Posts Tagged ‘Harvard’

On Charter Schools, Part 5: Separate but … Better?

May 8th, 2009
Education, Poverty & Race

That an achievement gap exists in the United States across racial and socio-economic lines is undeniable. This gap can be seen in “standardized test scores, grade point average, dropout rates, and college-enrollment and -completion rates.” Few would deny the connection between race and poverty in the United States. According to a recent study published by Kansas State University, this poverty in America is rooted in our education system. According to Kay Ann Taylor, associate professor of secondary education,

Because public school funding relies, in part, on property taxes, in communities with little property ownership in the way of a tax base, schools and children suffer.

Even more frightening is the fact that our leaders seem to be well aware of these problems … and completely ineffectual at confronting them. The only education reform act passed by congress in the last 40 years, the No Child Left Behind Act, has as one of its stated goals, the narrowing of the Achievement Gap. But according to a recent New York Times article, NCLB is not closing this gap: “Between 2004 and last year, scores for young minority students increased, but so did those of white students.” The article continues,

Although Black and Hispanic elementary, middle and high school students all scored much higher on the federal test than they did three decades ago, most of those gains were not made in recent years, but during the desegregation efforts of the 1970s and 1980s. That was well before the 2001 passage of the No Child law, the official description of which is “An Act to Close the Achievement Gap.

Perhaps the question we need to ask ourselves is, what are education reformers doing to tackle the problems of Racial and Socio-Economic Segregation?
Thirty years after the civil rights era, the United States remains a residentially segregated society in which Blacks and Whites inhabit different neighborhoods of vastly different quality.
The percentage of black children who now go to integrated public schools is at its lowest level since 1968. The words of “American apartheid” have been used in reference to the disparity between white and black schools in America.
Charter Schools and Segregation
Thus far in my writings for the Edurati Review, I have been focusing on the burgeoning Charter School movement. I would prioritize my perspective on this movement as such: 1) an urban, mathematics educator, 2) a school reform advocate teaching for an high-profile Charter Management Organization (CMO) and 3) a Master’s Candidate in Public School Administration. In this column, I hope to delve deeper into the issues of Poverty and Race as they effect and are effected by Charter Schools.
I have written about this issue previously in a post on Criticisms of Charter Schools. In this post, I wrote

That minority parents should be embracing charter schools should not be surprising. I believe that our nation’s Achievement Gap speaks to the fact that problems faced by our public education system are compounded for minority communities. As a result, “charter schools in most states enroll disproportionately high percentages of minority students, resulting in students of all races being more likely to attend school that on average, had a higher percentage of minority students.”

Indeed, much of the research on segregation and charter schooling points to this sort of pattern. As education reform advocate, Derrell Bradford, commented on the post,

These schools serve residential assignment patterns that already mirror segregated housing patterns created to send kids to traditional district schools. These concentrations, particularly of black parents, in charter schools are less about housing and assignment, patterns, which predate charters, as they currently exist (and school segregation that is endemic of that) and more about the ethnicity of the people who feel the most urgent need for an alternative. Harlem is full of black people. The traditional public schools in that area are terrible overall. So this is a natural response from the most put-upon sector of students who attend those schools.

This would be inline with findings by the Civil Rights Project, whose 2003 report on Charter Schools and Race found that:
  • Seventy percent of all black charter school students attend intensely segregated minority schools compared with 34% of black public school students. In almost every state studied, the average black charter school student attends school with a higher percentage of black students and a lower percentage of white students.
  • Becuase of the disproportionately high enrollement of minority students in charter schools, white charter school students go to school, on average, with more nonwhite students than whites in non-charter public schools. However, there are pockets of white segregation where white charter school students are as isolated as black charter school students.
Separate but Better?
In his comment on my April 24th post, Bradford states

school integration is laudable, but I don’t particularly think it should be considered a goal. Which is to say, if there’s a school where 100% of the kids are black or 100% are Latino, and everyone is testing advanced proficient, I think that should be enough for everyone.

While Charter Schools are segregated, this is most likely no fault of their own, but reflective of historical trends. Bradford is, in essence, asking, If Charter Schools are largely segregated, but they are performing, is segregation a problem? Conventional wisdom would point to research that connects segregation to the achievement gap, and answer “yes.” The standards-based education reform movement attempted to tackle this problem head-on and has been marginally successful.
Now, consider the fact that segregated Charter Schools are performing.
The Charter Practice Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education recently published Inside Urban Charter Schools, an analysis of the five high performing Charter Schools with whom the project works closely. While the crux of the Charter School movement is in what these five schools are doing with their freedom, it is important to this post that these five schools are “serving predominantly low-income, minority youth.” The CMO I work for recently had three of its schools selected as California Distinguished Schools. All three of these schools serve overwhelmingly low-income and minority students. Does this mean that the research was wrong and that segregation does not breed an achievement gap or does this mean that with the freedom that a Charter provides, a new breed of pioneering and innovative educators have found a solution to Poverty and Race?

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Emerging Trend: Giving Teaching the Ole Tire Kick-Test

April 19th, 2009

In his article, Creme de la Career (titled “With Finance Disgraced, Which Career Will Be King” on-line), Steve Lohr of the New York Times suggests that “the financial crisis and the economic downturn are likely to alter drastically the career paths of future years.”
This trend proved true during both the Depression and “cold war Communist challenge” when college students migrated toward fields where “jobs beckoned and pay was good.” The results — ranging from the interstate system to Hoover Dam to the foundations of our modern computing framework — continue to shape and inform the world we live. Their legacy lives on.
The basic idea is this: a period of instability triggers a change that is then followed by relative stability. In evolutionary biology, this theory is called punctuated equilibrium. Borrowing from biologists, social scientists apply this theory to explain rapid periods of change in policy, behavioral patterns, and organizations. Wikipedia states it as such:

The model states that policy generally changes only incrementally due to several restraints, namely the ‘stickiness’ of institutional cultures, vested interests, and the bounded rationality of individual decision-makers. Policy change will thus be punctuated by changes in these conditions, especially change in party control of government or changes in public opinion. Thus, policy is characterized by long periods of stability, punctuated by large, but less frequent changes due to large shifts in society or government.

Mr. Lohr goes on to report that with the diminished lure of Wall Street, indicators such as “graduate school applications this spring, enrollment in undergraduate courses, preliminary job-placement results at schools, and the anecdotal accounts of students and professors” are pointing towards the emergence of a “new pattern of occupational choice”. He goes on to say, “(p)ublic service, government, the sciences and even teaching look to be winners.”
Did I read that right? “Even teaching”?
“Even teaching” is among the winners?! Well, Shazam!
Someone gas up the barbi, put some micro brews on ice, and queue up Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration” on the iPod. There’s gonna be a party going on right here, a celebration, to last throughout the year(s).
I guess before I get too excited and start popping champagne to welcome more top-shelf students to our profession, we need to get serious about giving this jalopy of ours a tune-up. If young adults are going to be giving this career the equivalent of a tire kick-test, we need to make sure the wheels are in good shape, the engine hums and it is going to get good gas mileage over the course of their lives.
Basically, if we wish to capitalize on this dynamic shift in demographics and attract sharp, critical, and talented students to the field of teaching, we need to get serious about wooing seekers with a gleaming coupe of a profession. We need to Pimp Our Ride. And, we need to be already working on strategies keep them in it. Starting yesterday.
We should start with a good hard look at some of the rust built up on the frame of our beloved little clunker of a career:
  • Do we really think we’ll keep ambitious, growth-minded professionals in a field that requires a 30 year veteran to do nearly the same job as a fresh-from-college graduate?
  • Are students who’ve been successful at carving out their own niche going to be satisfied being required to teach from a text book, and then being judged solely on the results of a high stakes test that someone else takes?
  • Will young educators with a history of leadership experiences survive and thrive in a system dominated by top down reform efforts?
  • Can we really expect young adults, even altruistically minded ones, to stick with a profession that still pays many of its professionals like day laborers?
  • Are we likely to capitalize on the potential of collaborative curves if we isolate these new teachers in classrooms with little or no time to work with colleagues in meaningful and innovative ways?
Yikes. Will a wax job be enough to buff these issues out? No. Perhaps our strategy should be to enlist the efforts of a new generation of teachers. We want them to feel that their potential, their ideas and ideals can have a transformative presence in the field of education.
They need to feel that their contributions will make a difference.
There are small things we can do. To start with:
Our education language needs a stimulus package.
“Standards” and “accountability” can no longer be both the cornerstone and keystone of our conversations about learning. We need to hear words like engaging, curiosity, creativity, multiple intellegences, equal access, differentiation, learning environments, relevance, collaboration, and media literacy (among many others) when people talk about quality education.
There should be some effort to present the utility and versatility of becoming an educator. With the changing paradigm of globalization and international interaction, teachers have become indispensable On-Star navigators, helping to steer students (in any subject and at any level) toward information, knowledge, and skills that lead to success.
With that in mind, compare the aesthetics and persuasive content of the following sites. Which inspires you to teach? Which makes you want to run away?
Additionally, We need to begin establishing more layers in the teaching profession. Current advancement is limited to becoming a principal or a professor. What if there were a middle ground between these career options?
Katherine Boles, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Graduate School of Education, outlined in the book she co-authored with Vivian Troen,”Who’s Teaching Your Children: Why the Teaching Crisis Is Worse Than You Think and What Can Be Done About It“, ideas about how to achieve increased complexity and topography in the professional educator’s career. They suggest we construct “Millennium Schools” in which there are numerous layers to the teaching profession in order to provide opportunities for beginner and master teachers alike to develop.
Four main pillars of a Millennium School are:
  • Multi-tiered career paths for teachers
  • Teaching in teams instead of in isolation
  • Performance-based accountability
  • Ongoing professional development for all teachers and principals.
The authors write,
A Millennium School offers teachers a multilevel career path that rewards advanced training and experieince with higher levels of pay, responsibility, supervision, and team management. . . (It) calls for the establishment of six teaching positions:
  • Chief instructor
  • Professional teacher
  • Teacher
  • Associate teacher
  • Teaching intern
  • Instructional aide
As a potential career option, teaching becomes much more attractive (and interesting) when there are more layers and levels. As teachers become hungry for more responsibility, pay, or both, or just a slight change, they have possibilities.
Our 20th century Tin Lizzie of a profession needs some updating. New interior design with increased access to technology, collaborative opportunities, autonomy, and professional advancement. Aerodynamic classrooms tricked out with resources and outfitted with relevant curriculum. Advanced integrated features such as accountability measures that stimulate engaged students and inspire teachers to grow and develop.
The schools of the future begin with our efforts today, and we need to communicate the great value, purpose, and potential of teaching. We want these career seekers to give our profession the kick test and find that it is not only worthy of their attention, but well worth their investment. We only stand to gain — as a profession, as a society, and as a world.

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The Science of Charter Schools

April 16th, 2009

(by Joseph E. Ocando)

“A society that puts equality – in the sense of equality of outcome – ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality or freedom.” - Milton Friedman: “Free to Choose”

“I’ve consistently said, we need to support charter schools.” – Barack Obama

Caroline Hoxby’s studies at Harvard demonstrate that charter school students are more proficient in reading and math than public school students. Critics state that the results are useful but incomplete. Ironically, the advantage of charter schools (typically having much less numbers of students than their public school neighbors) makes acquiring statistically significant data difficult.

A direct comparision of the charter school to public school student involves many variables. Parental involvement, socio-economic status, cultural barriers, past performances on assessments, length of time at either a charter or public school, access to enrichment programs and district specific policies are but a few. From a scientific standpoint ideally there should be only one variable between the two populations: the one in question, math and reading proficiency. Larger sample sizes would dilute the potential offsetting impact of any one of these outside variables and increase confidence levels in the data ascertained.

Indeed the number of charters has grown to more than 4000 serving 1.2 million students. A recent study by Kevin Booker and Ron Zimmer shows that charter school students are 7-15% more likely to graduate from high school and attend college than their public school counterparts. In addition they state that charters do not generally draw top students away from traditional public schools.

While teaching middle school science in an under-resourced under-privileged area I collected mass amounts of data on a regular basis. This primarily involved efficient and appropriate facilitation of innovative tools kids could use on their own unique paths of self-discovery. Cognitively, my strategies heavily centered around inquiry-based learning to develop critical thinking. No matter the particular external variable or how many of them there were, the results consistently and repeatedly pointed to only one outcome: all children can learn.

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Emerging Trend: Collaborative Curve

April 12th, 2009

Recently, on the Harvard Business Publishing website, The Big Shift team (John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison) posted an article titled, Introducing the Collaborative Curve.
They tell the story of how a fax machine, by itself, is pretty worthless. However it becomes increasingly more valuable as more fax machines are added to the network (Network Effect). They go on to suggest that if the fax machines “improved their performance” when new units were added to the network it would not only have “an amplifying effect on the first level of exponential performance,” but it would also bring about a second amplifying effect as the machines’ performance improves.
To illustrate their point they provide an example from the World of Warcraft:

What happens, for instance, as you add more participants to a carefully-designed environment? The online role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW) provides an intriguing example. More than 11.5 million people around the world now play World of Warcraft. Performance in the game is measured by experience points, which are awarded to players as they successfully address progressively more difficult challenges. It takes roughly 150 hours of accumulated game play to earn the first 2 million experience points but players on average are able to earn another 8 million experience points in the next 150 hours of accumulated game play. Even though, within the game, experience points become more difficult to acquire as you advance, World of Warcraft players are improving their performance four times faster as they continue to play the game.

They postulate that this is the result of the numerous interactions between practitioners of the game and each others’ knowledge base. Through blogs, wikis, forums, and databases, they learn from and with one another at an exponentially amplified rate.
Calling this emerging trend “Collaborative Curve,” they define it as, “the more participants–and interactions between those participants–you add to a carefully designed and nurtured environment, the more the rate of performance improvement goes up.”
While this is an introduction to the trend, the behavior itself is not news to anyone who’s ever lived off the land.
Take the nomadic hunters of the ice age for example. Surely they collaborated in order to capitalize on and innovate new technologies, such as the atlatl. I imagine them, cloaked in fur, sitting around their fire, perhaps even gnawing on a deer bone, discussing methods for more effectively bringing down a mastodon using the new tool. Comparing experiences and then applying each others’ lessons surely advanced mastery and utility beyond what one could achieve alone, and at a much faster rate.
However, the emerging nature of this trend relates to the utilization of a new technology — interactive media. By ‘meeting’ at digital gathering points, the expertise of like minded enthusiasts, even across vast distances, accelerates the growth of ideas, knowledge, and ultimately innovation far beyond what was feasible with traditional trade publications, snail mail, or conference calls.
In the past, proximity has played a key role in meaningful collaboration. With the advent of Web 2.0 that obstacle has been effectively flattened, or at least lessened.
What does this mean for education? Depends on what we make of it.
If the anecdotal evidence proves true, the ramifications might lead us to two conclusions:
  1. Through our use of networking as professionals in the field of education (such as through the emerging on-line communities on twitter, wikis, skype, podcasts, blogs, etc) as well as efforts in our schools (through intentional practices such as PLC), we stand to exponentially improve the art and science of our pedagogical practices.
  2. By learning to utilize collaborative communities to their fullest potential, we can better implement tools that enable students to take advantage of these opportunities for their own growth. The benefits of this are two-fold. One, they have access to a broad range of content, yet depth in whatever topic they focus on. Two, If we can provide more opportunities for students to learn strategies for utilizing collaborative communities, we equip them with skills that will help them not only learn and understand more, but to apply that content in new and innovative ways.
I look forward to the emergence of new research on collaborative curves, because this trend could be a game changer. If researchers find that collaborative networks do accelerate learning for both individuals and groups, we might all benefit — students, teachers, administrators.
What else might we garner from this trend as it relates to teaching, learning, and constructing classroom environments that lead to a relevant education?
Jason Flom spends 10 months of the year being schooled by 4th graders (leading him to wonder if he missed the “101 Clever Kid Tricks” lecture at the University of Florida, where he received his bachelor’s and master’s in education). He recently founded Ecology of Education, a multi-author blog committed to exploring ideas and issues in education and learning from various niches in related fields. He can be reached at on twitter (jasonflom) or by e-mail (jason.flom@ecologyofeducation.net) or out in the woods on a hike with his wife and daughter.
Image: spekulator

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