Charter Schools: Better? Really? Check the Research!

It’s so easy. Make a broad claim: public schools are failing.

Now offer an easy solution: choice, particularly charter schools. The thing that makes these attractive in this scenario? They are not public schools, since as we said before, we all accept that public schools have already failed.

What’s wrong with all this? The main problem is that there is no evidence, no research, no support at all that public schools are failing and that charter schools produce superior results.  

In a national study of charter schools known as the CREDO study, conducted by Margaret Raymond, ” 17 percent were superior to a matched traditional public school; 37 percent were worse than the public school; and the remaining 46 percent had academic gains no different from that of a similar public school.” Furthermore, Raymond’s husband, Eric Hanushek, widely quoted in the film “Waiting for Superman,” points out that it’s only the very few lowest-performing teachers (five to ten percent) that bring down the nation’s test scores (if test scores are an adquate measurement of good schools and good teaching!).

And furthermore, the charter schools that produce really brilliant results are only a tiny percentage of the 17% that outperform public schools.

So why the push? It’s because it’s so easy to repeat “common wisdom” that isn’t true at all. Realize that the above statistics originate from research for a film that pushes choice and charter schools, yet the numbers don’t show that charter schools produce particularly superior results at all; on the contrary!

In our local district, legislators promised, when the sole charter school here was brought in, that the charter would not use any funding intended for the public schools. That was a good thing, too, because in a high-poverty area like ours, we can ill afford funding to be siphoned away from our diminishing budgets.

However, a few years into it, the legislators changed their minds and the public schools are losing part of their funding to the charter. What happened to the original promise? Well, that’s the way of politics and legislators. Trust nothing.

Educational reform always takes a long time, because the educational system is a huge, ponderous beast. We can all improve, of course, but are we all failing? Not at all (see my former blog). Should we replace what we have with something that is not clearly proven to work? Obviously, we should not.

Not Broken!

One of the big arguments for alternatives–like charter schools–is that the public schools are broken, so we need choice.

Who says they are broken? It’s one of those knee-jerk commonplaces in public discourse that has nothing to do with reality.

You want a standardized-test measurement? We will ignore for a moment that standardized high-stakes tests reveal little to nothing about good education happening in schools (I agree with this commentator on that). You can see from this page, if you don’t mind wading through all the statistics, that most states are doing decently with  children passing tests.

I cannot speak for schools and students throughout the nation, but I’d like to give you a snapshot of a few experiences I’ve had lately in my high-poverty rural area.

Here’s one: our little recorder ensemble, consisting of four players (soprano, alto, tenor, bass, trading parts), doing serious classical music, mostly arrangments of madrigals, was invited to a local elementary school to do a performance for about a hundred second- and third-graders learning to play the recorder. It was a less-than-ideal environment (banging from cafeteria tables being put away etc.), but those students were 100% engaged, smiling, participating. When we told stories about the songs, they participated whole-heartedly, laughing, smiling, engaged. When we played the songs, you could feel everyone focused, engaged. They were so sweet afterward, as they toted their chairs back to the classroom and we packed up the instruments and stands: “You guys are awesome!” “Thank you SO much!”

This type of openness, freshness, engagement, and the unique and charming thank-you notes afterward (“Dear Ensemble, You made my heart nearly burst. Thank you for coming to our school”) let us know that this was an unguarded, genuine educational experience we shared together. It made our hearts nearly burst too.

But even more important, it revealed that these young students in a typical school are learning in a deeper way, that they are alive and engaged–and that all is well in that school.

We can extrapolate that things are going well generally in our area. I surely see it in my junior high where I teach art. My students–all my classes–walk into class and avidly set up without being told. They launch into work without me having to remind them about anything, and they clean up cheerfully the same way. When I teach them new things, they are always game to give it their best try. There’s that same openness and cooperation, that high level of engagement, that sweetness and curiosity we saw in the elementary children.

From the educational internet groups I participate in, I glean the same kinds of things. The schools struggle with budgets, schedules, and personality differences; so what’s new? This is true of every organization, big and small. We don’t just say they’re all failing because of it.

It’s too easy to denounce the whole (expensive, I agree) system as broken. Of course, I would change the system, mainly getting rid of those standardized tests and going for a whole-child arts-based curriculum, like the Waldorf schools do. My desire for that doesn’t say that the system is broken, though! It’s not.

 

“Last In, First Out”

Sounds logical, right? Just because a teacher has been teaching for over four years doesn’t mean she’s any good. When it’s sadly time to adjust to budget cuts, we need to get rid of the bad teachers. Inferred in this is that the newer teachers will be better than the older teachers, so we need to be sure to be able to get rid of the bad old teachers.

I know this is a little melodramatized, WTH, that’s how we artsy types roll.

There are some huge misapprehensions in this type of thinking. Start with the reality that the average teacher salary in America is about $40,000. Take out taxes and figure it out. Monthly take-home pay will be about $2500. Subtract from that typical mortgage payment or rent, utilities, basic living costs and you will have to conclude: most teachers don’t take home much money. They’re not there for the big bucks nor the big perks. They are there because they love their subject and their kids.

It doesn’t matter what our age. What if any of us have problems in our teaching? We should follow Obama’s suggestion and get training for the teacher. If he or she cannot improve, then yes, we could consider termination. But most of us want to improve. If we need help, we gladly accept it.

So truly the only fair rule is “last hired, first fired.” Otherwise our budget problems can turn into discrimination, ageism, and that is never right. Besides that, it’s illegal.

Teachers’ unions are not out to protect greedy fat-cat teachers who want to sit back and collect big paychecks without doing the work. We DO the work. We show up every day, no matter our age, no matter our headaches, no matter the struggles we face with poverty, lack of materials, endless garrulous faculty meetings, and other daily difficulties.

Add to this that most teachers spend a good deal out of pocket to make their classrooms work. As an example, a teacher (older!) in our poor, rural district noticed that his first-graders are walking off the bus in near-zero weather without jackets. He went out and bought warm jackets for his students. They often would come back in a day or two without them. “Where is your jacket?” he would ask. “I don’t know,” the student will shrug, but remember, these are tiny first-graders, so they won’t know but their careless caretakers should know. What does he do? He goes out and buys more. True, he gets these coats at the thrift store, but at $4-5 apiece, they still add up.

It is so easy to get on the bandwagon of thoughtless popular thought. Think again. “Last in, first out” is really the only fair solution to budget cuts.

Immeasurable (by a test anyway)

In my juvenile corrections class, we often get students who have pretty low IQs. No surprise that these students are mostly failing in school. Probably no matter what I would do with them in class–that is, what I would do to help them pass standardized tests–would make any difference.

Yet these students are have great success in writing, reading and art.

Why would this be so? It’s because we work for mastery, we start where the students actually are, and I encourage excellence, no matter how long it takes. (It’s always a joke that “inside,” we have nothing but time, but it’s actually true in any classroom. If we want excellence, we need to take the time. I note that the requirements of the Common Core totally reinforce that. One of our teachers, attending a Common Core training, brought along a pacing guide that is required in our district, and the CC instructor practically recoiled).

“No,” she said. “This is antithetical to the process. We stay with it till we get mastery. If some students reach basic mastery right away, we set up experiences for deeper mastery.”

That’s good pedagogy. So when a repeat offender with an IQ of 86 appears in my classroom over time, and we keep writing together, and he produces, after all this time, a really stunning story (about hunting, which is NOT my preference for subject  matter, believe me), it’s time for celebration.

Will his test scores improve? Almost certainly not. But he can write–now, and hopefully for a long time–since it took quite a long time to get here.

He’s a big kid, fair hair, ruddy face; you could say chunky. And there he stands in front the of the class, after reading aloud, flushing with joy at the spontaneous applause from his fellows.

Immeasurable.

Obama on Education

We have at least two things we can look at for Obama’s policy on education: what he says, and what he’s done. That’s the kicker of running of a second term; your record speaks what your words don’t necessarily say.

For many years, administrators, teachers and parents have been hating No Child Left Behind, and it was a day of celebration when Obama stood up and announced that it would no longer be in play. Then he weakened the announcement by adding that NCLB would remain in place unless states opted out. This left a mushy field of confusion where states have felt continuing pressure to somehow evaluate teachers and to document student progress while stepping out of the iron yoke of NCLB. The transition has often been unclear and ineffective.

Politicians have a stake in education because they fund it (and Obama has included it in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) but this becomes problematic when politicians don’t understand what’s really going on in schools. There is a kneejerk cranky declamation that American students score so much lower than students in other nations, but analysts point out that our scores are not as bad as people say, though of course we can improve. If you look at scores delineated by populations, you will see that the majority of American students are scoring pretty well. International comparisons become meaningless if you compare a monocultural, monolingual nation such as Japan or Finland against a huge, multicultural, multilingual nation like ours.

The stimulus funds intended for education could have made a big difference, and in some areas they did help retain jobs for teachers and educational staff, but in other areas, the funds were applied to bonuses and other expenditures such as movie tickets, fast food, and a water park visit for students.

Race to the Top provides funds for states to devise evaluation systems that will “prove” superior student learning and to incorporate more STEM classes (science, technology, engineering and math). Results have been varied because there’s always the question whether evaluation methods really work. Commentators point this out: “We still have corporate-style accountability procedures, the employment of divisive market mechanisms, the closing of schools, an uncritical approach to what counts as important curricular knowledge…”

Obama’s policy has emphasized charter schools, which is a mixed bag. In urban centers, charter schools have provided a safe, humane and more personalized approach to education, often much better than their public counterparts. In other areas, such as in our rural areas, charter schools often become a drain on public-school funds without proving any particular excellence.

My take on Obama’s education policy? It’s the same as my response to our state legislature on education. Politicians want proof that their education dollars are properly spent and the only way they can do that is by standardized testing. Politicians from Obama down to rural representatives all buy this idea. However, education excellence is so much more than test scores, especially in low-income areas with high concentrations of non-English-speakers and kids at risk. If we are to use assessments to determine funding, these should be formative assessments rather than high-stakes, end-of-year assessments. I would say that Obama’s education stance still buys the old beliefs about assessment, and that has included a soft-waffling approach to ending NCLB.

Romney on Education

Here is the problem with politicians on education: they don’t really know what it’s like in schools. So where do they get their information? From their researchers and writers. How good is that information? Sadly, not always good, for we must ask where they get their information, and too often it comes from kneejerk public opinion that has little to do with life in real schools with real teachers and real students.

Consider Romney’s stance on vouchers. Have we forgotten the research during the 1990′s that proved that vouchers don’t work? Romney claims to fine-tune the voucher issue by allowing students to cross district boundaries and attend whatever schools they choose. But this is old news; districts have been doing this since the 1970′s. Vouchers will not demonstrably change this approach.

Romney has gone on record with the old saw that teachers’ unions protect bad older teachers; therefore, we should get rid of the unions so we can get rid of these bad old teachers and replace them with good young teachers. There is simply no evidence for this type of thinking. Indeed, the research indicates that most teachers find their excellence some years into teaching, and that there are good teachers at any age. This whole argument raises my hackles because I’m an older teacher, and a very good one. There are splendid younger teachers in my school as well. Age is no particular factor.

Romney recommends that good teachers be “highly compensated,” yet he and his running mate Ryan advocate across-the-board budget cuts that will also include education spending.

As long as we have free public education, at least in the format we now have it, we’ll have federal funding and that infers some federal influence. Romney’s stance on returning the power to make education decisions to the local level sounds good on the surface, but that would mean relinquishing federal power while retaining funding. Could that work? It could, but do politicians so easily relinquish power while retaining funding? Not usually.

Romney’s “Chance for Every Child” would offer vouchers for students to attend any school they want, including online, private and parochial options. Those of us who have been in education for many years know the arguments attending these options, including the separation of church and state and the depletion of stressed district budgets to accomodate transportation and funding for charter schools.

I notice that Romney has softened his stance on education quite a bit as the election gets closer, but I still think that his plan lacks depth and will be pretty much impossible to implement.

Teachers’ Unions and Bad Teachers

Ask the question, “What do teachers’ unions do?” and the knee-jerk reaction is that they protect bad teachers from being fired.

The truth is quite different. While it’s true that teachers who have grievances can secure the help of the union, unions go beyond that by using collective bargaining to help make sure that teachers have the conditions and materials they need to teach well.

If there really is a bad teacher, she or he can be dismissed with cause, and teacher unions just make sure that due process is followed. If there is is enough evidence that teachers have significant problems, they can still lose their jobs. No tenure policy can protect them from that.

States are trying to implement better and better evaluations so they can see what’s actually going on in the classroom, and that’s generally a good thing, so long as principals maintain their integrity in evaluating teachers. Having administrators or peers in classrooms for evals can work for more positive relationships and can help struggling teachers identify how to improve.

My experience is that there are not so many BAD teachers. We can all improve, and I’d rather see policy support improvement and change rather than punishment and censure. Teachers’ unions can help maintain enough security so that positive culture of improvement can work.

 

Beyond the Teachers’ Union

Could it be that the big hoo-hah over teachers’ unions is obscuring more important issues in education?

And what would those issues be?

For one thing, legislatures are requiring more and more teacher evaluations. I know that many teachers dislike feeling they are being put “on the line,” but on the other hand, frequent visits from my principal make me feel that he knows and understands my work. The district is pushing principals to be more and more rigorous in their evals (read that as a pressure to lower scores), but our principal points out that good teaching is good teaching, which comes out as good evals, no matter the pressure.

Another big issue is how to decide who gets let go when staff cuts are necessary. The ongoing standard is “last hired, first fired,” and as a veteran teacher, I think that seems fair. I know that popular discourse assumes that newer teachers are better than older teachers, just because, but my experience doesn’t show that. I’ve met stellar newbies and I’ve observed magnificent oldies. It doesn’t depend on how old you are, although studies seem to reveal that it takes a few years to find your stride and reach your finest level of work.

Another big issue is merit pay. I particularly take umbrage at this one because at present, math and science teachers get higher pay for good performance just because of what they teach. Next comes performance pay for tested subjects. Well, what about me? I’m an art teacher–a good one. It shows up in contests with blind judging where my students clean up the awards! Is that good enough for performance pay?

There are other important issues to discuss; just collar a classroom teacher of your acquaintance and ask him or her. It’s time to give up the fruitless fight over unions and talk about the more serious issues.

Are Teachers’ Unions Really the Problem?

Everyone seems to blame teachers’ unions for poor teaching and poor test scores; this has become standard in public discourse about education.  It would be worth taking a look at that premise.

At this point, there are ten states without teacher contracts protected by a teachers’ union. And of these states, nine have test scores far beneath the national average, while one, Virginia, has average scores.

Of course, there’s not necessarily a correlation between test scores and job security–but it’s certainly quite a “coincidence” that the scores would turn out this way.

A Washington Post article provides the statistics, pointing out that there are certainly many factors that contribute to the low test scores, but at the very least, the scores show that teachers’ unions are not to blame for some of the lowest scores in the nation, since these states don’t have unions!

I would conclude: just because popular discourse blames teachers’ unions for poor school performance doesn’t make it so.

Teachers’ Unions Declining? Really?

Just about all the teachers–and administrators–in my district belong to one teachers’ union or another. We do this because we are scared. If we should be sued by some litigious parent whose child has somehow been offended–or if indeed there is a legitimate suit against us, heaven forbid–we pay our dues so we’re covered legally.

The dues are expensive, almost $50 a month, a high price to pay on most teacher salaries.  But we do it, even though our votes in the organization count for almost nothing. We all know it and we all do it anyway.

Despite this almost universal acceptance of unions within the profession, at least in my state, I would agree that there’s a knee-jerk popular disaffection with unions.

I was at an artist reception during the summer and one of the rather famous artists held forth thus:

“Those d—n teachers unions keep those older teachers in place. There’s no way to get rid of these bad teachers and make room for the [good] young ones. We need to get rid of teacher unions so we can bring in better teachers.”

I really like this artist but he’s wrong about this. There’s no formula about age to teaching excellence. I’m an older teacher; I admit it, but I’m a very good teacher. The younger teachers I know are often good, sometimes not. Good teaching doesn’t correlate with how old you are.

I disagree with a culture of fear that makes it necessary for me to fork out $50 a month for union dues, but I don’t disagree with the idea of unions. To my mind, they protect teachers from litigation, not from being fired.