The Experiment

The Amherst College alumni magazine featured a piece on Excel Academy and its founder Yutaka Tamura '93 in its spring 2009 issue. You can find the article here. The article lays out many of the challenges inherent in starting up an excellent new school. The article highlights how the school overcame many of its early struggles to become of the preeminent charter schools in Massachusetts.

Good Schools Remove Labels from Students

For the first time ever, Charter School Independent has a pair of guest bloggers. Jon Clark and Kimberly Steadman, principals of the Edward W. Brooke Charter School, have crafted a thorough and well-thought out response to the most recent charter school article in the Globe. Since their piece was too long for publication in the Globe, I'm giving them the floor here:

Jamie Vaznis’s recent article about charter schools (Charter schools lag in serving the neediest - Aug. 12) raises interesting questions about whether schools should be praised for serving a high number of ELL and Special Education students or questioned why they have created or preserved these labels for so many students instead of working to remove those labels.

Consider these two recent headlines and excerpts from other Globe articles. “Boston Students Struggle With English Only Rule” (4/7/09) states "Students not fluent in English have floundered in Boston schools since voters approved a law change six years ago requiring school districts to teach them all subjects in English rather than their native tongue, according to a report being released tomorrow." Our school works relentlessly to build student proficiency in English as quickly as possible so that we can remove them from this category; we were able to reclassify 7 of our 11 ELL students as Fully English Proficient. At other schools, many students who are identified ELL retain that status for years – perhaps because the schools are incapable of building English proficiency or perhaps because they value these labels for their financial benefit. Students who are labeled ELL receive 25% more state funding; this means that an ELL carries a $2,600 reward for each student labeled.

And an article entitled “Changes Urged In Special Ed” (7/9/09) asserted that "The Boston public schools are keeping too many students with disabilities out of regular classrooms and may be wrongfully identifying some students for special services because of shortcomings in teaching literacy or dealing with behavior problems, according to a report released last night at a School Committee meeting." We wholeheartedly agree. We recognize that because charter schools do not serve students with the most severe educational needs, the percentage of special education students at district schools should be slightly higher than in Boston Public Schools. But the vast difference between our school and district schools is attributable to the failure of many schools to intervene early, respond to children’s educational needs within the regular classroom, and remove them from their special education plans. We pride ourselves on the fact that the number of special education students at our school has decreased, not because we are losing our special education kids, but because we are allowing them to lose their special education labels.

When comparing students in Boston Public Schools and Boston area charter schools, we urge people to consider demographics that schools do not control: race and low income status. Looking at statistics that rely on subjective labeling by districts isn't a valid analysis. It is backwards to criticize urban charters for not "serving the neediest" because they resist placing children into these categories when they enroll many more African American and similar numbers of low-income students and have closed the achievement gap between them and their suburban counterparts.

- Guest bloggers Jon Clark and Kimberly Steadman, Edward W. Brooke Charter School

Want a Label for Your Child? Go To BPS!

Today's Globe article argues that charter schools serve less students with special needs and less English language learners than their sending districts. By the numbers, this is irrefutable. However, it's important to ask the next question: why?

The general argument from the teachers unions and school districts is that charter schools intentionally recruit so as to avoid students that are "hard to educate." If that were the case, wouldn't the logical solution be to recruit the parents of the "easiest to teach" (according to popular conventions)? Shouldn't they be recruiting middle and upper middle class white kids in West Roxbury and JP like this mom's kids? However, if you look at the numbers, most charter schools in Boston (with a couple of exceptions) serve predominantly low income, minority students who come in to their schools way below grade level.

Perhaps the problem is on the other side. Perhaps BPS is over-labeling ELL and special education students. According to this piece:

"Some 20 percent of Boston’s 56,000 students received special education services last year, about 3 percentage points higher than the state average and notably higher than other cities nationwide."

Maybe Boston Public is labeling students as special education because they are frustrated because they are not able to get them to learn. On the other hand, as today's article mentions, the charter schools with which I am familar work really hard to get them OFF of unnecessary special education plans. They also label fewer students.

The same may be true for English Language Learners. Districts have a financial incentive to label students as Limited English Proficient. Why? Because then they get an extra $3,000 per LEP student in state funding. In Boston, 50% of all students whose first language isn't English are labeled as LEP. In most charter schools, that number significantly lower. Why aren't they labeling a similarly high percentage of their kids? Even in Lawrence, where 80% of students don't speak English as their first language, only 20% are labeled LEP. It seems as if BPS has caught onto the fact that if they label more of their non-English speakers as having the most severe needs, they will get more money.

I'm sure charter schools need to do more to recruit special education and ELL students; the Patrick proposal that would get the district mailing lists into their hands will help with targeting these efforts. However, someone needs to take a closer look at the district to see if they are over-labeling their students to make them seem needier than they actually are...

Ed vs. Op-Ed

The Globe editorial board today writes in support of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's efforts to to improve low-performing schools by challenging teachers unions and teacher work rules. His support of charter schools is their primary piece of evidence. Here are a few of my favorite quotes:

• “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!)

Front Page News!

The lead article in today's Globe announces that Governor Patrick is filing legislation today to raise the cap on charter schools in the 30 lowest performing districts in the state. Definitely a turn-around from previous incarnations of his school reform plan.

Highlights:

• In said districts, the cap will rise from 9% of students to 18% of students.
• Boston stands to gain more than 5,000 additional seats, which could go to either new charter schools or expansions of existing schools.
• Across the state, 27,000 additional seats will be available.
• Patrick has abandoned attempts to tie a rise in the cap to a change in the charter school funding formula. Also abandoned: the proposal that would have required charter schools to use a modification of the lottery-based admission system to admit quotas of low-income, special needs, and ELL students.
• Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will be on hand at the formal press conference.
• As expected, district public school advocates are up in arms about losing funding.

Can't wait to see the details of the legislation, but it seems like a step in the right direction.

Ice Cream vs. Fro-Yo

Interesting post over at the Fordham Foundation blog site.

Keller on Charter Schools in WSJ

The Boston charter school debate garners another look by the Wall Street Journal today, courtesy of an op-Ed by WBZ's Jon Keller. He breaks down the lay of the land after Menino's speech a couple of weeks back, and semi-confirms the Boston Collegiate rumor (without naming schools).