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March 31, 2010

Charter Schools Are Still Not Public Schools

by Alexander Hoffman, at 10:33 am

Last week, I explained why I no longer think that charter schools are public schools and asked for comments from GothamSchools readers. I’ve given a lot of thought to the ideas that others have presented.

First, no one has come close to rehabilitating the argument that charter schools are public schools simply because they accept public funds. Many organizations have their operations paid for — in whole or in part — by public funds, and not all of them are public in the way that “our public schools” are. If charters are public schools, this is not why.

Second, I raised the issue of democratic accountability. To what degree do elected officials and their appointees have authority over arbitrary aspects of charter school operations and staffing? For example, years ago Mayor Bloomberg required all schools to hire parent coordinators. Under mayoral control, Bloomberg can mandate curriculum and spending decisions, and any spending not controlled by existing contracts. Generally, elected officials and their appointees can even remove principals and other administrators for arbitrary — though not discriminatory — reasons. (Because New York City principals have a union contract, this authority is severely constrained. But this is unique to the city and could be negotiated out of the contract.)

There have been many arguments raised against this point, but they generally fall into two camps. One was that there are other public institutions that are led by people who cannot be so removed, but these responses have been based on admitted ignorance (e.g. how are members of the NY Board of Regents appointed and how can they be removed?, what are the laws regarding removal of charter board members? etc.). The other response has been that elected officials and their appointees can pressure charter schools to remove a principal. My understanding is that this pressure only comes in the form of withdrawing a school’s charter. I am sorry, but I do not think this argument works. By this argument, major accounts of a private company have the authority to fire salesmen at that company because they can threaten to move their account if the company does not accede to their demand. Going back to one of my examples, the private construction firm who builds schools for a district could be threatened with losing the job if some kind of site supervisor is not fired. That does not make the company part of a district or a public entity.

To state this more plainly: Demands that only have power if backed by the threat to pull a charter or contract do not equate to the sort of ongoing democratic oversight that fits into to my understanding of public schools

Third was my most important criteria, the obligations to educate all comers. One reader, Gideon, wisely pointed out that this would imply that our so-called public universities would be excluded. I do not have a problem with that. I think that the distinction between public and private higher education is rather thin and am therefore happy to say that public universities are not public at all like our public schools are.

Another response, perhaps the most common one, has been that many public schools do not serve all comers. There are exam schools, for example. And the kind of school choice model we have in New York City means that few, if any, schools serve all comers. However, I anticipated much of this argument before writing last week. School districts have a responsibility to educate all comers. It is our public schools who collectively – in the form of districts – meet that obligation. District offices are obliged to figure out how to do this and may not direct children to charter schools as part of their solutions

Let me be clear: Charter schools are not district schools. Virtually the entire purpose of charter schools is to free them from districts and their authority. Any argument that states that charter schools are part of the public schools because they are part of the mélange of schools that educate our children applies equally to unquestionably private schools. If those who advance this argument cite the use of public funds, they would have to claim that private schools that accept publicly funded vouchers are also public schools, an argument that I do not think they want to make.

However, I am also willing to concede that in most meaningful ways, selective so-called public schools are really not public schools. And I would further say that meaningful public status is certainly questionable for any school that students cannot attend simply by following the standard normal procedures that all students/families must follow — including my own high school.

Ken Hirsh and others have raised the point that charter schools are subject to government oversight, including inspections and perhaps various well or lesser known state and federal legislation. The mere fact of regulation and inspection however, does not a public entity make. Meatpacking plants are subject to federal inspection. Restaurants are subject to government inspection. Most organizations are subject to regulation in one form or another, though the degree of regulation often varies from industry to industry.

In fact, there are many regulations that only apply to those who receive public funds. For example, the City of New York enforces much of its own legislation by requiring compliance as a condition of contracting with the city. The fact of regulation does not make these entities public.

*****************

So, what am I getting at? I think that public schools must be both responsive to and responsible for the public.

There is no question that charter schools — like many private organizations and entities — are somewhat responsible to the public (as expressed in the form of democratic government). They certainly are more responsive to the public than traditional private schools, but it is not at all clear that they are more responsive than other private entities (i.e. other than traditional private schools) that accept large portions of their operating budgets from the government. By design, they are less responsive than traditional public schools, even if they are more responsive than traditional private schools

Clearly many charter school operators do personally feel responsible for the public and its children. Many charter school leaders work hard to build a school culture that will outlive them and that is infused with that sense of responsibility. I, therefore, understand why some who work in charter schools think of their schools as public schools. However, they build this culture voluntarily; it is not intrinsic to charter schools generally or even a requirement of their charters. The very fact that they are only required to select a student body from among those who apply in the first place makes for a qualitative difference from public schools. Districts cannot place additional students in charter schools when all district schools are overcrowded, nor can they enroll students whose families failed to take part in the normal school selection process in charter schools. In this respect, charter schools are more like traditional private schools than they are like traditional public schools.

And so, while charter schools are clearly not traditional private schools, by design they are not like traditional public schools, either. Even if we acknowledge that there are differences between different charter schools, and between charter school laws, neither of these terms seem appropriate. Those who insist that they are “public schools” or “private schools” clearly have some sort of agenda and some idea other than a full examination of the meaning these terms carry. This leaves us with a need for a third term, as neither “public” or “private” would be appropriate.

Luckily, we already have the term “quasi-public” from other sectors. I do not love this term — or even really like it — but it is surely better than either of the others.

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  • http://MoreThoughtful.blogspot.com Alexander Hoffman

    Ms. Alpert,

    I think that we generally agree on all that.

    Staying off topic….

    I don’t think that charter schools are or will be generally better than traditional public schools. They will be about as good, with about the same proportion of good and bad schools, for the reasons you lay out. There’s been some interesting work looking that the conflict that charter schools face when they try to balance the need for perceptions of legitimacy and efforts at innovation. It’s complicated and difficult.

    And so, not surprisingly, there are great charter schools — as there are great traditional public schools. But these schools are in the minority. My worry about charter schools is that so much more burden is put on them — without the support that good district central offices provide — that they will be a little bit worse on average for that additional burden.

    My own work focuses on the relationship between schools and district offices, examining ways to make that relationship more supportive of the work that schools do — the work of school leaders and faculty both, to say nothing of students. KitchenSink is right, there are major problem with many of our schools and our traditional district structure has plainly not be serving the students and families.

    KitchenSink apparently thinks that the best answer is to give up on districts, and focus his efforts on one school and the students in that school. He’ll have a larger impact on those kids than I will. But I am trying to address some the sorts of issues you have raised — and some others — to have an impact on more kids. I want radical change, and I am working to figure what might be done, and how quickly it might be done.

  • http://www.SpecialEducationMuckraker.com Dee Alpert

    Mr. Hoffman – I’ve rarely run across a district office that worked particularly well. I’m not seeing that training for administrators teaches (or demands) the level of logic, analysis and serious managerial skills needed for a LEA office to actually provide meaningful support for … and then there’s the question of who district offices are really supporting, i.e., staff or teachers. I mean, I’ve run across maybe 1 in 1,000 LEAs (and that’s being charitable) where there was someone who actually knew how to read, understand and evaluate “research” – or what passes for it – much less get to how to put anything seriously good into effect. With that kind of “leadership,” public education is doomed and the rationale for charters lies in hoping that non-educators can throw away all the regular models and try things which are both research-validated and drastically different.

    Have you taken any organization theory? I don’t mean in a grad school of ed. – a real, serious organization theory course in a real, serious graduate dept.? Let me suggest you do. I did and after having done so, (dogs years ago, I might add), I find that perspective on LEA/IEA/SEA and USDOE organizational functioning very useful. F’rinstance, I’ve come to the conclusion (and this is from org. and/or govt. theory) that most SEAs and definitely USDOE are captive regulatory agencies, in the classic sense (which is pejorative). The kinds of demands these captives put on their real clients are actually minimal, at best; at worse … well, we’ve got USDOE and NYSED as examples of what not do do, and how not to do it.

    Matters greatly in terms of talking about what charters are, or are not, because the SEAs and USDOE (when you look at what program office people do, not what their talking heads say) simply protect the structures and organizations already out there and are actually loathe to support radical alternatives in any meaningful way. Again, they talk the talk, but when it comes to walking the walk, they’re missing in combat.

  • http://www.charterinsights.blogspot.com Doug Hering

    I admit that I didn’t read all 52 comments before me, but it seems that if you create a definition of public school that eliminates charter schools from that definition, then, of course, charter schools won’t be public schools.

    The fact is that in many states the law says that these are public schools. The truth is that it is the legislature that determines what a public school is not Alexander Hoffman. Therefore, by definition, in states where the law says that charter schools are public schools, they are public schools.

  • http://stuartbuck.blogspot.com Stuart Buck

    In what cases AREN’T enrollment cap a luxury

    In virtually all cases. FYI, charter schools need revenue to survive, and the only way they get revenue is by signing up students. Enrollment caps are most certainly not a luxury if you’re a charter school trying to scrape together the money for a mortgage (most states don’t pay for facilities for charter schools) and your budget doesn’t work out unless you sign up X number of students. I’d suggest doing a little fieldwork (if not getting involved in a charter school for yourself) before presuming to tell other people that what they may see as their greatest burden is actually a luxury.

  • http://MoreThoughtful.blogspot.com Alexander Hoffman

    Ms. Alpert,

    Pick your school of ed carefully and your courses carefully, and you can get a wonderful education. Don’t paint with too broad a brush. So, while I know that Bolman & Deal passes for org theory at most schools of ed, but I’ve had a lot more than that.

    I think that you are going off in a very different direction from what I am trying to address in this post. There are real questions about what the relationship between district offices and schools ought to be. *I* believe in strong roles for district offices, but most of their work should be in supporting school level leaders to better be able to support those who do the core work of schools (i.e. teach students). In other words, supporting teachers is hard, challenging and complex work, and school level leaders need a variety of supports to do that well. I believe that building level leadership is key, and my work is geared towards figuring out what can be done to make it more effective (systemically).

    The kinds of radical change i truly and deeply want is not the least bit likely, I know. So, while I am prone to go off on rants about it, I try to focus my real work on figuring out what is actually possible.

    However, I generally do not pay a lot of attention in my real work the USDOE or state DOEs. The action is on the district/local level, for the most part. One worry I have with charter schools is that the supposed democratic oversight comes from a geographically diverse population who cannot elect their own representatives. Local school boards and/or local mayors are elected by the same communities whose educational systems they are responsible for. Most people who vote for state legislatures or governors do not send their children to charter schools, and charter schools are a small part of state government’s responsibilities. There’s far more democratic accountability with local control because of the congruence between LEA’s and local electoral districts.

    When thinking about state DOE’s, you’ve got to realize that their capacities are very low relative to the scope of education in their states. The simply don’t have the man power or talent on hand do address issues in schools and districts across the state. So, understanding them is its own puzzle. But also understand that NY has such a dysfunctional state that it should not be considered typical of other states.

  • http://www.SpecialEducationMuckraker.com Dee Alpert

    Schools and districts are just organizations. While the education industry likes to pretend that it’s so different, so totally sui generis, that even the laws of gravity apparently don’t apply within the rarified environment of a class or school, that’s just not the case. The field of organizational behavior fits what they and their incumbents do quite nicely. Group psychology tells what happens in classes, which are just groups at heart and follow all those rules.

    As for the SEAs, USDOE, etc., unfortunately you need to understand them and the structures they (really) impose on the organizations they control. Look up captive regulatory agencies – gives you a very nice understanding of the freedom, and lack thereof, imposed on districts include what they do, can’t do, etc. in support of their schools.

    Or to put it more bluntly, the fish rots from the head. =)

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  • http://MoreThoughtful.blogspot.com Alexander Hoffman

    Mr. Buck,

    I am not sure if we disagree on this last point, or if we are misunderstand each other. So, let me try to be a bit more explicit in my argument.

    I think that — for this purpose — we can split charter schools up into four groups.

    A) Charter schools that have have hit their enrollment caps, have waiting lists and whose finances ARE well in order.

    B) Charter schools that have hit their enrollment caps, have waiting lists and whose finances are NOT well in order.

    C) Charter schools that have not hit their enrollment caps, but whose finances ARE well in order.

    D) Charter schools that have not hit their enrollment caps, and whose finances are NOT well in order.

    * I would argue that groups C & D do not have meaningful enrollment caps, at least not at this time. Their enrollment caps exist on paper, but they do no impact any of their operations. I generally feel that things that exist on paper but do not play out in operations are NOT something I care about. There is plenty of “policy” that is ignored, and plenty of standard and openly acknowledged practices that are not written down anywhere. In my view, C’s & D’s “enrollment caps” might as well not exist. They are dreams, and little more.

    * A has the luxury of an enrollment caps. They can plan, do their hiring, set up their use of their facilities and all the rest with confidence, knowing exactly how many students they will have.

    * B is bad management and/or a bad proposal in the first place. If, having hit their enrollment caps, they are still unable to pay their bills, they should be shut down. (And, as I understand it, financial mismanagement is the #1 reason for charter school closings.)

    I believe that you are referring to group D, schools that have not yet attracted the minimum number of students they need to make their financial plans work. Is that right? If it is, you are not talking about an enrollment cap. They need more students, and would be allowed to enroll more students, if only they could attract them. Their enrollment caps are not a burden for them, because their enrollment caps are not the reason for their falling short of meeting their enrollment goals (i.e. having at least X students).

    If you are referring to group B, however, then we plainly disagree. Charter schools that have met their enrollment goals and are up to their enrollment caps but STILL are having financial problems? If they can’t make with their original plan, then why trust them with MORE students? Clearly, their planning and/or management is deficient. Should we trust them with more students without a plan? Or should they submit a new proposal with higher caps?

    Can you clarify which groups you are referring to? MY point was that all charter schools can aspire to being in that first group (A), where they have a stable number of student that they have set, and their finances can be managed within the budgetary limits that that many students allows. The public schools have a very different dynamic. Districts must accept all new students, and the additional local taxes that a family with one or two kids pays when they move to a new district does not cover the cost of schools their children. It’s just a different dynamic.

  • http://MoreThoughtful.blogspot.com Alexander Hoffman

    Ms. Alpert,

    I am not a structuralist. I do not believe that structural reform will repair our schools. Education happens in schools, and mostly in classrooms. I do not see how school size or district size or the manner of regulation is going to change what is happening in classrooms. Nothing that I have seen indicates that it will. Education is simply, to use a technical term, too loosely coupled a system. (Or, at least the sorts of structural reforms that are the LEAST bit plausible. We can all dream, of course, but that doesn’t mean that our fantasies can be made real.)

    Furthermore, I do not think that your explanations of certain dysfunctions point us towards actions that will help classrooms.

    KitchenSink and others have a prescription for better schools: Cut them off from district control and usually from unionization.

    I have my ideas, geared towards focusing on improving school leaders’ abilities to support the growth and development of teachers in their schools. (The gets to how we select school leaders, how we train, how we support them, how we evaluate them, etc.. It’s about focusing districts on ensuring that school have the capacity to build their own instructional capacities, or “second order capacity building.” That’s where the get to engines of continuous improvement.) It’s not just that I don’t challenge the existence of school districts, I actually see a critical role for them in supporting the very difficult work of school leaders (which is to support teachers, so teacher can do the core work of schools.)

    What do you think that you diagnosis indicates should be done?

  • http://www.SpecialEducationMuckraker.com Dee Alpert

    “I do not believe that structural reform will repair our schools. Education happens in schools, and mostly in classrooms.”

    Right. And medicine happens in doctors’ offices and hospitals. If you’re correct, then why did we just go through this national trauma to get some health care system reform when all we needed was more study about physician-patient interaction?

    Alexander – a very wise, internationally reknowned and respected professer I had once many years ago said something I’ve never forgotten: When you don’t know what to do and are looking for solutions, get every single bit of information you can, from all sources, analyze it, and then make the decision which will most increase the store of human dignity.

    The history of education in the States is simply overflowing with new models for school management and staff support. All of which have basically failed. That’s because they ignore the rather complex matrix of laws, norms, etc. in which individual teachers and their classes full of children actually function. That’s because they ignore the rules which govern not educational interaction and organization, but rather, ignore the rules of human interaction and organization, of which education is only a very small subset.

    Those who ignore this history and knowledge are condemned to repeat it. In the meantime, the failure of new models which ignore this matrix is, depressingly, predictable.

    It’s like the blind men grabbing something, but they don’t know if they’ve gotten the tail of a mouse or an elephant. Which does matter if you want to make the elephant walk a different road.

  • Stuart Buck

    I have in mind the following possibilities, both of which I am familiar with in real life, not just as hypothetical abstractions: 

    1. A charter school that needs extra money to add on to existing facilities, but is shafted by $1,500 per student per year (in that the state doesn’t give building funds), which means that the only way to pay for new buildings is to expand enrollment. 

    2. A charter school that is way oversubscribed and way too small (400 applications for 60 seats) and that would like to serve more people interested in its particular curriculum (heavy on science/math).  

  • http://www.SpecialEducationMuckraker.com Dee Alpert

    Mr. Hoffman – Below find an edited version of an email notice I just rec’d from the federally-funded IRIS Center at Vanderbilt re “fidelity of implementation” of new programs/methodologies in schools. It notes that when new programs are brought in by administrators (at district, school levels), hypothetically providing staff “development” and sometimes alternative staff “support” models, these are often implemented so poorly by teachers that they have little or no positive impact. The issues you’re interested in (how to support teachers in class) are intimately bound up in the issues of why teachers don’t implement effectively, and also the structural issues of why administrators can’t require teachers to do so. You may find these of interest. Note that charters, which are not bound by union contracts for the most part, have more freedom to insist on full implementation. Since charters are not producing obviously and significantly improved results, the reasons may lie elsewhere. In this case, I would posit that since charter school administrators are, for the most part, trained in the same grad. schools of ed. as are teachers, they are not able to proficiently select appropriate programs for staff development and paradigm change/model change and thus inflict ineffective ones on staff. Structure, unfortunately, controls what you think of as the intimate workings of an individual teacher in an individual classroom. Organizational theory and organizational behavior rule. And those who do not study the history of what results from particular structures are undoubtedly condemned to repeat it.

    Dear IRIS Family,

    The IRIS Center is pleased to announce the posting of our latest STAR Legacy Module, Fidelity of Implementation: Selecting and Implementing Evidence-Based Practices and Programs, developed with the invaluable guidance of George Sugai (Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports) and Lisa Sanetti (Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut).

    In today’s classrooms, teachers are expected to use evidence-based practices and programs. Sometimes, though, selecting and implementing such practices and programs can be more difficult than it sounds. Often, when school personnel implement new instructional and behavioral practices, they do not always see the improved outcomes in their students that they expect. Some school staff attribute this lack of success to the practice or program itself, believing it to be ineffective or suspecting that its advertised claims are misleading. Others wonder whether they could have implemented the practice or program in a different way, or whether more effective training would have led to greater student success.

    Designed for school leaders, professional development providers, and anyone who oversees the implementation of evidence-based practices and programs, this module first describes how school personnel can identify an evidence-based practice or program and highlights the importance of matching it to the school’s specific needs and resources. Next, the module underscores the importance of implementing the practice or program with fidelity, or as it was intended. It then discusses a number of actions that school personnel can take to increase the likelihood that education professionals will implement the new practice or program with high fidelity. To demonstrate how school personnel can put these actions into practice, the module provides three fictional school examples: Paige Elementary School (progress monitoring), Grafton Middle School (reading program), and DuBois High School (PBIS).

    In addition, to these school examples, the module contains step-by-step demonstration movies, activities that allow opportunities to practice the skill, and numerous audio interviews by leading experts: …

    To learn about fidelity of implementation and for an examination of the actions that school personnel can take to increase the likelihood that their practices and programs will be implemented as designed, please go to http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/fid/chalcycle.htm

    As always, we encourage you to share all of our materials (http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/) with your colleagues and students. If you have any questions concerning IRIS materials, please contact Kim Skow at 800-831-6134, kimberly.a.skow@vanderbilt.edu, or iris@vanderbilt.edu.

    Sincerely,
    The IRIS Center
    Vanderbilt University
    Peabody College,
    230 Appleton Place, Box 275
    Vanderbilt University
    Nashville, TN 37203
    iris@vanderbilt.edu
    615-343-5610
    615-343-5611 (fax)
    http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu

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  • Akademos

    This debate is not academic. Nor is it legalistic or political in the usual sense.

    It is about understanding the significance of what is happening right now in education.

    Some people think schools should be run as businesses or factories, others think they should not.

    Some think all schools must be run privately in order to circumvent stultifying dysfunction; others think public schools must remain public in order to preserve a certain degree of humanism in the education and development of minds, as opposed to adding value to products or providing a clear-cut service.

    And then there is everybody in-between. What exactly do they think when they think ‘charter school’?

  • http://MoreThoughtful.blogspot.com Alexander Hoffman

    Mr. Buck,

    I owe you an answer. Sorry for the delay.

    I think that we may have different interpretations of the word “luxury,” but I see the point that you are making. Let me try to respond to your two examples.

    1. I think this is really much like my class B. If they “need” new facilities then that is a failure of their own planning. However, I will grant that we can hypothesize about a case that does NOT fit into B. Say that we have a school that is VERY success by every measure, and remains open for a long time. While we can argue that many expenses often claimed as capital expenses for amortization purposes are really more like consumable operational expenses (e.g. computers), there remain REAL capital expenses. Let’s say redoing a roof or upgrading wiring to handle the additional power load of lots more technology in the classroom. I’ve not heard of that happening, at least not exactly, but it will be an issue.

    I would respond, however, that the problem here — and a problem you yourself mention — is not in the enrollment cap, but rather in the lack of access to building funds or capital budgets. I’m not saying that I believe that charter schools SHOULD get access to these funds, but if you want to make the argument, I think that that one is going to be lot more successful.

    (Why might they not? Well, if the model is to be little labs of innovation, why should any of them exist for that long? Shouldn’t we do the experiments, figure out the lessons, and then apply them elsewhere? This is slightly off topic, of course, but i that’s not the model for charter schools, I am not clear what the argument for their existence is, other than their popularity among some underserved populations.)

    2: I don’t think that the school you mention is actually hurt by the cap. It’s not like a for-profit business where more customers leads to more profits. In that case, capping the customer list DOES hurt the company. But how is a school actually harmed? Sure, there might be some opportunity cost to the community, but what is the damage to the schools. The advantages that I listed remain, and the cap does not actually hurt.

    I think that you read “luxury” much more broadly than I intended. I meant that it “provides rare benefits without actually causing harm” (to the school, of course). But I think you read it as “pure good without downside of any sort.” Again, I think that the harm you cite in example #2 is opportunity cost (as opposed to actual harm) and is not actually to the school.

    More importantly, however, I do not think that I have claimed that enrollment caps are always a luxury — though I came close as was clearly quite ready to go that far. Rather, my point was that insofar as they are a luxury (and I believe that when they matter at all that they almost always are), they are a luxury that only charter schools have, and only someone who doesn’t take the the public school’s obligation to educate every student to heart would apply them to every school.

    Of course, that wasn’t your point, anyway. it was KitchenSink’s.

    Getting back to the point of this post, I think that we can agree that charter schools lie somewhere between traditional private schools and traditional public schools, even if we disagree which they more resemble — and we might even — at times — agree about that. My point, however, is that there are substantial differences between charter schools and private schools AND there are substantial differences between charter schools and public schools. I have never argued that they are MORE like private schools than like public schools. Rather, I believe that the differences are important enough that it is wrong to group them with either.

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