Monthly Archives: August 2014

The Connection Between Choice and Humility, Edition Two

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Richard Kahlenberg and Halley Potter have an op-ed on diverse charter schools in today’s New York Times.

I enjoy Richard and Halley’s work and am aligned with their goal of achieving more socioeconomic diversity in our public schools.

In their new book, I am quoted on the benefits of diverse charter schools.

That being said, I believe the thesis of their op-ed falls into the trap of many charter school commentators (which I have written on before).

Many commentators praise charter schools that align with their vision of what makes a great school. Many of these same commentators then dismiss charter schools that do not align with their vision.

Not enough commentators give credence to the idea that different families want different things for their children.

While socioeconomic diversity is a noble goal, it may not be the number one priority for all families.

So yes, let’s support socioeconomic diverse charter schools.

But let’s also recognize that these types of schools will hopefully be only one of the thousands of school model innovations we will see when we hand power back to educators and families.

Lastly, perhaps the greatest irony of the piece is that it dismisses the strong evidence of the benefits of charter schools for African-American students while making a case for a specific type of charter school that (as far as I know) is supported by little rigorous research.

The Potential for Diverse Charter Schools

I agree with their take that diverse charter schools hold promise for both increasing student achievement and good citizenship.

When I worked at NSNO, we invested in a diverse start-up charter school, Bricolage Academy, for these very reasons. So far, the school is off to a strong start.

However, while there are high-performing diverse charter schools across the country, I have not seen a rigorous study that systematically studies their effectiveness. And, all told, this is still a young sub-movement within the charter school sector.

So while I’m bullish on the model, I also think the slim evidence base on these charter schools warrants caution.

The Research Base on Diverse Schools

I think Kahlenberg and Potter make significant mistakes in how they communicate and interpret research.

First, they site weak evidence for their argument that diverse schools benefit students.

They note: “Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress in Mathematics show that low-income fourth graders who attend economically integrated schools are as much as two years ahead of low-income students stuck in high-poverty schools.”

There are major, obvious methodological reasons not to use one-time NAEP scores to support any education intervention.

Kahlenberg and Potter would be wise to trust Matt Dicarlo at the Shanker Institute when he says NAEP scores “can’t be used to draw even moderately strong inferences about what works and what doesn’t.”

The Research Base on Charter Schools

Kahlenberg and Potter write: “the diminished teacher influence and increased segregation might be tolerable if charter schools regularly outperformed traditional public schools, but in reality, although much media attention is showered on high-flying charter chains like KIPP and Success Academy, on the whole charters do about the same.”

This is a dangerous half-truth that is often repeated.

Yes, charter schools, on average, perform about the same as traditional schools.

But, as I’ve written numerous times, CREDO’s 27 state study on charter schools found that African-American students in poverty who attended charter schools achieved nearly two months of extra learning per year.

Kahlenberg and Potter clearly care about the fact that African-American students continue to suffer from poor educational opportunities.

As such, I am unsure why they ignore this evidence, especially when the data comes from the very study they are referencing.

And, perhaps most surprisingly, they site no rigorous evidence for the actual charter model for which they are advocating.

The Purpose of Charter Schools

Kahlenberg and Potter open their article discussing Albert Shanker’s original vision for charter schools. Shanker’s envisioned that charter schools would be a place for empowered teachers to develop innovations that the traditional public could then adopt.

I have two thoughts on this.

First, I find Shanker’s vision to be an odd one. If Shanker thought that empowered educators would innovate more frequently, then why only grant this power to a few select schools, and why keep in place the existing structures that are hampering innovation?

Second, while I think it is important to understand the original vision for charter schools, it is an unclear to me that we should give this vision much weight. Just because something is created for one reason does not mean we should be beholden to this rationale.

In Closing

I think it bears repeating:

Yes, let’s support socioeconomic diverse charter schools.

But let’s also recognize that these types of schools will hopefully be only one of the thousands of school model innovations we will see when we hand power back to educators and families.

Sentences to Ponder – Nocera Edition

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1. Nocera writes an op-ed on Tucker that is void of real analysis

“Ever since the passage of No Child Left Behind 12 years ago, teachers have been judged, far too simplistically, based on standardized tests given to their students.”

Note: This perhaps the most wildly inaccurate statement I have ever seen written in the New York Times. Over the past 12 years, how many teachers have actually been judged in any real way based on student test scores? I would venture under .01% (and I’m not trying to weigh in on whether this is good or bad, just trying to clarify that very few teachers in this country face real consequences based on the performance of their students on standardized tests). Unfortunately, I find this type of column typical for Nocera, who generally summarizes other’s thoughts rather than providing critical analysis.

For my response to Tucker, see here.

2. Against empathy

“In light of these features, our public decisions will be fairer and more moral once we put empathy aside.”

3. Where slavery thrived, inequality rules today [HT Davis Z]

“In lands turned over to slavery, Wright had observed, there was little incentive to provide so-called public goods—schools, libraries, and other institutions—that attract migrants. In the North, by contrast, the need to attract and retain free labor in areas resulted in a far greater investment in public goods—institutions that would, over the succeeding decades, offer far greater opportunities for social mobility and lay the foundation for sustained, superior economic growth.”

4. 25 high-performing, low-income high schools

Note: this list is disproportionately dominated by charter schools. Make of that what you will – charters cream? charters have long tails on either end of performance? charters are both better at the median and at the tail?

The Best Practice Mindset vs. the Evolutionary Mindset

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When I started helping develop charter schools in New Orleans, I viewed this work as a school level intervention; i.e, students being poorly served in an underperforming school might be better served if we opened an excellent school.

This was a narrow way of looking at it.

Yes, charter schools are a school-based intervention. But, more importantly, they are a governance-based intervention.

Overtime, a sizable charter sector transitions a city’s educational system from a top down, bureaucratic monolith into a system that evolves based on educators on the ground constantly tinkering until they figure out what works.

Here’s another way to think about it: the best practice mindset vs. the evolutionary mindset.

The school intervention mindset is a best practice mindset. District officials and school board members, who constantly promise to adopt best practices, often possess this mindset. The goal is to identify what works and implement it.

Those seeking to change governance models are saying that a decentralized ecosystem of educator run schools will harness entrepreneurship, cooperation, and competition to deliver long-term better system level results. This is an evolutionary mindset.

There is nothing wrong with trying to implement best practices. But somebody also needs to be thinking at the systems level. Someone needs to be thinking with an evolutionary mindset. Someone needs to be saying:

“I’m going to help build a system that doesn’t just adopt best practices but constantly invents new ones. Not because of the strength of an individual school or leader, but because there is a set of schools that are independently experimenting on the ground.”

At scale, a charter school district gives power to educators to innovate, to creatively solve problems, to make mistakes but also to be held accountable if too many mistakes are made.

So, at the end of the day – in terms of a policy tool – charter schools should be understood through an evolutionary mindset.

Implementing the best practices of today is an important goal. But, of greater concern, is the fact that the best practices of tomorrow are currently being held hostage by outdated institutions.

We should hand power back to educators so they can invent, not just implement.

Thoughts on Petrilli on Ed Reform Backlash

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Mike Petrilli wrote a thoughtful piece on the current backlash on ed reform.

This is Mike’s argument:

American schools aren’t failing.

But American schools are often mediocre and lack urgency.

The mediocrity in suburban schools (especially those that serve mostly middle to high income families) is not as dire because the kids generally have access to other supports.

The mediocrity in urban schools is dire because these students already have so much stacked up against them.

Solution for suburban schools: utilizes standards (such as common core) to create a sense of urgency and raise expectations for what student can accomplish. But ditch centralized teacher evaluations, etc.

Solution for urban schools: be more aggressive; transform governance; let the best charter schools scale until they educate the majority of children in these settings.

Where I Agree with Mike

For the most past, I agree that American schools aren’t “failing” in the worst sense of the word. Some cities, such as New Orleans, have faced complete systems failure in the recent past, but most cities have not.

I agree that many American schools lack urgency. I felt this was the best part of Amanda Ripley’s narrative. And studies of American student television watching, homework, etc. seem to also paint this picture.

I agree that common core could raise expectations in suburban schools – but only if rigorous assessments accompany the standards (I assume Mike would agree).

I agree that urban systems should transform themselves into charter systems.

Where I Might Disagree with Mike

I think suburban communities would likely, over time, develop better schools if their systems were charter systems.

Recently, I wrote about the fact that suburban charter schools underperform traditional schools in terms of test scores. But suburban charter schools are small in number and I believe are currently being formed as an alternative to test based schooling.

My guess is that a more mature suburban charter sector would eventually evolve to include many Great Hearts type of schools – schools that exist to provide a more rigorous academic environment than the current system.

In a world without political constraints, I believe chartering suburban education systems would lead to better outcomes than simply implementing better standards and assessments in these systems.

We Each Have Our Own Political Problems

Here’s my political problem: trying to charter suburban school systems will be a wildly difficult battle.

The incumbents are wealthy, politically connected, competent, and providing a decent product.

Incumbents like this are extremely hard to displace.

Here’s Mike’s political problem: he’s saying suburban communities should get light touch reform but urban communities should get hardcore reform.

The race and class dimensions of such a proposal will be clear to all involved.

This doesn’t mean Mike’s proposal is wrong on the merits, but it does mean that (on average) white and black families will be treated differently by (generally) white governors and state legislators.

Where to Go From Here?

Well, my time (and the time of many other great folks) will be spent trying to help transform the structure and performance of urban school systems.

Plenty of people’s time will also be spent on trying to implement common core.

So that leaves two questions:

Will, per Mike’s suggestion, the reform community retreat from centralized teacher evaluation type reforms?

Will, per my suggestion, a suburban charter school movement swell into a force that can provide much better choices for middle class families?

I’m not sure.

Sentences to Ponder

Investing in iPads or Educator Run Non-Profit Schools?

What’s the Matter with Suburban Charter Schools?

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Perhaps nothing. But it’s worth exploring.

When I talk about positive charter school performance, I often include the caveat that it’s generally “urban charter schools” or “charter schools serving low-income students” that are driving these results.

The reason for this is simple: numerous high-quality studies in numerous cities document the positive results of urban charter schools; however, similar studies often find much lower performance in suburban charter schools or charter schools predominantly serving white students.

See below for CREDO’s summary of charter school effects across various subgroups:

As the table illustrates, charter schools achieve negative effects with white students (reading and math), Asian students (math), and non-poor Hispanic students (reading and math).

So what’s going on?

I’ve emailed, discussed, and tweeted with some folks (including Mike Goldstein and Ryan Hill) on the issue.

Here’s some possible reasons:

People in the Suburbs Care Less About Test Scores: Perhaps both suburban educators (who found charter schools) and suburban families (who send their children to these charter schools) simply care less about test score performance. If we assume that charters are often created to be an alternative to existing public schools – and if many suburban public schools already perform adequately on state tests – then the likely reason suburban charter schools form is to provide choice on some other dimension, with a de-emphasis on testing.

Urban Charter Founders > Suburban Charter Founders: Perhaps the founders of urban charter schools simply are more “talented” (smarts, grittiness, creative, or however one might want to define it) than founders of suburban charter schools. Under this interpretation, suburban charter school leaders want to achieve high test score performance, but they, unlike their urban counterparts, are not able to build institutions that can accomplish this goal.

Unobserved Selection Effects: Perhaps the students that attend suburban charter schools – while being of the same demographics as their traditional school peers – possess different unobserved traits. Perhaps they (and their families) are less conscientious, or more prone to risk-taking, than their traditional school peers, and these traits degrade their academic performance over time.

I do not know of any rigorous studies that point to one explanation over the others.

One piece of evidence that complicates the picture is the existence of some very high-performing suburban charter schools, such as Great Hearts Academies, which scored very well in CREDO’s CMO study.

Great Hearts has positioned itself as a more rigorous option than traditional public schools. At the very least, Great Hearts stands as evidence that there exists real diversity in what families in the suburbs desire for their children.

Ultimately, if I had to guess, my bet is that it’s some combination of all three of the aforementioned explanations.

It would not surprise me if suburban charters were providing a less test focused option; if on average these charters were opened by less talented founders; and if there did exist some type of unobserved selection effect.

But I don’ really know.

Bonus question: should we close a suburban charter school if parents are explicitly sending their children to these schools to sacrifice test score achievement for some other benefit?

I don’t know about that either.

relinquishment

writing about handing power back to educators and families – and other thoughts