that the Big Standardized Test is one size fits absolutely all.

In other words, what is happening in Texas, as outlined by this story, is absolutely wrong and completely insupportable-- but it is also in line with ongoing federal policies aimed at pushing back against special education.  

Professor Bush Goes To Harvard

So, Jeb Bush is going to be a visiting fellow at Harvard at the Kennedy School's Program on Education Policy and Governance.

Huh.

I suppose he could open his lecture with a recap of all the educational successes he had in Florida with programs that helped teachers teach and led to greater students success, but after that two minutes were up, what would he talk about for the rest of the time.

It is easy to imagine the many edifying lectures he could present. There's "How To Use Letter Grades To Grossly Oversimplify A Complex Human Service and Crush the Spirits of the People Who Work There." Or for the more business oriented crowd, "How To Dismantle a Public Service for Private Profit" as well as "How To Create an Astro-Turf Organization." And of course folks would line up for "Don't Build the House of Your Presidential Ambitions on the Sand of Your Education Policy." Maybe he'll even visit the philosophy department for "The Unbearable Angst of Watching All Your Hopes and Dreams Turn To Dust."

Presumably each lecture by Bush will conclude with a plea for the students to "please clap."

Harvard also announced other visiting fellows. Over at the medical school, Bob Phlegm will be lecturing on medicine and the proper uses of pharmaceuticals. Says Phlegm, "I should be great at this. After all, I've been to the doctor and had drugs prescribed. Also, I used to get high when I was a teenager. So I figured I'm as qualified to lecture about medicinal herbs as anyone."

Britney Spears will also be appearing as a guest lecturer on brain surgery. Said Harvard spokesman, "She once shaved her head, which is where the brain is located, so she's a qualified expert."

"Also," the spokesman continued, "we're going to get Kim Kardashian in here for something. I'm sure she has many areas of expertise, and lots of name recognition, and she's pretty rich, too. So, you know, we'll find some department for her to lecture in."

It is hard not to feel a little bit sorry for Jeb! at this stage of the game. This is a guy who spent his entire life building a big, beautiful sand castle with hopes of winning the big sculpture contest, only to have the castle ignored by the crowds and kicked over by some cheeto-faced baboon.

On the other hand, this is a guy who believes in the power of meritocracy and grit, so I think it's fair to ask what exactly qualifies him to talk about anything related to education other than dismantling it for fun and profit. Where are his successes? What is the merit, other than a famous name, a family fortune, and a lot of connections, that Jeb! Bush brings to Harvard's crimson table?

Jeb! wants to unleash the power of the free market on schools, forcing those that "fail" to fold up and go away, and those that provide "value" should prosper. So I have to wonder-- what free market forces determine that Jeb! is somehow entitled to function in this universe as an educational expert? What successes can he point to that reasonably lead the free market to reward him for his expertise? Yes, he has been successful in imposing and advocating for bad education policies that have consistently failed to work, so I guess he might be a good fit for lectures about marketing.

Maybe it's just that for children of Great Privilege, Harvard lecturer is such a step down from Leader of the Free World that this is what passes for failure (may my friends and I all fail so badly some day). Maybe it's name recognition-- after all, Lindsey Lohan kept getting cast long after anyone thought it was a good idea because her name brought customers in. 

But education expert and lecturer? I'm pretty sure Harvard can do better, can provide meaningful and useful teaching about public education, if they're so inclined. Selecting Jeb! is just further proof that their inclinations run another direction.

FL: Bad Retail Management As Ed Policy

If you have worked in the retail world, you have probably had this experience. If you teach in Florida, you're about to.

Somewhere way up the corporate ladder, some guys in a board room declare that they predict an awesome quarter for the corporate coffers. This awesome result is based on an uptick in revenue and that uptick is based on... well, it's based on pressuring the sales force. Not improved product, not greater demand in the marketplace, not any attempt to create a new relationship between the brand and the customers. Not any of the things that would actually be the responsibility of those boardroom guys.

No, what's going to happen is that the new Sales Goal Figures will be passed down the ladder until we finally arrive at a meeting between a store manager and the sales staff in which the store manager informs them that they are expected to move another $2,000 in merchandise per week.

What's the corporate assumption here? Well, it's not that the product or the corporate structure needs to be tweaked or fixed. The assumption is that, somehow, the sales staff could sell more if they just...well, did it.

Management may offer or impose some new policies or procedures (develop a customer call list and hit it every day, cry when you are trying to land the sale, or tackle customers when they get in the door and don't let them up until they buy something). But these are implemented backwards, after the fact. In other words, corporate doesn't say, "We've got some new ideas that we think will improve your sales so much that we can reasonably raise your goals." No-- it's "We are going to raise your goals. Here are some wild-ass guesses at things that might help you meet those goals."

This is bad management, and it can be found all over the retail sales world. It burns out sales people, gives management an excuse to keep wages low (you didn't meet your numbers again this month, Vern), and worst of all, it encourages sales staff to view customers as adversaries (I need to get your money away from you-- stop holding out on me).

Florida remains determined to establish itself as the leading state for Bad Education Policy (watch out, North Carolina) and so the Florida Board of Education decided to set "ambitious" education goals for state schools.

According to the strategic plan, reading and math scores on the Big Standardized Test are going to go up 7% by the 2019-2020 school year. So math and ELA numbers will both go from 52% to 59%. The graduation rate will increase 7.1% because that will increase the rate from 77.9% to the nicely rounded 85%. Postsecondary completion is going to increase by 10%!

Florida calls this a "strategic plan," and that's sort of accurate if you overlook the fact that there is neither a plan nor a strategy.

This is not a coach saying, "We've got these great new plays to try and I think they will raise our scoring 25%." This is a coach saying, "Get out there and score more points. Somehow. I don't know how-- just do it, dammit!"

This is not a corporate bigwig saying, "With the new strategies we have in place, we project the following improvements in our revenues next quarter." This is a corporate bigwig hammering his fist on the desk and hollering, "Bring in another ten percent in revenues or I will fire the whole damn lot of you." This is the heads of Wells Fargo saying, "I want every front line salesman opening 50 new accounts per month. I don't know or care how they're going to do it-- just tell them to do it or I'll can their asses." (The part where the corporate boss acts surprised by rampant cheating comes later.)

What's the theory here? Children will be getting smarter over the next few years? Teachers have been holding out and when faced with super-duper targets they will finally shrug and say, "Well, okay, I guess I'll finally really try to do my job." Or is it just that if we have a "bold" target set for no reason other than we aimed somewhere between "too small to be impressive" and "so large it's clearly ridiculous" and then we just threaten teachers and schools to go ahead and hit it, somehow.

This, of course, was the operating theory of No Child Left Behind-- set goals based on unicorn tears and fairy whispers and then just threaten people real hard so that they'll meet those goals. The whole rest of the country has since figured out that the NCLB operating theory is junk and gets you a whole lot of Nothing Good. So kudos to Florida board members for throwing one more burning sack of donkey poo that is the dumpster fire of Florida education policy. If nothing else, you are making many other states look enlightened and wise by comparison, and for that, those of us who don't teach in Florida thank you.