Public school daze

The problem with charters: scalability

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Every election year, the dismal state of our public school system suddenly becomes an urgent problem. But increasingly, the terms "choice," "competition," and "innovation" are obfuscating the basic decisions: Will we provide a good educational system for all our children, or just create safety valves for those few eager and able to escape it? Will we foster learning, critical thinking and whole-child development, or produce test-takers? Will we, as a community, take proper responsibility for our children’s education, or will we find easier targets for "accountability?"

This year, three of the four mayoral candidates have focused on charter schools as bold innovations. Mayor Tom Menino, who always opposed charters as a financial drain, now supports nominal "charters" (de-unionizing and pay-per-score in the lowest-performing schools) now that they draw federal money. Michael Flaherty wants to eliminate the charter cap and "allow money to follow the child" (will vouchers for private schools be a logical extension?). Sam Yoon wants to lift the cap only on the "good" charters, so they can expand to accept their wait-list students and give more families a choice.

Boston’s charters serve about 5,000 students; about 7,000 are on waiting lists. There are about 56,000 students in the public school system. Oddly, none of the candidates proposes to do what the charter "model" was supposed to do: find out exactly what makes "excellence" and diffuse it into the general system so that all children have a good choice. Instead, they simply want to make more of them.

Unfortunately, charter schools are not a systemic solution. Not only because they may be part of a strategy for privatization, union-busting, standardization and corporatization of education and other public services. Not only because they may, at some financial tipping point, lead to the collapse and dismantling of the public school system. Not because they may devalue and de-professionalize teaching and teachers, as well as the concept of collective bargaining, which created America’s middle class. Not only because they may produce regimented, docile test-takers, and create incentives for both teachers and students to cheat in various ways to reap the rewards of test-score "performance." Not only because the application-based process may "cherry-pick" students supported by motivated and involved parents (the oft-cited Boston Foundation study showing superior performance of charter attendees vs. comparable wait-list lottery-losers attending public schools acknowledges its flaw-it includes only the better charters that have wait lists), and, as Menino himself said in his recent Left Ahead blog interview, they can keep the successful students while sending others back to public school.

The problem ultimately is scalability. Many national, state and city studies have found that charter schools, as a whole, aren’t better than "traditional" public schools; they vary in quality, and some are actually worse. And the charters that form the enthusiastic lore of miraculous excellence are not really scalable; that is, they can’t be replicated to become the whole system. There are almost 4,600 charters in the U.S., according to the Center for Educational Reform website. A March 2009 report, "Success at Scale in Charter Schooling," by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a strong charter advocate, states that about two hundred high-performing schools nationwide are the "bright lights" of the charter school movement, including only seven of Boston’s 17 charters. And these excellent "no excuses" schools depend on teachers of which there is a small pool: young, highly educated and willing-usually, for a limited period-to devote extraordinary hours and effort to the Herculean task of rehabbing disadvantaged children. Not enough such teachers will be available-even if we decide to de-professionalize teaching, and make it a resume-brightener for a rotating crop of young people before they burn out or start a family or head for more rewarding career ladders. The competition for such teachers is fierce already, as the study points out, and we are unlikely to lure many future Ivy League-ish graduates into careers of teaching like this.

The AEI’s answer to expanding charters without such super-teachers is to "manage" teaching by buying packaged proprietary materials and practices so standardized and "teacher-proof" that anyone can administer them. (The author has not yet answered my e-mail questioning how this robotic teaching can be the substitute for super-teaching.) The majority of charters would thus feature large classes with low-skill, low-paid staff. The worst-case, long-term scenario is a patchwork of inner-city test-score factories, heavily subsidized by various state, local and federal funds; a small percentage of "bright light" charters would continue to carry the banner while the majority of students sit in 50-student classes, strictly disciplined, and drilled to perform on the tests that provide that all-important "accountability." When everyone who wants a charter has one, charters won’t be what they wanted.

Using charters as an experiment to improve education for all was, I conclude, never really a goal. The Boston Foundation report on charter superiority says: "...our study is not designed to uncover why or how Charter Schools and Pilot Schools might change test scores. Rather we focus on the narrower though still important question of whether different types of schools produce significant achievement gains." It doesn’t try to identify the replicable reasons for charter performance. If we really want to know, we should randomly assign students to charters and public schools and require student retention through graduation, to eliminate the skewing variables.

But we have some excellent traditional public schools. Why don’t we figure out what’s working there and apply those features throughout the system? The Boston Foundation report found, "...the estimated effect of a year spent in a Charter School remains positive and often quite similar to the estimated effect of a year spent in an exam school," which is taught by union teachers. Menino, Flaherty and Yoon send their kids/grandchildren to public schools, not to the charters they are advocating. What is it that works there?

Our goal should be to provide a decent education for the vast majority of our children, and not just a lucky few. The underlying reason for the "achievement gap" is poverty. So instead of more exceptionalism -- METCO, charters, elite missionaries in our very own "third world"-let’s face the real causes of the wealth and opportunity gap, the "hope gap," and remedy that, in the bigger framework of employment, housing, transportation, business assistance, etc. When we succeed, charters will be unnecessary. Until then, let’s look honestly at the educational and social services our children need to cross the gap, and give it to them-comprehensively, universally, and very early in their lives. I know we have the money. Do we have the will?

Shirley Kressel
Published in South End News

The Black Kindertransport

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Black History month is a time to gauge America’s realities of race against our talk of a tolerant, diverse society. Our black governor and a black presidential candidate are good signs, but the McCormack Graduate School at UMass-Boston reported last year that people of color in local government jobs in the state are underrepresented by half. Boston is more segregated now than it was before busing. We haven’t really come that far from the color line, 150 years after emancipation.

Look at our "uplift" programs for youth of color. Most are of the "Moses in the basket" model: the despairing mother must send him away as a child and hope the privileged and powerful will have pity and save him.

Consider the 40-year-old METCO program, created in response to Boston’s persistent school segregation. METCO lets a very limited number of "inner city" students into suburban schools that volunteer to participate. Envisioned as a temporary remedy until Boston would come ’round right, METCO now has almost 16,000 - about one-third - of Boston’s public school students of color, on the waiting list; only about 600 can enroll annually and under 10,000 have gone through the program in all these years. Studies of the METCO experience convey the pathos of the choice facing black parents: keep their children home to face almost certain failure in their own world, or ship them off every day to the custody of distant, sometimes hostile, strangers to give them a chance of success in the white world. Though few regret participating, many METCO alumni recall their emotional conflicts between loyalty to the families and neighborhoods they left behind, and their need to take advantage of that precious opportunity. And most important, although the opportunities for education and advancement given to these youngsters by METCO (and similar programs in other states) are undeniable, it hasn’t brought the same benefits to the black community as a whole. Indeed, some fear it has provided a safety valve relieving reform pressure on the city and integration pressure on the suburbs.

The New York-based Fresh Air Fund similarly finds hundreds of kindly suburban and small-town families willing to whisk more than 6000 black children away from the mean streets of the "inner city" every summer to expose them to the greener grass they presumably will never be able to reach on their own. Website stories recount the happy visit of disadvantaged little Tyquan and Jazmin to the good life of Caitlin and Oliver. Ages 6 to12 is the bracket for first-time urban participants. Somehow, I’m reminded of people who adopt as exotic pets the young of animals they’d never go near as adults. This, too, is a well-intentioned program, but what does it really accomplish? It’s an "enriching experience" for the gracious benefactor who is proud to be learning so much about the African-American community from controlled exposure to a well-behaved, carefully screened and isolated little specimen, and a joyful but probably puzzling experience for the grateful beggar lucky to be chosen for a brief glimpse of the bright side of the world.

Why don’t such programs - what I call America’s black kindertransport -- have a reciprocal program, where white privileged kids can go learn something from black life in the dreaded "inner city"? They could learn how it feels to be a tiny minority. They would meet adult black specimens and see that they are regular people. They might be moved to ask their parents why Tyquan’s school, maybe only a few miles from their own, is so run-down, why the streets around are unswept, why it has, perhaps, no cafeteria, or gym, or even enough books, and they might figure out it’s because, well, really, because white people - like their very own parents - are content to have it that way.

Black athletic scholarships, hiring and admissions quotas, the Madonna and Brangelina black-baby adoptions - all are variants of the Moses project.

What is the message for black children? That they can only aspire to be the chosen worthies from a bad herd, exceptions to the low standards expected from black people. That their communities are no good, that their families and neighborhoods are hopeless places from which they have to be rescued to make it in life, that their success depends on distance from their context and their culture. And - most important - that only a few of them can do it.

The village that it takes to raise a child is left behind in the Moses project. But it’s the village that’s broken; we broke it and keep it broken, and we, as a white society, are not committed to helping blacks the right way - by strengthening their communities and families, their economic and social infrastructure. We deliberately maintain blacks as an underclass, for the usual reasons underclasses are maintained: to provide cheap labor, to serve as cannon fodder, and to elevate ourselves.

We don’t treat all non-white people this way; Hispanics, Asians, black immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean, while they suffer various degrees of discrimination, are not as a group kept in the eternal back room we’ve created for our official American Negroes. It’s as if, having had them in our clutches once, we can’t quite bring ourselves to let them go. And in their condition, it’s easy to blame them for it.

It’s all very practical. Every white middle-class person understands: If you give them a decent childhood, you’ll soon be facing millions of black adults competing with you and your kids for good colleges and ever-scarcer good jobs, moving in and wrecking your property values, leaving you to do your own menial labor or pay decent wages for it, and doing important things while your kids join the army to get a scholarship - and end up in combat.

The New York Times ran a story a while back on school experiments, asking: "Can you make poor kids act middle class?" Yes, that’s all we want to know: How can we get them to behave -- and yet stay poor? Would you act middle-class if you were poor, just to avoid causing an inconvenience? How do you "act middle-class," anyway - don’t you need money for that? Why not ask how to make them middle-class if you want them to act middle-class?

Because it’s worth our while to pour money into end-of-pipe solutions we know won’t change much, to show that we’re really trying, to stave off dangerous rebellions, and, most important, to use the handful of successes to prove the point: that it’s possible to polish up a few of these people if they cooperate, and, well, the rest of ’em just aren’t trying and get what they deserve.

Shirley Kressel
Published in the South End News

School uniforms let students express their individuality

Thu, 7 Dec 2006 00:00:00 -0500

The question of dress codes for Boston public schools has emerged as a topic for discussion at City Council lately; the Councilors seem to think that some wardrobe discipline is needed. Former City Councilor Tom Keane wrote a Boston Globe piece a few weeks ago titled “Stay Out of Their Closets: Why Politicians Should Scrub Their Vision For School Uniforms” saying just the opposite: don’t punish all the kids for a few mis-behavers.

After thinking about my own school experiences back in the Pleistocene Era (uniforms in elementary but not in high school), and my recent observations of public school students, I’ve concluded that I am in favor of a dress code.

But it’s not to punish the students, or to keep them in line, or to squelch their creativity or individuality. It’s to liberate them to be themselves.

Across the top of the Boston Public Library are engraved the words: “The Commonwealth Requires the Education of the People As the Safeguard of Order and Liberty.” It is a powerful summary of the quandaries of civilized society, expressing both the fears and the hopes of democracy. We have to cultivate a citizenry — starting during childhood — that is equipped to use individual freedoms and yet to function in an orderly society.

Both for personal development and for good citizenship, young people (all people, really) need to have, and to balance, these two things: the freedom to flourish as their unique selves, and at the same time the security — and responsibility — of feeling that they fit in, they belong, they are a part of something bigger than themselves.

As every adult recalls, the clothes school kids wear are not necessarily expressions of individuality. Varied and changeable as they are, they are costumes, as rigid and prescribed by sizes, brands and colors as any school uniform. Their clothes are sort of a protective covering, not to bring forth their individuality, but to let them fit in, to blend in unobtrusively, without attracting unwelcome attention or having to explain themselves. .

These outfits define a youngster into a role, and identify him/her as a certain kind of character. And once in costume, a student is implicitly constrained to live that role and stay in character — with the outfit come the talk, the walk, the attitude and often pre-conceptions of what they can and can’t be. It works that way at home and on the street.

But I think young people need a place where they can safely be free of this role, and where they can experiment with their personalities and their talents. The poets and scientists and journalists beneath the name-brand disguises have to be liberated.

I’ve seen essays by public school students on the pros and cons of clothing standardization. Based on web research and their own feelings, some wrote that they think classmates judge each other by their clothes, and they might be missing out on friendships because they read someone wrong, or others read them wrong. Others wrote that kids are dressing to impress others, and it’s a competition that leaves some feeling like losers, when not every student can, or wants to, buy or wear whatever’s in style. Especially in a school system populated with a high percentage of low-income and immigrant families, the pressure for clothing conformity can socially marginalize youngsters at a formative age, when they most need acceptance.

We know that marketing and the media pressure kids to dress into mature adult roles before they’ve progressed through their childhood, sometimes with serious and lasting behavioral damage. Dressing grown-up isn’t always fun; it’s also sometimes scary and confusing.

We also know, as adults, that young people who stereotype themselves by their clothing choices may narrow their options early in life. The students really know it, too.

But they can’t unilaterally choose to drop this shell of identity; it has to be removed for everyone at the same time.

Rather than dress codes or guidelines that rein in the kids for the benefit of nervous adults, I think we should have actual school uniforms. Dress codes that just prohibit specific items or styles or colors of clothing are negative constraints, and simply dare the kids to challenge the rules. They also require discretionary judgments of infractions, and are likely to result in uneven enforcement and resentment of perceived discrimination or favoritism, further distracting attention from the work of education.

Compared with shopping for the latest look, uniforms are inexpensive, relieving parents of a huge annual budget drain, and freeing up those kids who work after school to pay for costly “in” clothes to do homework, social and recreational activities — and perhaps civic volunteering, too.

Uniforms are positive rather than punitive. They would help foster school spirit and class spirit — a sense of belonging and a bond of equality and comradeship with schoolmates. They might even lead students to reconsider dropping out.

Most important, they’d let the kids be whatever they want to be in school, a fresh start, free from the stereotypes in which they may be trapped in their everyday lives.

Shirley Kressel
Published in South End News

Tales Out of School

Fri, 20 May 2005 00:00:00 -0400

I just learned that the Boston Public School Department set up a website, www.givetokids.org, maintained by students so teachers can post requests for school supplies like color markers, Chapstick, floppy disks (?!), chalkboards, computer equipment, classroom furniture, etc. The site calls this “the most direct method of supporting individual classroom efforts in BPS” -- supplanting, apparently, taxes.

Since December (perhaps it was inspired by the Christmas “making a list” spirit), 50 teachers have posted $100,000 worth of requests, and were rewarded with a whopping $535 in donations, probably not enough to cover the cost of the website.

The Boston Globe called it “a smart way to bring philanthropy into the classroom,” after “several years of emaciated budgets.”

We have to wonder where the $15,000 or so of our budget per student goes. Obviously, our teachers, for all the griping about their rapacious union demands, are not making out like CEO’s, and, I hear, are even contributing supplies out of pocket. The amenities in our public schools are somewhat short of decadent. Perhaps there’s some truth in those reports about excesses in the administration portion of our program, or the rumored no-bid contracts for school construction work.

Anyhow, if we accept that the cradle of American public education (Boston Latin was the first public school in America) can’t seem to find the will or the way, this website, reflecting Mayor Thomas Menino’s proclivity for “public/private partnerships,” could inspire all sorts of creative thinking about raising money for our public schools.

Queen for a Semester:
Readers of a certain age will remember the TV daytime show, “Queen for a Day” where poor women would tell their tales of woe and the saddest story would win a washing machine or the like. So: BPS teachers (yes, men as well as women of all persuasions, “Queen” is just a figure of speech) will pour out their tales of deprivation to a panel of, say, real estate investors, and the very next multi-million-dollar tax break granted for a downtown tower will spin off that much-need marker money. It’s a win-win! Oh, wait. I just remembered: neighborhood folks who go to the City asking for a local school (or library or park) are already sent off to beg from developers. In fact, the development process for the biggest towers starts by leading community groups in making wish-lists of amenities (or necessities).

Miss American Idol:
Teachers will recite – or sing -- heartfelt essays about why they need their requested donations, as well as their general ideals for humanity. (No, no bathing suit competitions! Please. We’re Bostonians!) A panel of three renowned philanthropists (including one rude and merciless one) will pronounce their judgments, and call-in votes will determine the winner. Luckily, the web-site is already gathering the essays. All we need is television exposure to reward style as well as substance: perhaps -- perhaps a Labor Day charity telethon – for Tommy’s kids -- to kick off the school year. First, of course, we need someone to donate a microphone to GiveToKids.com. We’ll post that on the website.

Lottery Within a Lottery: We want to teach kids that the most important thing in life is dumb luck, right? Far better than working hard, since everyone knows people who slave away forever and get nowhere, but keep slogging along on their credit cards waiting for the big hit. Buuut: We can’t have lotteries, because we already fund schools with a lottery, so they’d be competing with the State that feeds them. However, we could have kiddie raffles, with prizes supplied by the beneficent corporations who have left Boston and want to send money back home from their new headquarter cities.

Adopt-a-teacher/classroom/desk/pencil sharpener: We could treat schools like highways, parks, planter islands, and other orphans of governmental abdication. Become a public/private partner, and get your ads up on the blackboard or wherever you darn well please. If it doesn’t help business, you can always terminate the contract. Actually, it turns out that there are already schools adopted by companies, in return for naming rights. I do remember seeing an aerial photo of a school in some city with a brand name written across the roof, so we have a model to follow.

Take It To The Streets:
Why should the kids waste their time rattling a virtual tin cup, waiting for donors to click onto the site? They could just take their begging directly to the streets. Oh, never mind. I already see kids with tin cans on my street, collecting for their extra-curricular activities.

Sister Cities: This is my favorite. The United States has been sending huge amounts of money to cities in underdeveloped countries to build schools. Iraq comes to mind, of course, but better yet is Egypt. According to a recent story in the New York Times, America is funding public education in Egypt to foster democracy by teaching critical thinking instead of rote learning and test-taking. No MCAS for Egypt, apparently. Yes, this is true; who could make up something like that?! So, I think our kids should write to our sister cities in Egypt, and get them to send us money so we can do the same!

Welcome to Boston, the Cairo of America.

Shirley Kressel
Published in the South End News