What is the role of charter schools beyond the most needy communities? I think charters should be allowed in more affluent neighborhoods, and it might actually be really good for the reform movement to increasingly grow into middle class communities. First, the schools and their networks can learn from that diversity and bring it back to their low-income schools... and second it might be good to take teachers with experience working with families in neighborhoods like Harlem and the South Bronx and facilitate a cultural exchange with more affluent, white families...
At the same time, two big challenges for charters and the middle class they might hope to serve come to mind, considering that 75 new charters will be opened in NYC by the end of Bloomberg's third term. The middle and upper class families, given their capital and educational expectations, when considering charters as an option, will most likely confront issues of space and institutional development.
(1) Space. Space in a school has a powerful impact on learning, from environmental concerns, major distractions from poor heating and lighting, scheduling conflicts in shared spaces, and low teacher retention associated with the frustrations emanating from a poor space. Young charters rarely have an ideal space (especially when they are only enrolling one grade at a time) and serious sacrifices are made to the detriment of the students.
(2) Time for growth and development. If I were a parent I might consider sending my student to a networked charter like KIPP or Achievement First because it would have that network support. However independent start ups I would probably avoid in their first few years. The real scarcity of money, talent, leadership, and the difficulty of designing and implementing good curriculum and well designed organization frameworks places education of the child in real jeopardy. I don't know that I'd take that risk with my child.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Anatomy of a School Crisis
"Anatomy of a School Crisis" by Amy Virshup, in last Friday's NYT, peels back some of the layers of the school crisis so many urban start-ups suffer from. What will happen to Columbia Secondary School with the departure of Jose Maldonado-Rivera? Good schools depend so much on good leadership, but good leaders crash and burn in impossible situations. Will Columbia Secondary ever be a good school? Will the departure of the principal be more a gift or a curse? If the structural obstacles remain unchanged, will any leader be able to bring the school to new heights, or even keep it out of the gutter?
Monday, January 10, 2011
Playtime!
Erika and Nicholas Christakis argue that play is critical to good education. With standards as they are written today, can teachers incorporate more play in their classrooms? If not, how should the standards be changed?
http://www.cnn.com/2010/
http://www.cnn.com/2010/
Thursday, December 30, 2010
The Future of Unions (part 1)
Ok. One of the touchiest subjects in education. Here's my perspective, and being a charter school teacher I threw away my union membership 16 months ago, which may say more than anything else about what follows. In my view, unions are not the solution or the problem. The way the unions operate in our system today undeniably makes it hard to institute change. The most challenging aspect of the unions' influence comes down to tenure, and the way that tenure discourages teachers from innovating and improving upon their craft. Without any sense of being challenged when displaying laziness, a tenured teacher will only have intrinsic motivation to propel them. Given the emotional burdens teaching frequently causes, teachers need every form of motivation to ensure sustained commitment and effectiveness, and schools need to have more flexibility to remove teachers when they prove to lack in this area.
Thus, we begin this conversation about unions on the question of accountability. Teachers need to be held accountable for what they are asked to do, and more than anything else, having a demonstrable impact on student learning ought to be paramount in the way teachers are reviewed. Some combination of standardized tests, student portfolios, observations, and student/parent surveys could make up the bulk of teacher evaluations. However, the union routinely resists adopting such measures. The argument tends to revolve around what the exact measures should be, but in effect there is no system of fair evaluation in place. Unions should do more to welcome a system of accountability based on fair and transparent evaluations, with at least 50% of that evaluation centering on demonstrable and measurable student learning.
A system of accountability as just described makes up part of the incentive structure in which teachers work (or ought to). The incentives for teachers to perform well also include (a) teacher pay, (b) opportunities for professional growth and advancement, (c) opportunities for acknowledgement, recognition and praise, and (d) satisfaction related to the service of teaching itself. On points (b) and (c), the unions play a constructive role, offering courses for teacher development, protecting teacher time so they can learn, rest, and explore, and granting awards and presenting acknowledgements in union newspapers. The union has little to do with point (d) directly, and as it is now well known, the union plays a major role in the structuring of teacher pay (a). Let us look briefly at unions and pay.
The issue of merit pay has recently gotten a lot of press, and in a nutshell here's my view on pay and unions: (1) if it weren't for unions, average teacher pay would be lower, attracting, as a whole, less well qualified candidates (due to a higher degree of risk and cost associated with the profession). At the same time, (2) so called "merit pay," which unions currently oppose, could definitely make a big difference in the field of education by increasing the reward for hard work and effectiveness. In essence, unions have both a negative and positive influence on one of the most important incentives--pay--for teachers. What then should be done? In my view, we should look very closely at what Washington DC attempted this year, in which teachers had the ability to vote to be on a salary scale or a merit pay system. This compromise could be the best solution yet considered.
The role of unions in education goes beyond accountability and incentives. In two early 2011 posts, I will look at other aspects of the union factor in education, in particular:
-support for teachers
-flexibility with school day, structure and management approaches
-areas of education relatively unaffected by unions
-Overall value of unions
Happy New Year!
Finally, a book I'd recommend looking at that considers many of these questions in the context of higher education:
Thus, we begin this conversation about unions on the question of accountability. Teachers need to be held accountable for what they are asked to do, and more than anything else, having a demonstrable impact on student learning ought to be paramount in the way teachers are reviewed. Some combination of standardized tests, student portfolios, observations, and student/parent surveys could make up the bulk of teacher evaluations. However, the union routinely resists adopting such measures. The argument tends to revolve around what the exact measures should be, but in effect there is no system of fair evaluation in place. Unions should do more to welcome a system of accountability based on fair and transparent evaluations, with at least 50% of that evaluation centering on demonstrable and measurable student learning.
A system of accountability as just described makes up part of the incentive structure in which teachers work (or ought to). The incentives for teachers to perform well also include (a) teacher pay, (b) opportunities for professional growth and advancement, (c) opportunities for acknowledgement, recognition and praise, and (d) satisfaction related to the service of teaching itself. On points (b) and (c), the unions play a constructive role, offering courses for teacher development, protecting teacher time so they can learn, rest, and explore, and granting awards and presenting acknowledgements in union newspapers. The union has little to do with point (d) directly, and as it is now well known, the union plays a major role in the structuring of teacher pay (a). Let us look briefly at unions and pay.
The issue of merit pay has recently gotten a lot of press, and in a nutshell here's my view on pay and unions: (1) if it weren't for unions, average teacher pay would be lower, attracting, as a whole, less well qualified candidates (due to a higher degree of risk and cost associated with the profession). At the same time, (2) so called "merit pay," which unions currently oppose, could definitely make a big difference in the field of education by increasing the reward for hard work and effectiveness. In essence, unions have both a negative and positive influence on one of the most important incentives--pay--for teachers. What then should be done? In my view, we should look very closely at what Washington DC attempted this year, in which teachers had the ability to vote to be on a salary scale or a merit pay system. This compromise could be the best solution yet considered.
The role of unions in education goes beyond accountability and incentives. In two early 2011 posts, I will look at other aspects of the union factor in education, in particular:
-support for teachers
-flexibility with school day, structure and management approaches
-areas of education relatively unaffected by unions
-Overall value of unions
Happy New Year!
Finally, a book I'd recommend looking at that considers many of these questions in the context of higher education:
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
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