In my first of this three-part series I discussed the need to do something better in our most impoverished neighborhood schools. In the second post I described what I saw in several high-performing New York City charter schools. In this post I’m going to tackle the question of whether Washington State should allow charter schools.
This question has come up before. In fact, Washington has voted down charter schools three times so far, following high-profile campaigns which basically pitted pro-charter groups against the Washington Education Association, our state’s largest teachers’ union.
The union’s opposition to charter schools, as I understand it, boils down to this: charter schools take jobs from union members, they compete unfairly with traditional public schools, and they undermine those schools by “skimming off” the more motivated students from those schools.
Each of these arguments is valid, to a point. Obviously, when a charter school opens up, its students will have to come from a public, union-staffed school. Unions get their black ink from member dues, therefore it stands to reason that a charter school takes students, jobs and dues from the union. Unions don’t like that, and will generally oppose such threats.
The second argument is also valid. As I described in the last post, charter schools don’t do anything magical. Their “secret” is more building-level autonomy, less teacher-level autonomy, attention to detail, longer school days and lots of homework. Principals have the power to hire and fire as they please, and schools have the authority to expel students who refuse to do their work. Traditional public schools, on the other hand, have to function within the framework of having most major decisions made at the district level, and most minor decisions made at the classroom level. The school itself is not the defining unit. Moreover, they can only expel a student after the most egregious of infractions. Comparing a charter school, in which an administrator has unparalleled authority, with a traditional public school is entirely unfair.
The third argument also holds some water. Charter schools, by definition, are attended by students whose parents want them to be there. Non-charters have everyone else, whether they want to be there or not. It’s probably safe to assume that charter school kids would be among the more motivated in any public school, since they and their families demonstrated that motivation by the fact that they ended up in a charter school – which is no easy trick. Yes, I’m aware of the study which showed charter school students outperformed students who applied for, but were not accepted into charter schools. But what that study failed to account for is the effect that the third group of students – the kids who never even applied for a charter school – had on the unaccepted charter applicants. Teachers teach the class in front of them, not the class they wish was in front of them. If half the class is unmotivated, things are going to proceed slowly. I don’t know if you could call the charter selection process “skimming the best students” but it’s fair to say that charter schools and their nearby, non-charter counterparts are teaching two different populations.
So those are the major anti-charter arguments. The pro-charter argument, on the other hand is simple and strong: these schools succeed in areas where nothing else seems to work. I’ve seen that for myself, and it’s a very powerful argument. So powerful, in fact, that I’m afraid there’s no stopping the progress of the charter school movement. If there’s a way to educate students in areas where traditional public schools have consistently been ineffective, we need to at least give it a try.
Therefore, I’d like to see charter schools allowed into Washington State. Not only that, I’d like to see the WEA embrace the idea from the start. If a change is inevitable – and this one is – it’s simply good policy to get involved from the beginning; to do otherwise means letting change happen to you. Besides, the WEA has the expertise of thousands of smart, experienced educators, whose talents will be required if a change this significant is to happen successfully.
If we have a charter school law, however, I’d favor three important conditions:
1. Charter schools would be overseen by existing school districts. Charters would have almost complete autonomy, including hiring and firing of staff, but the teachers would be part of the union. The union would bargain compensation commiserate to whatever the charter’s administration decides is necessary. What’s more, a teacher fired from a charter school would be rehired in a non-charter school. This would encourage teachers to try their hand at a charter school, without the fear of jeopardizing their entire career, and it would acknowledge the fact that failing in a charter school is not the same as failing in a non-charter. Having this condition would make teaching in a charter school more of a temporary assignment, with teachers flowing in and out of charters as their lifestyles change. Such churn would benefit charters and non-charters alike.
2. Charter schools would be limited to those areas in which traditional schools have failed. And I’m not talking about failing AYP. I’m talking about real failure; places in the bottom 5% nationwide. I worry that allowing unlimited charter schools opens the door to “boutique schools” like the one in my district where parents are required to volunteer 10 hours a week. As you can imagine, this school serves very few disadvantaged students, and it really does “skim the cream” off the rest of the schools in the district.
3. Charter schools would have to agree to the same expulsion policies as the rest of the schools in the district. As far as I’m concerned, this is non-negotiable. If students aren’t doing their homework or showing up on time, charters need to resolve the problem like every other school. Simply kicking them out of school – or even threatening to – is a cop out.
I’d like to get this conversation started. I’d especially like the pro-charter folks to acknowledge that teacher unions aren’t two-dimensional goons, intent on “less work for more money.” I’d like them to see unions as collective bodies of passionate professionals who care deeply about education for all students. And I’d like the teacher unions to understand that most education reformers, especially those in favor of charter schools are generally happy with what’s going on in most public schools. What they’re opposed to, in fact, is the difference between what they see in our successful schools and what they see in our failing schools.
They, like me, have seen what success can look like in our neediest neighborhoods, and they want to see that success replicated elsewhere. Maybe even here.
You can’t argue with that.
I’ll concede condition one, Kristin and Jason, but I’m not sure how we get teachers and leaders moving in and out of charters if they aren’t district-run.
When I was thinking about that part of my post, I was thinking about Kappa International School, a non-charter district school in the Bronx that we visited. It was actually run very much like a charter, but with district teachers. the administration was very autonomous and the teacher work-day was as brutal as any charter.
While I am still reflecting on many of your points I can say this: I don’t think teacher chrn is something to be encouraged or aimed for either in a charter or traditional school.Your observation of consistancy in delivery, management, and philosophy is one of the strongest arguements for why some charters perform so well. Yet that kind of cohesiveness takes time. Most research concludes three to five years to really have an effective team. Even if everyone is clear from the beginning that cohesive consistancy is what they are signing on for, team building and collaboration still take time. A revolving door every two to three years in any setting is disruptive. I like the idea of teacher flow between charter and traditional public schools, but not at the expense of the possiblity of building a really solid, consistant, cohesive staff.
I’ve really enjoyed reading the charter pieces.
I agree with many of Jason’s comments. From what I’ve seen and heard, two of the most powerful things charters have going for them is the right to attract the right staff and really strong leadership.
Charters are basically schools that have the freedom to do things differently – they’re not constrained by staffing protocol as defined by union bargaining, they’re not constrained by the district’s salary schedule, they’re not bound to do what’s already being done. This allows them to do what needs to be done, whether it’s paying a teacher more to teach a longer day or quickly fire a teacher who is not meeting expectations.
I agree with you on the expulsion policy. It’s true that kids who aren’t working out at a charter are returned to the local traditional school and lose their charter seat to a more deserving child. It’s true that traditional schools are not allowed to do this. We can say that every child wants an education, but we all know that some children, for whatever reason, make choices that would make them unworthy of a charter school’s requirements. I’d like to see something in Washington’s charter law that addressed this.
On the other hand, I don’t think it’s accurate to say that charter schools toss the challenging kids out. When I toured Locke, in LA, which is a turnaround high school that kept much of its staff and all of its students when it was taken over by Green Dot, I saw regular kids. I saw the same kids that had been there before, when it was a school in crisis. The difference was that they now had teachers who were doing what you said – working really hard and working really smart. They had excellent administration. They had school pride. They had a different structure to their school day. They had things put into place in their previously-traditional school that all of a sudden, meant kids who were problems were now college-bound.
We should remember that it’s possible. That we’re failing way, way more children than would choose to fail themselves.
As a somewhat pro-charter person, I figured I’ll throw in my 2 cents about your three requirements.
Of all of them, only the first one is really problematic in my view. I’m fine with charter teachers being unionized, but I don’t think they should be a part of the district-wide union. This creates several problems. First, there is a massive imbalance of legal power. A district-wide paid for union attorney versus what a single, autonomous school can afford are very different. The time and resources that a district-wide union could put into negotiation for charter teachers far outstrip the ability for school-level administrators, funds, and attorneys. I don’t think this heavy imbalance to the union during negotiations is a good thing.
Second, unique compensation packages are a major part of charter schools. I don’t see any rationale for taking this away. If people are willing to work at that charter for a certain salary structure instead of working at the schools just a block away in the traditional district, then by definition the salary is competitive enough to attract enough teachers of the right quality to that school. I don’t see any reason to add in a bogus safeguard that the pay scales should start where the district is– in practice, this is almost required because otherwise teachers would just prefer to work in the district. I think it’s false to assume that a district-wide union is going to negotiate toward a what the charter administration wants rather than starting with the district contract and allowing the charter to whittle it down or do a little tit-for-tat and ultimately end up with a similar contract. This is especially true for things like work rules which make up an extensive portion of most union contracts that would have to be started from scratch to meet a charter’s needs (and may be better left out entirely). These are precisely the kinds of things that traditional unions generally resist, and they make up a large portion of the structural strategy around high performing charters.
Third, I’m not sure that districts make good authorizers. A lot of preliminary work on charter authorizing policy suggests that districts are some of the worst authorizers because authorizing is very different than running a central office. Of course, the other problem is that the districts have an active interest in avoiding charters since losing students means losing funds. Very few monopolies invite competition, even fewer earn the ability to judge whether or not their competition should get to survive.
I think the goals you propose in your first condition are laudable, but the structure you’ve created won’t get you there. I’m not opposed to having charter schools stuck in state retirement systems, even if they’re very expensive. Teachers should earn years of service for being public school teachers wherever that happens, across district and traditional/charter lines. I think sharing a human capital pipeline that cycles teachers between districts and charters is an excellent idea. We should do it for leadership as well. But these things don’t require that we saddle charters with legacy contracts and provide their competition with the power to close them down by any means other than providing a far better education than the charter.
Conditions 2 and 3 are really good, even if I’d loosen condition 2. No doubt we want to focus on areas where there are fewer quality seats for kids and obviously charters should not have the ability to walk away from students districts could not (note: I think there may be an important exception here for high-cost special needs students but that’s a whole separate conversation).