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)
Oops! LJM
Pat,
I remember that Reuters report. I used it in one of my previous education posts.
*****
Study: Some D.C. Public Charters Still Discourage Special-Ed Pupils’ Enrollment
By Michael Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 27, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/26/AR2009062604138.html?hpid=sec-education
Excerpt:
Some D.C. public charter schools continue selective admissions practices that discourage special-needs students from enrolling, and students citywide with possible disabilities still face delays in special education evaluations, a federal court monitor said this week.
“Charter schools . . . generally have not enrolled students with significant disabilities who required extensive hours of special services or education,” the monitor, Amy Totenberg, wrote in a report prepared for a court hearing yesterday.
The report casts a somewhat harsh light on a fast-growing sector of public education in the city. Charter schools, which receive public funding but are independently operated, have siphoned many students from the city’s troubled public school system and have posted somewhat higher test scores than regular schools in recent years.
But Totenberg said some charter schools explicitly limit the number of hours of special education they will provide and counsel parents to enroll their children at regular public schools or at private or other public charter schools that focus on students with disabilities. D.C. law prohibits charter schools from asking about learning disabilities or emotional problems during the admission process.
“There are a number of challenges for us to correct,” said Josephine Baker, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board. She said the number of schools with special education problems is small and getting smaller.
D.C. schools are under a federal court order from the late 1990s to improve the timeliness of their response to special-needs children. About 23 percent of the 46,000 students in the D.C. public school system receive special education services. Many receive services from private schools at taxpayer expense.
By contrast, in the 2007-08 school year, 12 percent of the 21,800 students in D.C. public charter schools — which are also subject to the court order — received special education services.
Pat,
I wasn’t implying that he wasn’t “effective.” Mostly because I don’t know what you mean by “effective.”
I was implying that if he considered challenging students to be “little shits,” then maybe he was burning out.
LJM,
My mother, brother niece and myself are quite aware of the difference between a ‘challenging’ student and a “little shit.” If you are not you have definitely not spent enough time in the classroom or all your students were ‘perfect.’ Quite frankly your tendency to comment with dripping snarkyness while managing to pick gnat shit out of pepper, at least on this thread, is blatantly mundane as is your tendency to not answer a direct question.
“How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.”
Black Hawk, Sauk
And if you do not know what the word “effective” means in the English language then I would have to assume that you were one of those “piss poor” teachers that should have never taught in the first place.
Elaine,
Unfortunately, traditional public schools have been judged as “failing” because of standardized tests. Reformers used the tests as proof that we need charter schools. Now the same educational measuring stick has come back to haunt those who championed charter schools.
Reformers, shmeformers, let’s forget about what they say. Let’s talk about what parents and students say, because they know if they’re happy with their school or not. They don’t tend to talk about test scores when they explain why they chose a charter school. They talk about violence and overcrowding and uncleanliness. Whatever the reasons are, whatever the reformers say, all that matters is what the parents and the students want.
BTW, the studies and articles that I used in my research on this subject focused on teacher attrition–not test scores. Do you have an opinion about the main point of my post–which is the high teacher turnover rate in charter schools and not test scores?
If charter schools can’t hang on to teachers, and that makes for an unsatisfactory learning environment for the students, then the students won’t choose that charter school. If they have a choice, that is. If it’s a real problem, then charter schools will have to fix it if they want to continue to exist.
@Elaine M.
Thank you for all the thought and research you have put into this article and your thoughtful replies that include links to back up your position.
@LJM
Let’s see now, my brother taught for 40 years, 39 in the same school. That school is what’s known in CA. as a Fundamental School. The seats are highly prized and students can transfer from any school in the District. If he was ineffective the Teachers Union could not stop an in District transfer. At the beginning of his last year teaching ( He didn’t know it was his last year, his fourth stage renal failure had yet to be diagnosed) there was a week of teachers meetings. At one meeting he suggested that even though test scores would go down, that they “quit trying to out Army the Army; quit teaching to the test and teach the kids what they needed to know.” He was surprised by a standing ovation. And they all did it. Of course it helps to be in the very top of the testing range, they had some latitude. Nah, he wasn’t dedicated, not a bit.
The article I sent my brother will be linked right below this excerpt:
Set up as alternatives to traditional public schools, charter schools typically operate under private management and often boast small class sizes, innovative teaching styles or a particular academic focus. They’re booming: There are now more than 6,000 in the United States, up from 2,500 a decade ago, educating a record 2.3 million children.
In cities and suburbs from Pennsylvania to Colorado to Arizona, charters and traditional public schools are locked in fierce competition – for students, for funding and for their very survival, with outcomes often hinging on student test scores.
Charter advocates say it’s a fair fight because both types of schools are free and open to all. “That’s a bedrock principle of our movement,” said Jed Wallace, president of the California Charter Schools Association. And indeed, many states require charter schools to award seats by random lottery.
But as Reuters has found, it’s not that simple. Thousands of charter schools don’t provide subsidized lunches, putting them out of reach for families in poverty. Hundreds mandate that parents spend hours doing “volunteer” work for the school or risk losing their child’s seat. In one extreme example the Cambridge Lakes Charter School in Pingree Grove, Illinois, mandates that each student’s family invest in the company that built the school – a practice the state said it would investigate after inquiries from Reuters.
ARRAY OF BARRIERS
And from New Hampshire to California, charter schools large and small, honored and obscure, have developed complex application processes that can make it tough for students who struggle with disability, limited English skills, academic deficits or chaotic family lives to even get into the lottery.
Among the barriers that Reuters documented:
* Applications that are made available just a few hours a year.
* Lengthy application forms, often printed only in English, that require student and parent essays, report cards, test scores, disciplinary records, teacher recommendations and medical records.
* Demands that students present Social Security cards and birth certificates for their applications to be considered, even though such documents cannot be required under federal law.
* Mandatory family interviews.
* Assessment exams.
* Academic prerequisites.
* Requirements that applicants document any disabilities or special needs. The U.S. Department of Education considers this practice illegal on the college level but has not addressed the issue for K-12 schools.
Many charters, backed by state law, specialize in serving low-income and minority children. Some of the best-known charter networks, such as KIPP, Yes Prep, Green Dot and Success Academy, use simple application forms that ask little more than name, grade and contact information, and actively seek out disadvantaged families. Most for-profit charter school chains also keep applications brief.
But stand-alone charters, which account for more than half the total in the United States, make up their own admissions policies. Regulations are often vague, oversight is often lax – and principals can get quite creative.
When Philadelphia officials examined 25 charter schools last spring, they found 18 imposed “significant barriers,” including a requirement from one school that students produce a character reference from a religious or community leader.
At Northland Preparatory Academy in Flagstaff, Arizona, application forms are available just four and a half hours a year. Parents must attend one of three information sessions to pick up a form; late arrivals can’t get in. “It’s kind of like a time share (pitch),” said Bob Lombardi, the superintendent.
“You have to come and listen.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/15/us-usa-charters-admissions-idUSBRE91E0HF20130215
I would challenge you to teach in a “regular” classroom in a public school over a period of five years and not come away from the experience with “a little shit” story of your own. Other than your experience I see no documentation to what you claim in any of your post on this topic. Also, you said that you taught Special Education and had mainlined many students. Can you explain to me just what that means? I ask because my mother taught Special Ed. for over twenty years and her class room was for the Severely Retarded. In reality it was a dumping ground for children with disabilities, some that other teachers ignored, ranging from autism to hearing or vision problems. Some of her proudest times was when she could get a child with the latter two problems back into a regular class room after talking the parents and the school into testing for their problems. Once eye glasses or hearing aids or both were obtained for the student she would work with the prospective new teachers, parents and the student so that the student could actually enter the grade they were supposed to be in and not cause a hardship on that class by not knowing the material.
nick spinelli 1, September 8, 2013 at 1:42 pm
Since when are opinion pieces “supporting data”? There are no conclusive longitudinal studies presented. Merely opinion backed up by opinion pieces. Daily Kos, Huff Post, WaPo blogs, etc. all are pro education industry as is other “supporting data.” We WERE having a healthy, “civil” discussion. Hopefully that will continue w/o condescension turning it sour.
*****
It doesn’t sound as if you were talking about my comments.
I think charter schools are a mixed bag–just like public schools. I believe the high stakes testing mania has gone too far. We should be addressing the educational needs of ALL our children in ALL of our schools–and not pressuring teachers–whether in charter schools or traditional public schools –to spend precious class time prepping kids for standardized tests.
BTW, I read the NY Times article about teacher turnover in charter schools when I was on vacation. I had had no idea that it was a problem. I had heard about Teach for America years ago and thought it was a good idea. That Times article and my research made me rethink TFA. It also helped me to realize how detrimental teacher attrition can be to educational institutions.
Mike,
What is RJM’s reference point for saying “so many families find them satisfactory”
That’s a good question. Choice has been firmly linked to satisfaction, not just in education, but in all aspects of life. Everybody is happier when they can choose things for themselves, especially things as important as education.
It’s important for me to repeat my belief in public schools and the fact that there are lots of fantastic public schools out there that make a lot of kids and families very happy. If all public schools were like this, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Anyway, a quick google search turned up things like this:
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/schoolchoice/downloads/articles/pje-buckleyschneider2006.pdf
We see that 49% of charter parents gave their child’s teachers a grade of A, which is fully 10% more than parents whose children were in DCPS. At the opposite end of the spectrum, 3% of DCPS parents gave their child’s school an F, whereas only 1% of charter school parents gave this failing grade. There is also a clear shift in the distribution of grades parents assign to teachers, principals, and facilities—all in favor of charter schools. The differences displayed in Figure 1 are all significant at p <
And this:
http://www.educationnews.org/parenting/rand-study-charter-school-parents-are-happier/
A national think tank’s latest study says parents of students at independently run charter public schools are more satisfied with the quality of education, safety and discipline at those schools than parents of students at more traditional schools, even though both operate similarly in many ways, writes Kevin McGill for the Associated Press.
The RAND Corp. study said its findings were based on surveys of parents, teachers and principals taken in 2008 and 2009.
Interestingly, while the surveys show relatively few differences in the way charters and traditional schools operate, parents of charter students were not only more satisfied overall, they reported having a greater sense of choice.
That last part is most important. There are other studies and polls, all of them with similar findings. People like having a choice in the important decisions in their lives. And poor people especially like to have more choices.
I have good friends, good liberals and loyal Democrats, who are very grateful for their local charter schools. People who worry about profiteers (apparently ignoring the history of money in public education for the last 50 years), people who worry about teacher retention and test scores and social strata, they’re all forgetting the most important things. They’re forgetting to ask students and parents what they think. What do they want?
I honestly don’t care about standardized test scores in judging teachers, students, or schools. I don’t care who stands to make money. I care about happiness and engagement in what is one of the most personal experiences a human being can have: learning. I care about the satisfaction of students with their learning experience. The only way to make more students more happy with their learning experience is to give them more choices.
RJM,
Thank you. I will ponder those links. You have added to the discussion immeasurably.
Help, I’ve had two comments eaten by wordpress. No doubt designed by some charter school grad!
Turnover is not good in any organization, hardly a revelation. So, that point is conceded.
Turnover is not good in any organization. That is not a revelation. I’ll concede that point.
Elaine, I was talking about your comments, not your post. The CREDO study from Stanford shows conclusively, except for the most partisan, that black and Hispanic students show SIGNIFICANTLY better performance from charter schools. I didn’t see that study, the most significant to date, listed anywhere. Although you did quote a Stanford professor. I predict there will soon be multi links from pro education industry sources slamming that study. The results are indeed mixed. But, only those who “can’t handle the truth” will argue the kids most needing choice[those of color] in charter schools are indeed helped.
Both LJM have been pretty clear we don’t have the key to the “truth.” That’s probably because we know “The truth is never pure and rarely simple.” I respect your very passionate defense of the status quo. Conservatism has a long and respected history in the U.S. I just think in this case the change that has helped students of color is more important.
LJM,
Unfortunately, traditional public schools have been judged as “failing” because of standardized tests. Reformers used the tests as proof that we need charter schools. Now the same educational measuring stick has come back to haunt those who championed charter schools.
BTW, the studies and articles that I used in my research on this subject focused on teacher attrition–not test scores. Do you have an opinion about the main point of my post–which is the high teacher turnover rate in charter schools and not test scores?
Elaine,
I find that comment amusing.
I’m an entertainer, at heart.
It has been school reformers who have used poor test scores in traditional public schools as an argument for establishing charter schools and for school vouchers.
And that’s wrong. Like I said, that’s the main thing I don’t like about charters. But more than I dislike charters, I respect choice.
You and I seem to agree on the questionable usefulness of standardized tests. My point was that if we shouldn’t use standardized test to judge the value of teachers (and we shouldn’t), then anti-charter school folks shouldn’t use them to judge the value of charter schools. And yet references to test scores abound in the anti-charter school articles you link to.
One of the articles you link to above claims that charter schools “can push out the weak students, leaving them for someone else to deal with.”
They’re not allowed to, but I don’t doubt that this happens. When it does, it should be corrected and the people who implemented it let go. When it doesn’t, it’s not news.
Mike S.,
I only used opinion pieces from Daily Kos, Huff Post, WaPo blogs, etc., according to Nick.
*****
Nick,
Would be so kind as to point out the HuffPo and DailyKos opinion pieces that I used when I wrote my post???
nick,
nick,
I used only opinion pieces to get information for this post, you say? Did you really look at my sources? I posted excerpts from and links to a number of studies:
Teacher Attrition in Charter vs. District Schools (CRPE–Center on Reinventing Public Education)
http://www.crpe.org/sites/default/files/brief_ics_Attrition_Aug10_0.pdf
Teacher Turnover in Charter Schools (Vanderbilt University)
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/schoolchoice/documents/stuit_smith_ncspe.pdf
Teacher Attrition in Charter Schools 2007 (NEPC–National Education Policy Center/Arizona State University & University of Colorado at Boulder)
http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/EPSL-0705-234-EPRU.pdf
Teacher turnover harms student learning (University of Michigan)
http://www.ns.umich.edu/new/releases/21604-teacher-turnover-harms-student-learning
Teacher Attrition: A Costly Loss to the Nation and to the States (NCTAF-National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future)
http://nctaf.org/wp-content/uploads/TeacherAttrition.pdf
I even included information that I got from a charter school alliance group:
A Revolving Door (Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff)
http://www.chicagoacts.org/charter-news/142-a-revolving-door
*****
You need to read more carefully. Was your last comment colored by the fact that you don’t agree with the factual information that I provided in my post? Or do you suppose the researchers who conducted the studies are all biased against charter schools?
Since when are opinion pieces “supporting data”? There are no conclusive longitudinal studies presented. Merely opinion backed up by opinion pieces. Daily Kos, Huff Post, WaPo blogs, etc. all are pro education industry as is other “supporting data.” We WERE having a healthy, “civil” discussion. Hopefully that will continue w/o condescension turning it sour.
“We WERE having a healthy, “civil” discussion. Hopefully that will continue w/o condescension turning it sour.”
Were you referring to me Nick, because it would seem so? My comment was made with civility and my request for something more from you side than completely unsupported assumptions was a fair one. You might have even provided an item from Michelle Rhee if you were so inclined. However, making negative statements, done in an oblique fashion seems to me to be somewhat short of the mark intellectually and honestly.
Elaine,
Thank you for your excellent work…
Even Charters Must Value Experience
Mark Isero
(Mark Isero taught for 12 years at Leadership High School in San Francisco before becoming an instructional coach at Envision Education, a small charter network based in Oakland. He writes about teaching at his blog, iserotope.com, and is the founder of the Kindle Classroom Project. He is on Twitter.)
8/29/13
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/08/28/do-teachers-need-to-have-experience/even-charter-schools-must-value-experience
Excerpt:
It’s possible to be a good teacher after just a couple years on the job, but it’s not possible to be a great one. Teaching is more than a set of discrete skills acquired by reading books like Doug Lemov’s popular “Teach Like a Champion.”
Excellent teaching takes time, practice, and support. Most of all, it takes a deep emotional commitment.
I was lucky, then, to spend the beginning years of my career at a charter school in San Francisco that valued teaching. Otherwise, I might have left too early. Like many charter schools, mine had a young, energetic staff that worked insane hours and at times resembled a “youth cult.” But the school’s leaders also built a strong adult learning community. Rather than accepting that teachers would leave after a few years, my school offered professional support and adopted policies to promote sustainability. I stayed for 12 years.
My experience may now be an anomaly. Some large charter school networks are comfortable hiring young teachers who plan to leave after just a few years. This practice shortchanges students and promotes a national culture that undervalues teachers.
Young teachers ready for something bigger and better already have one foot out the classroom door. Students can tell which teachers have authentic intentions and which do not. In schools with high turnover, students habitually feel a sense of loss and instability. New teachers must rebuild relationships and re-establish trust, which means less time for quality instruction.