By: Curtis Valentine,
Deputy Director of the Reinventing America’s Schools Project with the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) and At-Large Member of the Prince George’s County Public School System
When asked about his childhood, Troy recalls “School was difficult. My classmates teased me due to my inability to comprehend written words. My teacher would call on me and I would have to endure an awkward silence until she moved on and called on another student.” By every measure we use to determine success and life outcomes in America, Troy Simon should be dead, unemployed, or in jail.
Troy believes a lack of parental engagement played a significant role in his low school performance and diminutive interest in education. Troy says, “My friends were always ahead of me academically because their parents were involved. My Mom and Dad both struggled with reading, but I had friends whose parents had them at a young age too, but they didn’t struggle like me with reading. Overall though, hardly anyone in my community had school spirit or happy feelings about school.”
Troy recalls, “There was a gap where I could go to school and then go home and not hear anything about school. Maybe I was supposed to be the middle man to bridge the gap between my teachers, my parents, and my community but I didn’t—or I didn’t understand how to.”
As a result, Troy found acceptance outside of school; snatching purses in the French Quarter and as a street tap dancer after teaching himself to dance. But following Hurricane Katrina, a short stint in Houston and what Troy describes as a “spiritual experience,” he began to take school seriously. Troy returned to New Orleans and enrolled in the new Recovery School District(RSD).
The RSD, administered by the Louisiana Department of Education, was created to take over and improve schools failing to meet minimum academic standards for at least four consecutive years. But after Troy discovered that the large class sizes and lax curriculum offered were not conducive to his learning needs, he enrolled in Abramson Sci Academy, a public charter high school that emphasized college readiness. Founded in 2008 with only 80 students, by 2009 Abramson Sci Academy students ranked second in Math and first in English in the RSD
Troy excelled. He graduated from Abramson Sci Academy and earned a prestigious POSSE Scholarship.As a Posse Scholar, Troy could choose from 54 different colleges and universities. Troy selected Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Despite the early challenges of transitioning to college course work, Troy graduated with honors from Bard College and is currently a joint Nursing/Divinity graduate student at Yale University.
Evidence is clear about the impact of parental engagement on student discipline and student achievement. The United Negro College Fund found a link between parental involvement and positive educational outcomes including higher grade-point averages; increased achievement in reading, writing and math; lower dropout rates; and academic self-efficacy[1]. Although all students benefit from parental involvement, research by ProfessionalSchool Counseling shows that parental involvement for students of color and those from low-income backgrounds significantly impacts their children’s school performance.
But Troy, does not let policymakers and school leaders off the hook. He believes that the future of New Orleans and the Orleans Parrish School System depends on school accountability. “Failing schools would not be tolerated in privileged communities; and therefore, it should not be tolerated in minority communities as well because minority students deserve the same privileges, opportunities, and access to a quality education like any other privilege community and school.
The national education law, ESSA, now requires that school reporting must show improvement for all groups of students and faster improvement for groups that are behind. School rating systems must also reflect the progress of underperforming student subgroups and schools can no longer depend on overall “good averages;” while neglecting or failing to facilitate academic achievement for their most vulnerable students.
Fortunately, Troy plans to use his Yale Degree to support other young Africans-Americans. Troy’s goal is to work in schools to support youth traumatized by violence, but he believes it will take schools and school systems giving him and other educators autonomy to be able to develop relationships with students. Troy believes, “If I am able to connect with the students and their parents, I am able to fully assess what the student needs (partly) and what they are going through and how I can be of any assistance to ensure their success.”
This article is a part of The ‘Reinventing America’s Schools’ series. This series highlights Change Makers from our community who are walking reflections of what’s possible when we place Accountability and Autonomy at the forefront.
The earth-shaking overhaul of New Orleans education after Hurricane Katrina has not fixed one of the city’s enduring problems: public school segregation. That’s according to a study Tulane’s Education Research Alliance for New Orleans released Tuesday (April 4).
“New Orleans schools were highly segregated prior to the city’s school reforms, especially in terms of race and income, and remain segregated now,” the authors wrote.
The changes include the state takeover of more than 100 campuses and their reinvention into independently run charters, as well as the end of automatically assigning children to schools near their homes.
The report does not detail why the problem has persisted or offer large-scale recommendations…
A $13 million dollar federal grant has been awarded to two New Orleans universities and four nonprofits in an effort to recruit and train 900 diverse teachers for Louisiana by 2020.
The U.S. Education Department’s Supporting Effective Educator Development Program grant will fund the task set forth by Xavier University and Loyola University, according to school officials Monday morning (Nov. 13) at Xavier’s campus. The schools will be collaborating with Teach For America Greater New Orleans, teachNOLA, Relay Graduate School of Education, and New Schools for New Orleans to address teacher pipeline challenges in the city.
The federal funding comes as figures from Tulane University’sEducation Research Alliance for New Orleans showed the rate of teachers leaving the profession or leaving the city was as high as 25 percent annually as of 2015. With this in mind, New Schools CEO Patrick Dobard said the funding serves as a “starting point” as organizations seek longterm sustainable strategies to fund and retain teachers in the city and the region.
Dobard said New Orleans needs to fill 800 teacher vacancies annually, and that doing so would contribute to the improved quality of its public schools. Drawing attention to the C-rating awarded to Orleans Parish schools by Louisiana’s Department of Education, Dobard stressed that “too many of our children are still not receiving the quality education that we’ve come to expect in New Orleans….”
It is 50 years since the Detroit riot, which followed a police raid on an unlicensed bar in 1967. The intensity of that event was surpassed previously only by the 1863 New York City draft riots during the Civil War, and subsequently by the 1992 Los Angeles riots. By the time it ended, 43 people were dead and over 1,000 injured. The 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions and the National Guard were deployed. At least 2,000 buildings were destroyed in a neighborhood that, half a century later, remains largely a wasteland.
The chaos, violence and brutality erupted in a city of multiple ills, with discrimination in policing, housing and employment rife; the quality of public education incredibly poor; and limited access to medical services. The riot erupted in one of the most neglected neighborhoods, in one of the nation’s most segregated cities—and little changed as Detroit continued its decline in the 50 years that followed. The city’s traditional public school system—which could and should have been a great equalizer, helping erase other injustices—has been dubbed the worst in the nation.
Today, as in many other cities where the public education system all but collapsed, public charter schools, which operate independently of the traditional school system, educate a large share of students enrolled in public schools. Taxpayer-funded and tuition-free—like traditional public schools—public charter schools may determine their own school curriculum and culture, while being held accountable for improved student performance by their authorizer, which can demand changes and even close campuses.
[/media-credit] Dr. Ramona Edelin is executive director of the D.C. Association of Chartered Public Schools.
Proficiency as measured by standardized test scores is better than at its nadir, but still far from satisfactory. There are some bright points, however. Charters have helped raise student proficiency. Of those public school students who took standardized tests in school year 2015-2016, 50 percent were enrolled in charters—but 61 percent of those who scored as “proficient” were charter students, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. And nearly half of charter students significantly outperform their Detroit Public Schools counterparts, Stanford University’s Center for Research and Education found.
With 53 percent of public school students enrolled in charters, Detroit has followed a similar path to the nation’s capital, which has a 46 percent charter school share. Only Katrina-hit New Orleans at 92 percent is higher among large cities. Washington, D.C. had similar problems with its public school system, as well as many of the same economic and social issues. Washington also began to innovate in its public schools with charters in the mid-1990s, amid a traditional system that, like Detroit, was seriously in decline academically, organizationally dysfunctional and dangerous to student safety.
If anything, the charter and other education reforms introduced in the District of Columbia have produced even more significant gains for the public education offering in the city as a whole.
Before the charter reform, half the public school students dropped out before graduating. Last year, the on-time—within four years—high-school graduation rate was 73 percent for charters, and 69 percent for DCPS, lower than the national rate, but fast catching up.
Standardized test scores also significantly improved at both charters and DCPS, with the strongest gains in the most underserved neighborhoods—not at the expense of a varied and diverse curriculum, but alongside one.
As public schools of choice, charters have brought options to families who pre-reform would have lacked the means to access alternatives to substandard schooling—especially important in a city where three in four public school children are economically-disadvantaged and half are defined as “at risk.”
The demand for these unique public schools is such that nearly 10,000 students are on waiting lists to attend one or more charter campuses in the school year about to begin. Demand for traditional public schools in the out-of-boundary program also has increased. And parental choice has been simplified by DCPS and D.C. charter participation in the common lottery, which allocates places when schools’ popularity causes them to be over-subscribed.
Charters’ success also has catalyzed improvements in the traditional public school system, following the introduction of mayoral-control of DCPS and the appointment of three reforming School Chancellors.
From Detroit, Washington, D.C. and New Orleans to the 13 other urban school districts where the charter share is above 30 percent, education reform has been a beneficial agent of change. This reform transforms the lives and life prospects of children growing up in our nation’s most troubled and vulnerable urban communities—for both traditional and chartered public school students.
Our blog post last week introduced the topic of “charter-district collaboration”, and reported on the status of Minneapolis’ District-Charter Collaboration Compact, as well as the Minneapolis Public Schools and Hiawatha Academies Collaboration Agreement.
In a January 2017 report, the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) wrote about the status of collaboration in the 23 cities that have signed a District-Charter Collaboration Compact. CRPE determined that five cities—Boston, Chicago, Denver, Central Falls, and New Orleans—have charter and district schools working together in a robust manner such that “systemic issues of equity for students and access to resources are being addressed.”
Below are summaries of the benefits that the aforementioned cities’ districts and charters have experienced from the Compacts, as well as key takeaways for Minneapolis and other Minnesota cities.
Boston
In September 2011, Boston’s mayor, 16 charter school organizations, and Boston Public Schools (BPS) signed their District-Charter Collaborative Compact, with the Catholic Archdiocese joining later on. According to CRPE, “Boston’s Compact is one of the strongest and most successful collaboration efforts in the country.” Some of the benefits that have resulted from the collaboration are:
School partnerships between district, charter, and Catholic schools in order to identify and share classroom level strategies
Shared use of data to locate and learn from classrooms and schools where students are thriving academically
Nationally recognized, researched based professional development for teachers from all three sectors for English language learners
Coordinated release times across sectors helped BPS save roughly $1 million per year in transportation costs
Two charter organizations (three schools) received leases for vacant buildings
The Compact was renewed in the fall of 2015 with new personnel dedicated to continuing the collaborative work between the three sectors. In September of 2015, Mayor Walsh called upon the Compact to help improve Boston’s enrollment process so that it would be “simple, unified, and equitable for all public schools.”
Additionally, in April 2017, the Boston Compact announced one of their new initiatives, the Boston Educators Collaborative. Through the Collaborative, Boston teachers are able to attend free classes that cover a range of topics from mathematical thinking to the impact of culture in the classroom.
Chicago’s District-Charter Collaborative Compact was signed in November 2011 by Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the Illinois State Board of Education, and the Illinois State Charter School Commission (INCS). Over the course of six years, across three CPS superintendents, and with constant help from INCS, Chicago has accomplished substantial achievements for both district and charter schools. Some of the accomplishments include:
Joint lobbying by both district and charter schools produced increases in funding for all public schools
A cross-sector committee designed the School Quality Rating Policy, which is a common tool that provides parents with comparisons of schools across multiple metrics
District and charter leaders are regularly brought together for professional development, with feedback on the program being very positive
Charter schools saw a rise in facility funds from the district
Denver signed their District-Charter Collaborative Compact in December 2010 and, in 2012, they were awarded $4 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to continue and build on their work. Since then, Denver has had several wins, including:
Implementing a common enrollment system
Creating a unified accountability system
Correcting an inequitable distribution of levy dollars across district and charter schools
Cross-sector professional development specifically targeted to better serve special education students and English Language Learners
Denver also has a District-Charter Collaborative Council that discusses and develops policy recommendations to improve the way that the district and charter schools collaborate and work together.
In August 2011, Central Falls signed their District-Charter Collaborative Compact. The Compact had been largely pushed by Central Falls’ superintendent, Dr. Frances Gallo, and received support from the school board. Early in the Compact the focus was on joint professional development, sharing a reading curriculum and bilingual language knowledge, cross-sector teacher fellowships, combined teacher recruitment, and facilities.
Even though Gallo retired in 2015, Central Falls School District and charter school leaders have continued to collaborate. According to their website, the Compact is collaboratively working on strategies around human capital and STEAM learning strategies, special education, and parent engagement.
While New Orleans’ citywide portfolio model is very different from the educational landscape in Minneapolis and other Minnesota cities, there are still lessons that can be learned from their June 2012 Charter-District Collaboration Compact. For example, the initial Compact agreement helped launch the OneApp common enrollment system and produced an “equity report”, which includes information regarding student achievement, growth, and demographic data for each school in New Orleans. They also developed a new, equitable system for distributing per-pupil funding to schools for their students with special needs.
Additionally, New Orleans’ district and charter leaders collaborated to create a set of universal school discipline standards that were adopted by all of the city’s public schools. Further, all of the city’s public schools implemented the Louisiana Recovery School District’s centralized school expulsion system, which has ensured consistent behavioral expectations across schools and has resulted in a decrease in expulsion rates.
Even though Minneapolis’ District-Charter Collaboration Compact is currently inactive, there is no reason why they, or other Minneapolis cities, cannot take advantage of the benefits that come from charter-district collaborative relationships. Some of the key takeaways from the five cities’ Compacts are that collaboration between the two sectors can result in:
Increased funding for all public schools
Sharing of best practices and professional development, particularly with regard to students who are ELL or have special needs
Unified data, accountability, and enrollment systems
Increased charter access to facilities and facility funding
In their report, CRPE asserted that for a rising number of school districts, “cooperative action between districts and charter schools is a necessity, not a nicety.” With over 21 percent of Minneapolis students, 23 percent of St. Paul students, and 15 percent of Duluth students attending charter schools, it’s time for the two sectors to set aside their differences and develop collaborative relationships for the benefit of students, schools, families, and communities.
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Yesterday, a twelve-member task force, convened by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), released a report on “Quality Education.” The task force was formed in December 2016 after the NAACP’s October 2016 call for a national moratorium on expanding charter schools until a set of conditions were met.
The charge of the task force was to bring forward “practical recommendations that respond to the urgency of this resolution and the inequities undermining public education.” In order to fulfill their charge, from December 2016 to April 2017, the task force held public hearings in seven cities—New Haven, Memphis, Orlando, Los Angeles, Detroit, New Orleans, and New York.
The report acknowledged that, from testimonials at the public hearings, they found some positive aspects of charter schools. However, the report ultimately concluded that “even the best charters are not a substitute for more stable, adequate and equitable investments in public education in communities that serve all children.”
Criticism of Public Hearings
According to NAACP task report report, the “hearing format [for the public meetings] ensured testimony” from all of the following stakeholders: educators, administrators, school policy experts, charter school leaders, parents, advocates, students, and community leaders. However, some have questioned the authenticity and fairness of these meetings, claiming that they did not include groups and individuals who were charter supporters.
For example, in Tennessee, members of Memphis Lift, a parent-activist organization, voiced disapproval when they were only allowed 12 minutes at the end of a four-hour meeting. Additionally, in Orlando, Minnesota education activist Rashad Anthony Turner was ushered out of the meeting by police after he interrupted a speech by Randi Weingarten, American Federation of Teachers President, because opponents of the moratorium were kept waiting.
Task Force Provides Five Recommendations Based on Public Hearings
According to the report, the testimonials illuminated the “perceived” benefits and problems with charter schools. Using those testimonials, the task force created five recommendations, summarized below, that would improve the quality of charter schools.
Recommendation #1: Provide more equitable and adequate funding for schools serving students of color. The task force argued that education funding has been “inadequate and unequal for students of color for hundreds of years.” In order to remedy the problem, the task force recommended that states should implement weighted student formula systems and model them after the systems that Massachusetts and California have pursued. They also recommended that the federal government should “fully enforce” the funding equity provisions within the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
Recommendation #2: Invest productively in low-performing schools and schools with significant opportunity and achievement gaps. In order to ensure that all students receive a high-quality education, the task force recommends that federal, state, and local policies need to “sufficiently” invest in three things: creating incentives to attract and retain teachers, evolving instruction to be more challenging and inclusive, and providing more wraparound services for students such as health and mental services.
Recommendation #3: Develop and enforce robust charter school accountability measures. There were five parts within this recommendation. They are as follows:
Create and enforce a rigorous chartering authorizing and renewal process. The task force recommends that states should only allow districts to serve as authorizers. This is significant since, of the 44 states that allow charter schools, only four—Wyoming, Virginia, Iowa, and Kansas—have district-only charter authorization.
Create and enforce a common accountability system.
Monitor and require charter schools to admit and retain all students. This recommendation calls for open enrollment procedures, and asserts that charter schools should not be allowed to counsel out, push out, or expel students that they “perceive as academically or behaviorally struggling, or whose parents cannot maintain participation requirements or monetary fees.”
Create and monitor transparent disciplinary guidelines that meet students’ ongoing learning needs and prevent push out. The report recommends that charter schools should be required to follow the “same state regulations regarding discipline as public schools,” and use restorative justice practices.
Require charter schools to hire certified teachers. Many states allow charter schools to hire uncertified teachers at higher rates than traditional public schools, however Minnesota is not one of them.
Recommendation #4: Require fiscal transparency and equity. The task force recommends that all charter schools be held to the “same level of fiscal transparency and scrutiny as other public schools.”
Recommendation #5: Eliminate for-profit charter schools. This recommendation not only states that all for-profit charter schools should be eliminated, but that all for-profit management companies that run nonprofit charter schools should be eliminated as well. Approximately 13 percent of U.S. charter schools are run by for-profit companies. Additionally, at least 15 states allow virtual schools, with many of them operated by for-profit organizations.
Report Elicits Scrutiny from Education Advocates
In response to the NAACP report, Nina Rees, CEO and President of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), issued a statement where she indicated that NAPCS was glad to see the NAACP recognize the value of charter schools and agreed with them that “whoever oversees a public school should take that responsibility seriously, have the highest expectations, and hold educators in the school accountable” for educating students.
However, Rees also asserted that the NAACP’s policy resolution and report failed to “acknowledge that Black parents are demanding more and better public-school options,” citing a nationally representative survey which found that found 82 percent of Black parents favored allowing parents to choose their child’s public school.
She also cited a 2015 CREDO Urban Charter Schools Report, which found that Black public charter school students gained 36 days of learning in math and 26 in reading over their non-charter school peers.
Chris Stewart, based in Minnesota and former director of outreach and external affairs for Education Post, asserted that “the NAACP has lost its way,” claiming that they have become an “unwitting tool of teacher unions” due to the union’s significant contributions to the NAACP over the years. He also claimed that the unions are “threatened by the growth and success of non-unionized charter schools.”
District-Charter Collaboration: Hope in a Time of Political Tension
The growing and contentious disagreements between education organizations and advocates regarding the merits of charter versus traditional district schools are not new and will likely continue to dominate the news cycle.
However, in recent years, a growing number of districts and charter schools have put aside their political differences and worked together in order to do what’s best for students. Our next two blog posts will examine the cities where some of those collaborative relationships are taking place, as well as provide history on district-charter collaboration in Minnesota.
By Ramona Edelin Special to the AFRO
