Join the conversation

I always like to say, charters are AN answer to school improvement/reform/change not THE answer.

I'm retired now, having been a public school teacher/counselor and a union business agent. I think that the pov of your friend is more than just the media. I have friends who are still teaching and they are very discouraged by inept principals and other top administrators, by the lack of meaningful staff development, and by the public's general lack of support through adequate and reliable funding. I sit now on the board of a charter school that is run democratically by a teacher cooperative without "big system" overhead. I am so pleased at what I see. I've concluded that the best answer seems to be to free the creative energies of staff, students and families to build places of learning that have meaning. The "system" wastes so much talent and thoughtfulness. Many schools are dismal places for students and adults and that's how I see it.

Thanks for your thought-provoking blog. I look forward to reading more.

Skip Olsen

Thanks for your kind note, Skip. Your charter school sounds wonderful. But as I'm sure you know, other charter schools are anything but. Unfortunately, the absence of a "system" doesn't guarantee anything. In fact, it might institutionalize what is unfortunately already too much in evidence--that excellent education become the luck of the draw for children living in poverty.

I've seen traditional public schools serving primarily poor kids that free the creative energies of staff, students and families. I believe that's not only possible in systems--It's happening. But it is often difficult when regulatory structures push schools in the opposite direction.

"The system can't get any worse, he reckons, so why
not reinvent?" The author ascribes that sentiment
to Arne Duncan, who is not generally given to such
reckless statements. (I suspect he was taken out of
next.)

I think you're wrong there, Claus. Arne Duncan is given to making precisely this kind of reckless statement. It's a sentiment very commonly expressed by reform-minded superintendents to justify their ill-considered schemes, ranking right up there with "It's for the kids."

For an example of Arne doing so, see http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/12/02/14duncan-transcript.h29.html

Q: To pick up on that evidence base, there are a lot of policies and strategies that the department seems to endorse or favor that don’t necessarily have a strong evidence base for them. President Obama has talked about restoring scientific integrity in the government decision-making process. How much of a role does the evidence play in setting policy in the department, and in things like charter schools and teacher evaluation?

Mr. Duncan: I would challenge your assumption a bit. So I would argue the whole turnaround stuff is relatively new but I think there’s a lot of scientific evidence that the status quo doesn’t work and that’s the evidence that I’m looking at.

[quote]...the despairing words of an 11th-grader as "a succinct assessment of the crisis in U.S. public education today": "It's not like we were learning anything in class anyway."

I chuckled when I saw that quote in Time--because I've heard it for the past 35 years--in public, private and charter schools, not to mention both of the universities I attended. It something that students say about the drudgery of traditional schoolwork. Sometimes, it's true. Sometimes, it's totally wrong and they're learning plenty, but--being kids--can't articulate why what they're learning might be important.

It's when a throwaway remark like that is construed as an monumental and believable assessment of the "crisis in public education"--and the prescribed solution is charter schools--that I wonder what lies beneath the drive to paint all public schools as utterly failed.

Cui bono? Who benefits? Who stands to gain when public education is shot full of so many holes by "reporting" like that in Time that private, for-profit and charter schools are seen as the only answer. It's a question worth asking.

Thanks for the note, Melody. I think Duncan's note can be taken as follows: In the schools that are struggling the most, we know it won't work to do just the same thing. We have to try interventions even if evidence for interventions is thin. That strikes me as a reasonable point. One could definitely take issue with the decision to prescribe a limited set of interventions under those circumstances, but there is certainly cause for big changes when schools continue to flounder. I'm most concerned with the implication that ALL public schools are floundering and that the whole "system" is so irredemmably broken that we have to apply one big fix to every school across the board. I'm not sure that's where Duncan was headed.

Nancy--cui bono, indeed. We hear a great deal about the "interest groups" that stifle reform, but people forget that there are a whole lot of interest groups involved on all sides of the school reform debate: associations, vendors, privatization advocates, the amusement industry, and even think tanks currying favor with foundations (we all do it.) So there are all kinds of motives--other than pure altruism--at work in education. That said, I chalk the missteps of the Time Magazine reporter up to partial ignorance and carelessness, an inability to sort through the narratives spun by interest groups on all sides.