- CER, FOCUS, BAEO, and NAPCS file amicus brief in D.C. charter school lawsuit [FOCUS, Eagle Academy PCS, and Washington Latin PCS mentioned]
- What It Takes To Serve On A D.C. Charter School Board
- Obama to propose new student privacy legislation
- To improve schools, let teachers run them
CER, FOCUS, BAEO, and NAPCS file amicus brief in D.C. charter school lawsuit [FOCUS, Eagle Academy PCS, and Washington Latin PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
January 20, 2015
Today, the Center for Education Reform announced that it has filed an amicus brief along with Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, the Black Alliance for Educational Options, and the National Alliance for Public Schools last Friday in support of the lawsuit charging that D.C. charter schools are receiving inequitable funding compared to DCPS. The brief reinforces the contention by the D.C. Association of Chartered Public Schools, Eagle Academy PCS, and Washington Latin PCS that money for all public schools in the District of Columbia must come through the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula as is stated in the School Reform Act of 1995. They specifically argue against the position taken by then Attorney General Irvin Nathan and 14 other educational activists that District Home Rule permits the Mayor and D.C. Council to ignore laws governing the nation's capital.
Stated CER president Kara Kerwin about the amincus filing. "The School Reform Act was instituted to remedy systemic problems clearly evident in education in the District of Columbia. Public charter schools have proven they are an equal and vital partner in educating our students, and the full intent of the law must be adhered to accordingly for schools to deliver the promise of excellent education to all students."
The FOCUS coordinated lawsuit estimates that each year charters receive between $1,600 and $2,600 less per student compared to the regular schools.
What It Takes To Serve On A D.C. Charter School Board
WAMU
By Kavitha Cardoza
January 16, 2015
Nearly half of all D.C. children attend charter schools, which are publicly funded, free and open to all. Charters are also free from many of the regulations governing traditional public schools, and each one operates with plenty of autonomy and independence.
That means what happens at these schools — and there are about 100 of them — is shaped not by the city's schools chancellor or mayor, but by the individual boards that oversee them.
We spoke this week with Carrie Irvin, the head of Charter Board Partners. It's an education nonprofit that supports and promotes effective public charter school governance.
Is serving on a charter school board different from the usual stereotype of serving on a board?
Serving on a public charter school board is not I show up twice a year, I vote like the person next to me because he looks smart and then I go about my way and put it on my resume.
In this city, when the authorizer grants a charter, they grant it to the board, not to the school leader. Charter schools have budgets of 8, 10, 12 some as high as 25 million dollars. Our organization was founded so we could, in part, help board members understand what they need to be doing.
Is the “friends and family board” still an issue in D.C. charters?
The “friends and family” board is quite common throughout the non-profit sector. That’s not inherently a bad thing. Charter schools are founded around a compelling and inspiration vision so of course you want people around the table who share that vision. However there are several problems with “friends and family” boards.
First of all, they tend to share a lot in common so they look the same, they come from the same backgrounds very often and they bring very similar and overlapping skill sets. The other issue that we see is this issue of true independence and accountability. Sometimes the founder of the school or the leader of the school turns out not to have the right skill set or not be the best person suited to lead the school.
If you’re talking about a “friends and family” board, every single person was recruited personally by that school leader and that makes it nearly impossible frankly for the board to do what’s in the best interest of the school. When board members have been independently recruited, they’ve been recruited because of the mission and because of their skill set; it’s more likely that board will bring the clear thinking that is necessary to look out for the interests of the students.
What skill sets are important to have to serve on a charter school board?
There absolutely are there are resume skills that we need around every board. So finance, legal, education expertise but there are certain skills that have been overlooked in nonprofit governance, especially charter school governance.
For example, PR and Communications. We have 60 charter schools in D.C. They have to attract families they have to attract teachers, they have to attract funds. So every charter school really has to distinguish themselves in this crowded marketplace.
Secondly the charter school board employs the head of school. The board itself is responsible for monitoring the progress of that leader and again, if necessary, replacing that leader. It’s really helpful to have someone with Human Resources expertise on the board.
But again, the other thing is the non-resume skills, temperament, motivation, these characteristics of board members are really the glue that hold the whole thing together. So we try to put together boards that can really come together like high functioning teams.
Should charter school boards be responsible in cases of financial and academic failures?
I believe yes. That is the power of independent governance is that there is accountability. You don’t see companies that are doing a terrible job and there boards just say “it’s hard, they’ll be fine.” We want the kind of results orientation and insisting on excellence that we see in other sectors and that we see in the best charter schools.
Do charter school board make mistakes? What types?
Probably the biggest and saddest mistake is that we really have run across more board members than I like to say who actually don’t believe that children living in poverty or children of color cannot achieve at the highest levels. If that’s coming from the top, what can we expect?
Another big mistake we see, focusing on the wrong things. We worked with a school a few years ago, very low performing. And the board was very focused on finding a permanent facility. Not that that’s not important but at that time that was not the most important thing. You can move to another building and the culture problems and the instructions problems will continue. So we really helped that board refocus on what was most important, which is always student achievement. So we do see boards focusing on the more concrete challenges that have a beginning, middle and end and so of a right answer.
We also see a lot of boards that are not data-driven. When you have a school leader that does not trust her board they’re much less likely to be candid and proactive about the problems. There might be mounting evidence that the test scores are declining but instead of bringing that to the board for fear of being penalized the school leader will come and tell anecdote. The third-grader who played in a city wide violin competition and we tell our boards that anecdotes are not a substitute for data.
Same with financial data. “Oh, I don’t know a lot about financial stuff but Joe does. He’s an accountant and I’m sure he’s got a handle on everything.” Not everybody on the board needs to be a CPA, but it is the fiduciary responsibility of every single board member to truly understand the finances. We’ve seen instances in this city where board members say, “well, I didn’t know that.” That cannot be an excuse.
Obama to propose new student privacy legislation
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
January 19, 2015
President Obama is planning to propose new federal legislation to safeguard student privacy, a move that comes as new classroom technologies gather sensitive personal information about children in order to deliver personalized lessons.
“We’re saying that data collected on students in the classroom should only be used for educational purposes — to teach our children, not to market to our children,” Obama said last week in a speech previewing several cybersecurity measures he is expected to discuss in Tuesday’s State of the Union address.
The White House has not publicized details of the proposed legislation, called the Student Digital Privacy Act, saying only that it will be modeled on a California law that passed last year and is considered the toughest among a raft of new state laws that address the issue of securing student data.
“This is a huge step forward,” said James Steyer, chief executive of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit child advocacy group that played a key role in lobbying for the California law. “You cannot use technology for learning in classrooms across America unless you have adequate student privacy protections.”
Under the California measure, companies may not target students with advertising based on data collected at school, nor may they sell student data for non-educational purposes. Both houses of the state legislature voted unanimously to pass it, bolstering Steyer’s hopes for its prospects even in gridlocked Washington.
“This is truly a bipartisan issue,” Steyer said.
But some members of the $8 billion educational technology industry have expressed reservations about the Student Digital Privacy Act, saying it is unnecessary.
And some privacy advocates argue that it doesn’t go far enough.
Parents have become increasingly concerned about their children’s privacy as schools have turned toward software programs and other classroom technologies that collect student data, including disability status, disciplinary incidents and academic performance. Last year, parent protests and lawsuits around the country helped shut down inBloom, a high-profile nonprofit group that sought to streamline student data collection and sharing in the cloud in order to help schools and companies create new classroom tools.
Leonie Haimson, a New York activist who was among those leading the charge against inBloom, said the California legislation is filled with loopholes. Haimson said parents want to be notified when their children’s data are being collected, and they want to have the right to opt out. The California legislation — and presumably Obama’s federal bill — does not require parental notification and consent.
“We see this as a very weak proposal, actually, and it doesn’t stop a lot of what we were concerned about,” Haimson said.
A ban on selling data, except for educational reasons, is “incredibly vague,” she said. “We don’t want student info sold for any reason without parental consent.”
The California legislation does not prohibit states from building warehouses of student data with the aid of federal stimulus funds. Those databases track students throughout their school careers, creating a trove of information meant to help teachers, administrators and policymakers make decisions to improve student achievement.
Obama’s proposal has drawn a cool reaction from industry representatives. Mark Schneiderman, senior director of education policy for the Software and Information Industry Association, said a federal law would introduce another layer of regulation atop a patchwork of state laws, creating a confusing environment for ed-tech companies.
“We clearly take student privacy and data protection absolutely seriously, and we need to get it right,” Schneiderman said. “But we don’t want to create a chilling effect out there on the use of technology in our schools because it’s become too hard to get through all the hoops.”
Rather than dealing with a new federal law, the software trade group is pushing companies to sign a voluntary pledge to protect student privacy. Obama hailed the pledge, which has been signed by more than 75 companies, including Microsoft and Apple, as “the right thing to do.” Google signed the pledge after Obama’s announcement last week.
Some large technology and publishing companies, such as Amazon.com and Pearson, have not signed the pledge. Amazon — whose chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, owns The Washington Post — did not respond to a request for comment on Obama’s proposal. A spokesman for Pearson, which is the world’s largest book publisher and also has several education-related businesses, said the company cannot comment until more specifics are released.
To improve schools, let teachers run them
The Washington Post
By David Osborne
January 16, 2015
Walk through a typical public school, and you see students, sitting in rows of identical desks, listening to teachers talk. Unless the teacher is particularly inspiring, half of the students are zoning out. This isn’t just a problem for teachers, half of whom leave the profession within their first five years. It’s also a problem for their pupils: Disengaged teenagers do not make the best students.
Now imagine if students were instead encouraged to work on projects they chose: building robots, writing plays, researching why bees are dying off by the millions.
When teachers run their own schools, they often make such changes. “We’re competing against Xbox 360, and over-scheduled days with soccer practices and very dynamic lives,” says Kartal Jaquette, one of 10 teachers who run the Denver Green School. “Are you almost as interesting as a video game? Are you getting almost as much attention as a soccer coach might? Is it as much fun? Because if not, they’re going to tune you out.”
Teachers are in charge of at least 70 public schools in 15 states; most, but not all, are charter schools. Ten more teacher-run schools, including one in Maryland’s Prince George’s County, are in the planning stages. These schools are not only redesigning the learning process to better engage students, they’re improving student performance. On top of that, they’re stemming the high dropout rate among teachers.
Studies show that the average teacher reaches maximum effectiveness after about five years in the classroom. When nearly half of all teachers leave the profession within five years, we are losing talent we desperately need.
There are many reasons for this high dropout rate. But in my years researching education, the complaint I’ve heard from teachers most often is: “They treat us like children.” Polls bear this out: Last spring, Gallup reported that of 12 professions, teachers were the least likely to agree that “at work, my opinions seem to count.”
Most teachers have no say in their schools’ decisions about hiring, promotions, firing, budgets, pay levels, curriculum or scheduling. This lack of control is a big reason they leave the profession, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s Richard Ingersoll, who studies teacher retention.
By contrast, consider the Avalon School, a charter middle and high school in St. Paul, Minn., which opened in 2001. A converted warehouse with high ceilings and exposed pipes, Avalon looks more like a loft space for artists than a public school. Two lead teachers share most of the school’s administrative duties, but all decisions — curriculum, schedule, salaries — are made by the entire group of 28. They meet two mornings a week, marching through each agenda item in a matter of minutes.
“I have a lot of friends in more traditional models,” says Tim Quealy, who teaches math, technology and language arts at Avalon. “They are just told what to do — some big binder lands on their desk, and their days are scripted. They feel very isolated.”
Avalon has committees that handle specific duties: personnel, technology, special education. Every year teachers evaluate one another on each other on four questions: What are their contributions? What are their greatest strengths and skills? What is some constructive feedback? And how confident are you in their overall performance? Parents and students also evaluate teachers, using different questions. If problems surface, the personnel committee appoints a fellow teacher to mentor his or her struggling colleague. If that fails, the group lets the teacher go, which appears to happen more often when teachers are in charge than it does in traditional public schools.
Having more control keeps teachers and students more engaged. Avalon’s high schoolers can take math, biology, physics and Spanish classes, but they spend the majority of their time on projects of their own choosing, with guidance from teachers to ensure that they master state standards. Such a heavy reliance on independent projects is typical of teacher-run schools, according to Kim Farris-Berg and Edward Dirkswager, who studied 11 of them for their 2012 book, “Trusting Teachers With School Success: What Happens When Teachers Call the Shots .”
When I spoke with Avalon students, it was obvious they were immersed in their own educations. One girl I met had adapted a book into a play and directed it when she was in ninth grade. Another wrote an interactive murder mystery and produced it with a classmate, raising $200 for their prom through ticket sales. A senior boy cooked six meals from different periods of American history. While the teachers ate, he explained the context for each one: that one consisted entirely of beans because it was for slaves, why there was no salt in another meal and so on.
When projects don’t cover all related state standards, teachers — who work more as coaches than instructors — intervene. One student, concerned by the mass die-offs of bees, did a project on bees rather than take biology. He researched threats to bees; visited beekeepers, apiaries and a state bee lab; and listened to TED talks on the subject. Once he was done, his teacher, Jo Sullivan, identified the state standards on water and carbon cycles he had missed, asked him to research them, then required him to demonstrate mastery.
Every sophomore and junior must do a major project. And to graduate, seniors must complete a 300-hour project, working with an expert from the wider community, and present it to the entire school. “This model is empowering to both the student, because they get to pick what they learn about, and to the teachers,” Sullivan says.
Teacher retention, on a year-to-year basis, averages 95 percent at Avalon, according to lead teacher Carrie Bakken. That’s higher than typical rates in St. Paul district schools, and about 10 percentage points higher than the national average in urban schools.
Charter schools in St. Paul get 24 percent less money per child than district schools, and 40 percent of Avalon’s students have a learning disability. (The project-based approach is well-suited for special education.) Still, Avalon outperforms the St. Paul average on most standardized tests and the state average on some. And its teachers value other measures more, such as the quality of senior projects. In a survey of about 125 graduates, 74 percent were in a post-secondary program or had completed one, and 88 percent agreed that their senior project had helped prepare them.
There are many different teacher-run models; some schools have principals, but teachers make the key decisions, even selecting the principal. Denver Green School (DGS), an “innovation school” with charter-like autonomy that opened in 2010, is a teacher partnership, organized much like a law or consulting firm.
Three lead partners spend most of their time on administration, while still teaching one class a day. But decisions are made by all 10 partners. In addition to fairly full teaching loads, the other seven partners each take charge of one area, such as hiring or professional development. The other 32 teachers are employees who can join the partnership if invited.
Though its students are younger than Avalon’s — pre-K through eighth grade — DGS also relies on student projects more than most other schools. Students tend an organic garden on campus, which provides about 80 pounds of food a week to the school cafeteria from August through October. The day before I visited, the sixth grade put on a harvest festival, during which they reaped the produce and offered organic foods from the garden. While preparing, they read a teenage version of Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” plus a book about a Cleveland urban landscape that was turned into an organic garden.
All the project work is connected to their classwork. In science class, for instance, the sixth-graders had been studying the water cycle, from rain and snow falling in the Rockies to rivers running out to the sea and evaporating. They then evaluated the use of drip irrigation in the garden and determined that it saved 1 million gallons of water a year, compared with when the building was vacant and the district was watering weeds.
One year, teacher Kartal Jaquette’s second-grade class counted every light in the building, as part of a math project to find out where energy was being wasted. They measured the lumens coming from each light, as well as from mini-skylights, or solar tubes. Using graphs and charts, they figured out which lights they could unscrew. Then they designed a monitoring system, with a student “light sheriff” to make sure that every classroom had enough light but didn’t waste energy. Their recommendations, according to lead partner Frank Coyne, saved $1,200 and 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year.
Though DGS prioritizes project-based learning over test prep, its academic results are strong. In ratings of academic achievement at all Denver schools, compiled by the district, DGS is in the second-highest of five categories, “meets expectations.” Teachers who consistently weave projects into their lessons produce some of the school’s highest test scores. Last year, 26 percent of Jaquette’s third-graders tested proficient and 60 percent tested advanced in math. In a school where 60 percent of students are low-income, half are minorities and 27 percent are English-language learners, that is a home run. “There’s not another school with that demographic [in the city] who had that level” of proficiency, he adds.
The advocacy group Education Evolving, which just published a guide to creating teacher-run schools, released a poll of teachers and members of the public last year that illustrates why the idea is spreading. After hearing a description of teacher-run schools, 78 percent of teachers surveyed liked the idea. More than half of non-teacher respondents were “very interested” in seeing one in their community, and one in five teachers wanted to implement the idea immediately. Interestingly, those sentiments didn’t change among union members.
The biggest obstacles to the spread of teacher-run schools are school districts’ central rules, most of which make it impossible to use unusual personnel configurations, alter budgets and make myriad other changes the teacher-run model demands. That’s why so many teacher-run schools are charters — they need autonomy to organize as they please.
Many union leaders love the teacher-run model as much as they hate charters. They constantly argue that teachers should be treated as professionals, and there is no more professional model than a teacher-run school. In Minnesota, in fact, the Federation of Teachers has created an organization to authorize teacher-run charters. In that state, and perhaps in others, this model might carve out some islands of truce in the war between unions and charters.
More important, in an era of resistance to tax increases, most districts can’t solve their teacher-retention problems by raising salaries. Handing teachers more control is probably our best shot at keeping more quality teachers in the classroom.