SLICED BALONEY: CHARTER SCHOOLS AREN'T WHITE ENOUGH

A couple of recent critiques of charter schools have reached  a conclusion that is shocking. I say shocking!

In early 2010, The Civil Rights Project, led by Gary Orfield who is known for his work on school segregation, issued a report last year criticizing charter schools for being more “racially isolated” than traditional public schools. Too many charter schools lack diversity because majority of their students are minority students, it complained.

The conclusion was so silly, I could hardly believe it when I read it. And my feelings were expressed by one Congressional aide who said that the study finds that some charter schools “aren’t white enough.”

In The Charter School Experiment, Evidence, and Implications, edited by  C.A. Lubienski and P.C. Weitzel (Harvard Education Press, 2010). Writing in the first chapter the editor/authors reach the same conclusion.

They point out that “Most data indicate that charter schools are at least as segregated as, if not more segregated than, public schools in their area.”

          Surely it is obvious that the charter schools are mostly in urban districts that serve disproportionate numbers of minority students so they are likely to enroll more minority students. And, voila, minority students fed up with traditional urban schools choose to go to charter schools in hopes of getting a better education.

Fortunately, another author makes that point later in the book.

SLICED BALONEY: COMMON STANDARDS WILL GET US THERE

Marion Brady, blogger for the Washington Post and a wise man who has taught at all levels, tells of an architect friend who told him: I have clients who have taste but no money and clients who have money but no taste.

He makes the same point about education. Those who really understand education have no power to change it and those who have the power to change it don’t understand it.

His point is illustrated often. For example, Craig Barrett is former CEO of Intel Corporation. He is also co-chair of Achieve, an organization of governors and leading business executives created to make standards and testing the dominant strategy of school improvement.

These folks have the power, but are generally light on understanding.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Barrett (surprise) strongly endorses the new Common Core State Standards, and asserts that they are “essential for producing the educated work force America needs to remain globally competitive.”

What Mr. Barrett and zealous advocates of standards-based accountability don’t seem to understand is those standards don’t produce anything. They are expectations for a certain level of quality. I’m sure Intel had high standards for the manufacture of its computer chips. But it wasn’t the standards that produce high quality chips; it was a trained and motivated workforce, well thought-out manufacturing procedures, intelligent supervision, good research, and wise allocation of resources.

Without those assets to implement the standards, Intel would never have become a Fortune 500 company.

Standards are essential in education, but they aren’t worth anything without the same kind of assets. Intel turned out high quality products in a 21^st century organization. In virtually every way, public schools are operating in a 20^th century institution and producing students for yesterday’s world.

Mr. Barrett acknowledges that the standards making was not perfect. He complains that “College educators and employers were hardly ever part of the discussion, even though they knew best what the real world would demand of high school graduates.”

College educators know less about what the real world demands than recent high school graduates know. They get the most able students but only manage to graduate about half of them.

Employers have a better idea of what the world will require of workers in the future, and despite the current emphasis on higher order math, they say that fluency in advanced math topics is less crucial than skill in problem-solving and in applying math to different tasks. And they contend that creating courses that place a greater emphasis on real-world or “applied” math, as opposed to simply increasing academic requirements, could not only improve students’ workforce skills, but also their enthusiasm for that subject.

Some of us remember when the Japanese were eating our lunch and business leaders and politicians were extolling their education system and urging us to emulate it. Well, the Japanese suddenly tanked, and the U.S. economy flourished even without having fixed its failing education system.

MANY WAYS TO GET THERE

Earlier this month, the Pathways to Prosperity Project at Harvard Graduate School of Education urged  the development of a comprehensive pathways network to serve young people in high school and beyond. The current strategy for school improvement, the report asserts, is “too narrowly focused on an academic, classroom-based approach.” http://www.aypf.org/events/pathways020211.htm

I agree with the arguments and proposals in the new report and devoted a chapter to the need for multiple pathways in my book just published by ASCD: Wasting Minds: Why Our Education System Is Failing and What We Can Do about It, by Ron Wolk. http://shop.ascd.org/ProductDetail/tabid/55/ProductId/5054383/Subsystem/INV/ProductCode/111015/Default.aspx

Pathways make a case for its recommendations by reciting the litany of failures that has led to the current crisis in education. The report asserts:“After 20 years of effort, and billions of dollars of expenditures, the time has come for an honest assessment. The underlying assumption has been that an academic, classroom-based approach is capable of preparing nearly all adolescents and young adults

for success in the 21st century. While there have been marginal gains, the bottom line measure of success is college completion. And on that score, we have still been unable to get more than 30 percent of young adults to earn a bachelor’s degree by their mid-20s.”

This pathways system would be based on three essential elements. The first is the development of a broader vision of school reform that embraces multiple pathways to help young people successfully navigate the journey from adolescence to adulthood.

Second, the report argues that we need to ask our nation's employers to play a greatly expanded role in supporting the pathways system, and in providing more opportunities for young adults to participate in work-based learning and actual jobs related to their programs of study.

Third, the report contends that we need to develop a new social compact between society and our young people. The compact's central goal would be that by the time they reach their mid-20s, every young adult will be equipped with the education and experience he or she needs to lead a successful life as an adult. Achieving this goal would require far bigger contributions from the nation's employers and governments.

"We are the only developed nation that depends so exclusively on its higher education system as the sole institutional vehicle to help young people transition from secondary school to careers, and from adolescence to adulthood," says Robert Schwartz, academic dean and professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who heads the Pathways to Prosperity Project.

As the first president of Achieve, Schwartz has been a key supporter of the need to raise expectations and academic standards for all young people. But in recent years, he has become increasingly concerned about the "college for all" movement, especially as that movement has led states to allow the admissions requirements of four-year colleges and universities to become the default curriculum for all high school students.

State policy makers and business leaders across the nation should read and discuss The Pathways report as a blueprint for much overdue action on this issue.

One slightly sour note:

I wish the report had gone further in making explicit the failure of standards-based accountability as the nation’s dominant school improvement strategy. But that would alienate the opinion leaders and policy makers whose support is essential if this important report is to have the effect it should.

I firmly believe that the concentration on standards and testing has worsened the crisis. I urge you to read Christopher H. Tienken’s essay (“Common Core State Standards: “An Example of Data-less Decision Making”) in the AASA’s Winter 2011 issue of the Journal of Scholarship and Practice . http://www.aasa.org/jsp.aspx

It is the most persuasive critique article I’ve ever read of standards-based accountability.