- “Test scores alone should never drive evaluation, compensation, or tenure decisions,’’ Duncan told the group. “But to remove student achievement entirely from evaluation is illogical and indefensible.’’
- "...union leaders still have 'grave concerns’' about any efforts to undo collective bargaining contracts. Much graver, however, is the condition of the state’s poorest-performing schools."
Across the editorial page, an op-ed by two researchers from Harvard Law School's Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice challenge the expansion of charter schools on the grounds that charter schools are often more racial and economically segregated than traditional public schools.
The authors propose researching ways to develop charter schools that are more integrated than current charter schools. For example, they say:
"Across the nation, elected leaders are exploring regional solutions for vast
and growing unequal opportunities. Employing a regional vision for charter
schools, Massachusetts could take the lead in providing high-quality education
in settings that approximate the larger, increasingly diverse democratic society
our students will join as adults. Incentives to create charter schools that
enroll students from several demographically distinct school districts - for
example, one city and several suburbs - could bring us good schools that could
reduce inequalities. Why not take what we have learned from the well-functioning
charter schools and replicate it in diverse settings that look like the real
world?"
Let's take the author's opinions and flesh them out. They are basically arguing that urban kids (read: poor blacks and Latinos) would do better if they went to school with suburban kids (read: wealthier whites). Sounds like a good idea to me. At my charter school, we try to get our almost 100% black and Latino kids into high schools where they would have opportunities to learn with wealthier peers (exam schools, private schools, etc.)
If this is such a good idea, why don't the authors suggest this for the district schools that serve most urban kids? History and reality. Forced integration by race and class clearly failed in the 1970's. Forced mixing of races drove white families from the cities to the suburbs or to private schools. If the suburbs had been forced to integrate with the cities at the same time, maybe we wouldn't be having these discussions now. Sadly, whites and wealthier minorities were able to escape the trouble of the cities behind the insurmountable walls of the suburban border line, while lower-income blacks and Latinos languished in schools that continued to get progressively worse. While it would be lovely mandate integration across the racial, ethnic and socioeconomic classes in a metropolitan area, clearly there is not the political will to make this happen at this point in time.
Urban charter schools (or at least the ones I'm familiar with) were created explicitly to provide better educational opportunities in the face of these political realities. Charter school teachers and leaders are working for the kids who need an education right now and can't wait for a pie in the sky change in society. I would make the same argument to Jim Horn over Schools Matter who likes to argue that charter schools are trying to make our society more segregated. Not true; they work within the current reality.
(By the way, interesting to note that most people who attack charter schools say that they don't serve enough "hard to educate" (their phrase, not mine) kids. This group is proposing they serve less of those same kids!)
