The ”conservative” majority on the State Board of Education, that justifiably often-excoriated gang of gung-ho history-revisionists, has done something good that the Legislature has failed to do, and they deserve credit for doing it. On Friday, they dedicated $100 million from the Permanent Fund to help build more charter schools.
Charter schools are public schools. They just operate outside the school districts. (To understand more about how public they are, read “Competing for Minds” from our education Special Edition in 2008.) Some of the most practical innovations in education — and certainly the best results — are coming from charter schools in Dallas like North Hills (ranked as the #14 public high school in America, way ahead of Highland Park) and Peak and Kipp.
But the Legislature — the Republican Legislature, mind you — has seen fit to pay charter schools a fee per student less than what the traditional public school districts are paid. And it will not grant charter schools the right to issue bonds so it can build and furnish new schools. So the best thing happening in our woefully under-educated state is not only not supported, it is hampered from growing to serve more students.
That $100 million is but a drop in the bucket. But it will do a lot of good if it goes to the properly managed charter schools that have a proven track record of success in helping the worst-served part of the student population — and not to ideological playthings of the State Board. The Attorney General is perfectly capable of setting guidelines to make sure that happens.
16 comments
Your “Peak” link is to North Hills.
Lots of “IF”s in there, Wick.
The problem I have with charter schools, besides taking money away from schools that have to follow the rules, is that the oversight is practically non-existent. For every good charter school, there are 10 that are run solely to rip off money from the taxpayer while providing a sub-par education.
The state needs to crack down ASAP and SHUT DOWN every charter school that has a whiff of budgetary/educational issues. Then only allow schools to start up that are have sound financial plans (they aren’t paying the CEO, his wife, two daughers, three sons and 4 inlaws, none of which have education degrees) AND a demonstrable history of success.
Enough of the scams and the favoritism.
The key to all this is buried in the last graph of your post, Wick: “it will do a lot of good if it goes to the properly managed charter schools that have a proven track record of success…and not to ideological playthings of the State Board of Education.”
We no longer teach critical thinking skills, and too many urban systems are not much more than daytime babysitters. But while charters and home schooling can be alternatives to public schools (or, as the far right derisively calls them, “government schools” i.e. indroctrination camps), too often these alternative schemes are motivated by what they do not want taught. Don’t want your child exposed to evolution, or to anything other than Texas Board of Education approved history? Home school or start a charter.
It is not OK to teach, with taxpayer dollars, that dinosaurs once hung out with our ancestors in the back yard, à la the Flintstones, or that the earth is just 6,000 years old when we know it’s more like 5 billion.
And while blaming public schools is the favorite pastime, the fact is that plenty of supposedly decent colleges and universities turn out grads — and quality polling shows this — who can’t tell you when the Civil War happened, who can’t name three Charles Dickens novels (much less one), who can’t tell you the name of the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Gallup polling in 2004 actually showed that 45% of our fellow citizens believe the fictional tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden is literally true. A thin majority of 51% disagree. Whew, that was close!
This enlightenment gap is embarrassing.
“gung-ho history-revisionists”
i’ve gone through the standards and think that the term revisionists does them an injustice. when you consider how many schools have their students reading howard zinn i’m glad to see some movement back to the center
but thanks for giving them a well deserved ‘thank you’
@ Sammy: Not sure I know what you mean that charters take money from schools “that have to follow the rules.” Do you know anything about charter-school law in Texas? I linked to an article that ought to help if you don’t.
@ Jackson: You are shadow boxing. It’s like the mention of the State Board sets off your automatic dinosaur reflex. Take a look at the schcools I linked to. Charters in Dallas are changing children’s lives. Right now. Not in some hypothetical future when miraculously all schools are like Lakewood elementary in 1957. People like you should be standing up and cheering.
@ Matt: Thanks. Fixed.
@Wick, if by shadow boxing you mean that I’m interested in remaining scar-free, I plead guilty. Otherwise, I certainly understand that there are successes within the charter school orbit, as you noted.
Still, empirical data from Stanford University’s National Charter School Study released last June, 2009 (http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/National_Release.pdf) found that there is a “wide variance in the quality of the nation’s several thousand charter schools with, in the aggregate, charter schools not faring as well as students in traditional public schools.”
Texas has only allowed charter schools since 1995, and there are now at least 200 of ‘em. Early this year, we learned of serious problems with the 10 charter campuses that make up the “Texans Can” charter school system. With over 4,000 students in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio, Texans Can is “strapped with declining enrollment, dismal academic results and a history of top-heavy spending” (http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6833260.html).
Sound like the same problems plaguing public schools? You bet, yet there are diamonds within the troubled charter school movement, just as there are diamonds within troubled public school systems. The question becomes: are precious taxpayer dollars best spent on public systems with oversight and elected school boards or on charters with neither? If we can’t tout the few successful public schools in defense of the public system as a whole, it seems to me unfair to tout the few successful charter schools to defend that system as a whole.
All of that said, I’m not opposed to certain charter schools; those associated with established institutes of higher learning, for example, or those associated with academic-minded Jesuits. It’s the willy-nilly issuing of charter licenses and use of taxpayer dollars to any and all fly-by-night comers — which has too often been the case — that rubs.
I’m pretty sure NorthHills Prep is managed by Uplift Education….who also manages (or whatever the word is) Peak. They run several charter schools in the DFW area.
Well, first off, I really stopped using D Magazine as a resource for reliable information after that little Trinity River thingee that was so highly touted within its pages. I’m still waiting for my sail boats.
But anyhoo…
Charter schools are public schools that are privately run and free of many state laws governing traditional schools. Which means, they don’t follow the same rules as public schools, such as being required to hire certified teachers.
As a group, charter schools in Texas are more likely to have lower state rankings, and many continue to have questionable financial issues. U
According to the Houston Chronicle, “In the Houston area, for instance, The Prepared Table saw its charter revoked in 2002; four of its administrators — a pastor and three relatives — were alleged to have stolen $3 million from federal and state programs. The Jesse Jackson Academy (with campuses in both Houston and Fort Worth) closed in 2008 amid charges it had misappropriated $3.2 million in federal grants. And last year, Gulf Shores Academy had to be reformulated after school administrators allegedly swindled more than $10 million from the state.”
Until the state can get a handle on the charter school program’s finances, I really don’t want to give them another penny.
Of course, the DISD hasn’t been exactly a glowing example of financial propriety itself, I guess.
Gentlemen, I will grant that charter schools are plagued with many of the problems that, for instance, higher education vocational schools are. Many are created — or were created — as ways of getting the organizers’ hands on federal or state dollars (or, in the case of the vocational schools, student loan money). And Sammy is right: the state needs to get a handle on how to measure them. Perhaps one way would be to require that they receive grants, as from the Permanent Fund, only after they have been in business for five years and can demonstrate student achievement and financial responsibility. But is it “unfair to tout the few successful charter schools to defend the system as a whole”? Perhaps. But, Jackson, is it fair to stunt the growth of the good because of the bad? Can’t we instead find a way to encourage the good and rid ourselves of the bad, just as public school leaders such as Michael Hinojosa are trying to do in the public sector?
You have raised good points. But too often we use those to tar a movement that is having a real impact on real lives. I think if Jackson, Sammy, and I were to sit down with charter school leaders, we could work out guidelines that would award money only to schools with best practices. If we could do it, certainly Joe Staus,Dan Branch, and David Dewhurst could do it. And Texas would be much better off for it.
Wick, thanks for taking the time to draw further attention for the need for our state to enhance and grow the strategies that are working in public education. Uplift Education, where I am fortunate to serve on the board, will feature 17 schools on seven campuses this year, including two new ones in West Dallas and in the West End near the new Perot Museum of Natural History. Preliminary results from recent TAKS scores indicate that 13 of our 15 schools that operated in 2009-10 will be rated Exemplary with the other two schools Recognized. Equally important, only one of these schools benefitted from the much-discussed TPM measure in its rating. This year we will serve 4,600 students with another 4,500+ on our waiting list that we would love to serve but, as you aptly put, cannot completely without having additional dollars to buy/renovate/build facilities. We just raised $55 million in the public bond market to grow our existing campuses and were rated investment grade by the rating agencies. Our founder was a former corporate attorney and our current CEO was a nine year veteran of McKinsey following receipt of her MBA from Stanford. Our board is appointed, not elected, and as a result we can be bring the right mixture of skill sets and expertise in education, marketing, law, finance, real estate, governance, etc. to the board. Our results should aptly reflect that the organization and its board seem to be doing their job, which is serving our students and being good stewards of taxpayer dollars.
Much has been incorrectly made of the fact that “charters don’t have to follow the same rules”. We are subject to the same regulations, oversight and state testing as every other public school. We have to take every child that applies as we are open-enrollment. Our differences are that we get to appoint our board, we can control the size of our schools to preserve the relationship culture of each campus (our model is roughly 100-125 children per grade), and we have the ability to remove students who violate our written code of conduct (signed by the student and parent at enrollment) in terms of drug use, cheating, fighting, etc. While these expulsions are not significant in number inasmuch as every student comes to one of our campuses by choice recognizing that our expectations are high, our hours are longer, uniforms are mandatory, college acceptance is required to graduate, etc, they do help reinforce the culture that every student is there to learn.
Much has also been made of the fact that there is something “wrong” in that our boards are not elected and thus not accountable to taxpayers. True accountability comes from the fact that every student carries with them an allocation of taxpayer dollars when they come to an Uplift school….if we don’t serve them and their parents well, they leave and take their funding with them. Enough students leave, and the school closes down. Is there anything more accountable than that?
Choice is critical to turning around our public education system. Our K-12 system ranks 25th or below in math and science globally, while our higher ed system is the envy of the world with students coming from multiple countries to be educated at these institutions. Our K-12 system in the majority of municipalities around the U.S. is a monopoly for those who don’t have the resources to afford private education; they have no choice because charter growth has been restricted or prohibited. The latter system features tremendous choice where any student can take the combination of their personal resources, federal loans and college financial aid and attend any higher education school, public or private, large or small, that they can be admitted to. Choice creates competition, and institutions have to react to that competition or fail.
I fully agree that dollars are precious and should be directed toward those institutions in Texas that are serving students well.
Thanks again for bringing attention to this critical issue.
The recent story about ‘black flight’ from DISD detailed that many students were going to charter schools which really did not fare as well as the public schools they left.
Probably many of these students are going to the charter schools for race. Is that much different than the many hastily-created privates which cater to white flight?
There are some of those in Dallas which began in the 70s which are still very undistinguished schools but draw big tuition money from those afraid of minorities.
So does this mean the AG’s office gave them the thumbs up? According to Texas Tribune last week, there was a big question as to whether the Permanent School Fund could be used in this way and AG opinion was needed before go-ahead.
So, where would one apply to teach at one of these “Charter” schools?
Wick, Todd and others who have posted,
I agree with most of what you have written above. Much discipline is lacking in our public schools. I’ve been a public middle school teacher at the same Dallas middle school for a decade. Our children do not have it easy, and that makes it harder for any concerned teacher. How can we best improve education?
Charter schools are helping the debate happen, and are hopefully helping the public to identify the issues they want solved in education. My concern is transparency. We must know what is going on is EVERY school to whom the honor is given of having our children entrusted to them, especially if that school is also funded with public money! Such transparency is sadly lacking on all sides, but DISD is getting better at it every year. If the multi-year enrollment by grade spreadsheet, complete with annual graduation numbers, is ever placed online by DISD, as was ordered by the Board about 6 months ago, we will have made significant progress. We will also be able to follow the dropout prevention progress that DISD is making year by year.
It appears that this year, for the first time in over 15 years, DISD may have given out a large enough number of diplomas so that it will equal over 50% of the total 9th grade enrollment for 2005/2006, when most of those same student were in the 9th grade. We will have broken a 50% graduation rate by one measurement! I wrote about that goal in March of 2009 (http://www.studentmotivation.org/DallasISDGoal.htm) never imagining that we could possibly reach it as quickly as the Class of 2010! DISD is making real progress.
In 2005 our inner-city middle school in Dallas started the School Archive Project that many of you may have heard about. It is the 10-year time-capsule and 10-year class reunion/mentoring project that is now being installed in a 6th DISD school.
From 2000 to 2007, Sunset High School, which received the majority of the School Archive Project students, had an average graduation rate of 34%. In 2009 the first class with School Archive Project students graduated giving Sunset a 49% graduation rate for the entire class! That was the highest graduation rate in over 15 years! Then this year, for the Class of 2010, the Sunset graduation rate jumped to 60%! Due to what it has been seeing, last year Sunset staff started their own high school level Archive Project. The other middle school feeding into Sunset also started a School Archive Project last year.
If the Archive Project and its focus on the future has had any role in this lowering of the dropout rate and the rise of the graduation rate, it is safe to project that the Sunset graduation rate will be going above 70% within the next 4 years!
Students must want to stay in school for the right reasons, not because the classroom is an effective detention facility! The Archive Project focuses students onto their own futures in as concrete and physical a way as is possible. Students appear to then be better envisioning the value of education. Along the way it appears teen pregnancy rates are going down. I personally think gang involvement is also going down slowly. Students are beginning to value themselves, their families, and their futures more.
At a cost that is less than $2 per child per year, this is a project all schools should have. It only requires one dedicated teacher to volunteer as project manager who would also love to see their students again in 10 years at the reunion. This project is free for any school to use, and there are four $1,500 grants still available at the Dallas Educational Foundation for DISD schools who want to start such projects. It is only requested that any schools using the Archive Project share any improvements they may develop so we can all continue to improve.
I think you are right on the money, let me ask you a question, when do you plan on updating this???