A city mom thinks outside the sandbox.
This is why every American who makes a middle class living should care about millionaires’ and billionaires’ dabbling in education reform. Why sequestration is hogwash. Why anyone who tells you there is no money for school buildings or public school teachers or health care or medical benefits is full of it. There is more than enough to go around.
Commence reality check.
This is what rapid growth looks like, in the world of stock images.
Baltimore City is a case study in the push for school choice. In November 2004, with the benefit of pro bono services from global lawyering giant DLA Piper, the founders of City Neighbors Public Charter School succeeded in an effort to eliminate the cap on the number of new charter schools that could open here. By 2005-06, there were 12; by 2007-08, 22. Now there are 34 of about 200. Next year, there will be more. With only 15 schools making Adequate Yearly Progress in 2011, no one can claim that the reforms of the past few years are doing much good. But right now, the school choice story isn’t about quality. It’s about quantity.
Whether or not Baltimore City will turn into another New Orleans, where 61 of 88 public schools were charters as of August 2010, the campaign for the exponential growth of charter schools in the name of “parental choice” is overwhelming. On July 17, the New York Times printed a story on conflicts over a boutique charter school in an affluent New Jersey suburb. This week, Maryland’s Montgomery County approved its first charter school.
In terms of national policy, under the leadership of Arne Duncan, the U.S. Department of Education is “incentivizing” an increase in the number of charter schools by states as a condition of winning Race to the Top funds. Corporate philanthropies are also pushing hard and fast for choice. In February 2011, the Progressive Policy Institute published a report coaching charter school supporters on how to take advantage of acquisition opportunities and eliminate barriers to expansion titled “Going Exponential: Growing the Charter School Sector’s Best.” The paper was written by three education policy consultants at Public Impact with support from the Walton Family Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Walmart. As of this week, the Walton Family Foundation is also the single largest private donor to Teach for America.
Back in Baltimore, another backer of Teach for America, the political action committee Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), is making big ripples in the political pond. DFER is raising funds for local and state-level candidates who are on board with their board‘s agenda, which includes mayoral control of city school systems, opening more public charter schools, and closing failing schools the way an investor might dump poorly performing stocks. Bill Ferguson, a Teach for America alumnus who bested a 27-year incumbent for the 46th district’s seat in the Maryland state senate (and who has commented on this blog), recognized DFER as one of the earliest supporters of his campaign. DFER board member and hedge-fund manager Whitney Tilson used his education blog last month to rally donors to the aid of Baltimore City mayoral candidate Otis Rolley. (Rolley’s education platform would be right up DFER’s alley, if not for the voucher part.)
Despite a 2009 report by BCPSS stating that the only significant area of superiority in the performance of charters versus traditional public schools is school climate, the school board’s push for choice in the form of charters continues. Given the resounding drumbeat, the number of “schools of choice” in Baltimore could double in the next five years. It’s reasonable to expect that it could more than double.
What then?
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George Joseph and Extra Credit, The Nation, January 11, 2013
Like schools, some hospitals have mascots. This adorable photo is from the University of Missouri Children's Hospital.
SteveK writes, “No school can be all things to all children.” There’s a truism. It’s kind of like saying no hospital can be all things to all patients. Here’s a brief meditation on this analogy.
How Is a Public School Like a Hospital?
The challenge of operating a public school and a hospital are similar in that both institutions have an obligation – call it ethical or professional, doesn’t matter – to improve the life of everyone who walks in the door. So they offer a range of programs and they employ a staff of generalists and specialists capable of customizing approaches to a broad range of cases.
Every so often, a hospital is presented with a case that another hospital would be better equipped to handle. The same goes for schools. The story of Matthew Sprowal – the boy who was counseled out of a New York City charter school and into one that turned out to be a great fit – is one example. But here’s where the hospital analogy begins to fray, and with it, this particular argument for school choice.
When a particularly difficult case presents itself, a hospital can arrange for more appropriate treatment at another hospital in our relatively loose health care system. That’s an excellent option to have. But despite the current push for school choice in Baltimore City, and the relatively rapid proliferation of charter schools here, less than a month ago, on June 28, 2011, the Baltimore City School Board approved a policy that strictly limits this ability. Per section I.5:
Once a student is admitted to a public charter school, a student or guardian may not be asked or counseled to leave for reasons related to academic performance, behavior, or attendance unless consistent with City Schools Discipline Policy and City Schools Code of Conduct.
(You can download the Word document of the policy from this page of the Supporting Public Schools of Choice website, thanks to Carol Beck.)
The way school choice works now, the act of choosing is limited to the application process. It’s a consumer model. You go to the market, stand in the aisle, and weigh your options. You may have preferences based on what you’ve heard from friends, or seen online, or read in brochures and ads. But this analogy breaks down, too. Because with schools – unlike with cereal or shoes or cars or any other consumer product – you’re limited to one. And you can’t really switch tomorrow if you don’t like it. (Then there’s the lottery issue to contend with.)
If the argument for choice is that every child is unique, then – barring the absurdity of a school for every child – the system has to provide the individualized attention that would get every student into the “best fit” school. Sometimes that won’t happen on the first try – especially when you’re talking about four- and five-year-olds whose strengths and weaknesses are only beginning to emerge. (This touches criticisms of the kind of testing that goes on in selective private school admissions.) If choice is to work to improve the life of the individual child, then educators – professionals, not just parents or guardians – need to take part in the work of getting every single child into the best school for them. That’s an extremely tall order.
If you want to argue that Matthew Sprowal’s story is a great argument for school choice, you have to concede that it wasn’t simply “choice” that made his life better. It was the involvement of his mother and school administrators in the act of choosing. When you take counseling out of the picture, all you’re left with is a consumerist system driven by competition and market trends. That’s hardly conducive to the kind of collaboration across schools that would be needed to find each student the best fit. Which can leave a thoughtful person wondering if individualizing public education is the true intention of the school choice movement at all.
What do you think?
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Someone stumbled upon this blog the other day by Googling the words “i want to make my own charter school.” I’m sure the Googler didn’t find this site of much use. This post is my attempt to make that search worthwhile if it’s ever repeated. Here are two handfuls of info that this curious Baltimore City mom has come to learn over the course of the last 18 months.
1 Baltimore City’s charter schools are part of the Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS). They are run by nonprofit boards with 501(c)(3) status. They are all not for profit and tuition free.
2 There is no legal cap on the number of charter schools that can open and operate in Baltimore City. As of this posting, 34 of Maryland’s 44 charter schools are in Baltimore City. There were 12 charter schools in Baltimore City in 2005-06. There are around 200 Baltimore City public schools. The percentage jump in the proportion of charter schools over the last five years reflects the exponential growth formula being pushed by the Progressive Policy Institute, with support from the Walton Family Foundation. See http://www.progressivefix.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/2.2011_Hassel_Going-Exponential_WEB1.pdf
3 Charter school students are required to take standardized tests. Charter schools administer the same high stakes tests that all other public schools in Baltimore City administer. Test results are used to keep schools accountable for students’ academic progress, particularly in math and reading.
4 Baltimore City charter school teachers are bound to union contracts. Maryland is one of the few states in which that is the case. Some people would like to see that change. The Baltimore Teacher’s Union recently came into conflict with KIPP’s demands for a 9.5 hour school day and summer classes. The union and KIPP negotiated an agreement in March 2011 that will keep KIPP in Baltimore for the next 10 years.
5 Enrollment is open to students citywide. This stands in contrast to what BCPSS and the charter movement call “traditional” schools, which give priority to students who live within a zoned neighborhood.
6 If the number of applications to a given charter school is greater than the number of available slots, the school holds a public lottery. The names that are not chosen are placed on a waiting list for that year. The list does not roll over to the following school year.
7 Many charter schools do not offer pre-kindergarten because of state mandates on PK enrollment. Charter schools that offer PK must give priority for PK enrollment to students with need (i.e., homeless students, students living in poverty, students who need Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), students from military families).
8 Charter schools set their own enrollment restrictions regarding priority for the children of founders and staff and the siblings of current students. Whether the sibling of an enrolled student can attend without being subject to the lottery is up to the governing board of the charter school. Up to ten percent of students in a charter school can be the children of founders. The definition of a founder is determined by the governing board of the charter school. These points are significant because the more enrollment exceptions and restrictions, the fewer slots there are for students from the “random” citywide pool of applicants.
9 If you want to send your child to a charter school, you must complete and submit an application by the stated deadline. Each charter school has a separate application process. There is no limit on the number of charter schools to which one student may apply. If the deadline is missed but there are still spaces in the next year’s class, the application will be accepted and the student permitted to enroll. It is up to the parent or guardian to obtain and complete applications.
10 Charter schools are supposed to receive the same per pupil funding as “traditional” public schools. For various reasons, it’s difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison of cost per pupil at charter schools versus neighborhood schools. The FY12 BCPSS budget – released only a few days ago – allocates more than $4,000 more per pupil for students in charter schools than in neighborhood schools. (The Sun’s InsideEd blog attempted to make sense of that yesterday.) One major difference is that neighborhood schools receive in services what charter schools receive in cash. Unused services cannot be rolled into the following year’s budget, while unused cash can. But the question of fairness has yet to be answered.
I want this blog to be – among other things – a source of valid and useful information for parents who are trying to make informed choices and Baltimore residents who want to understand what’s at stake when it comes to education reform in Baltimore City. If you have questions or corrections please let me know by posting a comment. If you would rather that your comment not go public, let me know that, too.
SOURCES:
BCPSS Charter School Report 2005-06 to 2007-08 School Years, April 16, 2009 (doc)
Maryland Charter School Law 2003 (link)
Maryland State Board of Education Charter School Program Policy (PDF)
Maryland Charter Schools Founders’ Manual, Third Edition (PDF)
Re:education in Baltimore 