The Charter Blog

27 Mar 2007

GUEST BLOGGER: Joanne Jacobs

In the summer of 2004, three publishers were interested in my book about a charter school founded to prepare Hispanic students for college. Then the New York Times ran a charters suck story on the front page based on a teachers’ union analysis of charter scores. Two
publishers dropped out. The third, Palgrave Macmillan, insisted that “charter” not appear in the title. “Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea and the School That Beat the Odds” came out in hardcoverat the end of 2005. Sales exceeded their very modest expectations, so they brought out a paperback edition this month. At the publisher’s suggestion, “charter” is back in the title. This time, they decided the public wants to hear about charter choices.

The school in my book, San Jose’s Downtown College Prep, recruits students who are “failing but not in jail,” as co-founder Greg Lippman put it. Most earned D’s and F’s in middle school, doing little work. Their parents ­ often Mexican immigrants with little education themselves ­ don’t know how help them succeed in school. The average ninth grader starts with fifth-grade reading and math skills.

In the book, I tried to report honestly on the school’s struggles. Some of the
founders’ education ideas didn’t work. Quickly, they recognized their mistakes and tried
something else. The school’s unofficial motto became: We’re not good now, but we can do better.

They did.

All DCP graduates are accepted to college; 81 percent of graduates in the first
three classes remain on track to earn a degree. The school has one of the highest pass rates in San Jose on the graduation exam; on the state’s Academic Performance Index, DCP hit 10 out of 10 compared to similar schools, 7 out of 10 compared
to all high schools in 2005. (In 2006, students staged a walk-out during the test to protest the decision not to rehire a popular teacher, sending scores crashing.)
San Jose Unified, which granted the charter, is happy to cite DCP’s results as a success for the district.

Charters, I wrote, are an experiment. Experiments don’t always work, but we can learn from failure as well as success. In the early years, DCP founders had no time for replication. They needed to stick closely to the job at hand. Now, in response to parents’ requests, DCP is considering opening a middle school as well as another high
school. Other groups of educators are proposing DCP-style charters in San Jose.

Of course, successful charter models are expanding in cities across the country with the
help of generous donors. Look at KIPP in Houston and Green Dot in Los Angeles.
Sometimes, state caps prevent new schools from opening to meet the demand for alternatives. But it will be increasingly difficult to justify denying choice to the parents of left-behind students.

Joanne Jacobs

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March 27 2007

Great Editorial on Impact of Caps in NY

Excellent Editorial on MN's Anti-Charter Proposal

Detroit Mayor Wants More Charters

26 Mar 2007

GREAT editorial from the WSJ

Charters, KIPP, and America's kids...

Wall Street Journal

Kudos for KIPP
March 26, 2007; Page A14

Rare is the occasion when these columns have reason to applaud more spending on public schools. But news that the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) will receive $65 million to create new schools in Houston is worth a standing ovation.

KIPP academies are charter schools, which are public schools freed from the grip of the public education bureaucracy. Charter schools can employ lengthier school days and longer school years than union work rules typically allow. They can pay teachers based on skills and performance rather than seniority. And charter school principals can fire and replace staff who are underperforming.

In return for such liberties, charter schools are held accountable for producing results in the classroom. And no charters in the country have made better use of their independence than KIPP. The brainchild of two Teach for America alums, Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg, the first KIPP school was started in Houston in 1994. There are now 52 schools nationwide serving 12,000 kids. More than 80% of KIPP students are low income and 95% are black or Latino, yet they regularly outperform their traditional public school counterparts in math and reading tests. Waiting lists are commonplace.

Charters nationwide now number more that 4,000 and enroll more than a million students. The public school establishment and its political supporters continue to talk about closing academic achievement gaps, but charters like KIPP, Uncommon Schools, Achievement First and others are actually getting the job done. These schools provide educational choice for people who otherwise have none. And their success is directly linked to their ability to innovate and operate outside of the union box.

This week KIPP announced the results of its most successful fundraising campaign ever, and the money will help spawn 42 new schools in Houston over the next decade. Donors include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Doris and Donald Fischer Fund, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation and the Walton family. All are veteran advocates of school reform, and it's encouraging to see them endorse successful models like KIPP.

Outside pressure is essential to reforming public education, and KIPP says it wants to "create a situation where both KIPP and [the Houston school district] benefit from the healthy competition when there are multiple public schools serving the same community."

Houston schools can certainly use the competition. With just over 200,000 students, the school district is the nation's seventh-largest. KIPP aims to expand its student body to around 10% of that number, which might be enough to exert pressure on district schools to improve or close down. Last year more than 50 district schools, or roughly one out of six, failed to make adequate yearly progress as mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, and nearly half of the district's high schools were rated "academically unacceptable."

By contrast, KIPP students were acing state tests. At the KIPP Academy Middle School, 99% of eighth-graders scored "proficient" or "advanced" in math and reading. The corresponding results for their district counterparts were 57% and 79%. No wonder the current KIPP waiting list in Houston is 2,500 students long.

KIPP's accomplishments are all the more impressive when you consider that charter schools in Texas receive no public funding for buildings and $1,200 to $1,800 less than the $9,000 per student the state spends on other public schools. More evidence, we'd say, that what public schools need is not more tax dollars but more autonomy to utilize the ample resources they already have.

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March 26 2007

Jersey Charters Underfunded

Some MN Legislators Seek to Kill Chartering

MA Charters Win Major Legal Challenge

Great Op-ed About Proposed Cap in IL

24 Mar 2007

GWU President Explains Charter Exclusion #2

March 29, 2007

Dear President Smith:

I have to leave some things for my successor to do. Perhaps expanding the Trachtenberg Scholarships to include a larger universe creates an opportunity for him to step forward in a positive way.

I actually didn’t see the editorial page of the March 21 Post, and I don’t know who Don Soifer is. I myself have spent the last week in San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco -- visiting with alumni and benefactors, trying to raise some money that I could use to fund scholarships and other good things in Washington. I don’t think that expanding the candidates eligible to participate in the Trachtenberg Scholarship Program is sinful but neither is it without effect. What we have is a game of Musical Chairs. There are a limited number of scholarships and, at the present time, there are “x” number of candidates. If we add to the roster of candidates creating a roster of “x + y”, the number of candidates will be greater – the number of scholarships will remain the same. It will be more daunting for youngsters from the DC public schools, as conventionally defined, to get the scholarships. The competition will be more severe because some of the candidates for scholarships will be students in the charter schools. Every seat that is taken by a charter school student will be a seat not taken by a DC public school student. If we reopen the universe, I see no reason to restrict the new candidates to your constituency. In other words, either we ought to keep it as it was conceived as a scholarship for the DC public school graduates or we ought to open it up without any reservation to youngsters graduating from secondary schools from the District of Columbia – DC public school students, charter school students, parochial school students, private school students, as long as they are legal residents of the District of Columbia. After all, you point out that charter schools are well established in DC law and policy. Most assuredly, the same could be said of private and parochial schools. So, if we are going to avoid discriminating, as you characterize it, by focusing our efforts on DC public schools, we might as well not discriminate by not discriminating.

I appreciate your advocacy for your own constituency but, it seems to me, that if your argument is taken to its logical conclusion including you in but leaving St. Albans and Georgetown Day and Sidwell out, is discriminatory in its own way. And there are, I know, economically disadvantaged and minority students attending those schools on scholarships provided by those institutions in much the same way as GW has provided the Trachtenberg Scholarships.

Thanks so much for stimulating my thinking.

Sincerely,
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg
SJT/sk

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