The charter school "sorting hat"
We keep hearing similar glowing accounts about a certain type of charter school.
These schools focus on low-performing students from disadvantaged demographics that tend to achieve poorly in school. They're almost always segregated — Latino or African-American. They mandate a no-excuses high level of participation by parents/guardians. They set high standards for the students, though they do often find themselves recognizing that their original standards weren't realistic and revising them. They require the students to meet the standards — or else.
They demand long hours from students and teachers. The widely hailed, San Francisco-based KIPP chain of charters runs schools with nine-hour days, Saturday classes and mandatory summer school. In many of these schools, teachers are required to visit students and home and to be available for student and parent/guardian cellphone calls at all waking hours.
Some — perhaps many &mdash schools like this appear to achieve academic success with their students. So what's not to like?
Critics and questioners &mdash who are largely drowned out by the mainstream media's cheering for these schools &mdash point to a few issues. Here are my interpretations.
Like the Harry Potter "sorting hat," there's a vigorous process going on that can't happen in traditional general-ed public schools.
As I said, these schools are largely segregated. There's no doubt that it's easier to teach a group of kids from the same background and at the same academic level. Remember Jaime Escalante, the "Stand and Deliver" teacher who brought poor Latino kids in his East L.A. high school to advanced levels of math achievement? Escalante later taught elsewhere, including Sacramento, and was never able to replicate his success. He attributed that largely to the fact that his classes in East L.A. were entirely homogenous — all one demographic, which was also Escalante's own — and he couldn't teach as effectively in diverse classes.
San Jose's Downtown College Prep is a high-profile example of this type of school. Pro-charter author Joanne Jacobs' book about DCP mentions that occasionally a middle-class family with high-achieving kids checks out the school and immediately recognizes it's not for their kind.
I'm not endorsing segregated schools! But we often hear that it's easier, short-term, to work with a homogenous group of similar kids at similar ability levels.
So, we have a type of school with classes full of kids who are very similar to each other. Kids are leaving the school — voluntarily or not — all along the way as they or their parents/guardians fail to live up. Those who remain are those most likely to graduate and (in a situation where colleges are eager to accept promising minority students) go to college.
If a traditional public school could apply all these practices, would it achieve the same successes? And if it could, what would happen to all the other kids — the many who couldn't get with the program due to their own or their parents'/guardians' failings?
Meanwhile, these schools demand superhuman commitment and sacrifice of their teachers and administrators, who must have no life at all. Joanne Jacobs' book and the book "Teachers Have it Easy" (about which I plan to blog later) portray plenty of these hero/martyrs.
Nine-hour days, Saturday school, summer school, on call 24/7, a schedule of visits to students' homes. Nobody could keep this up — which is why the turnover is staggering in those schools. Let's not even go into whether teachers' unions can possibly condone these working conditions.
My husband is training for a cross-country charity bike ride that he hopes to do this summer. He can (we think) manage the regimen of daily 5 a.m. gym workouts and biking to work till the cross-country ride begins in late June. He could not make it a regular lifelong routine. We could not honestly say "Yes! Any 54-year-old can be in shape all the time to take a 3,000-mile bike ride!"
Seems like that's the situation for these teachers. They can work near-miracles with challenging kids — a vigorously screened set of challenging kids — and lift them to undreamed-of heights. But only for a brief while, till the teachers crash and burn. Then another wave of teachers has to come in and take over. How many waves of these teachers are out there?
What these schools are doing is sustainable only if they can achieve it with merely talented, committed teachers under tolerable working conditions, able to live normal lives. If it's not sustainable, the achievement has no value as a "reform." We've seen this with the once-successful Leadership High charter in San Francisco, which is now in meltdown.
And these schools are no basis for hailing charter schools as a successful reform. Any traditional school could achieve the same results if it could utilize the same techniques: teach only students who can meet a set standard, from families willing to commit to significant involvement and support -- all others must go elsewhere. Maintain a segregated, homogeous student population. Demand superhuman, unsustainable commitment from teachers and administrators.
There's nothing mystical about being a charter school that makes these techniques succeed. And these successes are a "reform" only if they can be replicated and sustained.
— Caroline
These schools focus on low-performing students from disadvantaged demographics that tend to achieve poorly in school. They're almost always segregated — Latino or African-American. They mandate a no-excuses high level of participation by parents/guardians. They set high standards for the students, though they do often find themselves recognizing that their original standards weren't realistic and revising them. They require the students to meet the standards — or else.
They demand long hours from students and teachers. The widely hailed, San Francisco-based KIPP chain of charters runs schools with nine-hour days, Saturday classes and mandatory summer school. In many of these schools, teachers are required to visit students and home and to be available for student and parent/guardian cellphone calls at all waking hours.
Some — perhaps many &mdash schools like this appear to achieve academic success with their students. So what's not to like?
Critics and questioners &mdash who are largely drowned out by the mainstream media's cheering for these schools &mdash point to a few issues. Here are my interpretations.
Like the Harry Potter "sorting hat," there's a vigorous process going on that can't happen in traditional general-ed public schools.
- These schools self-screen for a subset of a demographic. They are all "choice" schools, so all students must have parents/guardians who care enough to learn about and request an educational option. That rules out those who have too many problems to pay attention at all, meaning largely the families with the very most messed-up, low-achieving kids.
- They self-screen for parents/guardians willing to commit to mandatory involvement. Many of these parents/guardians weren't involved in "regular" school when it was optional, but they come through when required to. That rules out those who absolutely can't or won't — and those are the most likely to have messed-up, low-achieving kids.
- They self-screen for students who will commit to trying to meet standards. That rules out another big batch of messed-up, low-achieving kids.
- Of the remaining students, those who can't or won't meet the standards they committed to are outta there, voluntarily or not. So there goes another batch of messed-up, low-achieving kids.
As I said, these schools are largely segregated. There's no doubt that it's easier to teach a group of kids from the same background and at the same academic level. Remember Jaime Escalante, the "Stand and Deliver" teacher who brought poor Latino kids in his East L.A. high school to advanced levels of math achievement? Escalante later taught elsewhere, including Sacramento, and was never able to replicate his success. He attributed that largely to the fact that his classes in East L.A. were entirely homogenous — all one demographic, which was also Escalante's own — and he couldn't teach as effectively in diverse classes.
San Jose's Downtown College Prep is a high-profile example of this type of school. Pro-charter author Joanne Jacobs' book about DCP mentions that occasionally a middle-class family with high-achieving kids checks out the school and immediately recognizes it's not for their kind.
I'm not endorsing segregated schools! But we often hear that it's easier, short-term, to work with a homogenous group of similar kids at similar ability levels.
So, we have a type of school with classes full of kids who are very similar to each other. Kids are leaving the school — voluntarily or not — all along the way as they or their parents/guardians fail to live up. Those who remain are those most likely to graduate and (in a situation where colleges are eager to accept promising minority students) go to college.
If a traditional public school could apply all these practices, would it achieve the same successes? And if it could, what would happen to all the other kids — the many who couldn't get with the program due to their own or their parents'/guardians' failings?
Meanwhile, these schools demand superhuman commitment and sacrifice of their teachers and administrators, who must have no life at all. Joanne Jacobs' book and the book "Teachers Have it Easy" (about which I plan to blog later) portray plenty of these hero/martyrs.
Nine-hour days, Saturday school, summer school, on call 24/7, a schedule of visits to students' homes. Nobody could keep this up — which is why the turnover is staggering in those schools. Let's not even go into whether teachers' unions can possibly condone these working conditions.
My husband is training for a cross-country charity bike ride that he hopes to do this summer. He can (we think) manage the regimen of daily 5 a.m. gym workouts and biking to work till the cross-country ride begins in late June. He could not make it a regular lifelong routine. We could not honestly say "Yes! Any 54-year-old can be in shape all the time to take a 3,000-mile bike ride!"
Seems like that's the situation for these teachers. They can work near-miracles with challenging kids — a vigorously screened set of challenging kids — and lift them to undreamed-of heights. But only for a brief while, till the teachers crash and burn. Then another wave of teachers has to come in and take over. How many waves of these teachers are out there?
What these schools are doing is sustainable only if they can achieve it with merely talented, committed teachers under tolerable working conditions, able to live normal lives. If it's not sustainable, the achievement has no value as a "reform." We've seen this with the once-successful Leadership High charter in San Francisco, which is now in meltdown.
And these schools are no basis for hailing charter schools as a successful reform. Any traditional school could achieve the same results if it could utilize the same techniques: teach only students who can meet a set standard, from families willing to commit to significant involvement and support -- all others must go elsewhere. Maintain a segregated, homogeous student population. Demand superhuman, unsustainable commitment from teachers and administrators.
There's nothing mystical about being a charter school that makes these techniques succeed. And these successes are a "reform" only if they can be replicated and sustained.
— Caroline
Labels: Charters
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