To Bus or Not?

Boston Public Schools wants to save money by reducing the amount of busing that happens. To do this, they plan to have more, smaller school zones and remove the city-wide status of two of their most popular schools (Hernandez K-8 and Timility Middle). As part of this plan, they are proposing to stop busing charter school students outside of their BPS zones. This would effectively limit the reach of Boston charter elementary and middle schools by taking away transportation to those students that live outside the zone in which the school exists. There's a piece in today's Globe that discusses the pros and cons of this proposal.

Menino Grands at Boston Collegiate?

This website purports to have information that Mayor Menino's grandchildren received a lottery spots for Boston Collegiate. I have no idea how reliable this information is, especially given the anti-Menino slant of the site, but it's interesting that they chose a non-BPS option for their kids after having them in BPS for elementary school. It'll be interesting to see if they use BCCS as a bridge to the exam schools.

Codman College Speed Dating

Almost 2 months since Codman Academy's last flashy piece in the Globe, they're back. This time the article is about an event in which colleges and Codman juniors try to learn more about one another using the principles of speed dating. It's an interesting concept.

This is Codman's fourth Globe article of the year. You can check out their PR record here.

KIPP Wants In

In an op-ed in Friday's Globe, Scott Lehigh reported on an event at the Boston Foundation at which KIPP CEO Richard Barth was the keynote speaker. Barth discussed KIPP's interest in expanding to Boston and its inability to do so because of the 9% charter cap. Lehigh posited that the potential of Boston KIPP schools should motivate local politicos to lift the cap. I doubt this is how our local pols think.

Lehigh's overall view is that the cap should be lifted and KIPP should be welcome here in Boston. I wholeheartedly agree. But he sets KIPP up as saviors for both charter school expansion and for the kids of Boston. It's a shame that he doesn't include in his argument the successful charter schools here in Boston that are itching to serve more kids and can't because of the cap. You would think that Bostonian politicians would be more inspired by local kids' exceptional success at schools like Excel or Roxbury Prep than the results of kids in other states.

Michael Goldstein "Goes Wild" of MATCH says that the risk of losing federal "Rae to the Top" money is a much better motivator and that changing the cap will allow local success stories to expand. He's probably right. Money trumps all.

Charter School Day on Beacon Hill

Today, charter school supporters assembled on Beacon Hill to lobby legislators to lift the charter school cap. There was TV coverage here.

Charter School Hiring Practices: A Limit to Growth?

Jay Mathews, the Washington Post education columnist and charter school supporter, writes in today's column about an American Enterprise Institute paper by Stephen F. Wilson that examined the hiring practices at No Excuses charter schools in Boston. The paper specifically looks that the selectivity of the colleges that charter school staffers attended. It argues that since there is a limit to the number of Ivy League and comparable school alumni who will work in urban schools, the growth of No Excuses charter schools will be limited. Mathews thinks that Wilson is onto something when he suggests that these schools turn to "innovative curriculum models of years ago" like SRA, Direct Instruction and Core Knowlege. I think Mathews didn't quite think through his logic here, and I was going to write a whole response about it, but the first comment on the WaPo website (by researcher2) summed it up the point perfectly for me:

"A couple of comments.I see a major contradiction. Wilson says one reason they do so well is "They want staffers to produce their own lesson plans and, through trial and error and consultation with other teachers, figure out what works best in raising the achievement of students who are often two or three years below grade level when they enroll."
And then says public schools need not fear because they could/should do this "If teachers were provided a powerful instructional system -- placement tests and guides for class formation; a sequential, content-rich curriculum tightly linked to state standards and taught to mastery; frequent electronic assessments; detailed pacing charts, and so on -- then skilled career educators of varying backgrounds might be able to achieve results similar to those posted by the No Excuses schools,”

The reason public school teachers get dismayed and burned out is because they are doing exactly what he suggests just above, and are not often given permission to do what the charter schools want their teachers to do: create their own lesson plans and see what is working/not working with THEIR students.

I think the key is the independence the charter schools have, and the collaboration that exists within the school (between principals and teachers) and the collaboration between the school and the community. In public schools teachers find out what the new fad is when they are told to go to a training i.e. their input is not asked for, collaboration is a foreign concept. And in the community, how many stories do you have to come across to realize that often in public schools the parents are the last to know of a major change, again no collaboration.

While the Ivy League teachers aspect is certainly interesting, I firmly believe the majority of public school teachers, whether from a level 5 school or a level 1, if they felt connected to the school in the fashion I gather the charter school teachers feel connected, if they felt valued as a professional, like the charter school teachers feel, you would see the same results in students' achievement."

Thanks researcher2.

BTW, the study looked at the following schools: Academy of the Pacific Rim, Edward Brooke, Boston Collegiate, Excel Academy, Boston Prep, MATCH, Roxbury Prep and the KIPP Academy Lynn.

Edward Brooke Charter School in WSJ

There's a piece in today's Wall Street Journal about charter schools, the high demand for them, and the political challenges in expanding them. Two Boston charter schools are mentioned: Edward W. Brooke and Uphams Corner. Edward Brooke principals Jon Clark and Kimberly Steadman are quoted discussing the heartbreak of parents, including Mr. Clark, whose children are not picked in the lottery.