>>[Carl] One answer is to create new schools to address today's students and prepare them for the world we live in today.

I totally agree -- in many public schools, learning has been paralyzed by a combination of poor teaching, peer pressures that undercut academic success, and outright disruption of classrooms.

Is it possible that healthier outcomes would emerge by engaging students as designers -- and stakeholders -- of for-profit charter school ventures that compete with under-performing schools?

A new framework for success-sharing

Many states now permit formation of for-profit charter schools, as an alternative to failed or failing public schools.

Although such ventures to date have been typically structured along standard business lines, their equity structures could be broadened to vest students and their families with equity interests.

For students and parents alike, the size of the shareholding and the annual dividends might be linked to criteria such as the following:

* Measurable gains in overall skills during the previous year by the charter school’s students; and

* The success of each student’s chosen peer groups during the year in gaining skills, and/or in staying out of trouble. (Each student annually might make or renew a pact for this with four or five friends.)

Such an approach would help align the near-term, as well as long-term, interests of students and their families with learning success.

Meeting and surpassing standards: partnering options with virtual charter schools

To meet curriculum requirements, the new actual charter schools could draw upon a growing range of online resources. More than 30 "virtual charter schools" are now offering online solutions to fulfill the standards often lacking in public schools.

Online core courses offered by virtual charter schools could be enhanced, over time, by new material from students versed in new media and the course topics. A growing number of sites such as StudentsKnow.com, Learnhub.com, and Wiziq.com enable students to create -- and earn revenues from -- online learning materials.

These sites, along with similar, downloadable authoring tools, could be used by students to steadily enrich the curriculum offered by the new charter schools and their virtual partners.

As the range of (highly-rated) new learning resources grew, further audiences could also be reached by the interactive online learning system.

Prize-winning content created by students in the new charter schools could be offered online as a free learning resource for those who remain caught in poorly-performing public schools, and who desire access to higher quality learning opportunities. Microvoucher coupons could help public school students in poor neighborhoods afford after-school internet costs, if they lacked other ways to connect with the new online learning resources.

Awards for the best student-created plans

How could charter schools co-owned by students emerge?

One option would be to launch competitions to recognize and reward public students who prepare charter school market studies and business plans.

Outstanding proposals to launch new for-profit charter schools -- schools featuring results-focused systems to promote peer-learning and discourage adverse peer pressures -- could earn prizes and other rewards for their creators.

The best of the proposals could be the basis for private investors to launch new charter schools, with a pre-set equity share for the initial designers as well as for families whose students enroll in these learning ventures.

Next steps

Openworld is interested in exploring opportunities for student co-owned charter schools and virtual learning ventures.

We hope you'll explore a range of related ideas (at www.entrepreneurialschools.com and www.openworld.com) and share your ideas on the best ways to proceed.

Mark Frazier, Openworld
www.openworld.com
@openworld (follow on Twitter)

Actually, the experiment in for-profit charter schools has been a spectacular crashing failure. Edison Schools Inc. was the shining standard-bearer 7 or 8 years ago -- the great hope for privatization, for applying the efficiencies of the private sector to public education.

Unfortunately, it didn't work. The majority of Edison's former client school districts -- those that contracted with the company to run schools -- have severed their contracts with Edison. Edison has pulled back from its business managing public schools and is now offering conventional supplemental services to schools, just like a zillion other vendors. The former cheerleaders who once viewed Edison as the hope for the future now treat it like an embarrassing odor in the room.

Here's an account written several years ago:


Controversial, for-profit Edison Schools, once hailed as the salvation of public education, has fallen from glory as what seemed like visionary ideas turned out to be just a sales pitch. In its heyday, Edison claimed that it could run public schools for less money than school districts could. The company dropped that claim as dismayed clients complained about its extra costs.

Edison's boasts that it could improve student achievement while making a profit fell just as flat.

Edison's student achievement has been mixed at best, and its claims about academic improvement never held up to scrutiny. A July 2002 New York Times analysis of Edison's claims found that the troubled Cleveland, Ohio, school system achieved higher gains than Edison's schools when analyzed with the methodology Edison applied to its own schools' achievement.

The notion of making a profit collapsed too. Edison Schools lost millions of dollars every year, showing a profit in just one quarter of the 10 years it made its finances public.

Edison's stock was publicly traded on the NASDAQ for four years. After reaching a high of close to $40 per share in early 2001, the share value tumbled to a low of 14 cents. In November 2003, the company was taken private in a buyout which paid only $1.75 per share. It was shortly after the buyout that Edison posted its lone profitable quarter, and then immediately ceased providing any public disclosure of its finances. The company has never indicated that it was able to maintain profitability for more than the one quarter.

After losing many contracts - along with its media luster -- Edison quietly began moving away from its original mission of "revolutionizing" public education, and into marketing conventional supplemental services such as testing, summer school and tutoring. Almost all of its new business involves providing such services rather than trying to manage schools.

Edison attracted ideological support from backers of privatization and school vouchers, and from such powerful conservative bastions as the Wall Street Journal editorial board and the Hoover Institution. But its name is no longer mentioned when "school reform" supporters talk about solutions for public education.

I beleive that charter schools are the best choice for our schools because they are able to provide an individualized, competitive and all inclusive education.  In the United States we are required by the law to educate every one until they reach a certain age, in most states 16 or 17 years old where many other countries around the world do not have this requirement, either because of space limitation, status in the community or the way that the schools track students progress deem them not worthy or unable to learn the required knowledge to continue with school.  The question of whether charter schools are more effective than public schools creates a spirited debate. Much research has been conducted, with mixed results. The National Charter School Research Project Center at the University of Washington, Bothell recently produced a report entitled Hopes Fears and Reality a Balanced Look at American Charter Schools in 2008. In the report they discuss the types of research that has been done on charter school's effect on student achievement. Their conclusion was that many of the past research used "snapshots" of student achievement at a single point in time, which were not accurate in assessing the effectiveness of charter schools. Since charter schools attract atypical students, often from less affluent and minority backgrounds, this type of study often produces misleading results. Using value-added comparisons might have more validity. Two methods were described. The first was to compare students who had been accepted by a particular charter school that used an entrance lottery system with the students who did not win the entrance lottery. Another approach would be to follow individual students' test scores over time and gauge whether the charter school produced more progress than a traditional public school. When the center applied their methods, they concluded that while there were a lot of differences between charter schools, they more often outperform than under perform their traditional public school counterparts. They also found that charter school students in Grades K-8 typically did better than traditional public school students.  Increasing the number of charter schools is the best choice for our schools because they are able to provide an individualized, competitive and all inclusive education.

Actually, it's self-evident that charter schools "cream" for students from more-motivated families that care about their kids' education. That's because every student at a charter school had parents who cared enough to seek out the school and specifically apply for it -- no students are assigned to charter schools by default. That eliminates the students who pose the toughest challenge to public education -- those who lack parents with the interest, motivation, wherewithal and so forth to take an interest in their children's education. Those students remain in the non-charter public schools.

Despite that significant advantage over non-charter schools, charter schools do not outperform traditional public schools, as study after study has confirmed.

The study James envisions is not a sound or valid measure. The following study would be sound: Create a non-charter public school consisting only of students who applied to charters but did not get in, and THEN compare that school to the charter school. When you include the students who never applied to a charter in one of the schools you're comparing, that's a confounding factor that taints the study. (By the way, the notion that every charter school has so many applicants it is turning some away is not accurate, despite the false claims coming from the charter world. Even the ballyhooed KIPP schools in my district, San Francisco Unified, have fewer applicants than openings.)

The entire notion of proving that charter schools are superior (or attempting to do so, since those attempts have consistently been unsuccessful for the 16 years charter schools have existed) perverts the original concept behind them. Charter schools were not originally intended as a weapon to crush and destroy public education, but that is what they've become. 

Paul Peterson, who conducted the so-called study James cites, is a longtime advocate of free-market "education reform" and opponent of public education. His alleged "studies" are not fair, valid or impartial evidence of anything but the amount of muscle the free-marketers wield in the education world.

Caroline,

Your assertion that charter schools "'cream' for students from more motivated families" is reverse logic.  The more motivated families you speak of who apply for their children to attend charters are the ones doing the "creaming" here, not the schools.  This argument can be applied to more traditional public schools on a macro level too.  It could be argued that many traditional public schools "cream" for students from more affluent families because they are located in more wealthy areas.  Those schools have levy power to give their students every advantage, charter schools don't.  In most states (maybe all states) charters have to work with what the state gives them and what they can obtain through private donations and grants.  Yes, this does mean that some poor kids who have dead beat parents who don't care about their education all that much will be left in poorly funded traditional public schools while their peers with more motivated parents are enrolled in charter schools but on a macro level it helps even the playing field between the economically disadvantaged and the affluent. 

I do like your proposed idea for a study on the effectiveness of charter schools.  However, this charter overflow only public school would have the same "creaming" quality you assign to charters.  One huge problem I have seen in research on this topic is when they compare traditional publics to charters the group of schools that represent the traditional publics are usually an average of all traditional publics including the private publics created by high property values and high rent in certain areas.  What percentage of charter schools are built in those communities?  Plus, what accountability measures are being used in these studies.  Many charter schools aim for outcomes other than test scores to evaluate their effectiveness.  How can we compare schools if we don't all agree what schools are for or how we should assess their effectiveness?  I am sure test scores are not on the top of the list of priorities of the Sudbury Schools. 

Perhaps the only reliable indicator of any school's success is student and parent satisfaction.  However, since most charter schools attempt to create the ideal learning environemnt for a specific type of learner and many families do not really know what the best environemnt is for their son or daughter this might be hard data to mine.  With this in mind the only data we can cling to would be qualitative data from families of students who in any school have been there for a while and feel it is the right fit.  Then we would need to pose these hypothetical questions:  How would closing this school effect these kids?   Would they be better off forced back into the traditional public school?  Would that even be an option for them?

Andrew,

There have been traditional public schools who have converted to charters.  Usually this happens when districts consolidate and the community determines it is best for one or more schools in to become independent charters.  However, I know it also happens to some under performing schools within districts.

I'm not saying that charter schools pro-actively do this creaming (some may, but that's not my point). The process INHERENTLY results in the creaming. That's because all students who enroll in charters had parents who cared enough to seek out the charter and apply for enrollment. Students whose parents are oblivious/uninvolved/unaware etc. remain in traditional public schools that accept students by default. If the extensive amount I've written about this didn't make that clear, my apologies.

Carl, what you say here is a given -- it's understood and accepted throughout discussion and policymaking involving public education:

"... many traditional public schools "cream" for students from more affluent families because they are located in more wealthy areas."

***

What you say HERE is unclear on the concept:

"...charters have to work with what the state gives them and what they can obtain through private donations and grants..."

Charters reap massive amounts in private donations and grants, largely because of the wide touting of the misleading, deceitful and harmful notion that they're a miracle deservedly crushing hapless public schools.

I'm sorry, but there is no possible way that this levels any playing field:

"this [charter school self-selection/creaming] does mean that some poor kids who have dead beat parents who don't care about their education all that much will be left in poorly funded traditional public schools while their peers with more motivated parents are enrolled in charter schools ..."

On the macro level, what this ACTUALLY means that we wind up with two classes of schools for the disadvantaged, aside from the privileged schools that already serve the advantaged. One class amounts to undemocratic privatization, while the vestiges of the public school system serve the "undeserving poor."

This is my point: "I do like your proposed idea for a study on the effectiveness of charter schools.  However, this charter overflow only public school would have the same "creaming" quality you assign to charters." -- yes, the study would obviously have to involve schools that were demographically comparable. California's school accountability system already ranks schools by demographic similarity, so that's perfectly feasible.

Actually, Carl and Andrew, parent satisfaction isn't a fair or reliable indicator at all, for several reasons ("Perhaps the only reliable indicator of any school's success is student and parent satisfaction."):

Reason 1: If my kid's school gets twice as much funding per kid as your kid's school and thus far superior resources -- to your kid's direct detriment, I'm likely to be VERY satisfied with the school (presuming I have no conscience or am willfully oblivious about its impact on your kid -- which IS in fact the case with many if not most charter school advocates, IHMO). So that's not at all a valid or fair indicator.

Reason 2: Research and anecdotal evidence have both shown that parents are often deceived or unaware about the effectiveness of their kids' schools. I've seen surveys of parents in schools that were failing by every measure who still liked the schools. And these two examples are anecdotal but true: In my district, one charter school was simply grade-inflating, so parents were happy happy happy that kids who had been D students at the former school became B students -- standardized test scores were still low, as one might expect, but the report cards made parents happy. In another case, a charter high school (now defunct) was graduating students with far fewer than the required credits. Parents of troubled or struggling kids were just relieved that their kids had gotten through high school and graduated, which wouldn't have happened at a school that wasn't basically cheating. It should be obvious from those examples that parent satisfaction was not at all a valid measure of success -- rather the opposite, in fact.

This might be a valid point, Andrew, except that it is known and obvious to everyone: "The same argument can apply to public schools if parents were allowed to choose which public school to send their children. Those who care, would naturally send their children to the best schools (by whatever measure) and those who don't would simply send them to the most convenient. Does this mean the best schools "creamed" those students."

Only the badly uninformed believe that a school that serves mostly privileged white children (or in my district white and Asian, since my district is plurality Chinese and that demographic has the highest achievement of any subgroup) is just plain teaching better than a school that serves mostly low-income black and Latino children. The awareness of the achievement gap is the basis of a huge amount of education policy.

On the other hand, when charters self-select/cream (by default, not necessarily with intent) and then are touted as superior to the non-charter schools that take the rest of the kids, only the best-informed observers understand that it's false to claim that charter schools are just superior in and of itself.

Some underperforming schools do convert to charters. But once they're charter schools, no students are assigned by default, so there may be a gradual change. Here's what happened when a struggling, low-performing non-charter school in my district became Edison Charter Academy, operated by now-discredited for-profit Edison Schools Inc., in 1998. All students were offered the option of remaining after the conversion,  and most did. But then Edison started "counseling out" the most challenging students, as its schools famously did in client districts nationwide. ("This school isn't a good fit for your child..."). Meanwhile, each year, the new incoming kindergarten included only students whose parents had sought out the school -- no more default students, except perhaps a small number of siblings from the former by-default era. So there was a gradual but steady change in the makeup of the student population.

 

I think I need to clarify something here.  I support charter schools not because I think they themselves are superior to traditional schools.  I support charter schools because I believe public schooling is improved on a grand scale by their existence.  There is a huge difference between why I support charter schools and how Caroline Grannan sets up her argument.  To say that charter school supporters feel charters are inherently superior to traditional public schools is similar to a pro-life advocate characterising pro-choice advocates as all being pro-abortion.  Support of charter law does not mean automatic support of all charter schools and it does not mean a condemnation of all traditional public schools. 

Caroline:

Let me clarify this statement:  "...charters have to work with what the state gives them and what they can obtain through private donations and grants..."

School districts have the power to levy funds from taxpayers.  They also have the power to propose operating and building referenums.  Charter schools lack this ability.  The state sets a standard per-pupil fuding amount that charter schools get.  In this way, at least in the way public funds are used, every charter school has equal funding.  Of course this is not exactly true because many influential private donors have lent their generous support to certain charter school models.  That is what I was refering to in that statement.

I don't agree with this at all:

"To say that charter school supporters feel charters are inherently superior to traditional public schools is similar to a pro-life advocate characterising pro-choice advocates as all being pro-abortion."

There's no analogy whatsoever. The charter school movement had engaged in a huge PR, media and political push to promote its schools as superior and disparage public schools.  It's calculated, deliberate and forceful, with the intention of weakening public education as much as possible.

"Support of charter law does not mean automatic support of all charter schools..." Agreed -- that's true. Most charter schools advocates claim to believe that some charter schools are unsuccessful and that they should be closed. I'm sure they're sincere. I never said otherwise, though, so I'm not sure what the point is.

"...and it does not mean a condemnation of all traditional public schools." For much of the charter movement, yes it does, because weakening and ultimately eliminating public education is the goal. Others who support charters yet might not fully agree with that goal if they were willing to acknowledge it look the other way and add impetus to it.

In a society that scorns and mistrusts its own public institutions, public services and public employees -- and the taxes that fund them -- school districts' power to levy taxes and win funds for construction etc. is severely limited. And in general, a school district that does achieve an increase in support and resources also can share that increase with charter schools. If the charter movement hadn't set itself up as the enemy of school districts and public education, claiming to be "superior" at every possible opportunity, the sharing would go a lot more smoothly, of course.


 

Caroline, it appears to me that you oppose the district administration methods when converting a public school to a charter school, and not necessarily the charter school model itself.

Please correct me if I am wrong. Would you not object, for example, if a school district mandates that schools which convert from public to charter must get consensus from a majority (say 80%) of the student population and their parents, and they must sign a contract to remain and participate for a set duration (say two years).

Given the funding formula as Carl pointed out, that charter schools have the same funding per pupil as other public schools, there can be no complain that charter schools are creaming or draining funding from other public schools.

By tracking the performance of the (80%) participating students, it is easy and unavoidable to demonstrate whether that particular charter school is effective or not improving student performance.

With respect to students and parents being "fooled" into a false sense of satisfaction, that's the job of regulators and superindentents who must provide objective dialog with the parents and students, independent of the school's administrators. Checks and balances of power have worked in the past, and can work again, as long as we are all honest about the agenda.

Having thought about your posts further, Caroline, I believe it may be worth stating up front that I am NOT speaking of a charter school model based on PAST experiences you may have with California, specifically those in your school districts. It appears to me that the experience soured your opinion on it.

I speak only of a charter school model as it is proposed, on paper, with all the limitations real, and yet to be defined. It is not fixed and unalterable. It is expected to change and evolve with experience and discoveries when more and more schools find different ways to innovate.

I hope this clarifies our differences in opinion, because I believe we fundamentally want what is best for ALL students, not just those with motivated parents, or those with advantages. And I believe artificial labels (of any ever kind) are counter-productive to the education of a student because each student is unique and has the potential to surprise everyone, when given the right environment, mentoring, and motivation to succeed. We can use labels for convenience as long as we are aware that these labels are highly statistical, inaccurate and useless when applied to individuals.

Andrew says: "...support for the use of Charter Schools as experiments to find better educational models, does NOT automatically mean a position that believes in the inferiority of any other educational model."

I agree that it doesn't. However, charter schools have become an integral part of a crusade to crush public education. One could certainly support the original concept of charter schools without desiring to crush public education -- that was not the original intent. But now, in my view, one cannot be a supporter of charter schools without being part of that crusade, like it or not. They're inextricably linked. 

Regarding this idea:
i"If a school district mandates that schools which convert from public to charter must get consensus from a majority (say 80%) of the student population and their parents, and they must sign a contract to remain and participate for a set duration (say two years)" ... I doubt if that would even be legal; what if the family's needs change? What if they move? And of course the charter schools may not go for it either.

The following is not true;

"Given the funding formula as Carl pointed out, that charter schools have the same funding per pupil as other public schools, there can be no complain that charter schools are creaming or draining funding from other public schools."

1. Charter school creaming refers to the process of attracting the more-motivated families away from public schools and has nothing to do with whether they have the same funding per pupil.
2. When students leave a school, their funding leaves with them. The cost of running the school does not drop accordingly. So there absolutely can, should and must be complaints that charter schools cream and drain funding from real public schools.

Perhaps this is true, but that's irrelevant to my point:

"...With respect to students and parents being "fooled" into a false sense of satisfaction, that's the job of regulators and superindentents who must provide objective dialog with the parents and students, independent of the school's administrators."

My point was that parent satisfaction is not a valid gauge of the effectiveness of a school. Also, the entire philosophy behind charter schools is that they're supposed to be "freed from burdensome bureaucratic regulation." So if you want to give regulators and superintendents more control over their operations, why have charter schools at all? That's unclear on the concept.

Yes, my views are to a large extent based on real-life situations with charter schools, not hypothetical concepts -- which makes them far more valid, wouldn't any reasonable person say? The whole point is that the hypothetical concept sounded really good on paper, but then it became corrupted by human nature, greed, desire for power and glory, and various other deadly sins.

I have some thoughts about how charter school advocates who aren't part of the anti-public school camp might work to put the charter movement on a positive, beneficial, righteous path. I'll do a blog post on them.

But meanwhile, every time any charter advocate who is NOT in favor of denigrating and destroying public schools voices the opinion that charter schools are superior, it puts that advocate in the anti-public school camp -- it does make him or her an enemy of public schools.

Andrew, I'm not saying that YOU said charter schools are superior, so you're misreading when you feel I'm accusing you. But so many other advocates of charter schools do say that. Your comment is in direct contrast to what most charter school advocates say.

There's a lefty-progressive-type K-8 charter school in my district. Their principal is very aware of and sensitive to these issues and discusses them publicly -- the fact that the once-well-intentioned charter movement has been hijacked by opponents of public education. I view her (that charter school principal) as someone who might be amenable to joining a countermovement within the charter school movement that would fight back against the privatizers.

Yet some parents in her school still belligerently take the "we're superior" line. One has claimed in online discussions that their school offers resources that non-charter public schools can't afford despite the fact that it supposedly gets less funding (claimng it's just better-managed). But actually that's not true -- that charter school gets more funding per student than comparable schools in our district. So that's an example. I even heard a student at the school make a speech to our school board claiming their school has no bullies and other schools do -- so even the kids are doing it.

So that's the kind of thing I mean. I"m not talking about you.

Yes, it's normal for enthusiastic kids to say something like that. (I know a lot of families in that school, and of course it has problem kids like any other school -- obviously things were working well for that kid at that time, which is great.) It's just that in the context of a massive amount of claiming that charter schools are superior to those stooopid old traditional public schools, the innocent comment takes on a different cast. (Of course I didn't actually react at all to the comment about bullies.)