Charter schools, Ikea style

Nestled between a blurb about the impending purchase of Anheuser-Busch by InBev, and a report on Europe’s biotech sector is a quaint story about a Swedish company’s method of privatizing public education. “The Swedish model“, from the June 12th edition of The Economist, describes the manner in which 1994 legislative reforms “allow pretty much anyone who satisfies basic standards to open a new school and take in children at the state’s expense.” Similar to the manner in which many American charter schools operate, the local government pays the “private” school what it would have cost for the child to remain in the public education system, anywhere from $8,000-12,000. According to the article, over 10% of the nation’s children currently participate in such schooling.

Unique about these schools is not that they exist, but rather the manner in which they operate. First, in receiving payment per-pupil, the schools are not allowed to inflate costs, but there is no provision against the school’s making a profit. Also interesting is the design and methodology employed by the largest of the schools, Kunskapsskolan (literally, “Knowledge Schools”). Similar to Maria Montessori’s educational method, the schools merely provide the learning environment for the students, in partnership with teachers and tutors, to direct their own learning at their own pace.

Two interesting questions arise from these schools’ existence:

• Is it reasonable for schools to get paid in excess of the costs associated with educating a student?
• Is a self-directed classroom the model that all schools should follow?

Fundamentally, education should not be a for-profit concept. This, however, is not mutually exclusive with schools’ getting paid in excess of the costs of education. It is completely reasonable for schools to receive the same money that would be spent on that student in the public education system. However, something reasonable should be done with the surplus. That is, it shouldn’t go into the CEO’s pockets. I would suggest initiatives that Kunskapsskolan has used, such as bonuses for leaving successful schools to teach at under-performing ones, and rewards for achievement-inducing educators.

The latter question is best answered by looking at a product of a Montessori nursery school (this guy). So the answer is yes and no. It is hard to generalize across all children, but there is something to be said for an approach that allows students to learn at their own pace and through their own discovery. It’s like the adage, “If you give a man a fish…”. On the other hand, if one begins education in such a method that so emphasizes experimentation and hands-on principles, it seems almost incompatible with other pedagogies, in that students would experience a drastic change in the structure that could be unnerving.

Regardless of the answers of these questions, it seems that Sweden has once again out-designed America, and we soon be knocking at their doors to get a copy of their blueprint. I only hope that there are words this time…

Fighting Words

It’s taken me some time to craft this post, mostly because I had to allow myself sufficient time to calmame. In lieu of a bare knuckle MMA brawl, I offer the following in response to Jay Mathew’s report on the closing of the Tri-Community Public Charter School, entitled “Charter School to Close Over Academics” (The Washington Post, 6/9/2008).

Generally, I think that the discussion that Mr. Mathews spurs with his columns are an excellent way to draw attention to educational issues. However, upon viewing his columns from the perspective of a referenced party (my school is mentioned repeatedly), I realize that there are better ways to engender dialogue than to use poorly-researched statistics and meaningless variables to facilitate the drawing of unsound conclusions.

According to Mr. Mathews,

A list of the D.C. Charter Schools with the lowest reading and mathematics proficiency rates reveals that the closing of Tri-Community is the exception, not the rule, for struggling charters. Charter Schools with achievement rates even lower than Tri-Community’s are still open, in several cases because they serve a large number of students with learning disabilities or other special circumstances. (Emphasis added)

As a result of lumping all failing charter schools together (yes, I agree with his fundamental premise that charter schools are not quite making the grade), Mr. Mathews is making a severe ontological error. The table, “D.C.’s Lowest-Achieving Charters” lists several of the “worst performing” charter schools based at least, in part, on the findings of a non-profit that does not understand the fundamentals of statistical analysis. Mr. Mathew’s puts forth a harrowing statistic:

According to a FOCUS list of 58 D.C. Charter schools arranged by combined reading and math proficiency rates last year…[there were] two charter schools, City Lights and Next Step, with no students scoring at least proficient on the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System (D.C.-CAS) tests.

It is outrageous to have no students reading or doing mathematics at the proficient level, and Mr. Mathews’ exceptional reason for such educational shortcomings is that

[Booker T. Washington, Young America Works, Next Step and other] low achieving charters deal mostly with high school dropouts, including many adults, and focus on developing job skills rather than boosting reading and math scores to the highest levels.

Thus, developing job skills is incompatible with improving reading and math abilities of students. Such an awkward conclusion should have catalyzed further research into the reasons for these schools’ achieving at such a low level. A simple visit to our website would have informed Mr. Mathews that we only have approximately 85 students at any given time. A phone call to our receptionist could have informed him that at least 97% of our students live in households that do not speak English as their primary language, with over half of those students qualifying as English Language Learners. Finally, a brief conversation with our executive director would have provided him with our own harrowing statistic: no more than 4 students from our school take the DC-CAS in any given year.

Isn’t there someone who gets paid to do that?

On Wednesday, a meeting scheduled to last an hour somehow extended itself at least an extra 93 minutes. I know, because I counted every tick of my Flava Flav clock that I wear to staff meetings to keep time. The meeting involved all of the teachers on staff, but it wasn’t a status-of-the-school staff meeting, but rather, a school-vision-and-mission-and-student-body-composition-and-state-mandated-restructuring staff meeting. Needless to say, as a third-month teacher, I don’t have much to add to these conversations, beyond the pragmatic, “Wrap it up, B”:

Obviously the problems of meetings beyond the scope and experience level of the staff are not endemic to the education industry, but I feel that other entities probably have more capital to invest in an outside organization to do the [grunt/boring/tedious/hard] work. I feel that the more efficient way of achieving this “new vision/design” would have been through educational consultants who can come up with a handful of plans based on interviews with senior members of the staff who have the best idea of where the school came from and where it should go. While I understand the importance of the egalitarian method that this school is attepmting to use, all it achieves is a cyclic arguments that devolve into scheduling discussions. This ad hoc methodology that is currently in effect is going to get us to one place: where we are, having the Charter School Board tell us that the school, once again, isn’t making the grade.