Bill would check Oakland’s charter movement
By Katy Murphy
Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 7:15 pm in charter schools.
The Oakland school board has endorsed it, and the Assembly’s education committee has kept it alive.
Assembly Bill 2008, which would stop Oakland’s charter movement in its tracks, is another attempt by Sandre Swanson to help the state-run school district get back on its feet and stay there.
Conceived of concern that charters are bleeding the school district of students — and the money that follows them — the bill would prevent any new charters from opening as long as the district has a debt to pay.
In other words, for a looong time.
Oakland’s 32 publicly funded, independently run schools now educate some 8,000 children in the city, and two more are slated to open this fall. One in six public school children in Oakland attend one. (The history of the local charter movement, and all the openings and closings, is well documented here.)
One might argue that it shouldn’t matter how many students leave traditional public schools. If you’re not educating those kids anymore, then why do you need the state dollars alloted to them?
A reasonable point, and one that is often overlooked in calculations of “lost funding.” But, as an analyst from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office explained to me recently, the state funding formulas work against school districts with declining student populations. And when districts experience steep declines, such as Oakland has, it’s hard to shrink the infrastructure quickly enough.
Now, back to the bill: Is it in the best interest of Oakland families to halt charter expansion? According to Gary Larson, of the California Charter Schools Association, Oakland’s charters have even longer waiting lists, on average, than those in the rest of the state. Is it fair to limit a family’s choices in an effort to uplift the system as a whole?
On the other hand, is it wise to allow the expansion to continue, unchecked, when fiscal experts (i.e. a FCMAT team led by Oakland’s future superintendent) say charters could stand in the way of Oakland Unified’s fiscal recovery?
image from jmfrazier’s site at flickr.com/creativecommons
[You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.]
April 18th, 2008 at 8:20 am
It is possible that in addition to the loss of public “school” money, the left wing is also afraid that if they don’t shut the charters down soon the testing may show that the charters provide more education for the dollar than the public “schools”?
In this Brave New World of psychometric testing – forced testing if you will, anybody can come along and through data mining of these scores publish the trends and conclusions about what is going on. It will be hard to hide very much.
Although people can individually have a bad day on standardized tests, the larger the testing samples and datasets are the more reliable the stats and related predictions are. NCLB has ensured that the USA has the largest cognitive testing dataset by age, race and sex in history that is completely available to everybody (including the Chinese) for datamining. You can’t always predict what everyone will do with such a gold mine. It could even be used for jury selection or employment one day. You can legislate all you want, people will take care of number 1.
People who have not worked in the use of these stats really don’t understand how powerful they can be – remember Providian Credit Card Company in San Francisco? Founded by a mathematician to make money on people considered unbankable – the first operation of it’s kind that used math models to sort through customers unusable by the other banks. Fair Issac & Co in San Rafael was founded by actuaries who realized they could make money by selling statistical predictions. Boy were they right. And here’s the rub. Numbers that were first thought to be represent odds of paying off a loan have now been found to relate to odds of having a car accident. They are also now seen to represent the desirability of employing a subject. Want to bet they are being looked at by the health insurance companies?
The numbercrunching power is readily at hand, what is needed is ready access to statistical databases. NCLB takes care of that nicely. By tying the number to specific schools and years you can even try to make judgements about the collective people from that school.
Here’s how I ties this into the thread at hand. How much of Sandre Swanson’s bill is also driven by fear of the Charter’s undermining the public school’s test scores by cherry picking desirable students? Much like a large health insurer watching the younger and healthier customers go to a competitor.
April 18th, 2008 at 10:43 am
On the new superintendent, and the way the vote was handled: It seems really odd that the first action the board would take on being given this power would be in secret, hastily, and on a sharply divided vote. Wouldn’t it have been a much better message to the public, the school community, and the State Superintendent, to have talked it out enough to come up with a unanimous candidate that could show Oakland’s school board is ready to lead again? This is what I have feared most over the last 5 years: that once power was returned to the board, it would return to its old (bad) habits.
April 18th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
OUSD Watcher: Are personnel decisions normally debated in public? Not that I’ve heard of. And Unanimous votes are nice but optional. Business must get done and there usually no reason to hold up serious decisions until everybody is happy. There are reasonable deadlines on making decisions. Beyond that, not deciding is in itself a decision. Look slike the board is doing their job. Hope the new Super works out well.
April 18th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Nextset, charter schools have been around since 1993 now. Despite attracting torrents of private money and wielding a mighty PR operation — and being backed by the strength of the Bush Admin and all the powerful right-wing think tanks, and THEIR megabillions — charters have not shown themselves to be any better than traditional public schools. Just like traditional publics, some do great, some are crashing failures and most are somewhere in between.
Despite all the claims (that’s that PR operation at work), they are NOT pioneering any innovations — I challenge anyone to name a single innovation pioneered by a single charter school — that public schools can gratefully emulate, as was the original promise.
They have the freedom to do stuff they’re not really supposed to do, like pick-n-choose their students, or employ processes that aggressively self-select for the most motivated, high-functioning and compliant students from the most motivated, high-functioning and compliant families. Well, that DOES tend to make a better school, but that would happen if the venerable public school down the street could employ those same winnowing processes.
Also, I would dispute that the left wing is opposed to charters. Reality shows otherwise. The farthest-left member of SFUSD’s school board, Green Party activist Mark Sanchez, teaches at a charter school and is the board’s strongest charter supporter. The left is (cluelessly) attracted to the “whoopeeee! No rules!” aspect of charters and is willfully oblivious to the fact that at heart they’re a weapon of the right-wing privatizers being deployed to attack and undermine public education.
April 18th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Oh yeah, and “waiting list” claims are classic PR hokum from the charter folks.
I mean, I’m sure those claims are true sometimes. But for example — SFUSD’s Envision charter schools claim to have waiting lists when they’re doing PR or talking to prospective parents, but are actually underenrolled. Rumor is that they list everyone who has ever attended a school open house as being on the so-called “waiting list.”
The New York Times Magazine did a puff piece– oops, I mean article — on KIPP some time ago, and the reporter asserted (without backup or attribution) that “all KIPP schools” have waiting lists. But SFUSD’s two KIPP schools do not have waiting lists and are scrounging for 5th-grade applicants, offering attractive prizes to existing KIPP families who bring in applicants.
Back in the days when all the gushing was about Edison Schools, Edison used to claim to have waiting lists. But twice I called the very school that supposedly had a long waiting list to ask if they had room for my kindergartner, and they magically did.
No reporter should ever believe a waiting list claim from a charter school. I’m sure they’re true sometimes, but the default assumption should be that they’re PR BS. (It’s easy to check: Just call up anonymously and ask if they have room for your kindergartner/9th-grader/whatever.)
April 18th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
This is a truly unfortunate proposal, as it places the needs of students second to politics. Many of the most effective schools in Oakland are charter schools. That’s especially true in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty. In addition, African American and Latino kids in charter schools are also doing a significantly better than their peers in regular public schools. Likewise, as a whole, charter schools in Oakland are overall outperforming regular public schools. The most important fact is that kids are better off because of Oakland’s charter schools.
There is no question that Oakland needs support from the state in curing its budget crisis. But this bill would try to balance the budget by limiting the choices of Oakland parents in finding a good public school. That is exactly the wrong way to do it. The voters and the legislature have made clear their support for strong, accountable public charter schools. The district and the state must look for solutions that don’t compromise one of the best options for Oakland’s families.
Jonathan Schorr
April 18th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Yeah, but you’re a paid flack for KIPP, Mr. Schorr! I don’t think you have a lot of credibility, since you’re paid to say that and we have no idea what you really think.
(FYI I’m a volunteer and speaking from the heart.)
April 18th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Caroline. The public schools are so rotten in the urban areas that they probably need to be utterly destroyed. One of the best ways would be to end compulsory and free schooling alltogether at puberty.
Having typed that and waited, I’m not so sure I really mean something so draconian. For over a century the nation’s public school system was one of the things that protected the USA from a heriditary class system that the UK has. It was the public schools K through PhD that ensured social mobility – and the GI Bill helped pay for the educational system also.
Things seem to have changed so that the place is barely recognizable.
So do we throw out the public schools? I think that they way they are run now they are becoming an instrument of the new caste system in this country. Wiping them out and creating a sink or swim network of “independent” schools who can enforce standards and reject students as undesirable might put discipline back into education (and the families who would become supplicants to good schools).
Anyway the decision is hardly mine, it is already being made and the wheels are turning so to speak. What I can say is that I liked the public school system I grew up with (Catholic grade school, public high school, public and Catholic Colleges, Public Grad School). Few public high schools are run now the way my high school was run. I feel we were better prepared to survive in the job market than the current crop are – and education is about careers it’s not about smelling the roses.
April 18th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Ouch! The “flak” with no credibility, according to Caroline, is also the author of a book on charter schools and a former Tribune education reporter.
Yes, it’s worth mentioning that Jonathan Schorr is on KIPP’s payroll. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t bring insight and a valid point of view to the table.
For all we know, half the people who post anonymous comments on this blog could have a vested interest in the issue or organization at hand. Some could even be flaks!
April 18th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Assembly Bill 2008 by Assemblyman Sandre Swanson is good for the Oakland Public Schools in that if passed it will immediately stop the financial drain on the District through students leaving to attend yet another opening of a new charter school.
At the same time with almost 1/3 of Oakland charter schools servicing grades K-12 parents Oakland parents are not without charter school choices.
If AB 2008 should pass (and get signed by a Governor that vetoed Assemblyman Swanson’s previous bill setting up a time table for return of local control) it would be interesting to look at the data and see if the current charter schools continue to attract enrollment.
Johnathan Schorr beats the drum for charter schools, as well as for the KIPP charter on whose Board he sits. He was also on the KIPP advisory board when KIPP was an Oakland small school. My understanding is he worked to convert KIPP Oakland to a charter school because KIPP could get more money for its KIPP program as a start-up charter school. I think KIPP got almost quarter of million of taxpayers money on converting to a charter. Mr. Shorr testified at Oakland School Board meetings that the KIPP public school program was not sustainable without more money than what the Oakland public schools received. When their original grant money as a KIPP school ran out KIPP Oakland sought to take advantage of charter school start-up money by converting.
For some of the Oakland charter schools extra money doesn’t help make their charter school a more successfully high-stakes test scoring school, but there are almost 100 Oakland public schools that would love the extra money to try improve their school.
I think the charter school idea is a bad idea for many reasons. One reason the charter school idea is a bad idea is that the charter school laws created a poweful special interest after the same dollar as public schools. California charter school laws are Peter robbing Paul laws. The power of the charter school lobby is a reality. The charter school lobby won more dollars for charter school housing than porportionately public school housing in the last Statewide election. Few districts have an interest in passing legislation that will only benefit Oakland in righting its fiscal ship and AB 2008 faces an uphill battle against Mr. Shore and his Sacramento charter school lobby.
Mr. Shore is saying in effect forget you the parents and children of Oakland because I want to grow the charter school idea and I don’t care what it costs the District to continue to grow Oakland charter schools.
Under the current system the charter schools of California, and in many states across America, can pay with public tax dollars, to have Sacramento and Washington lobbyist work to prevent laws passing that will protect local school districts, such as Oakland, from the harmful financial impact of growing charter schools.
Let’s be clear, under California law financial harm caused by the growth of charter schools is not a lawful reason for a school board, or other authorizing authority to reject a charter school. Under present California law charter schools can become an instrument for fulfilling Nextset wish of destroying public schools in urban settings. But, such action is not a dream and children of Oakland are impacted negatively by the constant drawing of students away from Oakland’s public schools.
Under State receivership Oakland needs a break from continuing to grow charter schools and Assemblyman Swanson’s AB 2008 cleanly, and clearly, is aimed at plugging the financial drain of growing charter schools.
Although AB 2008 does not go as far as ending charter schools in Oakland (my dream) AB 2008 deserves the support of Oakland’s citizens.
April 18th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Jim 2812: Throwing money at public schools will never improve anything. The Kansas City experiment pretty well demonstrated that unlimited funding doesn’t move the scores – or improve the finished product.
I don’t want to destroy the public schools (despite the rants!), I want a strong, vibrant public school system that forces the lower class and immigrants to assimilate into the USA mainstream, kicking and screaming if they want. Our public schools make it policy that people stay in their comfort zones and don’t change.
The present OUSD is not helped by having captive kids. And I don’t think they need more money. They need change they don’t want to make. If the students can vote with their feet perhaps OUSD will have to change or die.
Is it possible that OUSD can out-charter the charter schools? What about adopting the SF-USD’s Lowell High approach where you have a network of elite application only district wide schools? The only reason the Charters attract the students is the promise of greater success in life, which Lowell High delivers in Spades. Why can’t OUSD have a Lowell?
As far as this new legislation goes, remember it’s only a matter of time before the homeschool movement gets into the Internet and private schools start internet schools just like the internet banks – possibly with rented “classrooms” in commercial buildings a’la University of Phoenix. OUSD can’t expect to keep the captive kids forever, they must find a way to make their products desirable. The legislation, if it even passes into law, will only buy OUSD a little more time.
April 18th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
It’s called a shill, Katy, and that’s not cool! True, others here could be paid to be voicing the opinions of their employers. But shilling is still not really an ethical way to practice PR.
April 19th, 2008 at 12:38 am
Nextset:
Thank you for clearly making one of my points about charter schools. School Boards are throwing taxpayers money against a wall called charter schools and hoping that something good sticks and the government has been collecting taxes for these charter school experiments since 1992. Now this is where your quote fits nicely: “Throwing money at public schools will never improve nothing.” I would prefer to say throwing money at charter schools has proven nothing and been a huge waste of taxpayers money by spending scare education dollars on a redundant system lacking accountability and proper oversight in a financial environment operating as a zero sum game taking from public education to pay for charter school education.
The lack of oversight of charter schools under the current California charter school law can only be changed by increasing the amount of money spent on overseeing charter schools thus making the charter school concept even less cost effective.
My suggestion is to reform charter school law by tying charter schools to a funding source separate and independent of Prop 98. Lottery money might be used but then other sources would have to be tapped to fully fund Prop 98.
Another reform I would advocate is that the authority authorizing a charter school be funded by the State to post on its webpage the agenda and minutes of Brown Act compliant meetings of charter schools. In Oakland with millions being spent on over 30 charter schools the public has no electronic access to the actions of these charter schools but if interested it can view the agenda’s and minutes of the Oakland School Board meetings on line.
Finally, school board’s should have a right to reject charter school petitions if harming the district’s finances.
April 19th, 2008 at 1:20 am
Interesting. I didn’t realize that some might consider it unethical for people to post an opinion that toes — or that could be perceived as toeing — the company line. I’m not arguing the point, I just never saw it that way.
Jonathan Schorr was one of many people whom I invited to comment on AB 2008, in part because he is knowledgeable on the subject and because I knew he would have something to say (Maybe that’s why I felt compelled to come to his defense). I’ve also invited Troy Flint, the OUSD spokesman, to participate in the forum (He reads it, but thus far has declined to post), and OEA President Betty Olson-Jones, who is paid to lobby for a cause, among others.
I don’t want to pull the discussion away from original issue, but I do take ethical dilemmas to heart. In the interest of transparency, maybe I should ask participants with certain affiliations — those who post their real names, anyway — to include their titles at the bottom. I’m not sure. Anyway, it’s good food for thought.
April 19th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Caroline:
Jonathan Schorr a shill? I don’t think so but wished it were true because he is far more dangerous as a true believe defending the charter schools concept than pimping his skills and knowledge.
His background as a former high school English teacher and education reporter for the Oakland Tribune provides him with experience and contacts that I envy. But, his talent and skills are enlisted on the side of a cause that undermines public education while he, I believe, feels he is offering a better, not destructive way.
It is the destroyer of public education, charter schools, that rightly deserves our fire and not the man.
I had trouble writing this piece because I have so appreciated your many posts exposing the PR spin and lies told in promoting charter schools.
My hope is that you’ll continue to muckrake the charter school muck.
Jim Mordecai
Oakland Teacher Retired after 35 years
plus 5 years Oakland substitute and currently
an OEA elected rep to CTA and NEA
April 19th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
My second sentence I was trying to say I think Johnathan Schorr is more dangerous as a true believer than a shill.
April 19th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
I think (in fact, I believe it’s widely held) that it’s unethical for a paid spokesman to post an opinion without disclosing that he’s a paid spokesman posting the opinion on behalf of his employer.
Katy, it would be unethical for you to quote him in an article giving an opinion on KIPP, or charter schools, as though he were an impartial member of the public without disclosing that he was actually a paid spokesman, wouldn’t it?
Or more innocently, if this were a discussion of — say — which local restaurant was best, it would be unethical (albeit amusingly so) for the owner of a restaurant to post comments promoting his own restaurant without disclosing that he was promoting his own restaurant.
Here’s Wikipedia’s definition of “shill” — does it fit? You be the judge:
A shill is an associate of a person selling goods or services or a political group, who pretends no association to the seller/group and assumes the air of an enthusiastic customer. The intention of the shill is, using crowd psychology, to encourage others unaware of the set-up to purchase said goods or services or support the political group’s ideological claims.
I think it’s FINE if Mr. Schorr wants to give the KIPP viewpoint here or anywhere, and would never suggest that anyone be muzzled. My point is that it’s unethical for him to make comments as though he were a regular member of the public without disclosing that KIPP is paying him to make the comments.
April 19th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
On further thought — if that post was entirely by invitation, I do temper my comments, though the fact that Mr. Schorr is a paid spokesperson is extremely material and should have been disclosed. Since the post just appeared, I naturally assumed it was an effort to mislead.
In terms of the actual content of the post, there should be asterisks on most of the comments. Such as:
“African American and Latino kids in charter schools are also doing a significantly better than their peers in regular public schools.”
If so — IF so, and I’ve seen so many misstatements about this that I’d still want to see the numbers — surely the fact that many charters, such as KIPP, aggressively self-select from motivated, high-functioning, compliant students from motivated, high-functioning, compliant families has a lot to do with that. Then they leave the unmotivated, dysfunctional, oppositional students in the traditional public school down the street and proclaim themselves superior to the traditional public school down the street. That’s dishonest and misleading, and harmful to public schools.
And if you want to see numbers, how about the attrition rate of Oakland’s KIPP school? Here’s my 2/13/07 blog post on the subject:
The most startling KIPP attrition statistic I’ve seen comes from (Oakland’s) KIPP Bridge, where 77% of the African-American boys in one class (the class that would finish 8th grade in 2006) left KIPP Bridge between 5th grade and the fall of 8th grade. It’s not publicly known how many of the remaining 23% finished 8th grade and moved on to high school.
http://www.sfschools.org/2007/02/where-have-all-kippsters-gone.html
And yes, I understand that there is high mobility in low-income communities and that impacts KIPP as well as traditional public schools. The traditional public school down the street replaces the departed students with others, likely from the same disadvantaged, high-mobility demographic. KIPP does not replace the departed students. That’s a key difference.
April 19th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Jim1812: When you quoted me you changed the grammer of the quotation…
It’s hard enough for me to control the typos without having the grammar slip also in the haste with which these comments are composed and posted.
Katy: Shills are criminal when they operate in situations where money is being waged. Caroline is correct that shills are bad (try rotten, cheating, deceitful, etc.) Ethicall it is imperative is your poster has an economic interest in the policy he’s touting (like they pay him), to disclose the conflict whenever he speaks.
But to the point of Charters vs Public Schools: We have to realize, the public school systems in this country, at least the ones in the leftist urban areas, are simply doomed. They are Soviet Factories making communist junk (like the Yugo) that nobody wants to buy. The charter school capitalists, if that’s what they are, may be using ruthless methods to muscle in to the education business but what’s the difference if people just don’t want to turn their kids over to the public school because they can no longer trust the morals and values those schools teach?
By the way, I’ve just been informed by my family members that were forced to attend OUSD by economic circumstances, that they are relocating out of the East Bay and will withdraw from OUSD immediately. They also will no longer be frequenting Lakeshore Ave which is apparently turning into a Beirut style shooting gallery. I’ve seriously told the rest of them that they need to make contingency plans to leave also – at least when the kidnapping-for-ransom start occurring in Oakland.
And I used to hang out on Lakeshore as a child, and take the bus downtown for a Burger at the Latham Square burger joint. Nobody worried about being mugged or about children running around on AC Transit. Too Bad.
Meanwhile your mayor dines in DC instead of dining at Lakeshore and Montclair to support the beleagured restaurants.
Maybe they can open restaurants in Piedmont.
April 19th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
typos everywhere, sorry!
April 19th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
The Lathanm Square burger place was Doggie Diner…. Never was grease & fat so good!!
April 19th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
As a veteran urban public school parent, I would say that the issue for parents whose kids attend troubled inner-city schools is not the morals and values that public schools teach but the high-need, oppositional, disruptive “street” kids in those schools. Charter schools rarely include those students, because enrollment in charter school is generally by specific request, and those really troubled kids don’t have parents equipped to make or interested in making the request.
I doubt that overall traditional public schools convey any different values than charter schools, except that by example a lot of charter schools are promoting constant dishonesty for the sake of self-aggrandizement — see my post No. 18. (Then there’s the the ruthlessness that Nextset mentions, a value some would question.)
I have wondered if there’s a way to create a school system where every low-income student (or every student) had the choice of a default-assignment school and a school where all students were admitted by specific request — no other criteria, just that they had to request it. That doesn’t solve the problem for those truly troubled “street” kids — nor do charters, KIPP, Small Schools by Design or any of the other “it’s a miracle!” magical-thinking “solutions” — but it gets the motivated, “decent” kids away from the pull of the street.
April 19th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Caroline: Im not unsympathetic to the public schools having to deal with the disruptive street kids and their crack addick families. When I refered to morals and values unfortunately I also refer to the inability to stand up to lowlife. You see, that’s a moral and value also. Any school worthy of the title would crush the disruptive kids and their families as requred to maintain order. That is the value of ruthlessness. I watched the Nuns do exactly that when dealing with a wilful, obstinate boy or girl. They did not just kick them out – they fought with them. Frankly I think they enjoyed it.
The Nuns took in the children of the working class in the flats of Oakland from at least when my family arrived in 1949. There was a school and church somewhere near San Pablo in Oakland near the Emeryville border, perhaps. Some of the willful and obstinate kids weren’t dumb either, they were sneaky. When the Nuns got through with them they usually ended up as Cops.
Our schools today falsely claim that all people are created equal and all “cultures” are equally valid. Well even if my parents hadn’t settled that nonsense before I was 6 the Nuns lined us up in 1st grade and clued us in on who was good and who wasn’t (Elizabeth Taylor and anybody else they didn’t approve of). There was no moral relativity. If you disagreed with them you had better not say so and let them hear it.
We learned that we had to tow their line if we wanted to survive in that school. As we got older we found an appreciation and understanding of why. That was optional – to understand why. For the working comprehension all we had to know is because (authority) they say so. Choices come later not early in life.
These are things no longer taught in the public schools and the kids are weaker in the marketplace because of this. Public schools no longer teach respect for authority, or respect for yourselves for that matter. The students are raised to be self centered and used to immediate gratification which is why the talk back so much. It was thought to be cute at one time I guess.
By puberty the difference between kids schooled this way and schooled my way is so great you start experiencing these historically bad results. At least it seems so to me.
And at the risk of ringing alarm bells at the Oakland Tribune, it is my experienced opinion that the minority students are more vulnerable to damage from all this, which we see in the mortality, incarceration and pregnancy rates. My appraisal of the Black Professional Class is that they realized this all the time which is why they fled OUSD at the head of the line.
If the public schools don’t visibly and publicly take a stand to eliminate or change the “disruptive street kids” they are unworthy of any support and the Charters will pick their bones. It is not too late to change and I believe it can be done.
April 20th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
How do you eliminate the disruptive street kids — do you mean just kicking them out or de facto excluding them the way KIPP and all other charters do? And how do teachers and administrators “change” them — how would you do it?
April 20th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Nextset at it again.
So now”Lakeshore Avenue has turned into a shooting gallery”.Oh,really?Funny,I just returned from there and the only things I had to dodge were women with baby strollers,not bullets.
And so all cultures are not equal?And are you implying that the”less equal”ones seem to be those where people have darker skin?All I know is that if”our”(white Western)is the “superior”one,then we are all in more trouble than I dare dreamed!
April 20th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Doowhopper: Paranoid, man…. Have you seen West Va lately?
Trash culture of any color is a problem and to be resisted. Also to be resisted are leftist turncoats of any “class” who are part of the Treason Lobby.
I think you understand me more than you let on. We don’t do the same politics. You’d likely support Obama’s run for office and I wouldn’t elect a “community activist” notary public. To each his own. In the grand scheme of things we are all people caught in this flowing river anyway.
April 20th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Caroline: The distruptive street kids are to be broken and reformed, or simply eliminated from the particular school program if you can’t spare the time and energy to fix them. Think of marine drill instructors or just the several characters played by the actress CCH Pounder in “ER” or “The Shield”.
Any good school and teacher combination (that’s the trick..) can break the will of individual loser children and their families with a combination of rules and enforcement – with a bit of red tape thrown in as a weapon. At some point if you can’t get them to bend to your will you need to make them leave, then help them leave.
If the disruptive street kids are the dominant culture of the entire school you have a different problem.
In general the adults – the authority – has to me more mean, ruthless and determined than the kiddies are. That’s where black autocrats of either sex do very well, Irish and Italian Nuns have distinguished themselves – ethnics in general I have noticed can be recruited to crack some skulls literally or figuratively. It is not a job for feminists, people who need to be loved, or anyone who in any way identifies with the targets and believes thay have some right not to change.
When I was a sub I was the only black sub at the Middle School I’d often work at. The black street kids tried the “hey brother” routine on me and I took them down in front of the entire class. We got along fine after that. They were as interested in my (law) career as I was in what their stories were. I was only there for several months between the and announcement of results. Maybe they’d not seen a black lawyer – I don’t know. They were lucky they didn’t get my physician relatives & cohorts (who are notorious taskmasters).
If you aren’t concerned about the kids you tend to ignore them and allow them to be whatever they will. Fighting with the sore thumb kids is a way of caring. Good excercise also. And I’m not saying you have to backhand them our of their seats the way the Nuns did, you have the School Police do the real heavy lifting. If you have any.
On the “hey brother” thing – I kind of went nose to nose with him and told him we’re not brothers, and had him re-enter the classroom and sit down properly. In front of the rest of the class. If you are a teacher you can’t identify with the students as equals – socially, intellectually, or any other way. It’s nice if everybody gets along but optional. Going to all assigned seats from day one helps make that point. In time you may be able to relax authoritian rule but it must be established first.
April 20th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Caroline: Just Channel Sidney Poitier in “To Sir With Love”. And have carrots to use as well as a stick. In the movie the field trip was one of the carrots. Others were the esprit de corps he gave his classes vs the classes of some of the other teachers. On some level you make the students and especially the disruptive ones want to prove themselves to you, and then to themselves. That may involve making up some job for them to do to impress other people (and themselves). I’ve done that with the law students. Over the years mine have been in the middle of battles and in situations that none of their classmates got anywhere near. So far nobody has been hurt. The bragging rights they walked away with served them very well, and I got more out of them than they intended to give.
April 20th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Early on in “Lean on Me,” the popular and inspirational movie based on a “true” story – but one which unfortunately perpetuates an urban educational fantasy – the dedicated, but tyrannical principal Joe Clark (played by Morgan Freeman) begins his reign by kicking 300 of the worst kids out of the high school. Then he rolls up his sleeves and gets to work to produce the usual miracles with the rest of the school. I always wondered, where did those 300 kids go? The movie never says.
Since charter schools are so free to innovate, they should be the ones who take on the very most difficult and disruptive students. Doesn’t it make sense for them to be trying out their fabulous new ideas with this set of kids? Just imagine what the regular public schools might be like then.
PS: By the way, Paterson’s (New Jersey) schools have long-standing BIG TIME problems. Whatever effect Joe Clark may have had, that made him famous, lasted about a millisecond.
April 20th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
But Nextset, if you know only one thing about the Marines, it’s that they’re looking for “a few good men” — they pick and choose. They don’t take on the cross-section of challenging individuals that public schools are required to. So that comparison doesn’t wash in the slightest. And movies and TV are movies and TV, not real life.
“The distruptive street kids are to be broken and reformed, or simply eliminated from the particular school program if you can’t spare the time and energy to fix them. Think of marine drill instructors or just the several characters played by the actress CCH Pounder in “ER” or “The Shield”.”
I agree about charter schools’ taking on the most challenging kids. Maybe they can finally come up with an innovation — after 15 years of existence, it’s about time they managed that.
April 20th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Caroline: You’re darn right the military currently screens all recruits for IQ and rejects the dull – more so now maybe than during the VietNam draft. I’m not saying the schools can do this the same way, I’m saying that the schools can get control of unruly children if they ever tried to. They most certainly don’t try. Their dogma about moral relativity gets in the way. The Charter schools do not all share that dogma and, like the military, will cherry pick the student-candidates. But even so the Charters will not tolerate anti-social behavior the way the public schools do.
We need anti-tolerence in the schools. It must be taught and it must be practiced. No happy home for anti-social behavior and the Penal Code (and other state criminal codes)is the first place to look to for the definitions of anti-social (after insubordination). And since the students have to live under the criminal codes it would be just as well to teach them anyway. Reading excercises.
Anyway, much is happening. We are steadily splitting into different societies – who attend different schools. The schools my society went to/send their kids to don’t have discipline problems. If the public schools have discipline problems it’s of their own making, not the parents and frankly, not the kids. Groups of adolescents tend to behave as they are trained to. Our schools train the problem kids to be what they are. Schools are far more powerful than parents. Ask the Asian immigrants what public school has done/is doing to their kids. School “culture” overpowers family culture anytime.
April 20th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Nextset, I don’t think you can cite any institutions that don’t cherry-pick and that manage to succeed in changing the behavior of troubled, anti-social individuals.
And really you’re contradicting yourself when you readily acknowledge that all the institutions you view as successful cherry-pick and don’t accept the problem individuals — and then blame the public schools for discipline problems with those same individuals whom no one else accepts (not the Marines, not charter schools, not private or parochial schools).
Schools are not more powerful than parents’ early input, and far less powerful than The Code of the Street. It’s peers and the street that have the influence from 4th or 5th grade on.
My kids live in a world of Asian immigrants in school, so I can attest from our family’s personal day-to-day experience that Asians will overwhelmingly NOT tell you that school culture has overpowered family culture. Asian students remain consistently high achievers in our plurality-Asian district.
April 20th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Caroline and Nextset,
You are forgetting the most important piece of the puzzle. What Caroline calls cherry-picking is actually (95% of the time) a process of self-selection. Those charter schools that do not put up with the typical garbage and that get a reputation for strict discipline do not have applicants who are trouble makers. Trouble makers do not want to go to schools where they are going to be disciplined. The schools themselves have to do very little. Students who end up in these schools and who are running head-first into the reasonable behavioral parameters that have been set for them do one of two things: they work very hard to be kicked out or they complain to their parents until they are permitted to withdraw.
I don’t believe there is a perfect solution for every child, but I do believe there should be a place where students who wish to learn can go to school without being disrupted daily by students who want not to learn. The real question is, why don’t non-charter public schools do a better job of separating those who want to learn from those who don’t. If they accomplished this, fewer students would leave for charters.
Charter schools are filling a necessary gap because traditional public schools are slow to react and weak-willed when it comes to discipline. Saying that charters are taking the best of the best is either a naive oversimplication of the truth or an intentional misrepresentation. The reality is, the kids who want to learn (and their parents) are looking for places that want to discipline and teach. The kids who don’t care to learn want to stay as far away from these institutions as they possibly can.
April 21st, 2008 at 7:55 am
Mr. G says it better than I did.
April 21st, 2008 at 7:59 am
Caroline, maybe you are talking about different Asians than I am. San Francisco Chinese have historically been able to pass their culture through the generations even with mainstreaming. Ditto German Jews.
Now try Hmongs and Vietnamese. Their kids are becoming strangers to them, especially when the parents do not learn english and depend on the kids as translators. Parents attempts to maintain discipline crumble against school training the kids about their “rights” and how to call 911 and CPS when the parents try to physically chastise them. Both the adolescent girls and boys are typically out of (parent’s) control from what I see and are greatly overrepresented in juvenile hall.
April 21st, 2008 at 8:32 am
Charter schools are bad public policy as they provide scarce public education dollars without proper accountability. Since charter schools compete for the same education dollar as public schools in a zero sum game charter schools grow at public school district expense.
Thus, growth of charter schools is at the expense of both strongest and weakest schools in a district as the students leave a public school district for a charter school in the same neighborhood taking State ADA education dollars with them. Oakland had a declining enrollment problem associated with the rising cost of housing and the aging of its school population that its growth in charter schools further stressed and Oakland has over 30 charter school today.
AB 2008 will not address the long range harm that charter schools do in breaking down public accountability but it will give relief to Oakland State Administration’s financial recovery effort that has been undermined these last 5 years by the losses in charter school growth.
Finally, previous State Administration unnecessarily made charter school growth part of its policy and shot the District’s financial recovery in its foot. The biggest growth in Oakland charter school history was when the District under State Administrator Randy Ward put an Associate Superintendent on leave for the purpose of creating charter schools and subequently turned the almost two thousand students in both Cox and Hawthorne elementary schools over to a corporation set up by the Assistant Superintendent still on leave. Oakland largest loss in ADA to Oakland charter schools was not about parent choice but a manipulation on high by the State Administration converting two neighborhood schools to charter schools without the parents in the neighorhood understanding what happened. How do you say charter school in Spanish?
Jim Mordecai
April 21st, 2008 at 9:13 am
To Nextset:
I often get the whole “Hey, brother, hey, blood, hey n****”routine from kids and I am WHITE.
Yet my reaction is a little diferent than yours. I don’t automatically stiffen up or “bring them down” because I understand its their way of giving me a message in code that I have a chance to relate to them and that they are allowing me an opening to have a decent and at least halfway productive class.
Don’t get me wrong. I am no pushover. I have gone head to head, toe to toe with some bad dudes. During my younger days over in San Francisco, I had to fight kids physically and held my own. Or maybe I could tell you about the time in New Orleans back in 1972 where I battled three little cats in a school hallway armed with sticks and belts who wanted to “kick my honky ass”
Yet those days of mortal combat are long gone for me. Now my weapons must be a clever wit, a sense of humor and maybe a few lines from a Ludacris song to win a class over. This year has been a good one for me with minimal drama and just occasional stress.
And, since this is my eighth year in the rough and tumble schools in Oaktown, I must be doing SOMETHING right.
April 21st, 2008 at 9:31 am
It is true that many non-Chinese Asians are having more difficulty than Chinese Asians. This is because they do not have the Confucian tradition so deeply imbedded in their home culture. The families who do abide by this tradition train their children to have a high regard for learning. Children honor their parents by achieving academic success. “The cultures most strongly influenced by Confucianism include those of China, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, and Vietnam, as well as various territories settled predominantly by Chinese people.” (Wiki)
Asian groups such as the Hmong and Cambodian people have different histories and cultures. Some Vietnamese are culturally Chinese, others are not. So, in viewing the academic achievement of Asians, you can probably mostly narrow it to Chinese-Americans who from a certain type of family culture.
One reason the public schools can’t control their kids better is because their hands have been tied by lawsuits. I don’t know the exact history but a number of years ago OUSD was sued for suspending too many African American kids. Now the suspension statistics are monitored very closely. Principals are hesitant to serve up this punishment because they will get in trouble. It’s a useless punishment anyway because the kids just end up hanging out on the street for a few days.
Probably the biggest reason that OUSD can’t get a Lowell-type school going is because of the racial friction it causes whenever the subject is raised. That’s also why programs for GATE identified kids are resented. They have to operate discretely, ineffectively, or not at all. It is all because of the emotions that well up and relate to one’s race.
By the way, according to the last census, San Francisco was 7.8% African American and 14.1% Latino. Oakland was 35.7% African American and 21.9% Latino. Last year, San Francisco was 12% African American, 24% Latino, 44% Asian and 9% White. OUSD was 38% African American, 36% Latino, 16% Asian and 6% White. The critical mass just isn’t here to tip ourselves out of the sludge.
April 21st, 2008 at 9:35 am
Correction: You can probably figure it out, but in the above the second set of San Francisco numbers is for SFUSD.
April 21st, 2008 at 9:43 am
This is exactly what I say often, Mr. G, so you’re not correcting me — I know it’s often self-selection. That’s what I said in post No. 18):
“What Caroline calls cherry-picking is actually (95% of the time) a process of self-selection.”
What I have already suggested (see my post No. 22) is: what if every low-income student, or every student, had a choice between a school where students were assigned by default and a school where only students who specifically requested it could enroll? That latter school could just as easily be run by school districts as a non-charter, without the problematic charter system that throws public money at practically anyone who asks for it, with minimal oversight and accountability and many, many attendant problems.
Nextset, I agree that street culture and peer culture have excessive influence over kids, but in my (direct personal) experience, the schools FIGHT the street culture and peer culture. They often can’t win the battle any more than the parents can. But also, too often the parents are working constantly and are otherwise clueless or oblivious. The Perimeter Primate blog just had an excellent post on Latino gang culture, discussing parents’ willful refusal to notice the signs that their kids are involved in gangs.
I’m sorry to sound intolerant, but I have to cite a favorite incident. A few years ago, two koalas were stolen from the San Francisco Zoo, and were recovered after a few days. It turns out that a couple of teenage boys had somehow stolen the animals as gifts for their girlfriends, and the koalas (which are not that small and are smelly, unhousebroken wild animals) had been living in one of their houses — I forget if it was the boys’ or the girlfriends’ — just roaming the place. This was an Asian immigrant family in San Francisco’s Visitacion Valley. The parents lived in the house, but were working so much or otherwise so oblivious that they were unaware of large, smelly stolen wild animals befouling their small home. That does seem kind of emblematic. The kids of parents like that ARE rather likely to succumb to the call of the streets. I’m sorry for the parents, but I really don’t think the schools are to blame. Their role is to teach the kids academics, not to be babysitters 24/7 or to make up for invisible, oblivious parents. I doubt if you’ll find any private schools (not counting boarding schools) even trying to do that.
Also, back to charter schools and regarding whether it’s cherry-picking or self-selection: I’d say it differs with different schools, Mr. G — charters are barely overseen and are certainly perfectly free to cherry-pick if they want. SFUSD’s most successful charter school, Gateway High School, requires a nine-page enrollment application, teacher recommendations, an essay, transcripts and signed commitments for involvement and parent volunteer hours to get into its alleged “blind” “lottery.” They do maintain they admit by blind lottery, but while barely keeping a straight face.
Similarly, Jonathan Schorr’s own book on the founding of a charter school, which I read (it’s really interesting), describes the school openly rejecting special-ed applicants. I’d say it’s highly unlikely that a mere 5% of charters, as you say, actually screen their applicants and pick-n-choose — I’d bet the number is far, far higher.
April 21st, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Doowhopper: Your position with OUSD must be very stable. You’ve been there quite some time. Can you tell us of some of the successes your students have had after your work with them? I could use some good news.
As far as the “I am White” thing – I’ve said it before, race loyalty trumps all others – it is always there. Your interaction with the black students isn’t anything like mine. It isn’t going to be. I don’t expect you to understand it. I certainly am not saying that my approach is better or worse, but believe me it is different than yours. I also do believe in reading your writings that you, on same level at least, regard the students as little adults (young adults?), perhaps you want them to like you, respect you, etc.
I’m beyond that. Regardless of race (although the minorities just have special needs) the students need good teachers, but the love thing just isn’t my problem at all. I’m not teaching for love. But I do love having really useful and competent staff – though once trained I always plant the stars in higher positions. I have found through my own experience and study that the authoritarian model is faster and more efficient for what is needed in training adolescents (you call it schoolteaching). You can run it relatively low key and pleasant, or not. Public address of me as a familiar in class by a student will get an unpleasant result. It never happened twice. Maybe my problem (I don’t see it as such) is my own education and training with a bunch of WWII era vets, women included. I’m admitting that I accepted their methodology as a norm.
And what I never cease being amazed with is how people (who trained & taught me) who were Cannery Workers, blue collar workers and immigrants went from nothing to heads of the bench and bar, industry and commerce. Did I mention that all of them went to public schools? I was not trained/school-taught by anybody from Harvard or Yale. Even the Nuns, many of whom took advanced academic degrees, were not from ruling class. Thay are dying out now. We won’t see another generation like them. My approach to things is like theirs. And I tell students that they are going to be a “whatever” If I say they can do it no matter what their parents were. I went to school with the children of union workers, Even in law school some of my classmates were tow truck drivers. All of them got into the professions by changing what they came from.
Schooling is about change and I think our public schools are mainly about staying comfortable. Informal behavior and trying to be cozy with the instructors are examples of the comfort zones I smashed even as a sub.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:19 am
At the risk of derailing the discussion, I need to correct the record. Jonathan Schorr is still on the board of KIPP Bridge (charter middle school in Oakland), but he is no longer a KIPP employee. He’s at the NewSchools Venture Fund.
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Thanks for the correction. He’s still a paid spokesman for the charter folks (NewSchools Venture Fund provides massive funding for charter operations), so the point still holds.
Again, though, I had no way of knowing when I called him a shill that he had been asked to contribute a comment. His employment should have been disclosed in any case, but the fact that he was asked puts it in a bit of a different light.
Re NewSchools Venture Fund: What if instead of pouring all that private money into “it’s a miracle!” magical-thinking fads they provided some of those megabucks to our actual public schools? Or called for meaningful taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations so we could support our public institutions adequately and meet the needs of our community, especially its most vulnerable members? Oh well … dream on …
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Yesterday’s Chronicle had a story on one of the Oakland charter schools run by Aspire, funded by NewSchools Venture Fund. To those of us who find it troubling that students already spend so much time taking the state- and NCLB-mandated tests, it’s really kind of sad:
San Francisco Chronicle 4/21/08
http://tinyurl.com/3jd27k
… And there are tests – lots of tests. The students and staff spend a great deal of time preparing for, talking about, practicing and taking tests.
Ten weeks before this year’s high-stakes standardized tests in May,Monarch shifted into high gear with student practice tests for an hour or so each week. They call it “Figure it out Friday.” They also review
material and talk about the test between other lessons.
… The emphasis on testing is part of the philosophy of Monarch’s operator, Aspire Public Schools, a nonprofit organization with 21 charter schools across the state. Aspire uses quarterly assessments to
determine the progress of every child learning grade-level academic skills. The annual statewide test comes too infrequently and too late to help a child who’s fallen behind, Aspire leaders say.
***
I just read a RAND study on NCLB, which confirmed what critics already say: an overemphasis on testing means less time for enrichments that benefit learning, and also, those enrichments are often what inspire kids to enjoy and engage in school. So when they’re lost to test-prep and testing, more kids turn off to school. It seems the attitude is that enrichments are only for the privileged, and poor kids should learn to tolerate drudgery.
April 23rd, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Wow:
You guys amaze me. Let’s cut to the chase…..what is best for the children??? I am soooo tired of having the charter/no-charter discussion centered around money.
OUSD has failed over and over and over again to address the needs of a large population of hard to serve youth; let alone provide a decent education for our less hard to serve kids. Any business that fails, does not deserve to continue doing business. Period.
Perhaps Sandre Swanson should focus his efforts on finding out where all the money is going. The fact is, of the $7,500-$9,000 per kid that the district gets, only about $4,000 makes it to the classrooms, teachers, and students. What is going on Sandre?????
If the idea is to get control back to the district is the focus here, then lets look at the requirements for doing so:
Get fiscally responsible
Educate the Kids
As a parent of 2 school age daughters, I don’t care where, who, how, charter, no-charter, voucher… whatever it takes to get my children better than the 11th grade education than I got from the beloved Richmond Unified School District. A local district very similar to OUSD.
Let’s do the numbers: 7500 per child per year/10 months per year = $750 per child/monthly * 50,000 students = 37,500,00 per month
That’s 37 million per month of income (Conservatively)
Now…The second largest cost for a school is facilities. OUSD is the second largest land owner in Oakland, (second to the Port of Oakland who, by the way, provide no funding for Oakland Schools, which is rediculous) That fact eliminates a large monthly expense that private and charter schools must bare.
First largest expense, teachers (as it should be)
50,000 students/20 kids per class = 2500 teachers * $65000yr salary for everyone one of them = 13,541,666.67 per month
That leaves $23,958,333.33 per month after the two bigest expenses are taken care of.
Where is it going???????
My point…(after talking about money, once again)
The money is there, the facilities are there. The district has been and is getting the basic tools they need to deliver……AND THEY CAN NOT.
A good number of charter school students are students who the district has already failed. A good number of high school students are very hard to serve, these are studets that the district has pushed out because they couldn’t handle them (expulsions and drop-outs.)
Charter schools don’t get funding for facilities (although the law says they must) leaving their second largest expense on their shoulders.
Summary: Charter schools provide more services for the harder to serve students and their families with the same money but significantly more expenses than the district and they are still competing. Leave them alone.
Step up OUSD. Stop whinning and start working.
If you or I borrowed $100,000,000 from our supervisor and could not pay it back, would we get to keep our jobs? our house? our car?
Maybe……if we whine long enough, they will forget about the 100 million. Maybe even give us more later. Oakland politics at it’s best.
Kids, kids, kids
April 23rd, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Your information is inaccurate, Joseph:
“Charter schools provide more services for the harder to serve students and their families with the same money but significantly more expenses than the district and they are still competing.”
Because they are all by request, charter schools serve only students whose families have it together to make a specific request. That leaves the most troubled, challenging, dysfunctional, oppositional students to the traditional public schools to which the charters then proclaim themselves superior. It’s unknown how many charters further winnow the students who apply; it’s clear that some do.
Also, charters get vast oceans of private funding — note the reference earlier to the New Schools Venture Fund — go look up Gates, Broad, Irvine, Walton Family Foundation, many other private funders and look at the multimillions they pour into charters.
And study after study shows that despite those advantages, charters overall do not outperform traditional public schools.
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Thank you for your reply:
1. Charter schools are not “by request”. Please read the charter law. They must accept all students interested in applying and when they are full, students must be enrolled based on a lottery system.
It is strictly prohibited to enroll students based on economic status or academic performance. Many families in Oakland, unfortunately, have no other choice than a charter school or a private school (for those that really “have it together”,) unless they choose a GED program, a prison-like alternative high school or leaving school all together. So, if good students and families are choosing charter schools, that tells us that they are not willing to accept the short commings of OUSD.
2. Charter schools can not require funding of any kind from any families.
3. A large number of High School Charters are granted a charter “only” if they agree to serve OUSD drop-outs and those expelled. Students (money) they have already lost due to their inability to serve such students.
4. It is true, charter schools compete for outside funding from a multitude of sources, many of which the OUSD is also eligible and often competes for. The OUSD also automatically recieves some outside funding that the charter schools are not eligible for. The charter schools may get more outside funding because they are forced to have a better fiscal policy. If you think getting outside funds is easy, you don’t understand the non-profit world. Never the less, OUSD has access to these same funds but are often not granted them because they CAN NOT PERFORM.
Again, no financial, and certainly no political advantage, equal opportunity for funding, higher overhead and harder to serve students and still they remain competative.
In my personal estimate, one class of 25 High-risk youth take up as much total resources as 4 classes of motivated, socially supported, financially stable classes take.
For example, the needs of students pushed out by the OUSD: Services include: tutoring, 24/7 mentoring, long-term case management, pot-lucks and interactions with families, anger management, substance abuse, preganancy, HIV, and general health.
Often, charter shcools and community organizations collaborate to provide theses services. More than you know, The OUSD turns away local help because they find it a threat to their funing sources.
Oakland students need direct services. The money, political power and opprotunity for collaboratives needed to provide these services is in place.
The 20-30 people in Oakland that make the major decisions regarding education are so enamored in their personal aspirations to “change” Oakland that they forget about the kids and ignore the salaries of the administration and under doings of those in charge.
We are being robbed!
I may not be very educated but what happened to “no taxation without representation.”
By the way, our county superintendent makes over $250,000 per year and still can not help in fixing these problems.
How can someone making $250,000 understand someone making $21,000 for a family of 4?
When can we stop talking about “who gets what” and start talking about “what we can give our kids?”
What is best for the Children????????
P.S. – Charter schools must allow teachers to belong to the unions, contribute to their retierment and often, pay more than OUSD – So Teachers….please don’t be discouraged.
Do you really want to educate our youth???
April 24th, 2008 at 7:56 am
No, Joseph, you’re misinterpreting. No students are automatically assigned to a charter school by default. Every student at a charter school had to specifically request that school. That self-selects for students whose parents were motivated enough to make the effort to apply.
Charter schools very often require mandatory volunteer commitments from parents. That’s illegal for traditional public schools to do, and I have heard but not confirmed that it’s illegal for charters too, but it’s totally routine in the charter world. So that’s an in-kind donation, plus of course it further aggressively screens for involved, motivated, compliant families.
Charter schools do often require mandatory financial donations from families, though it appears that those tend to be the charter schools that exist to serve higher-income families. I noted on one Waldorf charter school’s website that it stipulated the amount that parents were expected to donate and directed parents to consult with the head of school if they couldn’t comply. That’s illegal too, of course.
I don’t know about OUSD’s charter high schools, but here in SFUSD, we have one that serves high-risk youth (Life Learning Academy). The others overall serve fewer low-income students than the traditional public schools.
Until a law (SB319) that took effect a couple of years ago remedied the situation, by the way, school districts were mandated to give charters a set amount of funding. In San Francisco that amounted to $800 per student per year MORE than our traditional public high schools got — subsidized by the students in the traditional public high schools, of course.
April 24th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Oh, and regarding charter schools’ picking and choosing, if they get enough applicants? They are perfectly free to do so — nobody is looking over their shoulder enforcing the law.
Jonathan Schorr’s book, “Hard Lessons,” on the startup of an Oakland charter school (E.C. Reems) made it clear that they openly rejected all special-ed kids, for example.
As noted before, SFUSD’s Gateway High school requires a 9-page application, an essay, teacher recommendations, transcripts and a signed commitment of volunteer time — to get into the supposed “blind” “lottery.” Do you think SFUSD officials are standing around making sure Gateway administrators are really running a blind lottery? (One involved Gateway alumni parent I know tells her friends she can make sure their application gets into the “right pile.”) That’s just one example of how bogus that claim is.
April 28th, 2008 at 9:39 am
I wonder why no one has ever mentioned how many Oakland students attend private schools, or schools in neighboring cities?
The Private schools in or around Oakland are raking in the dough from many affluent, and middle class parents. Even personnel from Oakland Unified School District, and Alameda County Office of Education personnel such as Sheila Jordan, Alameda County Superintendent and Kirsten Vital, OUSD Director of Community Accountability sent their kids to private schools.
How many other do the same? I do not blame them, OUSD is messed up, but what about those residents that cannot go to Head Royce at 20+K a year? How come these people who sent their kids to non district schools, instead talk aganist the charter school system and not the private schools?
If Oakland could return all of the students who cross the tunnel or bridge to Alameda every day; Alameda might be looking for their own bailout loan.No one discuses this though.
As far as I am concerned, it does not matter what a school’s classification is i.e. charter, non , district, etc. What matters is that those families that cannot afford what private school parents can afford, have a choice.
All this attack on charter schools, the only public funded school choice opportunity for the less wealthy, is nothing but a union ploy to maintain a public funded monopoly. What else can all of this charter war be?
So some charters do not perform well. True, but how long has OUSD been in exisistence and they still cannot get it right. Other charter schools in this city are performing better than OUSD, but I am sure the union and OEA will come up with an excuse for this as well.
As a parent who sends kids to private schools, I am appalled that our so-called leaders such as Sandre Swanson are aganist poor people’s right to choose simply to appease who- the union, the city, the Board of OUSD and those people that do not send their kids to public schools. Mr. Swanson is sure not thinking about the flatland Oakland population when he asserts to stop charter schools until OUSD gets its financing right. OUSD will not ever get this right.
If charters do it better than OUSD, than I do not care what OUSD board members and union people have to say; this is what a bold leader must say. But in these parts, such bold talk . that is so much needed, wil not give way to the politics as usual.
I would love to send my kids to public school one day to save money and to once again believe in the public school system, but with misguided leaders such as Mr. Swanson and OUSD Board of Directors, that day does not seem on the horizon.
April 28th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Bill, I think you must be new to this blog. Private school advocates abound here. We even have a few who believe the solution to OUSD’s problems is everyone-out-of-the-district, last-one-turn-out-the-lights-and-close-the-door-behind-you.
April 28th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Sue, Many people believe the solution to OUSD’s problems is for them to run decent schools. Until they do run decent schools, no decent family will allow their children to set foot in OUSD.
It is not too difficult for OUSD to start segregating problem students – and field a set of schools K-12 where the students and staff do not experience violence, threats of violence, promiscuity, unacceptable clothing and deportment, indiscipline and uncivil behavior. Alternative schools can remain for those who want to go to classes run in the more liberal mold (drop in when they feel like it, be whatever they want to be).
Intolerence is what decent people want in their schools. OUSD schools pride themselves in tolerating just about anything, as long as it’s politically correct. Better families insist on better conditions for their children to be taught in.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:09 am
Sue;
I think you hit the nail on the head. Oakland is much too tolerant of those who do not care about school, education, or values for that matter.
Until then, I will send mine to private schools.
I wish that Swanson should feel the backlash of those inner city, flatland voters. But then again; this is Oakland!
April 29th, 2008 at 10:09 am
Excuse me, I mean Nextset, not Sue.
April 29th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Nextset wrote: “Schools are far more powerful than parents.”
This goes against everything I’ve ever read, with the notable exception of some recent researchers who claim at a certain age *peers* become more influential than parents.
Adolescence is all about individuation from parents, but it is parents who are the model, not teachers.
Research I’ve read would indicate the following order of influences on a person’s development:
- Parents
- Genes
- Exposure to trauma or deprivation
- Siblings and peers and extended family networks
- Sub-cultural norms
School would be somewhere below this, perhaps tied with television/videogames as an influence.
Now, when you say it is up to schools to impose discipline during school hours, you are right. But to say schools form human beings is wrong in general, although I’m sure you can find exceptions.
April 29th, 2008 at 11:47 am
Nextset Says:
Sue, Many people believe the solution to OUSD’s problems is for them to run decent schools. Until they do run decent schools, no decent family will allow their children to set foot in OUSD.
SUE: My children are in OUSD schools – decent ones, I might add – did you intend to call my family indecent?
Nextset Says:
It is not too difficult for OUSD to start segregating problem students…
SUE: Funny, you seem to frequently hold forth on how difficult it is for OUSD to get rid of problem students, and now you are contradicting your previous position. So, how did it suddenly become less difficult?
Nextset Says:
Intolerence is what decent people want in their schools.
SUE: Again, you are directing this post to me, and it appears that you’re calling me and my family indecent because we don’t embrace intolerance.
I think we are using “intolerance” to mean very different things, though. I mean “unwilling to tolerate others’ beliefs, etc” – the first definition of intolerant from Webster’s New World Dictionary, 1973 edition. I think you mean the list of unacceptable behaviors that I didn’t quote in full, which I agree should be controlled and as far as possible eliminated from schools. But I don’t think the word “intolerance” communicates what you intended.
Nextset Says:
Better families insist on better conditions for their children to be taught in.
SUE: Okay, one sentence that I can agree with – since my husband and I specifically chose our sons’ public schools for their good conditions for learning.
May 1st, 2009 at 4:44 pm
[...] who has tried to check Oakland’s charter school growth in the past –authored a bill, AB 980, that would require all charter schools in Oakland and [...]