Billionaire titans take aim at urban school systems

(This is a version of a commentary I posted on www.change.org recently.)

There’s a growing chorus protesting the takeover of public school districts by what blogger Jim Horn calls “vulture philanthropists” — the billionaire, non-educator business titans who are bent on imposing their vision for the education of low-income inner-city minorities. That often means obliterating existing schools and replacing them with charter schools run by managers from outside the community.

One of the most sincere, and surprising, of the voices of protest belongs to Diane Ravitch, longtime education commentator who is a fellow at the Hoover Institution (the heart and soul of anti-public-education “reform” advocacy) and former Assistant Secretary of Education in the George H.W. Bush administration. I previously posted about Ravitch here.

Writing from New York, where she has become a sharp critic of Michael Bloomberg’s mayoral takeover of the city’s school system, Ravitch declares: “It appears that the Big Money has placed its bets on dismantling public education.”

Today’s highest-profile venture philanthropists are Bill Gates, who needs no introduction; real estate development king Eli Broad; the Walton family of Wal-Mart fame; and San Francisco's own Don Fisher, founder of the Gap. “The Billionaire Boys Club,” Ravitch observes, “know what needs to be done, and they don't see the point of listening to such unenlightened types as parents and teachers.”

From the outside it would seem to make sense to just move in and shutter a struggling school and start anew with a different model. On the ground, it may be another story, as school communities are fragmented — some scattered among the new schools, with the most challenged and highest-risk students winding up at the most marginalized of the existing schools.

"Model programs tend to skim off those kids who are already better positioned (thanks to better home environments, greater natural gifts, savvier or better-educated parents, etc.)," writes Sara Mosle in Slate. "Regular public schools are left with a more distilled population of struggling students."

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, this is falling most heavily on Oakland. My own city, San Francisco, has a fairly high-functioning urban public school system – largely because the city’s astronomical housing prices are pushing the lowest-income (and thus often most-challenged) families out of the city. San Francisco is also a mecca for Asian immigrants, who (overall, on average) tend to be high academic achievers, which strengthens our schools. So while the school district where I live is of little interest to those forces, our neighbors across the bay in Oakland bear the brunt. The Oakland-based Perimeter Primate blog has become a valuable source of information and research on the billionaires’ experiments with the beleaguered school district.

A new research paper, "The Politics of Venture Philanthropy in Charter School Policy and Advocacy," by University of California, Berkeley Associate Prof. Janelle Scott, examines the history and impact of such projects.

“[T]here is in fact a long history of wealthy, mostly White philanthropists funding and shaping the education of African-Americans and other communities of color in the United States – sometimes in ways that opened their access to education and often in ways that restricted it,” Scott writes. She describes schools and other projects created by the Julius Rosenwald Fund: “Although there is no question that these institutions provided opportunities for students that otherwise might not have existed, the schools were also originally organized around specific notions of what African-Americans’ social status should be, usually aligned with training students for industrial and service work.”

The backlash against the 21st-century version of venture philanthropy reveals itself in this account in the Michigan Citizen of “[t]he alliance to completely dismantle the Detroit Public School system, and in this video clip of a fiery New York City Councilman Charles Barron denouncing the push to impose charter schools throughout New York City.
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“At some point,” concludes Diane Ravitch, “the music and the upheaval will stop. But when it does, will there still be a public school system? Or will the schools all be run by hedge fund managers, dilettantes, and EMOs [Education Management Organizations]?

What's not to like about charter schools?

At a community meeting at my kids’ high school last week, a parent asked the principal about the possibility of becoming a charter school. The principal’s answer was respectful and noncommittal.

I was sitting next to a friend who’s well aware of my skepticism about charter schools — not that she necessarily shares it — and whispered semi-jokingly that I’d have to transfer my daughter out if that happened. Another mom commented to me that she’s uninformed about what charter schools are and why they might be controversial, and in that setting, all I could say was, “It’s a long story.” Here's a summary of the long story.

As to finding out what charter schools are, that’s pretty easy, since they are being pushed by the nation’s most powerful and bountifully funded forces and get reams of glowing PR (at the expense of non-charter public schools). Much of the mainstream press (or what remains of it in this country) is also big on promoting charter schools — sometimes due to close connections with those same powerful forces and sometimes due to, in my opinion, naivete, insufficient research and excessive susceptibility to that glowing PR.

The Wikipedia entry on charter schools is undoubtedly groomed regularly by the many people paid by the well-funded charter forces, and there is no corresponding paid force taking the skeptical view.

From the skeptics’ view, Clay Burrell recently posted a thoughtful commentary on www.change.org.

As to why charter schools, which sound so fantastic in concept, would provoke any objection or controversy, I’m going to quote another source to sum things up. In my view, charter schools are something like Communism — they sound really good in theory, but human nature corrupts the concept and causes the good intentions to go awry.

The following excerpts are from the introduction to the March 2008 book Keeping the Promise? The debate over charter schools, a collection of essays published by Rethinking Schools in collaboration with the Center for Community Change. These are the points that raise concerns from my own philosophical/political perspective; someone who believes that the free market and privatization are the solution for our schools would not have the same reaction.

The introduction was written by education researcher/commentators Leigh Dingerson, Barbara Miner, Bob Peterson and Stephanie Walters.

‘The charter school movement has roots in a progressive agenda that, as educator Joe Nathan wrote in Rethinking Schools in 1996, viewed charters as “an important opportunity for educators to fulfill their dreams, to empower the powerless, and to help encourage a bureaucratic system to be more responsive and effective. …

Unfortunately, the charter concept also appealed to conservatives wedded to a free-market, privatization agenda. And it is they who, over the past decade, have taken advantage of the conservative domination of national politics to seize the upper hand in the charter school movement.

… Virtually all segments of the charter school movement have targeted urban areas. Some hope to counteract inequity, spur innovation and better meet the needs of marginalized students. Others, taking advantage of the frustration that inevitably follows when districts are allowed to deteriorate, seek fame and fortune. … [T]here are those who view charters as a way to get rid of public schools altogether.

The elixir of an individualized bailout from a struggling system has serious side effects, however. It can create a painful wedge in many communities, especially among African-Americans. It can weaken the political will for a collective solution to the problems in public education; and it can promote the deterioration of traditional schools. As highly motivated and engaged families pull their children from traditional public schools, urban districts have fewer resources — both financial and human — to address their many problems. The worse the schools get, the more appealing the escape to charters and private schools, all of which feeds into the conservative dream of replacing public education with a free-market system of everyone for themselves, the common good be damned.

[The text addresses the progressive intentions of charter schools.]

… At the same time, one cannot deny that the charter school concept, as a movement, has been hijacked by individuals, groups, and corporations who are guided by free-market principles, often with a hostility to unions, and who do not necessarily embrace core values of equity, access, public purpose, and public ownership.

This summary brings up some other issues:

Charter schools “too often … prefer, in practice if not in rhetoric, to educate “the deserving poor.” There is far less inclination to serve students whose parents are absent or uninvolved, or who have severe physical or emotional educational needs, or who have run afoul of the juvenile justice system, or who don’t speak English as their first language. Perhaps the most glaring example involves students with special education needs. Such students are increasingly overrepresented in traditional public schools.”

… Overall, studies have shown that charter schools perform either worse or just as well as comparable public schools.

… Even if it is shown that certain bureaucratic rules, union requirements, or state and federal mandates stifle innovation and suffocate higher achievement, shouldn’t they be thrown out or modified for all schools, not just charters?

[In reference to the fact that some charter schools, famously including the highly praised KIPP chain, require teachers to work crushingly long hours and, unsurprisingly, experience high teacher turnover:]

“Reforms are bound to fail if they rely on the voluntarism of idealistic, overworked teachers who burn out and leave the school once they decide to have a family or want any semblance of a meaningful personal life.”

It’s often noted that the late teachers’ union leader Al Shanker was one of the early proponents of charter schools. Education activist/blogger Mike Klonsky, reviewing “Tough Liberal,” Richard Kahlenberg's biography of Al Shanker, described Shanker’s vision:

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."

Klonsky quotes from the book:

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."

A defense of U.S. schools from the privatization world

President Obama was wrong to paint such a dismal picture of U.S. schools, a commentator declares on Forbes.com.

And the headline news is that the author of “Educating Obama: American Schools Are — in Many Ways — the Best in the World,” Matthew Kaminski, is a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board.

The WSJ editorial board is the international high temple of the free-market right, and its op-ed pages have been Ground Zero for an incredible amount of anti-public education commentary, much of it based on flat-out misinformation (or, if you prefer the blunt term, also known as “lies”).

A falsehood-filled Wall Street Journal editorial attacking SFUSD on behalf of now-failing for-profit Edison Schools in early 2001 started me on my crusade to learn about the murky and often creepy world of the charter/voucher/privatization crowd.

Kaminski, who emigrated from Poland as a child and experienced both Polish and U.S. schools, sticks to the free-market crowd’s party line in bashing teachers’ unions – but other than that he is an unabashed cheerleader for U.S. public education. He didn’t debunk the numerous false and misleading pieces of information Obama used in his speech, but went to the heart of it to just plain praise our school system.

Wow.

Mrs. McKay's [third-grade class in Kent, Ohio] brought another sort of revelation. Teachers could be nice and encouraging; at my school in Warsaw, the clearest memory is of an old codger rapping my ears. Here, I got silver stars for doing well; there, we plotted our escapes. American school, in short, was fun. Get a Japanese crammer to make that admission.

… From primary school through America's unparalleled universities, our schools teach children to think critically better than almost any other. It lets them experiment and make their own mistakes. It doesn't lock anyone into a profession or academic track at 18, or earlier, as in Europe or Asia.

Something, after all, must account for the flexible and quick American mind that succeeds remarkably well in the world beyond, even if our reading scores lag Finland so badly. Without sounding overly corny, I think it goes back to the idea that school here is fun by comparison and admittedly often in retrospect. In one field, the nation runs a surplus: People who'd rather go to school here than somewhere else.

… the president should tone down the talk of American educational demise.

When responses to Obama’s misinformation-filled speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce started popping up on blogs, I despaired of any idea that the President would ever get wind of the fact that he’d been so wrong. That’s given that I think he’s getting corrupt and distorted advising in a field that’s not his area of expertise — rather than on his own deliberately and maliciously spreading misinformation to attack and damage public education, as I believe many in the “school reform” crowd do.

But the backlash has been so increasingly visible and widespread that he has to recognize it. It would so fill us with joy if the President would be ethical enough to publicly acknowledge the errors and correct his misstatements.

No more Mr. Nice Guy for the state Board of Ed

Gov. Schwarzenegger has outdone himself with his new pick for state Board of Education: Jorge Lopez, head of the prison-like but high-performing Oakland Charter Academy.

Lopez is a foul-mouthed tough guy whose fiercest detractors still acknowledge that he fixed a broken school. The East Bay Express profiled Lopez in December 2006, describing how he “took over the school three summers ago, ruthlessly eliminating its entire staff and remaking the place in his own image …”

You have to wonder how Lopez will get along with his colleagues on the state Board of Ed, since he told the East Bay Express in a December 2006 article, "One thing I know about boards is they're dumber than s***."

Lopez is a protégé of Ben Chavis, the flamboyantly antisocial former principal of Oakland’s similarly scary and similarly high-performing American Indian Public Charter School who left after (though not necessarily because of) reports about his bizarre behavior kept popping up. Chavis, as described in a June 2007 Oakland Tribune article , “refers to black, Latino and American Indian students as ‘darkies’ … will swear at anyone who doesn't follow his rules, and … scoffs at the idea of defending his decisions to an unhappy parent.” He notoriously horrified a group of visitors from Mills College with his behavior, including launching a torrent of abuse at a graduate student who arrived late for the visit.


Lopez hasn’t attracted quite that much attention, but he's cut from similar cloth. When I blogged about Lopez and the East Bay Express article in December 2006, titling my post “Oakland Charter Not for the Faint of Heart,” I quoted a Craiglist ad the school was running for a resource specialist, which emphasized:

“Multi-cultural specialists, self-esteem experts, liberal progressives or their 'klan' relatives need not apply.”

Lopez took over the school— Oakland’s first charter, which had originally been founded to celebrate bilingualism and Latino heritage and was achieving embarrassing test scores — and unceremoniously dumped the multiculturalism in favor of a hard-nosed, relentless focus on tests. And even his detractors can't deny that the test scores soared.

From the Express article:

Lopez believed he could produce high test scores and ambitious, college-bound students by emphasizing mandatory attendance with more classroom hours; zero tolerance for bad behavior; a homework-laden curriculum stripped of cultural, linguistic, or artistic coursework; and inspirational or menacing speeches as necessary. "I run this school with a hard hand," he explained recently. "I don't take a lot of s*** from parents. I don't take s*** from kids. I don't take s*** from teachers.”

And no wussy whining about kids in need for Lopez, either.

Even if the school had a cafeteria, Lopez says, he would not offer the free or reduced-price lunches for which 87 percent of his students qualify based on family income. "There's a misperception that there isn't enough food," he says. "That's bulls***. The biggest problem is obesity."

The article described Lopez’ first weeks at the school, when he was supposed to be working with his departing predecessor, Francisco Gutierrez, during a transition period.

Once aboard, Lopez quickly set about making Gutierrez's life miserable, insulting and demeaning him repeatedly and making a mockery of his staff meetings. Within a couple of weeks, Gutierrez was gone, vowing, he says, to "never, ever, ever again" agree to such a power-sharing arrangement. Next to go was the school's secretary, whom Lopez caught sympathizing with parents upset over the last-minute addition of a mandatory summer school for incoming sixth graders.

Then, at the school board meeting in late June, Lopez employed a tactic he had learned from a book recommended by Chavis. The book: Sun Tzu's The Art of War, a copy of which Lopez still keeps in his office. The tactic: to obscure his primary objectives.

At the meeting, Lopez cited a looming fiscal crisis due to sloppy bookkeeping, and called for a 15 percent reduction in the school's budget. To cut costs, he proposed reducing teaching staff by switching to "self-contained" classrooms, where students stay in the same room with one teacher throughout the day. The board went along, unwittingly paving the way for Lopez to end the school's long tradition of teaching Spanish. In addition, since only one teacher had the necessary credentials to teach a self-contained class, Lopez was able to force the others out. Within weeks, the new principal had curtailed parent involvement and gotten rid of volunteering and planning committees, which were school fixtures. It was no less than a coup d'état. "It became no longer a community-oriented school," says Estella Navarro, an OCA cofounder, parent, and board member bitterly opposed to Lopez' changes. "It became his school."

Lopez acknowledged to the Express that he doesn’t subject his own child to a drill-sergeant atmosphere. His son was in kindergarten at the private Rising Star Montessori School in Alameda.

According to the Rising Star literature, the school promotes "academic excellence in a warm, nurturing environment that celebrates diversity." "They're soft whiteys," Lopez acknowledged. ... "But he doesn't need the same s*** I needed.”

It remains to be seen whether Lopez’ concentration-camp approach is the secret to success for low-income Latino students in the long run – and whether he’ll play well with the others on a “dumber than s***” board.

Annex Edison?

SF-based KIPP sheds light on Fresno situation

I sent some questions about the Fresno dustup to KIPP spokesperson Steve Mancini -- spokesperson at KIPP HQ in San Francisco, not just for the Fresno school, that is. He provided fairly thorough responses and posted them as part of a long FAQ section on the KIPP website, as he has previously done with questions I've sent him (and, giving him full credit, mine weren't the kind of softball questions the mainstream press is unfortunately prone to ask). There's some PR talk, but the answers still give a decent picture.

Brief background points so that the questions make sense:

Fresno , Calif., school officials released a report based on various accusations about alleged occurrences within KIPP's Fresno school, mostly charges of abusive behavior by the former principal to students and of testing irregularities.

Meanwhile, KIPP is in arrears on $2 million-plus in payments on the site it purchased for that school. KIPP officials say they are awaiting a $5 million facilities grant from the state to make those payments. A letter of good standing from the Fresno school district is required before that grant can be released, and Fresno district officials are demanding mitigation of the alleged problems cited in the report before providing the letter. However, Fresno district officials say the grant is in jeopardy anyway because of the state budget crisis.

KIPP Fresno parents, students and apparently some teachers have been protesting the district's charges against the school. Some say that the numerous charges against the principal -- made by several dozen individuals -- are fabrications. Here's the KIPP Q&A, with KIPP's responses to my questions.



Questions about KIPP Academy Fresno, March 2009

1. What's the current status of the KIPP-FUSD situation and the school? What's the current status of that $5 million grant possibly coming from the state? Is it clear that the money would come through if FUSD provides the needed letter of endorsement, or is it hung up by the state budget crisis anyway? If it doesn't come through, what happens with the foreclosure threat?

In February 2005, KIPP Academy Fresno was recommended to receive Prop 55 funding for school construction. In order to access this money, however, KIPP Academy Fresno needs a letter of good standing from the Fresno Unified School District. Although the KIPP Academy Fresno Board has continued to work with the District to release this letter, at this point it is not forthcoming.

As to whether the Prop 55 funds will be available due to California’s budget crisis, we at the KIPP Foundation are working to ensure that KIPP Academy Fresno can access the funds it has been awarded. Whether the state ultimately releases these funds is outside of our control. We want the opportunity to make our case to the state for KIPP Academy Fresno.

Through KIPP’s decentralized model, each KIPP school is funded and managed locally. The KIPP Foundation’s goal is to identify, train and support excellent school leaders, but their success ultimately rests on decisions that are made locally by each KIPP leader and the board of directors.

If KIPP Academy Fresno cannot access the Prop 55 funds it rightfully deserves, then the school will have a difficult time staying in its current facility.

2. Regarding the charges against the principal, what's KIPP's official position? Some people are saying that the accusations are fabricated by disgruntled former teachers, disgruntled former students and disgruntled former students' families. Is that the view of KIPP leadership? If so, why ARE there so many disgruntled former teachers, disgruntled former students and disgruntled former students' families?

KIPP Academy Fresno’s parents took their concerns to the Fresno Unified School District as the District is the chartering agency. The KIPP Foundation did not conduct the investigation and cannot comment on the veracity of specific charges. However, the KIPP Foundation takes the issues raised in this report seriously, and is working hard to ensure that KIPP Academy Fresno is in good standing. KIPP’s success is based on strong partnerships between families, teachers and staff members, and it is crucial for KIPP parents to feel that the school’s policies are consistent and fair.

The KIPP Foundation supported the succession of William Lin as principal of KIPP Academy Fresno and felt it was in the best interest of the school. William Lin is a talented educator who completed KIPP’s leadership training at New York University, and we believe he will be successful as KIPP Academy Fresno’s new school leader.

3. Is KIPP leadership mobilizing the protests or are they happening spontaneously? Is there an overall KIPP strategy on this issue, including PR/outreach/public support?

It is not surprising that KIPP Academy Fresno parents are working to save the school, because they believe it has been a positive learning environment for their children. KIPP Academy Fresno had a strong start five years ago and last year was one of only two middle schools in Fresno County to be designated a California Title I Distinguished School.

The KIPP Foundation has not organized parents to demonstrate on behalf of the school.

The Foundation’s priorities right now are supporting new principal William Lin and working with the District to release the letter of good standing needed to access Prop 55 funds.

The KIPP Foundation has made every effort to respond transparently to media requests about the situation in Fresno and will continue to do so as events move forwad.

A view from the left (or not) on charter schools

A couple of unconnected people sent me the link to a long,
well-written, thoroughly researched article on charter schools that
they thought would resonate with me. It does, which makes it amusing
that it’s from the International Socialist Review.

A number of people in this community who fervently support charter
schools and are regularly enraged by my commentaries about them are
viewed as far to the left of me — in San Francisco, my spot on the
political spectrum is often called moderate (sometimes even
conservative). So it’s interesting that I’m the one in solidarity here
with www.socialistworker.org . (And how many people have called San Francisco Board of Education veteran Jill Wynns, the board’s most staunch critic of charter schools, the most conservative member of the board?)

The author of the article, “Charter schools and the attack on public education,” is Sarah Knopp, described as a Los Angeles teacher. Knopp’s tone is academic and generally mild, except maybe when she refers to Bill Gates and other private funders as “jackals.”

Some excerpts:

“ …the concept of ‘autonomy’ —"which the pioneers had hoped would mean democracy—"turned into privatization when it crashed into the slick and well-funded strategists of the ‘Ownership Society.’ “…because the noble intentions of some of the pioneers of the charter school movement (to create laboratories that prove what all educators know: that creativity, individual attention, and curricular relevance are the roots of good education) took shape so recently, and because there are some good charter schools, many progressives are disoriented in the current climate.”

The article quotes the Rethinking Schools book “Keeping the Promise: The Debate Over Charter Schools”:

The question facing the charter school movement is whether it will fulfill its founding promise of reform that empowers the powerless, or whether it will become a vehicle to further enrich the powerful and stratify our schools.”

The article’s author, Knopp, goes on in her own voice:

“Founding promises notwithstanding, an honest look at the balance of forces inside the charter movement makes a strong case for the latter. …"

“Liberals who support the idea of charter schools give cover to politicians who champion privatization schemes.”

Knopp cites President Obama, and adds:

“Not surprisingly, Republican presidential candidate John McCain agreed totally, adding only that any obstacles to the expansion of charters should be wiped away.”

(Note from Caroline: I am a strong Obama supporter — not that I think he’s perfect — but clearly I disagree with him here. I view him as
swayed by propaganda and lobbying in an area in which he has limited expertise.)

Knopp:

“If we recognize the rapid acceleration of corporate-style
charters, and admit that progressive forces are dwarfed by the billions of dollars invested in this movement by the private sector, we should try to group our forces around a completely different movement with a different vision rather than trying to recapture the charter movement (if it were ever ours).”

Knopp quotes longtime education critic Jonathan Kozol; an endnote cites the source as an interview with Kozol from a previous issue of the International Socialist Review.

“Charter schools are, according to Kozol, a bridge toward vouchers: ‘In the long run, charter schools are being strategically used to pave the way for vouchers. The voucher advocates, who are very powerful and funded by right-wing foundations and families, recognize that the word “voucher” has been successfully discredited.... They have now shrewdly decided the best way to break down resistance to vouchers is by supporting charters, which represents a halfway step in the same direction. One of the intentions of this, by creating selective institutions, usually with extra forms of funding, is to discredit the entire public enterprise in America. We already have the privatization of the military, as we’ve seen with the private military contractors in Iraq; we’ve seen the privatization of the prison system. Well, the next step is the privatization of public schools. It’s a matter of
ideology. In rare occasions, a charter school created by teachers in the public system and in collaboration with activist parents in the community have had at least short-term success.... They tend very quickly —" even when they’re started by teachers with the best intentions — to enter into collaboration with the private sector.’ ”

“... As for a coordinated effort, the private incursion into public schools is being pushed by a band of jackals grouped around Bill Gates and the $2 billion that his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have sunk into the education ‘reform’ movement. ... In the beginning, the Gateses used their dollars and employees to push school districts such as Los Angeles to break up mega-high schools into ‘small learning communities.’ But now they are advising superintendents to give up that project and go straight for independent charters.”

Knopp concludes with some ideas about alternate ways to work/fight for effective and equitable education, including the unassailable first principle, “Fight for resources.”

“This is fundamentally about fighting for democracy in the schools,” she declares.

Report on KIPP school: Abuse, cheating alleged

The Fresno Unified School District issued a "Notice to Cure and Correct" on Dec. 11, 2008, to Nolan Highbaugh, general counsel for San Francisco-based KIPP schools, based on a 65-page report on problems at Fresno's KIPP Academy. Here are some excerpts from the report.

Alleged abusive behavior to students

Student (name deleted) said that in December of 2007, Mr. Tschang told him to get on his hands and knees and bark like a dog. (Name deleted) said it was a metaphor to get him to stop joking around in class.

… It was reported by Kim Kutzner that students who were late to school would not be allowed to eat their meals provided by the state. Student (name deleted) stated that Mr. Tschang told her, “People who are late don’t get to eat.”

… Parent (name deleted) reported that Mr. Tschang took student (name deleted) glasses away from him because (name deleted) was constantly adjusting his glasses. (Name deleted) is totally dependent on his glasses and cannot see without them. Mr. Tschang admitted to taking (name deleted) glasses away.

…Several students stated that students are not allowed to talk or socialize at all during school hours. When asked about this policy, Mr. Tschang stated, “If parents are not happy with the school program, it is a school of choice. They are free (and indeed encouraged) to remove their kids from the school. There are plenty of other public school options for their children.”

… Parent (name deleted) confronted Mr. Tschang about yelling at her daughter who was a student at the school. (Name deleted) reported that she told Mr. Tschang she did not appreciate Mr. Tschang yelling at her daughter. (Name deleted) said that Mr. Tschang responded, “well next time I won’t yell, I will ask you to leave the school.” Mr. Tschang told the investigator, “my thought on this is if a parent or child is not happy with our disciplinary methods; to get the results we do, discipline and structure is a part of the way we instruct; you can’t have it both ways. This is a school of choice.”

… (Name deleted) reported that Mr. Tschang put the entire 5th grade class into a two stall bathroom and kept them there for 20 minutes. … Mr. Tschang admitted that he did ask students to go into the bathroom and figure out a way to solve the bathroom vandalism issue.

… Kia Spenhoff witnessed Mr. Tschang put a garbage can on a student’s head. Mr. Tschang admitted to putting the garbage can over the student’s head because the student, (name deleted), had been clowning around.

Alleged irregularities in standardized testing

1. During the 2005-2006 STAR testing session, completed state tests were stored in a location where students and parents had access to the tests;

2. The Charter School failed to abide by mandated testing procedures, and the testing coordinator failed to report testing irregularities for the 2005-2006 STAR testing session;

3. During the 2006-2007 STAR testing session, the Charter School failed to abide by mandated testing procedures; and

4. The test site coordinator for the 2006-2007 STAR testing session failed to report testing irregularities.

6. Kim Kutzner and Marcella Mayfield stated that the school adopted a policy that students were required to check their answers again and again after they had finished their tests and were not allowed to do other activities.

7. Ms. Kutzner also witnessed teachers record students’ answers during testing, review students’ tests, and tell students which page to correct.

... 9. Mr. Tschang stated that he possibly gave students extra time on more than one day on a test that was to be completed in a single sitting.

10. In a staff meeting in May of 2006, Ms. Kutzner, who had five years of experience as test-site coordinator, reviewed with the entire staff the violations that she had witnessed during testing and presented the written testing protocol materials to Ms. Tschang. The staff actively opposed any changes in procedures which would potentially lower test scores, and Mr. Tschang and Mr. Hawke stated that the legal and ethical guidelines for testing were, in fact, only guidelines that could be ignored.

Alleged efforts to cheat the National School Lunch Program

Vincent Montgomery was the Charter School’s Chief Operating Officer from February 2005 to April of 2006. He told investigators that Mr. Tschang would ask him why the school was losing so much money on the school lunch program and instructed Mr. Montgomery to count students as present whether they were there or not. Mr. Montgomery disagreed because he thought that this practice was illegal.

Fresno KIPP head quits amid abuse charges

It seems to be getting little public attention that the principal of the KIPP school in Fresno has resigned after a lengthy school district report accused him of:

... slamming students against the wall, placing trash cans over their heads, forcing kids to crawl on their hands and knees while barking, and enforcing unreasonably strict bathroom rules, resulting in students having accidents and vomiting on themselves inside the classroom.

In keeping with the typical press swooning over the national charter-school chain, the press accounts (so far all very short and local to Fresno) mostly lead with the student protests calling on the principal, Chi Tschang, to stay in the job. The lead from KPMH Fox Ch. 26:

Students and parents lined the streets outside the KIPP Academy in Fresno, outraged over the recent and sudden resignation of their principal Mr. Chi Tsichang (sic).

If I were a journalist covering the protests, I think I would be asking a few more questions than the Fresno press seems inclined to about these students' support for the principal.

KIPP is getting extra attention right now because of the publication of a high-profile new book about it, Work Hard. Be Nice. by Washington Post/Newsweek education columnist Jay Mathews, the nation's most visible education journalist and an unabashed KIPP enthusiast.

The Post itself has quite an intelligent review of Mathews' book, actually in tomorrow's paper, by education researcher/author Richard D. Kahlenberg. The excerpt below struck me as particularly perceptive, especially compared to the unquestioning cheerleading KIPP generally gets in the press. Yet the description of the alleged abuse by the Fresno KIPP principal does belie the notion that KIPP schools are anything like middle-class schools.

KIPP schools more closely resemble middle-class than high-poverty public schools. KIPP does not educate the typical low-income student but rather a subset fortunate enough to have striving parents who take the initiative to apply to a KIPP school and sign a contract agreeing to read to their children at night. More important, among those who attend KIPP, 60 percent leave, according to a new study of California schools, many because they find the program too rigorous. As KIPP's reputation grew, it could select among the best teachers (who wish to be around high-performing colleagues), and it became funded at levels more like those of middle-class schools.

Study: Local KIPP schools lose 60% of their students

A new study of the five Bay Area KIPP schools by the respected research firm SRI International confirms what we already knew: KIPP students overall perform well academically, usually outperforming their peers in other schools.

But it also confirms what those who look beyond the test scores have found: Those KIPP (two in San Francisco, one in Oakland, one in San Jose, one in San Leandro) schools suffer from very high student attrition.

Sixty percent of the students who enter the Bay Area KIPP schools in fifth grade leave before the end of eighth grade (page ix of the study, repeated in several places throughout). And the study also confirms what some might suspect — it's consistently the lower performers who leave:

"On average, those who leave KIPP before completing eighth grade have lower test scores on entering KIPP and demonstrate smaller fifth-grade effects than those who stay," the study reports on Page ix.

To clarify one point that confuses some observers: Traditional public schools also have high turnover (called mobility in the education world). And high mobility is associated with the less-stable lives of low-income families. That is, families who move often are more likely to be poor and lower-functioning — meaning that their kids are more likely to be low achievers. But when students leave traditional public schools, they are replaced — most likely by similarly high-mobility kids with similarly unstable lives. By contrast, when students leave KIPP schools, they are not replaced.

Thus, when 60% of KIPP students leave and they tend to be the lowest performers, to state the obvious, KIPP is left with the top 40% of the class. That's not what happens when students leave traditional public schools.

The study does not address the questions that information immediately raises:

• What would the impact be on the traditional public school down the street if its lowest 3/5 of achievers left?
• How much impact does that attrition rate have on the success of the 2/5 of students who remain at KIPP schools, if it could be separated from the impact of KIPP's distinctive culture , methods and practices?
• Why did the students leave?

The study noted:

"Although an in-depth analysis of why students (or their families) chose to leave the Bay Area KIPP schools—and how stayers and leavers experienced KIPP—was beyond the scope of this study, we did ask school leaders why students left their schools. Whereas most leaders noted that the schools lose many students to family moves, they also elaborated on the issue of fit. As one school leader explained: I think for a cohort of students and families, it was harder than they thought it was going to be.

Our expectations were more than they had anticipated. [For example,] [w]hen we said we were going to give 2 hours of homework [a day], they didn’t really believe that it was going to be that much. " (Page 14; emphasis in the original)

One area the study would have looked at is the impact of KIPP's culture, methods and practices on the students who make it through eighth grade. But it couldn't, because the high attrition rate -- and the fact that the students who leave are likely to be the lower performers -- made that impossible, biasing the sample:

"We could not estimate longitudinal impacts because of student attrition and in-grade retention. Because of both the number of students who left and the fact that those who left are systematically different from those who stayed, longitudinal comparisons would be biased," the study stated (page ix).

The study confirmed two other points that have been raised about KIPP.

• KIPP schools cost more than traditional public schools: "...(I)mportant for sustainability, at least in the California KIPP schools, is a continued influx of supplemental private funding for operating costs. The Bay Area KIPP schools could not function without substantial resources above and beyond the state per-pupil expenditures they receive." (Page 80)
• Because of the intense demands placed on KIPP teachers, faculty turnover is very high, raising questions about long-term sustainability of such programs:" Leading and teaching in a KIPP school are hard jobs, and turnover in the five Bay Area schools is high for teachers. ... How much turnover can KIPP schools tolerate and still retain the essence of their cultures? Over time, will the pool of candidates for school leaders and teachers continue to meet the schools’ needs?" (Page 80)

The study also confirms the observations that I and others have made about claims of KIPP's rate of alumni matriculation to college: The claims are based on a very small sampling. (I believe that they're largely repeated by journalists who don't grasp that fact.)

" Because college attendance begins 8 years after students enroll in fifth grade in KIPP, only students from the original two founders’ schools have reached college age. Those two schools, begun in 1995, report that 80 percent of their graduates have enrolled in college. Because most KIPP schools began in 2003 or later, large waves of potential college attendees will begin completing their senior year in 2011.' (Page 81)

I've already been interviewed about the study findings, as a "KIPP critic." It may sound like hairsplitting, but I really don't view myself as a critic of KIPP itself.

I'm a critic of the notion that KIPP schools have found the solution to educating the most challenging of our students. The study confirms that at least in those four schools, KIPP has succeeded in educating a high-functioning subgroup of the most challenging of our students, and we don't know how that subgroup — roughly the top 40%, isolated from their less-successful peers — would have done in another setting. And we also don't know how a traditional public school would have fared in educating just that top 40%, isolated from their less-successful peers.

But the study does help dispel the "miracle solution!" myth, which I believe is an important start in moving toward real solutions.

KIPP attrition vs SFUSD attrition

I'm only doing this by popular demand (see comments on previous post about KIPP attrition). I'll bet KIPP wishes you wouldn't egg me on.

OK, San Francisco's two KIPP schools are distinctive in that they do not fill up for grade 5, which is the starting grade for all KIPP schools (not counting a new high school or two). Jay Mathews, the Washington Post/Newsweek education writer who covers KIPP frequently and admiringly, asked me about that, because apparently it's unusual for KIPP. Evidently students in SFUSD K-5 schools, and their families, aren't eager to switch until it's time to move on to middle school — kids don't want to miss their 5th-grade graduation. But then the San Francisco KIPP schools get a surge of 6th-grade applicants, and KIPP says both have 6th-grade waiting lists (and KIPP confirms that the 5th grades do not have waiting lists).

So because of that I'm looking at the enrollment from 6th to 8th grade for the most recent 8th-grade class, which finished grade 8 in June '08. Note that these figures (including SFUSD's) are for FALL of 8th grade and do not indicate how many finished 8th grade. The attrition in the two KIPP schools was significantly higher than attrition in SFUSD.*

KIPP S.F. Bay Academy:

Total enrollment for that one class:
05-06 (6th grade) 75, 06-07 (7th grade) 55, 07-08 (8th grade) 44. That's a loss of 41.4% of the class.

This KIPP has enough of a Latino population that I crunched those numbers too, as well as African-American. The subgroup with the highest attrition was African-American girls, which is unusual; in other KIPP schools the subgroup with the highest attrition has been African-American or Latino boys. Please let me know if I've miscalculated any percentages.

African-American boys in that one class:
05-06 (6th grade) 17, 06-07 (7th grade) 15, 07-08 (8th grade) 9. That's a loss of 40% of the African-American boys in the class.

African-American girls in that one class:
05-06 (6th grade) 21, 06-07 (7th grade) 14, 07-08 (8th grade) 10. That's a loss of 52.4% of the African-American girls in the class.

Latino boys in that one class:
05-06 (6th grade) 9, 06-07 (7th grade) 7, 07-08 (8th grade) 5. That's a loss of 45% of the African-American boys in the class.

The number of Latino girls just went from 11 to 10, so I didn't bother to crunch that subgroup.

KIPP Bayview Academy:

Total enrollment for the class that finished 8th grade in June 2008:
05-06 (6th grade) 88, 06-07 (7th grade) 58, 07-08 (8th grade) 47. That's a loss of 46.6% of the class.

African-American boys in that one class:
05-06 (6th grade) 27, 06-07 (7th grade) 27, 07-08 (8th grade) 10. That's a loss of 63% of the African-American boys in the class.

African-American girls in that one class:
05-06 (6th grade) 32, 06-07 (7th grade) 34, 07-08 (8th grade) 20. That's a loss of 37.5% of the African-American girls in the class (after a small increase from 6th to 7th).

San Francisco Unified School District:

Total enrollment for the class that finished 8th grade in June 2008:
05-06 (6th grade) 4,106, 06-07 (7th grade) 4,025, 07-08 (8th grade) 4,016. That's a loss of <3%.

There was striking attrition for African-American boys and African-American girls in that grade, districtwide -- but far below that of both KIPP schools.

African-American girls in that one class:
05-06 (6th grade) 320, 06-07 (7th grade) 230, 07-08 (8th grade) 266. That's an overall loss of 16.9% of the African-American girls in the class.

African-American boys in that one class:
05-06 (6th grade) 318, 06-07 (7th grade) 233, 07-08 (8th grade) 287. That's an overall loss of 9.75% of the African-American boys in the class.

Attrition of Latino girls was >4%. The number of Latino boys in that one class rose from 456 in grade 6 (05-06) to 465 in Grade 8 (07-08).

*Note that it only makes sense that attrition in the two KIPP schools would be much higher than attrition in the district overall, because students who leave the KIPP schools are likely to move to a non-KIPP SFUSD school, while mobile students within SFUSD still show up in the district statistics.

Attrition — a KIPP school vs. its district

An admirer of KIPP schools is resolutely defending them against observations I've made and is insisting that KIPP schools have lower attrition than their school districts.

As noted, my past research has found that six of California's nine KIPP schools have very high attrition — and attrition for the demographic subgroup that is (on average) statistically most likely to be academically challenged is strikingly higher than overall attrition in all of those six schools. (That subgroup is either African-American boys or Latino boys, depending on the school's overall demographic.)

The claim that district attrition overall is higher doesn't make sense on its face. That's because KIPP schools largely don't replace students who leave (they officially don't accept any new students for 8th grade, and apparently accept few for 7th grade), while in district schools, students transfer in and out as part of the natural course of family life.

It would theoretically be possible to look at numbers for every KIPP school and the district in which it's located, but it would be pretty pointless for the reason mentioned above. Just for the heck of it, though, I looked at the numbers for KIPP Bridge Charter in Oakland Unified, and for the district. This is just a random sampling and a snapshot; I just looked at the class that started 5th grade in the '04-'05 school year and finished 8th grade in spring/summer 2008.

KIPP's Oakland school is notably one of its less successful, but it's also in a very troubled school district, so it seems like a fair choice for a random snapshot. Oakland Unified is also losing overall enrollment, as is SFUSD.

So anyway, the numbers please, assuming my percentage calculations are accurate (please correct me, anyone who sees an error)...

KIPP Bridge
Total enrollment for that one class:
04-05 (5th grade) 76; 05-06 (6th grade) 75, 06-07 (7th grade) 54, 07-08 (8th grade) 44. That's a loss of 42% of the class.

African-American boys in that one class:
04-05 (5th grade) 33; 05-06 (6th grade) 27, 06-07 (7th grade) 15, 07-08 (8th grade) 13. That's a loss of 60.6% of the African-American boys in the class.

Oakland Unified
Total enrollment for that one class:
04-05 (5th grade) 4,032; 05-06 (6th grade) 3,876, 06-07 (7th grade) 3,598, 07-08 (8th grade) 3,476. That's a loss of 13.7% of the class.

African-American boys in that one class:
04-05 (5th grade) 785; 05-06 (6th grade) 791, 06-07 (7th grade) 728, 07-08 (8th grade) 680. That's a loss of 13.3% of the African-American boys in the class.

OK, that's only one KIPP school in only one district. But. And it's particularly noticeable that OUSD's overall attrition of African-American boys is not higher than the district's overall attrition.

By the way, the poster is also voicing outrage that I indicated that KIPP schools use volume meters in classrooms, accusing me of making it up. Honestly, I'm not creative enough to make that up. The information came from the parent handbook of KIPP San Francisco Bay Academy. I acknowledge that I didn't ascertain how common a practice this is in KIPP schools before I started posting about it, but the KIPP S.F. Bay handbook treated it as a practice to be cited proudly, while the commenter is treating it as an embarrassment to be downplayed.

Because of the proud tone of the KIPP handbook, it didn't occur to me that KIPP partisans would treat it as some kind of slander if I mentioned it, and thus that I should carefully ascertain exactly how many KIPP schools engage in this practice. So I acknowledge that I don't know -- and I passed on the handbook to another interested KIPP observer, so I no longer have it to recheck. I acknowledge that perhaps KIPP S.F. Bay is the only one of all the KIPP schools that uses a decibel meter — only KIPP knows for sure.

How self-selection works

A poster disputes that KIPP's application methods self-select for more-motivated applicants. Honestly, this seems so obvious that I'm really not convinced that the poster is sincere. But in case there's anyone who truly doesn't get it, here are some ways that happens.

1. The student must have a family that pays enough attention and cares enough about schooling to fill out the application and otherwise pursue the process.
2. The student and family must be willing to commit to KIPP's longer hours and days, including some Saturday school and an extended school year.
3. The student and family must be willing to agree to abide by KIPP's many requirements, from strict uniform policies to making sure homework is done.
4. KIPP gives a test to all incoming students. (I am told that in the community this is viewed as an entrance test, though KIPP says it's not.) In any case, the student and family must be willing to cooperate with this test requirement; in cases where the test is believed to be an entrance test, the student and family presumably must assume the student has a chance of passing it and getting in.
5. Once in the school, the student must be willing to cooperate with KIPP's unusual practices, such as the SLANT behavior (students must "sit up, listen attentively, ask and answer questions, nod in response to the speaker, and track the speaker with their eyes). The student must also be willing to comply with the decibel rules (each classroom has a decibel meter, with approved levels depending on the activity). And the student must accept and comply with the KIPP discipline policy, which is based around shunning.
6. In most districts, the student's default school would either be close by or would have busing. In many cases, that wouldn't be true of the KIPP school. So the family must be willing to deal with getting the child to school.

I suppose there may be somebody somewhere who's so naive that he/she doesn't understand that there are many families less functional than this — not to mention many students without families at all — but I can't imagine any readers of this blog would be that sheltered from reality.

KIPP alumni in college: the number, please?

In the current Newsweek, columnist Jonathan Alter earnestly claims that 12,800 alumni of KIPP schools have gone on to college. Here's what Alter wrote:

At the 60 KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) schools, more than 80 percent of 16,000 randomly selected low-income students go to college, four times the national average for poor kids.

The actual number, according to KIPP itself, is 447.

It's ironic that Alter made that rather significant error in a column mostly devoted to blasting and blaming teachers for troubled schools and calling for getting rid of problem teachers, along with eliminating tenure and increasing "accountability" for teachers. I wonder how he feels about more accountability for journalists.

Here's a memo from KIPP explaining the actual number. It went from a KIPP staffer named Debbie Fine to KIPP press spokesman Steve Mancini to Washington Post/Newsweek education writer Jay Mathews to me.

We have been tracking KIPP middle school alumni (i.e. KIPP students that
completed the 8th grade at KIPP) since the fifth grade class that entered
KIPP in 1995. Since that time, 546 students have completed the eighth
grade at KIPP, and 447 of those students have matriculated to college for
an average college matriculation rate over five years of roughly 81
percent.

This number only includes students who attended the original two KIPP
schools in Houston and New York since those are the only KIPP schools that
have been in operation long enough to have kids progress from eighth grade
to college freshmen. Kids from the next generation of KIPP schools that
opened this decade will not matriculate to college until 2009.

Also, it's not truly fair or accurate to claim that KIPP students are "randomly selected," though they are presumably randomly selected from among those who pursue the application process all the way through. The KIPP application process, as has been extensively discussed here and elsewhere, aggressively self-selects for motivated, high-functioning and compliant students from motivated, high-functioning and compliant families. So the implication that KIPP students are a random sampling of low-income students is wildly off the mark.

I'm not opposed to creating schools for motivated, high-functioning, compliant low-income students from motivated, high-functioning, compliant families. KIPP's target is a low-income, high-need, at-risk demographic, and it does seem to be working well with that subset of kids.

I just think the public discussion needs to be clear and honest about the fact that this is not a random cross-section of low-income, high-need, at-risk kids. KIPP misleads, and insufficiently questioning journalists with an overly shallow understanding of education issues eagerly accept and spread the misinformation.

A union leader's comments on charter schools

Oakland Unified held a conference on charter schools yesterday, and Betty Olson-Jones — president of Oakland's teachers' union (the Oakland Educators Association) — prepared a commentary on charters, which she has disseminated publicly. I can't find a way to link to it, so I'm just pasting it, just for the edification of anyone interested.

Talking Points on Charter Schools
Betty Olson-Jones
May 29, 2008

1. There are two very important principles we must start with when talking about charter schools. First, we live in a society where a free, quality public education is guaranteed as a civil right for every person. Second, as parents and as teachers, we all want what’s best for our children and students. We want safe, caring schools with excellent teachers and site administrators that guide our children to become productive members of society. But unlike us, the parents and teachers, many charter operators are closely linked to corporations and foundations, which sponsor them and keep them afloat through donations. And many of them do not share our commitment to equal quality education for all children. They support charters to discredit public schools in order to advance their goal of privatization. Today’s corporate sponsors of charters are almost identical to those who advocated vouchers for over a decade, which is why in many instances, charters are really vouchers by the back door.

2. In a society where we do have free public education, why charters? The idea originated with Albert Shanker, then President of the American Federation of Teachers, some 20 years ago. His idea was to create publicly funded institutions that would be given greater flexibility to experiment with new ways of educating students, while remaining under the protection of collective bargaining agreements.

3. The first charter was established in St. Paul, MN in 1992. California was the second state to authorize charters. Since then, over 4100 charters have been established in 40 states + DC. California now has the second largest number of charter schools and the most students enrolled in charters (UCLA Charter School Study). Oakland has 32 charters. Since the state takeover in June, 2003, 21 charters have been approved by the State Administration.

4. Why do parents opt for charters over their local district schools? Many parents, for many reasons, feel that their local public schools are not providing a safe, quality education for their children. In Oakland, many early charter schools were born out of frustration due to safety concerns, overcrowding, and inequitable resources. We share that frustration with the current state of affairs, especially since the state takeover in 2003, when our rights to voice our frustrations and concerns to an elected School Board were stripped. Where we differ is in how to change that reality.

5. Why are we generally opposed to charters?

• Charters aren’t equitable; they don’t treat all children equally. Although by law they must not discriminate against any children, there are many ways to prevent some children from enrolling in charters or to “counsel students out.” I’ve talked with numerous teachers, parents and administrators who report receiving students from charter schools just before spring testing.UCLA’s Charter School Study Finding #9: “Charter schools exercise considerable control over the type of students they serve.” And Finding #10: “The requirement that charter schools reflect the racial/ethnic makeup of their districts has not been enforced.” Charters often “cream” some of the best students, or those with most parental support. By selective outreach, specialized curriculum and marketing, charters can target specific types of students and ignore others. Once accepted, students can be expelled or encouraged to withdraw for social, disciplinary, or academic reasons.

• Charter schools are funded by public money, but every charter school is owned, operated, and governed by a private Board of Trustees. In practice, charters are subject to very little public control or oversight. And even though in California all charters operate under the Brown Act, making Board meetings public, this is a far cry from being accountable to a democratically elected School Board. In essence, there is no redress with charter schools. They operate independently, as separate entities.

• Charters are often the recipients of additional funding from private foundations and wealthy individuals. The Gates, Broad, and Walton Foundations have poured millions into charter schools. Can we really believe they’re doing this for altruistic reasons? Or are they using public funds to privatize public education? Although traditional public schools may also receive grants from private philanthropists, charters are far and away the preferred recipients of private dollars. Just look at Paul Robeson School of Performing Arts, part of the Fremont Federation – they’re being threatened with the loss of their counselor, dance instructor, drama instructor and principal. Where is the foundation money for one of our district schools?

• Charters drain money from “traditional schools,” leaving the district with fewer resources but the same responsibilities for overhead and infrastructure. Charters endanger the fiscal health of a district: OUSD has nearly 8,000 students in charters, or $48 million in lost ADA. Further, in Oakland charters pay nothing toward the state loan – so as more students go to charters, more $ must come from the remaining ADA, making it even more inequitable and taking resources away from those schools. In essence, repayment of the state loan is being shouldered by our most vulnerable students.

• In most charters, teachers aren’t covered by collective bargaining agreements, and are often required to work longer hours with no protection against being fired. It’s important to recognize that a union contract is a stabilizing factor which guarantees certain standards of quality for students, e.g., 20-1 in K-3, prep/enrichment, a stable teaching force, etc. Without a collective voice, and with no protection from longer work hours and difficult working conditions, teachers in charter schools turn over at almost twice the rate of public school teachers, and most have less than five years experience in teaching. Last year I spoke with teachers at KIPP before they opted to convert to a charter. All were very clear that they could not sustain the long hours and additional responsibilities for more than a few years. They were symbolic of what’s happening in public education, where new teachers don’t see this as a vocation and a career, but as a stepping stone to something else. (From Wikipedia): State Rep. Mark B. Cohen of Philadelphia, said that "Charter schools offer increased flexibility to parents and administrators, but at a cost of reduced job security to school personnel. The evidence to date shows that the higher turnover of staff undermines school performance more than it enhances it, and that the problems of urban education are far too great for enhanced managerial authority to solve in the absence of far greater resources of staff, technology, and state of the art buildings."

• Contrary to many claims, studies have shown that students in charter schools on average do not do better than their counterparts in regular public schools. And yet the charter school movement is constantly attacking public education and claiming superior results, thereby effectively decreasing public support for traditional schools.

• Charters are not subject to all the regulations of the Ed Code, and in fact receive waivers to many of the provisions that traditional schools must follow. This allows them to operate with much greater flexibility than traditional schools, thus putting them at a distinct advantage. Two comments here: 1) Most of these regulations are in the Ed Code for a reason – to keep students safe, to gain fair working conditions for teachers, to avoid favoritism, to support disabled students. 2) As for those regulations that are truly bureaucratic, why can’t traditional schools be freed from some of the restrictions that charter schools don’t have to follow?

• Charters compete with traditional schools for students. In Oakland, the demographic update for OUSD of June, 2007 stated unequivocally, “During the 2000s, the District experienced severe enrollment losses due to two factors:

1. Out-migration of families, especially African-American families, from Oakland;

2. Growth of charter schools, which now comprise 15 percent of Oakland’s public school enrollments.

Between 2000 and 2006, about half of the District’s enrollment loss resulted from the growth of charter schools, and the other half was from community demographic trends (large net out-migration of Oakland families). Charter enrollments have had a greater impact on District enrollment losses during the most recent years: between 2000 and 2004, 37 percent of the District’s enrollment loss was due to the growth of charter enrollments, and between 2004 and 2006, the percentage grew to 58.
Our analysis suggests that the vast majority of charter students would attend District schools if the charters did not exist.”

6. Charter schools were supposed to be laboratories of innovation to improve public education. However, many of them mimic the instructional program of the districts from which they separate. And they are more often laboratories of privatization that are destroying public education and draining our public resources.

7. So what do we offer as an alternative? We maintain that a quality public education is a civil right guaranteed to all students. But without full funding, some children will always be left behind and parents will understandably look for better options. We maintain that as the sixth largest economy in the world, California not only has the resources but has the responsibility to provide an excellent public education for all students. Furthermore, Oakland is not a poor city! We’re home to one of the richest ports in the world, and our Gross Metropolitan Product of over $100 billion is the 20th largest in the US. It is time for all advocates of equal opportunity to reject the divide and conquer strategy embodied in most of today’s charter schools; to recognize that every dollar that goes to a charter is a dollar less for the children remaining in district public schools; and to demand that corporate California and corporate Oakland be taxed to ensure full funding for education.

Proposed standard for charters hits bumps

I previously posted that the California Charter Schools Association had asked a Republican assemblywoman to sponsor a bill addressing conflict of interest on charter schools boards — and then opposed the bill after Bonnie Garcia (R-Cathedral City) followed through.

Now the San Diego Union-Tribune reports (embedded in a story about a troubled charter school) that Garcia has dropped the bill, and Bay Area Democrat Gene Mullin of South San Francisco is now sponsoring it. The bill, AB 2115, passed the Assembly on Wednesday and now goes to the Senate, according to the Union-Tribune.

...the state Legislature is debating a bill that would require charter schools to comply with the same conflict-of-interest laws that public school boards follow. State law forbids any employees of a school district to serve on that district's school board, among other restrictions.

“Charter schools are given more autonomy than public schools, (but) their governing boards have authority over public funds,” said Assemblyman Gene Mullin, a South San Francisco Democrat who resurrected the bill after its original sponsor withdrew it late last week.

Bonnie Garcia, a Republican Assemblywoman from Fountain Valley, said she wanted to reconsider how restrictive the bill should be for charter schools.

Yesterday, Mullin said he's clear on what he wants out of the bill.

“Charter school governing boards should be held to at least the same standards as school district boards,” he said.

Charter lobby opposes law it first requested

The California Charter Schools Association asked a Southern California assemblywoman to sponsor a bill "that would address concerns about conflicts of interest on charter school boards, but still let those with a financial stake in a school serve on its board." But now the CCSA thinks the bill carried by Bonnie Garcia, R-Cathedral City, is too tough, so they're fighting it, according to the Riverside Press-Enterprise.

Riverside Press-Enterprise May 6, 2008
Charter school bill now opposed by sponsoring group
By SHIRIN PARSAVAND
The Press-Enterprise

A group representing the state's charter schools was thrown for a loop when the bill it asked a legislator to carry ended up being much more restrictive than expected.

The California Charter Schools Association asked Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, R-Cathedral City, to carry a bill that would address concerns about conflicts of interest on charter school boards, but still let those with a financial stake in a school serve on its board.

Garcia heavily amended the bill last month to reflect the concerns of the Assembly Education Committee.

Now, the association is opposing the bill it had sponsored, and charter schools are writing letters to Garcia and other legislators against the bill.

The association's director of governmental affairs, Branche Jones, said Garcia was going against the group to push a bill through the Democrat-controlled Legislature.

"I think she caved, from our perspective," Jones said.

Garcia declined to comment on the legislation. An aide, Sharon Gonsalves, said Garcia is still open to changes.

The San Bernardino County superintendent of schools, Herbert Fischer, said in his annual address in January that new legislation was needed to address abuses such as those at the now-defunct California Charter Academy. The Victorville-based charter school network operated four schools and more than 50 satellite sites, including campuses in San Bernardino, Colton and Rialto, before it closed in 2004.

In September, a grand jury handed down a 117-count indictment against the school's founder, Charles Steven Cox, and Tad Theron Honeycutt, a Hesperia councilman who ran businesses connected to the schools.

They are accused of illegally transferring $5.5 million from the academy to private, for-profit management companies they created to sell supplies and services back to the school.

Honeycutt and Cox have pleaded not guilty to misappropriation of public funds, grand theft and failing to file tax returns.

Garcia's bill, AB 1772, originally would have required that no more than 49 percent of a charter school's board be made up of staff or those with a financial interest in the school.

The new version would prohibit charter school board members from holding any financial interest in the school. Charter schools would have to comply with the same conflict-of-interest laws affecting public schools.

Some charter schools are started by teachers, and those schools should be allowed to have staff on their boards, Jones said.

But the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools office and the California School Boards Association support holding charter school boards to the same standards as public school district boards.

"We think it's better for the school, better for the taxpayer," said Brian Rivas, senior legislative advocate for the California School Boards Association. He said employees who serve as board members could influence decisions on a school's contracts even if they recuse themselves from certain votes.

Kevin Gordon, a lobbyist for San Bernardino County's Superintendent of Schools office and for school districts around the state, said it's highly unusual for a sponsor to ask a legislator to carry a bill, then withdraw its support.

But, he said, a bill's sponsor must work closely with the legislator who carries a bill to address any concerns.

"In the Legislature, the sponsor of a bill doesn't own the process," Gordon said. "The legislator that authors the bill controls the bill."

Rainy Day Calculus

The following excerpt comes from a recent UESF email by Dennis Kelly. It gives a reasonably clear explanation of where we stand with the rain day funds:

Report Back from UESF Delegation to SF Controller
=================================================
Yesterday [ed: April 28th] the San Francisco City Controller and his staff provided a briefing on the Rainy Day Fund to a delegation from UESF and representatives from several City Supervisors' offices.

The law states that the triggers for the Rainy Day Fund to be released to the school district are a reduction of inflation-reduced per-pupil revenues and the noticing of significant numbers of layoffs. The Controller certified that the appropriate conditions were met to release the funds.

The law also states that the district is entitled to 25% of the total amount in the fund, or the decline in inflation adjusted per pupil revenue, whichever is less. Currently the fund holds $117.6 million, 25% of which is $29.4 million.

However, according to the Controller's office, under his calculations the decline in the inflation adjusted per pupil revenue is projected to be somewhere between $18.0 million and 19.7 million.

Although SFUSD is expecting an approximately $40 million budget shortfall to the entire budget, much of those cuts will be made to categorical funds.

According to the Controller, the total shortfall in the discretionary budget (which he is interpreting as the decline in inflation adjusted per pupil revenue) is the number somewhere between $18.0 million and $19.7 million. The amount is a range because it depends on the calculation of the education Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) by the state of California. The COLA is not set yet for next year, but is expected to be between 4.9% and 5.4%.

Therefore he is authorizing the release of the lesser amount, unless conditions in the state budget change substantially. Governor Schwarzenegger announced yesterday that the state budget crisis is around $20 billion for next fiscal year, much higher than the original projections of $14-16 billion. The number may therefore be revised upwards as we move forward.

The Rainy Day Fund will be released when the San Francisco City budget is passed, which is typically in the end of July. However, we have been informed by SFUSD that they intend to rescind a certain number of layoffs based on the promise of the funds from the Controller's office. They have stated that on or around May 8th, a further list of rescinded layoffs will be sent out.

By law the SFUSD must send out final layoff notices by May 15th.

The same material was covered in the Chron in this article: Rainy day fund comes to rescue of S.F. teachers, but the UESF report goes into clearer detail on how the $19M figure was derived.

Again, we've been pretty lax about reporting on the budget issue, so we're catching up. More to come.

Charter brouhaha rages in LAUSD

The battle in LAUSD over finding space for charter schools continues. I'm posting this article from the L.A. Daily News because SFUSD has the same issues, luckily on a smaller scale. Note that Ramon "Ray" Cortines was SFUSD superintendent in the early '90s.

Los Angeles Daily News
4/30/08
Charter-school battle unfolds
District pulls offers of campus space to schools
By Naush Boghossian, Staff Writer

Just one month after Los Angeles Unified offered space on its campuses for nearly 40 charter schools, district officials said Wednesday they have withdrawn seven of the offers and are considering yanking five more.

The withdrawals come amid a growing outcry by the teachers union as well as charter schools and traditional schools unhappy with the prospect of sharing dozens of campuses.

In a letter outlining the plan, Senior Deputy Superintendent Ray Cortines said he decided to withdraw the offers based on the "instructional impacts the charter co-location would impose."

But the move drew immediate outrage Wednesday from charter leaders who said the district is reneging on its deal and may be in defiance of Proposition 39 - a statewide ballot measure passed in 2000 that requires LAUSD and other districts to share facilities fairly among all students.

Click to read the rest of the article.

LA teachers' union fights charters' space demands

This article is directly relevant to SFUSD because of the controversies over charters' needs for space disrupting SFUSD school communities. With similar controversies erupting in LAUSD, the teachers' union there is fighting back.

Note: The conservative Los Angeles Daily News' editorial position is vigorously pro-charter, and in my opinion that is often reflected in its news coverage:

Los Angeles Daily News
4/16/08

L.A. teachers union targets pact on charters
By Naush Boghossian, Staff Writer

Launching a pitched battle against Los Angeles Unified over plans to dole out more space for the growing charter-school movement, the teachers union said Wednesday that it will aggressively campaign against traditional schools sharing sites with the popular independent schools.

Demonstrations by parents and teachers and community meetings have already begun, just days after the district offered space to more than three dozen charter schools - the most so far - as part of a settlement of a lawsuit challenging the LAUSD's lagging efforts to share its facilities under Proposition 39.

But some schools and teachers said the plans are too disruptive because they include mixing some elementary and secondary students and allocating classrooms that already are in use.

"This has to do with a bad law, and instead of the district fighting this they chose to make a settlement that will impact the educational programs at the host schools by taking away precious space," said A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles.

"And having a high school or middle school on an elementary campus is total madness and a very serious potential security and safety situation for students."

Changing the law

In addition to rallying parents, teachers and community-based organizations, Duffy said, the union will begin talking with legislators about changing the charter law.
Click for the rest of the article.

Charter battle disrupts another community

Again, charter schools are a big topic in SFUSD right now, because two charters' needs for space are disrupting two vulnerable school communities. I read a lot about charter schools, and I'm currently blogging more of what I've been previously just reading and digesting, as this issue is having such an impact on our community.

In our school district, it's low-income students and families who are suffering because of this charter brouhaha. The Los Angeles Times reports on a charter flap that distressed the rich. The ultra-wealthy community of Palos Verdes, on a beautiful wooded peninsula outside L.A., has been ripped apart recently by a controversy over a proposed charter. Now the proposal has been dropped, but the ugly rift in the community will take a long time to heal.

These rich folks can take care of themselves, and my heart isn't particularly bleeding. But my point is that charters manage to spread controversy and divisiveness far and wide; these parents saw clearly the damage this one would do.

Parents who proposed the charter wanted to escape the culture of high-stakes testing (which is not a goal I disagree with). But they were working with an outfit that operates charters in San Diego and has been accused of various types of corruption and wrongdoing, so that was one little problem. Meanwhile, school officials and other parents in Palos Verdes protested that the charter would siphon resources and students away from the district, harming the existing schools and their students.

Then the unsavory charter operator from San Diego severed its ties with the Palos Verdes charter proponents, who were already apparently getting nervous about the San Diego issues, and the proposal fell apart. From the L.A. Times:

Opponents vowed to fight any future charter proposals and urged the charter parents to work with the district.

Tracey Lyons Tozier, whose two children attend Mira Catalina Elementary, said mending the community divide would take time.

"It's a shame," she said, "how many families are no longer talking to one another over this issue."

Pay $500,000, get a KIPP school in your town

My friend Karen in Houston sent me a link from the newspaper in Galveston, where folks want KIPP to open a school. KIPP told them maybe, but only if Galveston will come up with $500,000 for the school. That seems like an interesting set of terms — is that request even legal? Obviously KIPP should choose where to open schools, but requiring the money commitment seems a little unsavory, at the very least. Karen sent the Galvestonites links to our most recent KIPP commentary.

Galveston, Texas, Daily News

KIPP Asking for Help To Consider Isle Site

By Rhiannon Meyers
The Daily News

Published April 14, 2008

GALVESTON — If islanders want a nationally recognized charter school to come to Galveston, they might have to have to ask for it and come up with half a million dollars.

Officials with the Knowledge is Power Program — or KIPP — are inviting Galveston residents to submit a proposal explaining why the charter school should come to the island.

Charter school officials want to know why Galveston students are underserved by the island’s public and charter schools, what sort of facilities are open for the school to move into and how much money the community will raise to bring a KIPP school to the island.

The school requires the community to raise $500,000 to cover startup costs.

Click to read the rest of the story.

An MSM look at the burden posed by charters

The San Gabriel Valley Tribune (not really a mouthpiece for teachers' union radicals) looks at the negative impact charter schools have on school districts. Pasadena is currently grappling with the sudden financial collapse of a new charter partway through its first year.

Charter school issues are particularly relevant in SFUSD right now because of the stresses on Excelsior Middle School and James Denman Middle School caused by two charter schools' demands for sites, which Prop. 39 requires SFUSD to meet.

Charter Schools' Rise Weighs on Districts

Petitions to establish independent facilities getting more scrutiny
By Caroline An, Staff Writer
April 12, 2008

PASADENA - Financial problems that threaten to close at least one charter school in Pasadena highlight the role school districts play in approving and ultimately overseeing these independent schools.

Charters are largely independent of districts that approve them. And while they are funded by the state and are held to the same benchmark standards that public schools must adhere to, the allure of charter schools has been the freedom they have to develop their own curriculum and control their own budgets.

But district oversight of charter schools is becoming more strict, officials said.

While the majority of charters are in the Los Angeles Unified School District, charter schools - which typically cater to a certain demographic or offer a more specialized curriculum - are now beginning to make their impacts felt at school districts across the San Gabriel Valley.

District officials attribute the rise in charter schools to dissatisfaction with the quality of regular public education and, to some extent, recent decisions by school boards to close campuses to allow districts to save millions of dollars.

With the state's looming budget deficit, officials say that charter schools - now more than ever - can capitalize on these recent developments.

"The charter operators know when sites are vacant. With districts publicizing school closures, charters will exacerbate the problem," Baldwin Park Unified School District Superintendent Mark Skvarna said.

Click to read the rest of the article.

A response from KIPP, and related observations

I sent a list of questions to KIPP spokesman Steve Mancini, and he e-mailed me that he has posted the answers on KIPP's website. KIPP, the Knowledge is Power Program, is a nationwide chain of charter schools touted as a miracle solution for low-income students. KIPP is nominally based in San Francisco, reportedly to be close to major funder Don Fisher. Aside from the Fisher funding, it also gets lots more money from the usual billionaire education-reform benefactors.

KIPP schools require students and parents to sign agreements to comply with many rules. They require extra-long hours and extra days in school, including Saturdays. They teach students a set of anti-"ghetto" mannerisms and use a decibel meter in class to keep things calm. They rely on strict discipline systems based on shunning miscreants, plus a reward system paying "KIPP dollars" to spend at a "KIPP store."

The questions and answers about KIPP are more than most people want to know, but click to read them if you're curious. Steve Mancini has invited me to meet with him, which I will try to do soon.

I've been researching KIPP, as a hobby, ever since a happy KIPP parent posted proudly on the sfschools listserve a couple years ago that his daughter had "tested into" KIPP S.F. Bay Academy. Students are not supposed to have to "test into" KIPP schools.

In another incident that piqued my interest, the mother of a child with autism decided that KIPP, with its firmly structured program, was an ideal setting for her son. She applied to KIPP Bayview and was troubled that her son was given what she understood to be the entrance test in a busy setting with lots of distractions — a particular problem for an child with autism. She tells me that she complained to an administrator and was ordered off the property.

What's with the apparent entrance tests? Well, when KIPP schools (which are almost all grade 5-8 middle schools) get applicants who have completed 5th or 6th grade at other schools — who intend to apply for grades 6 or 7 — they're tested to determine their academic grade level before KIPP accepts them. Then apparently they may find out that they're in 5th grade again even though they thought they were in 6th (or 6th rather than 7th) if they want to start the KIPP school. (KIPP doesn't accept incoming 8th-graders.)

Here are some observations about KIPP schools.

1. KIPP targets low-income students of color. Its application process and program inherently self-selects for high-functioning, motivated, compliant students from high-functioning, motivated compliant families. A child from a family that's deeply entrenched in the oppositional, alienated street culture described by sociologist Elijah Anderson in "Code of the Streets" is extremely unlikely to apply to a KIPP school, or to comply with its requirements in the unlikely event that he/she does apply and get in. KIPP and schools like it attract the "decent" families (Anderson's term) — the higher-functioning families seeking a better life for their children, trying to get them away from the street culture.

If the traditional public school down the street also implemented admissions procedures and other processes that self-screened for such families, and if that schools were not automatically assigned students, would that school succeed as well as the KIPP school? We have no way of knowing.

Of course it's a good thing that KIPP schools are elevating disadvantaged students to a high academic level. My concern is the widespread belief and publicity promoting them as doing something they're not — taking the full spectrum of disadvantaged students and elevating them to that high level. That misleading portrayal is then used to compare KIPP schools unfairly to traditional public school down the street — the one that actually is accepting the full spectrum of disadvantaged students. That causes the traditional public school to lose approval and support, harming the children in that school.

2. Beyond the processes and systems that self-select for motivated families and students, which aspects of KIPP contribute most to the successes? Can different aspects of the KIPP culture be disaggregated and studied? How would these students perform without the substantial private funding KIPP gets? It appears that KIPP schools require students to repeat a grade at a higher rate than the traditional public school down the street. How much higher a rate? How does that impact the success of KIPP students? Does requiring a student to repeat a grade work more effectively with those higher-functioning, motivated, compliant students than with a disengaged, resistant, oppositional student? That's the kind of thing we don't know. It would be valuable to have that information, so that all schools could implement the best practices. It appears that because this aspect of KIPP is not illuminated or discussed, it's also not being studied. It's not even clear if it's on the radar of the various entities that study KIPP schools. (There's also the fact that being required to repeat a grade is likely to discourage less-compliant students and families from enrolling in or remaining at KIPP schools.)

3. I have already blogged about the high (in some cases astounding) attrition rate at some KIPP schools. When I researched it, six of California's then-nine KIPP schools showed high attrition overall, and very, very high attrition of the most academically challenged subgroup — either African-American or Latino boys, depending on the school. Why some KIPP schools and not others? Is this true at KIPP schools elsewhere (California's data is unusually accessible, or maybe it's just that I know how to find it)? Once again, if the students who are leaving KIPP schools are the least successful, how is that impacting the schools' success? If the traditional public school down the street had as many students leave — and, a key point, go unreplaced — what would the impact be?

4. Much of the publicity surrounding KIPP exaggerates and oversimplifies its successes. There's the pervasive implication that KIPP enrolls a full cross-section of disadvantaged inner-city kids — that those barely parented children of the street who disrupt class, roam the halls, get combative with teachers and intimidate other kids at some schools have been transformed into diligent, engaged, middle-class-behaving students at KIPP schools.

No. Those kids do not enroll at KIPP schools. Only someone fully out of touch, who has no contact with urban youth, would believe that myth — but a lot of commentators are that out of touch. KIPP enrolls the high-functioning, motivated and compliant among low-income students. Why does this matter? Because again, these claims are used to make KIPP schools look superior to the traditional public school down the street, causing that school to lose approval and support, hurting its students and all of public education.

I asked Steve Mancini about KIPP's claims about how many alumni have gone to college. Here's the way this is typically described, including on KIPP's website: KIPP runs 57 schools serving over 14,000 students. ... 80% of its graduates go on to college. Wow! KIPP has sent 11,200 students to college! But no, actually: KIPP schools are grades 5-8. The only KIPP students old enough to have reached college age attended KIPP schools that existed before 2003 — and KIPP ran only two schools at that time. Steve Mancini didn't give hard numbers, but they're not big schools. It may well be that 80% of those 14,000 current KIPP students will go on to college, after four years in high school, but at this point that implication is not accurate.

Same with the claim that "all KIPP schools have waiting lists," which is not true. Everyone pins the blame on New York Times writer Paul Tough, who made that claim without attribution or backup in a long article last year. Now it's repeated everywhere. Paul! Do-over on Journalism 1A!

5. KIPP depends on these exaggerated claims and on the positive press coverage it routinely gets to win the huge amount of private funding it attracts from the usual roster of billionaire benefactors. That also, in my opinion, leads KIPP to downplay issues such as its rate of requiring students to repeat a grade, and its schools' attrition. And this all makes it much more difficult to know what are the keys to KIPP's success and what can be emulated throughout our schools. But KIPP, being heavily dependent on that private funding, has no choice but to depend on the exaggerated claims and oversimplification, and to downplay the details and nuances that might actually illuminate how KIPP achieves its successes.

I'm not blasting KIPP schools overall. I'm saying that it's all but impossible to learn from them, to find out which parts of their program are best practices that can be emulated, because there's so much misleading publicity about them and so little illumination of the details. They could be beneficial for our entire public school system, but instead they're doing harm.