Summer is slipping away, but there's still plenty to read about education. Here are a few things from this week that you might want to catch up with. And remember-- amplifying important voices is how those voices become important.
End of Public Schools in Milwaukee
Thomas Ultican explains what's going wrong there.
Charter Schools Have Done More Harm Than Good in Michigan
Mitchell Robinson with a guest op-ed that lays out the sad, destructive history of charter schools in Betsy DeVos's home state
What Does TFA Tell the New Recruits about the Janus Decision?
Gary Rubinstein with another interesting perspective on the Janus decision
The Problem with Fear Based Reform
Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider on the Have You Heard podcast talking to Andrea Gabor about her new book and how education has learned lessons from the business world-- just all the wrong ones.
No, Private Schools Aren't Better At Educating Kids
I'd like this better if we weren't depending on tests as a measure, but it's still worth a quick look.
Sunday, July 29, 2018
Saturday, July 28, 2018
Calvin, Hobbes, and the Limts of Time
One gift that I finally got to crack open this summer was my copy of the Complete Calvin and Hobbes. And I just finished it.
It's done. I've looked at every panel, every sequence, every extra piece of artwork. That's all there is. There is no more.
You know the feeling. You love the book, or the book series, and you turn the last page, and you're done. That's it. There is no more.
My father is a bit of a Glenn Miller scholar, and he has amassed over the years pretty much every recording, including many that exist only as reel-to-reel copies of transcripts, and he can chart them all against the complete list made by other scholars of every gig Miller ever played. And maybe a few more will turn up, but basically, that's all there is. There is no more.
It's the same for Beatles fans and Tolkein enthusiasts. It's why J. K. Rowling will never have a moment's peace even as fans shell out money for recreations of Harry Potter's ear wax, and why there will always be a cottage industry in writing "new" Sherlock Holmes and James Bond stories. We don't want to get to the end.
We humans love to mask the finite nature of earthly life. We talk about things that "always" happen as if they don't have a limit. But there are limits. I can't talk about what I always did on the first day of school because in the end, as a teacher, I only had thirty-nine first days of school. Thirty-nine. Not that many really, but that's all there is now.
Schools exist in an oddly exaggerated time bubble. I often joked about the lifespan of a new policy idea, whether it was a grading scale or a special carpet for prom:
1st year: It's a radical new idea.
2nd year: It's that new thing we did last year.
3rd year: Oh, we always do this.
4th year: It's an inviolable tradition!
By February, our students talk about our classes like they've been going on forever. We were strange and new in the fall; now we're as familiar as the coffee stain on Grandma's couch.
But teachers grapple with the finite all the time. There are 180 student days in the school year. In Pennsylvania, that may actually mean 178 days; if you are a high school teacher, that's less than an hour with each class on each of those days. That's it. Every thing that gets added costs part of that time. And every hour lost is gone forever; this is not like a private sector office job where you can end a meeting with, "Well, we'll get back that tomorrow." In school, fairly quickly, you reach the moment where there is no tomorrow. That's all there is. There is no more.
This is undoubtedly part of why schools tend to be conservative institutions. Every new thing, every added thing, costs us part of our finite resources. It is the question that staff asks (or wants to ask but is afraid to) every time a new initiative is proposed-- "This is great, Sir. What do you want me to stop teaching to make room for it?"
There's a moment in the fourth Indiana Jones movie where a character says to Jones, "We've reached the point where life stops giving us things and starts taking things away from us." (It's striking for me because Jones in that film is supposed to be fifty-eight-- three years younger than I am. Oh, so old!) Teaching can get to feel like that. Well, not the teaching itself. For most of my career I worked hard at finding ways to do more and more with the resources I had; for the last decade it felt more like I was trying to keep doing as much as I used to with fewer and fewer resources. Every test, every practice test, every new initiative add-on just meant my teaching year had gotten shorter.
It's good for us to bump up against the finite limits of existence. It reminds us to make good use of every class period, every day. From my current vantage point, I can say this to younger teachers-- it may feel like you'll do this forever, but you won't. You'll have only so many first days, last days, 133rd days, only so many years, only so many different students. A teacher's body of work is finite, just like any other artist's.
Don't wait. Don't save it for later. Don't imagine you have forever to work things out. Don't panic-- but don't postpone, either.
The end of Calvin and Hobbes is a lovely gracious note, particularly for a feature in which a child has remained six years old for ten years, suggesting that the story, filled with possibilities, will continue long after we've stopped reading about it. That's a gentle way to let us down, but the fact is, that time is over. Even if the story continues elsewhere, in it, Calvin will age and live through every year of his life only once and then, yes, eventually he will grow old and die.
Things end. That's normal and it says something about us a earthly creatures that the statement generally prompts a bit of a pang. It needn't. In the classroom, in our professional lives, in our personal lives, we should feed the impulse to say yes, to grow, most of all to help others and not, as Simon Stimson bitterly observes in Our Town, "to spend and waste time as though you had a million years." In each other we find a million different living stories, any one of which could turn a final page tomorrow. We can do better. We should do better.
In life, we never know how much time is left. In school, generally, we know exactly how much is left-- and it's never enough. If teachers seem touchy about giving up some of it, it's because they can see the calendar and hear the clocking ticking down the minutes until we have to say that's all there is. There isn't any more.
It's done. I've looked at every panel, every sequence, every extra piece of artwork. That's all there is. There is no more.
You know the feeling. You love the book, or the book series, and you turn the last page, and you're done. That's it. There is no more.
It's the same for Beatles fans and Tolkein enthusiasts. It's why J. K. Rowling will never have a moment's peace even as fans shell out money for recreations of Harry Potter's ear wax, and why there will always be a cottage industry in writing "new" Sherlock Holmes and James Bond stories. We don't want to get to the end.
We humans love to mask the finite nature of earthly life. We talk about things that "always" happen as if they don't have a limit. But there are limits. I can't talk about what I always did on the first day of school because in the end, as a teacher, I only had thirty-nine first days of school. Thirty-nine. Not that many really, but that's all there is now.
Schools exist in an oddly exaggerated time bubble. I often joked about the lifespan of a new policy idea, whether it was a grading scale or a special carpet for prom:
1st year: It's a radical new idea.
2nd year: It's that new thing we did last year.
3rd year: Oh, we always do this.
4th year: It's an inviolable tradition!
By February, our students talk about our classes like they've been going on forever. We were strange and new in the fall; now we're as familiar as the coffee stain on Grandma's couch.
But teachers grapple with the finite all the time. There are 180 student days in the school year. In Pennsylvania, that may actually mean 178 days; if you are a high school teacher, that's less than an hour with each class on each of those days. That's it. Every thing that gets added costs part of that time. And every hour lost is gone forever; this is not like a private sector office job where you can end a meeting with, "Well, we'll get back that tomorrow." In school, fairly quickly, you reach the moment where there is no tomorrow. That's all there is. There is no more.
This is undoubtedly part of why schools tend to be conservative institutions. Every new thing, every added thing, costs us part of our finite resources. It is the question that staff asks (or wants to ask but is afraid to) every time a new initiative is proposed-- "This is great, Sir. What do you want me to stop teaching to make room for it?"
There's a moment in the fourth Indiana Jones movie where a character says to Jones, "We've reached the point where life stops giving us things and starts taking things away from us." (It's striking for me because Jones in that film is supposed to be fifty-eight-- three years younger than I am. Oh, so old!) Teaching can get to feel like that. Well, not the teaching itself. For most of my career I worked hard at finding ways to do more and more with the resources I had; for the last decade it felt more like I was trying to keep doing as much as I used to with fewer and fewer resources. Every test, every practice test, every new initiative add-on just meant my teaching year had gotten shorter.
It's good for us to bump up against the finite limits of existence. It reminds us to make good use of every class period, every day. From my current vantage point, I can say this to younger teachers-- it may feel like you'll do this forever, but you won't. You'll have only so many first days, last days, 133rd days, only so many years, only so many different students. A teacher's body of work is finite, just like any other artist's.
Don't wait. Don't save it for later. Don't imagine you have forever to work things out. Don't panic-- but don't postpone, either.
The end of Calvin and Hobbes is a lovely gracious note, particularly for a feature in which a child has remained six years old for ten years, suggesting that the story, filled with possibilities, will continue long after we've stopped reading about it. That's a gentle way to let us down, but the fact is, that time is over. Even if the story continues elsewhere, in it, Calvin will age and live through every year of his life only once and then, yes, eventually he will grow old and die.
Things end. That's normal and it says something about us a earthly creatures that the statement generally prompts a bit of a pang. It needn't. In the classroom, in our professional lives, in our personal lives, we should feed the impulse to say yes, to grow, most of all to help others and not, as Simon Stimson bitterly observes in Our Town, "to spend and waste time as though you had a million years." In each other we find a million different living stories, any one of which could turn a final page tomorrow. We can do better. We should do better.
In life, we never know how much time is left. In school, generally, we know exactly how much is left-- and it's never enough. If teachers seem touchy about giving up some of it, it's because they can see the calendar and hear the clocking ticking down the minutes until we have to say that's all there is. There isn't any more.
Friday, July 27, 2018
Castro Calls On DeVos To Support Public Schools
It's a short news brief, but worth catching.
According to Politico this morning, DeVos had a meeting with the Congressional Hispanic caucus (not on her public schedule) which yielded this comment from Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas):
“The Secretary’s primary focus is school choice,” Castro said. “However, her statements did not encourage us that the Department of Education has a strategy — or much desire — to earnestly improve the existing public school system. We are not interested in siphoning money from public schools to prop up a shadow system that includes private, for-profit schools.”
Castro chaired the meeting and said he appreciated the visit but said they still have a "fundamental disagreements on how to best prepare kids for success in life, and the critical role of the Department in making our public schools stronger."
Castro has a mixed record on education issues, with strong support for the public system, but also strong support for the whole standards-and-testing mess. And the Castro brothers (a rising Texas brand) have been pretty friendly to the charter sector in the past. He's a successful Democratic politician in Texas, so that's an achievement in itself, but I also note that his quote opposes "for profit" schools, and as we've noted before, a non-profit charter is just a for-profit charter with a good money laundering system.
DeVos's office followed up on the meeting by saying "Glad for the meeting blah blah blah choice students." I may be paraphrasing a bit.
According to Politico this morning, DeVos had a meeting with the Congressional Hispanic caucus (not on her public schedule) which yielded this comment from Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas):
“The Secretary’s primary focus is school choice,” Castro said. “However, her statements did not encourage us that the Department of Education has a strategy — or much desire — to earnestly improve the existing public school system. We are not interested in siphoning money from public schools to prop up a shadow system that includes private, for-profit schools.”
Castro chaired the meeting and said he appreciated the visit but said they still have a "fundamental disagreements on how to best prepare kids for success in life, and the critical role of the Department in making our public schools stronger."
Castro has a mixed record on education issues, with strong support for the public system, but also strong support for the whole standards-and-testing mess. And the Castro brothers (a rising Texas brand) have been pretty friendly to the charter sector in the past. He's a successful Democratic politician in Texas, so that's an achievement in itself, but I also note that his quote opposes "for profit" schools, and as we've noted before, a non-profit charter is just a for-profit charter with a good money laundering system.
DeVos's office followed up on the meeting by saying "Glad for the meeting blah blah blah choice students." I may be paraphrasing a bit.
The Parenting Gap
Another reformster has come out against the use of Big Standardized Test results as a measure of school success, not just once, but twice in the last eight days. Corey DeAngelis (Cato) took the stand both at the ever-reformy The 74 and at a website called Townhall, a website so conservative it includes as piece about the coming Trump landslide.
There's nothing mysterious about DeAngelis's apostasy-- the use of BS Test scores as success measures has made voucher programs look pretty bad, and DeAngelis likes vouchers. What, you don't think people can support good ideas for bad reasons? And lots of reformsters are not dopes-- Jay Greene was a lonely voice in the reformy world that tests are lousy proxies for what we actually care about. He's finally getting some company. Yet again, reformsters are "discovering" what teachers have been trying to tell them all along. That's okay. Everyone comes to the truth in their own way in their own time. Glad to have more folks at the party.
The DeAngelis Townhall piece looks at a study out of Barbados and pulls some detail out on the way to this conclusion:
This new study adds to the mounting scientific evidence suggesting that standardized test scores are not strong proxies for the long-term outcomes that society actually cares about. In other words, education regulators ought to realize that the tools that they have to attempt to control the quality of schools are far from perfect. And they ought to realize that families already know what’s best for their own kids.
The first two sentences are spot on. And the third-- well, the third walks us up to an uncomfortable conversation that we've avoided having, because it involves issues that are not easily delineated, and because it requires teachers to confront their natural allies-- parents.
The choice fans relentlessly return to the idea of parental choice. Parents know best. Parents can choose.
There's a problem with that.
Some parents suck.
Every teacher can tell you the stories. Even teachers who teach in small rural areas like mine. There are the spectacularly bad parents that lead to
The student who was always tired because her trailer home had no heat because her father spent the utility money on beer...
The student whose only non-deserting parent was in jail for trying to run over that student with s car, on purpose, when the child was eight...
The student who was thrown out of the house because he got in a fist fight with his father, because his father wouldn't share his drugs (that student was later convicted of a double homicide)…
In some ways, these are not the most heartbreaking stories. Those are stories where you are sitting in an IEP (individualized education program) meeting with a parent who is being clear that they hope you can shape up their child who is worthless, lazy and stupid. Or the student who is sad and distracted because their father announced over the weekend that he was moving with his new wife and child to another state to start a new life, and his previous children, your student, was not welcome to visit, ever.
And that's before we get to more widely understood examples, like the parent who throws a child out for being gay. Or the simple unextraordinary stuff like "I stopped getting Pat up for school because it was just so hard" or "I didn't need no book learning to get through life and I don't see why Junior needs any either."
None of this is a factor of socio-economics. At least one of the parents above is a college-educated successful and comfortably wealthy physician.
This is not a simple issue to navigate. I don't support any kind of Parent Police, and I think removing a child from parental custody is a nuclear option to be used only in the most extreme of situations. And it should be noted that "extreme situations" do not include "lives a culture or lifestyle different from the one you prefer."
But the fact remains that a not-insignificant number of parents are not capable or concerned advocates for their children. An open market voucher system will leave those children without an effective advocate at all, or an advocate who is not so much shopping for a great school as they will be looking for a babysitter who won't bother them (and I am not even going to start today on how marketing will further cloud the issues).
Now I suspect that some voucher fans, like Betsy DeVos, are okay with that, that they will view a choice system as one more chance for the deserving few to rise to the top and the Lessers to sink down to their rightful place at the bottom. Did your parents choose a terrible school for you? Well, I guess it was nothing more than you and your kind deserve. And this, truly, is not far removed from the reformster idea of charters as a haven for strivers, so that they can get away from Those Peoples' Children. The idea of a two-tiered system is baked into some reform ideas, the educational equivalent of the idea that trying to use welfare and food stamps to elevate poor folks just upsets the balance of nature, and we need to stop trying to artificially raise people up above their station.
But for people who believe otherwise (and I think there are plenty on all sides), the problem remains. If you're going to propose a voucher/choice system, you must include some sort of safety net for students whose parents suck. Somewhere in your system there must be a means providing support for those students who won't get it at home.
Otherwise, for all your calls that every student should enjoy the privilege of school choice, you're really arguing for a system that creams the students who come from solid families and abandons those who don't. Such a system doesn't serve the interests of the children, the community or the taxpayers; it simply further cements the inequities that are already there. The biggest advantage that children can have in life is parents who care about them, who love them, who watch out for them, who advocate for them. A choice system that does not look out for students who don't have such parents is just a system that widens the gap between the advantaged and the disadvantaged.
The DeAngelis Townhall piece looks at a study out of Barbados and pulls some detail out on the way to this conclusion:
This new study adds to the mounting scientific evidence suggesting that standardized test scores are not strong proxies for the long-term outcomes that society actually cares about. In other words, education regulators ought to realize that the tools that they have to attempt to control the quality of schools are far from perfect. And they ought to realize that families already know what’s best for their own kids.
The first two sentences are spot on. And the third-- well, the third walks us up to an uncomfortable conversation that we've avoided having, because it involves issues that are not easily delineated, and because it requires teachers to confront their natural allies-- parents.
The choice fans relentlessly return to the idea of parental choice. Parents know best. Parents can choose.
There's a problem with that.
Some parents suck.
Every teacher can tell you the stories. Even teachers who teach in small rural areas like mine. There are the spectacularly bad parents that lead to
The student who was always tired because her trailer home had no heat because her father spent the utility money on beer...
The student whose only non-deserting parent was in jail for trying to run over that student with s car, on purpose, when the child was eight...
The student who was thrown out of the house because he got in a fist fight with his father, because his father wouldn't share his drugs (that student was later convicted of a double homicide)…
In some ways, these are not the most heartbreaking stories. Those are stories where you are sitting in an IEP (individualized education program) meeting with a parent who is being clear that they hope you can shape up their child who is worthless, lazy and stupid. Or the student who is sad and distracted because their father announced over the weekend that he was moving with his new wife and child to another state to start a new life, and his previous children, your student, was not welcome to visit, ever.
And that's before we get to more widely understood examples, like the parent who throws a child out for being gay. Or the simple unextraordinary stuff like "I stopped getting Pat up for school because it was just so hard" or "I didn't need no book learning to get through life and I don't see why Junior needs any either."
None of this is a factor of socio-economics. At least one of the parents above is a college-educated successful and comfortably wealthy physician.
This is not a simple issue to navigate. I don't support any kind of Parent Police, and I think removing a child from parental custody is a nuclear option to be used only in the most extreme of situations. And it should be noted that "extreme situations" do not include "lives a culture or lifestyle different from the one you prefer."
But the fact remains that a not-insignificant number of parents are not capable or concerned advocates for their children. An open market voucher system will leave those children without an effective advocate at all, or an advocate who is not so much shopping for a great school as they will be looking for a babysitter who won't bother them (and I am not even going to start today on how marketing will further cloud the issues).
Now I suspect that some voucher fans, like Betsy DeVos, are okay with that, that they will view a choice system as one more chance for the deserving few to rise to the top and the Lessers to sink down to their rightful place at the bottom. Did your parents choose a terrible school for you? Well, I guess it was nothing more than you and your kind deserve. And this, truly, is not far removed from the reformster idea of charters as a haven for strivers, so that they can get away from Those Peoples' Children. The idea of a two-tiered system is baked into some reform ideas, the educational equivalent of the idea that trying to use welfare and food stamps to elevate poor folks just upsets the balance of nature, and we need to stop trying to artificially raise people up above their station.
But for people who believe otherwise (and I think there are plenty on all sides), the problem remains. If you're going to propose a voucher/choice system, you must include some sort of safety net for students whose parents suck. Somewhere in your system there must be a means providing support for those students who won't get it at home.
Otherwise, for all your calls that every student should enjoy the privilege of school choice, you're really arguing for a system that creams the students who come from solid families and abandons those who don't. Such a system doesn't serve the interests of the children, the community or the taxpayers; it simply further cements the inequities that are already there. The biggest advantage that children can have in life is parents who care about them, who love them, who watch out for them, who advocate for them. A choice system that does not look out for students who don't have such parents is just a system that widens the gap between the advantaged and the disadvantaged.
Thursday, July 26, 2018
Public School Registration
It's that time. The local newspaper is loaded with notifications from all local school districts that it is now time for registering your student for school.
That means mostly kindergarten registrants, though it could be any grade. But here are some things that will not happen during this period:
* No parents will be handed complicated paperwork as part of the beginning of a long application process.
* No parents will be told there are no more seats available.
* No parents will be told they must enter their child in as lottery.
* No parents will be told that the school cannot (and will not) offer programs to deal with that child's special needs, so so sad, too bad, seeya.
* In fact, weeks or even months from now, no parents will be told that they missed the registration period so they are locked out of the district until next fall.
This registration period goes straight to the heart of a difference between public schools and charter schools. Charter advocates like to talk about students "trapped" in certain zip codes, but the beauty of the US public school system is the guarantee-- the guarantee that whatever your zip code, there is a school that will take your child in (or at a minimum, help make the arrangements necessary to get your child an education-- and pay for them).
If, due to some bizarre set of circumstances, 150 kindergarten students show up to register in your tiny district, the school doesn't get to say "We don't have that capacity-- go away!" They have to find or make the capacity.
Are there public schools that try to weasel around this requirement? Sadly, there are. But parents can take these schools to court. It's an unnecessary barrier that parents should never have to surmount, but compare it to charters, where if the school refuses to offer the special services a child needs, the parents' recourse is... well, nothing. Vote with your feet.
And yes, some of you will point out that some urban systems (looking at you, NYC) have hoops and paperwork and applications that rival anything a charter system ever thought of, and I'll point out that A) that's a bug, not a feature, and it ought to be changed, B) not all of the US is urban, and C) this is one of the way that some public school systems have made themselves vulnerable to charter challenges-- by losing sight of their real mission.
That's the promise of US public education-- wherever you are, wherever you live, wherever you have chosen to raise (or move) your family, right now, there's a school district where you can walk in and say, "I want to register my child for school," and they have to say, "Okay." And that is true all year. When charter schools can match that, then we can start talking about their claims to being public schools.
That means mostly kindergarten registrants, though it could be any grade. But here are some things that will not happen during this period:
* No parents will be handed complicated paperwork as part of the beginning of a long application process.
* No parents will be told there are no more seats available.
* No parents will be told they must enter their child in as lottery.
* No parents will be told that the school cannot (and will not) offer programs to deal with that child's special needs, so so sad, too bad, seeya.
* In fact, weeks or even months from now, no parents will be told that they missed the registration period so they are locked out of the district until next fall.
If, due to some bizarre set of circumstances, 150 kindergarten students show up to register in your tiny district, the school doesn't get to say "We don't have that capacity-- go away!" They have to find or make the capacity.
Are there public schools that try to weasel around this requirement? Sadly, there are. But parents can take these schools to court. It's an unnecessary barrier that parents should never have to surmount, but compare it to charters, where if the school refuses to offer the special services a child needs, the parents' recourse is... well, nothing. Vote with your feet.
And yes, some of you will point out that some urban systems (looking at you, NYC) have hoops and paperwork and applications that rival anything a charter system ever thought of, and I'll point out that A) that's a bug, not a feature, and it ought to be changed, B) not all of the US is urban, and C) this is one of the way that some public school systems have made themselves vulnerable to charter challenges-- by losing sight of their real mission.
That's the promise of US public education-- wherever you are, wherever you live, wherever you have chosen to raise (or move) your family, right now, there's a school district where you can walk in and say, "I want to register my child for school," and they have to say, "Okay." And that is true all year. When charter schools can match that, then we can start talking about their claims to being public schools.
Tuesday, July 24, 2018
OK: More Money For Charters
Early-stage charter development in a state often features the Bargain argument-- we keep pouring money into public schools and getting nothing, but charters can do awesome things for less money, so let's get chartering!
But that's just Phase One, and in Oklahoma, it's time for Phase Two.
The Oklahoman editorial board thinks that Oklahoma is going to shift from austerity budgeting to doing some spending, and it sees several likely areas. Some sort of prison reform. Spending of school bond issues. Rep Chad Caldwell wants to study the correlation between spending and "educational outcomes," which presumably means test scores in a bogus study that ignore eleventy zillion factors in order to focus on just one. And this one:
Sen. Gary Stanislawski, R-Tulsa, will lead a study on equitable funding of charter schools. Some of Oklahoma's best-performing schools are charter schools, yet they are denied property tax funding other schools receive. As a result, some of the state's best schools are in some of the most dilapidated buildings. It's time to reassess a funding system that (perhaps inadvertently) financially penalizes excellence in education.
So in Phase Two we shift from "we can do the job more cheaply" to "Hey, why aren't we getting as much money as everyone else."
Stanislawski has attempted a bill like this before, arguing that it's costly to come up with a building to house a charter. And he's also behind the laws making cyber-charters in Oklahoma, a type of charter school that has not performed well, to the point that even charter supporters have been critical of them.
Stanislawski himself has been a voice resistant to making charters accountable for their use of taxpayer dollars, using an argument that the "charters are public schools" crowd might not support.
He equated it to the private sector. He said when the government pays a private company to do a job, they don’t ask how much everyone is getting paid, or how much the materials for the job are going to cost.
I'm not sure that really holds up, but thanks, Senator, for being one more voice that agrees that charters are private businesses and not public schools.
Stanislawski seems to sidestep one of the issues of using bonds to get physical facilities for charters, which is simply-- who owns the building? Is he proposing that the public issue bonds that are used to buy private property for an individual or business? When the government issues a bond for a public school, the process ends with facilities that are owned by the public. What we've seen in some states is government bonds being used to buy someone some private property.
That's before we even get to the damage done by diverting funds from the public school sector to private charter schools. It all seems kind of reasonable up front-- we just want these charters to have the same financial chance that public schools do. But McDonalds doesn't come to town and say, "Hey, we'd like to set up shop, but a building is really expensive, so could you issue a bond to build the facilities and then just give them to us as a gift?" And McDonalds is at least going to generate their own income once they get started-- a charter school will be living off of public tax dollars.
Oklahoma voters are encouraged to keep their eyes on their tax dollars, because once charters are established, they have really only two ways to increase their bank balance-- either cut the costs of operation, or by getting the legislature to send more money their way. Welcome to Phase Two.
But that's just Phase One, and in Oklahoma, it's time for Phase Two.
The Oklahoman editorial board thinks that Oklahoma is going to shift from austerity budgeting to doing some spending, and it sees several likely areas. Some sort of prison reform. Spending of school bond issues. Rep Chad Caldwell wants to study the correlation between spending and "educational outcomes," which presumably means test scores in a bogus study that ignore eleventy zillion factors in order to focus on just one. And this one:
Sen. Gary Stanislawski, R-Tulsa, will lead a study on equitable funding of charter schools. Some of Oklahoma's best-performing schools are charter schools, yet they are denied property tax funding other schools receive. As a result, some of the state's best schools are in some of the most dilapidated buildings. It's time to reassess a funding system that (perhaps inadvertently) financially penalizes excellence in education.
So in Phase Two we shift from "we can do the job more cheaply" to "Hey, why aren't we getting as much money as everyone else."
Stanislawski has attempted a bill like this before, arguing that it's costly to come up with a building to house a charter. And he's also behind the laws making cyber-charters in Oklahoma, a type of charter school that has not performed well, to the point that even charter supporters have been critical of them.
Stanislawski himself has been a voice resistant to making charters accountable for their use of taxpayer dollars, using an argument that the "charters are public schools" crowd might not support.
He equated it to the private sector. He said when the government pays a private company to do a job, they don’t ask how much everyone is getting paid, or how much the materials for the job are going to cost.
I'm not sure that really holds up, but thanks, Senator, for being one more voice that agrees that charters are private businesses and not public schools.
Stanislawski seems to sidestep one of the issues of using bonds to get physical facilities for charters, which is simply-- who owns the building? Is he proposing that the public issue bonds that are used to buy private property for an individual or business? When the government issues a bond for a public school, the process ends with facilities that are owned by the public. What we've seen in some states is government bonds being used to buy someone some private property.
That's before we even get to the damage done by diverting funds from the public school sector to private charter schools. It all seems kind of reasonable up front-- we just want these charters to have the same financial chance that public schools do. But McDonalds doesn't come to town and say, "Hey, we'd like to set up shop, but a building is really expensive, so could you issue a bond to build the facilities and then just give them to us as a gift?" And McDonalds is at least going to generate their own income once they get started-- a charter school will be living off of public tax dollars.
Oklahoma voters are encouraged to keep their eyes on their tax dollars, because once charters are established, they have really only two ways to increase their bank balance-- either cut the costs of operation, or by getting the legislature to send more money their way. Welcome to Phase Two.
Monday, July 23, 2018
Another Merit Pay Failure
Merit pay for teachers remains a golden dream for many Reformsters. Of course, there's a problem with that-- it doesn't actually work. It has not worked in a variety of settings and under a variety of conditions. Of course, "worked" is usually measured as "raised standardized test scores," which is a lousy measure of teacher quality, anyway.
The effectiveness of merit pay in the business world is questionable, but merit pay for teachers doesn't even make sense. After all, your bonus is supposed to come out of all the extra money that the business made this year; that is not how schools work. In education, you only have two options:
1) Set aside a pile of merit pay money at the beginning of the year and let the teachers fight over it.
2) If your teachers all have a really good year, raise taxes to pay for their bonuses.
Guess which model is more popular.
Merit pay for teachers is also premised on the notion that teachers could try harder-- they just aren't going to until they're bribed. But if that's really the case, then offering a tiny base pay with the prospect of tiny bonuses doesn't seem like the way to harness greed as a tool to overcome slothfulness.
But it turns out there's another way to screw up merit pay.
Arizona implemented merit pay on the state level via sales tax (after carefully looking at all the evidence that it wouldn't work) and, of course, made it available to charter schools as well. One charter thought it had found a clever way to use merit pay to plug holes in its own budget.
Heritage Elementary School is a K-8 charter school with campuses in Williams and Glendale, plus others under the La Paloma brand. They focus on "superior academics and family values with a character-based curriculum." On their "careers" page they note that they have a "family environment, a great staff, supportive administration, and our teachers are treated with respect." One would hope the "respect" thing was a given, but since we're talking about Arizona, maybe it needs to be said.
I'm not sure everyone would agree, however. News broke last week that twenty teachers (all women) had been denied the second half of their merit pay because they had resigned from Heritage Glendale. First-- twenty teachers have resigned effective the end of this year?! Yikes. The school had about 920 students last year. The family seems to have some issues. The second half of the merit pay would be about $1,500 to $1,800 (the first installment was paid during the school year). Teachers can use that; the average pay at the school is $38,734 according to teachersalaryinfo.com, but Arizona Republic reports the average as $32,899. The school's principal, Justin Dye, was not very helpful:
I understand their viewpoint. The reality is the school board can decide how to use it (301 money). There are schools that hold the money…They could decide one teacher gets all the money. It's been done before.
So, tough luck. (I'll note here that Dye, because this is Arizona, runs some side businesses that are contracted by the school, like the preschool program and the transportation service.) It does raise the question-- exactly how motivational is merit pay when it may be awarded and then withdrawn on an administrative whim?
The action by the school's unelected four-person board was taken in June. Teachers appealed the decision, and were told that only those returning to Heritage would get their merit bonus. Then they threatened legal action. The Arizona Republic published stories about the stiffing of the teachers on Monday and Tuesday and, miraculously, the board decided to have a quick call-in meeting and decided in about ten minutes to fork over the promised pay that the teachers had already earned.
Charter Superintendent Jackie Trujillo said the news coverage had nothing to do with the decision, but that Principal Dye had pushed the board to pay up. Trujillo also showed the Republic budget documents indicating that Heritage teachers would be getting a 17% raise-- which will mean that Heritage teachers' average pay will be only $14,000 less than the projected average for public school teachers.
(And don't forget-- this is Arizona, where charter schools get paid more per pupil than the public schools do.)
So one more Arizona charter establishes itself as a highly ethical and trustworthy place where teachers can expect to be treated like family, with respect, because character-based education is what they're all about. Also, merit pay. And if you're a teacher looking for work-- well, now you know about one more place that belongs on your Last Resort list.
The effectiveness of merit pay in the business world is questionable, but merit pay for teachers doesn't even make sense. After all, your bonus is supposed to come out of all the extra money that the business made this year; that is not how schools work. In education, you only have two options:
1) Set aside a pile of merit pay money at the beginning of the year and let the teachers fight over it.
2) If your teachers all have a really good year, raise taxes to pay for their bonuses.
Guess which model is more popular.
 |
| Your merit pay is out there, somewhere. |
But it turns out there's another way to screw up merit pay.
Arizona implemented merit pay on the state level via sales tax (after carefully looking at all the evidence that it wouldn't work) and, of course, made it available to charter schools as well. One charter thought it had found a clever way to use merit pay to plug holes in its own budget.
Heritage Elementary School is a K-8 charter school with campuses in Williams and Glendale, plus others under the La Paloma brand. They focus on "superior academics and family values with a character-based curriculum." On their "careers" page they note that they have a "family environment, a great staff, supportive administration, and our teachers are treated with respect." One would hope the "respect" thing was a given, but since we're talking about Arizona, maybe it needs to be said.
I'm not sure everyone would agree, however. News broke last week that twenty teachers (all women) had been denied the second half of their merit pay because they had resigned from Heritage Glendale. First-- twenty teachers have resigned effective the end of this year?! Yikes. The school had about 920 students last year. The family seems to have some issues. The second half of the merit pay would be about $1,500 to $1,800 (the first installment was paid during the school year). Teachers can use that; the average pay at the school is $38,734 according to teachersalaryinfo.com, but Arizona Republic reports the average as $32,899. The school's principal, Justin Dye, was not very helpful:
I understand their viewpoint. The reality is the school board can decide how to use it (301 money). There are schools that hold the money…They could decide one teacher gets all the money. It's been done before.
So, tough luck. (I'll note here that Dye, because this is Arizona, runs some side businesses that are contracted by the school, like the preschool program and the transportation service.) It does raise the question-- exactly how motivational is merit pay when it may be awarded and then withdrawn on an administrative whim?
The action by the school's unelected four-person board was taken in June. Teachers appealed the decision, and were told that only those returning to Heritage would get their merit bonus. Then they threatened legal action. The Arizona Republic published stories about the stiffing of the teachers on Monday and Tuesday and, miraculously, the board decided to have a quick call-in meeting and decided in about ten minutes to fork over the promised pay that the teachers had already earned.
Charter Superintendent Jackie Trujillo said the news coverage had nothing to do with the decision, but that Principal Dye had pushed the board to pay up. Trujillo also showed the Republic budget documents indicating that Heritage teachers would be getting a 17% raise-- which will mean that Heritage teachers' average pay will be only $14,000 less than the projected average for public school teachers.
(And don't forget-- this is Arizona, where charter schools get paid more per pupil than the public schools do.)
So one more Arizona charter establishes itself as a highly ethical and trustworthy place where teachers can expect to be treated like family, with respect, because character-based education is what they're all about. Also, merit pay. And if you're a teacher looking for work-- well, now you know about one more place that belongs on your Last Resort list.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)