Thanks, Judy, very interesting article.

I'm guessing many people in Seattle are as ignorant as I am when it comes to the pros and cons of charter schools. Yet given the problems with our public schools, it seems they deserve a much closer look. At a minimum, they introduce a level of accountability among teachers and schools that doesn't and can't exist in our current monopolistic, unionized public school system.

What Is a Charter School?

The basic difference between a traditional public school and a privately run charter school is that with a charter school there is complete control of the school by a private enterprise within a public school district. Although taxpayer-funded, charters operate without the same degree of public and district oversight of a standard public school. Most charter schools do not hire union teachers which means that they can demand the teacher work longer hours including weekends at the school site and pay less than union wages. Charter schools take the school district's allotment of money provided for each student within the public schools system and use it to develop their programs. In many systems, they receive that allotment without having to pay for other costs such as transportation for students to and from the school. Some states, such as Minnesota, actually allocate more than what is granted to public school students.

A charter school can expel any student that it doesn't believe fits within its standards or meets its level of expectation in terms of test scores. If the student is dropped off the rolls of the charter school, the money that was allotted for that student may or may not be returned to the district at the beginning of the next year. That is dependent upon the contract that is established by each district.

Also, according to a recent (June 15, 2009) study by Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO), charter schools do not necessarily perform any better than public schools. In fact, 37 percent performed worse. Forty-six percent demonstrated "no significant difference" from public schools. Only 17 percent of charter schools performed better than public schools.

If you want to know more about charter schools see:

http://seattle-ed.blogspot.com/

Regarding KIPP Schools, see:

Bay Area KIPP schools lose 60% of their students, study confirms:
http://www.examiner.com/x-356-SF-Education-Examiner~y2008m9d17-Bay-Area-KIPP-schools-lose-60-of-their-students-study-confirms

Charter school faces withdrawals over punishment:
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2009/03/22/kipp_school_withdrawals.html?cxntlid=homepage_tab_newstab

Recess: Happy playtime or hellhole of fighting and bullying?:
http://www.examiner.com/x-356-SF-Education-Examiner~y2008m12d26-Recess-Happy-playtime-or-hellhole-of-fighting-and-bullying

Re charter schools performance: new research suggests that kids attending charter schools have higher rates of high school graduation and college enrollment. http://educationnext.org/the-unknown-world-of-charter-high-schools/ - has article and a video. I think good charter schools suffer from media sensationalism both positive and negative - the public gets disappointed that they're not miraculous in the way the news has suggested, or their defects get exaggerated to grab reader attention ("hellhole"?).

I find the timing of this article fawning about charters very interesting. Where is the balance in the piece? National tests have shown that about 80% of Charter students do no better than in traditional public schools, and about 30% do worse. Charters haven't been around long enough to assess the long term damage of the high attrition rate between 5th and 8th grades for example, which runs extremely high, at over 50% in some charters. KIPP seems to be among the most successful charters, but like other Charters, they take less than their share of Special Ed kids, and work their teachers very long hours, so comparisons to traditional public schools is not apples to apples. Again, where is that recognition Ms. Lightfoot? Is this a sustainable model for teachers who might someday want families of their own?

While you are free to exercise advocacy journalism for something you believe in, you're not exactly objective while riding the Charter bandwagon. What about the problem of so many private charter EMO's sucking dollars away from the public trough and into the pockets of their highly paid CEO's, while producing questionable or poor results for their kids?

I am not per se anti-Charter schools. But I'm sick to death of them being presented as viable alternatives or be-all-and-end-all, magic bullet solutions to an extremely complex set of problems with Education. Charters do not have to abide by the same rules, nor must they absorb, many of the problems that regular schools must accommodate. Direct comparisons are therefore inherently unreliable and misleading. Let's be honest and not set up everything as being the fault of unions and teachers who give up on or hate kids, for God's sake.

I ask whether it's possible to learn anything from successful charter schools, based on some of their expressed values, and the question sparks such a high level of emotional threat it's as if I had proposed personally escorting a decadent and deadly enemy through the gates. Remarkable!

Well, Judy, that shouldn't be surprising, when you consider that Washington voters have rejected charter schools three times in statewide voting, twice by approximately 60-40 margins, as you yourself acknowledge.

Here is some food for thought, in this LA Times story about a UCLA study that indicates that one effect of charter schools in increased racial segregation. Is that "something we can learn" from "successful" charter schools?

Here's the link.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-charters5-2010feb05,0,3300930.story?track=rss

And the first thankful commenter to the article is a union basher. Go figure.

Ivan: It's always "surprising" to me when people reject opportunities to think. You really find it intellectually (let alone ethically) acceptable that voters who rejected charter schools in the past refuse to learn from what good charter schools do well?

I see, Judy. According to you, only charter school advocates think. Those of us who oppose them do so without thinking.

Here's a clue. Alternative schools in the Seattle School District already do "what good charter schools do well." There's innovation to burn, individualized instruction, team learning, peer review, etc., etc. I observed all this first-hand as a classroom volunteer in my daughter's K-8.

Alternative schools do this without turning schools over to "entrepreneurs" whose mission is to return a profit first and educate our children with our tax money second. They do it without it coming at the expense of our teachers' job security and bargaining power.

Ivan, I think you're being disingenuous, and that you know your conclusion doesn't logically follow from what I said. It would be convenient if only the people with a viewpoint opposing one's own operated "without thinking," but of course not-thinking doesn't pick sides.

I hear and appreciate your skepticism about the market-based nature of charter schools. And SPS has many first-rate teachers! But I still think (sigh! one more time) that no matter how we feel about charter schools in general, we can learn from the themes dominating KIPP's recruitment event. Does every one of our schools (not only alternative schools) start from the assumption, stated and underlined every day in every class to every student, that every one of our students can learn, be accepted to, and succeed at college? Is daily instruction based on the ideal of supporting each student toward and through these goals? Is each school's ethos based on the ideal of everyone involved working hard to make this happen? Do we ever cut corners and go easy on students who seem to be having a difficult time, instead of insisting that they keep working hard as we find ways to help them learn what's difficult for them? Do we ever inflate a grade in a counterproductive effort to raise a student's self-esteem that sets them up for later failure? What happens in a school when a teacher feels like giving up on a student? Do our schools partner productively with families?

Is the Total Student Load of our teachers so huge that they can't possibly encourage and work with every student in the above ways? Research says the TSL tipping point is around 85; if TSL exceeds this in our schools, is it because we spend too much on SPS central operations, on hiring administrators, or on retaining ineffectual ones, instead of on hiring more teachers? Rainier Beach High, with an enrollment shrinking toward 300, now has *2* principals! Ballard High with 1600+ students pays not only a principal but *3* assistant principals; is this a little heavy on top? If so, if the money was spent on hiring more teachers so TSL would be lower, would teachers be able to develop stronger relationships with individual kids, making extra administrators less necessary as a result?

Finally, how can a "work hard - be nice - climb the mountain to college" spirit be developed and sustained in every school belonging to a system as large and unwieldy as our city's? It can happen at individual schools that have a principal determined to keep a set of specific goals before the eyes of every teacher, student, and parent, and determined to infuse every day's work with high team spirits focused on those goals. But the kind of site-based management that gives principals local decision-making power, which I believe expanded during the Stanford and Olshevsky periods, seems much less in evidence at SPS, currently quite centralized and top-down. (Ivan, if now you trot out all the things you didn't like about Stanford and Olshevsky, you'll be writing beside the point again.)

Btw, have you ever read Jay Mathews' "Work Hard. Be Nice.", Paul Tough's "Whatever it Takes" (on Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children's Zone), or Teach For America Chief Knowledge Officer Steven Farr's "Teaching As Leadership: The Highly Effective Teacher’s Guide to Closing the Achievement Gap"? I highly recommend the first two (#3 was just released last month, so I haven't read it yet) and wish everyone involved with Seattle Public Schools including parents would read at least one of them.

I certainly don't disagree about the topheaviness of administration and central staff, and how that affects the teacher-student ratio. That has been one of my pet peeves. Surely we can move forward in agreement on that issue.

Judy,
So much heat generated without learning about the efforts of others! I’m sure that public reaction to Charter Schools contributes to climate change.. Just like the climate change problem, school problems must be addressed with new perspectives. Let’s listen for solutions that focus on one kid at a time. We have so much to learn..
IMHO the focus on irrelevant detail has missed the real issues we face. Our current secondary schools are based on the assumption that life is secure, predictable, and stable. We all know that this assumption is patently false for the majority of our children, especially those in the urban setting.

"Serious harm, I am afraid, has been wrought to our generation by fostering the idea that they live secure in a permanent order of things. … They have expected stability and find none within themselves or in their universe" Helen Keller

The 7 periods/day-5 day/week-4 years/graduate schedule is the norm that our students face. If this schedule is combined with the expectation that all students attend, learn at the same pace, place, and time, we have the perfect recipe for generating curriculum casualties.
In the game Dodge Ball, those with least skills get eliminated first. As a result, those with the most skills get the most practice. Our schools practice academic “Dodge Ball”! Observations show that the best get more practice in the direct instruction classroom. Poor academic performers are eliminated from the high rigor classrooms and tracked with other failures. Once placed in the lower track, there is little future access to the rigor. Less practice with high rigor results in a greater number of curriculum casualties. How many people would participate in a marathon if the race ended after the first runners finish?...............................................
If you want to contemplate not just gesticulate, join me in thinking about these matters at www.mathonmonday.com