Tag Archives: charter schools

TEACHED films bolstered by $50,000 grant from TFA

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teachedTeach For America (TFA) announced the winners of its annual Social Innovation Award, including education advocate-turned-filmmaker Kelly Amis, who was one of the first 500 college graduates to be accepted into this national teacher recruitment program.

Amis will receive a $50,000 grant from TFA’s Social Entrepreneurship Initiative to support TEACHED, an innovative series of short films documenting the causes and consequences of education inequality in America, particularly as experienced by urban students of color.

Based on Amis’s twenty years of teaching, research and advocacy in K-12 education, TEACHED is intended to provoke thoughtful discussion on challenging issues, remind viewers of the civil rights struggle behind many of today’s education battles and motivate more people to engage in urban education reform. Amis explains, “The short film format is designed to be more conducive to interactive screenings–the films can be easily interspersed with guest speakers and heightened audience participation–and also intended to reach a larger, more diverse audience through online streaming and social media.”

The first three TEACHED short films, collectively titled “TEACHED Vol. I,” premiered at the Napa Valley Film Festival in November 2011 and have since won “Outstanding Achievement for Short Documentary” at the Williamsburg International Film Festival and the jury prize for “Spirit of Independence” at the Amsterdam Film Festival. They are currently available for online viewing via SnagFilms and for community-organized screenings.

Teach for America received 87 applications for two tracks within the Social Innovation Award: an Overall Track for alumni entrepreneurs like Amis who have already tested their idea and a Pre-Pilot Track for those who are in the early planning and development stage. The awards were made possible with support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the Doris & Donald Fisher Fund, and Joyce and Larry Stupski. Full results for this year’s awards are available at http://www.tfasocialinnovationaward.com/2013-award-winners.html.

TEACHED is a non-profit film project fiscally-sponsored by the International Documentary Association. TEACHED Vol. II and Two Boys, a feature-length documentary being filmed in Washington, DC, are currently under production.

Synopses of the TEACHED Vol. I films:

The Path to Prison  (7 min.)

A former gang-member from South Central, Los Angeles helps explain how so many capable and intelligent young men-especially African-American males-end up uneducated and incarcerated in the ‘land of the free.’

The Blame Game: Teachers Speak Out  (16 min.)

Public school teachers speak candidly about their profession and the consequences for students-especially urban minority students-of policies that treat all teachers as equal and make it difficult to fire a teacher even in the most extreme circumstances.

Unchartered Territory (17 min.)

Featuring some of the most successful pioneers of this still-developing frontier, Unchartered Territory explains what charter schools are, why they were created and why some are performing so well and others…not so much.

For more information, please contact info@teached.org or visit this website: http://www.tfasocialinnovationaward.com/

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Los Angeles school Pioneers Blended Learning Model

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educationsectorA Los Angeles High School is trying to prove that more individual instruction can be provided with larger class sizes.  How might they accomplish this? Alliance Tennenbaum Family Technology High School hopes that blended learning, a model which for this school includes a third of their class time in traditional teacher-led instruction, a third working independently online, and a third in collaboration with each other, can provide the answer.

A new article from Education Sector, “The Right Mix: How One Los Angeles School is Blending a Curriculum for Personalized Learning”, profiles an east Los Angeles charter school that illustrates both the strengths and the challenges of implementing this radical new way of educating students.

Tennenbaum, which uses a rotational model, gives students three ways to learn: Students spend a third of their class time in traditional teacher-led instruction, a third working independently online, and a third in collaboration with each other. “At Tennenbaum, what looks like a class size of 48 students effectively becomes an ideal student-to-teacher ratio of 16-to-1,” says author Susan Headden. The school also departs from the norm in that its curriculum is competency-based—students move on only when they’ve proven mastery of the material.

To a large extent, Tennenbaum has taken a leap of faith, Headden says. There is still little research on the effectiveness of blended learning or on which models work best. But Headden says one thing seems clear: “For technology to make a difference in student learning, it must be integral to instruction, and it must come with humans attached.”

Read Headden’s full article “The Right Mix: How One Los Angeles School is Blending a Curriculum for Personalized Learning”. Also watch “A Look Inside Tennenbaum,” for exclusive interviews with Tennenbaum Principal Mickie Tubbs, and to see the school’s rotational model in action: http://www.educationsector.org/publications/right-mix-how-one-los-angeles-school-blending-curriculum-personalized-learning

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Charters still face Upward Climb

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PPI_promoThe Center for Education Reform has just issued its annual Charter School Law Report Card, and most states do not make the grade. The majority of states, according to the report, are only making “satisfactory” progress, and only 13 states have “strong” charter school laws. Among the nation’s 43 states with charter school laws, only four received “A” scores, nine received “B” scores, 19 received “C” scores, and the remaining 11 states scored at “D” or “F”.

CER president Jeanne Allen warned against a lack of increased reforms: “At 21 years old, the national charter school movement is only making satisfactory progress. Satisfactory progress is not good enough for our students’ report cards and it shouldn’t be good enough for our state report cards. In the past two years, we’ve seen two new charter laws but both are average in their construction, unlikely to yield large numbers of successful charter schools, and only minimal state improvements. Many states failed to advance substantive reform in 2012, a fact we hope to see change this year.”

The Center for Education Reform argues that the charter school movement, which has only been active for 21 years, has shown “unparalleled” success, “with more than 2 million students today attending in excess of 6,000 public charter schools.” Whether or not the charter schools should be considered a success, the fact is that many states have simply not offered charter schools a real chance to get started. Not to mention the eight states that do not have public charter laws.

As an example, the state of Maryland exemplifies states that have done little to encourage charter schools. According to the state of Maryland education website, there are only a little over 50 public charter schools in Maryland, all contained within seven of its districts. The charter school law in Maryland was only passed in 2003.  Maryland scored a low “D” in the report by the Center for Education Reform, which cited strictures by local school boards as a major hindrance to parents looking for more school choice through public charters.

The Charter School Law Report Card is one of the key components used by the Center for Education Reform to create its Parent Power Index. The Parent Power Index is a broader index of how successful each state is at allowing access and agency for parents of students. Taking into account school choice, charter schools, online learning, teacher quality (including means of evaluation), and transparency, the Parent Power Index provides a ranking of states.

For more information, please visit the following links:

http://www.edreform.com/2013/01/annual-charter-school-law-report-card-issued/

http://www.edreform.com/in-the-states/parent-power-index/

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16 Race to the Top District Winners Announced

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ClickHandler.ashxOn December 11, 2012, the Education Department announced the 16 winners of the Race to the Top school district grants (RTTD).  61 Finalists had been announced recently out of an original 372 districts that turned in applications in November. A total of $400 million was due to go out, and winners ranged from $10 million to $40 million for a period of four years, depending on the population of the given district.  The winners included urban and rural districts, small districts and large consortia, and public and charter schools. The only large, urban school district to win was Miami-Dade (FL), which also just won the Broad Prize.

The winners, by order of total mean score, are as follows:

  1. Carson City, NV (208.33)
  2. New Haven Unified, CA (207.67)
  3. Miami-Dade, FL (207.00)
  4. Puget Sound Consortium, WA (205.33)
  5. Guilford County, NC (205.33)
  6. Metropolitan School District of Warren Township in Indianapolis, IN (205.00)
  7. IDEA public schools, TX (203.00) [charter schools]
  8. Charleston County, SC (201.67)
  9. Harmony Science Academy consortia, TX (201.67) [charter schools]
  10. St. Vrain Valley, CO (200.33)
  11. Galt Joint Union, CA (199.67)
  12. Iredell-Statesville, NC (199.67)
  13. Middletown City, NY (199.33)
  14. KIPP, DC (199) [charter schools]
  15. Green River Regional Education Cooperative, KY (197)
  16. Lindsay Unified, CA (196.33)

The rankings were based on the evaluations of “independent peer reviewers.”

The grants are designed specifically to target and “support locally developed plans to personalize and deepen student learning, directly improve student achievement and educator effectiveness, close achievement gaps, and prepare every student to succeed in college and their careers.” The Education Department also released a more detailed explanation of what the grant money will address:

Race to the Top-District plans are tailored to meet the needs of local communities and feature a variety of strategies, including: using technology to personalize learning for each student; giving students opportunities to learn beyond the traditional school day and environment; supporting students’ transitions throughout their education, including from high school to college and careers; expanding partnerships with community organizations to provide students with targeted social services like crisis intervention, individual counseling and life enrichment opportunities; and providing professional development and coursework options to deepen learning in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.

The education department was very enthusiastic about the results, especially concerning how diversified the school districts were that won. Arne Duncan, education secretary, commented, “Districts have been hungry to drive reform at the local level, and now these winners can empower their school leaders to pursue innovative ideas where they have the greatest impact: in the classroom. The Race to the Top-District grantees have shown tremendous leadership though developing plans that will transform the learning environment and enable students to receive a personalized, world-class education.”  Duncan also tweeted his opinions shortly after the results were released: “Race to the Top sparked as much reform in some states that didn’t receive funds as in those that did-a trend we want to see continue. We had many more great RTTD applicants than money. We hope districts will move aggressively forward with their RTTD blueprints.”

Questions certainly remain, however, especially about the process by which the decisions were made.

Several districts that had been listed in the previously released top 61 finalists did not finish in the overall top 61 when each of the scores is ranked. The Education Department has not yet explained if the finalists were re-scored before a final determination was made. In particular, Baltimore, which had been one of the 61 finalists, finished in 109th place.  Lane County School District 4J, OR wasn’t a finalist but ended in 52nd.

Of the 16 winners, only 5 are from states that originally won Race to the Top money, and nearly all of the large, urban school districts lost. Some of the city districts that applied and lost include Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, Dallas, Nashville, New York City, Newark, Philadelphia, and St. Louis. Finally, the only two districts that won top dollar ($40 million) were for consortia of schools.

For more information, please visit these two links from the Education Department:

http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/education-department-announces-16-winners-race-top-district-competition

http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop-district/awards.html

Also see these three links for further commentary:

http://www.edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/flypaper/2012/first-take-on-race-to-the-top-district-results.html

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/District_Dossier/2012/12/race_to_the_top_district_winne.html

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/12/12/14rtt_ep.h32.html

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Unclear Mandates & Uncertain Direction for Education Reform

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Yesterday, Andrew Rotherham reflected in TIME magazine on the election results and their meaning for public education reform. From the presidential election to local elections and ballot questions, the picture of public support for education is murky, leaving newly elected politicians with no clear roadmap for reform. Rotherham writes about the meaning of the election results in four key areas:

Standards for teachers and students
The biggest omen for the Obama Administration is, ironically, the defeat of a high-profile Republican, Indiana state schools superintendent Tony Bennett. He has been a quiet Obama ally, most notably in the fight to reform teacher evaluations and develop common academic standards in all 50 states. The latter effort didn’t endear him to conservatives, and Bennett’s Democratic opponent said she’d pull the state out of the standards initiative. Bennett also angered teachers’ unions with his blunt talk and his support for one of the toughest teacher-evaluation laws in the country. This left-right convergence led to Bennett’s losing on the same night that a conservative Republican won the governorship, and that doesn’t bode well for Obama’s centrist approach to education reform. Or for that matter, for GOP leaders on these issues, including former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who has championed many of the initiatives that got trounced on Tuesday night.

In other Republican-on-Republican violence, Idaho schools chief Tom Luna wasn’t on the ballot, but all three of his big education-reform measures were roundly defeated by voters in this solidly red state. Luna, who is a Republican and also the president of the Council of Chief State School Officers, the national organization representing state education agencies, had pushed hard for initiatives that would have instituted merit pay for teachers, weakened collective bargaining and mandated more online education and use of laptops in public schools. All bombed at the ballot box, despite an influx of donations to support them from out-of-state donors including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Meanwhile, South Dakota voters rejected a new state law that would have incorporated test-score data into teacher evaluations, added merit pay and weakened teacher tenure. The bill had passed the state’s legislature by just one vote, and defeating it was a top priority of teachers’ unions.

Unions didn’t win everywhere, however. In Michigan, which Obama carried, voters rejected a measure that would have expanded collective-bargaining rights for teachers and other workers. Bottom line: Just as we saw in Wisconsin last year, organized labor is not viewed sympathetically by many voters from either party, but teachers’ unions can still pack a punch when their back is against the wall. No one wants to be perceived as offending teachers. And that message won’t be lost on state and local elected officials — who will all be on the ballot in the next few years — as they debate how much risk they’re willing to take to carry out the President’s agenda.

Charter schools
Publicly funded charter schools were the night’s big education winner, scoring two hard-fought victories on opposite sides of the country. In Georgia, after the state supreme court struck down a charter-school law as unconstitutional, reformers took their case directly to voters, who by a decisive 58% to 41% margin approved a modification to the state’s constitution that will enable a special commission to authorize charter schools. In Washington, voters narrowly approved a referendum allowing the creation of charter schools, after rejecting similar initiatives in 1996, 2000 and 2004. Charter-school supporters like me see these wins as a sign that giving families more choices in education is no longer a question of if but of when and how.

Immigration reform
Maryland voters passed a state version of the controversial DREAM Act, granting in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants at public colleges and universities, provided they meet certain conditions. Long stalled in Congress, the measure sailed through on the ballot, with 59% of Maryland voters in favor of it and 41% opposed. That lopsided result, along with the growing importance of Latino voters in national politics, should embolden skittish politicians elsewhere in the country to help Obama tackle the issue of comprehensive immigration reform.

Education spending
The other big issue, in addition to immigration reform, that the President will face early in his second term is the deficit. In California, the prospect of additional education budget cuts helped prompt voters to pass a temporary increase in sales and income taxes. Fiscally, California is running on fumes, but the difficulty of doing something about it previews the coming debate in Washington over balancing spending cuts and tax increases to get the federal budget under control.

The fiscal cliff will now dominate politics in Washington. But the real education story of the 2012 election is the fragility of the reform consensus and the high-wire act the President and Republican reformers have ahead of them.

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Green Dot Announces Pay-for-Performance Agreement

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Green Dot Public Schools (GDPS), a charter school network operating in inner urban Los Angeles, announced earlier this month the approval of a contract with its teachers that includes a pay-for-performance evaluation tool.  Though the agreement does not “make the critical link between teacher compensation and student performance,” it does position the charter group to do so in two years.

Right now, teachers are getting their regular step and column advancement, but both labor and management is working to perfect the evaluation process with the expectation of formally incorporating it as a component for setting teacher compensation.  This agreement is unique among public (both charter and traditional) schools, because not only has a pay-for-performance plan been agreed to, but it has been agreed to with the support of the teachers’ union.

“We’re working very collaboratively with the teachers,” Marco Petruzzi, CEO of GDPS said. “They’ve really put a lot into this – in fact, nearly 30 percent of our teachers participated in focus groups and other activities. I think that’s really important – that it has been a group effort and not top-down, and we really worked through the details with the union.”

Though GDPS has always had a contract that includes performance evaluations, the new system makes the process more formalized.  For starters, administrators will be required to get specific training before they are allowed to conduct classroom evaluations.  They will also have to follow a specific process for conducting the evaluation, including transcribing a minimum sequence of at least 45 minutes of instruction.

In the meantime, GDPS has implemented an element of pay for performance in their compensation structure.  For the next two years, high performing teachers will be eligible for bonuses from $500-2,000.  “What we are doing is piloting teacher bonus on top of the step and column increases,” said Arielle Zurzolo, a teacher in GDPS and president of the union. “So teachers are guaranteed their money until we can feel confident to say that we trust this system – that is, when the system can say that you are an effective teacher, you are an effective teacher.”

Petruzzi said the administration is very sensitive to concerns about moving ahead too quickly.  “We know that there are a lot of kinks that need to be worked out,” he said. “We want, number one, for the credibility of the system to be very high.”

The progress made by GDPS vis-à-vis teacher evaluation has largely come from grant money from the Gates Foundation and the US Department of education over the past three years.  The uncertainty of how the system might continue to be funded once the grants have ended has led GDPS to consider how they may continue to make significant steps forward.  California’s struggling economy has decreased state education funding, and it is hard to predict when it might recover.  “In our mind, if we can get funding back to where it was [in 2008]—we have a path to make all of this work,” said Petruzzi.  “And it’s something that is highly repeatable by all districts.

To read the full story, please visit http://www.siacabinetreport.com/articles/viewarticle.aspx?article=2408

 

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Managing Talent for Coherence: Learning from CMOs

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A new report by the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) finds that leaders in the charter sector hire teachers based on their fit with a school’s mission, not just their individual characteristics and talent, as a way to build strong schools.  The report, Managing Talent for Coherence: Learning from Charter Management Organizations, details how some CMOs have created personnel systems focused on hiring, developing, and rewarding teachers who best suit their approach and mission.

“As reformers continue to push public education away from compliance-driven human resource policies and toward performance-driven approaches, they need to ask not only how they can hire and reward effective teachers, but also how they can build talent management systems…and create coherent work environments that develop and support their performance,” write the authors of the report.

The CMOs in the study used three broad strategies to find and develop their teachers:

  1. Recruiting and hiring for fit.  CMO leaders sought out teachers with the skills they valued, used focused recruitment messages to communicate their mission and expectations for teachers, and watched candidates teach and interact with members of the school community.
  2. Intensive socialization on the job.  Teachers were continually socialized toward the school’s particular goals and strategies.  This was largely done through teachers and principals watching each other work and constantly sharing information about the schools’ expectations.
  3. Purposeful pay and career advancement opportunities.  Exceptional teachers were given chances to work as staff developers or start new schools.  Some CMOs use flexible, performance-based compensation rather than traditional step-and-lane models.  The promotions and rewards were often determined by a combination of student performance and the professional judgment of leaders, rather than by hard-and-fast performance metrics or assessments.

Most CMOs are non-unionized, which gives them flexibility to try more creative approaches to hiring and compensation.  As a result, the authors acknowledge that not all of these practices can be easily transferred to traditional school districts and union contracts.  However, there are a few things districts could do to develop a more intentional, coherent approach to personnel management.  For example, districts could:

  • Press schools to decide what skills and values their teachers need to be successful
  • Help to create recruiting messages that communicate those priorities
  • Build relationships with different training programs that deliver the right teachers
  • Incorporate demonstration lessons and other assessments into the hiring process
  • Develop classroom-based teacher supports aligned to each school’s values and practices
  • Provide career opportunities and financial rewards for teachers who exemplify the type of teaching the district wants, beyond raising test scores

To read the full report, please visit http://www.crpe.org/cs/crpe/view/csr_pubs/500

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Report Reveals Promising Practices of High-Impact CMOs

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Last week, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) and Mathematica released a follow-up study to their January report on successful charter management organizations (CMOs).  The new report, Learning from Charter School Management Organizations: Strategies for Student Behavior and Teacher Coaching, delves deeper, explaining how five successful CMOs put two successful approaches into practice.

This four-year study is analyzing the effectiveness of 22 CMOs by comparing the reading and math achievement of approximately 19,000 CMO middle school students to those with similar backgrounds and prior achievement in traditional schools. Researchers isolated the hallmark practices of the five high-performing CMOs, drawing on information obtained from CMO central office staff, principals, and teachers.

The report describes strategies for communicating and enforcing high expectations for student behavior in four of the high-performing CMOs: Inner City Education Foundation, KIPP DC, Uncommon Schools, and YES Prep. These CMOs’ schools relied, more than other schools, on a model that includes school-wide student behavior expectations with positive reinforcements and clear consequences, zero tolerance policies for potentially dangerous behaviors, and consistent school-wide enforcement of the student behavior systems. The CMOs reinforced behavior norms by having students and teachers role-play scenarios, by building relationships with parents (including signed contracts investing families in the school culture), and by providing teachers with training to model and enforce student expectations. By conveying consistent and clear expectations to students, these CMOs try to create a safe, focused environment where effective learning can take place.

The other practice common in many high-performers profiled is an intense and targeted approach to teacher monitoring and coaching. Four of the CMOs, Aspire (schools throughout California), KIPP DC (Washington, DC), Uncommon Schools (Boston, New York City, Newark, Rochester, and Troy), and YES Prep (Greater Houston), try to ensure that teachers are observed frequently by administrators and by master teachers and receive prompt feedback. Individualized coaching, coordinated throughout the school, makes use of a rich trove of achievement data, and teachers receive intensive preparation on classroom management.

“The students attending these CMOs are making remarkable academic gains, and it’s important to examine closely the strategies they are employing, both at the school and system level,” said Robin Lake, Director of CRPE and lead author of the report.  The report includes specific examples of how behavior management and teacher coaching systems are set up, and elucidates-in the words of the educators interviewed-their value and the challenges they pose.

The report makes clear that there may be barriers to expanding these practices or transferring them to other schools and districts. These approaches rely on robust data systems that are used regularly to inform instruction, a partnership with parents, a clear set of instructional goals, and strong school leaders–characteristics that may be absent in some institutions. Specific rules (such as a district ban on behavior rewards) may hinder implementation of these practices, or they may be difficult to scale up because of resource constraints.

To read the full report, please visit http://www.crpe.org/cs/crpe/view/csr_pubs/485

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New Study Attempts to Isolate What Works in Charter Schools

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Roland Fryer and Will Dobbie, researchers at Harvard University, have released a new study that claims “what happens inside New York City charter schools is more important than their ideological affiliations in determining academic success.”  The paper, Getting Beneath the Veil of Effective Schools: Evidence from New York City, consists of in-depth case studies at self-selecting charter schools who were paid $5,000 for their time (interviews with principals, teachers and students; providing test scores and lesson plans, videotaping lessons, etc.).

The purpose of the study was to find which traits of city-based charter schools seem to be most closely linked with academic success.  Furthermore, the researchers wished to determine if any particular philosophy, such as “whole child” or “no excuses” approaches, resulted in greater academic achievement than others.

Fryer and Dobbie concluded that teacher credentials, class size, and per-pupil spending did not account for test score differences across schools.  They also found that if a school does not have 1) frequent teacher feedback; 2) high rates of data usage; 3) “high-dose” tutoring; 4) more class time; and 5) a culture of high expectations, the philosophy under which the school operates does not boost its students’ achievement.  These five policy variables explain almost half of the variation in school effectiveness.  Even after taking into account alternative models of schooling and other variables, these five policy variables continued to be statistically important and predictive of success in a different sampling of schools.

It should be noted that this study has not been peer-reviewed; however, the ideas presented are certainly worth considering seriously as the country continues to grapple with education reform.  To read the full study, please visit http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/effective_schools.pdf

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The State of Charter Schools

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Last month, the Center for Education Reform (CER) released The State of Charter Schools: What We Know—and What We Do Not—About Performance and Accountability, a report analyzing the nation’s charter schools.  The report found that historically, charter schools have a 15% closure rate.  Charter school closure is usually the result of a failure to meet accountability standards set by the charter school authorizing body.

The report contradicts a commonly-heard criticism that low-performing charter schools are never closed.  “The truth is charter schools that don’t measure up are closing at a rate of 15 percent.  Regrettably, the same can’t be said for traditional public schools,” said Jeanne Allen, president of CER.

Additionally, the report found that of the approximately 6,700 charter schools that have opened in the US since 1992, 1,036 have been closed.  An additional 500 charters have been consolidated back into the district or received a charter but never opened.  Moreover, most charters that close for financial or operational deficiencies do so within the first five years, or within their first charter contract.  Academic closures take longer because the whole charter term is required to collect enough useable data and make comparisons.

Another interesting find is that there are five primary reasons for charter closures:

–Financial (41.7%)

–Mismanagement (24%)

–Academic (18.6%)

–District obstacles (6.3%)

–Facilities (4.6%)

Allen sums up the report by observing that writing off charter schools by saying there are too many bad ones is too simplistic and is inaccurate.  “The real story about charter school closures and accountability is that strong state charter laws and strong authorizers give schools a better chance at success because they hold them accountable and can offer them tools to succeed.”

To read the full report, please visit http://www.edreform.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/StateOfCharterSchools_CER_Dec2011-Web-1.pdf

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