of The Center For Education Reform
No. 28 July 1996
From the Trenches
On Choice
On Charters
Words of Wisdom
Motherhood, Apple Pie and the BLOB
Dear Friends:
Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer have been crazier than ever! As we went to press last month, North and South Carolina joined the ranks of charter school states, New Jersey began accepting applications for its entry into the world of charter schools, oral arguments were being heard in the Cleveland school choice case, and Hartford's autonomy over educating its students was under challenge by the courts, which ruled the state must do something to alleviate the devastating effects of racial imbalance and poverty on the city's children. Those issues, along with a plethora of other education news and activity throughout the country, have confirmed pollster reports that education heads the list of concerns of Americans. Read on.
While some districts work to eliminate social promotions and states strive to raise standards, others still don't get it. Somerville, Mass. officials have been criticized by some in the community for a proposed shift from letter grades - an 80, 90 or 100 meaning a C, B or A, to an A representing "excellent progress," a B meaning "good progress," and a C meaning "limited progress/teacher conference requested." The new system would also abolish failing grades and rely on more detailed "progress-in-the-standard" reports on how well a child is doing. Parents and school officials alike say the district is just trying to couch report cards and avoid making children think they are not doing well. They are also concerned that the new reports won't adequately convey what the teacher is saying about the child's ability on various subjects.
Dodge Ball is bad for kids. That's what a former P.E. instructor told a group of West Virginia Educators recently. According to the Associated Press, Ambrose Brazelton says dodge ball is bad because competition shouldn't be a goal of education. "I'm looking to the day when we can have many homecoming queens, many valedictorians." This editor did a radio show on the subject of whether the competitive spirit moves people. The 10 callers on that show, including several teachers, said it is a positive part of providing incentives for children.
A poll done for a commission appointed by Louisiana Gov. Mike Foster found a majority of residents support proposals to punish poorly performing schools by withholding certain state funds and replacing principals. When asked to rate their schools from 1-10, only 13% gave their schools an 8 or higher. People kept the pollsters on the phone longer because they had such strong feelings about the issue. The new commission has proposed setting levels of achievement and taking action against those who fail to meet minimum requirements. They've also proposed reconstituting staffs and allowing parents of children in failing schools to move their children to the public or private school of their choice, which 60% supported. Finally, 90% said they believe in school-organized and based teams to make key decisions for their schools.
How well are American children doing in geography? Not too badly, according to the 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress Geography Report. About 70% of tested fourth, eighth and twelfth graders were at or above the basic level. Not surprisingly, those who liked the subject and did more homework and projects performed better as a whole, as did children who were exposed to a greater variety of literary materials, or who were from families with higher education levels, or had parents who were more involved in their studies. Unfortunately, proficient and advanced scores were less cheery, showing that even in geography, we have a long way to go.
Illinois law now makes it a misdemeanor - punishable by a $500 fine and up to 30 days in jail - for knowingly enrolling your child in the wrong district. The target of this new anti-crime crusade? Chicago parents who jump into surrounding districts where they feel their children will be safer and better educated. No one questions that the practice puts a burden on these districts, which can't recoup the entire cost of educating these children. But to padlock the gates? That's no solution.
Eye on the PTA: a national poll done for the Education Policy Institute by Wirthlin Worldwide found that 80% of parents were unaware of the issue positions and lobbying efforts of the national PTA. More than half said they would be less likely to join the PTA knowing it opposes school choice. Other important findings: 77% of parents believe the PTA "should focus on providing a forum for parents to discuss significant issues regarding their children's education," and 75% of those who don't attend meetings said they would if critical educational issues were discussed.
Letters to the Editor: In our April issue we inducted two members into the Don't Worry, Be Happy Hall of Fame for passages from their new book claiming that educational achievement is very bright. Writing recently in the Christian Science Monitor, Hudson Institute fellow and former Assistant Education Secretary, Chester Finn, wrote that our inductees' (Stanford's Robert Calfree and Cynthia Patrick) "assertion that the picture 'looks mighty bright' can only be made by omitting and distorting key data, such as the persistently weak-to-woeful performance of US students on international assessments and the recent [NAEP] reports, which, by common agreement, are our soundest domestic gauge of academic achievement."
Still, Calfree believes that knowing the facts about achievement is not enough. You have to read his book, he says. In a May 17 letter to us, Calfree wrote, "research on reading comprehension shows that an individual's understanding of a text depends to a greater or lesser extent on their background experiences. I suspect that your interpretation of our actual book would not change greatly if you were to read it. But you might think about the idea. In any event, I am sorry to turn down your induction offer." (Sorry, membership is involuntary!)
The new book by the Kettering Foundation's David Mathews, Is There a Public for Public School? is a brilliant manual on the disconnect between public life and schools today, which urges communities to engage citizens to remake that connection. Based on focus groups and surveys that Kettering has helped produce for years, Mathews shows how the words "school" and "education" illicit vastly different responses from people, the former being more negative because of, perhaps, specifically bad experiences, the latter being something everyone believes is important and positive. The only hitch in the analysis is that nowhere does Mathews remark on the possibility that perhaps the most needed unifying issues are demands that our schools be good, excel, and find never-before-explored ways of doing things. With so many feelings in play - about schools and what is and isn't being done to help students - we need first to recognize what is not being done and work for what should be. As a New York Post headline screamed over a morbid crime, "Where's the Outrage?" It is the lack of it, or the mischaracterizations of the motives of reformers, that has disengaged schools from public life. Reconnecting the public to schools requires involvement and buying into what is happening. True engagement is hard to come by in a system that is impervious to people's everyday concerns.
The courts and the bureaucracy have again shown their lack of understanding of what school districts are trying to achieve. First, in Prince George's Co., Maryland, 500 magnet school slots that the school board voted to open to black children on a waiting list will remain unfilled while the court ponders whether this is a good idea, in spite of the fact that there are not enough white children to fill them. Then the U.S. DOE's Office of Civil Rights ruled that the county's Black Male Achievement Institute, which pairs boys with male role models and mentors, cannot continue without being opened to girls. Never mind that boys' needs may be greater, or that districts should be able to create programs that address competing gender needs, OCR says it's discriminatory (just like it initially said Ohio's eighth grade skills test was discriminatory because too many black children failed) so, there.
Laughter was our reaction when we read the NEA's suggestion to its allies on how to combat "extremist groups." Write letters! "To correct misinformation... about public education, nothing beats writing to them - especially if you teach literature or the humanities. Introduce yourself by telling them where you were schooled and what you do as an education employee. State how disturbed you are by their characterization of public school employees...then conclude it with a challenge: 'If you truly cared about young people and what they are learning, you would support the public schools rather than tear them down!'" Now them's fightin' words!
A survey by two university professors of teachers' attitudes toward school choice came up with some interesting numbers. Of the slightly fewer than 1,000 teachers surveyed, only 25% of public school teachers supported choice involving private schools, while 75% of private school teachers did. Non-union public school teachers supported private school choice nearly twice as often as union teachers (27% to 15%), and interestingly, 35% of inner city teachers supported full school choice, as compared to only 6% of suburban teachers. Younger teachers were also more likely to favor full school choice by a margin of 24% to 14%. The authors were Robert Maranto of Lafayette College in PA and Scott Milliman of James Madison University in VA.
And speaking of polls, one of the teachers unions' mantras on why school choice shouldn't be enacted is that school choice has failed on so many ballot initiatives that the public clearly doesn't want it. But Dave Kirkpatrick, a former union leader writing for the Blum Center for Parental Freedom in Education, makes an interesting point about polls and campaigns. He cites The Populist Persuasion, in which Michael Kazin discusses how many times unions had to fight for the right to organize before getting it - 4,300 times between 1880 and the Great Depression to be exact. As more evidence that failed choice initiatives (despite their progress beyond where such measures were even five years ago) do not indicate they are a bad idea, Kirkpatrick quotes Bella Abzug, who in her autobiography writes, "Just to get the right to vote it took women...52 years of pauseless campaigns, 56 state referenda, 480 legislative campaigns [for] state amendments, 47 constitutional convention campaigns, 19 campaigns to get suffrage planks in party platforms, 19 campaigns in 19 successive Congresses to get the federal amendment submitted and then the final ratification campaign." And for more historical perspective by Kirkpatrick, a 1974 quote in the Phi Delta Kappan, (ironically a journal of the status quo today) from L. Thomas Hopkins: "History shows that in crisis the people in power tend to redefine and intensify the status quo system which eventually destroys them. This is the present movement in education."
Speaking of extreme, the AFT showed its true colors when, in oral argument against Cleveland's new pilot choice program before the Franklin Co., Ohio Common Pleas Court on June 24, it called parents "inconsequential conduits." One man who's hoping the AFT loses its case against school choice is Dennie Widener, a 32 year old parent and high school dropout who the Columbus Dispatch says supports his disabled wife and three children on $421 a month in welfare. "I just want to go in there and tell them I can't believe we have to fight for an education," he told the Dispatch. "I'm a flunky, and that's what they are trying to make my kid." Widener says that in public school kindergarten, his daughter only learned the alphabet while "At private school, they were reading in kindergarten. If she got the chance, she'd excel."
Michigan's education budget, adopted in June, included an open-enrollment program allowing districts to accept children from other districts. Detroit was one of the first to sign, followed by several neighboring districts. With the program, if a child exits a district, $5,380 in per-pupil costs will follow him to his new school of choice. It provides an incentive for some districts, which, like Detroit, had to cut millions from its budget. Michigan is the 17th state to allow statewide public school choice.
In Hull, Massachusetts, the South Shore Charter School had its first three graduates in June, giving each a scholarship for college. In a day of celebration and ceremony, the school's principal said, "It was a great symbol for the primary school to see all this...It was like Wow! If you hang in there you get all these accolades and attention." South Shore has about 200 students and expects to graduate 12 next year. (Districts like Hull are now being fully reimbursed for the loss of 175 students to charter schools, a move by the legislature of which many charter proponents are skeptical.)
The growing charter movement still breeds resistance. In the words of the Baton Rouge, Louisiana Morning Advocate, "Big institutions are hard to change, and the school establishment is among the biggest institutions around." They are referring to the fact that only two charters are slated to open this fall, and to the decision by one parish school board to approve three schools but limit enrollment to 54 students each. Operators said that would make it very hard to operate...not to mention the fact that it closes off opportunities for other kids who want to apply.
Yet another story: one of Florida's more than 70 charter applicants is interested in opening a K-2 charter for children with Attention Deficit Disorder. Brenda Harris in Polk Co. has already recruited educators to help and advise her. The problem for Harris and others is that Florida's School Boards Association has already said that most Boards will delay consideration of such applications until next year because they need time to develop a process. Association attorneys are also trying to develop a "contract" that boards can use for their charters (which they also say privately, will set up far more stipulations for charters than the law intended). Rather than using the proposal itself as the basis for a contract, many fear school board models will restrict charters in numerous ways and not allow for maximum autonomy. Thankfully, there are enough individual school boards likely to approve charters without such threats.
In Massachusetts, after many fits and starts and much political wrangling the Somerville Charter School is finally slated to open this fall. But the Council of PTAs is not pleased. In an enormous Somerville Journal op-ed, the PTA reported that charters are not up to National PTA standards. The harangue says that for a PTA endorsement, a charter school: cannot specialize in a particular kind of student, cannot be run by for-profits, cannot be funded with money that follows the child from his current district (which begs the question, why should a district get money if a child leaves?), should be governed by the same laws as other public schools (which begs the question why would anyone want to start a school that followed all the same arcane rules?), should be held accountable mainly to the school board, all personnel should be certified...you get the picture. Sounds eerily like the NEA position on charters. Which begs the question, who does the PTA represent anyway?
And the AFT is getting into the act. With a tacit endorsement of charters, while urging the public to beware, AFT will release a "study" at its annual convention in Ohio that suggests charters are not accountable institutions. The reasoning? Only a handful of charter laws require passage of state standards, most do not require the same tests as public schools, all are not required to have certified teachers, and (are you ready?) 15 out of 25 laws "prevent, restrict or are silent on" collective bargaining. Our response, developed in consultation with charter authority Joe Nathan: Not all states have state standards or state tests so, of course, not all charters must meet them; while there are states that do not require a particular kind of assessment, charters are bound to come up with evaluation methods acceptable to them and their sponsors, and then must meet or exceed the goals laid out in the charter, unlike most public schools which are not judged on performance and not required to lay out goals (in fact, of the 110 schools Joe surveyed for an ECS report earlier last year, most did use standardized tests or some other recognized means of assessment). And finally, both the openess towards non-certified teachers and restrictions on collective bargaining are good things, not bad. I'm reminded of the Stanford Physics professor who teaches math in a San Carlos, CA charter. Does the AFT think he can't handle it because he lacks an El-Ed degree?
On the subject of assessment, the California Network of Educational Charters' monthly newsletter reports that Sonoma Charter middle school students are required to produce a project for graduation. This year's projects "integrated the study of math, science and humanities by investigating population and disease connections." Knowing this, would the AFT still balk if these students weren't required to take standardized tests?
To give credit where credit is due, the AFT does have some of the best literature on standards available, and their recognition of falling achievement and demand for higher standards is commendable. CER has signed onto AFT's Standards Bill of Rights because we share their interest in the field, which is why their new report on charters truly boggles the mind.
Ever on the cutting edge, California may see more action on the charter front before yearend. Gov. Pete Wilson, after redirecting Goals 2000 toward reducing class sizes and exposing teachers and children to phonics, has endorsed several legislative proposals that would expand the number of charters in the state, allow for the chartering of districts and allow parents to initiate and sign charter petitions in lieu of teacher signatures. Even though the State Board is approving charters above the cap, legislation with bi-partisan backing stalled in the Senate earlier this summer when union forces went all out against the measure during the committee mark-up.
While perusing Common Knowledge, the newsletter of the Core Knowledge Foundation, we decided to share the following passages from speeches at the Fifth Annual Core Knowledge Conference:
"....When this great and brave man agreed to come speak to the conference, it seemed to me a validation of the idea of Core Knowledge and the ideal that has always laid behind the movement - the ideal of social justice...Today we face the paradox that those who claim to speak for the oppressed and to defend the rights of all peoples are also people who unwittingly contribute to the continuation of inequality...No longer is the enemy of justice a white supremacist with attack dogs. The enemy is a person who would be shocked to hear that he or she could even be thought to hold a condescending or racist idea...so that each child goes at his or her own pace -even if that pace should keep the child in the ghetto.
"The basic explanation for the strong correlation between equality of educational opportunity and use of a core curriculum is [that] a core curriculum induces grade-readiness for all children and thus enables all members of a classroom to learn."
-- E.D. Hirsch, Introducing James Farmer, the founder of the Congress of Racial Equality, who led CORE's famous Freedom Ride through the south in 1961.
"The danger in too great an emphasis on multiculturalism is that it denies that there is an individual existing apart from and above the collective definitions of race, gender, culture and national identify.
"The function and purpose of education is not only to confirm you in who you are; it is also to introduce you to all that you are not. Education should overwhelm you to such an extent that you will never again assume that your experience can be equated with all of human experience."
-- Julius Lester, professor at University of Mass., Amherst and author of To Be A Slave; Long Journey Home: Stories from Black History.
And speaking of Core Knowledge, the 7th and 8th grade sequences are in review and this August, E.D. Hirsch will add to his works by publishing What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know (Doubleday), and in November, Books to Build On: A Resource Guide for Parents and Teachers K-6 (Dell). If you have an interest in standards on the big and small picture scale, these are must reads.
Motherhood, Apple Pie and the BLOB
Is it just us, or do you also detect an odd similarity in the following statements?
"....public education, the foundation on which our great democracy has
been built." NEA Charter School Initiative, Education Week, January 31
"....the democratic purpose of public education." Education
Secretary Richard Riley, State of American Education Address, February 28
"...the democratic principles that are the foundation of all public
education." Keith Geiger, then NEA-President, News Release, April 16
Critics might see such rhetorical consistency as a propaganda effort organized by status quo leaders who can no longer argue their case on its merits and, thus, must resort to shameless flag-waving. Some might even cite the quote that "Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels." But I, being of a more generous nature, prefer to think of it all as just coincidence, or perhaps an unfortunate case of self-hypnosis. But then, what do I know, since I also thought that individual rights were somehow part of our democracy.
As the campaign season heats up, we are amused (or disgusted, depending on our mood) by the program-a-day approach taken by some politicians, and hope you won't get too depressed that so few seem to have a clue as to what's really happening in the world of true education reform. Speaking of which, if you need a refresher course, or want to be otherwise stimulated and provoked, there's still time to sign up for Education Reform: A National Happening in Boston on September 16-17. We've added some hotel rooms, but they won't last so call or fax your registration back today!
In the great American tradition of our Founding Fathers, (and our own), we will not publish in August. We'll be back with our special back-to-school issue in September. In the meantime, relax and enjoy, and for those of you always looking for tax deductions, keep in mind that little obnoxious envelope we are forever sending you to help bolster our education troops in the field! Thanks, again, for everything you do to make our lives so enjoyable.