Is it really possible that the DOE is spending 30 million dollars on home instruction for 183 students?
This can't be correct, I hope someone corrects me.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
The Economist: Wrong About Money
An article in the Economist states, "Education spending in America has increased to $9,000 per student today, versus $4,300 in 1971 (adjusted for inflation), yet math and reading scores in the country have both flatlined."
It interesting to cite this fact then point to the Harlem Children's Zone charter school as an example of a school that works. HCZ charter school spends far more per student than any traditional public school. There are two certified teachers in most classrooms. Class sizes are very small and students have access to an incredible network of social services through HCZ. If you are trying to make the point that money will not solve the problem's in education, this charter school actually proves the opposite.
Before you can educate poor urban youth, you need to address basic needs. Do they have food, clean clothes, health care and a safe home? School and learning doesn't happen until those basic needs are addressed. Geoffrey Canada recognizes this and provides those services to the children living in the HCZ. Its a great model, but who is going to pay for it? Goldman Sachs doesn't fund everyone's school.
It interesting to cite this fact then point to the Harlem Children's Zone charter school as an example of a school that works. HCZ charter school spends far more per student than any traditional public school. There are two certified teachers in most classrooms. Class sizes are very small and students have access to an incredible network of social services through HCZ. If you are trying to make the point that money will not solve the problem's in education, this charter school actually proves the opposite.
Before you can educate poor urban youth, you need to address basic needs. Do they have food, clean clothes, health care and a safe home? School and learning doesn't happen until those basic needs are addressed. Geoffrey Canada recognizes this and provides those services to the children living in the HCZ. Its a great model, but who is going to pay for it? Goldman Sachs doesn't fund everyone's school.
The Case Against Merit Pay
By all accounts, even my own, merit pay seems to make sense. If someone has better performance than someone else, pay them more. Unfortunately, the research doesn't support merrit pay as a tool to increase performance. Below is a great video about the use of money as an incentive and here is one of my favorite blogs addressing the same question.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Charter School Agenda
Below is an excerpt of an email conversation between NYC School Chancellor Joel Klein and Harlem Success Academy CEO Eva Mustquit.
Just in case there were any doubts that charter schools are specifically designed to union bust/replace traditional public schools, here is what she wrote to pal Joel Klien.
"We plan to open our last 3 in Harlem in august 2010 and then move to Bronx,"... "With 27 charters in Harlem [counting other non-Harlem Success charter schools] we will have market share and will have fundamentally changed the rules of the game."
Just in case there were any doubts that charter schools are specifically designed to union bust/replace traditional public schools, here is what she wrote to pal Joel Klien.
"We plan to open our last 3 in Harlem in august 2010 and then move to Bronx,"... "With 27 charters in Harlem [counting other non-Harlem Success charter schools] we will have market share and will have fundamentally changed the rules of the game."
The Post's First Negative Article about Charter Schools
This morning hell froze over and pigs were flying.
The NY Post owned by charter school proponent Rupert Murdoch, wrote its first negative artilce about charter schools.
The focus was on the DOE progress reports which is an attempt by the New York City Department of education to assign each school a letter grade based on student performance. According to the article in the Post, public schools scored 10 percent higher on average than charter schools.
This puts Joel Klien, New York City public school chancellor and charter school proponent in a difficult situation. Either admit that your scoring system doesn't work and you have wasted millions of dollars, or admit that chater schools are not the answer to education reform.
Joel did what anybody in that position would do - he left town.
The NY Post owned by charter school proponent Rupert Murdoch, wrote its first negative artilce about charter schools.
The focus was on the DOE progress reports which is an attempt by the New York City Department of education to assign each school a letter grade based on student performance. According to the article in the Post, public schools scored 10 percent higher on average than charter schools.
This puts Joel Klien, New York City public school chancellor and charter school proponent in a difficult situation. Either admit that your scoring system doesn't work and you have wasted millions of dollars, or admit that chater schools are not the answer to education reform.
Joel did what anybody in that position would do - he left town.
A Heartless Lottery
"My own particular, narrow wrath was focused on the ritual at the heart of the movie, where parents and kids sit nervously in an auditorium, holding their lottery numbers while somebody pulls out balls and announces the lucky winners of seats in next fall’s charter school class. The lucky families jump up and down and scream with joy while the losing parents and kids cry. In some of the lotteries, there are 20 heartbroken children for every happy one.
Charter schools, please, stop. I had no idea you selected your kids with a piece of performance art that makes the losers go home feeling like they’re on a Train to Failure at age 6. You can do better. Use the postal system."
-Gail Collins New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/opinion/30collins.html
Charter schools, please, stop. I had no idea you selected your kids with a piece of performance art that makes the losers go home feeling like they’re on a Train to Failure at age 6. You can do better. Use the postal system."
-Gail Collins New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/opinion/30collins.html
Why do hedge funds support charter schools?
Why do charter schools enjoy the support of hedge funds, Walmart, and Rupert Murdoch?
At first I thought the only reason was the ideology of privatization, but an article by Juan Gonzalez makes more sinister connections.
Some investment banks are using tax credits for school construction to double there money in 7 years.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/05/07/2010-05-07_albany_charter_cash_cow_big_banks_making_a_bundle_on_new_construction_as_schools.html
At first I thought the only reason was the ideology of privatization, but an article by Juan Gonzalez makes more sinister connections.
Some investment banks are using tax credits for school construction to double there money in 7 years.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/05/07/2010-05-07_albany_charter_cash_cow_big_banks_making_a_bundle_on_new_construction_as_schools.html
Monday, September 27, 2010
Why focus on problems with Charter Schools
Why focus on problems with Charter Schools when the focus should be on how to fix education in our country?
With so much “reform” focused on expanding charter schools it is important to realize that they are not the magic bullet many have made them out to be. You can’t compare Public and Charter schools in NYC, because the charters are playing by different rules with different students.
Several high performing charter schools have changed the threshold for grade promotion from 65 to 80. Its not hard to have a 100% passing rate on standardized tests when only students that have 80’s in the class take the test. If a student has less than an 80, it is likely they will be transferring out of the charter to a public school, rather than being left back. That’s why the charter schools with high standardized test scores are also the ones with 30% attrition.
In addition, we know that the charter schools that are enrolling fewer ELL’s and SPED students.
Charter schools are also investing big money on PR and advertising. As a result we hear about the success of Harlem Success Academy or Harlem Village academy, but we don’t hear about the great work P.S. 83 is doing in the same district.
The PR campaign has worked. Reform to many now means, expanding charter schools and providing them with huge (multi million dollar) donations. We can’t address the current reform movement unless we also address the fact that CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE NOT PROVIDING PUBLIC EDUCTION, but education for the top 2/3 of students. If we listen to their PR firms long enough we will forget that the bottom 1/3, the group of students our reform movement should focused on, are left out. I guess not all of them are left out. Some of them will attend P.S. 83 a high performing public schools that is humbly doing the job they were meant to do - Educating all children.
If we were to sit down with Geoffrey Canada for a drink he would tell us what reform really means. “Keep the kids that make your test scores and graduation rates look great. Create policies that ensure the low performing students transfer back to a public school. Once your numbers look good hire a PR firm to get you on Oprah.”
With so much “reform” focused on expanding charter schools it is important to realize that they are not the magic bullet many have made them out to be. You can’t compare Public and Charter schools in NYC, because the charters are playing by different rules with different students.
Several high performing charter schools have changed the threshold for grade promotion from 65 to 80. Its not hard to have a 100% passing rate on standardized tests when only students that have 80’s in the class take the test. If a student has less than an 80, it is likely they will be transferring out of the charter to a public school, rather than being left back. That’s why the charter schools with high standardized test scores are also the ones with 30% attrition.
In addition, we know that the charter schools that are enrolling fewer ELL’s and SPED students.
Charter schools are also investing big money on PR and advertising. As a result we hear about the success of Harlem Success Academy or Harlem Village academy, but we don’t hear about the great work P.S. 83 is doing in the same district.
The PR campaign has worked. Reform to many now means, expanding charter schools and providing them with huge (multi million dollar) donations. We can’t address the current reform movement unless we also address the fact that CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE NOT PROVIDING PUBLIC EDUCTION, but education for the top 2/3 of students. If we listen to their PR firms long enough we will forget that the bottom 1/3, the group of students our reform movement should focused on, are left out. I guess not all of them are left out. Some of them will attend P.S. 83 a high performing public schools that is humbly doing the job they were meant to do - Educating all children.
If we were to sit down with Geoffrey Canada for a drink he would tell us what reform really means. “Keep the kids that make your test scores and graduation rates look great. Create policies that ensure the low performing students transfer back to a public school. Once your numbers look good hire a PR firm to get you on Oprah.”
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Charter School ≠ Better School
I can't tell you how many times after I describe the fantastic school I work at someone says, "that sounds great, is it a charter school?"
Why is it that charter schools are equated with better schools even though all the research says that they are no better than traditional public schools. (see a great article about reasearch on Charter vs. Traditional Public Schools)
That is a rhetorical question, I have my own ideas. How much money was spent on the Harlem Village Academy, or KIPP websites? Sure the DOE has its own fancy website, but spread over a million students the cost is nominal. Spread over a thousand students the PR and advertising expenses of charter schools mean real sacrifices on instructional materials in order tocreate the illusion of a functioning school put the best face on a school. If the DOE spent per student what the charter school operators do for advertising and PR it would cost, (real data is not available because charter schools are not required to report it) for lack of a more precise figure, a lot.
At some point people who were supposed to be journalists caught whiff of the charter school PR and jumped on the bandwagon. There were feel good stories about students in poor communities with low high school graduation rates breaking the mold and going to college. These stories focused almost exclusively on high achieving charter schools even though we could hand pick a proportionate number of high achieving public schools doing the same things for students. We could have also picked a number of charter schools and public schools completely failing their students.
I get really upset when "real journalists" buy into PR sound bites and start producing biased writing. Winnie Hu wrote an article for the NY times the other day about an idea I don't think will be very effective - completely teacher run schools. It is interesting that most of her articles about charter schools are success stories, and the articles about traditional schools depict them as struggling or searching for answers, but I digress. In this article she casually writes that public schools are scrambling to come up with answers to catch up with charter schools. She writes,
Why do traditional public schools need to compete more effectively against charter schools? What is it we are competing for? We already know that charter schools are not more effective than public schools. (See Searching for Superguy in Gotham).
The article by Bob Herbert is another example of the New York Times painting the story of a successful charter school and failing public schools. Later this month a movie called "Waiting for Superman" by the same director as an inconvenient truth will open. In it he picks looks at the Harlem Children Zone Charter school which has done well for its population of students (which doesn't include a proportionate number English Language Learners or Special Ed students.) Why did the director choose a high performing charter school and not a high performing public school?
Unfortunately with the focus only on successful charter schools and failing public schools, public perception will remain the same. I will have to continue explaining that I work in a high achieving public school and that they exists in an equal proportion to high achieving charter schools.
Why is it that charter schools are equated with better schools even though all the research says that they are no better than traditional public schools. (see a great article about reasearch on Charter vs. Traditional Public Schools)
That is a rhetorical question, I have my own ideas. How much money was spent on the Harlem Village Academy, or KIPP websites? Sure the DOE has its own fancy website, but spread over a million students the cost is nominal. Spread over a thousand students the PR and advertising expenses of charter schools mean real sacrifices on instructional materials in order to
At some point people who were supposed to be journalists caught whiff of the charter school PR and jumped on the bandwagon. There were feel good stories about students in poor communities with low high school graduation rates breaking the mold and going to college. These stories focused almost exclusively on high achieving charter schools even though we could hand pick a proportionate number of high achieving public schools doing the same things for students. We could have also picked a number of charter schools and public schools completely failing their students.
I get really upset when "real journalists" buy into PR sound bites and start producing biased writing. Winnie Hu wrote an article for the NY times the other day about an idea I don't think will be very effective - completely teacher run schools. It is interesting that most of her articles about charter schools are success stories, and the articles about traditional schools depict them as struggling or searching for answers, but I digress. In this article she casually writes that public schools are scrambling to come up with answers to catch up with charter schools. She writes,
"Teacher-run schools are spreading as many districts seek new ways to raise student achievement and compete more effectively against charter schools."
Why do traditional public schools need to compete more effectively against charter schools? What is it we are competing for? We already know that charter schools are not more effective than public schools. (See Searching for Superguy in Gotham).
The article by Bob Herbert is another example of the New York Times painting the story of a successful charter school and failing public schools. Later this month a movie called "Waiting for Superman" by the same director as an inconvenient truth will open. In it he picks looks at the Harlem Children Zone Charter school which has done well for its population of students (which doesn't include a proportionate number English Language Learners or Special Ed students.) Why did the director choose a high performing charter school and not a high performing public school?
Unfortunately with the focus only on successful charter schools and failing public schools, public perception will remain the same. I will have to continue explaining that I work in a high achieving public school and that they exists in an equal proportion to high achieving charter schools.
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