Cesar Chavez a sellout to the AFT?

There's hot debate going on on some national education blogs over the issue of anti-union charter schools naming themselves after labor icon Cesar Chavez, as blogged here previously.

Leading charter backer Andrew Rotherham claims that the AFT paid off Chavez to oppose "school choice." Rotherham's charges are ticking some people off.

— Caroline

Unanswered questions about a new school

Blogger Alexander Russo asked me if I feel that when I have questions about charters and small schools, I get answers. After sputtering for a while, all I can say is — no.

I thought I'd try again with questions I have about a planned new small high school, Bayview Essential School of Music, Art and Social Justice, to be opened in SFUSD in fall 2008. I feel like all these questions have floated out there unanswered, or have been answered with non-answers. (This school has been variously proposed as a charter and a non-charter; current plans are for it to be a non-charter with semi-charter-like autonomy.)

Questions about the school include the following:

• SFUSD enrollment is dropping, and opening a new school drains students and resources from existing schools, harming them. Opening one more new school will likely mean closing an existing one. Is this healthy for our district, schools and students? Which school should be closed?
• The school's backers predict that SFUSD will stop losing students because their school will attract them back. But the target demographic for this school is not the demographic that's notably leaving district schools -- middle-class families going private. African-American families are leaving the city in search of affordable housing, often when they move into the economic bracket that might enable them to own or at least rent a single-family house (far costlier in San Francisco than in many surrounding suburbs). Do the Bayview school's backers believe that the school's existence will persuade those families to stay?
• SFUSD is not Chicago or Oakland. There are already small-school and charter options for high-schoolers in the southeastern part of the city (June Jordan, Leadership, City Arts & Tech -- plus Metro Arts & Tech, though its location is in flux, and the Academy of Arts & Sciences, which is outside the immediate area but easy to get to). Balboa High School and Mission High School are larger nearby schools organized into small learning communities. Another budding small Bayview high school with extra enrichment resources, the "Dream School" Gloria R. Davis (GRD), was just closed. (One big, possibly fatal, problem for GRD was that the United Educators of San Francisco (UESF) union was unhappy with its hiring policies -- and the union is not comfortable with the Bayview Essential setup either.) How would the Bayview Essential School offer a better option to all those?
• Under SFUSD's all-choice enrollment system, any family can request any school. As middle-class parents often complain, students from low-income communities have some advantages under the SFUSD Diversity Index process in getting into the district's highest-achieving non-magnet high schools (Lincoln, Washington, Raoul Wallenberg, Galileo), if they so choose. They also have some boosts in the application process for Lowell (academic magnet) High School. School of the Arts (arts magnet) High School is eager to recruit low-income minorities as well. With the already-existing small schools and small learning communities in and near southeastern San Francisco, and access to any school citywide, what unmet need is the Bayview Essential school filling?
• SFUSD has committed to implement a new department to oversee small schools, at a time when essential central office positions are going unfilled. How can our fiscally strapped district do that without taking resources from other needs?
• The new school promises to be successful and high-performing. It even sent out a press release saying it would be high-performing (dutifully reported as such by the less-savvy neophytes in the non-mainstream press). Don't all founders of new schools expect them to be high-performing? We have other schools in that area and elsewhere in the city that also committed to be successful and high-performing, with mixed success. What key do the Bayview Essential backers feel they have to making their school successful and high-performing where others have had mixed success?
• The organizers of the new school say it has grassroots support. But it appears to have won that support by running a Bayview summer school that paid students $50 a week for working on a fun project to make a socially relevant music video. Kids who enjoyed that summer school, and their families, are eager supporters of the proposed new school. But presumably the new school won't be built around paying its students $50 a week to work on a fun project making a music video. Is support that was won in such a way truly genuine, grassroots support?
• The small-schools organizers call for more hiring autonomy than other schools have. I believe that what they mean is exemption from the union seniority system, so they can autonomously hire whom they choose. That's why the UESF union is dubious. Wouldn't all schools like to be able to hire whom they choose and circumvent the union seniority system when it comes down to it? How is it reasonable and justifiable to allow some schools to do that and not others (meaning that other school communities must hire the rejects that Bayview Essential has the discretion to pass up)?

— Caroline

Addendum: I neglected to mention Gateway, SFUSD's most successful charter high school. It didn't fit into the categories I was discussing -- it's not close to the Bayview and it doesn't employ SFUSD's Diversity Index assignment system. It's another popular high school option worthy of mention, though (with my personal caveats that I'm not a charter fan and that much of its success is surely attributable to the fact that it transparently screens applicants while non-credibly claiming not to).

High-profile head of renowned charter quits

Oakland's Novometro blog is reporting that admired but controversial Principal Ben Chavis of American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland has quit.

This sky-high-scoring school has received such national acclaim — even as Chavis' bizarre behavior has achieved local notoriety — that this event is worth noting from across the bay.

— Caroline

Addendum: Now the East Bay Express, which has covered AIPCS and Chavis' antics closely, has a story posted.

Union-busting charters honoring Cesar Chavez?!

I'm re-posting another item from Mike Klonsky's blog. It speaks for itself about the larger context on charter schools. This is, of course, aimed at those who mistakenly think that liberal/progressives can support today's charter schools without selling out their principles.

Chavez and DuBois rolling in their graves?

Since we're on the topic of teacher unions and charter schools, does anyone else think it strange that several charter schools named after the great union leader Cesar Chavez, don't allow their teachers to join teachers union? For example, there's the Cesar Chavez Academy in Detroit, run by the Lansing Michigan based, for-profit Leona Group for a hefty fee of $1.5 million per year. Leona is an anti-union bunch that also subcontracts to run schools in post-Katrina New Orleans.

SmallTalk scoop on the Leona Group

Once they got their charter application approved, the non-profit New Orleans Charter School Foundation immediately went out and hired the Leona Group, to operate their K-8 school and a high school. Leona had previously been hired by a Florida non-profit, the Athenian Academy to open two charter schools in Pasco County. They had been fired from its previous charter operations in a Michigan district after test scores plummeted. As it tured out, Leona couldn’t get it together in New Orleans in time for the 2005 opening and had to push the schedule back a year. But by hiding behind their partner non-profit, Leona suffered no consequences even though an on-time opening was desperately needed by Katrina-ravaged residents. Despite a spotty record of school management, Leona continues to thrive in the ownership society business climate. According to the Muskegon Chronicle: “Tri-Valley Academy, the county's oldest charter school, used Lansing-based management firm Leona Group for most of its 10-year existence. Last spring, the school board fired Leona, and is expected to submit a new school improvement plan…that reflects the leadership of its new management company.”

Then there's the Cesar Chavez Public Charter Schools for Public Policy (that's a lot of publics for one name, isn't it?) with such notables on their board as Albert Lord, president of Sallie Mae, Inc., a privatized company now being investigated by congress for education loan irregularities. Hmmm, I see Eduwonk's Andrew Rotherham is also on that board.

Of course we can't forget Chester Finn, whose neocon Fordham Foundation double dips as both charter school authorizer and charter school operator. Finn, a sworn enemy of teacher unions, operates the Veritas/Cesar Chavez Academy in Cincinnati.

Finn and Fordham took some heat after raving about Cincinnati's W.E.B. DuBois Charter (DuBois, for those who don't know, was also a big fan of organized labor). The school’s founder and leader, Wilson H. Willard, was described as a “role model for charter schools” by Terry Ryan, Fordham's vice president for Ohio programs and policy.

Last year, however,Willard the role model, was indicted by the state on charges of stealing money from school coffers and falsifying enrollment records. He left the school before the start of this academic year. Fordham then became the school's sponsor, as charter authorizers are called in Ohio. So now, neocon Finn runs schools named after DuBois and Chavez with no collective bargaining rights for teachers allowed.

— Caroline (quoting Mike Klonsky)

Charter movement hijacked by conservatives

Chicago education activist/blogger Mike Klonsky has an interesting post about the biography of teachers' union leader Al Shanker ("tough liberal"), who started out championing charters as a progressive alternative, and watched with dismay as they become the pet project of conservatives "who had tremendous contempt for public education" and the tool of privatizers. I'm reposting it with Mike's permission.

July 20th

Early charter school advocate

I'm reading Tough Liberal, Richard Kahlenberg's biography of Al Shanker, who led the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the world's largest union local, as well as the national AFT and was thought by many to be the most influential figure in public eduction, right up until his death in 1997.

Progressives like me had a love/hate relationship with Shanker. Those of us who were around in the late 60's, despised his attacks on the black freedom movement, which fought for community control of the schools in Harlem and Oceanhill-Brownsville in 1968. We also couldn't fathom his support for the Vietnam War.

On the other hand, Shanker was a defender of public schools in the face of the assault by privatizers, as well as a far-sighted and bold school reformer. He was jailed for leading teacher strikes and never hesitated to stand up for teachers's rights and respect. He realized before most, that unions had to play an active and leading role in reform, while, at the same time, defending teachers' rights, living standards, and working conditions.

In a speech to the National Press Club in 1988, he proposed the idea of teacher-led "charter schools" where rules could be bent if the great majority of teachers in a small school approved. He called on districts to "create joint school board-union panels that would review preliminary proposals and help find seed money for the teachers to develop final proposals." His ideas forshadowed today's Pilot Schools and Green Dot charters.

At the time, his idea received negative responses from today's right-wing charter advocates, like William Kristol and Chester Finn. Finn, who at the time, was Bush's assistant secretary of education, attacked the charter school proposal, saying it suggested that we don't already know what works in education.

In the coming years however, writes Kahlenberg:

Shanker "watched with alarm as the concept he put forward began to move away from a public-school reform effort to look more like a private-school voucher plan..Shanker came to believe that the charter school movement was largely hijacked by conservatives who made many charter schools vulnerable to the same groups that made voucher schools so dangerous: for-profit corporations, racial separatists, the religious right, and anti-union activists...Shanker watched with dismay as 'those who had tremendous contempt for public education' jumped on to the charter school bandwagon."

— Caroline

SFWeekly interview with Carlos Garcia

Sounds like the new Supe is making the rounds with reporters. Here's the first interview I've seen posted. Very interesting.

SF Weekly on SF Schools: Interview with new Superintendent:

But Garcia says his number one priority is to do something that San Francisco institutions are notoriously bad at -- the one thing that doesn’t come naturally to the concerned, progressive, school district that hired him.

Focus and be practical.

"We need to set achievable goals and get everyone on the same page," he told me. "We can’t take a shotgun approach. There’s too many issues we care about. If we target our resources, we can make a real difference on some of them. But we can’t try to solve all of them now."

The two priorities that are mentioned as a possible target to focus on: achievement gaps and graduation rates, sound like excellent priorities. Let's hope Mr. Gracia can step in and lead, keeping all the disparate forces pulling on the district working together. We can always hope.

Private school and startling consumer behavior

As an advocate and satisfied customer of San Francisco public schools. I'm forever troubled by the high percentage of families that choose private school. It weakens our public schools when families with resources opt out. So while it's a personal decision, it is one with an impact on the whole community.

The thing that's really dismaying is the number of families who never even consider SFUSD and who see private school as their default option — especially those who aren't wealthy and have to stretch to pay private-school tuition.

I have no beef with families who checked out the options conscientiously and made an informed choice that a private school could meet their child's needs better — sometimes for religious reasons, sometimes because of other well-thought-out concerns. (There's a bit of an asterisk here on families who chose public for K-5 and automatically go private for middle and high school entirely because of a mistaken notion that teens are animals and only private school can protect their child from sex, drugs, violence, and pants four sizes too big.)

And I know families who gave at least a few SFUSD schools a serious look or a decent shot and weren't satisfied. I'm not always convinced that moving to private — rather than switching public schools — is the only option or the best one, but I'm certainly not quibbling with those families' decisions.

But it's the non-wealthy families who barely give SFUSD a passing glance — who just assume it's unthinkable — whose consumer behavior stands out as inexplicable.

Here we have two options that are, in general, the same thing: versions of a K-12 education that meets certain overall outlines. One option is free and the other can run $12,000-$20,000 a year per kid and up. Wouldn't you assume that the free option would be your default, and the five-figure-a-year option would have to thoroughly prove its worth to you, with rock-solid evidence and convincing guarantees of its clear superiority, before you decided to choose it?

But that's not at all what I've seen with many families. Au contraire, the option that will run them thousands and thousands of dollars is the default; they just assume that the free option is worthless. Maybe the belief that you get what you pay for is so ingrained that it overcomes self-interest and common sense — something that's free must have no value.

One friend I discussed this with explained it as status-seeking. But on reflection, I don't think so. I know many, many families who have this attitude — private school as the default option, even when it's a financial stretch for them — who would never drive a car they couldn't afford just to impress people.

I think it's more about peer conformity and group behavior. Even though most people I hang out with are public-school parents and advocates, I still get the "Wow, you were daring to choose public school" attitude at times. Sheesh — shouldn't the attitude (or the response) be "Wow, you were extravagant to choose private school"?

With a less-populist, less-informed group than the people I hang out with, I'm sure the pervasive viewpoint is, "No responsible parent would be reckless enough to choose public school."

The pack mentality raises another issue with older kids, too: Kids from public-school-minded families often look longingly at private school for middle and especially high school, when they see their peers heading for Lick Wilmerding or Bay School or Sacred Heart. This is a big problem for families who don't have the money, would rather spend it on other things, or just aren't fans of private school. Being part of a community in which private school is the default suddenly becomes a source of major stress and family friction.

I can't write this without addressing the issue of what private school DOES provide for the money, though to explore that would take a book. I would sum up the situation by noting that my son is going into 11th grade at a public arts high school that attracts many students from private K-8s, and there is absolutely zero indication that kids coming from private school are overall on any different level academically (or otherwise) than kids coming from SFUSD schools. Kids from private school and public school mingle in honors, AP and regular ed classes, with neither group standing out. Kids from private school and public school are represented among the stellar achievers, the struggling students and the vast array in between. There's just no visible grand overall difference. So what was all that tuition money spent on again?

I can keep going about how public school is the populist choice; how strong public schools strengthen communities and democracy; how families fleeing public school work against those ideals.

But for now, let's just make this about smart consumer behavior. Again, we have two things that are, in overall outline, the same product: a K-12 education. One is free and one costs thousands of dollars a year. Wouldn't the smart consumer view the free version as the default choice and consider the high-priced version only after thoroughly researching exactly what extra benefits it provides for the money, looking with a sharp and questioning eye past hype and marketing, demanding solid evidence and guarantees? In what other area would so many otherwise smart people spend thousands on something they could get free, based mainly on vague hearsay, without even comparing the options?

— Caroline

Calfee School Guide

Here's an excellent resource for families researching the SFUSD high school offerings: Calfee School Guide. From the introduction on the site:

The SFUSD Open Enrollment process requires every middle school student to submit applications to attend public, magnet or public-charter high schools.

Each high school has different social climates, academic programs and career pathways.

If your student has a strong interest in a particular subject or has a specific need, this website will help them locate
the right school.

Not sure which path to follow? This site will allow you to explore what the various public schools have to offer.

The site is aimed at both students and adults and offers an interesting approach to exploring high school choices.

Pushing junk food on SFUSD's smallest students

SFUSD has been such a pioneer in banishing junk food from our schools — and has won such acclaim for it — that it's bizarre to discover a part of our district that's on an entirely different planet.

We still have kids who are routinely given an array of sweets and junk foods during class time, and teachers and administrators who look at you like you're speaking Urdu if you question it. (No insensitivity meant to Urdu-speakers.)

Child Development Centers, I'm talking to you.

The recipients of the junk food barrage are the tiniest members of our school community, the pre-K children. The National School Lunch Program provides two meals and one snack per day, but parents rotate providing the second daily snack. Lots of parents apparently use poor judgment, and Child Development Center (CDC) administrators provide no guidance. Here's an account from a parent at one of the CDCs who has run into a stone wall trying to advocate for healthier food:

These are some snacks I have witnessed being given to the kids at snacktime: gummy bears, cheese/cracker type Oreo cookie dipping packs, Otis Spunkmeyer cookies, microwave popcorn. I've also seen donuts, brownies, pastries, cookies and chocolates brought in for snacktime in the guise of 'fundraisers'. A common occurrence for in-class parties (open houses, parent meetings) are the ubiquitous cakes, cupcakes, chocolates, pastries, sodas, chips and corn-syrup 'juice-boxes'.

At an opening of a new art room, baskets of cookies and crackers were left out in the hallways, available to any child walking by. My top two are seeing a kindergarten-age child getting admonished for taking M&Ms out of the open dish on the teacher's desk without asking (in a shared preschool classroom), and hearing my daughter talk about the hard candy she was given by a teacher on the playground one day. It is common to have preschoolers coming in to the school with gum or lollipops first thing in the morning.

The Oreo cookie dippy snack thing occurred just yesterday. One of my daughter's teachers said he came into the classroom and saw the other teachers handing them out and he took them away and in frustration made a reminder notice about encouraging parents to bring in healthy snacks. (Note from Caroline: It's heartening that at least one teacher is clued in that this is a problem.)

Additional treats come not from the parents but from the CDC staff, apparently from a stash. The CDC mom says:

What I was told by the site director, and by teachers, was that they had a sort of reserve of donated snacks from Safeway that were primarily crackers and cookies, and I assume that many of the things I see in the classroom come from this.

The SFUSD Wellness Policy, which has mandated healthy foods in our schools since 2003, applies to all SFUSD schools including the CDCs. But it didn't explicitly mention the CDCs until new language was added this spring. A CDC director is reported to have said "No one pays attention to that stupid policy anyway," or words to that effect.

Well, it's time to pay attention. The Wellness Policy now explicitly restricts handing out unhealthy food to kids, and explicitly covers the CDCs. It's hard to imagine early-childhood educators' being unaware of the childhood obesity epidemic — or, more directly in their own interests, the impact of unhealthy food on kids' behavior. In my experience, including parent-provided snacks at co-op preschool and in two years of an SFUSD class where the teacher set up a program of rotating parent-provided snacks, most parents will follow guidelines about healthy foods if they are just given those guidelines.

So I'm publicly calling on the administrator in charge of the CDCs to impress — right now, today — upon her site managers and teachers that the Wellness Policy (if not common sense) requires them to tell parents that they need to bring in only healthy snacks.

None of you has to be the bad guy — not the downtown administrator, the site managers or the teachers — because the Wellness Policy lays down the law for you. All you have to do is follow the rules.

For full details, including a beginner's guide to the Wellness Policy guidelines and a list of the snacks that meet them, go to www.sfusdfood.org .

— Caroline

The P-word

The Pittsburgh, Pa., school district has decreed the term "public school" to be such bad PR that it's dropping the word "public" from its official name.

Officials hope to avoid "the negative attitudes and perceptions that some people have about public schools," the Associated Press reported.

Firmly stuck in contrarian mode, I was inspired by that to go looking online for an innocuous "We heart our public schools" bumper sticker. Eventually I found something along that line, but it was way outnumbered by anti-public-education stickers.

• Victim of public school education
• Public Schools: Because if there wasn't a place for Marxists, what would they do when it's not summer?
• I survived public school: That's why I homeschool
• America's public schools: Our students excel in mediocrity
• Govermint skool edukaydid (many variations on this oh-so-clever misspelled words theme)
• Bankrupt America: Support public schools
• Public school sucks nuts: Anarchy, apathy, atheism
• Public schools: tools for fools

Oh dear — now do I have to write a defense of public education, or can I assume that our visitors are sophisticated and grasp the fine points?

In any case, that level of hostility is dismaying. I ordered my little bumper sticker and a few extra to give away, but where do we even start beyond that?

Of course, private schools must also perceive a negative connotation, since they're trying to get everyone to call them "independent" instead. I looked around to see if there were correlating anti-private-school stickers and found only gentle messages like "Private school royalty." Of course I've mentally written my own slogans ("Private schools! Widening the gap between rich and poor for 400 years!"), but that's definitely the wrong tack to take.

— Caroline

A response to the charter folks

The charter folks keep on blasting me over the fact that my high-schooler attends a public school that admits by audition, San Francisco School of the Arts. They ask how I can criticize charters if my own child goes to a selective school. I just posted a response to one of them as a comment, but I'm going to blog it too.

First, I'm not picking on the families who choose charter schools — I make a point of leaving them alone unless they approach me to discuss it.

But I know that charter schools are harmful to public schools — and deliberately so, as they're a weapon in the right-wing arsenal aimed at privatizing public education. So I speak out about them, a small voice trying to counter the massive pro-charter lobby and PR campaign.

Second, I think it's fine for public schools to openly set admission requirements (such as artistic or academic criteria), as part of the school's design. The key is openly. Some people do object to that, and that's a matter of debate. It's quite well accepted throughout our communities that some public schools are openly designed with admission criteria, so it's not a radical notion.

One (and only one) of the objections I have to charter schools is the secret, covert picking, choosing and dumping of students. Many charters cherry-pick or design admissions processes that self-select aggressively for students who are likely to be successful. Then, pretending that they don't do that, they bash traditional public schools — the ones that accept their rejects and dumpees — and hold themselves up as superior. Even if the schools don't do that themselves, the charter lobby's mightily funded PR operation is busily doing it. That does damage to public schools.

Again, the difference is between an openly designed selection process and a secret one — plus the use of the results of the secret selection processes to attack public education as part of an orchestrated campaign to privatize it.

— Caroline

Charter lobby's view of presidential candidates

The brief commentary below is from the Center for Education Reform (CER), a right-wing organization that's the primary national lobbying force for charter schools. CER, closely linked to the Bush administration, is run by Jeanne Allen, who is the source the media calls first for any comment from the pro-charter viewpoint.

Here CER gives its perspective of the views of presidential candidates who spoke to the National Education Organization's annual meeting. CER criticizes candidates who "pandered to the unions (sic) calls for more money, less testing, and less competition."

Once we understand where the commentary is coming from, it's an interesting view of the candidates — and also a good look at the view from the heart of the charter movement. (This commentary came via my e-mail subscription and I can't find a link to it.)

UNIQUE CELEBRATION. From Bristol, RI the home of the nations oldest and longest running Fourth of July parade to Seattle WA, most of America was clapping and grinning in tribute to the nation on last weeks Independence Day. But the National Education Association (NEA) was conducting its celebration a bit differently. Every year during the week of the fourth, this labor union convenes and demonstrates why it is out of step with most of the families who lined the streets and lawns in tribute to America last week. This years annual NEA meeting hosted presidential hopefuls Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, Mike Huckabee, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, and Bill Richardson. All of the candidates, with a few brief exceptions, pandered to the unions calls for more money, less testing, and less competition. Obama talked of finally raising salaries across the board and fixing and improving schools instead of abandoning them and passing out vouchers; Huckabee spoke of the need for more arts and music education, dodging any of his support for greater options for children; Biden emphasized the importance of early childhood education. Hillary Clinton backed off her boastful support of charter schools delivered to the 1999 NEA convention (at which no one applauded) and instead told the convention she supported charters that dont drain public schools of their funds. (N.B. Thats code for states that dont require money to follow kids and happen to have the worst laws and least number of charters). A slight glimmer of hope for reformers came as Obama spoke of merit pay as a means of raising salaries for teachers, though that issue goes against the union brass. But sadly, the fight for independence didnt seem to rub off on these pandering presidential candidates this year. Theres always time, however if reformers get aggressive with their own demands for what they want to hear.

These quotes are from the CER dispatch. The quotes from Biden and Obama are in the spirit of vigorous disagreement, of course (as is the presence of Huckabee at a teachers' union event):

WORTH REPEATING:

"Thats what candidates do when they come to the NEA." — Michael Tobmann from Democrats for Education Reform commenting on Clinton and other Democrats criticism of vouchers.

"We know what we need to do, and its not No Child Left Behind. We have to stop focusing on test scores." — Sen. Joe Biden commenting before the NEA on what we need to do without explaining what we need to do.

"I might look as out of place as Michael Moore at the NRA convention." — Gov. Mike Huckabee, the only Republican candidate who accepted the NEAs invitation to the convention.

"You didn't devote your lives to testing, you devoted it to teaching, and teaching is what you should be allowed to do." — Sen. Barack Obama commenting on testing under No Child Left Behind, which he called one of the emptiest slogans in the history of American politics.

— Caroline

How cheating charter won its acclaim

Trusting Chronicle columnist Chip Johnson applauds University Prep along with the, um, unorthodox American Indian Public Charter School, which is a story yet to be written.

Model schools' cherry-picking questioned

When the Small Schools Redesign Initiative was being promoted with SFUSD, the Boston Pilot Schools were cited as a model — one that was an unqualified success.

But today's Boston Globe reports that the Pilot Schools are screening and cherry-picking students, which puts a big asterisk on their claims of success. The Globe cites charter schools that also do that (as do some SFUSD charters).

Pilot schools setting more hurdles
Original mission skewed, some say
By Maria Sacchetti and Tracy Jan, Globe Staff | July 8, 2007

Most of Boston's experimental pilot high schools, held up as a national model and acclaimed for outperforming traditional public schools, have quietly created admissions hurdles that call into question whether they are stacking the deck with the most successful students.

The pilot high schools, run by the public school system, often demand student transcripts, teacher recommendations, and essays from applicants, practices more common in private schools, a Globe review of admissions policies has found.

Boston's superintendent and others say the hurdles fly in the face of the pilot schools' original purpose, which was to show that given more freedom in budgeting, teaching, and hiring, they could produce higher test scores with the same pool of students. The goal was to have traditional Boston public schools then replicate the success.

Regular school principals who accept any student who walks in the door say the pilots' admissions criteria infuriates them, given how a recent study hailed pilot schools' superior test scores and college-going rates. And, cities around the state and the nation, including Los Angeles, are creating pilots because of Boston's success.

"I think it's unfair, obviously," said Michael Fung, headmaster at Charlestown High School. "If you allow us to get rid of 25 percent of our kids, I can assure you I'd do a much better job than I am."

Superintendent Michael G. Contompasis said he is concerned about the perception that pilot schools are picking the best students and ordered them in recent years to stop reviewing transcripts and to phase out other requirements. Some headmasters continue to resist, insisting that they use the information to better understand students' needs and that they do not screen for the highest achievers.

State education officials, who last year proposed modeling four failing schools around the state after Boston's high-scoring pilot schools, said they were unaware of the pilots' admissions requirements and would ban the four schools from using them.

"Pilot and charter schools are doing a really good job with urban kids, but we shouldn't be comparing them to regular schools because they're educating kids who aren't exactly the same," said Ellen Guiney , executive director of Boston Plan for Excellence. "The kids farthest behind are not in the pilot schools."

The majority of Boston's pilot high schools enroll far fewer failing students than regular schools, according to a new study by Boston Plan for Excellence, a nonprofit that works with the city to improve schools.(partial excerpt)

And a sidebar about admission criteria:

Make the best impression possible'
July 8, 2007

Below is a sampling of the steps parents and children must take to apply to some charter schools and Boston's pilot schools. School officials say they often make exceptions for those who cannot complete the steps.

River Valley Charter School in Newburyport

Parents: Complete an application, attend a school information meeting, tour the school, and sign an agreement stating that they understand that the school expects each family to volunteer 40 hours a year at the school and contribute to the annual fund.

Sturgis Charter Public School in Hyannis

Students: Fill out an application listing favorite subjects, favorite book read since sixth grade, and extracurricular activities. Submit two typewritten essays on why they are choosing Sturgis and on their favorite teacher. The essays "should be an example of your best writing" and should be edited "to make the best impression possible," according to
the application.

(partial excerpt)

— Caroline

University Prep: Charter schools gone wild

Thanks to Oakland's NovoMetro blog, today's lead Chronicle story on cheating and other misbehavior at the acclaimed University Prep charter school is not news to all of us, though it fills in lots of details.

The story stands on its own without my succumbing to the temptation to add my own snide comments. Also, thanks to SFGate for providing free permanent access to content.

Dennis Kelly has the stage

How cool. Yesterday I asked a hypothetical question about 'what would Dennis think?' and lo and behold, we have his response!

Dear KC,

Thanks for asking.

Barack Obama with Dennis Kelly
and Linda Plack of the UESF

MSNBC may be right that there was no audible booing in that immense Philadelphia hall, but there certainly was a buzz. The impression I had when Barack Obama spoke was that he recognizes the need to raise salaries and is groping for a way to do it.

The context of the presentation made it clear that Obama is not calling for merit pay in the traditional, conservative sense that we know it, and is looking for ways to work with teachers. When Linda Plack and I met with him in June at a Labor Council gathering, we had asked him about how he intended to “invest in education”. He made a commitment at that time that he wanted to institute a program to raise the base salary of teachers. (Biden spoke this week about the same concern and about sponsoring legislation similar to his law enforcement legislation that called for appropriations to pay more and bring more people onto the job.)

If his comments this week were intended as a “conscious break” with other candidates, it was not seen that way. As with much of what the Illinois Senator presents, there is a sense that there has been insufficient staff work to polish the presentations.

In unity,

Dennis Kelly

Hey, polish is overrated in my book. Unvarnished sounds like a refreshing change. Thanks Dennis.

What about "merit pay"?

Apparently the CW reaction to this bit of election news is that Obama shot himself in the foot making this case to a union crowd. But really, it's a pretty nuanced position when you dig into it. I wonder what Dennis Kelly would really think of this kind of merit pay?

MSNBC: Obama Calls For Merit Pay

In an address to the National Education Association Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, Obama risked a strong reception and broke from the other Democratic presidential candidates by calling for merit-based pay -- an issue unions are typically against. But Obama did not receive any audible boos, and he actually received some applause because of the way he framed his stance.

"The most controversial aspect of any discussion of teacher compensation is merit pay," Obama said, "and I know that folks here object to the idea properly that if you are being measured and paid simply by how the child is doing on a test without taking into account what that child is coming to the school with, ... if it's all based on assessments made on No Child Left Behind, then it's not fair to pay teachers who are pouring their heart out based on some of these arbitrary measures."

He pledged to work with the NEA and teachers' unions to determine a new system for accountability. "What I want to do is work with teachers, and where we can work with teachers to come up with ways to set those kinds of professional standards, then I want to be part of that process,” Obama said. “But I'm not going to do it to you; I'm going to do it with you."

Warren Hellman and Sandra Hernández welcome Carlos Garcia

Frankly, I missed this op-ed piece by Warren Hellman and Sandra Hernández of the San Francisco Education Fund when it ran in the June 15th Chronicle, but the PEN news blast included it in a recent news blast email. Check it out:

New superintendent a catalyst for change

[...]The school district, along with its philanthropic and community partners, began market research last fall to determine what it would take to bring families and students back into its schools. In this evidenced-based study, the school district, the San Francisco Education Fund, Parents for Public Schools and Parent Advisory Council held nearly 90 meetings reaching out to more than 900 parents, youth and community members throughout San Francisco.

These conversations involved concerned members of the community representing the socioeconomic and geographic breadth of our city. What did we learn? San Franciscans are telling us that their top issues are quality schools, safe schools, and a family friendly enrollment process. Pretty simple.

And although the fix will not be as simple as identifying the needs, it can be done. The new superintendent will inherit declining enrollment, school closures, school assignment battles and a critical opportunity to begin a productive relationship with the teachers union. What will we do as a community to help ensure success for our vitally important public schools?

We must continue our effective public-private partnership and our commitment to our shared vision. Together, we can create the first-class schools our community needs and wants. Based on the research, we now know everyone wants quality schools in every neighborhood. Quality means much more than test scores; it means parents and students want the fundamentals of strong math, reading and writing. Non-negotiable items also include science, art, music, technology and physical education. City residents want safe schools, safe neighborhoods and a strong community. Our diverse community of school families value both strong academics and proximity to their neighborhoods. Finally, parents want school leaders to implement a proactive, clear, long-range plan to make all of this happen.[...]

The authors reference the recent Community Engagement Report that was a collaboration between SFUSD's Parent Advisory Council to the Board of Ed, Parents for Public Schools SF, SF Ed Fund, and SFUSD. The report can be found here in English, Spanish, and Chinese. If you want more, you can find the detailed report along with various appendices here. It was a very interesting process and a valuable report.

Please, sir, I want some more

Some piece of information that floated past me piqued my curiosity about the SEED school, an "it's a miracle!" charter boarding school in D.C., leading me to its website. I couldn't help noting that the school meals appear a bit lacking in fresh seasonal produce (OK, maybe the kids ate that all up first).

Problem charter school's leader has troubled past

Oakland's acclaimed University Preparatory Charter Academy has been accused of cooking test scores, and its director is reported to have intimidated teachers and staff. The director, Isaac Haqq, is a former Pasadena city councilmember — then known as Isaac Richard — who was a handful there too.

Thanks to Oakland's NovoMetro for pointing out this interesting article in the Pasadena Star-News. The boldfaced paragraph in the article piqued my interest too — a question that goes beyond just this "miracle!" charter school: the head of the school's board of directors questions how well its alumni are doing in the colleges to which they've proudly been accepted.

Ex-councilman faces accusations
By Janette Williams
Staff Writer
Pasadena Star-News
07/02/2007

Former Pasadena Councilman Isaac Richard — whose antics and brushes with the law in the 1990s kept him in the headlines and twice led to council censure for "antisocial behavior" — has been accused of doctoring academic test results and intimidating staff and students at a charter school he runs in Oakland.

Eight former staffers who taught at the University Preparatory Charter Academy until May wrote to the Oakland Unified School Board and school district officials on June 8 alleging that, as the school's executive director, Richard — now known as Isaac Haqq — engaged in behavior and actions that call school operations and claims of stellar academic results into question.

"The matter's in litigation" after a former school staff member sued, following the test-score controversy, Haqq said by telephone Monday evening.

"You'll have to contact my attorney." But, Haqq added, "I'm responsible for everything that happens at the school. With regard to the voided test scores, I take full responsibility for that - but I can't speak out about the issue until we've resolved the lawsuit. I think it will be very clear soon there was no intention to deceive on the part of anyone currently on the staff at U Prep."

He added the recently completed term was "our most successful year in terms of college recruiting - 39 kids have gone to the best colleges in the country."

Haqq's school, which was granted a charter in 2001, lists Prentice Deadrick, former Pasadena Unified School Board president and long-time former assistant city manager, as chairman of its board.

Deadrick, who left Friday as chief executive director of the Center for Community and Family Services in Pasadena, could not be reached Monday for comment.

The Oakland school's five-year plan shows 360 students in grades nine through 12 with a projected budget of more than $2 million and a heavy emphasis on academics.

The Oakland school board wrote to Harold Pendergrass, president of the charter school's governing board, asking for a response by last Friday to "serious allegations" by teachers, including STAR testing irregularities, grade and transcript changes made by administration, intimidation and arbitrary discipline of students, improper firings, use of coercion and withholding of pay.

Oakland Unified School District spokesman Alex Katz said Monday that Haqq had not met the deadline.

But Pendergrass, a former Oakland district board member, said he had "overseen the timely compliance with their request" and that it should have been received.

Pendergrass said he was aware of the problems listed by the teachers; Haqq told him the test results had been altered, but that the changes were made by a consultant hired to prepare students and oversee testing. "There was an admission it was done," Pendergrass said.

There have been complaints from parents about Haqq's behavior, Pendergrass said, that have now been resolved.

"They were mostly personal, and I concluded it was personality conflicts," he said.

Haqq had a troubled tenure in Pasadena civic life, feuding with then-Mayor Rick Cole and other council members and being cited for brandishing a gun: In 1993 alone, Councilman Chris Holden filed a restraining order against him, there was a police report that he sexually assaulted a woman — no charges were filed — then-City Clerk Maria Stewart alleged he sexually harassed her, insulted her national origin and used obscene language during a meeting, and attempted a filibuster of a council meeting by reading "War and Peace."

Pendergrass said he is aware of the problems some have cited with Haqq, but stressed that they happened in a city and district with "intractable problems, and a history of failure and dropouts."

Pendergrass said the charter school's board had been pleased with the rate of college acceptance — the school Web site boasts "Elite Colleges Scrambling for Grads of Local Charter School" — but he now questions that success in light of students' retention rate in college.

The high turn-over rate of teachers is also a concern, he said.

Pendergrass said he has had no confrontations with Haqq, but is aware others have had a different experience.

"I find him strongly opinionated," he said. "How he actually performs day-to-day, well, I've vowed to spend more time at the school — it's definitely inconsistent, the complaints from parents and the way he relates to me. I attended a meeting of teachers, and some were so strongly critical it caused me to have some questions. But I'm not ready at this point to abandon the school. I'm convinced it must stay alive, and its track record has not been (officially) refuted."

— Caroline