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charter schools

Blog GuestCharter SchoolsCommentary and OpinionEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedJack CoonsParent EmpowermentSchool ChoiceUnionismVouchers

Truth, freedom, choice

John E. Coons
John E. Coons

See! A disenchanted nation

Spring like day from desolation;

To Truth its state is dedicate,

And Freedom leads it forth, her mate;

— Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Prometheus Unbound”

Shelley got it right; truth and freedom are inseparable. And, when it comes to schooling, the two join in the long-established freedom of parents to decide the specific medium of truth for their own child.

And yet, it is the national reality that we have imposed the unchosen medium – the specific “public” school – upon the lower-income family; such parents have no voice in the matter. Billy’s school will be assigned to him by a completely impersonal system, one that lacks any plausible, or even intelligible, justification beside the welfare and power of the union chiefs who profit from it.

Will the empowerment of non-rich parents ever become a reality? Will these mothers and fathers one day be offered the dignity of making that fateful decision for their own child – that power and freedom that the rest of us so cherish?

Given his very specific and humbled submission to the teachers union by our most plausible next president, the federal government seems an unlikely champion of the poor for the near future. Yet, today, in a number of states, we watch politicians adjusting to signs of an awakening civic conscience; of course, it helps that the polls show a mounting preference for choice among all parents, the comfortable as well as the poor. The subsidized mother and father have become a spreading vision among our people.

When and if choice comes to be in a sustainable way, it will most likely do so in a variety of legal and economic forms from state to state. Vouchers that would subsidize and empower lower-income parents to exercise their legal right by paying tuition are merely the most simple and obvious remedy.

And, of course, we have already created the harbinger of parental empowerment in our well-functioning and very popular charters. Aside from their superior test scores, we can be confident that they work simply by watching the frantic (and too often successful) effort of union chiefs to minimize their numbers and/or to shrink the operating liberty of these precious quasi-public latecomers in our history.

Tuition vouchers for ordinary and poor families will be the simplest form for the subsidizing of choice. Imagine the real freedom for families that need financial help to decide for themselves if both vouchers and charters were to become available to them.

That will depend entirely upon the prudence and resilience of their current union overseers to transform themselves and, for the first time, rise to meet the competition in a free market.

In short, they would have to become worth choosing. Is that too much to ask?

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Charter SchoolsCoronavirus / COVID-19Demographic ResearchEducation ChoiceEducation ResearchEducation SpendingFeaturedNewsSchool Choice

Trio of education surveys shed light on school trends

Patrick R. Gibbons
Patrick R. Gibbons

As schools continue to wrestle with reopening plans and what seems like the shortest summer break on record comes to an end, researchers have continued to churn out reports and surveys related not only to COVID-19 but to charter schools and per-pupil spending as well.

EdChoice, a school choice advocacy and research organization based in Indianapolis, released a survey on parent opinions regarding education during the pandemic.

According to the researchers, nearly 60% of parents with a child at risk for coronavirus complications said they would seek remote learning options compared to 39% of parents with a child not at risk. Additionally, Black parents were more likely to be seeking remote learning options than white parents, a finding in line with a previous survey conducted by Education Next that showed Black parents found greater satisfaction with remote learning than white parents.

A study by Ian Kingsbury from Johns Hopkins University and Robert Maranto from the University of Arkansas examined the impact of charter school regulations, finding that some regulations produce negative effects. Instead of protecting consumers, Kingsbury and Maranto concluded, bad regulations sometimes simply protect insiders.

According to the researchers, states with a high number of regulations like Texas, Ohio and Indiana saw Black- and Hispanic-run charter school applicants denied at far higher rates than white or Asian charter applicants.

“As states like California and Pennsylvania mull strengthening their charter regulatory regimes, they’d do well to take heed to ensure that people of color are stewards and not subjects of the charter schooling movement,” the researchers wrote. An Education Next article gives a good summary of the study.

Finally, a study by C. Kirabo Jackson and Cora Wigger from Northwestern University and Heyu Xiong from Case Western Reserve University, summarized in Education Next, found the Great Recession negatively impacted student achievement and college attendance. The researchers argue that a decline in education budgets because of the recession may have caused these declines.

The researchers also found that budget cuts impacted Black students more than white students and may lead to a widening of achievement gaps. They note, however, that “A particular concern is that it is changes in families’ economic circumstances due to the recession, not reductions in school spending, that account for the decline in outcomes.” Indeed, the college attendance rate began declining in 2006, years before budget cuts to per-pupil spending.

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Charter SchoolsCoronavirus / COVID-19CustomizationEducation ChoiceFeaturedNewsParental ChoicePublic School ChoiceSchool ChoiceTechnology and Innovation

New Pasco County charter school: ‘We have a plan and teachers who are ready to go to work’

Scott Kent
Scott Kent

Enrollment at brand-new InPrep Charter School has reached 400, with space still available for families who want the flexibility of both in-person and online learning.

The COVID-19 pandemic has tossed K-12 education into a sea of uncertainty, forcing parents navigating waves of anxiety to search for a safe harbor for their children.

Innovation Preparatory Academy, a new K-8 public charter school in Wesley Chapel, is positioning itself as a beacon of stability.

Like many states, Florida has been roiled by conflicting policy demands amidst coronavirus apprehension. On July 6, the state Department of Education issued an emergency order requiring all public school districts to reopen brick-and-mortar schools five days a week to provide an option for families. That prompted a lawsuit from the Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, which argues the DOE’s directive is unconstitutional and puts students, teachers and their families at risk of contracting COVID-19. The lawsuit is seeking all instruction to be held online until in-person has been deemed safe.

Parental frustration is boiling over. InPrep principal Sara Capwell said a mother called her in tears recently, saying, “I just don’t know what to do anymore.”

InPrep, part of the Charter Schools USA network, was scheduled to begin its first year Aug. 10, along with other Pasco County district schools. Citing concerns about rising cases of COVID-19, the school board pushed back the start date to Aug. 24.

Capwell says she and her staff would have been ready to go on the earlier date, but admits the two-week delay will give them additional time to distribute iPads to students, put the finishing touches on mobile technology in classrooms and persuade parents still trying to decide which education option is best for their children to consider InPrep.  

“A lot of parents are worried about going to a school, then having the school shut down and being thrown to the wolves again because that’s what they experienced in the spring,” Capwell said. “We are an alternative. We have a plan and teachers who are ready to go to work. That’s what parents want to hear.”

Capwell says InPrep is trying to develop, as much as possible, a sense of normalcy. That means maintaining in-person classroom learning for those who want it while also providing an online “mobile classroom” that incorporates brick-and-mortar lessons.

Innovative mobile platforms will bring the classroom to students who choose to learn from home.

This isn’t a teacher sitting in front of a computer screen of Zoom squares, checking to see if worksheets have been completed, Capwell says. Online students will learn the same curriculum, at the same time, as students in the actual classroom. In fact, 360-degree cameras and microphones put the online students in the classroom and follow the teacher around during a lesson, even when classes break up into smaller groups, making for an interactive experience. That includes online students interacting with their in-person classmates.

“We’re trying to make it as real as we can so they can feel like they’re there,” Capwell said.

Improving the quality of distance learning is just one goal. Making in-person and online learning as seamless as possible is another.

InPrep wants to make sure students don’t miss a beat if their parents initially choose the online option as a temporary solution and then pivot to brick-and-mortar later. The school also will provide the flexibility for students to move back and forth between in-person and online if that becomes necessary.

“When they do come back, they’ve probably already made friends, because even though we’re a new school, they’ve built relationships in class and with teachers,” Capwell said. “We’re trying to give them a mirror of actually being there. When they come back, they can just jump in.”

The number of students choosing in-person learning versus those doing the “mobile classroom” keep shifting, a testament to how volatile the pandemic is. Initially, about 90% of InPrep’s inaugural families chose in-person, but after the COVID infections began soaring, that figure dropped to as low as 52%. The figure has since rebounded to around 65%, while the school continues to survey all its parents to make sure they still are where they want to be in terms of in-person or online.

Regardless of the exact figures, it’s clear that a significant number of parents want in-person learning for their children, while others prefer the options online can provide, at least in the short term.

As for those families who still are undecided about what to do, Capwell is getting the word out that InPrep is open, has teachers who are ready to teach, and has processes in place to facilitate learning while protecting everyone’s health. She said she already has seen an uptick in enrollments in recent weeks, an additional 25 to 35 students each week.

InPrep also has begun hosting Facebook Live presentations to show off the new school and to have staff members role-play safety procedures to reassure parents.

“Parents can actually see that and go, ‘Oh, so it’s not like everyone’s going to show up and be afraid to interact.’ We’re going to interact, and do so safely,” Capwell said. “Once they see the actual visuals in our building, I think that the interest will be exponential.”

Although chartered as a K-8 school, InPrep will be K-6 its first year, building a middle-school culture in the upper grades before adding seventh grade in 2021-22 and eighth grade the year after that. The school currently has more than 400 students enrolled toward this year’s target of 615, so space is available. Even if it reaches its maximum capacity, Capwell said, InPrep will be able to practice social distancing between students in every classroom. And while students and faculty will be required to wear masks, they will be allowed to take five-minute “mask breaks” each hour – while remaining socially distant – to give everyone a literal breather so they can stay focused on learning.

This may be what passes for normalcy in the turmoil of a pandemic. But for many parents craving constancy, they’ll take however much they can get.

 

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Achievement GapCharter SchoolsCommentary and OpinionEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedPublic School ChoiceSchool ChoiceVideo

Education choice advocates discuss equity for children of color

redefinED staff
redefinED staff

Step Up For Students’ Keith Jacobs made a recent guest appearance on The Soul Purpose Show, a podcast with the goal of educating, enlightening and empowering listeners through engaging and thoughtful conversation on topics including education, relationships and pop culture.

The episode, which aired June 20, was one in a three-part series titled “Education Matters” and was hosted by Keith Harris, CEO of a youth services nonprofit, and Monica Williams Harris, Esq. Appearing with Jacobs were Kendra Spence-Wester, veteran educator and principal of Renaissance Charter School at Cypress in West Palm Beach, Florida; and Katrina Long-Robinson, vice mayor of Westlake, Florida, owner of KLR Consulting and a former charter school administrator.

Running at just under an hour, the podcast touches on a host of issues regarding traditional public and charter schools, exploring questions such as:

·       Is it realistic to say that education is the great equalizer, or is education equity merely an aspirational goal?

·       If education equity is possible, what would it look like?

·       How can communities move beyond blame for a failure to address systemic issues and move toward solutions?

The participants, all of whom benefited from education choice within the traditional public school system when they were students, also discuss the importance of high expectations and rigor for children of color, the intrinsic connection between school funding and education outcomes, and the importance of advocating for change as opposed to settling for a mere promise that education will improve.

You can listen to the podcast here.

The Soul Purpose Show airs every Saturday at 11 a.m. on Facebook Live, YouTube and NTouch News Radio. 

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Charter SchoolsEducation ChoiceEducation ResearchFeaturedNewsPublic School ChoiceSchool Choice

Charter school competition and traditional public school student outcomes

redefinED staff
redefinED staff

A new study from a national group focused on domestic-policy areas has found evidence rebutting the argument that charter school exposure over a meaningful period of time produces declines in the performance of traditional public schools.

The study, conducted by Marcus Winters, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, indicates a small but positive relationship between the proportion of students within a geographic district who attend a charter school and test-score growth for students enrolled in traditional public schools in the same district.

Winters used school-level test-score data across the United States made available by Stanford Education Data Archive for students attending a charter school as of 2009 and the test-score growth for students enrolled in traditional public schools in the same district over the following seven years.

As of 2009, charter schools served at least 10 percent of students in 91 of the 947 U.S. school districts with at least 10,000 students.

One important insight to be gained from the study according to Winters is that among districts with very high charter exposure, some did make meaningful gains while others saw declines. Similarly, among districts with little or no charter exposure, similar numbers made increases or decreases.

Winters acknowledged the results of his analysis should not be construed as proof that charter school expansion does not affect traditional public school outcomes, nor that the analysis can rule out other factors that potentially have systematically influenced the test-score outcomes of districts in areas with more or less charter school exposure. However, Winters says, even if it were true that charter school exposure did hamper public schools, his analysis suggests that in practice, public school systems have responded in ways that counterbalance that negative impact.

Bottom line: The analysis finds that charter exposure has either no influence or a positive influence on public school outcomes. According to Winters, the burden of proof remains on those who argue that expansive charter school sectors hurt students in traditional public schools.

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Charter SchoolsCommentary and OpinionCoronavirus / COVID-19CustomizationEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedPublic School ChoiceSchool ChoiceTechnology and InnovationVirtual Education

The uses of adversity: education innovator Eva Moskowitz on distance learning

Matthew Ladner
Matthew Ladner

Eva Moskowitz, founder and chief executive of Success Academy Charter Schools, has been a teacher, a college professor, an elected official and chair of the New York City Council’s Education Committee.

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

I would not change it.

— As You Like It, William Shakespeare

 Brian Greenburg, CEO of the Silicon Schools Fund, produced this graphic to categorize varying levels of proficiency achieved by schools that launched impromptu distance learning at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The graphic accompanied a post Greenburg wrote for EducationNext titled, “What we’ve learned from distance learning and what it means for the future.”

The graphic’s horizontal axis organizes schools by general effectiveness: culture, teamwork, flexibility, quality. The vertical axis organizes schools by expertise with technology, low to high. In the worst-case pandemic scenario, you are a child enrolled in a school system with an ineffective bureaucratic culture and a poor grasp of technology. In the best-case scenario – a highly effective, flexible and technically proficient organization – your school quickly reorganized efforts around distance learning to produce high-quality distance instruction.

New York’s Success Academy Charter Schools have been lauded for the high levels of academic proficiency achieved by high-poverty students. Stanford University’s Opportunity Explorer, for instance, shows Success Academy schools posting about three grade levels above average in academic proficiency, despite free and reduced-price lunch eligibility in the 74 to 90 percent range. Plotted against all available data in schools nationwide, this means Success Academy is not only breathing some very thin air in terms of performance, but also that it can lay claim to consistent excellent achievement.

The horizontal axis in the Greenburg chart was not an issue for Success Academy, and as it happens, neither was technological dexterity.

How did Success Academy tackle pandemic-induced distance learning? Well, the Philanthropy Roundtable was curious about that, so it interviewed founder and CEO Eva Moskowitz on how the schools rose to the pandemic challenge. You can watch the video here. What Success Academy pulled off seems potentially revolutionary, and Moskowitz is sharing learning resources free of charge.

I’ll give you my CliffsNotes version of the video.

The most effective lecturer in the entire network of schools on any given subject delivered live instructional lectures, while other teachers broke students into smaller groups online to facilitate group discussion and projects. Teachers monitored ongoing assignments to identify students who were falling behind and proactively required students to attend online remedial tutoring sessions.

In other words, Success Academy staff took great effort to keep students on track.

Why is this potentially revolutionary?

Because Success Academy and anyone else mastering these techniques may be able to offer it as an option to both admission lottery winners and losers in the future. It may be possible, for instance, to serve many students currently floundering in the bottom left quadrant in the Greenburg graphic through these techniques.

Exempt from public haunt, and more importantly, the need to provide very costly school space, a new path to quality and scale may beckon.

This crisis version of Success Academy distance learning should be viewed as a mere prototype. Success Academy and others doubtless will improve upon these techniques.

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Charter SchoolsEducation ChoiceFeaturedOpinionPublic School ChoiceSchool Choice

IDEA charter schools shine in national rankings

Lisa Buie
Lisa Buie

IDEA Brownsville in Brownsville, Texas, opened in 2012 and is one of 96 IDEA schools in Texas and Louisiana serving nearly 53,000 students. IDEA will open schools in Tampa and Jacksonville in the next two years.

A not-for-profit Texas-based charter school company that plans to expand to Florida has received national recognition for 15 of its high schools.

IDEA Public Schools, which is scheduled to open four schools in Hillsborough County next year and four in Jacksonville in 2022, announced that 15 of its college preparatory schools were ranked among the top 1 percent of the most challenging high schools in the nation by the Jay Matthews Challenge Index high school rankings. The index ranks public and private high schools by their ratio of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or Cambridge tests given in a school year, divided by the number of seniors who graduated that year. (The list is intended to rank schools that serve average students; those that serve elite students are ranked separately.)

The index included 11 IDEA schools among the top 25 of all high schools nationwide. Additionally, IDEA schools ranked in the top 25 percent of charter schools nationwide, with eight schools ranked among the top 10 in Texas. IDEA schools also ranked in the top 25 among Texas charter schools; IDEA College Preparatory McAllen was named the top high school in Texas and was ranked third in the nation.

The charter school company, which primarily serves students from low-income families, also was recognized by U.S. News & World Report’s 2020 Best High Schools. Two of its schools were among the top 25 percent of charter schools nationally and nine were among the top 10 percent of high schools in Texas overall. The U.S. News rankings are based on college readiness, reading and math proficiency, reading and math performance, underserved student performance, college curriculum breadth and graduation rates.

“IDEA believes deeply that every child can and will succeed if given the opportunity, and we provide our students with an enriching, nurturing and high-expectations educational experience,” said Adam Miller, vice president of advancement for the nonprofit company, which operates 96 schools in Texas and Louisiana. “We know that if we challenge our students with rigorous content delivered by exceptional teachers, our students will succeed.”

IDEA schools require each student to take at least 11 Advanced Placement courses, a contributing factor, Miller says, in the schools’ 100 percent college admission rate. Miller said the requirement also has helped boost IDEA graduates’ rate of college completion. Fifty percent of the class of 2012 earned bachelor’s degrees within six years, compared with 11 percent of low-income students nationwide who earn four-year degrees by age 24, according to the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education.

Nine out of 10 IDEA students are eligible for free or reduced-priced lunch, generally an indicator of poverty. The company typically operates campuses located near traditional schools rated as failing.

When governors in Texas and Louisiana closed school campuses due to the coronavirus pandemic, IDEA quickly pivoted to distance learning for its 52,000 students and distributed more than 12,000 laptops to students in need. IDEA also provided wireless routers and mobile hotspots. Teachers have kept students up to speed with a combination of live instruction, recorded instruction and work packets.

In addition, the company has provided mobile meals to students younger than 18 who live in communities where IDEA schools are located.

“While this has been a new experience for most of us, our students, teachers and families have risen to the challenge,” Miller said.

The coronavirus hasn’t delayed the company’s plans to expand to Florida.

“IDEA is on track to open our first four schools in Tampa in 2021 and Jacksonville in 2022,” Miller said.  “Over the next six years we will open 32 schools across Florida, creating 25,000 high-quality seats for kids in neighborhoods with persistently low-performing public schools.”

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Blog GuestCharter SchoolsCommentary and OpinionCustomizationEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedJack CoonsSchool Choice

Give them our tired and our poor

John E. Coons
John E. Coons

The leader of our teachers unions, national and local, appear to live in dread of our states subsidizing choice of school for the low-income parent. These mighty monopolies of the children of our have-not families seem convinced of their own schools’ vulnerability to competition; the liberated mother appears all too likely to execute a quick bail-out for her child.

Here in California, we get to watch the union function in constant paranoia; ever protecting the status quo, it has nourished a rare cordiality with Sacramento, where its influence has kept charter schools very limited in numbers far below the evident parental demand. Family choice threatens their sovereignty over the poor; hence, the charter gets labeled a bad influence, a threat to our otherwise ideal system.

Maybe some charters are, in fact, not so good; their teachers can be sloppy, their facilities second rate, the atmosphere gloomy, and test scores a point or two below average. Just because most of them are popular, who needs such disasters becoming available to all parents?

We all do.

Markets, in due course, can dispose of the inferior few that will always exist; we can happily risk the short-lived, third-rate charter in order to secure the only mechanism – choice – that works to clear the system of failures. Competition among institutions allows customers to decide which school should live. If Happy Hollow Elementary disappoints, mothers and fathers can choose again in hope of getting it right this time.

All of us make mistakes (or so I hear). But these inevitable errors can be part of a valuable learning experience for both parent and child. Mother and father may come to realize that Joey was better off back at his underrated assigned public school. Or, more likely, their empowerment will move them to try a second charter (or private) school, one that appears free of the faults of both schools they have decided to abandon.

Learning from our mistakes can have happy consequences for us humans; in our school domain, there are four such outcomes that seem quite obvious:

·       The public school that loses students by parental choice just might awaken to its own failures and mend them, hopefully making itself competitive for the future.

·       The parent will, at last, experience the stimulus of real authority, power, and sheer dignity – hence of responsibility.

·       The child will begin to appreciate the parent as sovereign and caring, hence of family, as a blessing.

·       The society will have given its citizens the chance to become responsible actors in the human story.

Unless our civic aim were to maintain our historical regime of servitude, there is no real downside.

The securing of school choice for the impoverished family can take a wide variety of practical legislative forms. The design of state systems that will truly protect that family from discrimination in the private sector and that will do this without threatening the scholastic identity of the school itself is a challenge.

Over the years, Stephen Sugarman and I designed a half-dozen or more diverse models, all aiming to protect the uniqueness of both seller and buyer; none is perfect, but all, I can hope, would be workable and politically prudent. Of course, the form adopted would very likely vary from state to state in their structure.

Reform in pursuit of choice for the poor may, in many states, entail political earthquake in order to become reality. However, that reality excuses none of us from rejecting this nation’s indefensible and degrading treatment of families lacking the resources that the rest of us carefully display in the parental hope to realize the latent capacities and vision of our descendants.

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