“Competitive effects” in Washington, DC
It’s hard to find a better example of the positive change that can come from charter school competition than this statement by Washington Teachers Union president George Parker (part of an interview published by the National Council on Teacher Quality ):
Have your views of the role of the union changed over time? How?
I think it has a lot to do with the landscape in the system right now. We have the second highest number of charter schools-56 or 57 charters. So we are in a competitive market here in D.C.
The union has now had to take on a dual role. Previously our main concern was bread and butter issues—to make sure teachers have good benefits and working conditions. We didn’t have to be that concerned about keeping children in [D.C. schools]. But now around 21,000 of our students are in charters and around 45,000 in public schools. We lost 6,000 students last year. The charter schools have created a competition where the very survival of the union and the job security of our teachers is not dependent on the language in our contract. It is dependent on our ability to recruit and maintain students because we are funded pretty much by the number of students we have enrolled in the public system.
It puts the union in a different light. It’s not just the contract that protects jobs but also student enrollment.
We are expanding our professional development because that impacts student achievement and if parents perceive we improve student achievement then we stand a better chance of getting students back who moved to charter schools. The more students we have, the more teachers we can employ, and the more security we can develop in terms of jobs.
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August 29th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Parker, I think, gets it. Saunders, on the other hand...
August 29th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Parker, I think, gets it. RHEE on the other hand ...
I was so disappointed by Pearlstein’s article. The problem with his analysis was exemplified by the follwing:
“The way out of this pedagogical thicket is pretty obvious: Teachers, like all workers, ought to be hired, fired, promoted and paid based on a combination of subjective and objective criteria that bear some relation to the ultimate purpose of the enterprise, which in this case means imparting to children the skills and knowledge they need in life.”
I agree with the above, but then he wrote the next blatantly unfair sentence:
“For years, teachers and their unions have been saying that’s exactly what they want, but for years they’ve been unable to find an acceptable way to do it.”
NO!!! WE, the unions and management, have been unable to do it. If Rhee wants a bargain, then bargain with Parker. Don’t set him up for a suicide mission. It takes two to agree on a valid evaluation process. Pearlstein acknowledges that Rhee hasn’t budged, but he doesn’t seem to realize how many union members would love to negotiate if we had a partner who we could trust.
I realize that Pearlstein is not an education reporter, and the two commenters on that post did a great job of explaining how education is different. I’d like to make a subtler, and less important point. Pearlstein wrote that somehow businesses with unfair evaluations still survived. Yes, some have. But some haven’t. (And look what has happened since 1973 with the shrinking middle class and the declines in personal health and the planet’s health.) Do we want an America where the cities that have superintendent’s with relatively more integrity have educational systems, but the city’s with unscrupulous or ideological superintendents see their systems crater? Its one thing to rebuild a bankrupt company. If a Rhee-like super misused their power and ripped the system apart, I doubt we’d ever rebuild public schools in that city.
Too many people look to business for “creative destruction.” Having never taught or sent their kids to a inner city school, they don’t realize that we already have plenty of destruction going on. We’ve got plenty of reason to say, thank you very much but you can keep your fearless business gamblers. We’ve already seen too much of the effects of unintended consequences.
Finally, Pearlstein may have revealed another bias, thinking upper middle class and above. What professions/crafts is he comparing us to? Would Rhee’s changes be comparable to chaging Fed EX drivers to that company’s white collar administrators in terms of salary and protections. What would happen if Rhee’s contract was applied to nurses? Certainly the patient mortality rate would rise. In the airline industry, perhaps the market will sort itself out. So, if the very lives of parents and voters depended on the quality control system we devise to protect their children, the market would work itself out. But, I don’t think we’d ever work this out in education unless the schools where actually hovering at 30,000 feet. If we are all in the same boat, and that boat is flying at hundreds of miles an hour, then arbitrary administrators would think twice before unfairly destroying the careers of good teachers.
I think its pretty “obvious” that the Rhee plan, if implemented nationwide would improve many school systems, destroy many others, and have a range of results scattered in between. Of course, when the creative destruction of the market destroyed school systems (probably beyond repair) good urban teachers would gain huge raises as they moved to suburban districts that were becoming even better.
August 29th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
John, Nice points. Additionally, education is not a marketplace and trying to artificially create a market using test score excessively relies on a very fallible measure. What if the test makers are wrong and capture very little of the essence of a quality education? Who will hold the test makers accountable? More importantly, who is going to chart the path forward and enable the teachers to learn how to teach better? Who is going to provide better curricula?
Market force economics apply well to business but is an utter failure when applied to education.
August 30th, 2008 at 6:25 am
It’s nice to see that a union guy understands that the cushy berth provided by a monopoly (”We didn’t have to be that concerned about keeping children in [D.C. schools]“) is about to get a bit lumpy.
Unfortunately for Mr. Union Guy he either doesn’t understand or can’t admit that a union’s really not in much of a position to help the organization on which it depends, compete.
I just wonder how long it’ll be before it starts to become inescapably obvious that the message charters articulate is that public education doesn’t need school districts. Once that starts to penetrate the public consciousness it’ll start to become clearer that the school district actually impedes education. Hopefully that realization will bring an end to an anachronistic institution.
August 30th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Allen,
And also, society doesn’t “need” the children left behind in neighborhood schools after the charters cream off the most motivated children and families.
You may be right, and if the trends continue I doubt we’ll have much more than “schools” that are mere “fig leafs” to make adults feel better about abandoning so many children. This is just another example of “the Big Sort,” except that it is particularly tragic. But few middle class Americans have to look at the damage.
But my students are some of those kids, and I’m not going to give up on them. Neither am I going to give up on working with reformers like Parker to redefine the role of unions.
The idea that we can help most of the urban poor by bashing their teachers and their unions is absurd.
August 30th, 2008 at 10:41 am
John: Well said.
August 30th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
And how would charters “cream off” the most motivated children and their families? After all, charters aren’t selective like district magnet schools; it’s first come, first serve.
Also, why would the “most motivated children and their families” show up to enroll that kid in a charter? It’s the motivated kids, with motivated families, that are most likely to be doing well in the district schools. Why would parents want their kids, who are doing well in a district school, to go to a charter school?
The fact of the matter is that it’s the kids who are struggling that are most likely to go to charters and no few charters set out enroll just those kids, not the potential Westinghouse Prize winners.
You might want to reconsider your role as a conduit for the talking points generated by folks who like the public education system just as it is and consider the fact that as a teacher you’re at the bottom of a pretty substantial administrative pyramid which does what for education?
Teachers at charters rarely have more then one full-time administrative professional in their organization whereas teachers in district schools have, oh, lots. Who do you think is better off, better able to get on with their job? Who do you think is more likely to get their complaints heard and considered? Whose more likely to be dealt with like a professional rather then as an interchangeable cog in a machine?
So good luck with redefining the role of unions. Having been in several I can state with confidence that you won’t succeed. Unions exist for one reason and that’s to get the best possible deal for thier membership. When they deviate from that role it had better not be at the cost of the best possible deal for the membership or there’ll be a new union leadership come the next election and that’s not a knock on unions or their members. Just a statement of fact.
August 31st, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Allen: Having worked at charter-type schools and at traditional public schools, I firmly believe that charter schools do “cream” the “most motivated children and their families.” This is because: (1) Only parents who are informed and interested enough in their children’s education take the time to investigate and apply to charter schools. (2) Students who do not follow the rules of the charter school (including extra school hours, and rules of conduct) can be asked to leave or expelled.
In this regard, charter and private schools are much different than traditional public schools, who must take ALL students, including students with special needs, emotional disorders, and histories of behavior problems. Except in very specific circumstances, public schools are NOT able to expel students for disruptive or inappropriate behavior such as repeated tardies, failure to complete homework, or disrespect toward teachers or administrators.
From the evidence I’ve seen, the KIPP schools enroll many students in 5th grade who are no longer there by 8th grade. However, KIPP is praised by the press for the success of the remaining students, not chastised over their “drop out rate” like many public schools would be in the same position.
August 31st, 2008 at 11:09 pm
1) Why would your “informed and interested” parents want to send their kid to a charter school if the child were doing well in a district school?
For a parent to be sufficiently informed to investigate whether they’d like to send their kid to a charter doesn’t require a EdD and - brace yourself - most, the vast majority of parents, are interested. It’s just that in a school district their interest is of little importance and treated accordingly.
2) And not expelling kids who disrupt the education of other kids is good because?
By the way, I can think of a number of district schools that can not only expell students who don’t follow their rules but also are explicitly and unapologetically selective in which kids they’ll admit. I don’t know what they’re called in your neck of the woods but where I come from they’re called “magnet” schools and if you don’t measure up and stay measured up, you’re out. As for the balance of the school district I think it could be argued that no one’s doing the kids a favor by pretending to try to educate them.
September 1st, 2008 at 10:44 am
Allen,
I get annoyed by people who think that the history of education began when they entered the field, and I don’t want to be that way. So I’m honestly asking the question of when where you a union member. Since I entered the public school classroom 16 years ago, the job of teaching has been completely transformed but the challenges have not. The union is not perfect, but if you compare our responsiveness to reform with the record of other stakeholders I’d say we have been remarkbaly agile.
I won’t repeat the D.C. attorney’s arguments, except to add a couple of examples. Our elementary feeder school was the lowest performing inner city school in the state (the lowest are always in Deliverance-type hill country, but come to think of it I never hear of charters who want to go into the far far backwoods to fix their schools ...). That school did not cream, did not change teachers or the union, took full advantage of the capacity and knowledge, of a local hospital, and freed itself of some of the most dysfunctional policies. That school now is wonderful, but you will never see one of its former students in our secondary school. They now have a full range of choices.
Also to semi-confirm your awarenesses, my daughter teaches at an alternative charter school next to ours. The single largest group of their students comes from us. If a chronically disruptive student threatens one of our teachers, that student is back the next day or in serious cases the next week, until EVENTUALLY they end up in the alternative school. When they threaten a charter school teacher an armed security guard (who is currently or formerly with the Okla City police or the sheriff’s office) is there instantly, and the school and the teacher are completely free to give him another chance or not. Our armed guards are OKCPD and they are prohibited from intervening by the policies negotiated by the institutions involved.
But there is no point in shifting the blame game to the central offices. To my knowledge, every school policy, standing alone, is completely rational. When they are all interacting with each other in real world settings, however, they become a suicide pact. I don’t begrudge charters or their students their freedom from dysfunctional policies. But I’ve even read of KIPP teachers who deny that they cream! If you start on third base, thinking you hit a triple, it doesn’t say much about your situational awareness. But I don’t want to push that point to far. I praise charters, KIPP, and other magnets for their good work, but it accomplishes nothing when they deny that they cream.
For the foreseeable future, society will need neighborhood secondary schools where we can’t make improvements without persuading our fellow teachers, administrators, policy-makers and other stakeholders to listen to our practical experience. Frankly, I still love it, but it gets old. Plenty of great educators get tired of continually having to engage in those conversations. Without charters and magnets, they would just leave the profession.
One of the very few efforts of charters to reform an entire high-poverty middle school (not one with 50 to 60 to 70% poor but one like mine ) while not creaming is recounted in Paul Tough’s Whatever It Takes. Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children’s Zone had far more resources than we could ever imagine, and yet they failed in less than two years. I don’t blame Canada. He made the common mistake of ignoring educators who said that you must establish discipline. He refused to suspend the 29 most disruptive students, and then had to pull the plug on the whole experiment. But mistakes happen, and we still need to follow Canada’s overall vision. Had he included the union, and listened to us, those students would have benefitted greatly.
But I do blame the New York Times for not seeing fit to report this story. When a charter announces its goal of proving that creaming is not necessary to turnaround hardcore schools, there is great fanfare. When it craters, you have to wait 11/2 years for the last chapter of the book.
When I started teaching I already had plenty of experience with the most challenging students, and I didn’t see any of our high schools as hard core inner city schools like in D.C., Detroit, or Baltimore. Now my school is one of three. Our neighborhoods don’t have nearly as many dangerous kids as during the crack and gang days of the Reagan/Bush era where there was no institutional possibility of trying to get those kids into schools. But with the proliferation of all types of choices, as well a laudable change in consciousness (and I do have to give props to people who I mostly disagree with for that change), we now have an extreme critical mass of our most challenging kids in our toughest schools.
September 1st, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Allen: I just wanted to make one point with regard to your idea that attentive parents are happy to have their children stay in traditional low-income public schools. In my experience, motivated and academically-oriented children are frustrated by low-income public schools because the large number of misbehaving, disruptive students impacts their ability to get a quality education. If nothing else, teachers are distracted from focusing on the “good” kids in their quest to get control of the disruptive students.
As a result, it is just these motivated, involved parents and children who most want to leave the traditional public schools, and that have the ability and knowledge to apply for and attend the charter schools. In that way, charters (and private schools) “cream.”
Obviously, this pattern doesn’t apply to ALL schools. For instance, a middle class school may have a very good gifted and talented track. Parents of these students are happy to keep their children in the school, even if other students are having problems in the regular or remedial classes. However, in low income, high-minority schools, the misbehaving students often cause such chaos (and the schools and teachers are powerless to discipline them), that these motivated students are exactly the ones who leave for the charters. Hence, creaming.
September 1st, 2008 at 12:07 pm
One more thing: Allen seems to suggest that I think not expelling consistently disruptive students “is a good thing.” (see above).
My position is that public schools effectively have their hands tied from expelling or significantly punishing students for the sort of chronic, disruptive behavior that charters will not tolerate. While public schools can expel for some high-level “one-strike” offenses (such as carrying a loaded weapon on school grounds), they cannot expel students for things like: (1) constantly talking back to teachers and administrators; (2) cursing; (3) skipping class; (4) wandering the hallways; (5) failing to complete homework or classwork; or (6) disrupting classes with talking, joking, throwing things; (7) lying.
September 1st, 2008 at 10:37 pm
You might want to check your knee-jerk reaction at the door, I haven’t attacked teacher’s unions nor do I consider them the source of what ails public education. I don’t, however, think they’ll be a significant force in the reform of public education either. It’s not in the nature of unions to improve or see to the health of the organizations upon which they depend.
The purpose of a union, as I wrote above, is to see to the welfare of its membership. To get the best possible wages and working conditions even to the extent of being shortsighted enough to injure or, in extreme cases, destroy the organization upon which they depend. You will find examples to the contrary of course just as you will, occasionally, find a lion that will lie down with a lamb but it’s not the way the smart money bets.
To get back to your “creaming” argument, in the Detroit Public Schools district the parents of 25% of the kids are sufficiently informed and motivated to send their kids to charters. In Washington D.C. it’s over 30%. In both districts the number of informed and motivated parents is actually higher then the statistics admit because there aren’t sufficient in the way of charter seats to take more students. If parents have to be informed and motivated in order to send their kids off to charters then we’re getting dangerously close to having a majority of the parents informed and motivated.
The argument about disruptive or dangerous students being chucked out of charters to end up in district schools is wrong in so many ways its hard to keep track of them all.
The disruptive student who gets chucked out of a charter ensures that the non-disruptive students are more likely to get an education. Does the right of a disruptive student to disrupt the education of other students trump the right of the non-disruptive students to get an education? Of course not but that’s just the position you’re espousing.
In fact, the approach of charters to disruptive students underscores one of the deficiencies of district administration: its inherent inflexibility and its self-serving nature.
Rather then deal forthrightly with incorrigibly disruptive student the district administration ignores the problem until it escalates to the point that students and teachers are being endangered and quite often not even then. But it’s just easier to ignore the problem, to make it the problem of the individual teacher or perhaps the school. But instituting appropriate policy is troublesome, politically touchy and costly so why bother when teachers can be saddled with the problem?
You may see that as blaming or bashing the central administration but, like my view of unions, I see it as accurately describing their limitations and motivations.
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:44 am
I’ll write one more comment, before moving on. Again (Allen), you seem to think I approve of the public schools’ inability to properly discipline disruptive students and prevent them from disrupting the education of students who are trying to stay on task. This is not at all my position. I think the inability of schools to maintain discipline and enforce basic rules of behavior is one of the major problems afflicting many schools in America today.
However, I do not believe the inability to enforce discipline in public schools is the fault of (a) the teachers or (b) the teacher’s unions. Teachers desperately want the tools to effectively maintain order in their schools. Teacher’s unions also want their teachers to be able to work in safe, orderly environments. However, teachers are restricted by many laws, policies, and actions of administrators from enforcing consequences for disciplinary infractions.
I believe the factors limiting public schools’ ability to discipline disruptive students are the following: (1) Threat of law suits from parents; (2) Public image/media pressure; (3) Federal mandates, especially with regard to the treatment of students with learning or emotional disabilities; (4) State laws; (5) District policies; (6) School policies/ Actions of Administrators.
I agree with you that it is imperative to ensure that classrooms are orderly, and that disruptive students are dealt with appropriately, and are not able to disrupt the education of the rest of the students. But please do not blame public school teachers (or unions) for this situation; most teachers don’t like it any more than you do.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:16 am
I don’t have any particular desire to have the last word but it may turn out that way. Oh well.
While I agree that maintaining discipline is a serious problem I see it as a symptom of a larger problem.
I agree that teachers, unsupported by the administration, are unable to maintain discipline. The fact that discipline is a serious problem tells me that administrators aren’t doing what they should to maintain order in the classroom. You offer six reasons why discipline isn’t being maintained.
1) Threat of lawsuits from parents.
There are remedies as demonstrated by the firearms industry’s legislation preventing the misuse of the courts to bring about the bankruptcy of the industry. Similarly, the insurance industry got reforms passed that limited the ability of the plaintiff’s bar to use specious “experts” to sway uneducated juries.
If lawsuits are a system-wide problem why hasn’t there been any substantive effort to stem the threat? It is doable as seen in the two examples I’ve provided.
2) Public image/media pressure.
Which means that within the public education system public image/media pressure is seen as more important then education.
3) Federal mandates, especially with regard to the treatment of students with learning or emotional disabilities.
See the previous two points and, in the interest of *not* overlooking the cynical response, federal mandates are very often a springboard to more funding. A good part of the reason for the passage of NCLB was the misuse of Title I funding which existed to fund federal mandates.
4) State laws.
Oh come on. The largest single budget item in most, if not all, state budgets is education the bulk of which goes to K-12. If the public education establishment lobbied for laws that removed obstructions to classroom discipline as vigorously, even singlemindedly, as they do for funding increases how long would it be before some compromise was reached? Not long at all I think.
5) District policies.
Which skirts the question. *Why* would districts form policy that’s destructive of the goal of education?
6) School policies/ Actions of Administrators.
See above.
Maintaining discipline is obviously a school-wide necessity with the teachers on the frontlines. But without support teachers can’t maintain discipline and they’re not getting that support. The obvious question is, why aren’t they getting that support.
The reasons you supply are either non-responsive to the question - 4, 5 and 6 - or symptomatic - 1, 2 and 3.
The problem of discipline, indeed many of the problems of public education, result from the concept of the school district and its inevitable product, the central administration.
Without getting into the deleterious effects of the school district beyond the inevitable creation of the central administration, the central administration is an organization in search of a function.
Private schools have never had the services of a central administration in the same sense that a public school district does yet have gotten along quite nicely. Charter schools, public schools in every respect except for the absence of a central administration, also seem to be doing quite well. Even one of the few education organizations that does sport a central administration, the Catholic archdiocesan system, belies the value of the idea by having a central administration that’s vanishingly tiny by comparison to the central administration of similarly sized public school districts.
All those people being paid all that money without a worthwhile task in sight. I don’t know about you but that sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.
Charters prove public schools don’t need a central administration and if it isn’t a necessity it ought to be dispersed.