9/11/16 For a comprehensive view of the problems caused by regulatory gaps in California’s charter school accountability system, see the article by Carol Burris, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/09/09/how-messed-up-is-californias-charter-school-sector-you-wont-believe-how-much/ which is the first of four articles about charter school problems in California.

9/2/2016 The number of students reaching levels three and four on the Smarter/Balanced state tests climbed either 3 and 4 percent across the board in grades 3-8 and 11th in Language Arts and Math. http://caaspp.cde.ca.gov/sb2016/Search Levels three and four were set to predict success in 4yr college courses and for 2 year transfer students.

Of particular importance is the number of students in 11 grade meeting the 4yr standard in language arts–59% up from 56% last year. That is a very good result for California’s diverse student body comparable or higher than many other less diverse states. Since only about 35-40% of students attend or transfer to a four year college, the news is particularly positive in growing the pool of students who can choose to enroll in more advanced college work. Math scores were still low, but also gained 3% in 2016. Disparity among groups was still a major problem.

Two caveats: Using the numbers of students reaching levels three and four is not the only or even best way to measure student performance–average performance scores is fairer and more comprehensive and other additional indicators are being considered by the State Board of Education. Also, for example, using levels three and four doesn’t show how many schools and districts moved large numbers from level 1 to level 2 which also should be an important indicator and goal of our schools. More problematical is whether these tests alone measure school quality accurately. Secondly, much of the media coverage misunderstood or ignored what the levels actually mean and tended to state that any student not meeting “the standard” (levels 3 and 4) was essentially flunking. That is a gross misrepresentation of reality. No school, district, state, or country will ever be able to educate almost all of their students to that 4yr level or should they. Massachusetts, which scores as well as the highest performing nations in the world is able to get just over 50% of its students to those levels. So congratulations to teachers and educators for a job well done and for attending to the continuous improvement of California’s students.

8/17/2016 A new report by the National Conference of State Legislatures supports a “build and support” approach. No Time to Lose: How to Build a World-Class Education System State by State http://www.ncsl.org/documents/educ/Edu_International_FinaI_V2.pdf  The document suggests that we model our strategies after high performing other countries and the best districts and states in the US. They especially recommend instructionally driven  improvement strategies,  enlightened teacher and leadership development efforts, early childhood education,  revitalized career and technical education paths to supplement the 4 yr college pathways, and comprehensive, not single shot strategies–all points made in this buildingbetterschools website. A quote from the report:

We are discovering what seems to work. Common elements are present in nearly every world-class education system, including a strong early education system, a reimagined and professionalized teacher workforce, robust career and technical education programs, and a comprehensive, aligned system of education.

8/9/16 Another study, this time from Michigan, showing that proliferation of charter schools has harmed the remaining public schools. http://www.metrotimes.com/Blogs/archives/2016/07/18/study-the-proliferation-of-charter-schools-in-michigan-hurt-traditional-districts; http://www.education.msu.edu/epc/library/papers/documents/WP51-Which-Districts-Get-Into-Financial-Trouble-Arsen.pdf and an interview Jeff Bryant with an author: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/07/15/how-charter-schools-in-michigan-have-hurt-traditional-public-schools-new-research-finds/

Bryant’s quote from the interview: “We saw very significant and large impacts of charter penetration on district fund balances for different thresholds, whether there were 15, 20 or 25 percent of the students going to charter schools. That was really striking. At every one of those thresholds, the higher the charter penetration, the higher the adverse impact on district finances. They’re big jumps, and they’re all very significant statistically. What’s clear is that when the percentage gets up to the neighborhood of 20 percent or so, these are sizeable adverse impacts on district finances.”

8/9/16 According to a new report by EPI: The teacher pay penalty is bigger than ever. In 2015, public school teachers’ weekly wages were 17.0 percent lower than those of comparable workers—compared with just 1.8 percent lower in 1994. http://www.epi.org/publication/the-teacher-pay-gap-is-wider-than-ever-teachers-pay-continues-to-fall-further-behind-pay-of-comparable-workers/

8/4/2016 A California report finds that at least one out of five charter schools in the state actively exclude low-performing students. https://edsource.org/2016/report-charges-many-charter-schools-exclude-children-in-violation-of-the-law/567622

7/30/2016 William Mathis and Tina Trujillo have edited a massive compilation of the research demonstrating the severe problems with market-based reforms, Learning from the Federal Market-Based Reforms; Lessons for ESSA (2016) The book has twenty-eight chapters in five sections.

• The Foundations of Market-Based Reforms;
• Test-Based Sanctions: What the Evidence Says
• False Promises
• Effective and Equitable Reforms
• Lessons for the Every Student Succeeds Act

The research and examples in the book are further support for many of the claims and research provided in this website.

7/30/2016 Mercedes Schneider’s book on the failures of the schools choice movement is now available in paperback. School Choice; The End of Public Education (2016)

To quote from an announcement of the book: Proponents of market-driven education reform view vouchers and charters as superior to local-board-run, community-based public schools. However, the author of this timely volume argues that there is no clear research supporting this view. In fact, she claims there is increasing evidence of charter mismanagement–with public funding all-too-often being squandered while public schools are being closed or consolidated. Tracing the origins of vouchers and charters in the United States, this book examines the push to ”globally compete” with education systems in countries such as China and Finland. It documents issues important to the school choice debate, including the impoverishment of public schools to support privatized schools, the abandonment of long-held principles of public education, questionable disciplinary practices, and community disruption. School Choice: The End of Public Education? is essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the past and future of public education in America.https://www.amazon.com/School-Choice-End-Public-Education/dp/080775725X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1468030602&sr=1-1 This book makes a similar case for the problems of schools choice as my articles.

7/30/2016. Further support for the failure of for-profit educational efforts has just been thoroughly documented in Samuel Abrams 2016 book, Education and the Commercial Mindset. He tells the instructive story of Edison, founded on the belief that public schools were so inefficient that applying the best business practices would save enough money to allow both high profits and high performance if private companies managed them. Chris Whittle, the super-salesman of Channel One fame (in return for TV’s schools agreed to have their students watch a slickly produced news show with commercials–Channel One eventually went belly-up due to negative evaluations and educator resistance), convinced foundations and the investment community to sink hundreds of millions of dollars in such a private management scheme. In the 1990’s the company took off with a bang, hired high-profile executives, and secured contracts to manage schools in such places as Philadelphia and Baltimore.

Contrary to promises the company produced no better and, in many cases, worse results than comparable public schools, alienated the communities they were in, narrowed the curriculum for test preparation, and couldn’t even keep order in many of their schools. Losses forced the company  to keep borrowing to stay alive. This did not stop Edison from providing top salaries and perks for its executives and spending large amounts on advertising and marketing. Edison eventually lost all but a few of its management contracts. By 2013 after being taken private, the remnant which had been reduced to a shell was sold for a pittance. Investors along the way lost most of their investment. The book also describes a similar fate for other Educational Management Organizations (EMOs) especially the on-line virtual academies referred to above in the Article. He also gives chapter and verse on the rise and fall of for-profit schools in Sweden as mentioned above.

Abrams argues that such a demise was inevitable. He quotes economic researchers who claim that  privatizing some services are easily monitored such as school busing or constructing buildings. Other services, however, where there is a mismatch of information or clout, run into difficulty in assuring quality service. Clients or contracting government entities in privatized prisons, elderly homes, or especially schools don’t have the power of correction or expertise to tell if the private company is cutting corners to increase returns or executive pay or if the service such as education students are receiving is worthwhile.

Abrams also provides a chapter on the non-profit Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) especially KIPP schools. As stated above, he finds that some are very good and others are spotty. He contends that even the best cannot be scaled because they rely on large foundation support, teachers who are unsustainably over-worked (and leave at much higher rates than the public school counterparts), and students and parents who are willing to endure a harsh “no excuses” management style. He also confirms the point I raised that CMOs can control who they accept,  many don’t backfill when underperforming students drop-out leaving a smaller, higher achieving remnant, benefit from a more committed student body and their parents which makes comparisons difficult, and since they live or die by test-scores narrow the curriculum and spend inordinate amounts of time on test-preparation which harms children later in high-school and college.

Finally, he shows how Finland took a different path. They raised teacher pay, improved teacher training and autonomy, used sampling strategies for test assessment instead of wide-spread testing, and provided a broad liberal arts education. Unlike Sweden, whose PISA results declined substantially after adopting privatization measures, Finland improved from mediocre results to become one of the top countries in the PISA assessments.

Rating:

The theory behind the “no excuse” philosophy currently used in many schools especially charters is forcefully challenged by Paul Tough in his 2016 book, Helping Students Achieve: What Works and Why and his article in the Atlantic “How Kids Learn Resilience.”  Tough asserts that frequent punishment doesn’t work in helping the most severely traumatized students but engagement in a welcoming atmosphere and a hands-on curriculum does. He cites research which demonstrates that one of the arguments for suspension of acting out students—that even if they are not helped the remaining students will be benefitted—turns out to be false.

Tough’s previous book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character (2012) underscored the importance of non-cognitive skills such as perseverance, self-control, conscientiousness, and optimism especially for the low-income students who now comprise more than half of K-12 students in the US.

His first major point is that educators shouldn’t necessarily try to teach these attributes directly, but they should arise from student’s continuous work in an engaging classroom atmosphere with an active curriculum. He further adds that schools shouldn’t be testing for these traits, but examining the high-performances which will be generated by students’ presence in such classrooms.

High levels of continued toxic stress among many poorer children caused by growing up suffering abuse, neglect, or family dysfunctions such as substance abuse or an incarcerated parent hampers learning by creating strong physiological driven feelings of incompetence, alienation, and inability to persevere. While half of our children do not experience any of these circumstances, many of the rest in lower-income areas endure multiple instances of these traumatic circumstances. These students account for the bulk of school problems.

Quoting from the book: On an emotional level, chronic early stress—what many researchers now call toxic stress—can make it difficult for children to moderate their responses to disappointments and provocations. Small setbacks feel like crushing defeats; tiny slights turn into serious confrontations. In school, a highly sensitive stress-response system constantly on the lookout for threats can produce patterns of behavior that are self-defeating: fighting, talking back, acting up in class, and also, more subtly, going through each day perpetually wary of connection with peers and resistant to outreach from teachers and other adults….growing up in a chaotic and unstable environment—and experiencing the chronic elevated stress that such an environment produces—disrupts the development of . . .executive functions. . .which include working memory, self-regulation, and cognitive flexibility. . .underpinning non-cognitive abilities like resilience and perseverance.

Tough quotes estimates that about 15-20% of students in schools with high levels of poverty suffer from multiple causes of stress at home and act out in school. Another large group suffers similar levels but withdraws and refuses to engage.

Tough found that while there is a group of teachers who constantly produce high cognitive results in their classrooms, there is another group, which although producing lower academic gains than the first group, create the atmosphere that counteracts toxic trauma so that their students subsequently succeed at higher rates in other classes and later in life. The first group gets recognition; the second is usually neglected.

How do they do it? The know how to avoid escalation of student’s acting out; they build a supportive calm and engaging classroom; and their curriculum and instruction emphasizes deeper learning and active participation.

He then examines several programs which have been effective in developing the building blocks which support the growth of the non-cognitive traits which allow learning to progress— overall an important piece of work

This website is the result of my seventy-year romance with education—first as
a student and then in a variety of roles in education: teacher,
administrator, policymaker, elected official, professor, and educational
entrepreneur. My perspective and beliefs about what we should and should not
be doing to improve our schools have been forged from experiences and study
during my long career. Building Better Schools is a place where the supporting ideas, research, and exemplary models of Build-and-Support are available and kept fresh. I invite you to join the conversation!