- The Health of Charter Schooling
- No. 2 U.S. education official heads for exit
- Authors visit D.C. schools to inspire young readers and writers
- 'Blended' Learning Shows Promising Results At D.C. Schools
The Health of Charter Schooling
Education Week
By Rick Hess
October 6, 2014
Last week, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools issued "The Health of the Public Charter School Movement: A State-By-State Analysis." Authored by Todd Ziebarth and Louann Bierlein Palmer, the report is offered as the "first comprehensive attempt" to explore the link between charter school performance and the Alliance's ranking of state charter school laws.
The report examines 26 states where charters account for at least one percent of public K-12 enrollment and that participated in CREDO's 2013-14 evaluation of charter school performance. The report features 11 indicators that measure dimensions like reading and math performance, geographic distribution, the ethnic makeup of charter enrollment, the number of new charters opened, the number of charters closed, and the extent of certain "innovative" practices. The top five finishers, in order, were Washington DC, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York. Of the 26 states ranked, Nevada brought up the rear, with Oregon close on its heels.
The report is carefully and thoughtfully done. These kinds of efforts are always fraught because the data you really want is never available, every measure is inevitably simpler than you'd ideally like, you inevitably tick people off, and the whole thing ultimately rests on a series of subjective determinations. For that reason, these reports are best and most useful when they're painfully clear about the rationale, the metrics, and the role of human judgment. On that score, Ziebarth and Bierlein Palmer do a stellar job. They clearly and succinctly explain all of this up front. The result is a good and useful exercise.
I quite like what Ziebarth and Bierlein Palmer have done. They've created a substantial contribution, and one that I hope (and trust) they'll be replicating in the years ahead. It offers a serious framework for discussing the relative merits of state charter school systems in a more robust fashion. At the same time, it's clear that there is a lot of room for improvement over time. One complaint that's been raised, but that I don't share, is that some of the data points are a couple years old. I'm okay with that, because doing the best you can with the data you can get is part of the deal if you're doing this kind of work. And, since I think this kind of work is worth doing, c'est la vie...
That said, I do have three particular reservations/suggestions.
The first is that I'm always disappointed when charter rankings do nothing to examine the red tape and compliance burdens that are being imposed on a state's charter schools. Organizations from the World Bank to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce rank countries and states in terms of their openness to entrepreneurial activity. They measure how long it takes to open a new enterprise, how burdensome it is, and what costs are imposed along the way. Alongside measures of quality control like school closures and reading/math performance, I'd love to see the Alliance start to shed some light on this score.
The second is my discomfort with the notion of model "innovations." The report awards points if a larger share of a given state's charters was employing one of six practices: extended day, extended year, year-round calendar, school-to-work, independent study, and offering higher education courses. Now, I think these practices are all fine. And if I thought they worked consistently, or if just adopting them meant that kids would be better served, I guess I'd be fine with this. But I don't believe that's the case. Or, if charter schooling was about dictating a particular model of delivery, they'd be appropriate. But that's not the deal. Now, if this category was renamed something like "the National Alliance's preferred school practices," I'd be fine with it. But I get real uncomfortable with the notion that the National Alliance is issuing a report that judges the "innovativeness" of a state's charter schools based on how many comply with some punchlist of preferred practices. That can encourage subtle (and not-so-subtle) pressure on schools to adopt these practices and on authorizers to demand them, which strikes me as more consistent with comprehensive school reform or the School Improvement Grant model than the charter school bargain.
The third is my ongoing worry that we're defining school performance solely in terms of reading and math scores (and, occasionally, graduation rates). This is not how parents think about school quality. It's particularly bizarre for it to be the whole conversation about schools that are purposefully given the room to pursue their own path. Reading and math performance is a fine and useful measure, but charters ought to be leading the way in helping us think about other dimensions of performance--the share of students mastering world languages, passing AP exams, receiving IB diplomas, excelling on their state's science assessments, or what have you.
Now, let's be clear. These concerns are hardly unique to this report. Ziebarth and Bierlein Palmer have crafted a good and a valuable contribution. But I hope next year's version will rethink the innovation question and start taking some baby steps on the other stuff.
No. 2 U.S. education official heads for exit
The Washington Post
By Lyndsey Layton
October 1, 2014
Jim Shelton, the deputy secretary and second in command at the U.S. Department of Education, will resign his government job by the end of the year, department officials said Wednesday.
Shelton, 47, has held several posts at the department since joining the agency in 2009 and has had a significant influence over the agency’s policies. Shelton ran the department’s innovations program and was a force behind its Promise Neighborhoods, a grant program that gives “cradle to career” help to students in selected poor communities.
Shelton grew up in Washington, the son of a cab driver and a federal worker. He attended Gonzaga High School and won a full scholarship to Morehouse College , a historically black college in Atlanta. He earned a master’s degree in education and an MBA from Stanford University.
He worked at McKinsey & Company as a consultant and later at the New Schools Venture Fund, a non-profit venture fund that invests heavily in charter schools and educational technology companies. He also co-founded LearnNow, a charter school management company that was bought by Edison Schools.
Shelton also worked as a program director for education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation before joining the federal education department to work on issues of school choice and educational technology. The Gates Foundation has forged a close relationship with the U.S. Department of Education and Shelton was one of several people at the agency with ties to the foundation.
Critics of the department’s policies, including its promotion of charter schools and technology point to Shelton and other like-minded advisers to Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
In a statement, Duncan credited Shelton with molding much of his agency’s agenda.
“Jim has brought a profound understanding of how to encourage innovation to address some of the biggest challenges faced by our education system and, more broadly, our country,” Duncan said. “From developing and managing signature reform programs such as the Investing in Innovation fund and Promise Neighborhoods to being a key leader on the President’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative and strengthening the Department’s operations as deputy secretary, Jim has helped shape so much of this administration’s education policy, programs and strategy over the last five-and-a-half years. Jim has earned a break, and we’re so grateful to Jim for all he has contributed.”
Shelton is one of the last remaining of Duncan’s longtime advisers. There has been a steady exodus of other senior members of his policy team, including the architects of Duncan’s signature efforts: the Race to the Top competitive grant program and the waivers awarded to states to free them from No Child Left Behind.
And Duncan himself is one of only two original Obama Cabinet members to stay on the job; the other is Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
Authors visit D.C. schools to inspire young readers and writers
The Washington Post
By Michael Alison Chandler
October 6, 2014
Isabel Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, said she has traveled as far as Singapore, Alaska and the British Parliament to discuss her book about the migration of African Americans from the South. But she was especially excited to be talking to students at Cardozo Education Campus Monday morning, she said.
For Wilkerson, who grew up in Petworth and attended Roosevelt High School, coming to the school was like a return home.
“I can just see myself in each and every one of you,” she said.
She was there to talk about “The Warmth of Other Suns,” her 2010 narrative history that describes the paths that 6 million African Americans took north and West, through the stories of three people who lived it. Wilkerson interviewed more than 1,200 people during research that spanned 15 years.
“These were people who took pieces of themselves from home and remade themselves, so we could sit here and have access to things they never dreamed of,” she told the students.
The visit was organized by The Pen/Faulkner Foundation, which sponsors a Writers in Schools program that donates books of contemporary literature to the schools and arranges for the authors to visit. In all, 10 writers were scheduled to visit D.C. public schools Monday to talk about their books. Many of them are in town for the organization’s annual fundraiser Monday night.
Many of the students in the audience at the Cardozo media center had been reading her book in their classes.
They asked questions about how she did her research and how she selected the three people to focus on in the story.
One student, who immigrated from El Salvador when he was 13, asked, “How do you explain to a country that does not understand that migrating is not a sin but a necessity?”
She said migrants from all different places have a lot in common.
She talked about the resistance that African Americans met with when they left the south and settled in new cities and towns, through red-lining and discrimination.
“Why do people make the heartbreaking decision to leave everything they know?” She said. “They are coming for a reason, and they are not coming to fail.”
'Blended' Learning Shows Promising Results At D.C. Schools
WAMU
By Kavitha Cardoza
October 6, 2014
Some D.C. public schools using the "blended learning model" are seeing student test scores go up and suspensions go down.
At Randall Highlands Elementary School in Southeast D.C., fourth grade teacher Jarvis Gause just left the small group of readers he was working with for a moment, and he's checking in on another group wearing headphones, working quietly on computers.
There are different learning "stations" and these 9-year-olds rotate through all of them. It's part of the blended learning model, which blends teacher-led instruction and technology.
Principal Tracy Foster says even kindergartners at this school use computers to learn, but they have a picture password because they can't spell yet.
"We try to balance the technology with social interaction so we don't create a cohort of students who shuts out the world and tunes into a computer," Foster says.
The principal says she's seen a nine percent increase in math scores and an 11 percent increase in reading scores since they've implemented blended learning. She says teacher turnover is far lower this year and there haven't been any school suspensions. She attributes the change to how much more engaged students are with their school work.
Foster receives reports every day showing if students are just clicking through lessons on the computer or if teachers are not rotating student through different learning stations like they should. John Rice with DCPS Central Office says this model allows students to learn at their own pace.
"We have some kids that are reading at the eighth grade level, some kids that are reading at second grade level," Rice says. "How can I teach them all at one time? And the answer is you can't effectively. So by breaking the classroom into different groups, students can get the content they need, so that's a huge advantage."
Currently eight DCPS schools follow the blended learning model. School officials are hoping to expand the program to several more over the next year.