Tulsa Families Win Court Battle

The Tulsa Public Schools lost their court battle that asked the District Court to find that charter schools are unconstitutional. In this battle, TPS spent plenty of taxpayer money.

Many would argue that they spent taxpayer money to harm the taxpayers. (But I wouldn't do that here. Oh, no. Not me.)

Despite the amount of money spent, the more interesting issue is that the charter schools in Tulsa have largely been very successful. So, the question is "Why would we want good schools declared unconstitutional?"

This is obviously a move based on the attempt to retain power and the status quo. The Tulsa school system wants a monopoly, not based on who provides the best services for kids, but based on oppression of families that they are supposed to serve. So, often today we hear corporations in a competitive environment called oppressive, but here we see true oppression. General Motors has abused its large market share and become inefficient and one day may be a monument to inefficient poorly run business. This is because it has to compete in the market. It appears that the real oppressors today are monopolies like the Tulsa Public School District that insists on operating like GM, but without competition.

The similarities of many public school systems to the failures of GM management are many and should not be repeated in our public schools. Our students should not be subject to the same treatment that GM has given the American consumer. Schools must become more efficient and produce a quality product. This doesn't come from investing in the latest technology or fancy buildings. It comes from hiring and developing great teachers and firing those teachers who cannot or cease to desire to teach. Charter schools are one way to ignite this change.

The court made a decision to end the oppression of Tulsa children and families by the district. TPS, hear the message. Your customers are speaking.

Seven Silly Sins: How to Screw Up a Charter School Interview

1. Get lost and show up late. Sometimes we schedule interview teams on very tight timelines. Many charter school leaders are one-deep and don’t have time to waste, so spending ten minutes waiting for you sours the start of the interview. Show up late and you make our job easier than it should be.

2. Disclose character flaws. There is a big difference between an error in execution, an error in judgment, and a character flaw. A candidate who told us he cheated his way through high school geometry told us enough to say, “No thanks.”

3. Bash your last boss/school. We are eager to prune negative and disgruntled employees. Charter schools are small enough to feel claustrophobic. We don’t like to bathe in sour grape juice. Show us your critical side and we’ll show you the door.

4. Shine us on. If you inflate your resume, overstate your responsibilities, finesse your degrees, or otherwise engage in puffery, we will find out. We check references carefully because we can’t afford to hire badly.

5. Stay general at all times. When we ask for specific answers and stories give us platitudes and generalities. Fill the interview with sunny mush. If you can’t tell us how you did it, we can’t tell you to sign on.

6. Confuse us with private schools or our neighborhood  district. The charter school movement is unique and has a particular identity and self-image. To survive, we are advocates bordering on zealotry so we react strongly if you get us confused with our cousins. If you misname us or confuse us with what we are not, we’ll invite you to go apply at one of those schools.

7. Make it all about you. Ask us about salary, request special exceptions, challenge the work hours, compare us to some more desirable job. Charter schools are all about us and we. Make it about you and we’ll give a chance to make a quiet exit.

10 Secrets to Interviewing for a Charter School Teaching Job

After seeing hundreds of candidates, here are some tactics to help you make the most of your opportunity to interview:

1. Be great at your current job—references really matter. They often seal or break the deal.
2. Crackle and hum with energy—schools need energy more than experience. Shake every hand, look in every eye. Stand up until we invite you to sit down. Sit on the edge of your chair. Physical energy communicates professional vitality.
3. Know the school—really well. Get inside their vision and their community. Interview students or parents about the school. Use social media. Do your homework.
4. Give yourself some think time before answering each question. Five-ten seconds is fine. Even if you are smooth and articulate, give yourself a moment to go deeper. We hear loads of smooth answers—we crave depth.
5. Dress up—I have never met an overdressed candidate. Lot’s of candidates make a bad first impression with casual, rumpled, stained, or garish clothing. When in doubt match yourself to a hip bank manager.
6. Answer succinctly. Write down the question and parse it if it is a multi-part question. Answer all the parts. Clarify if needed. Say just a little less than necessary and let us project your great answer into the silence.
7. Smile more. We need positive people. Laugh with us. Enjoy our time together. This may be the first hour of a multi-year relationship. Why so serious?
8. Don’t mention salary. Don’t mention salary. Don’t mention salary. Wait till we make an offer to talk compensation.
9. Write answers to basic questions, then organize them, shorten them, and practice them. Clarity of thought doesn’t have to be spontaneous to be compelling.
10. Bring products, props, and pictures. If asked about a favorite teaching memory, wouldn’t it be great to have a picture of that kid? If we’re too stiff to hire a person with a package, thank us and find a better school.

In honor of my friends at Spinal Tap here’s #11.

11. Be eager to work long hours, sell out for the vision, and be available. If that sounds too hard then don’t apply at charter schools.

Senioritis Schmenioritis

This is the time of year when every twelfth-grade student must face the implacable "senioritis."

Some schools deal with this phenomenon by requiring seniors to complete a rite of passage, such as a final project or presentation. As Jay Mathews points out on his blog at the Washington Post, these are fairly common in private schools, but less so in public schools.

Two schools bucking that trend are the School of Environmental Studies at the Apple Valley Zoo in Minnesota. This optional school (not a charter, not a magnet) is limited to juniors and seniors. During their senior year, students must complete three elements in a capstone sequence. They write a personal statement of their ethic of environmental leadership. They complete an extensive project, internship, or investigation. Finally, they present their work before a panel of at least 30 people, including four adult community members. At an end-of-year event called the senior forum, students dress up and discuss their senior experience during a forum event that is part open house and part science fair. It isn't a perfect solution because some students disengage, but it is far better than the traditional slide into oblivion.

At The Classical Academy in Colorado Springs, we require our students to form teams of two and present on an issue of current controversy. Throughout their senior year, the seniors participate in a variety of world view seminars as part of the senior core consisting of Civics, World Literature, and Rhetoric. The students hear from scientists, religious leaders of many faiths, alumni, business leaders, philosophers and artists. When it comes time to synthesize their learning into a coherent presentation, seniors at TCA must present to a hostile panel. Using the claim-data-warrant model (assertion + evidence = argument) the students must stake and defend a position on a controversial topic. However, they face a panel of three to five adults who are also prepared to challenge the students' reasoning. The students are highly motivated to prepare and perform. This gives the end of their senior year a level of meaning and focus similar to the students in Minnesota.

This is exactly the kind of innovation that should be bubbling up in a charter school so it can be adopted by the traditional public schools. Mr. Mathews serves education well by finding examples of this kind of practice that we can share and emulate.

$100K a Year, a Bomb Threat and call the Union First?

Red flag, Red Flag, Red Flag Red flag, Red Flag, Red Flag.

This teacher makes over $100K per year. He assaulted a student. He defied a directive to report to a reassignment center. He barricaded himself in an auditorium. He reported having planted a bomb in a cafeteria. He indicated he had a "date with God" and once the police evacuated the building he called the TEACHER UNION. Meanwhile, he started a hunger strike to have the principal "ousted."

Fortunately, skipping the mid-morning twinkies wasn't enough to win  the day and the police intervened successfully. I'm glad New York's finest are professional enough to manage situations like this, because with union involvement I'm worried the teacher might get a golden parachute and reassigment to a "rubber room" where he can tweet and blog all day. This despite multiple allegations of physical mistreatment of students, including two confirmed and two still under investigation. That's the kind of teacher that needs a union to stay employed.

At least he has parent support. According to the NYT, the head of the parents' association said, “It’s blown out of proportion; he was just trying to make a stand for himself.”

After the event resolved peacefully, UFT and AFT president Randi Weingarten forwarded the teacher's grievances to the Education Department in hopes that someone there will address his concerns. There is no word on whether Ms. Weingarten will pass on the concerns of the students, parents, and teachers who were terrorized by the loyal dues-paying teacher.

Really? $100,049 a year? I guess that buys a lot of cover.

Effect Size Screams: "Vaporize the Caps in MA!"

Chris Anderson, in the Worchester Business Journal, makes a compelling case for lifting the caps on the number of charter schools in Massachusetts. As he points out, there is substantial and well-designed research indicating that spending time in a charter school leads to significant and durable gains for students. The usual culprits preserving the status quo are teacher unions and the politicians who depend on their patronage. Sound familiar?

Union members first, patronage second, parents and students last—once they start paying dues. The spirit of Shanker lives on.

BTW—if we can judge the effect of schools, can we similarly judge the effect of teachers or principals and use that information to inform compensation?

Yes. We. Can.

(and we should)

CONTEST: What's the Over-Under on Decertifying Charter School Unions?

How long will the union last at KIPP AMP?

Many of us are tracking several stories about the unionization of charter schools.

In some cases, the in-house organizers give up after experiencing the certification process first hand.

In other cases, the organizers are successful and a union is certified—such as at the KIPP AMP school as reported by the UFT.

In all cases where the union is certified, decertification is one possible future.

So, taking the KIPP AMP story as a focus, please reply in the comments with your prediction by year, month, and day as to when the teachers at KIPP AMP will succeed in decertifying the UFT/AFT as their representative. The date will be determined by the day when the decertification becomes official.

The most accurate predictor wins something of moderate value to be decided in the future. It will be worth your time to comment!

Ready?

I say, September 21, 2010. What say you?

Accountability starts at home in Arizona

As Nelson Smith and other national leaders often say, charter schools must take care of business on the quality side, or the movement is at risk. We agree. This is one of the fundamental insights we bring to the charter improvement game.

In Arizona, the pursuit of school quality is job #1. The Arizona quality model mines data from the state AIMS test to identify patterns of longitudinal growth. This is similar to the Colorado Growth Model that is being adopted on a national level. The level of sophistication required to do this with fidelity is higher than most volunteer leaders or part-time oversight can manage. That's why it is encouraging to see experts like Rebecca Gau and her colleagues toss around phrases like disaggregation and hierarchical linear modeling without blushing. Since Colorado and Arizona share a micro-border at the Four Corners, we count them as neighbors, and we're proud to see charters on the rise across the West.

Teacher Salary Systems: Rewards at the end of the trail

Discussions of teacher compensation innovations are never blank slate. They all reference the dominant salary system in public education—commonly called the single salary schedule. One problem advocates of differentiated pay must avoid is the tendency to refer to all such schedules as if they are the same.

At Education Sector, Chad Alderman aggregates information about salary schedules in a variety of districts. He includes lots of specific information about district systems and weaves in useful analysis of implications for teachers in various stages of their careers. Since retirement calculations are often based on high average salaries, Chad also identifies impacts on retirement systems. One of the most prominent conclusions is that the practice of "packing" the end of the salary schedule to boost retirement rewards teachers when they are least likely to improve performance.

This is an important resource because it expands the concept of "single salary schedule" without overwhelming data. The interactive charts are useful and link to specific districts, making follow-up research simpler if needed. Information that is relevant, interactive, and just deep enough is invaluable. Give a visit.

More Mythbusting about Charter Schools

Like the excellent series by Karin Piper at Charter School Examiner, this post by Joshua Cook at Edurati aggregates and addresses a group of charter school myths. We need excellent and articulate responses like this to help promote and move the charter community forward.

Take a look!

Do Parents Fight to Get Their Kids in Non-Charter Schools

A Brooklyn student is angry because of begin rejected from a charter school. Jurek Ustrzycki, 54, and his son Christopher Kovalas, 11, live in School District 15, which includes Brooklyn Prospect Charter. Christopher was told he would be allowed in, but then received a rejection letter an hour later.

My interest in this article is not so much whether the school is right or not. It is the fact that a father would get that upset about getting rejected. Why would a parent get that upset about not getting into a school? Whether the charter school is that good or the non-charter public schools are that bad, the fact is that there must be a huge difference for the father to be so upset.

Non-charter leaders often criticize charters for stealing kids from non-charter schools. They also make the statement that charters' original purpose was to be incubators of new instructional methods that could be replicated by non-charter schools.

Let's look at this. First, the charter is obviously not stealing kids. That's actually a pretty funny claim as a parent has to decide to take a student to a charter school and out of the non-charter school. That's hardly stealing. It's like saying that if I open a restaurant down the street from your restaurant, and customers who used to come to your restaurant start coming to my restaurant, then I've stolen your customers. Last time I checked, that's the way the world works. People choose their favorite option.

Second, the non-charter school does not have a right to those students. Just because the non-charter school existed first, the students do not belong to that school. The restaurant example works the same way here. Just because your restaurant existed first, it doesn't mean that those are your customers in any sense that indicates ownership or a right. They are your customers purely on a contingent basis.

The last issue has to do with non-charter leaders fighting against charters. If non-charter leaders would adopt the successful charter school methods as was the intent of the original charter laws, then charters might go out of existence by the fact that parents will begin demanding re-entry into non-charter public schools. Now, wouldn't that be newsworthy?

President Obama, are 1,750 Students worth .0015% of the budget?

George Will puts the D.C. voucher program in proper economic perspective by comparing a year's funding of the program against the money fountain of stimulus dollars being piped around by the current administration.

He makes an interesting point that the teacher unions contributed four times as much money to the Democrats as the D.C. voucher program would cost. I'm sure that's a coincidence.

I'd be interested to see an analysis of how much it cost to take a retinue of 500 staffers on the excellent adventure in Europe. I wonder if there are $15 millions in earmarks anywhere in the stimulus funds.

Charter School Teacher Turnover: Good Thing or Bad Thing?

In a blog called The Maine View, Derek Viger quotes an article about teacher turnover in charters. Not surprisingly, it's higher than in non-charter public schools.

One of the main reasons is pay. This is also not surprising as numerous charter schools pay less than non-charters due to funding reasons or small class sizes or both. More charter school teachers also leave to pursue further education. This may well be because more non-charter school teachers already have advanced degrees.

So, while this is obviously bad news for charters at an administrative level, is it bad for the students? Do we know that teachers that leave charter schools are good teachers, for example. I know many charter schools that seem to be able to keep good teachers--some leave. It isn't easy being a charter school teacher. It's not for everyone.

In addition, pay is not everything. Passion to teach for a school that is working harder and hopefully smarter to achieve a better education than non-charter alternatives can make up the difference in salary. Many charters, despite high turnover, still manage to hire pretty decent teachers every year. It's a lot of work on principals, HR staff and payroll staff, but perhaps its worth it. If it keeps up the passion in the school, then it may actually be better for kids. I realize this is speculation, but it's not irrational speculation. What do you think?

School Accountability and Giving Credit Where It's Due

As regular readers know, we aren't generally pro-union on this blog. However, today I read an article by Iris Salters (president of the Michigan Education Association). Ms. Salters made some excellent analysis of the educational landscape.

1. change for change's sake is not educational reform.
2. "there are no 'silver bullets'."
3. for-profit companies are not always the best at running schools.
4. all schools must be accountable for their success or failure.

She concludes:

In schools that are not improving, we determine why. Instead of declaring them "failing" schools, we need detailed analyses of what each school is doing wrong and what can be done to fix it. We must learn from what works in other areas and inject it into struggling schools.

Let's work together to foster creative, successful strategies and share them with the larger educational community. Only then can we truly "reform" our schools so every student has the chance to succeed.

If serious, then this union leader has it right, it's about the kids, not the schools or teachers. Non-charter public or charter public school, we must be about the kids, about teaching and learning, about producing citizens capable of thinking and presenting those thoughts. Let's do it!

Another Victory for Unions, Another Loss for Kids

In an excellent commentary Juan Williams, an NPR Sr. Correspondent, discusses the dismantling of the Washington, D.C. voucher program. One of the best examples that vouchers can work, the decision to stop the program came from the very top--the feds.

Who is served by this move? No one except the unions who want to see vouchers fail. What better way to see them fail than to stop the most successful program out there. If there are no working examples, then there is less evidence to support the fact that vouchers can help kids that need a way out of failing non-charter, non-voucher public schools.

Once again, we see that teachers unions are united for teachers, not for students.

Will National Standards Work?

Walter Isaacson at Time.com published an article on Wednesday about national standards. While many of us who favor state's rights have looked down on this notion, Isaacson shows that many states have created less than optimal standards, to say the least.

Practically speaking, it could be difficult to come up with a national standard. People disagree with what should be the standard. Should it be in all subjects or just core subjects? Should the standards include citizenship and character or simply academic knowledge and skills?

Then there is the issue of how high the standard should be and how it should be used. So, what is proficient? Should proficiency be the standard for passing a grade? Do we eliminate social promotion nationwide?

So, why am I talking about all of this here on a charter school blog? I had this strange notion that may be a really stupid idea, but charter schools have a national organization. While charter schools are often different in their methods and approaches and their specializations, I'd guess that charter school leaders all agree that core academics are important. Is it possible that charters could come up with a charter school national standard? Could charters take the lead in such an effort?

I don't believe that the government will do a good job if the task is left to them. When I deal with people and want them to act, I always come in with a recommendation. Could charter schools develop a plan and submit it to the federal government? In taking such action, could we show how truly innovative and productive we are? If we could, and if the standards worked, we could really show our value to society.

Is Moreno Valley Looking for Ways to Prevent a Charter School?

While it's tough to make a call based on one article, there are some interesting reasons that Moreno Valley School District decided not to accept the charter application from an interesting school.

Gabrielinos Charter Academy of Arts and Sciences applied as a school focused on performing arts and sciences. The school anticipated an initial enrollment of 300 students.

The District gave some reasonable cause for rejecting the application--inadequate budget and educational plan. However, some of the other reasons were not so sensible--the school would take students from the district and they didn't know what to do with extra teachers.

This shows a number of continuing problems with having school districts approving charter applications. The very reason for charters is innovation and parent/student choice for a different or better education. The school district has a vested interest in not allowing competition. The district can easily say that the school doesn't have an adequate educational plan because the district uses its own standard for deciding that (although some times districts apply state standards, which is appropriate).

A bigger issue is that the bureaucracy of a list of check boxes that may or may not have anything to do with student outcomes is applied to applications rather than an approach that favors innovation, we use a process that is structurally opposed to innovation. Moreno Valley may be biased against charters schools or its system may be biased against innovation and change. Either way, it's not the way things are supposed to be.

Will Obama's Plan for Merit Pay for Teachers Work?

The Washington Times reported this morning that teacher pay systems are proliferating around the country in response to Arne Duncan and President Obama's desire to see pay for performance.

My fear is that many of these districts are throwing systems together without being strategic. This frenzy for stimulus money from ARRA is like a shark frenzy for blood. It isn't rational or at least can lead to poorly thought out systems. Existing merit pay systems are still being studied and many have been found lacking. In addition, no one has really set the goals for a teacher pay system. Is the goal student achievement? If so, how do we measure that? Is it teacher retention? If so, who do we want to motivate to stay? Is it those with higher level degrees? Is it those who practice specific methods of teaching? Is it those who display the most passion?

The system that we've proposed and implemented rewards many of these factors. The reason is that we began with the goals in mind, then decided what we would measure and reward. We looked at the characteristics of teachers that were most important to our school--passion, citizenship, leadership, method, etc. We also looked at research about what teaching characteristics make the most difference in developing students. We don't look at test scores. We look at the characteristics that normally lead to better test scores. Any group of students could perform worse than the prior group (which leads to another issue with tracking test scores by grade rather than cohort).

So, while I love the fact that Obama and Duncan support innovation in teacher pay, it will be interesting to see which if any of the pay systems implemented will work to achieve the goal of creating better citizens prepared for the work force and to be part of our diverse community.

Bragging About The Classical Academy

I need to brag for a minute about our charter school, The Classical Academy.

Three students will be going to the international science fair--two of them are freshman in high school. Their teacher, Candus Muir, was also honored with a PACE teacher award. Way to go Candus!!!!!

A Local Union Option

The insightful Ben Degrow, writing at ednewscolorado, links to another example of decertification where local educational staff members decided to dump the overhead of the national NEA and retain the benefits of unionization at the local level. This reminds me of my first union transition back in Eagan Minnesota, where the local teachers union (DCUE) actually accepted both NEA and AFT as affiliates of the local union, instead of the other way around. It has been almost 15 years and that arrangement is still going strong. I am highly skeptical of the motives of the national unions, but I support the collaboration and local control that can make a local union an effective part of the support system for all students.

_

Do Teachers' Unions Have Secret Fears?

This is just a thought, but I was reading an interesting post on Mormon on Politics about charters schools and his daughter's experience. He made a comment about class size and teachers.

He didn't say it, but the suggestion is that charter school teachers often choose to teach at charters and take a lower salary. They do that because they can serve their students better--often fewer students in classes or else more help from tutors.

Is it a fear from unions because they do not understand why a person would accept less money? Is it because charter school teachers focus on students and not themselves?

One of our teachers recently got up at a board meeting, not asking for more money or time off or a shorter school year or school day, but simply to ask for a realignment of the school schedule so that she could have more time to collaborate with her fellow teachers. She said that it was because her job is a "labor of love."

Could it be that unions fear love? When teaching becomes more about what I can get out of it rather than what I can put into it (and this is true of every profession), there is a huge problem. Is it a universal truth that unions take the passion out of work? I just wonder.

Why Charter Schools Need to Be Careful

The Director of Communication for the Albany School District had a letter published in the Times Union yesterday. He showed that charter schools have been publishing inaccurate information about their enrollment as a percentage of the total school district.

While the argument is largely irrelevant to the value of charter schools in the district, it provides ammunition to those predisposed to be against charter schools. It allows people to hold to the fallacy that if charters are not accurate in their statements about enrollment percentages, then the schools are not good for students. When put that way, any rational person can see that the two issues are completely unrelated. However, charter school opponents rarely put things so clearly. They will use just about any argument (however unrelated to school performance) to cast aspersions on charter schools.

Because of this, charter school leaders need to be very careful in the way they use statistics and language about themselves, especially when comparing themselves to non-charter public schools. Charter leaders need to stick to the real issues like running a great school and not get into debates about what percentage they are of the district.

§504 I.D.E.A.S. about Special Education for Texas Charters

Hey Texas friends! Many of you asked for a link to our presentation on Special Education for second-career school administrators. You can link to the presentation at my SlideShare space, and don't forget to read some of my other blogs on Asperger's Syndrome as well as another presentation here.

While you're at it, jump over to Twitter and start following me for more bits of Special Education insight. Twitter.com/PeterHilts.

Thanks for serving all our kids!

See you in D.C.!

The Triangle of Tension for Texas Charter Schools

Hey Texas friends! Many of you asked for a link to our presentation on The Triangle of Tension for Charter Schools. You can link to the presentation at my SlideShare space, and don't forget to read some of our other blogs on the subject. Since you care about financial matters, you might also like to see our presentation on Strategic Compensation for Charter School Teachers.

While you're at it, jump over to Twitter and start following me for more droplets of life cycle insights. Twitter.com/PeterHilts or Twitter.com/CharterInsights. 

Thanks for the chance to be part of Texas' first unified charter school conference.

See you in D.C.!

Life Cycle Renewal for Texas Charter Conference

Hey Texas friends! Many of you asked for a link to our presentation on Life Cycle Renewal for Charter Schools. You can link to the presentation at my SlideShare space, and don't forget to read some of our other blogs on the subject.

While you're at it, jump over to Twitter and start following me for more droplets of life cycle clairvoyance. Twitter.com/PeterHilts or Twitter.com/CharterInsights. 

We sure enjoyed the hospitality, and the food at Mi Tierras was the best!

See you in D.C.!

First United Texas Charter Conference is a Success

I just returned from the Texas Charter Conference an hour ago and found the first united conference to be very well run and attended. Four organizations came together this past year to form the Texas Charter School Association. David Dunn is the president of this fledgling organization and seems suited to the task.

I had a chance to talk to David for a few minutes and he seems like both a competent and nice guy who will lead this organization with some clear legislative efforts on behalf of all charter schools.

We also ran into a great guy from San Antonio named Gene Gentry who gave us a ride to Mi Tierra--a great and relatively inexpensive Mexican restaurant.

We presented on the tension between facilities, salaries and enrollment. We also presented on charter school lifecycles. The lifecycle presentation was very well received and our reviews were excellent.

We also got a chance to sit with Brian Carpenter again for a while. His new book still isn't out yet, but his sessions were overflowing. You can buy his book through Amazon.com by clicking on the link in the right hand column.

It was a very tiring trip. I was at The Classical Academy board meeting until about 10 p.m., came home and finished my taxes about 2:00 a.m. on Tuesday, woke up about 5:00 a.m. on Tuesday, then flew to Texas and presented about two hours after arriving at the hotel.

Peter presented on Monday on SPED for charter school principals. He said it was well received also, but most of the attendees were SPED Directors and not principals so he had to do some adjusting while presenting.

I also was able to talk with Matthew Polk who I originally met this past summer at Harvard University. Matthew is doing very well and his school is moving forward.

I'm getting tired and need to be in the office in the morning so I'm off to bed, but I'd like to say thanks to David Dunn and the other Texas charter folks who make our trip so worth while.

How Does Paying For a Building Twice Save Money?

In using very interesting logic, "Rep. Chris Kelly says his co-sponsoring of a bill that would allow school boards to sell their buildings to any highest bidder — including charter schools — is his way of looking out for taxpayers."

Now, let's look at this for a moment. The school district normally issues bonds to purchase a school building. Taxpayers pay property taxes that pay off the bonds. So, this building is later sold to a charter school that pays for the building out of...you got it...taxpayer money. Any thinking taxpayer must find this appalling. Only a person bent on emphasizing the difference between the district and the charter school could see things this way. A taxpayer bent on efficient use of taxpayer money to educate kids would see far more options. Why couldn't the district loan the building to the charter school, for example?

Does anyone else see this as a way to double dip taxpayers and take money away from educating children?

Colorado Senate President Named to National Post

Peter Groff, Colorado Senate President and Charter supporter was named to the post of the faith based and community initiatives center.

Peter is a long time charter school supporter who has been responsible for maintaining and increasing the funding for charter school capital construction. He's also a great guy.

Congratulations, Peter!

Camden School Board President Shows Illogic of Traditional Public Education

Many have called the current public education structure a monopoly. One of the few legal monopolies left. I'm sure many opponents of school choice loved the government's probe of Microsoft or when small towns oppose a new Wal-Mart. However, when Sara Davis, the President of the Camden City School Board said, "the charter schools are not performing better than the city's programs and are stealing money from the district." She may also need to think about the fact that "The number of parents enrolling students in charter schools within Camden nearly has quadrupled in the last decade."

The assumption by opponents of school choice is that the money somehow belongs to the district. The truth is that taxpayers have the right to say, and it appears that demand is for charter schools and not non-charter public education. It also shows the continuing bias on the part of many non-charter public school administrators who conveniently forget that charter schools are public schools.

So, parents of students in Camden, keep asking for what you need. This is a free country. Let's speak up for what we need so that our governments serve us and not the other way around.

What Secrets Does Barrow County Know That Others Don't?

Citing increased flexibility yet another Georgia school district plans to petition to become a charter school district.

The Barrow county district believes that by getting away from some state laws they can provide a more innovative and flexible education for their children. It's interesting when an entire district believes that state laws prohibit them from providing a quality education. If that's not something to think about as we move forward with Obama's stimulus money for K-12 education under ARRA, then I don't know what is.

Who's Writing the Anti-Charter Script in New York City?

...and could they be coming to a school board meeting near you?

I don't have much to add to this disturbing report at Gotham Schools, but it reminds me a lot of this great video about the resistance to Green Dot taking over Lock High School.

I am shocked, shocked, that public officials would turn off their brains and spout the party line union position.

When Elephants Fight...

...the Grass Get's Trampled.

So says an African proverb.

In the charter school universe, the authorizer is always the elephant in the room. As Erin Dillon points out at The Quick and the ED, in situations where the authorizer is an unfriendly host district, there is a major power imbalance between the district and the charter school. What is supposed to be a negotiated collaboration between authorizer and district can end up as a capricious power struggle that makes the school non-viable.

I am privileged to work at a school with an excellent authorizer. Academy School District 20 in Colorado Springs is a high-performing district in all aspects, and their charter authorization and oversight is no exception. As the district's sole charter school, The Classical Academy educates about 12% of the district's students. This creates a positive interdependence, because the district simply could not absorb all the students if TCA were to close its doors. Two years ago, our charter school needed to evacuate a campus of modular buildings because unusually rainy weather had created a mold problem. The district had excess capacity, and they allowed our students and teachers to relocate while we worked on a permanent solution. Two years later, we are constructing a new campus and still living as guests in several district buildings.

Other charter schools are not so lucky. Many districts resent their charters, believing that charters somehow "drain" funds or take the best students.. Those oppositional charters are like hostile landlords. They can't quite evict you, but they can make your life miserable in a thousand little ways. From accreditation to transportation, the host district can obstruct, deny, and harass the charter school. The relationship can degrade from tense to hostile over a seemingly small issue. Lost in the conflict is the reality that student learning is completely perishable. If learning is disrupted, the lost opportunity might never knock again.

Those of us who are school board members, union leaders, politicians, and educators must submit to a simple reality. When charters and authorizers fight, students suffer. Every "winner" in a charter—district fight creates schools full of student losers. Authorizers must commit to the success of every charter, even when they question the charter's right to exist. So long as charters exist, they serve our students and they must be given every opportunity to succeed. Charter schools however, must honor their side of the equation. They must cooperate and comply with the authorizer as much as possible. The must embrace constructive criticism and take correction when necessary. Most importantly, charter school leaders cannot let the sometimes tense relationship with the authorizer devolve into an us-them squabble.

We are elephants. The grass needs our care.

Merit Pay + Feedback Loop = Strategic Compensation

As a principal who hires within a strategic compensation system, I have been thinking wistfully about the simplicity and ease of my colleagues who hire with a traditional step-and-lane system. I am a little jealous. They don’t have to worry about comparing teachers or tracking added value. The simply add up education and experience and voila! the correct salary appears on the contract.

Merit pay is much, much harder. Leaders must know what they value, they must measure what they value, and most importantly—they must communicate the relationship between philosophical value and financial value. I struggle with this during every hiring cycle. Every year I have to tell excellent teachers that their worth as a professional can be measured and ranked. That is hard for us all. When I communicate poorly or misjudge a teacher’s value, they push back or they leave. While it is painful to offend or lose good teachers, their response to the compensation offer is valuable feedback.

Every self-correcting system—from the scientific method to Linux development—depends on corrective feedback. Every year, the leaders at The Classical Academy debrief the hiring cycle and fine-tune elements of the compensation system to make it more strategic. There are elements of the system that don’t work well yet, but overall the system is much better than a pure, subjective merit pay system. The strategic improvements over merit pay are a function of the excellent feedback teachers give to the system.

Last year, two teachers gave me very different kinds of feedback:

• Teacher A was overpaid according to our model, so she received a modest raise.
  
• Teacher B improved performance and earned a more substantial raise.
  
• Teacher A said, “I don’t like this system” and left—voting with her feet.
  
• Teacher B said, “Thank you for recognizing my worth!” and stayed—voting with her feet.
  

Their differentiated responses gave us good feedback and helped us make our performance compensation system more strategic.

Does your system give you feedback? More importantly—do you use it?

Are 21st-Century Skills Enough For College-Bound Students?

Comparing two articles about 21st-Century Skills makes for an interesting conclusion.

First, there is Jay Mathews reporting on students building bridges out of spaghetti at Metz Middle School in Manassas. He points out that students at the school are learning skills that translate to more dependence on technology. Is it any coincidence that the Partnership for 21st-Century Skills lists dozens of corporations as "partners"? Any program that brings together Apple, Dell, HP, K12, Cisco, Verizon, etc. must have some serious profit potential. With the debatable exception of HP and a former iteration of Apple, these are not companies that have much history of educational altruism.

Next, consider this analysis of the "soft skills" offered to students at Robeson High School in Chicago. Out of 17 Robeson graduates who entered college in 2004, only 4 have graduated.

This is not a slam against those students. Maybe their expectations were artificially inflated by a school that promises:

• Allow all student to re-do any test or quiz with a grade of a “C” or lower 
  
• Instructors must assign a minimum of 40 grade entries per Quarter 
  
• Instructors will drop 10% of the lowest grades within the Formative Assessments category

Something is wrong when students can graduate from an accredited school that requires all the state graduation standards and yet find themselves unprepared for the next level.

This sure sounds like "the soft bigotry of low expectations".

21st-Century skills are practical and useful, but they are not sufficient for students who want to succeed in post-secondary academics. I'm worried that the profitable push for 21st-Century skills brings us closer to the kind of dystopia envisioned in C.M. Kornbluth's The Little Black Bag, where an elite of intellectual super-normals entertain themselves by keeping the rest of society busy thinking they're doing real work.

I cannot believe that Paul Robeson would appreciate my linking him to Kornbluth's bleak vision. I also cannot believe the school in Chicago bears any resemblance to his vision for academic achievement. We can do better and all our students deserve it.

I'm the reformer your union warned you about...

At The Quick and the Ed, Chad Aldeman makes a funny analogy that the educational establishment (and in particular New York) treats two types of public schools like parents might treat two types of children—sons and daughters.  His funny idea is that the traditional public schools are like daughters, they get a regular allowance but they can't date. Charter schools—independent sons that they are—have the freedom to make their own money, but they can't count on the folks for more than spare change. Charters can stay out late if they like as long as the lawn gets mowed and students pass the test.

Leaving the gender stereotypes aside, Chad' s analogy does sort of make sense. I feel like buying a leather jacket and getting a tattoo that says, "I'm the educational reformer your union rep warned you about!"

Strategic Pay Better Than Pay for Performance

In the commentary page of the March 11, 2009 Education Week, Donald B. Gratz argues that pay for performance fails because many who use it assume that high test scores equate to well-educated students.

He makes a compelling case that the student is much more than a test score. Citing several advocates of "child-centered" education such as Dewey and Emerson, Gratz shows that the current standards ignore the development of the whole child. Student growth has been sacrificed at the alter of "academic achievement as measured by standardized tests."

Gratz then gives examples of better assessment measures that could be used to reallocate classroom time to what really matters in student development.

While Gratz' conclusion doesn't leave us with a lot of information about how that would affect a pay for performance system, it seems to me that the system that I've argued for on this blog fits well into a more robust assessment framework.

I've often argued that a pay for performance system (that I've called Strategic Compensation) must include a multitude of factors--those factors that are integral to the strategic outcomes of the school. In our charter school some of those factors are teachers who teach and act in ways that align with our mission, who teach in specific methods, who engage students. We also value those who take leadership of their areas or grade level. Those are things that we can measure that contribute to the whole student, and not just test scores.

If we can accept most of Gratz' position, then a strategic compensation model makes more sense than a traditional pay for performance model. Performance is only one element of a strategic compensation model. Treating students as whole persons is another.