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Newswire: December 11, 2012

December 11, 2012 By

Vol. 14, No. 34

“YOU DON’T SAY!” US Students Still Lag Globally, bellowed the New York Times this morning. While that may not be huge news, the real findings in the two new reports out today are that while we may not lag substantially (though we still lag folks!), others have far greater numbers of kids scoring in the top tiers. It’s not because we are so egalitarian, either. The data suggests that our most advanced students are still behind advanced students in other countries.

SEE FOR YOURSELF. The Global Report Card, a project of the George W. Bush Institute gives you a chance to compare your district to another district, to a state, our nation or other nations. Take the plunge. You’ll be surprised what you learn.

WHY SO MANY REJECTIONS THEN? It’s not like we’re winning the brain race, or even the fight for global competitiveness. Condoleezza Rice says it’s a national security issue; so does the president. So why in a state known for reform-minded leadership and in desperate need of good schooling options, does a board reject dozens of charter applications, many from proven providers? Yes, folks, that’s right. Down in the Bayou, the Louisiana reform community is cutting off its nose to spite its face. Out of 51 applications to open schools in the Bayou, only 11 will move ahead. A national group hired to do the reviews, NACSA, recommended adoption of just 7, the State Ed Dept (BESE) declined 1 of these 7, and thankfully added another 5 schools that hadn’t been recommended. At issue is how these schools are being reviewed and whether the evaluations actually hold water. That’s under investigation by many groups whose applications were rejected – in many different states – oftentimes after they’d been praised by the same evaluator in other applications. One would think with the unions having taken the voucher program to court, and legal action to find all state reform efforts at odds with district desegregation orders, there’d be an effort to create more learning opportunities for kids, at a faster pace. Hiding behind fear of not being able to guarantee quality, some advocates would prefer to control parent choice than give parents the power and learn to decide.

BROCKTON REDUX. Check out this priceless communication from the Superintendent, who peppers his board and community regularly with anti-charter missives, on company time, mind you!

LIBERALS v. CONSERVATIVES? Apparently you’re a liberal if you don’t think the Common Core’s quality will be robust enough to serve so many different needs, and you’re a conservative if you think it’s about local control. The ongoing debate, somewhat adequately given voice to in yet another New York Times piece today, is a bit deeper than that, of course. The real distinction should be GOVERNMENT CYNICS v. GOVERNMENT TRUSTERS. Those who believe that government can take any good idea and distort it, even at the state level, are trending anti-Common Core. They believe that standardization breeds, well, common, or under-whelming products, and that trying to maintain standards and assessments often falls to people who had nothing to do with their creation. The “Trusters” rarely look at the fall out until it’s too late. They assume that good programs will retain their health and quality, no doubt because they were or believe themselves or their elected officials to be vigilant in their governing. Time will tell.

NAUGHTY OR NICE. How will you spend your holidays? Looking for things to talk about? How about a great conversation starter or two to make sure your next gathering is fun AND substantive? Plant a seed for education reform this holiday season and spread the word about what’s critical to our future. CER’s Holiday Gift to you starts here.

Filed Under: Newswire Weekly

Mississippi Should Give Charters A Chance

December 11, 2012 By

“Give charters a chance in Mississippi”
Editorial
Commercial Appeal
December 11, 2012

The battle over new legislation to make it easier to create charter schools in Mississippi may be rejoined when the Legislature reconvenes next year.

For the future of the state’s children, legislators should allow charters. Charters are not a panacea for improving student proficiency in core subjects, but when structured right they have helped children achieve academically. Charters generally are exempted from most provisions enforced on regular schools, allowing them to use innovative teaching methods.

Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves and legislators saw the impact charters can have on students during a recent tour of the KIPP school in Helena, Ark. They left impressed. KIPP: Memphis Collegiate Schools is among charter schools in Memphis that are helping students achieve academically.

Legislators on both sides of the political aisle have expressed the same reservations about charters that have been expressed elsewhere: They take financial resources from cash-strapped school districts. They cherry pick the best students. They diminish local control. They do not work any better than regular schools.

School districts like DeSoto County, where students are performing well, have a hard time seeing how charters can do better. We will give them that point. But about 30 percent of Mississippi’s school districts are failing or at risk of failing. Children at those schools deserve a chance for a better education.

Charter schools would provide those students with another tool to get that chance.

Filed Under: Opinions Tagged With:

Trashing Charters on Company Time

December 11, 2012 By

December 11, 2012

This is what the Superintendent of Brockton Massachusetts has time to do, when the students in this district, a very heavily minority district barely passing the state’s requirements for performance in any grade, and in most, are below 45% proficiency. SABIS, a proven leader in charter school management that has been praised by media and state officials, is trying to open a charter school for a group of community leaders.  Students at comparable SABIS schools outperform all of Brockton’s performance.  But I guess this guy is just about the money.

by Jeanne Allen

Filed Under: Commentary, Edspresso Tagged With:

School Cancelled So Teachers Can Protest

December 11, 2012 By

Students in two Michigan districts, the Taylor School District and Warren Consolidated Schools, are not in class today. The districts cancelled school, allowing teachers to go protest right-to-work legislation at the capital instead of educating kids.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder says schools shutting down so teachers can go prostest is inappropriate.

“Too often the educational system’s all about the adults,” he said. “To see schools shutting down because of an issue like this is not appropriate in my view.”

The legislation at hand would make Michigan the 24th right-to-work state, and would mean union dues could no longer automatically be deducted from teachers’ paychecks. Unions attempted to enshrine collective bargaining rights in the constitution, but the measure failed to win voter approval in November.

Filed Under: Unions & Establishment Tagged With:

NV District Backs Charter, Online Changes

December 10, 2012 By

“Schools push to change rules on charter schools, online classes”
by Trevon Milliard
Las Vegas Review-Journal
December 7, 2012

Clark County school officials want to change several rules regarding charter schools and online classes, according to a pair of bill draft requests the district is backing for the Nevada Legislature’s 2013 session.

The first bill would help charter schools, which operate through a contract with the State Public Charter School Authority or a school district. These schools are autonomous and privately run but must still meet student performance standards. If not, the district or state authority could revoke their charter, shutting them down.

A common complaint from charter school operators is that they’re “funded to fail.” That is because they receive the same per pupil funding as the district they are in, but they do not have help with the cost of providing a facility and cannot seek a bond or tax increase, like districts, to pay for it.

And school districts are not allowed to let charter schools use their public facilities.

These rules often lead to “unsatisfactory” designations by national charter school organizations, said Joyce Haldeman, the district’s associate superintendent of community and government relations.

Clark County School District, which sponsors seven of Nevada’s 32 charter schools, would like charter schools to be allowed in public facilities, she said.

The second bill would make several changes to rules for online classes.

Currently, a student must go through an extensive process to attend an online course offered by a district other than their own.

Haldeman said many rural students are interested in Clark County’s online courses, which aren’t offered in their district, but must get approval of both the Clark County and their school board.

The district would like that requirement removed.

The other change would allow an unlicensed teacher to supervise a class taught online by a licensed teacher.

State law requires a licensed teacher in the room though they serve as a supervisor and do not instruct.

The new amendment would reduce the cost of online courses, Haldeman said.

Filed Under: Breaking News Tagged With: ,

More Flexibility for Charter Teachers in NJ?

December 7, 2012 By

“State May Ease Alternate-Route Rules for Charter-School Teachers”
by John Mooney
NJ Spotlight
December 7, 2012

The Christie administration has proposed easing some of the state’s teacher-certification rules for charter schools, saying the move would give the schools more flexibility in hiring.

The provision, which is tucked deep within the administration’s Professional Licensure and Standards Code for NJ Teachers proposed new administrative code for teacher licensure], would essentially give charter schools their own alternate route similar to the state’s long-established and popular “alternate route” process for hiring public-school teachers who did earn a traditional education degree in college.

The proposal, which is now before the state Board of Education, is facing some resistance from the state’s dominant teachers union, among others. But it nonetheless moved ahead with preliminary approval at the board’s meeting on Wednesday.

Under the proposal, the charter schools would no longer need to meet the existing requirements that their alternate route teachers have at least 30 hours of credits in their content area, nor would they need to have a set number of hours of classroom training before they are hired and once they are hired. They would also not be required to have a mentor teacher as rookie teachers do in the public schools.

State officials stressed that the charter-school alternate-route teachers would still need to pass a national exam in the content subject, and the charter schools would still need to provide in-school training and support for its teachers once they are on the job.

But the charter schools would have flexibility in how to do that, officials said, as long as they met the conditions of the state’s review.

“The rationale is increasing flexibility and autonomy in exchange for increased accountability,” said Amy Ruck, director of the state’s charter school office.

“Our belief is a lot of this (training) will be already be happening in the charter school,” she said. “Why require it in a prescribed way? This focuses more on the outcomes and less on the inputs.”

A number of other states have eased certification requirements for charter schools even more. Four states have no certification requirements at all for charter schools, and another 17 allow for some hiring of noncertified teachers, usually up to a certain percentage of staff.

The proposed certification rules for alternate-route teachers in charter schools would not be transferable to a public school.

“We believe this would be more the exception than the rule because it is not transferable,” Ruck added.

Not all are pleased with the move, with at least one board member and leaders of the New Jersey Education Association maintaining it sets up different standards for district school teachers than it does for charter schools. In a public hearing on the proposal last month, concerns were raised by the state’s principals association as well.

“With all the teacher evaluations now being required and the concerns about teacher effectiveness, you are now reducing the qualifications for teachers in charter schools?” said board member Edithe Fulton, a former president of the NJEA.

“I just don’t understand that. What’s the rationale?” she said yesterday, a day after she confronted the administration at the board meeting and cast the lone dissenting vote on the proposal’s preliminary approval.

The NJEA’s current vice president, Wendell Steinhauer, said the union has voiced its opposition as well and hopes to still meet with education department officials to iron out differences.

“I know charter schools are supposed to be laboratories of innovation, but I don’t think that should apply to certification,” he said yesterday. “They are still public school teachers.”

The proposed licensure code for public-school teachers has so far received little attention as it moves easily through the approval process, despite some significant changes in how teachers get credentials and are trained once on the job.

For instance, the administration would tweak the existing requirement that public-school teachers receive 100 hours of professional development over five years, instead moving to a 20-hours-per-year mandate but allowing for more flexibility in how that professional development is determined.

Board member Ronald Butcher said he’s not sure the 20 hours is any better than the previous 100 hours, saying it only further restricts teachers.

“The 100 hours was pretty arbitrary, and we have now moved to another pretty arbitrary number,” he said yesterday. “What if there was an opportunity to do 15 hours one year and 25 the next? Looking at the code, there is no flexibility for that.”

Butcher raised his concerns at the meeting, and state officials pledged they would revisit the measure in a year to see if it has some unintended consequences.

Filed Under: Breaking News

Risky Business

December 7, 2012 By

December 7, 2012

Remember the board game Risk, where the goal was “world domination,” or “to occupy every territory on the board and in so doing, eliminate all other players“? Well unfortunately this scenario is playing out in real life in the charter school world in the form of increasing regulations. The problem is autonomy at flexibility are at the very heart of the charter school movement, and this regulatory creep puts these essential elements in danger.

But as Jeanne Allen notes while discussing these increasing rules on John Stossel: “Good Intentions Gone Wrong”, the name of the board game itself is an important piece of the puzzle as well:

“Even the charter movement is so afraid to make a mistake. It fears risk because they are so afraid that if they don’t show themselves to be the very, very best, then they will go out of business. But the reality is, risk is in every great innovative business. It’s what makes America tick. And so when you want high quality, you want to take a risk on someone who wants to start a school.”

Speaking of making America tick…

Tim Cook, the new CEO of Apple, was asked by Brian Williams what it would take for Apple to become a “Made in America” company and what that would do to the price of iphones. “It’s not so much about price, it’s about the skills, etc.,” Cook told Williams. “Over time, there are skills that are associated with manufacturing that have left the United States. Not necessarily people, but the education system has just stopped producing that. It’s a concerted effort to get them back.”

by Kara Kerwin & Michelle Tigani

Filed Under: Commentary, Edspresso Tagged With:

Listen to the Kids

December 6, 2012 By

December 6, 2012

“The teacher body are all inspiring. They make us well rounded. Notice the halls? At my old school, the halls are never quiet. You can’t even walk. There are fights everywhere.”

That was from Michael, a 15 year old freshman at Howe HS in Indianapolis, one of the four worst schools in the state, which thanks to legislation were able to be taken over from the district and turned over to new management. There is nothing like students to tell it like it is, and at Howe, Manual and Emma Donnan – 3 of the 4 I visited this week, order is more the norm than the exception these days. Pages could be written but this media piece tells part of the story as does this. If we just listened to the kids more we may actually make real progress some day.

by Jeanne Allen

Filed Under: Commentary, Edspresso Tagged With:

New Jersey Charter School Achievement: The CREDO Report

December 5, 2012 By

A recent study by Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) found that charter school students in New Jersey had learning gains in reading and math that were 0.06 and 0.08 standard deviations greater than the averages of their virtual comparison panel, or students in conventional public schools. Overall, 30 percent of charters had significantly more positive learning gains in reading, and 40 percent had significantly more positive learning gains in math.

However, they found differing effects based on the “urbanicity” of the charter school. Students in urban charter schools performed better than those in suburban schools; students in urban charters scored about 0.12 standard deviations greater than the virtual twin in math, whereas students in suburban charters scored only 0.05 standard deviations greater than their virtual twin. Students in rural charter schools performed significantly worse, about 0.14 and 0.18 standard deviations lower than the virtual twin in math and reading, respectively. Charter schools were also found to be more effective than traditional public schools at closing racial achievement gaps for black and Hispanic students, and students in poverty performed better in charter schools than in public schools. No significant difference in achievement was found for special education students attending charter schools, though this is likely due to the small number of students in question.

This report used the same virtual control record (VCR) or “virtual twin” methodology as the 2009 report Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States (New Jersey was not one of the 16 states analyzed). The Center commented on the problems with the methodology in this paper, although there are some differences with this report.

The problem that CER noted in the past about studies overly emphasizing new charter schools does not appear to exist here. The majority of the sample comes from students in schools operating for nine years or longer, and while there are plenty of observations from young charter schools, there is not as much room for systematic bias. On the other hand, when CREDO breaks the sample down by the student’s previous time in a charter school there are significantly more first-year (newly transferred) charter students than second or third year students. It’s hard to say whether this will cause bias because first, second, and third-year students only account for about 6,000/16,000 of the students in the sample, so there are plenty of unreported results that would help determine the amount of bias.

Looking through the appendix, there is not any information about the actual number of schools in each category, but they do break the samples down by number of students in the appendix. The sample has a lot fewer students in rural charter schools (about 700 vs. 8,600 and 7,200 in urban and suburban schools, respectively), but that is due to the nature of the charter school system in New Jersey, where schools are generally concentrated in urban areas. This may cause bias when breaking down the school achievement by urban, suburban, or rural because so few students are attending rural charter schools, each individual’s scores are weighted more heavily.

Filed Under: Choice & Charter Schools

Indiana Turnaround Schools: Model for U.S.

December 5, 2012 By

CER Press Release
Washington, D.C.
December 5, 2012

In testimony before the Indiana State Board of Education today, Jeanne Allen, Founder and President of the Center for Education Reform lauded the move by Indiana lawmakers to turn over failing schools to new management and shared the progress she noted in the three “turnaround schools” she visited this week. The schools are now given over on a performance contract, which grants the operator, Charter Schools USA, four years to improve. The 2011 contract was made possible by legislation supported and signed by Governor Mitch Daniels.

“The schools I visited this week are orderly. Educators are in command of their classes,” said Allen. “Students are focused on their work, a stark contrast to the chaos and violence that plagued these schools before the takeover.”

This is a direct result of the provider being granted authority to replace most of the staff and implement their own programs. While the turnaround model has come under scrutiny, with skeptics wondering whether such restructuring of schools will stem the tide of school failure, it’s clear that a key ingredient is the absence of fixed labor contracts and an easing of cumbersome bureaucracy.

Charter Schools USA President Jon Hage also addressed the State Board of Education, saying, “The parents and community are seeing real results already and are highly supportive of our efforts. It’s amazing how quickly students respond to a highly supportive and engaged learning environment.”

Allen concluded, “It was a pleasure to visit these schools and see their great work firsthand. These schools were among the worst in the state. It is early in this process, but we know from research that strong discipline and high behavioral expectations of the sort I witnessed are vital factors in achievement. In addition to dramatically improved environments, I also observed a sense of hope and promise where there was once despair. It is no surprise that Indiana, consistently evaluated as the ‘reformiest’ state in the nation, is leading the nation, providing a model for turning around schools.”

Filed Under: Press Releases
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