Charter Schools- The Basics and The Biases

At my high school, every senior was required to write a research paper during the spring semester. I chose to write mine on charter schools. Ultimately, the paper was lousy, not because I didn't do a lot of research or reflect on the issue, but because I changed sides routinely through the course of the paper. It was not an easy topic to take sides on, especially knowing as little as I did about the politics behind the issue.

Now, with a lot more reflection and experience, I can take a clearer stance, though I am still left with some questions and more than a little ambivalence.

First, a general definition: a charter school is a publicly funded school that does not have to follow the same rules an restrictions as a public school, as long as they meet certain goals laid out in their charter. Most charter schools receive anywhere from 25-40% less than public schools, though some charters inexplicably receive more public funding than public schools. Most charter schools also receive funding from private corporate and philanthropic sponsors.

In New York City, charter schools share space inside of a larger public school. That means that the charter does not have to pay any money for infrastructure- that all comes out of the public school's budget.

In New York City public schools, 14% of students are English Language Learners. In NYC charter schools, 4% are English Language Learners.

Fifteen percent of NYC public school students are labeled Special Education, as compared to 11 percent in NYC charter schools.

Charter schools serve (percentage-wise) as many Black and Latino students who qualify for free lunch as public schools (although some data argues against this).

The average class size in a New York City high school is 27. The average class size in an NYC charter school is 23.

The average NYC public school teacher makes $56,000 per year. I couldn't find how much the average charter school teacher in NYC makes, but they do not have to follow the public school salary schedule, because one exceptional school pays teachers $125,000 per year. Many charters also give teachers cellphones, laptops, and other work supplies.

Charter school principals make slightly less than public school principals, but charter school "executives" can make up to $500,000 per year.

Teachers at most charter schools are not allowed to unionize, and as far I know, no charter school offers tenure.

The data is very, very mixed as to whether charter schools outperform public schools. Some charter schools certainly do, and some certainly do not. Overall the difference is slight if there is a difference at all.

With this information in mind, here are my thoughts:

If I were a parent, I would definitely consider sending my kid to a charter school. They are (considering both public and private donors) better funded than public schools (and thus can afford better support staff and educational resources), have smaller class sizes, smaller populations of high needs students, can (theoretically) lure better teachers (while being able to fire the ones that don't work out), hire (theoretically) more committed and competent principals, and have a clear focus/mission/philosophy as laid out in the charter. It's no wonder the wait list at charter schools averages around 200 students!

I have no problem with schools that are well run and give kids quality education.

Here's the problem: all of this comes at the expense of public schools. If 10% of NYC students end up in charter schools (as Joel Klein has stated he wants), then that leaves 90% of students to deal with less money, a higher concentration of ELL and special ed students, larger class sizes, a weaker pool of teachers who don't feel supported, and weaker principals convinced that innovation and philosophical focus is the realm of charters.

I don't think charter schools are evil, but I wonder: why are policymakers so intent on abandoning public schools? Why not give public schools smaller class sizes, greater funding, greater resources, better principals, less regulation, etc.? Why create these brand new schools when their formula could be used to help fix the old ones?

I don't have the answer, but I have my guesses:

1. Elimination of teacher unions/tenure. This will never, ever happen in public schools, and perhaps they think that without it, they cannot remove bad teachers, and thus, the system will never improve.

2. Wiping the slate clean. There is some irresistible human urge to start fresh when things get too messy. Divorce is way easier in some ways than trying to save a marriage (though, on both sides of this analogy, the kids are often the one who get hurt). Starting a new school means picking your own teachers, creating your own philosophy, feeling obligated to no traditions. I'm guessing this was going through the head of the principal in Rhode Island that fired every single teacher at the school.

3. The BloomKlein stamp. Sure, they could try to fix the current schools, but that's so passe. Charter schools are a relatively new idea that could help cement their legacy as "innovators".

4. The slippery slope towards privatization. If this partially private funding thing catches on, it could greatly reduce the city's budget. Sure, corporate sponsorship could come with some ugly ethical quandries, but it works for the government, right?

As I said before, a good school is a good school, and I can't take issue with any individual charter schools that responsibly and ethically utilizes resources, teachers, and staff to effectively educate students in their communities. And in fact, even though I don't necessarily agree with it, I can see a logical argument behind starting fresh, eliminating tenure, and using private funds.

What is concerning is that Bloomberg and Klein wish to frame Charters vs. Public Schools as a clean competition (a "Race to the Top") driven by market forces that will cause all school to improve or die. If so, it is a race in which one side has been given a space shuttle and the other has been given a hot air balloon.

Crunching Numbers

I teach at a school with over 1600 students.

There are 13-15 full/part time English teachers at my school.

In the New York City Department of Education, the maximum number of students that can be enrolled in a class is 34.

I teach 5 classes.

All 5 classes have 34 students in them.

In total, I teach 170 students.

I give a minimum of 1 major essay every 6 weeks.

That means I grade at least 170 major essays every six weeks.

I give a minimum of 1 project every 6 weeks.

That means I grade at least 170 projects every six weeks.

I give around 10 homework assignments every six weeks.

That means I grade around 1700 homework assignments every six weeks.

There is an attempt at our school to require teachers to contact parents via phone 2 times per semester, or 4 times per year.

That means I would have to make 680 phone calls per year.

For years, educators have been pushing for reduced class size in public schools; lobbyists have long considered it a key to education reform. Administrators and public officials have long promised to use funds to help achieve it, and yet here I am, teaching 170 wonderful kids who I can't give enough individual attention to because of the sheer enormity of my workload. The NYC DOE is being sued by the UFT for promising (and failing) to spend money towards reducing class size.

Instead, the money is spent on just about everything BUT reducing class sizes. The closest we get are charter schools, which are given smaller class sizes (23, on average), greater selectivity of students, updated facilities, and greater autonomy. OF COURSE they are outperforming public schools- they have had four of the public system's greatest challenges removed.

Teachers and students alike are hurt by large class sizes. The only thing that seems to benefit is the school budget, which gets more money if more students are crammed in.

The Scientist and the Storyteller

Science captivates me. Or, I should say, certain areas of science captivate me. Put a television show or book about space, evolution, wildlife, emerging technology, scientific ethics, etc., in front of me and I can be entertained for hours. Something about the vastness of space, the complexity of life, the processes of evolution, the possibilities of scientific advancement, spark my neural nets something fierce.

And yet, I realize, my brain is not wired for real science. Real science is tedious and slow. The broad strokes of science that I love are built on lifetimes of small, incremental movements. Cataloging, digging, entering data, cleaning equipment, carefully attempting to remove as many variables as possible, scrapping hypotheses in the face of contradictory data. The ideas, breakthroughs, and discoveries that I learn about are distilled from so much rigorous, uneventful day-to-day work that make the field truly admirable, albeit less sexy. In education, which occasionally attempts to guise itself as a science, action research involves much the same process. I find myself far more interested in ideas than in the tedium of action research itself, even if the "action" label is supposed to convince me to feel otherwise.

An idea without methodical, empirical support is much more likely to turn out false. And yet, without someone to tell its story in a persuasive and relevant fashion, to give it a reason for existence, methodically acquired empirical data will languish uselessly in some hall of records.

The scientist and the storyteller are a necessary team for improving the lot of mankind, but for too long they've been forced to live in separate houses, not only in society, but in the mind as well. This division starts in primary and secondary education. How do educators begin to change the notion that these two roles are a forked road, an either/or choice? Each one fulfills the other, gives it purpose, gives it voice.

Part of the Cloud Crowd

As communication technology continues to develop and change, so do I. During the decade of the Internet 2.0 Renaissance, I've collected quite a few ways to spread ideas: email, blogs, Facebook, text messaging, Twitter, Forums, instant messaging, Skype, Google Wave... they combine to become this semi-chaotic swirl of information, blowing briefly worded ideas around like leaves in an updraft.

I step into this world often, the text moving above, around, and through me. I grasp at intriguing threads that float by and I pull at them, seeing where they lead. At this speed, you don't so much read as absorb. You don't so much seek out information as roll around in it and wait for something to come in handy later.

In many ways, I am thrilled by it. I am more up to date with friends, news, Education, Sports, Weather, etc. than ever before. The Web can now be both an extension of my mind and an almost frighteningly constant connection of my mind to others. Our intellects are being uploaded into the Cloud, and we are solving problems with the wisdom of the Crowd.

And yet, ambivalence rains on me like a lukewarm shower. As we contribute to and become part of the Cloud, what becomes of the rich internal lives we lead? If intimacy and immediacy can be more and more achieved through the Web, what then of those loved ones who we had specially chosen to be more intimate and immediate with than anyone else?

Ironically, I know that what I think is my rich internal life has become so despite my growing up with technologies that previous generations fretted about in the same way I am fretting about Social Networking. Within ten years, I will probably wonder why I even questioned it, as there will certainly be newer, even more socially innovative technologies pushing the envelope even further.

But I don't care. Everything may be speeding up, and in this I feel I have to try and take my time.

Two Abrahams

Abraham. The Mesopotamian man who heard a voice in his head one day and became the Patriarch of three religions. I was thinking about him this morning and was struck by the two completely different persons he is painted to be.

When God told Abraham He wanted to strike down Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness, Abraham asked him to spare it if there were 50 good people there. When God told him there weren't 50 good people there, Abraham asked him to spare it for the sake of 10 good people there.

Let me make sure the weight of this has sunk in. Abraham questioned the Lord and Creator of the Universe, the all-powerful, all-knowing Jehovah. Twice. Because he wanted to save the lives of good people, he haggled with the Almighty. Not only that, but the Almighty seemed to take him seriously, not only responding to his requests, but eventually saving Lot and his family. This seems to be a truly heroic side of Abraham.

Later, God asked Abraham to take his only son Isaac up to the mountain, tie him up, and slit his throat as a sacrifice. Without a word of protest, Abraham took his son up the mountain, tied him up, and would have sacrificed him without a peep if an angel of the Lord had not intervened. The same Abraham who questioned God over the destruction of a city full of guilty men said nothing when asked to kill his innocent son with his own hands. Kierkegaard called this a tremendous act of the "teleological suspension of the ethical," of putting God before reason. Abraham, in his estimation, was a true "Knight of Faith", a hero in different terms.

Both of these pictures paint Abraham as a man of significant courage, yet they are completely opposite of each other. Why would Abraham question God over a somewhat rational (though perhaps over-the-top) action, and yet say nothing in the face of seeming absurdity (and a far greater personal cost)? Will the real Abraham please stand up? I suspect there are different layers of textual tradition here that are put forth as one voice. But if these stories truly come from the same author, and Abraham is supposed to be an exemplar for a person devoted to God, when should one question and when should one obey?

Wheat and Chaff

Sometime after the arrest of John the Baptist and the scattering of his followers, Jesus of Nazareth began his own public ministry, preaching, as John did, that God was going to reenter human history and turn the world upside-down, and he was going to do it soon.

What would you do if you knew that God was coming to mete out cosmic justice, to separate the wheat from the chaff, and that he'd been watching and taking notes the whole time? Naturally, you'd want to put your house in order. You'd want your moral and spiritual life to be in tip-top shape when the Big Guy came to look things over.

This is what Jesus and John were urging of everyone: repent. Renounce your wicked ways and start treating each other right, because if you don't, you'll be sorry when the Bossman arrives. This was Bentham's Panopticon 2000 years earlier, except that for the devout Jews John and Jesus, someone really was watching.

It's common knowledge that Jesus' audience generally wasn't the rich or the pious. He spoke to the poor, the criminals, the vagrants, the tax collectors, the lepers- in other words, people who had likely done some things (by choice or by necessity) that they weren't proud of, and knew that God certainly wouldn't like. When they heard Jesus' message, they probably assumed that God, who knows all, had already seen their misdeeds and written their names on his cosmic list. If He was coming soon, they were screwed, so why change?

To me, many of Jesus' parables address this issue by highlighting a reversal of expectations. The wayward son is welcomed home with joy and feasting; the gutter trash of the town get invited to a wedding feast, the shepherd is concerned about one sheep that strayed; the workers who started later get paid the same as those who started earlier. The message of these parables seems to be "It's not too late."

This is a radical notion of forgiveness that is difficult to swallow. It doesn't seem in line with our traditional notions of justice and fairness. The worker who works less should get paid less; the son who disobeys should not be treated better than the one who obeyed. A whole flock of sheep should not be put in danger in order to save one.

And yet, if everyone who has done wrong in their lives feels as though they cannot turn back, the world of the righteous would shrink to almost nothing. Jesus understood that forgiveness and hope are essential to justice and repentance here on earth.

But do we now offer forgiveness (or simply forget transgressions) so easily that some people will say sorry until they're blue in the face without really changing? Nowadays, it seems lucky to even get an apology, sincere or not. After 2000 years, the notion that God is coming soon with his axe and his winnowing rod seems to have lost some of its punch. Jesus and John were not content to wait for God and let him sort things out. They wanted people to enact their own transformations. In the absence of the threat of sulfur and brimstone, how do you make people want to do the right thing?

What is the grass?

I just got done visiting my father's grave for the first time since we buried him last month.

The gravestone is not finished yet, so there is just a modest marker with his name on it. A coffin-shaped square of freshly-turned soil leaves little to the imagination as to where exactly my father's body lies.

Walt Whitman said that grass is the "uncut hair of graves". Until the grass seeds begin to sprout, Dad's grave site will be as bald as his head.

The next time I am able to visit, the grave may be covered in snow. It may not be until next summer that I can see him coated in lush greenness. I look forward to laying in that grass and reading dad some Whitman from his dog-eared copy of Leaves of Grass.

My father worked in Education his entire life, sometimes as a teacher. What was there in him is there in me; but I work with a different population than he usually did. Is it my job to make them appreciate Whitman the way I do or to show them through Whitman how to appreciate something else? Can we really say, with the economy in the crapper and the United States ranking far below most first-world countries in test scores, that "appreciation" is a luxury our kids can afford? I'm not sure, but I did think that would be a good way to transition a very personal post into a professionally relevant reflection.