Closing bad charters

Posted on December 18, 2008 by axooms

After a national election where both candidates supported enhanced funding for charter schools, and the appointment of a Secretary of Education who has seen an expansion of charters in his Chicago district (47 over his term), it is hopefully time to move past the debate on if there should be charter schools at all, and talk instead about how they can be effective as part of a larger system of public education.

The promise of charter schools is simple: Give educators control over their schools to allow for different ideas and approaches.  These schools then set specific goals, and in return for increased freedom, they promise higher accountability and better results. All this is detailed in a contract between the charter and the local school district with a limited time span (3-5 years). Over time, the charter models that succeed can be expanded, and the ones that fail can be closed.

In Denver, the first part of this equation has worked: charters include several of the highest-ranked schools in Denver according to DPS’s own School Performance Framework (SPF), including the only two non-elementary schools on the DPS “Distinguished” list. In fact, the only non-elementary schools with open enrollment to exceed DPS standards on either growth or status were charter schools. That is impressive.

However the last part of the equation — closing charter schools that are doing poorly — has been a dismal failure.  DPS has never closed a charter, and in fact has only recommended one charter for closure (a decision overturned by the State Board of Education).  The nadir of this cynical practice was the decision to keep CCI (now Amandla) open.  If you can’t close a school that has already been put on probation, has the worst SPF academic performance of any high school in DPS, has financial improprieties authorized by the head of school, and where a senior administrator is arrested in a nearby alley for buying crack, who can you close?

Without closing bad schools, the full promise of charter schools will never be fully realized — there will simply be a different method to educational failure. Closing bad charters is a key component to overall charter success.

The failure here is twofold: there is a lack of political will from the school board to displace any existing students (no matter how bad the environment), and there is no mechanism for effective closure. Charter schools are generally reviewed at the end of the contract  (or on a repeated and meaningless annual probation) at which point the school board faces a binary decision to shut the entire school or keep it open, with no other option. But if one changes the mechanism for closing bad charter schools, one reduces the need to miraculously grow political backbone. This can happen by simply modifying the basic charter contract.

Currently, there are virtually no consequences for charter schools who are not meeting basic levels of academic or financial performance (nor are there for district schools, but that is a different issue).  DPS should change their charter contracts to have automatic provisions that are triggered as a result of missing benchmarks on either the SPF or basic financial reporting. Here are two ideas:

1. Enrollment. Particularly for missing minimal academic standards, a charter school’s allowed enrollment should automatically decline and eventually be stopped altogether. Performing at the lowest level of the SPF (“Accredited on Probation”) for one year receives probation; a second straight year and enrollment for incoming grades is reduced by 50%, with no additional students allowed in additional grades.  If performance does not improve in the third year, new enrollment is stopped entirely, and eventually enrollment simply declines to zero students (as DPS is doing at district schools Kunsmiller and Rishel). There is no vote or politicking, and no displaced students — if there are exceptional circumstances, the charter can make its case before the school board, but the default position is that if a dchool does a bad job, they then do so with progressively less students.

Cutting enrollment would also result in a school able to focus on a smaller base of kids (hopefully increasing their academic performance).  Presumably, the least-effective teachers would be dismissed, additional attention would be paid to improvement, and the smaller school would have a chance to get better. It serves as a small step toward the harsher penalty of termination without displacing any students.

This proposal would also intentionally create some financial pressure: a school would see its PPOR reduced by roughly 12-15% on the initial enrollment cut, and then continue to decline over time.  Faced with consistently poor performance and declining funds, some schools that are unable to improve might even see the writing on the wall and close themselves.

2. Governance. One of the clear lessons on CCI was the lack of a governing board with oversight of the head of school. So another option for a charter school that misses annual academic or financial milestones would be to have its voting Board of Trustees reduced while DPS appoints member(s).  The appointed member(s) would address a specific problem: financial, educational or management.  For example, a charter could maintain a Board of 10 people, but on the second year of academic probation, 7 would have observation rights and only three would have voting rights.  Of the three voting positions the DPS member would take one slot.  Upon missing a second year, DPS would appoint a second voting member, which would give outside representation a voting majority.

Denver’s citizens are increasingly involved in DPS (various committees, groups and volunteers), and many might relish the chance to become more directly involved.  I think it is highly unlikely this would be applied to more than 1-2 schools a year, requiring a very small amount of personnel time.  This approach is similar to situations where there is a “minority” investor who is content to sit quietly when things are going well, but is given additional authority and control when things go badly.

Those are two ideas; there could easily be more.  DPS has vastly improved it’s initial chartering process, but the review and continuance of poor charters in a system that is designed to eliminate poor performers is even more of a disgrace than the continuance of poor district schools that have not contractually traded freedom for accountability.  DPS should either change the basic charter contract or form a committee to further examine ways to do so.

The debate and process for allowing charters to open has evolved greatly in the past few years; it is time for the debate and process on Closing charters to catch up, and fast.

Posted in Charter Schools, School Performance | Leave a comment

Bennet Bingo….

Posted on December 15, 2008 by axooms

With the Secretary of Education position now decided, one might think the game of guessing DPS’s new Superintendent in the new year would pass.  Not so fast…

Posted in Whimsy | Tagged | Leave a comment

Competition and Choice

Posted on December 14, 2008 by axooms

Denver Public Schools’ recent decision to have different schools share buildings provoked fearful cries of “increased competition” among some neighborhood advocates. But these objections blur the important distinction between competition and choice.

While unfettered competition could well have a negative impact on public education, managed choice (and the resulting academic specialization) can benefit everyone.

Organizations that offer commodity products compete primarily on price (think gas stations). Those that offer non-commodities compete by having different products or services. Public education is not a commodity product, but defenders of the status quo often act like it is, and assume that adding a second school to a half-full building can only mean the demise of the original school.

That assumption is unfounded. Demand for commodity products does not increase with more choice (i.e., one does not buy more gas because there are two stations). But demand often increases for products that are reasonably distinct, even if they are located right next door.

If, within a single building, one gives different schools the autonomy and ability to better focus their academic programs, there is no reason to think they won’t both attract more students and do a better job helping them learn.

The common example of this differentiation in business is Starbucks, which took an industry with a single bland offering and both introduced new products (skinny caramel soy latte, anyone?) and provided better service. Surprisingly, instead of a new Starbucks resulting in the demise of all nearby coffee shops as once feared, it often helps them. According to the Specialty Coffee Association of America, from 2000 to 2005, in the midst of Starbucks’ period of rapid growth, the number of independent coffeehouses grew 40 percent.

This phenomenon is not limited to business. There is a large body of research on the tendency of like-minded organizations to “cluster” and the benefits that clustering brings. In industries as varied as textiles, medical research and the visual arts, similar organizations in close proximity see increases in both innovation and productivity.

Of course, public education is not coffee. Opening a public school requires significant planning and a lengthy application process carefully vetted by both DPS and the Board of Education with considerable community input. Any competition is carefully weighed among different factions, and Colorado’s school choice law ensures that there is no centralized planning such that students are required to attend a specific school. Increasingly, the role of public school boards includes the approval and oversight of new schools, a process DPS manages increasingly well.

What DPS has achieved through the decision to share school buildings is the ability to offer students and families carefully placed educational choices that can help all schools, placing programs together that often complement each other or allow each to focus on their strengths. Thus, West High School will share with Edison, a middle school that could easily increase the number and academic preparation of kids eventually attending West. Kunsmiller Creative Arts Academy, slated as a K-12 integrated arts school, will share a facility with sixth- to eighth-grade West Denver Prep, which overlaps in middle school years but will offer a different, highly structured curriculum and culture.

Smiley Middle School, with a specific International Baccalaureate program, will share with a new Envision school that features project-based learning. An elementary school run by the Denver teachers union will share with a high school expansion from the nationally successful Knowledge is Power Program.

Managed choice is important because there is no single school model that works for all kids. Increasingly, the idea of a single school that is the right fit for every child in a neighborhood is problematic. No one disputes that kids can be vastly different, so why do we demand that different kids attend only one local school?

Having different schools in close proximity allows each the option to specialize. New York City recently graded its public schools, and the eight specialized schools within the city all received the highest ranking. It is likewise no coincidence that the two best high schools in DPS — located less than a mile apart — are both highly focused: Denver School of the Arts and Denver School of Science and Technology.

When opponents decry “competition” in shared buildings, they overlook the benefits: Increased and better school choices will help more of Denver’s families choose some form of public education in one of its evolving flavors. And the truth is that competition for public schools already exists in private schools or in dropping out altogether. This is the competition that public school advocates should fear most — not the choice of a different educational program in the same building.

—
Originally published in the Denver Post on Sunday, December 14, 2008

Posted in Charter Schools, District Performance, Facilities, School Performance | Tagged | Leave a comment

Song of Themselves

Posted on December 11, 2008 by axooms

DCTA president Kim Ursetta’s full endorstatement on Michael Bennet was just posted by Alan, where she concludes:

Michael Bennet would bring new ideas and approaches to the U.S. Department of Education.

This press release was sent to the media on Tuesday, and neither posted on the DCTA site or sent to DCTA members. On Wednesday however, DCTA members received the DCTA Newsletter (Vol 2, Issue 15) in which the central column reads:

Bennet as Potential Secretary of Education

DCTA has been getting a lot of media calls regarding Bennet’s potential selection as US Secretary of Education.  Understand that a statement of fact is not in an of itself an endorsement. The statement characterized Mr. Bennet as a non-traditional superintendent that is willing to talk with us, even when we disagree.  It also discussed the district’s School Performance Framework, and our support of it’s [sic] use of multiple measures of student achievement. We also indicated that he had supported us in our efforts to start a teacher-led school. Know that DCTA is working closely with NEA to advocate for the best interests of DCTA members and public school employees across the country.

While it’s always fun to catch people talking out of both sides of their mouths, and cynics might believe this is an intentional strategy where it is in DCTA’s best interest locally if Bennet were to leave, I think there is more here.

This dual approach — praise, then distance — shows the sheer difficulty of being the head of the DCTA: on the one hand you surely have to work with a superintendent as popular and visible as Bennet — particularly when his ProComp update received 77% of DCTA votes — yet you also have to placate your core union members, the most vocal and hardcore of whom believe that any cooperation is a sellout.

Let’s take Ursetta at her word: she called for a no-confidence vote, praises Bennet for honest dialogue and supporting a few popular union initiatives, then is clear that this in no way means she is abandoning the base.  That’s is a complicated dance.  To paraphrase Whitman (SOM, 51):

Does she contradict herself?
Very well then, she contradicts herself.
(DCTA is large, it contains multitudes).

Posted in Teacher Unions, Whimsy | Tagged | Leave a comment

Strange Bedfellows (an ongoing series)

Posted on December 11, 2008 by axooms

The latest tangent from the speculation regarding Bennet’s potential as Secretary of Education, is a press release from the Denver teacher’s union supporting the choice:

“He is reform-minded and interested in new approaches,” wrote Kim Ursetta, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association. “As a non-traditional superintendent, he thinks outside the box to find new answers to old problems, especially concerning student achievement. . . . Michael Bennet would bring new ideas and approaches to the U.S. Department of Education.”

I could not find the actual release online (please send the link if someone can); the following is from an article in the Denver Post.

Now DPS and the DCTA certainly have a cordial relationship, but they have clashed pretty hard over changes to ProComp, and Innovation Schools  – both “out of the box” solutions.  DCTA’s support on the recent DPS bond was minimal. And in the last round of Board elections, there was a clear divide between the DPS preference (unstated, but palpable) to stay with the current board members (Pena, Hoyt) and the slate that DCTA supported (all of whom lost). The is an upcoming battle (which could be a ways off, but will come) on the pension, which is financially unsustainable.

Cynics might believe that DCTA has met a formidable foe in Bennet, and their interest here is to see him leave in the hopes that a new Superintendent might be more pliable. Education has a lot of cynics.

I personally still think the Secretary job goes to Duncan, and the test of the relationship between Bennet and DCTA will be the next time DCTA is in the box, and Bennet is outside.

Posted in Teacher Unions | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Malcom Gladwell on hiring teachers

Posted on December 10, 2008 by axooms

Gladwell is an original and arresting writer.  I really like The Tipping Point (which has recently been cited in several education meetings I’ve attended).  But I thought Blink flat-out stunk (read The Wisdom Of Crowds instead).  Unfortunately, his essay on hiring, which schizophrenically jumps between American football players and teachers before throwing in a dash of financial advisors, is not his best work.  But if one strings the education pieces together, it’s worth a read.

Gladwell always sets his premises on the research of others.  Here is a wonderful explanation of why teaching is so critical, particularly given the usual focus on schools and class size:

Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year’s worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half’s worth of material. That difference amounts to a year’s worth of learning in a single year. Teacher effects dwarf school effects: your child is actually better off in a “bad” school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a bad teacher. Teacher effects are also much stronger than class-size effects. You’d have to cut the average class almost in half to get the same boost that you’d get if you switched from an average teacher to a teacher in the eighty-fifth percentile. And remember that a good teacher costs as much as an average one, whereas halving class size would require that you build twice as many classrooms and hire twice as many teachers.

What he finds, naturally enough, is that we focus far too much on teacher preparation and far too little on evaluations and interventions — for teachers, not by them — once they are in the classroom.

A group of researchers—Thomas J. Kane, an economist at Harvard’s school of education; Douglas Staiger, an economist at Dartmouth; and Robert Gordon, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress—have investigated whether it helps to have a teacher who has earned a teaching certification or a master’s degree. Both are expensive, time-consuming credentials that almost every district expects teachers to acquire; neither makes a difference in the classroom. Test scores, graduate degrees, and certifications—as much as they appear related to teaching prowess—turn out to be about as useful in predicting success as having a quarterback throw footballs into a bunch of garbage cans.

It should surprise no one that it is hard to predict what makes a good teacher, for there is no single model. Particularly in schools with strong cultures, teachers work within a system — and the same teacher may shine in one system and fail in another (and some systems are so bad no one can succeed).  Gladwell writes “A prediction, in a field where prediction is not possible, is no more than a prejudice” — and prejudice describes our current hiring preferences.

Like many of Gladwell’s pieces, the answer he chooses is not particularly complex.

[Teaching] needs an apprenticeship system that allows candidates to be rigorously evaluated. Kane and Staiger have calculated that, given the enormous differences between the top and the bottom of the profession, you’d probably have to try out four candidates to find one good teacher. That means tenure can’t be routinely awarded, the way it is now. Currently, the salary structure of the teaching profession is highly rigid, and that would also have to change in a world where we want to rate teachers on their actual performance. An apprentice should get apprentice wages. But if we find eighty-fifth-percentile teachers who can teach a year and a half’s material in one year, we’re going to have to pay them a lot—both because we want them to stay and because the only way to get people to try out for what will suddenly be a high-risk profession is to offer those who survive the winnowing a healthy reward.

In my experience, too many school systems already have an entering wage that is apprentice-like, so we need to focus on compensation plans that reward the truly great teachers over the merely average.  Ugly truth number one is that we need to start measuring which teachers are which. Ugly truth number two is that we need to reduce pension benefits and use that money to increase salaries so that we are not underpaying teachers during their working years while rewarding in retirement those that stay for 20 or more years.

Frankly I don’t find the requirement to have four candidates for each teaching job that daunting — we already lose 50% of teachers within five years, we just often lose the wrong ones for the wrong reasons.  Due to the efforts of organizations like TFA, the teaching profession (like all others) is becoming more mobile — one part of a career that may take many turns.  Argue for or against this if you wish, but it is probably here to stay.  But while we see increased mobility for new teachers, ugly truth number three is that we need to give principals more ability to change the teachers they have who are not working.

Posted in Teacher Preparation | Leave a comment

Bill Gates on Ed (and Bennet teaser)

Posted on December 8, 2008 by axooms

Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter has an article on Bill Gates, which happens to also mention Denver’s own Michael Bennet as a potential Secretary of Education. Gates, as we’ve seen, has spent lots of money with little effect, so it’s interesting to see how his thinking has evolved.  Much of this is pretty basic to ed reformers, but it’s good to see it getting play more broadly via Newsweek:

Betraying his own professional background, Gates shakes his head in dismay at the idea of secondary schools and colleges trying to function at all without simple software that offers them basic statistical information about how students and teachers are performing over time (for-profit colleges are an exception). Everyone in education knows why: unions have simply prevented teachers from being judged, even in part, on whether their students improve during the course of the year. It’s no surprise that Gates is a believer in merit pay and incentive pay and has little use for teachers colleges as presently constituted because there’s no evidence that having a master’s degree improves teacher performance. You never hear Gates or his people talk about highly qualified teachers, only highly effective ones.

Despite this, the following will probably be the most-discussed local news: Bennet is mentioned as a short-list prospect for Secretary of Education, and happens to be author Alter’s favorite.

…Obama also knows that if he chooses a union-backed candidate such as Linda Darling-Hammond, a Stanford professor active in the transition, he’ll have a revolt on his hands from the swelling ranks of reformers. That’s why it’s more likely he’ll settle on a superintendent like Arne Duncan of Chicago, Michael Bennet of Denver or Paul Vallas of New Orleans, any of whom would suit Gates and other reform-minded philanthropists just fine. (I have my money on Bennet, whose new compensation system is popular with Denver teachers, if not the union.)

I confess I think this is mostly just speculation, although Bennet is certainly politically savvy enough to pull a rabbit out, and he’s been running DPS with a sharp eye on politics the whole time.  And it is true that as a reformer, Bennet is not nearly as aggressive as Klein or Rhee, so offers the “least objectionable” option between them and LDH.

But the reasoning is a little odd: ProComp was inherited by Bennet, not originated by him (though he did much to improve it), and is in my opinion more hype than substance.  DPS’s approach has lacked any tangible strategy (remember Beacon schools? or Jamie Aquino?) and has mainly meandered between a variety of modest proposals.  If you want insight into Bennet, the best place to look is probably the Denver Plan.  This document, still ocassionally referred to in Board of Ed meetings, is a true tabla rosa, a long grocery list of inputs in which any advocacy group can find something familiar, with barely any mention of tangible educational outputs.  It is, in other words, everything that the Gates camp is largely against.

One of the three goals of the Denver Plan: “Highly-skilled teachers” — the very aim Alter mentions that has given way to a premium on effectiveness.  The difference between skill and effectiveness is not a new debate.  That difference, between teacher skills/qualifications and effectiveness — and more broadly between inputs and outputs — to me sums up the primary rift in Education reform.

I think Bennet would be a pretty good pick for Education Secretary — but I wish his record here was more in line with the thrust of Alter’s article.  And should Bennet stay in Denver, I hope he creates a more substantive record of reform that embraces the critical focus on outputs.

Posted in District Performance | Tagged , | Leave a comment