Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
In a recent New York Times article titled At Charter Schools, Short Careers by Choice, Mitoko Rich wrote of how charter schools seem to be developing something of a “youth cult” in their teaching ranks. She reported that in the charter network “teaching for two to five years is seen as acceptable and, at times, even desirable.”
Teachers in the thirteen YES Prep Schools, which are located throughout Greater Houston, have a reported average of two and a half years of experience. The teachers who work for Achievement First—which has 25 schools in Connecticut, Brooklyn, and Providence, R.I.— “spend an average of 2.3 years in the classroom.” And the individuals who teach in the KIPP schools and the Success Academy Charter Schools stay in the classroom for an average of four years. This youth culture—or culture in which most classroom practitioners have little teaching experience— differs from that of our country’s traditional public schools where teachers average nearly fourteen years of experience…and where public school leaders have made it “a priority to reduce teacher turnover.”
In the NYT article, Jennifer Hines, senior vice president of people and programs at YES Prep, was quoted as saying, “We have this highly motivated, highly driven work force who are now wondering, ‘O.K., I’ve got this, what’s the next thing?’ There is a certain comfort level that we have with people who are perhaps going to come into YES Prep and not stay forever.” (Note: New teachers at the YES Prep schools receive just two and a half weeks of training over the summer before arriving in the classroom.)
Rich says it was Teach for America (TFA) that was mostly responsible for introducing the idea of a “foreshortened teaching career.” TFA is an organization that recruits “high-achieving” college graduates and places them in some of our neediest schools. In a piece for Policymic, Benjamin Cosman wrote about TFA recruits. He said that after just five weeks of training, “Teach for America participants lead a classroom for two years, slap it on their resume, and leave the school with a bevy of opportunities.”
Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America, contends that “strong schools can withstand the turnover of their teachers. The strongest schools develop their teachers tremendously so they become great in the classroom even in their first and second years.” (Question for Wendy Kopp: Are you sending your teaching recruits into the “strongest” schools?)
Mark Naison, a professor of African American Studies and History at Fordham University and a man who once viewed Teach for America as a positive program, has a difference of opinion regarding teacher turnover. He has been disappointed that TFA doesn’t instill a commitment to teaching in its program participants. In fact, Naison no longer allows TFA to recruit his college students.
Naison said the following about Kopp’s organization:
Until Teach For America becomes committed to training lifetime educators and raises the length of service to five years rather than two, I will not allow TFA to recruit in my classes. The idea of sending talented students into schools in impoverished areas, and then after two years encouraging them to pursue careers in finance, law, and business in the hope that they will then advocate for educational equity really rubs me the wrong way.
He added:
Never, in its recruiting literature, has Teach For America described teaching as the most valuable professional choice that an idealistic, socially conscious person can make. Nor do they encourage the brightest students to make teaching their permanent career; indeed, the organization goes out of its way to make joining TFA seem a like a great pathway to success in other, higher-paying professions.
Several years ago, a TFA recruiter plastered the Fordham campus with flyers that said “Learn how joining TFA can help you gain admission to Stanford Business School.” The message of that flyer was: “use teaching in high-poverty areas as a stepping stone to a career in business.” It was not only disrespectful to every person who chooses to commit their life to the teaching profession, it effectively advocated using students in high-poverty areas as guinea pigs for an experiment in “resume-padding” for ambitious young people.
After reading Rich’s article about the high turnover rate of teachers in charter schools, Catherine M. Ionata responded in a letter to the editor. She wrote:
The charter school representatives in your article defend the rapid turnover of teachers. Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, even says that teachers can become great in one or two years! Would we expand this idea to other professions? Do we think the best lawyers are those fresh out of law school? Should we choose a rookie physician for complex surgery, because this surgeon is more “enthusiastic” than veteran surgeons?
Ronald Thorpe, president of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, said, “To become a master plumber you have to work for five years. Shouldn’t we have some kind of analog to that with the people we are entrusting our children to?”
Education expert Diane Ravitch also weighed in on the subject after reading Rich’s article:
Can you imagine that a “teacher” who graduated college in June is already “a great teacher” by September?
Why do we expect entrants to every other profession to spend years honing their craft but a brand-new teacher, with no experience, can be considered “great” in only one or two years, then leave to do something else?
This is a recipe to destroy the teaching profession.
How can anyone say they are education “reformers” if their goal is to destroy the profession?
What other nation is doing this?
This is not innovative. In fact, it returns us to the early nineteenth century, when the general belief was that “anyone can teach, no training needed.” Teaching then was a job for itinerants, widow ladies, young girls without a high school degree, and anyone who couldn’t do anything else. It took over a century to create a teaching profession, with qualifications and credentials needed before one could be certified to stand in front of a classroom of young children. We are rapidly going backwards.
Henry Seton, a humanities teacher at Community Charter School of Cambridge in Massachusetts, was another educator who responded to Rich’s article. He wrote:
The high teacher turnover at charter schools leaves these institutions fragile and ill equipped to support their most vulnerable students. It takes far more than a year or two in the classroom to develop that elusive set of skills needed to serve our nation’s neediest cohorts of students — young men of color, English language learners and so on. And I have seen some of the most well-regarded charters here in Massachusetts left reeling and in danger of closing after extensive teacher departures.
Benjamin Cosman (Policymic) wrote that young teachers in charter schools “are supposed to save education in the United States.” He thinks, however, that there is a “very real danger in valuing inexperience in the teaching field…” He believes this “supposed remedy” may possibly be hastening the “demise of public education.”
In his article titled It’s Harder for Charter Schools to Keep Teachers, Francisco Vara-Orta wrote about information provided in data collected by the Texas Education Agency. The data, taken from 47 local school districts from 2006 to 2011, showed that the “average teacher turnover rate for charter school districts was 46 percent, compared with 13 percent for traditional school districts.” Vara-Orta wrote that analysis of the data showed that teachers leave charter schools in Bexar County nearly three times more often than teachers in traditional public schools, “which generally pay more and perform better academically.” He continued, “Of the 10 districts rated academically unacceptable by the state in Bexar County last year, all were charters, with turnover ranging from 38 percent to 65 percent…”
Researchers from Vanderbilt University found that the teacher turnover rate in charter schools was nearly twice as high as that of traditional public schools. In addition, the researchers found that teachers in charter schools were also more likely to leave the profession.
Excerpt from the Vanderbilt report titled Teacher Turnover in Charter Schools:
Our analysis confirms that much of the explanation of this “turnover gap” lies in the differences in the types of teachers that charter schools and traditional public schools hire. The data lend minimal support to the claim that turnover is higher in charter schools because they are leveraging their flexibility in personnel policies to get rid of underperforming teachers. Rather, we found most of the turnover in charter schools is voluntary and dysfunctional as compared to that of traditional public schools.
A second reason is that attrition is highest among teachers that are new to the profession. Past research found teachers make important gains in effectiveness in their first three years and smaller gains over the next few years (McCaffrey, Koretz, Lockwood, and Hamilton, 2003; Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 2005). Given that almost 50% of teachers leave the profession within their first five years (Ingersoll & Smith, 2003), many teachers are leaving the classroom before they have developed into optimally effective practitioners. Moreover, exiting new teachers are often replaced by similarly inexperienced teachers and consequently students in schools with high turnover may rarely be exposed to experienced teachers.
Third, turnover affects many of the organizational conditions important to effective schooling, such as instructional cohesion and staff trust. Effective schools hold shared beliefs in similar instructional goals and practices (Fuller & Izu, 1986; Bryk & Driscoll, 1988). Schools with high turnover are challenged to develop a shared commitment towards the same goals, pedagogy, and curriculum. The constant churning of teaching staff makes it difficult to collaborate, develop standard norms of practice, and maintain progress towards common goals. This can lead to fragmented instructional programs and professional development plans that must be adapted each year to meet the needs of a teaching staff in constant flux (Guin, 2004). High turnover also makes it difficult for teachers to build relational trust, which is critical towards productive collaboration in schools (Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Guin, 2004).
Critics of charter schools argue that students and schools need stability. “When you stay in a school or community, you build relationships,” said Andrea Giunta, a senior policy analyst for teacher recruitment, retention and diversity at the National Education Association.
As might be expected, studies have shown that teacher turnover often “diminishes student achievement” and has a negative impact on “the overall school environment because it creates instability and a loss of institutional knowledge.”
Matthew Ronfeldt, an assistant professor of educational studies at the University of Michigan—along with colleagues Susanna Loeb and James Wyckoff—conducted a study on teacher turnover. Their report was titled How Teacher Turnover Harms Student Achievement. Loeb, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, said that the problem of teacher turnover had been well-documented. She noted, “One in three teachers leaves the profession within five years.” In their study, the three researchers sought to find out if students “do worse in the year after there is high turnover.” They discovered that high teacher turnover hurt student achievement in English and math—and that the negative impact was as “significant as the effect of free lunch eligibility (a standard measure of poverty) on test scores.” They also found the negative impact to be strongest “among schools with more low-performing and black students. “
In a Texas Tribune article dated January 27, 2010, Brian Temple wrote that at some charter schools in the state “it’s the teachers who can’t wait to clear out at the end of the school year.”
Temple reported that according to data that had been released at the time, 79 percent of the faculty of Accelerated Intermediate Academy in Houston turned over before the 2008-09 school year. At Peak Preparatory in Dallas, 71 percent of teachers did not return…and at Harmony Science Academy in College Station, “69 percent of teachers split.”
Temple continued:
In all, more than 40 of nearly 200 charter operators the state tracked — some which oversee multiple schools — had to replace more than half their teaching staffs before the last school year. Even more established and successful operators, including KIPP and YES Prep in Houston, lose nearly a third of their teachers annually. In contrast, just six of more than 1,000 non-charter school districts statewide had more than half their teachers leave, and none of the 20 largest school districts had a turnover rate higher than 16 percent.
The financial cost of teacher turnover is high. According to a study conducted by the National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future, teacher attrition costs approximately $7.3 billion per year. Since teacher attrition is so costly and has been shown to have a negative effect on student performance, Benjamin Cosman wonders why TFA and charter organizations like the Yes Prep schools encourage teachers to have a “get out while you can” mentality.
Cosman argued:
We should be cultivating teachers who are in it for the long haul, who build steady careers based on longevity, who become the wizened old stalwarts who’ve been around the block a few times. Yes, there are problems with tenure and bad teachers sticking around too long, and those issues need to be addressed. But the exact opposite — getting teachers in and out as fast as we can — is certainly not the solution.
Excerpt from Teacher Attrition: A Costly Loss to the Nation and to the States, an issue brief released by the National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future (NCTAF) in August 2005:
There is a growing consensus among researchers and educators that the single most important factor in determining student performance is the quality of his or her teachers. Therefore, if the national goal of providing an equitable education to children across the nation is to be met, it is critical that efforts be concentrated on developing and retaining high-quality teachers in every community and at every grade level…
According to the National Center for Education Statistics’ 1999–2000 “Public School Teacher Survey,” 47 percent of public school teachers worked with a mentor teacher in the same subject area.12 Sixty-six percent of teachers who were formally mentored by another teacher reported that it “improved their classroom teaching a lot.”13
Mentors are an important factor in providing support for new teachers as they enter the real world of the classroom, but mentoring alone is not enough. Comprehensive induction proves most effective at keeping good teachers in the classroom. Studies demonstrate that new teacher turnover rates can be cut in half through comprehensive induction—a combination of high-quality mentoring, professional development and support, scheduled interaction with other teachers in the school and in the larger community, and formal assessments for new teachers during at least their first two years of teaching.14
I can speak from experience. Mentor teachers can prove invaluable in helping young and inexperienced teachers by providing them with advice, insight, educational ideas and materials that have proved successful in the classroom, and by being a sounding board for them when they feel a need to express their frustrations, insecurities, and fears. Experienced teachers helped me when I was a teaching “ingénue.” Later, when I was a seasoned professional, I helped guide and advise young teachers. I shared books and teaching materials with them. I also listened to their new ideas. Other experienced educators at my school and I found that mentoring new teachers helped us to bond with them and to become a close-knit educational community.
Older teachers provide wisdom. Young teachers bring in a “breath of fresh air.” I think the healthiest school communities have teachers with different perspectives and levels of classroom experience—new teachers, teachers in mid career, and the old sages who have been around the block more than a few times.
One has to wonder how difficult it must be for young and inexperienced teachers to find mentors in their schools if most of the classroom practitioners have little more experience than they. One has to wonder how schools where teachers stay for just two or three years can develop their own culture and institutional memory—as well as a sense of stability and community. One has to wonder how children feel when their teachers come and go so frequently and rarely show evidence of a commitment to their schools and the student population.
It saddens me to think that there are “school reformers” in our country who encourage “foreshortened careers” in education…who think that youth trumps experience…who don’t instill a commitment to education in the young people they recruit for their teaching programs.
SOURCES
At Charter Schools, Short Careers by Choice (New York Times)
The High Turnover at Charter Schools (New York Times)
Charter schools are developing teachers with short tenure (Examiner)
Teacher Attrition in Charter vs. District Schools (CRPE–Center on Reinventing Public Education)
High teacher turnover in charters: Does student achievement suffer? (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
A Revolving Door (Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff)
Teacher Turnover in Charter Schools (Vanderbilt University)
It’s harder for charter schools to keep teachers (My San Antonio)
Teacher Attrition in Charter Schools 2007 (NEPC–National Education Policy Center)
Professor: Why Teach For America can’t recruit in my classroom (Washington Post)
Teacher Turnover Negatively Impacts Student Achievement in Math and English (The Journal)
Teacher turnover harms student learning (University of Michigan)
Teacher turnover affects all students’ achievement, study indicates (Stanford University)
Churn, Churn, Churn, Is Not Good for Kids or the Teaching Profession (Diane Ravitch)
LA students more true to their charter schools than teachers, studies say (UC Berkeley)
Charter Schools Battle High Teacher Turnover (Texas Tribune)
Teach For America: Let’s Stop Encouraging Teachers to Leave After Two Years, Maybe? (Policymic)
Guest Post: Teacher turnover – who stays and who leaves (Stanford University)
High Teacher Turnover Rates are a Big Problem for America’s Public Schools (Forbes)
Teacher Attrition: A Costly Loss to the Nation and to the States (NCTAF-National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future)
NCTAF Study: Teacher Attrition Costs U.S. Over $7 Billion Annually (American Association of Colleges for Teacher education)
Gene,
Whether you are explicitly arguing that lack of choice is what causes particular schools to fail or not does not change that it is implicit to the argument.
Not my argument. My argument has nothing to do with failed schools.
Imagine a country with no failing schools (just try, damn it!).
School choice would still be a fundamental right for every individual. Education is a personal experience and different people need to choose which experience is best for them.
Even in great schools with lots of money and high test scores, there are students who are miserable, because that school doesn’t meet their individual needs. Everyone deserves an education that meets their individual needs.
Choice is the cornerstone of personal freedom. And nothing is more personal than the way we experience learning.
Anonymously Yours,
If you tell me the name of the charter school that you are familiar with, then we can ascertain the structure under which it operates.
Whether or not the “district” runs it or the “state” (that would have to be one of the less populated states), any kid who is kicked out of a public school or a charter school will be reassigned to another school by an entity other than the school which kicked them out.
Our entire disagreement has been based on your misunderstanding of the process by which school systems deal with disruptive students and the very structure of those systems.
LJM,
Apparently you did not read the statement that at least the one I am familiar with…. They are run by the state….
Anonymously Yours,
Please quote the part(s) of the articles that support your assertion that…
In Sweden they are not required to maintain disruptive students….
I ask you to do that, because I couldn’t find any support. So now it’s your turn. Prove that my reading comprehension needs work (it does, actually) by quoting where your assertion is supported.
Now with respect to charter schools they are not part of a district… Or at least the ones I know of……you can support that I presume?
I can’t support that, because it’s not true. Please tell me the name of the charter schools that you think are not part of a school district.
The school district uses taxes to pay for every kid’s education. If a kid goes to a public or a charter school, the district gives that school the money to educate the kid. If the kid is so disruptive (or if he tweets something inappropriate) that the school expels him, charter or public, the district takes responsibility for finding the kid a place to get educated.
The same is true under a voucher system.
Apparently you didn’t read either article LJM the one I posted or the one you posted…. Good work… They both support the same proposition….
Now with respect to charter schools they are not part of a district… Or at least the ones I know of……you can support that I presume?
Anonymously Yours,
You don’t seem to understand when someone is talking about K-12…. The term school is interchangeable with school district….. Same breath, body and blood…. There is no distinguishable difference….
This is simply false. Districts and schools work together but have very different responsibilities. Among other things, schools manage the students and districts manage the schools, assigning students to them.
School districts are responsible for schools and charter schools. Charter schools have to meet requirements set by the school district.
This information is not in dispute. There are no controversies over whether or not a school is the same as a school district. Or whether or not a school district is ultimately responsible for the placement of a disruptive student.
I’m very confused about your assertions. Have you worked in a school system before?
With respect to Sweden… Google it yourself if you’re too busy to read the article….
It’s not a matter of being too busy, it’s a matter of your assertion that…
In Sweden they are not required to maintain disruptive students….
…is not supported by the articles.
But maybe you could read this and it will help you to understand that Sweden takes care of special needs students, whether or not they’ve been kicked out of a public school or a private school.
https://www.european-agency.org/country-information/sweden/national-overview/special-needs-education-within-the-education-system
LiM,
You don’t seem to understand when someone is talking about K-12…. The term school is interchangeable with school district….. Same breath, body and blood…. There is no distinguishable difference….
When the term charter voucher is used they are not interchangeable….as part of the school district……
With respect to Sweden… Google it yourself if you’re too busy to read the article….
Elaine,
The only thing I describe myself as is “liberal.” I don’t think of myself as being on the left or the right.
Anonymously yours,
You’re missing the trees for the Forrest…..really…. I’m saying once a child is expelled by a charter or voucher school…. They have no obligation to find alternative education for these children…
Public schools have no obligation, either. The district has that obligation.
When a public school kicks out a student, the district takes over. When a charter school kicks out a student, the district takes over.
When a private school in Sweden kicks out a student, the the Swedish version of the district takes over.
Public, charter, or voucher, the state, not the school, pays for the student’s education and is responsible for independent action when that student has special needs.
Are you not aware of this?
READ before you respond….Call someone and ask for interpretations in you can’t comprehend…..
When I READ what you wrote…
In Sweden they are not required to maintain disruptive students….
…I asked you to demonstrate that Sweden doesn’t maintain disruptive students. You haven’t done that. I think that’s because you can’t.
And yet you’re still confident enough to be incredibly condescending.
Elaine,
I assumed that the term, “school reform,” was tied into the Michelle Rhee movement to judge teachers based on tests and whatnot. Sorry for the misuse. I agree completely with the rest of your comment. Testing is the common enemy!
LJM,
Are you a neoliberal?
*****
Jeff Bezos’s Other Endeavor: Charter Schools, Neoliberal Education Reforms
Lee Fang on August 6, 201
http://www.thenation.com/blog/175627/jeff-bezoss-other-endeavor-charter-schools-neoliberal-education-reforms#
Excerpt:
As news broke yesterday that Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos has dipped into his personal fortune to buy The Washington Post and several Post-related media properties, there has been buzz about Bezos’s potential political agenda.
His record seems to suggest that Bezos is socially liberal, but economically conservative. He has contributed to both Republicans and Democrats, from John Conyers (D-MI) to Slade Gorton (R-WA); donated to the libertarian Reason Foundation; provided $2.5 million to pass gay marriage in Washington State; as well as $100,000 to defeat a modest effort to create an upper income tax in Washington State.
Others have scrutinized Bezos’s record at Amazon to predict his management of the Post. At The New Yorker, David Remnick says that under Bezos Amazon has “demonstrated itself to be ‘a First Amendment absolutist’ when it comes to the sale of controversial books (including Mein Kampf’) and an unwillingness to censor reader comments.” Others are less optimistic, particularly when it comes to Amazon’s lobbying and labor record.
The most troubling part of Amazon’s record, as it might relate to Bezos’ ownership of the Post, is Amazon’s December 2010 decision to shut down WikiLeaks’s server access after the group published a trove of State Department cables. Robert McChesney, citing Amazon’s move to pull the plug on WikiLeaks, released a statement today condemning the sale.
There’s one area where Bezos has been hyper-active, but it is largely unknown to the general public: education reform. A look at the Bezos Family Foundation, which was founded by Jackie and Mike Bezos but is financed primarily by Jeff Bezos, reveals a fairly aggressive effort in recent years to press forward with a neoliberal education agenda:
• The Bezos Foundation has donated to Education Reform Now, a nonprofit organization that funds attack advertisements against teachers’ unions and other advocacy efforts to promote test-based evaluations of teachers. Education Reform Now also sponsors Democrats for Education Reform.
• The Bezos Foundation provided $500,000 to NBC Universal to sponsor the Education Nation, a media series devoted to debating high-stakes testing, charter schools and other education reforms.
• The Bezos Foundation provided over $100,000 worth of Amazon stock to the League of Education Voters Foundation to help pass the education reform in Washington State. Last year, the group helped pass I-1240, a ballot measure that created a charter school system in Washington State. In many states, charter schools open the door for privatization by inviting for-profit charter management companies to take over public schools that are ostensibly run by nonprofits.
Other education philanthropy supported by the Bezos Foundation include KIPP, Teach for America and many individual charter schools, including privately funded math and science programs across the country.
LJM
“I’m not arguing that at all, I promise. There are lots of things that cause schools to become unsatisfactory. Everything from poverty to mismanagement to philosophy.
I’m arguing that poor people deserve choice in their education, because they’re human beings and education is a sacred, personal thing to human beings. That’s it. That’s all.
Do you agree with that or not? If not, why?”
Do you still beat your wife? This is called a loaded question.
Whether you are explicitly arguing that lack of choice is what causes particular schools to fail or not does not change that it is implicit to the argument.
New Data Shows School ‘Reformers’ Are Getting it Wrong
June 7, 2013
by David Sirota
http://billmoyers.com/2013/06/07/new-data-shows-school-reformers-are-getting-it-wrong/
Excerpt:
In the great American debate over education, the education and technology corporations, bankrolled politicians and activist-profiteers who collectively comprise the so-called “reform” movement base their arguments on one central premise: that America should expect public schools to produce world-class academic achievement regardless of the negative forces bearing down on a school’s particular students. In recent days, though, the faults in that premise are being exposed by unavoidable reality.
Before getting to the big news, let’s review the dominant fairy tale: As embodied by New York City’s major education announcement this weekend, the “reform” fantasy pretends that a lack of teacher “accountability” is the major education problem and somehow wholly writes family economics out of the story (amazingly, this fantasy persists even in a place like the Big Apple where economic inequality is particularly crushing). That key — and deliberate — omission serves myriad political interests.
For education, technology and charter school companies and the Wall Streeters who back them, it lets them cite troubled public schools to argue that the current public education system is flawed, and to then argue that education can be improved if taxpayer money is funneled away from the public school system’s priorities (hiring teachers, training teachers, reducing class size, etc.) and into the private sector (replacing teachers with computers, replacing public schools with privately run charter schools, etc.). Likewise, for conservative politicians and activist-profiteers disproportionately bankrolled by these and other monied interests, the “reform” argument gives them a way to both talk about fixing education and to bash organized labor, all without having to mention an economic status quo that monied interests benefit from and thus do not want changed.
Meanwhile, despite the fact that many “reformers’” policies have spectacularly failed, prompted massive scandals and/or offered no actual proof of success, an elite media that typically amplifies — rather than challenges — power and money loyally casts “reformers’” systematic pillaging of public education as laudable courage (the most recent example of this is Time magazine’s cover cheering on wildly unpopular Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel after he cited budget austerity to justify the largest mass school closing in American history — all while he is also proposing to spend $100 million of taxpayer dollars on a new private sports stadium).
In other words, elite media organizations (which, in many cases, have their own vested financial interest in education “reform”) go out of their way to portray the anti-public-education movement as heroic rather than what it really is: just another get-rich-quick scheme shrouded in the veneer of altruism.
That gets to the news that exposes “reformers’” schemes — and all the illusions that surround them. According to a new U.S. Department of Education study, “about one in five public schools was considered high poverty in 2011… up from about one in eight in 2000.” This followed an earlier study from the department finding that “many high-poverty schools receive less than their fair share of state and local funding… leav(ing) students in high-poverty schools with fewer resources than schools attended by their wealthier peers.”
Those data sets powerfully raise the question that “reformers” are so desperate to avoid: Are we really expected to believe that it’s just a coincidence that the public education and poverty crises are happening at the same time? Put another way: Are we really expected to believe that everything other than poverty is what’s causing problems in failing public schools?
Because of who comprises it and how it is financed, the education “reform” movement has a clear self-interest in continuing to say yes, we should believe such fact-free pabulum. And you can bet that movement will keep saying “yes” — and that the corporate media will continue to cheer them as heroes for saying “yes” — as long as public education money keeps being diverted into corporate coffers.
But we’ve now reached the point where the economics-omitting “reform” propaganda has jumped the shark, going from deceptively alluring to embarrassingly transparent. That’s because the latest Department of Education study isn’t being released in a vacuum; it caps off an overwhelming wave of evidence showing that our education crisis has far less to do with public schools or bad teachers than it does with the taboo subject of crushing poverty.
In 2011, for instance, Stanford University’s Sean Reardon released a comprehensive study documenting the new “income achievement gap.” The report proved that family income is now, by far, the biggest determining and predictive factor in a student’s educational achievement.
A few months later, Joanne Barkan published a groundbreaking magazine report surveying decades worth of social science research. Her conclusions, again, came back to non-school factors like family economics and poverty:
“Out-of-school factors — family characteristics such as income and parents’ education, neighborhood environment, health care, housing stability, and so on — count for twice as much as all in-school factors. In 1966, a groundbreaking government study — the “Coleman Report” — first identified a “one-third in-school factors, two-thirds family characteristics” ratio to explain variations in student achievement. Since then researchers have endlessly tried to refine or refute the findings. Education scholar Richard Rothstein described their results: “No analyst has been able to attribute less than two-thirds of the variation in achievement among schools to the family characteristics of their students.””
Then, just a few months ago, Reardon chimed in again to contextualize all of this. In a follow-up New York Times article, he noted that it is no coincidence that these out-of-school factors — and in particular economic conditions — have created the “income achievement gap” at the very moment economic inequality and poverty have exploded in America.
Taken together with the new Department of Education numbers, we see that for all the elite media’s slobbering profiles of public school bashers like Mayors Rahm Emanuel and Michael Bloomberg, for all of the media’s hagiographic worship of scandal-plagued activist-profiteers like Michelle Rhee, and for all the “reform” movement’s claims that the traditional public school system and teachers unions are to blame for America’s education problems, poverty and economic inequality are the root of the problem.
One way to appreciate this reality in stark relief is to just remember that, as Barkan shows, for all the claims that the traditional public school system is flawed, America’s wealthiest traditional public schools happen to be among the world’s highest-achieving schools. Most of those high-performing wealthy public schools also happen to be unionized. If, as “reformers” suggest, the public school system or the presence of organized labor was really the key factor in harming American education, then those wealthy schools would be in serious crisis — and wouldn’t be at the top of the international charts. Instead, the fact that they aren’t in crisis and are so high-achieving suggests neither the system itself nor unions are the big factor causing high-poverty schools to lag behind. It suggests that the “high poverty” part is the problem.
That, of course, shouldn’t be a controversial notion; it is so painfully obvious it’s amazing anyone would even try to deny it. But that gets back to motive: The “reform” movement (and its loyal media outlets) cast a discussion of poverty as taboo because poverty and inequality are byproducts of the same economic policies that serve that movement’s funders.
LJM,
You’re missing the trees for the Forrest…..really…. I’m saying once a child is expelled by a charter or voucher school…. They have no obligation to find alternative education for these children…READ before you respond….Call someone and ask for interpretations in you can’t comprehend…..
LJM,
Who said that I was an anti-reformer? I’d definitely like to reform some of the reforms instituted in our public schools because of pressure put on states, state and national politicians, and state boards of education by some in the school reform movement. I’d LOVE to do away with the focus on high stakes testing. (High stakes standardized testing of children in public schools was one the terrible things brought to us by school reformers.) Eliminating those tests would improve education in this country a great deal. Then public school teachers could better focus on innovative programs in the classroom and meeting the needs of their students.
Anonymously Yours,
Are you actually suggesting that Sweden has no alternative education programs for students who are too disruptive to be in class?
I hope not, because that would be silly of you.
In a voucher program, every family gets money to spend on a public school or a private school (which usually cost less). If a student gets kicked out of a private school, then the student loses the choice of schools he or she goes to. The student is then sent to a public school. If the student is too disruptive for the public school, then the student receives alternative education.
Your confident snark and insults would be more effective if you had some facts on your side.
LJM,
Exactly…. Public schools expel and private schools expel…. We agree… So far….
Now, what happens to the expelled children in private schools…. Oh yeah… They have nothing to do with them….
What happens to expelled students in public schools…. Oh yeah…. They have to create a thing called alternative education…. Yeah…. A fine example…. But I guess you don’t know things like this…. You don’t read…
Anonymously yours,
I searched the studies to find what you asserted, which was…
In Sweden they are not required to maintain disruptive students….
I couldn’t find anything to support that. Perhaps you could cite exactly where your assertion is demonstrated to be true.
Also, you haven’t yet addressed the fact that U.S. public schools expel disruptive students on a regular basis as they have for a century.
LJM, Great comments and compassion for those who need and want a good education. The poverty curveball is one that is often pulled out here and you answered it w/ common sense and empathy. Maybe we need another war on poverty, because poverty kicked ass in the last war declared by LBJ.
It would appear that “pushout” has been occurring at increasing rates for decades throughout the public education system. The problem isn’t charters. The problem is the paradigm.
http://www.dignityinschools.org/files/Pushout_Fact_Sheet.pdf
Fact Sheet on School Discipline and the Pushout Problem
Many schools over-rely on zero-tolerance practices and punitive measures such as suspensions and expulsions.
Increases Over Time in Suspensions and Expulsions
Schools are suspending and expelling students at a rate more than double that of 1974. In 2006, more than 3.3 million students were suspended out-of-school at least once and 102,000 were expelled.
Between 2002 and 2006, out of school suspensions increased by 250,000 and expulsions by 15 percent.
Suspensions for Minor Misbehavior
The majority of suspensions are for minor misbehavior, such as “disruptive behavior,” “insubordination,” or school fights, which can be interpreted in subjective and biased ways, even unintentionally.
Even the most severe disciplinary sanctions such as suspension for the remainder of the school year and transfer to a disciplinary alternative school are applied to minor incidents. During the 2007-2008 school
year, the most common reason for serious disciplinary actions in U.S. schools was “insubordination” (43% of all actions).
Exclusionary practices even target our youngest students. In fact, the expulsion rate for preschool students is more than three times that for K-12 students.
Too many schools cede disciplinary authority to law enforcement or security personnel and over-rely on law enforcement tactics to control school discipline.
More and more school districts use police officers or “school resource officers” not trained for educational environments to patrol school campuses and discipline students.
Between 1999 and 2005, the number of students reporting the presence of law enforcement officers in their school rose by 14 percent.
School-based arrests have also increased dramatically. The majority of arrests are for minor incidents such as “disturbance of the peace” or “disruptive conduct.” High school students have been arrested for
food fights, writing on a desk or breaking a pencil. In the most extreme cases, five year olds have been handcuffed and arrested for throwing tantrums.
Over-emphasis on high stakes testing creates incentives for schools to increase overall test scores by pushing out the lowest performing students.
Low performing students may be suspended during testing days, transferred to alternative schools, enrolled in General Educational Development (GED) programs, or simply expelled.
Students of color are suspended and expelled at disproportionately higher rates than their white peers, a “discipline gap” that has been growing since the 1970s.
African-American students are 3.5 times more likely, Latino students twice as likely and American Indian students 1.5 times more likely to be expelled than white students. In addition, African-American students are nearly 3 times more likely, Latino students 1.5 times more likely and American Indian students 1.1 times more likely to be suspended than white students.
Students with disabilities are suspended and expelled at a rate twice that of their non-disabled peers.
Students in foster care are over three times as likely as their peers to be suspended or expelled. Studies show that between one- and two-thirds of foster care youth drop out or fail to graduate on time.
Exclusionary discipline practices and zero-tolerance policies have yet to demonstrate improvements in student behavior or increases in school safety.
Instead, pushout results in the denial of access to education for vulnerable youth.
Suspensions result in missed instructional time and increase the likelihood of poor academic performance. In fact, students who have been suspended in the past score three grades levels behind
their peers in reading skills after one year, and almost five years behind after two years.
Suspension, expulsion and school based arrests are linked with an increased likelihood of school dropout or failure to graduate on time. Students suspended three or more times by the end of their sophomore
year of high school are five times more likely to drop out than studnets who have not been suspended.
Exclusionary discipline increases a child’s likelihood of involvement with the juvenile or criminal justice system.
Young people who drop out of high school, many of whom have experienced suspension or expulsion, are more than eight times as likely to be incarcerated as those who graduate.
One study found that 80 percent of youth incarcerated in a state facility had been suspended and 50 percent had been expelled from school prior to incarceration.