Thoughts: Charter Schools Teach Us That We Are Human

On the tails of the last post, a few comments:

Richard Kahlenburg, in his post in the NYTimes, says the following:

Scholars have discovered that success stories like KIPP are unrepresentative.Stanford University researchers, backed by pro-charter school funders, found that nationally, only 17 percent of charter schools outperform comparable public schools, and 37 percent underperform. 

I find such citations vexing to say the least. The average reader is not going to follow through in looking up the Stanford study, but this is what the study has to say on the matter (it's much more nuanced than Mr. Kahlenburg allows):

It is important to note that the news for charter schools has some encouraging facets. In our nationally pooled sample, two subgroups fare better in charters than in the traditional system: students in poverty and ELL students. This is no small feat. In these cases, our numbers indicate that charter students who fall into these categories are outperforming their TPS counterparts in both reading and math. These populations, then, have clearly been well served by the introduction of charters into the education landscape. These findings are particularly heartening for the charter advocates who target the most challenging educational populations or strive to improve education options in the most difficult communities.

So let me condense: Charter schools that target average populations of students tend to fare less well than their traditional counterparts. The dip is not massive, but it is important. However, charter schools designed to do exactly what most people believe traditional schools are failing to do, that is, serve English Language Learner populations and the children of the poor, tend to do very well indeed. 

That charter schools are necessarily good at teaching kids in the middle is important to note for many who for some reason (they tend not to have a lot of actual K-12 teaching experience) think that charter schools are some kind of silver bullet. As I've commented before, I am in no way convinced that charter schools are by their nature better models than traditional schools (in short, they tend to only remove inorganic [ read system induced] problems in education, not actually be a better vehicle for teaching in and of themselves). Yet despite all this, charter schools are successful at doing things the traditional schools are often failing at. 

That there are charters out there failing (and that even a large number of them are failing) is in no way surprising to me. We've got to stop thinking policy vehicles are what is going to change our schools (we also have to realize that even good policy vehicles used indiscriminately, as it appears the certification of some of these charter schools has been, will fail for the simple reason that people fail). 


Properly constructed policy vehicles may be a great arrow in the quiver for broad reform, but what we should really be doing is go to these top performing traditional schools and top performing charter schools and find out what the best practices and approaches are that are making them so successful. Then look to finding ways to induce and foster these same kinds of results. My word choice there is important, because it's going to look a lot less like the mandates and AYP of No Child Left Behind and more like creatively thinking of ways to get schools to want to change their calcified methods, to get teachers to want to constantly improve and better their instruction, and to get more people who would thrive in such a teaching and administrative environment to want to go into education for the long haul. 

Education Enters Into Public Square Limelight

How long will it last? Who knows, especially with healthcare, financial reform, jobs bills, etc taking up so much of the current public discussion. According to my count, the announcement of President Obama's educational blueprint to reshape No Child Left Behind took up headline space for all of 4 hours (tops) at the New York Time website on Monday. But regardless of whether the media and the public ultimately has the interest or the will power to keep a healthy debate going on education (emphasis on healthy), there are some interesting things afoot. I do not have enough time to go into detail with all of them, but here are links of note:

TNR's education symposium, starring Diane Ravitch. Will comment on this as soon as I've waded through the data and better formulated my thoughts.

Broad preliminary sketch of Obama's new education plan. Anybody been able to locate a source with actual details?

Another good education debate, on charter schools.

Defending Defending

The recent upsurge in debate about whether Justice Dept. lawyers will be able to serve their country unbiasedly (brought to our attention by the so-called "Keep America Safe" organization) after representing alleged al-Qaeda terrorists plays at a much deeper level than just foreign policy or partisan politics.
Stephen Jones, a man not unfamiliar with unpopular clients, contributed an important perspective to the discussion this past Saturday (see essay).
In sum, Jones asserts that the tenor of Cheney's attack is out of step with our country's founding principles (John Adams famously represented British soldiers, i.e. foreign enemies, in the Boston Massacre) and that underneath its surface lies the implication that these lawyers believe in their clients' cause(s).
However, Jones doesn't stop there. What is at the root of these accusations is a belief that is not reserved simply for lawyers representing enemy combatants, but lawyers representing any despicable client (or better said, clients who have committed despicable acts). As alluring as it is to proclaim judgment on the obviously (or seemingly?) guilty rather than to give them their day in court, we must as rational, cautious people pursue the process in earnest on both sides.
Over the course of the next month or so I will offer various reasons why this is important and ultimately necessary.
For the moment, I'd simply recommend the Jones reading to whet your appetite.

Links: The Double Edge of Law

Amid the Cheney/Kristol tempest (in brief: They slammed the Justice Department over current Department lawyers who previously went out of their way to provide counsel for terror suspects), Julian Sanchez makes a much need point: bad guys make good law. 

(Hat tip: Matthew Yglesias)

Links: In Switzerland, hunters and anglers breathe easy...

An interesting possibility: here.

And then a summary rejection: here.

OF NOTE: the ad hominem slippery slope of moral equivalency (three fallacies in one):

The case emerged after a local newspaper photo showed the fisherman proudly showing off the four-foot-long fish—a scene that, to Mr. Goetschel, was reminiscent of a safari hunter with his foot perched on the head of a dead lion. "It is this Hemingway thinking," he says. "Why should this be legal when other animals have to be slaughtered in a humane way?"


To be clear, I'm very much in support of certain animal rights restrictions and regulations (would it be so bad a thing if you had to get a license to own a dog or cat?). But this kind of thinking has to be done in a philosophically honest and legally restrained manner. More on this later...

Thoughts, Links, and Questions: Charter School Drama in New York City...

Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution weighs in on Harlem state senator Bill Perkins's opposition to charter schools in his area.

The NYT's coverage of the issue is here. 

I tend to support charter schools. They seem to cut through a lot of the red tape of effectively running a school, allow for much needed innovation in teaching, and, most importantly, allow the principals and teachers to create a focused and high-octane school culture. Also, per Tabarrok's analysis above, the fact that many of them are successful at improving student proficiency is not much in question.

But I do wonder about the long-term problems of the charter school solution. The ability for culture-creation and effective systems management are, to my mind, the big plusses of the charter school movement. With that in mind, some questions:

1. What happens when, in say New York City, the educational landscape becomes dominated by charter schools? Part of the advantage of charter schools is that students, and often parents, must buy in to a school's culture and contract in order to attend. Often they can be kicked out for repeatedly failing to do so, which creates a reasonable negative feedback mechanism that has the benefit of mirroring the real life situations at companies, colleges, and so forth that the schools are trying to prepare students for. But what happens when there are no more charter schools for a seriously troubled student to attend? Will non-charters become repositories for such students?

2. On the tail of that last question, with an increasing number of charter schools siphoning off high-risk students that can be successfully assimilated into a rigorous academic program within a certain norm, what will/should the school model for the highest-of-the-high-risk students be? This begins to get into the inclusion vs. isolation debate still quite current in education today. More on that later.

3. Are we looking at an eventual tier-ing of schools? Will these charter schools begin to naturally sort out as some get a reputation for exceptional excellence and the applications to these schools increase? You can imagine that even if administrators try to keep an even spread of students, some students and their parents will begin to self-select schools by only applying to some and not others.  Or will there be measures to prevent this? Will this be such a bad thing?

4. As with any "movement" of its kind, how many of these successful schools are built around the personalities of a few core members? What happens when these people move on?

5. What happens if, 10-15 years down the road, charter schools themselves start to flag and fail? Is there something built-in to the charter school phenomenon in and of itself that long-term is better than traditional schools? Or are they more attractive right now because they fix only immediate (if still pressing) problems?

More on Teach For America

OF NOTE: For a great blow-by-blow response to some of the statistics out there people are citing against Teach For America, read this article. Good throughout.

Teachers Getting Fired...

Rhode Island's continued controversy. A pretty good overview. 

I agree that mass firings are not necessarily productive. They also have the risk of backfiring and damaging the credibility of good ideas (teacher accountability, tenure-reform), should the turn-around not be as quick as public opinion would like (again, this is what I suspect is happening with some of the ideas Ravitch is going back against). The truth is, however, that the plan to hire back 50% of the teachers at a school like Central Falls is, more than likely, too generous (I say this per the corporate-inspired logic that many of these style reforms are based upon). There is rarely a 1 to 1 ratio of good to bad teachers in failing schools such as this, at least not as any private company would evaluate "good" and "bad" in terms of the performance of their employees.

But that, perhaps, is just the point. We're not in a private sector situation here, and while I, personally, support the influx of more market force into education to some degree, the reality is that in a community collaborative and contracted process such as public education, the system has failed these teachers just as much as the teachers have failed the system.

In a private sector situation, this wouldn't really matter. The company needs to mind its bottom line and has the power and the moral right to lay off employees at whatever rate necessary, regardless if the company has found itself in this situation in part because of its own mismanagement. Company A has underperforming employees and massive benefit responsibilities, so Company A lays off the bad employees, takes the severance package hit, then hires back better trained and higher performing employees and eventually returns to profitability.

In education, however, we run into a different situation, because (ideas of commonwealth and community contract aside) the simple fact is that the same system that installed and failed to train these underperforming teachers into schools like Central Falls is the one that has taught and trained the teachers that will replace them. The teacher market is simply not that dynamic. Especially when it comes to the top-notch-teachers-of-severely-disadvantaged-students market. New blood may give the feeling of a new start, but unless the system dramatically reassesses its end of the bargain it will be, after some perhaps modest improvements, back to the same old thing.

On that note, I enjoyed this comment: “Actually preparing teachers to work in high-needs schools is a bold move, but it’s something we often don’t do." This from Barnett Berry, the head of a North Carolina think tank called the Center for Teaching Quality. I won't pick on Mr. Berry for this, but just end with this comment: Bold? A bold move? It is a sad state of affairs when bold action for the leaders of our public education sector would look like Management 101 in any business course in any college nation wide. 

Links and Thoughts: Education

Most of my posts for the time being will be focused on education. Some links:

From what I know thus far, I like this guy: click here.  See Ezra Klein's interview with him here. We need more folks in congress with experience in reforming education on the ground level.

Diane Ravitch's new book, in which she goes back on just about everything she's ever championed in education. Without having read it (yet) I would venture this: education policy is no place for experimenting with ideology (it has been, largely, over the past few decades of the culture wars), but that does not mean that certain models that came of Ravitch's group are not worth following through with. Probably because things like charter schools and school choice (note, I'm not saying school vouchers), are less about ideology than good sense.

The New York Times's education section has a number of newish articles of interest:

Protecting students against abuse.

Unintelligent white teachers.

NCLB: Okay, ladies and gentlemen, let's see what we can do. (Most notably, from Rep. Kline of Minnesota: “Starting with a blank piece of paper is absolutely the right process." Yes, please, by all means.)

First Post and Explanation

This blog does not pretend to be anything other than what it is: a blog by a soon-to-be former teacher and soon-to-be-current law student wrestling with issues in law, theology, education, and culture. I claim no great expertise (what expertise I have, let it stand for itself) and reserve all rights to change my opinions as my understanding deepens and broadens over time (with the help of you, surely, my constructive readers and commentators).

That said, this blog does have concrete goals, and unsubstantiated commentary is not one of them. I will endeavor to be self-critical and open, but also honest and relentless in pursuit of good ideas and constructive critiques that go beyond sound bites and spin. If you, in your commentary on this blog, repeatedly breach the norms of productive civil discourse, I will delete your comments and ban you from the site. There are other blogs out there that encourage partisan soap-boxing; I'm sure you will find your home somewhere. Go in peace.

NOW, for the good stuff: Law, Theology, Education, Culture. Leaving economics aside (I got as far as macro-econ 101 at Vanderbilt), these to me make up some of the pillars of society. Or at least they're really, really important. I'm interested in the way that they shape our lives and, more particularly, how they each interrelate to the others. If you are too, then welcome.

Without going into (much) further detail, let me just say that the title of this blog captures its modus operandi best--if there is any hope for us in the long run, it will be grounded upon this simple fact: the world we live in is the world we build ourselves each day. We have collective and individual power to change culture, politics, education, and the state of faith in America. We build this city. There is nothing incredible romantic meant by that statement--building and changing is very, very hard business. But if we conceive of this local, national, and (increasingly) global society of ours as a living breathing thing, created and formed anew each new day, we realize that the world we live in is one we collectively each second will into existence. Willing, then, does perhaps contain the way...