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Could you please clone yourself, Mr. Pallas, and just follow the mouthpieces promoting these “it’s a miracle!” claims around, fact-checking them everywhere they go? We need you in San Francisco (actually, poor besieged Oakland needs you much, much more — and, god yes, L.A.). And if you found that the miracles were really happening, even we hard-nosed cynics would believe it and would be won over at last.

Aaron,

By my read of the conversion chart on the NYSED website, these differences in scale score translate into one or two questions difference on the raw test scores, for the average kid.

Now I agree that the “average” kid is not all the kids, and thus the standard deviations are needed to further assess the distribution of the scores.

But to the extent that each child’s individual test result has some standard error in it, isn’t getting the average kid in one group to within a few questions of the average kid in another kinda like a statistical tie? Or close to one?

Jack, what evidence do you have for your claim? Skoolboy, though I sometimes disagree with his point of view, works with hard data and I have no doubt about his accuracy. I’ll consider your claims specious until you can back them up.

Kent,
I appreciate your comments, but with true respect, not all of your logic.

If one were to accept your approach, the question would then seem to be: Why hasn’t Chancellor Klein, in the NON-charter schools for which he is primarily responsible, closed the achievement gap relative to black and hispanic kids who have opted for charters?

Could
a) lower average teacher pay (allowing more teachers for a given block of in-class instructional budget, and despite his recent statements that we need to pay teachers more which exacerbates the budget gap which in effect blames the teachers for part of the budget gap slamming intervention programs which in turn gives a hair-splitting advantage to… charters); and
b) smaller class sizes (that he says are irrelevant for the club-o-the-rest-of-us — while touting for charters)
… have anything to do with it?

Last, while I might not at a policy level be pro-charter, I fully support the right of parents to choose charters once they are in place — especially given Chancellor Klein is neglecting and crowding up the neighboring NON-charters to stack the deck.

P.S. Your union-busting colors are showing, but I do not accept that the union is the reason for the achievement gap. Nor should anyone. Further, there was a recent Joel Klein essay on Huffington Post wherein he virtually blamed the teachers for derailing the entire civil rights movement.
http(colon)//www(dot)huffingtonpost(dot)com/joel-klein/transforming-the-teaching_b_200616.html

And here’s a quote from a Rethinking Schools publication in further response to Kent’s comment:

“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 quote is 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. The introduction was written by education researchers/commentators Leigh Dingerson, Barbara Miner, Bob Peterson and Stephanie Walters.

Aaron, you wrote: “By the best evidence available, New York City charter schools have not yet closed the achievement gap that exists between African-American and Hispanic students and their white and Asian peers.”

Okay.

Among those individual charter schools which DO equal white and Asian performance on the tests — ie those individual predominantly black and Hispanic charters who on your chart would have the highest bars, above Asian and white averages — would you say those individual schools HAVE closed the gap?

Because recently you made a point in a different post, a reasonable point I thought, that schools that DID have test scores higher than white and Asian averages had still NOT closed the gap.

In those schools, and I’m paraphrasing so please correct me, I think you said it may look like they closed the gap but that they’d ALSO need to beat other students on SAT for you to be convinced.

It’s neither fair nor accurate to say that I have no better solutions to propose — nor ethical nor honest, Greg, since you have no idea what I have to propose. Shooting the messenger is not a righteous tactic.

Also, it’s simply not true that charters cost less and do better. That’s not simple; it’s just false.

Hmm…I’m seeing a trend here.

Charter supporters: “Not all charters are the same. Some are miraculous, some are mediocre, some are terrible. The charter law allows the miraculous ones to operate, and the terrible ones to close.”

Charter skeptics: “Bash, bash, bash.”

Caroline, because of your stated aims I’m very interested in hearing your other solutions. I think most charter advocates are in education with same goal you have: to help our education system work toward genuine and valid solutions. You’re right to ask for more transparency in charter school practices, and to question results that just don’t square with common sense. But what is your alternative?

Like it or not, those of us in the charter movement have brought millions of private dollars into the educational system – and that money has literally created more seats than would otherwise be available, brought new and innovative practices into the system, and given an alternative choice to sometimes desparate families – not to privatize, but to realize OUR [read: teachers, parents, community members, community institutional sponsors] dreams and visions of what school should be like. We have the autonomy to make those dreams come true, which district public schools just don’t have due to the endless layers of bureaucracy and autocracy that have been caked on for decades and decades.

Oh, and the professional culture at many district schools stinks to high heaven (just read some of the teacher blogs if you disagree) – and that can’t be turned around with the snap of a finger. That can be done at charters – close it! Or, for the board, fire the school leaders and flush out any disgruntled troublemakers on the staff or board. Charter school leaders and board members can often be heard running around saying, “This is not an employment agency.” It’s hard to make adults change. Charters appreciate the flexibility to get rid of employees and volunteers who are not a mission fit and move on. That’s a HUGE innovation. It doesn’t excuse allegations of creaming, if true, or of pushing out kids who are most at-risk. But again…where’s the evidence that this is happening? And to the extent that it is happening, is it happening at a higher rate in charters than in district schools?

I know one charter parent (actually a grandma raising two grandchildren) who complained that a well-regarded district school principal told her, “Take him somewhere else. I don’t have time for him and his learning disability!” Where did she take him? To a charter school. To the extent that this “pushing out” is happening, it works both ways, friends.

All these charters are new, and not all of them have the funds for radio ads and bus and subway posters. Do you really think hordes of parents whose children are doing WELL in the district schools are going to take their kids away from their friends and teachers and bring them to a school with NO track record? Do you think a desparate family with no real success happening in school will do so? The latter was certainly my experience as a charter school leader.

Sorry to ramble, but I will continue to push all these skeptics not to paint all charters with the same union-bashing, money-making, privatizing brush that populates the conspiracy theory wing of our educational landscape.

Oh come now, KS.

ONE charter supporter says “range,” and ALL charter skeptics but “bash?”

I appreciate your partisanship, but rullly. Two examples…

Re your point about private dollars and charter schools: I note the story of the spring in Manhattan has been a public school overcrowding crisis. The Post’s coverage? Evil PTA’s spending money on classroom assistants (to deal with the teeming hordes).

Re your point about innovation vs. layers of bureacracy: For better or for worse, the public school principals have the flexibility to select any of a variety of Klein-endorsed School Support Organizations, and, Klein has banished the District Superintendents to far-off-from-home-district locales to serve as Senior Achievement Facilitators (i.e., ARIS trainers). I don’t see the gulf.

Last, re your items about Spec Ed pushouts and subway ads: while I don’t doubt numerous anecdotes abound, the aggregate numbers show that non-charters handle more than charters. And the Kleinberg PR campaign doesn’t prove how rolling in dough the non-charters are — it’s just a Mayoral Control / Third Term PR stunt.

Apologies for the personal nature of this comment; I’m trying to keep it to the content. Cheers.

P.S. Re heat vs. light. I’m chillin, I’m chillin.

It seems like I’ve previously made the same points to Kitchen Sink that I’m about to make again.

Aside from the near-parodic degree of bias here (snip below), I have to say that I almost never criticize a charter school for its actual characteristics. Rather than pro-actively attacking or criticizing, pretty much 100% of my comments about charter schools are refutations of their own dishonest and misleading boasts/claims.

Kitchen Sink’s words:
***Charter supporters: “Not all charters are the same. Some are miraculous, some are mediocre, some are terrible. The charter law allows the miraculous ones to operate, and the terrible ones to close.”

Charter skeptics: “Bash, bash, bash.”
***

Yet, Kitchen Sink, right away you contradict your charge that all charter critics do it bash, bash, bash.

*** You’re right to ask for more transparency in charter school practices, and to question results that just don’t square with common sense.***

For the zillionth time, if there is harmful, detrimental, needless bureaucracy hampering public schools, it should be eliminated for all schools, not just a special class of privileged, cosseted schools that then proclaim themselves superior, bash the schools that are still bogged down by bureaucracy, and attract vast amounts of support, acclaim and money by doing so.

So that’s one of my suggestions.

***We have the autonomy to make those dreams come true, which district public schools just don’t have due to the endless layers of bureaucracy and autocracy that have been caked on for decades and decades.***

Do I really have to go, again, into how charter schools cream — inherently, because of the application process, or pro-actively?

We have this discussion over and over.

Charter skeptic: Charter schools have a huge advantage because they cream for students who are likely to be higher-functioning.
Charter advocate: They do not.
Charter skeptic: (explains how charter schools cream.)
Charter advocate: What’s wrong with creaming?

It’s dizzying.

*** And to the extent that [creaming] is happening, is it happening at a higher rate in charters than in district schools? ***

This again too? OK, wearily, again:

First, the charter school process creams because every child in a charter had a family who knew enough and cared enough to seek out the charter and apply. Children who don’t have families who take an interest in their education — who are likely to be the biggest burden on the public education system — go to district schools, by default, by definition.

(The charter advocates’ dishonest “gotcha!” response is always “oh, so only kids whose parents don’t care go to district schools?” No. ALL kids whose parents don’t care go to district schools, but not ONLY kids whose parents don’t care go to district schools.)

Kitchen Sink says: ***I know one charter parent (actually a grandma raising two grandchildren) who complained that a well-regarded district school principal told her, “Take him somewhere else. I don’t have time for him and his learning disability!” Where did she take him? To a charter school. To the extent that this “pushing out” is happening, it works both ways, friends.***

Glad you found one example, but if true, it’s obviously an anomaly. For one thing, statistics resoundingly show that charter schools accept fewer disabled children than public schools — and the ones they do accept have less severe disabilities. One exception, if it’s true, doesn’t change that. And further, once again: Charter schools only enroll kids whose families cared enough to ask. Plus at least in my state, they get basically no oversight, so they can screen as much as their hearts desire in their enrollment processes. The kids whose families don’t take an interest in their education by definition end up in non-charter public schools.

*** Do you really think hordes of parents whose children are doing WELL in the district schools are going to take their kids away from their friends and teachers and bring them to a school with NO track record? Do you think a desparate family with no real success happening in school will do so?***

You’re correct there. But once again, those are families who care. They are motivated enough to take their kids away from their families and teachers and etc. etc. The kids who are doing poorly and have families who don’t give a rat’s a** (if any families at all) are the real challenge to public education. Those kids will remain in the publics, while the charters get the students with the motivated families.

Here’s a lesson that I do think we’re learning from charter schools: In at least some cases, when low-income, at-risk students who have families motivated enough to take an interest in their kids’ education are removed into a setting where all their classmates have the same advantage — and away from the most troubled kids from the most messed-up families — they overall seem to do better.

But is there something special about charter schools that makes this happen, or is it simply being removed from their most-troubled peers? Would the same thing happen in a public school if the same kids were removed from their most-troubled peers into a setting of entirely kids from more-motivated families? Since this entire situation is shrouded in denial (and, let’s be blunt, lies), it hasn’t been studied and we simply don’t know.

Some steps.

1. Everybody stop denying this and look at it clearly. Charter folks, own up, be honest and stop claiming it doesn’t happen. Press, researchers, observers, etc., wake up and pay attention.
2. Do some pilot projects replicating the situation — simply regular, non-charter public schools that no one gets into unless they request it. Add some hoops to jump through, like the contract-signing sessions KIPP does that weed out less-committed families. Do nothing else differently. Track student achievement and outcomes.
3. If this is a success, set up a public, non-charter system that’s frankly going to be two-tiered, justifying this on the basis that it’s helping some at-risk kids toward success. This system would offer every family a school that’s entirely by request (maybe with a few hoops to jump through) and provide a default school for those who don’t make the request. The difference would be that it would be an open and honest system, and the by-request school wouldn’t be able to claim to be superior to the default school, because the situation would be clear to all.

For added benefit, do some honest and thorough accounting of how much the more successful charter schools spend per student, counting the private philanthropy. Give that much to those pilot schools.

A sound and fair study, Math Teacher, not an obviously biased one. This is from eager charter booster Jay Mathews’ account of that study:

“…the randomized results apply only to charters so popular they have more applicants than they can accept. Less popular charters were not included in that part of the study; they could have reduced the charters’ measured gains if their data had counted.”

This needs to be a serious piece of research, not just a sham undertaken to boost charter schools.

Kitchen Sink, I’ll refer you (as I have before) to Elijah Anderson’s book “Code of the Streets.” Anderson is an African-American Yale sociology professor who examines the culture in inner-city Philadelphia.

I’ve blogged about Anderson, and my blog posts contain further links, including to Oakland’s Perimeter Primate blog, which has addressed these issues even more extensively.

Here are some quotes from Anderson’s book:

“Almost everyone residing in poor inner-city neighborhoods is struggling financially and therefore feels a certain distance from the rest of America, but there are degrees of alienation, captured by the terms “decent” and “street” or “ghetto,” suggesting social types.

“…The inner-city school is an outpost of the traditions of the wider society. … During their early years, most of the children accept the legitimacy of the school, and then eagerly approach the task of learning. As time passes, however, in their relentless campaign for the respect that will be meaningful in their public environment, youth increasingly embrace the street code. By the fourth grade, enough children have opted for the code of the street that it begins to compete effectively with the culture of the school, and the code begins to dominate their public culture — in school as well as out — becoming a way of life for many and eventually conflating with the culture of the school itself. … For many alienated young black people, attending school and doing well becomes negatively associated with acting white. … “(S)treet knowledge” is esteemed, and the quest for it … begins to predominate, ultimately competing with, if not undermining, the mission of the school.

“… With each passing year the school loses ground as more and more students adopt a street orientation, if only for self-defense in the neighborhood. But often what is out on the streets is brought into the classrooms. The most troublesome students are then encouraged by peers to act out, to get over on the teacher, to test authority. … (M)any students in the upper grades attend school sporadically or stop coming altogether, because street activities effectively compete for their time. Even while in school, they walk the halls instead of attending class, and their encounters there often mirror those on the streets, marked by tension and fights.

“… (M)ost of the young people in these settings are inclined toward decency, but when the street elements rule, they are encouraged to campaign for respect by adopting a street attitude, look, and presentation of self. In this context, the decent kids often must struggle to maintain their credibility.”

I’ll post links to two blog posts about Anderson on a subsequent comment here, as this blog delays any posts containing links until a moderator gets to them.

Naturally I disagree that making observations on the situation Anderson writes about is either counterproductive, untrue, offensive or condescending. I would respond that it’s counterproductive and insincere to try to insist that this situation doesn’t exist.

Green Dot Schools in Los Angeles, a charter operator that has actually won support from progressives who are otherwise charter skeptics (I believe they’re misguided and will be changing their tune, but that’s another story) IS currently doing an experiment in taking over a troubled Watts high school and taking on its neighborhood enrollment. The L.A. Times has a history of gushing over charters at least as effusively as any naive mainstream media source in the nation, but even they are starting to see what’s going on. Quotes from recent L.A. Times coverage (link will also be on subsequent post):

“Previous Green Dot charters, opened as alternatives to failing public schools, attracted motivated families that came from far-flung communities to place their children on waiting lists. As a result, enrollment was predictable and stable. At Locke, Green Dot took over an already cramped and rundown campus and committed to accepting students within its enrollment area — which has meant taking more than it has room for, and enrolling students who are less interested in what Green Dot has to offer. …

“Locke can’t be run by the standards of most other schools, or even other Green Dot schools. The charter operator normally requires a certain amount of parent involvement. Here, parents are often overwhelmed and sometimes uninterested. Some come in for conferences clearly under the influence of drugs; other parents are in prison.

“After a promising start to the school year, dozens of new students enrolled. Some had just been released from juvenile detention, bearing gang tattoos on their necks — at age 14. Staff found marijuana stuffed into the caps of pens. Graffiti made an appearance.”

Green Dot has vastly more money than struggling L.A. Unified to pour into the school, by the way, and the Times coverage doesn’t address that, but you can see they’re starting to get it about the creaming. We’ll see.

I googled some information on union-led charters and discovered that Randi Weingarten and the AFT are accepting private funds so that teachers and their unions can start their own schools. The unions have traditionally been against charters (even though Al Shanker was one of the first to suggest them) because many charter teachers do not want to belong to the union. Randi, who, in my opinion, is a brilliant strategist who thinks several moves ahead, probably knows that to continue to fight against charters is a losing battle. Whether they are better than other public schools is irrelevant. What is relevant is that they are multiplying, and with Obama’s support, will probably increase in number with, or without, the cooperation of teachers.

Charters offer teachers the opportunity to be full professionals. Once they start their own school they can select the head teacher, choose materials, collaborate with one another and basically do what they feel is best for their students. During my final years of teaching, after NCLB, I felt extremely pressured to teach inappropriately (i.e. drill small children on test items) and was relieved to retire. I would have loved starting my own school. Frankly I’m puzzled as to why so many teachers fear the charter movement.

I can understand why unions are lukewarm on charters. Once teachers are full professionals in the same sense that college professors are, then they will no longer have a need for the union as it is. However, the union will just evolve along with the role of the teacher. Instead of a labor union, as it is now, it will become the professional association that it was envisioned to be at its inception. Surely the American Medical Association is a strong and powerful organization without being a labor union.
My guess is that Randi Weingarten understands this.

While I understand that many charter school leaders are misleading the public (especially journalists), I still think starting their own schools would be a huge step forward for teachers, unions and students.

Yes, I am a retired teacher. I taught in three states for 42 years and have much gratitude for the unions. I can’t imagine teaching without them. However, everything evolves over time. I can see the unions expanding and becoming even more than they are now, as long as they take the lead in the educational reform movement. I want to see the teaching profession as a full profession with teachers being much more empowered.
For our students, I want teachers who are free to use their best professional judgment. The time when the teacher was a young unmarried girl and the principal was a man, is over.

As for Randi Weingarten, I just can’t see her allowing anyone else to tell her how to think. To me, she is one sharp woman. She’s got people like Linda Darling-Hammond, Jeanie Oakes and Barbara Byrd-Bennett on her side.

Pogue:

Read the article in the Washington Post entitled “Rare Alliance May Signal Ebb In Union’s Charter Opposition.” (Jay Mathews, May 4, 2009)

The last years of my teaching career, from 2001 – 2007, were not pleasant. Suddenly my professional judgment was questioned and administrators were checking my lesson plans and asking me to write my objectives on the board. (This was done to all the teachers.) Despite my many years of creating a “joyful” classroom for my first-graders, I was suddenly expected to take out the word “joyful” and drill the children on paper/pencil tasks all day. Any psychologist or experienced early childhood teacher knows that this is a recipe for academic failure because it leads to a dislike for school. (Contrast this with the projects, discussions, field and arts experiences at a place like Sidwell Friends – no tedium allowed for the rich kids.) The union could do nothing for the other teachers or me because they (union) have no jurisdiction over curriculum and instruction. Charter schools were created to allow teachers to ignore many of the usual constraints. Yes, I was glad to retire and grateful that most of my career was spent during a more enlightened time. My own sons went from public school to Harvard and Stanford, so I’m a big supporter of the public schools, even though I know that they fail many children (as they do in every country of the world). I am just being realistic; charter schools are multiplying quickly so we can be followers or leaders. Those are the options as I see them.

I don’t think our choice is between regular public schools and charters. I believe our choice is between charters run by teachers and their unions, or charters run by politicians, rich people, hustlers, ideologues, entrepreneurs, and bureaucrats. I much prefer the former. In the latter teachers will be forced to take lower salaries and will lose due process. Worst of all, they will be required to teach in a way prescribed by others. To me, that signals the end of teaching as a profession. Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear but I want to see an expanded role for the teachers and their unions.

Caroline: you state “If this is a success, set up a public, non-charter system that’s frankly going to be two-tiered,…”

We already have such a system: it’s called “I am moving to the suburbs”. People with money can and do leave bad inner-city schools by simply relocating. The problem is poor parents don’t have the resources to “request” a better school… unless there are good charters like there are in Harlem.

To those that argue charters are creaming, I will grant you that the extremely high parental involvement expectations (at some, but not all charter schools) can and do drive some less enthusiastic parents away. There is no doubt this does happen. However, I have a problem with the idea that motivated poor parents should somehow be forced to send their children to schools with non-motivated poor parents, while middle class and higher SES parents have the option to choose better schools by moving or sending their children to a private school. Is that fair?

Caroline,

Thank you for the thoughtful post and ongoing references to Elijah Anderson’s work. I have read up on him since you brought him to my attention in this space and his views certainly resonate with my experiences.

I will follow with great interest the Green Dot/Locke “experiment,” but I will tell you that my educational philosophy is based on the premise that when children are very young – and my experience in both district and charter schools is in elementary education, not middle or high school – the direction of their lives can change dramatically depending on their experiences.

Children can change much more easily than can adults.

So when the right adults are in the building for the right mission and create the right culture, they can effectively counter the code of the streets.

Teach For America is filled with young people having these conversations. They used to require Lisa Delpit’s “Other People’s Children” as required reading. It’s about REACHING kids who are from disaffected families. It’s done by teaching kids to navigate through the different worlds they inhabit, from the culture of the street to the culture of power, which obviously have very different expectations for speech, dress, manner and values. But kids immersed in the code of the streets (remember, I’m talking about young kids, not middle and high school because those age groups are not part of my experience) can learn how to code-switch if their schools are open and validating on the subject…and enforce a coherent, consistent school culture that demonstrates to kids that there is real value to the culture of power as well as the culture of the street.

Is it really all that different from what our national leaders said they would do in Iraq and botched so poorly? To win the Iraq war – which I will go on record and say was completely misguided and inappropriate and a worldwide travesty that should never have occurred – the administration talked loftily about winning the “hearts and minds” of regular Iraqis. Successful charters try to do this with the kids described by Anderson.

Linda,

I really respect your opinion. I agree that charters should be a place where teachers have greater voice and autonomy than they could otherwise enjoy.

However, my experience tells me that a strong school vision, co-created by teachers and administration and constantly revisited in an authentic manner, is necessary and that all teachers must be on the same page for a school to be successful. This is especially true in at-risk communities, where there is much less room for error and incoherence than in privileged communities.

As charters have expanded, they have given teachers a new level of choice: shopping around to find a school community that “fits” best. Charters don’t all have a hook or a gimmick, but they all have real mission statements that form the basis of their work (if not, they would be shut down, or should be shut down). There is a wide range of educational philosophy among NYC charters, and obviously even more so nationally, so teachers have an opportunity to join a school community that fits their views on how the classroom should be run.

In other words, charters eliminate the element of chance that as a teacher, you just may not agree with the fundamental values and pedagogy of your principal. Unless you as a teacher don’t do your homework before signing up to work at that particular school.

KS,
Perhaps I wasn’t clear. The “reforms” I cited are all Klein convolutions. Calling them “reforms” is to generous. I am not a fan of them, nor are most parents, principals, teachers, or superintendents I talk to. I dare say the principals are not a fan of said reforms’ impact on their budgets, and would have a hard time making an argument that said “reforms” impact test scores let alone the achievement gap.

With respect, you seem to be refering to a time long past.

Dictates during the Klein tenure are not from “district” or “region” level but direct from “department” level at Tweed — in the form of increased testing and decreased funding.

DOE principals now have the “autonomy” to endure enrollment and budget crises. But they need not suffer alone. Klein is happy to charge them to join a “Children First Network.”

I could agree with your closer, but for that — given the above issues — morale amongst principals has never been lower.

Linda,

The best example of teacher-led charter schools I have seen is in Minnesota, where the charter movement began in 1991. The rural Minnesota New Country School (url: newcountryschool.com) is actually run by a teachers’ cooperative. It’s one of the most innovative, project based environments I’ve ever heard of.

And a cream pie for Caroline: they recruited their first class of kids by going around to all the local hangouts in their small towns and telling middle and high school dropouts that they were starting a new and different kind of school, one where what the kids wanted would have a say and the whole enterprise woudl be project-based learning and relevant.

I haven’t seen a formal teacher ownership/leadership structure like that in NYC, but I know for a fact that the kinds of very promising structures of School Leadership Team and mandates around Comprehensive Educational Plans that exist in the DOE are actually put into PRACTICE in many charters in New York. Parents and teachers both have a seat at the table in determining school-wide priorities and action plans, whether as board members or as stakeholders that are full participants in ongoing school reform dialogues. It’s 100% because the schools are smaller and have the responsibility and autonomy to make all of these planning decisions themselves.

KS:
Thank you for the information.
I know it’s difficult for some teachers to do a complete paradigm shift. After all, K-12 teachers, in sharp contrast to college instructors, have been functioning in the same way since the eighteenth century. Many have come to feel comfortable with their second-class professional status and they are threatened by something different, even if it represents a more empowering direction for them. On the other hand, I know that many teachers are afraid that charter schools will destroy the public schools that have been the bedrock of our democracy. But we need to remember that these schools ARE public schools; they just differ in governance.

There is an article in The Nation (June 15, 2009) entitled The Selling of School Reform. This article confirms my belief that teachers need to take the lead in school reform; otherwise it will be done to us. It IS being done to us and to our children.

KIPP schools still cream — please don’t reverse yourself and argue this again — they admit it themselves! Aside from the fact that parents have to seek them out, accept the longer hours and uniforms and discipline and fact that their kids will basically be taught white mannerisms, KIPP has a contract-signing/counseling session with every potential incoming family. KIPP insiders themselves acknowledge that this is a weeding-out process.

And I’m not sure we know for sure of any KIPP schools that don’t have high attrition, do we? I only know how to research California schools using state data. An interesting point is that when SRI researched the S.F. Bay Area KIPP schools, with of course much better access to data (provided by KIPP) than I had, SRI showed HIGHER attrition than I found with the state data. One school (KIPP Heartwood, Alum Rock School District, San Jose, Calif.) that did not appear to me, from the state data, to have high attrition was found in the SRI research to have the same high attrition that the other Bay Area schools do.

That’s why the Green Dot Locke experiment is of interest. This is the only charter I know of in a situation where the creaming/attrition issue is totally on the radar and the operator has committed not to engage in it. Previously, in general, it just never seemed to occur to researchers and the press that this WOULD happen, or that it would be an issue, so it went on unnoticed and unquestioned.

My term, but I think most KIPP insiders would acknowledge that’s what it is. I guess you haven’t read Jay Mathews’ book or much else about KIPP, or you’d be aware of the SLANT behavior that they teach — Sit up, Listen, Ask and answer questions, Nod to show you’re listening, Track the speaker with your eyes. In one of the San Francisco KIPP schools, decibel meters are used in class, with acceptable levels set for different activities. And I read in one commentary on KIPP that students are taught to “walk briskly down the hall.”

There’s probably a sociological term for it — the behavior of the dominant social class or something. But it would be absurdly PC to deny that it’s about teaching kids to “act white.” So one might imagine that some parents would perceive that and be potentially offended enough to choose not to enroll their kids.