Charter schools don't steal money, Districts do.

In another case of misunderstanding about schools. A district in Atlanta is suing the state for authorizing a school and "taking" their money.

As many of us know there are many irrelevant arguments in such a case. Here are few from this case:

• We didn't approve the school.
• The school is taking money away from "our students."

First, the school is properly authorized by the state. It's the law.
Second, the students are not being educated by the district so it's money for the students that are being educated by the charter school. The charter school hasn't taken a dime away from the district. The district is getting the money to educate the students that are at district schools.

There is another interesting point here that's missing. The district claims that it is doing a good job, but obviously there are families who don't thinks so. Has the district bothered to try to find out why?

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LAUSD becoming impatient

LA Unified School District has become impatient with its own efforts to reform traditional education. In the words of Claremont professor Charles Kerchner, "Does this mean it's the end of public education? No. ... Does it mean privatization? ... No. But it does mean we are going to have public education looking a lot different than it does now."

Kerchner confirms what you've heard me say many times. Charter school education is public education. It is simply a different model. LA Unified is going for more of a smorgasbord because past efforts haven't worked. Ramon Cortines, LA Unified's Superintendent said, "Some people want this district to ... have everything fit into ticky tacky boxes, like in the 1950s. Well, I'm saying that has failed the children of this district, and across America."

You have to know how refreshing it is for a superintendent of one of the largest school districts in the country to say something like that. After my blog this morning on being patient with charters, here is a guy who is not waiting to see the results. He knows there has to be change and he isn't going to sit and allow the status quo to exist. It is true that charter schools are still a risk, but there is a greater risk to allowing traditional education to continue sucking our tax dollars and not give us much in return.

You can say that traditional public schools are changing, but that doesn't make it true. In fact, not all non-charter public schools agree on the answer to the problem. So, how long to we sit and wait for change--the right change? Hats off to Ramon Cortines. My first honorary member of the Charter Insights blog.

Patience is a virture

Did you ever think about how much time and money society has put into our current education system just to see it go downhill? It's not just the education gap that I'm concerned about. Top performing students aren't what they used to be either.

Now, here is the rub. Traditional educators are saying that charter school improvement is too slow and too costly. I'm not joking. You can read it for yourself. Just click the link.

So, let's see. Charters operate on thinner budgets, receive less money, don't receive free land, have to buy back buildings from the districts that are already paid for, AND they are expected to change decades of a crumbling educational system overnight.

Charter schools have been around about a decade and a half. The average charter school has been around approximately four to five years. Even traditional education experts say that it takes about ten years to develop significant educational change. Using the logic of the education experts, we should be abandoning traditional public schools and flocking to just about any other possible solution.

The same article notes that some charter schools that are failing have been closed. There is nothing wrong with that. It's appropriate, but let's not have a double standard. Why not exercise a little patience for charter schools? My patience with traditional education is just about worn out.

Duncan may be wrong, but he has the right attitude

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has taken a ton of criticism recently for his passion for charter schools. While he may or may not be right about charter schools, I love this quote "Duncan said he wants ED to become 'an engine of motivation, not a compliance machine.'"

This may be the shortest blog I've ever written (and many of you think that's a good thing), but there isn't much else to say. The biggest criticism by those of us in the education reform movement has been about the traditional assumption that compliance with licensing and legal requirements would make adequate or even good schools.

The research is in and it's clear that licensing makes little difference in the quality of a teacher, and yet traditional educational pundits still advocate and advertise that they use "certified teachers." My grandma is "certified" but I'm not sure she's a great teacher, if you know what I mean. Seriously, traditional educators have set up a "rubric" which is essentially a set of check boxes. If you can check all of the boxes, you are good to go.

Compliance is that least of our worries for education. What matters is results. I say, "Bravo, Mr. Secretary. Bravo."

The Problems with Merit Pay

In the article, Texas takes another stab at merit pay, we find again that good intentions can go wrong. We have often argued against standard step and lane pay scales on this blog. However, don't let that fool you. It doesn't mean that we favor just any merit pay system. In fact, we believe that our system of strategic compensation overcomes the problems seen in this Texas system and other traditional merit pay systems.

A traditional merit pay system does one of two things.

1. Puts a pot of money in the hands of the leader and allows him or her to distribute the money on some subjective basis of high performance.
2. Assigns dollar value to some measurable criteria that may or may not be what one truly wants to reward.
   

The second is the fault of the Texas system.

Any good merit pay or pay for performance system must be strategic. In other words, it has to reward the characteristics desired. A teacher cannot always control test scores, but a teacher can control the characteristics and methods used to teach and lead students in ways that follow the mission and vision of a school. In addition, a good pay system allows those being rewarded some input into the criteria. They aren't the only players, but they should have a say. The Texas system is a top down approach that doesn't recognize contributions within the local school and to its vision, nor does it recognize the place of teachers to have some say in what kind of a system is fair.

Until districts realize that pay for performance is more than test scores, teacher merit pay systems will continue to fail as has the traditional step and lane system.