Entropy, Architecture and Schools

So I read this op-ed in the Globe today and it got under my skin. But rather than go on the offensive and try to refute the subtle digs at charter schools or poke holes in her argument, I thought I'd take a different tack. 


In her essay, Ms. Yearwood argues that she chooses to teach in a district school because it lacks

"'good' teachers, rigorous curricula, strict and consistently enforced codes of discipline, high expectations, and a host of other attributes needed for academic success."  She feels that she needs to stay behind to fight the good fight for the kids who don't get these things, which "are all the characteristics the education experts and pundits agree that the public school, where I chose to teach, lacks." 

So here's my question: why doesn't her school have those attributes of successful schooling?  The easy answer is entropy.  The universe, as we all know, tends towards disorder. This is the concept of entropy. So how does this relate to schools?  Well, it's a lot harder to keep a school orderly than to keep it in disorder.  But there are schools that establish order.  So, how come it isn't possible at English High?
 

I am going to argue that the issue isn't teachers, administrators, kids or parents, in isolation.  The problem is a lack of will to enforce order upon the school by the group working in collaboration.

 

Here's an imperfect metaphor - building an orderly school is like building a building with the following parts:

 

Administrators - architects

Teachers - contractors

Parents - suppliers

Students - building materials

Just as building materials will never assemble themselves without a contractor and architect, so too will students fail to learn without their teachers and administrators.  This is the core tragedy of the battles between administrators and teachers in district schools.    If architects and contractors aren't on the same page, there are bound to be a lot of wasted materials and a lot of structurally unsound buildings.  The same is true if you swap administrators for architects, teachers for contractors and students for materials.  I don't buy the fact that issue is the kids; rather the adults need to get their issues figured out if a school will be orderly.  When the battles are over money, it's awfully hard to get the adults in the same room to figure out how to make the house get built even if the end goal is the same. 

Essential "Stuff"

I visited Pierce Middle School in Milton yesterday.  Every classroom and some common spaces are equipped with SMART boards.  On the other hand, I tried to set up a visit to the Curley K-8 in Boston.  Though it was a no-go, I learned that their teachers and staff don't have voicemail.  Don't know if this is true across the district, but I imagine it hamstrings the teachers in communicating with parents in a major way!

At Brooke, we don't have SMART boards, but we do have voicemail (and laptops, individual phones (classroom and/or office), and easy access to many supplies, photocopies, etc. 

Here's what I'm wondering.  If you were to start up a school right now, what would be the top 10 supplies/technology necessary to allow you or your teachers to be productive?

Revving the Engine

It's been over a year since I've blogged and in the interim, there's been a new addition to family.  Now, I'm getting the itch to get back to it.  I can't promise I'll be able to find the time, but we'll see!

Roslindale Mom Investigates School Options

A newish blog called Braving the BPS Lottery, written by a Roslindale mom, is tackling the drama of figuring out how to pick a public school in Boston for her little one. Geeky Mom, as she refers to herself, is exploring different options, including, it seems, charter schools. The writing is solid, and I'm guessing it will be interesting to follow the process from the perspective of a parent. She also does a nice job of keeping a calendar of upcoming events for those parents starting to investigate and enroll kids in schools. You can find the blog here.

RadioBoston Talks Charters

RadioBoston, the weekly WBUR show, featured the charter school debate as their main piece yesterday (with a nice piece on Camp Harbor View, where a number of my studens went this summer, to wrap up the hour). Not much new for those in the know, but a good overview of the arguments on both sides for newbies. A couple of quick thoughts:

No appearance by BTU president Richard Stutman. He declined to appear, which is odd since he normally takes any chance to attack charter schools. I'm curious if anyone knows why he would have sat this one out.

While there was lots of support from Paul Grogan of the Boston Foundation, and Mitchell Chester from the DESE, there was very thin coverage of actual charter schools. There was a small bit on Edward W. Brooke Charter School in Roslindale, including a short interview with guestblogger Kimberly Steadman, and a teacher. However, there was no appearance by Jim Peyser, who is leading the ballot initiative to lift the cap, Marc Kenan, from the Charter School Association, or any other actual charter schools.

Candidate Analysis

The September 22nd primary is coming up fast, so it seems like a good time to see where the candidates for Mayor and City Councillor sit in regards to charter schools.

Mayoral Race

The incumbent, Mayor Tom Menino, is proposing an expansion of charter schools that would be run by the Boston Schools Committee. His plan allows the BSC to take over the lowest performing schools in the district and convert them to charter schools with new leadership and no unionized teachers.

Sam Yoon supports lifting the cap under a proposal that he refers to as a "smart cap." This model, which he pushed before Gov. Deval Patrick picked up the idea, would only allow high achieving schools to replicate.

Michael Flaherty supports lifting the charter school cap, among many other school reform ideas. Flaherty references the Harvard charter/pilot school study in this campaign literature.

Kevin McCrea does not support lifting the cap on charter schools.

City Councillor At Large

There are a lot of candidates, so I'll group them by their positions, or lack thereof:

Supports Expansion
John Connolly (Incumbent)
Robert Fortes
Sean Ryan - also supports vouchers

Supports
Ego Ezedi
Hiep Nguyen

No Comment
Felix G. Arroyo
Doug Bennett
Tomas Gonzalez
Tito Jackson
Andrew Kenneally
Stephen Murphy
Ayanna Pressley
Jean-Claude Sanon
Bill Trabucco
Scotland Willis

Kennedy to be Honored (Perhaps)

Health Careers Academy, a Boston Horace Mann charter school, will be renamed after Senator Kennedy, pending approval by the state Board of Ed.

Coming Soon...

An article coming out in this week's Globe magazine examines the high pressure world of 21st century kindergarten. The article briefly mentions Edward W. Brooke Charter School. I think it's important to make a distinction between wealthy suburbs and urban schools. In wealthy suburbs, most kids who start school have important literacy skills before starting kindergarten. In low-income, urban schools like Edward Brooke, many kids start kindergarten not even knowing how to hold a book correctly, let alone knowing their alphabet or numbers. While suburban parents are striving to get their kids into Harvard, charter schools like Edward Brooke are trying to reverse an achievement gap that arose before the kids even got to school. This, to me, seems like a more important goal, and one which might warrant giving up some playtime for a greater focus on math and literacy.

And on the wireless, RadioBoston was supposed to do a piece on charter schools this week, but it was bumped for special on Ted Kennedy. The charter school piece should air a week from today on WBUR.

Finally, I appreciate the love that I got from MATCH's Mike Goldstein, who was guest blogging over at Eduwonk. I'd love to hear from the Eduwonk crowd if you're out there reading...

Is Boston Latin School "High-Performing?"

In an op-ed in today's Globe that supports teachers unions and attacks efforts by Mayor Menino and Governor Patrick to expand the reach of charter schools, Ed Doherty refers to Boston Latin School as a "high-performing school." What does it mean for a school to be high performing? I would argue that it has more to do with the amount of growth children make in said schools over their time there, than with the absolute levels of achievement (although those would ideally be high as well). Schools can and should be transformative in students' lives.

Let's take a look at BLS: while I know that some BLS students do impressive things in and after high school, it's important to remember that every child at the school had to have high grades and excellent test scores to get in. This implies that they should have a head start on the road to academic success and college admission at the beginning of 9th grade.

At BLS student demographics (in terms of race, income status, etc.) are not at all representative of the district as a whole. For example, here is the race data for BPS in aggregate:

African-American: 38%
Asian: 9%
Hispanic: 38%
White: 13%

And here is the profile for BLS:

African-American: 12%
Asian: 28%
Hispanic: 8%
White: 50%

Looking at low-income status (free and reduced lunch), the disparities are also apparent:

BPS: 74%
BLS: 31%

In those areas that charter schools have recently taken so much heat recently, special education students and English language learners are also underrepresented:

LEP Status
BPS: 19%
BLS: 1%

Special Education:
BPS: 21%
BLS:1%

And finally, many students do not finish their high school careers at BLS after starting there. The numbers decline from about 440 9th graders to about 380 12th graders. A school filled with academically prepared students should not lose 15% of their students over 4 years. I know of a number of students who excelled in middle school and did not make it through BLS because they did not feel supported there.

Boston Latin and high performing charter schools both achieve excellent end-game results with their students. BLS is held up a paragon of excellence by the teachers' union, while charter schools are accused of "creaming" the best students. But who is really "creaming?" BLS has a academically-based admissions policy; charter schools use a lottery that allows in a random sampling of the student population, most of whom are many grade levels behind. BLS enrolls a student body that is drastically different than the district as a whole, and skewed towards White, Asian and less disadvantaged kids; charter schools enroll student bodies that often have higher levels of African-American and/or Hispanic students, and similar percentages of low-income kids relative to BPS as a whole.

Which type of school is more "high-performing?" If schools are supposed to be transformative, I would have to say high-performing charter schools.

Teach for America in Boston Charter Schools

Teach for America is placing corps member in Boston this year for the first time. Placement sites among charter schools include Boston Collegiate and Excel Academy.

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).

HGSE on MA Charter School Cap

Professor Tom Kane posts here on Mayor Menino's charter school proposal, and Katherine Merseth (HGSE) and Marc Kenan (Mass Charter School Association), respond. As a poster at Universal Hub commented, it looks like there is some support from the HGSE folks for Sam Yoon's proposal, while MCSA is worried about limiting charter school entepreneurs.

Patrick on "Smart Caps"

Looks like Governor Patrick is going to be filing legislation on a "smart cap lifting" for charter school, or so says Secretary Reville in last month's DOE "Board in Brief." Also in there, mention of his Readiness Schools, although the names, Advantage, Alliance and Acceleration, do say much about what they're going to be...I'll do some digging to see if I can find out.

Rotherham and Whitmire on Duncan Charter Proposal

Eduwonk Andrew Rotherham and Richard Whitmire have a piece in US News that praises Arne Duncan's call to expand good charter schools and close the lousy ones. MATCH and Roxbury Prep are held up as examples of schools at the top of the charter school ranks and the Massachusetts logjam is also mentioned in passing.