Posts Tagged ‘
Charter schools ’
I like to ask my fourth graders what college they are planning to attend. Of course, they think I’m asking them if they are a Duck or a Beaver. I am really serious about this though. Kids and parents need to know that some sort of post high school education is the goal for all Oregon kids.
This economy has taught us all that education is vital. Economists can debate whether current unemployment is cyclical, a downturn that will rebound, or structural, a result of a tipping of economic needs away from low skilled labor to the need for a more educated workforce. Whatever the case, the jobs of the future will require more advanced math skills and the ability to quickly master new skills. We can’t have kids think that ending their education after high school is an option that will lead to future financial security.
Since post secondary education is a necessity, I like to peruse the web in search of what college prep schools are doing. What are charter school expectations? What are elite schools doing for their students? I checked in with the Dalton School (NYC) to see what their fourth graders will be doing. The Dalton School has a $38,000 price tag and 60 staff for approximately 350 students. It may sound unfair but graduates from these schools will be competing with my students to get into top colleges. Their 4th graders have an hour and half of homework a night and an extensive reading list. We should expect our public school kids to have the same. We should also expect families to realize this new reality and do what it takes to support a more vigorous program and to expect their child to attend college.
In looking further I found charter schools in low income areas with graduates in elite colleges. This week the New York Times reported about efforts in Houston public schools to replicate effective charter schools like KIPP and Harlem Children’s Zone where a high percentage of graduates head to college (“Troubled Schools Try Mimicking the Charters” Sept. 6).
I really appreciate these charters for showing us what is possible. It’s too easy to look at impoverished neighborhoods and think that kids there can’t make it at competitive colleges. With concerted effort effective charter schools are cranking out the productive citizens of the future from some of the least productive neighborhoods.
In the article the author cited the 5 common policies of effective charters.
- longer school days and years;
- more rigorous and selective hiring of principals and teachers;
- frequent quizzes whose results determine what needs to be retaught;
- “high-dosage tutoring”;
- and a “no excuses” culture.
The policies that public school teachers like me can control are limited. Without more support staff, high dosage tutoring is out. Without a better funding structure we are severely limited in the amount of instructional time we can give kids. For example, KIPP kids typically get twice as much math instruction as public school kids. Even the Texas schools mimicking the model of KIPP fell short by 300 hours of instructional time (50 6 hr school days).
My colleagues and I are working hard to tailor instruction to meet individual needs through data collection and targeted standards-based instruction. Along with this comes a beefed-up “no excuses” culture.
Teachers will continue to look at research and mimic what works. Meanwhile, we’ll look to the citizens of this state to fill in the other requirements on the list. How will we provide more instructional time? How will we mobilize tutors to target failing students? When will we start showing kids in Oregon that they are important, and give them the tools they need to make college an attainable goal?
Category:
education achievement gap, education reform, equity, research, student achievement |
2 Comments »
Tags: Charter schools, college readiness, high school graduation, KIPP
Marc Tucker, in his recent report, “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants” made some strident observations about education reform in the United States, and after spending some time with it, I’d like to explore some of his proposals over the next few blog posts.
For those who haven’t had the opportunity to read the entire report, the Chalkboard team offered a summary in their recent Research Update. In short, Tucker is the head of the National Center on Education and the Economy, and crafted this report after a summit of various education ministers from around the globe. Commissioned by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the summit sought to investigate what the “best” nations were doing well in order to learn how to improve our beleaguered education system in the U.S.
This particular document drew some interesting conclusions—in fact, I found myself startled at some of Tucker’s claims. One was the ineffectiveness of charter schools as a means of true reform. Tucker feels that the gains made by charters are too sporadic and, ultimately, these schools are more prone to fail than succeed. I appreciated the insight since two of my children are educated in Portland charter schools.
(more…)
Category:
career paths for teachers, education reform, research, teacher compensation |
26 Comments »
Tags: Charter schools, education reform, international education systems, research, school choice, teacher compensation
Let’s say you have a very smart child, and you live in Portland, Oregon. You want your child to be challenged and encouraged, and given every opportunity to reach his highest potential. What are your options?
First of all, let me say that I realize I’m hardly the one who should be writing this post. I am just a parent, and in many ways I feel like I’m just peering in through the windows of a house, wondering how many bedrooms there really are. But here is what I see, and if there is more out there I hope that someone from PPS will let us all know.
First of all, there is the ACCESS program:
If your child tests in the 99th percentile in verbal or math skills, you can enroll him in the ACCESS program that is housed at Sabin school in Northeast Portland. (If you have an older sibling in the program already, then only the 90th percentile is required for entry.) The program used to run grades 1-8, but this year seems to have been cut back to grades 2-8. And once your child reaches high school, it’s back to business as usual, which means that PPS can’t even guarantee access to AP classes for academically qualified students.
As far as I know, there are no other TAG programs anywhere in Portland Public Schools. Is that not unbelievable?
So, what if your bright little guy (or gal) is a first child, and is only 95th percentile?
The options, as far as I was able to discover for myself, are roughly as follows: (more…)
Category:
parent involvement, Student Success, teaching strategies |
6 Comments »
Tags: Charter schools, classroom tactics, inspiration, learning styles, student engagement
Waiting for Superman is a powerful reminder that children and parents care about their own education. By choosing to focus on several children and their families, the director Davis Guggenheim translates large data sets about school and child failure into personal stories. The two former elementary teachers, present teacher educators, who attended the film with me, were in tears at its end. (Even this hardened secondary teacher’s eyes were moist!) All three of us are familiar with the statistics, with the arguments of the policy makers, with the demands from our own constituency to send them better prepared teachers; those numbers and demands are never as convincing as seeing the effects of bad policies and unresponsive schools.
And it is just that manipulation of our emotions through the struggles of five students and their search for better schools that worries the film’s critics. They know that tugging on heart strings will get a greater response than, for example, Deborah Meier’s argument in the October 27, 2010 Education Week. She says that, instead of blaming “‘lazy’ teachers and power-hungry unions” (p. 12), Guggenheim might rather illustrate the issues between the wealthy and the poor that allow people like him to escape the public schools. Her exposing an obvious, but still extant, problem is important. It does not, however, resonate as much as hearing the story of Bianca whose mother can no longer afford the small tuition of a Catholic school and hopes the public, free charter school is the answer.
I am a great admirer of Meier and certainly agree that our country’s acceptance of the wealth gap is a disgrace. Her own response to that gap was to start her own successful alternative school in Harlem; she is certainly familiar with the stories in the film. Those stories bring us closer to the problem than any kind of lecture on the problem: poverty, systems’ failures, bad teachers, unions. I often have to counter my student teachers’ comments that a lot of parents just don’t care. These novices reflect the beliefs of some other teachers who, working under demanding circumstances, feel a loss of effectiveness. That loss of self-efficacy often turns into scape-goating – parents are a natural target. This film might work to counteract that response.
Unless….unless we decide to focus on the film’s deficiencies: (more…)
Category:
education reform, parent involvement, Student Success, Teacher advocacy |
4 Comments »
Tags: activism, Charter schools, education reform, parent involvement, student achievement, Teacher advocacy
I received a call this week from a concerned mother in our local school district. I listened as she described the issues her 10 year old son has been having in school. His struggles are all too familiar to our family and many more. He’s falling behind, he’s been bullied and he’s so discouraged and school is so overwhelming that he wants to quit. I wish I could say this is the first of these types of calls that I’ve received, but unfortunately it’s not. In the last two years alone I’ve received over a dozen of calls similar to this.
Without fail, every parent that calls me has one question: What are the educational choices available for my child? Much like our family, most of these parents simply cannot afford private schools or a tutor. The school their child must attend has been chosen by the district because of where they live, and is not determined by the needs or abilities the child has.
We had to make a very difficult decision two years ago. That decision was whether to keep my son in a school where he was slipping farther on daily basis or change schools. We didn’t even know where to start, or what choices we had. The more we searched, the more we realized how limited our choices really were. As I mentioned previously, finances kept us from choosing private schools, homeschooling seemed so overwhelming (even though I have dozens of friends who do it remarkably well), and there wasn’t a single charter school within 30 miles of our home. Was there anything else? (more…)
Category:
education reform, parent involvement, Student Success |
5 Comments »
Tags: Charter schools, education reform, Oregon schools, parent involvement
Kaaren Heikes is the Executive Director of the Northwest Center for Educational Options. NWCEO serves as the state charter school association in Oregon. Their mission is to collaboratively create and advocate for the development, operation, sponsorship, and accountability of quality public charter schools throughout the Pacific Northwest.
This is the second post in a two-part series on Charter Schools in Oregon. Read the first post here: http://blog.chalkboardproject.org/education-reform/charter-schools-in-oregon-an-overview/
Charter funding
Oregon’s charter school law entitles charter school students to a percentage of the State School Fund, but does not entitle them to any other public funding. Charter school leaders and advocates have long been painfully aware of the funding inequity that charter school students experience. In order to determine the precise level of disparity, NWCEO commissioned a study this past spring. Using only data from the Oregon Department of Education’s financial database and analyzing only public (not private) funds, the study found that:
- The State School Fund (SSF) accounts for only 69% of the public funds that public schools receive.
- Charter school students in Kindergarten through 8th grade receive 80% of the SSF (i.e., 80% of 69%) and charter school students in 9th-12th grade receive 95% of the SSF (i.e., 95% of the 69%).
- On average, charters receive 55% of the revenue per student that districts receive; charters in large districts receive only 49%!
- Overall, charter students accounted for 2.73% of the student population in Oregon in 2008/2009, but only 1.51% of the total public K-12 funding.
- Charter revenue per student varies significantly by district.
- The public funds allocated at the state level for charter school students goes out to districts; it does not remain at the state level, so charter schools do not “save the taxpayers money.” (more…)
Category:
education achievement gap, education reform, parent involvement, Teacher advocacy |
1 Comment »
Tags: Charter schools, collaborative culture, school funding
Kaaren Heikes is the Executive Director of the Northwest Center for Educational Options. NWCEO serves as the state charter school association in Oregon. Their mission is to collaboratively create and advocate for the development, operation, sponsorship, and accountability of quality public charter schools throughout the Pacific Northwest.
This is the first post in a two-part series on Charter Schools in Oregon
What is a charter school?
A charter school is a public school, operated by a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, nonprofit corporation; typically started by a group of parents, teachers and/or community members as a semi-autonomous school of choice, authorized by a school district, established to provide innovative, flexible and creative educational choices for students and their parents.
Charter schools operate under a charter—performance-based contract—between the charter school board and the board of its sponsoring district. Public charter schools are subject to most laws pertaining to school district public schools, although they have much more flexibility of the “means” (structure and strategies) to get to the “ends” (high academic outcomes—state content standards, state assessments, and state report cards all apply to charter schools). Charters enjoy this flexibility and quasi-autonomy in exchange for extremely high levels of accountability; charters experience more scrutiny than other public schools, as well as more instability—an initial charter agreement lasts a maximum of five years and if a charter fails to produce academic results or to meet other terms in its charter, its sponsor may non-renew or close it.
How did charter schools get started in Oregon? (more…)
Category:
education achievement gap, education reform, parent involvement, student achievement |
No Comments »
Tags: Charter schools, education reform, parent involvement, student achievement, student engagement
The genesis of this blog comes from many conversations that I have been having with friends and colleagues about education reform. Some of these have been difficult conversations and I often find folks with very similar passions and desires for our schools feeling like they are on different “sides.” For me, I have tried to stay away from absolutes like I have heard both from education pundits and politicians on both sides of the political aisle. I don’t look at Race to the Top (RTT) and other similar reform efforts and jump to them being an attack on teachers or a push to privatization or other absolutes. I see them as an entrée to opening a discussion about making our public schools better – especially for kids who are being lost through the cracks (and actually putting some federal $$ towards it).
There is a huge amount of rhetoric around how we might “fix” our schools. There are many things that I don’t know – these are some things I think I know:
- Our system is failing many of our kids – that has to change;
- Our system is adult-centered rather than kid-centered – that has to change;
- It seems that many or most of our political and education leaders do not have the will to have the difficult conversations and then take meaningful action to make a difference for our kids. Rhetoric is old and cheap and isn’t doing a damned thing for us – in fact we’re losing many of our kids before our eyes; (more…)
Category:
education achievement gap, education reform, parent involvement, Student Success, Teacher Effectiveness |
4 Comments »
Tags: achievement gap, Charter schools, education budget, education reform, parent involvement, parents, Race to the Top, student success, teacher effectiveness
A number of years ago, I became very interested in the idea of “chain” charter schools. I think it’s an idea that is immediately appealing to anyone who is focused on efficiency and process: Can you pick a system with great results, and replicate it? Is there a magic formula?
For the most part, the answer seems to be no. Most of the chain charter schools seem to have closed, or to be struggling quietly under the radar. Which is probably why there is such a strong focus now on the idea of “teacher quality” (a tricky thing to evaluate, indeed) rather than schools.
But there seems to be one standout that has survived and proven itself over time: KIPP Schools. (more…)
Category:
education achievement gap, education reform, student achievement, Student Success |
4 Comments »
Tags: Charter schools, college readiness, education partnerships, education reform, KIPP, student achievement
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September 13th, 2011 | Ruth Wallin