Are locally elected school boards and their politics at the root of the inertia that has led to little reform of a system of public education? Is the new request for Rocketship Education’s 20 Charter Schools a means to get around the non-productive politics of school boards?
For the last five-plus years I have attempted to write provocative columns about the number one issue of the 21st century: public education. These columns have appeared in the Silicon Valley Community Newspapers and SJI. I take my fair share of hits from the readers about the content of my writings, however I always take a position that is consistent with my core values about children, teaching, and learning.
I spent 33 years as a teacher and principal prior to leaving the profession I loved and hated, sometimes on the same day in the same hour. Since my first teaching job at juvenile hall in 1974 I have never been so befuddled about what is right and what is not when it comes to my personal beliefs about an educational issue. Usually, when I use my self-imposed filter on what is right by children my decision always comes into clarity. Not this time, though.
A majority of four board members on the SCCOE Board of Trustees could establish a new district of 15,000 county students beginning with our vote on August 10. At our meeting on June 15 two out of seven members, Mann and Hover-Smoot, gave a strong endorsement of Rocketship’s 20 school expansion material revision request. Member Mann invoking the letter by Dr. Martin Luther King from the Birmingham jail and Member Hover-Smoot quoting Senator Robert Kennedy.
It is critical for the Santa Clara County Office of Education and its seven-member school board to weigh all the relevant questions in the most public and transparent manner as possible. At our meeting on July 20 we will have a written response from Rocketship Education on the more than 50 questions we have asked in writing by this week’s deadline.
Some of the questions deal with the bedrock of the American democratic system of government and local elected control.
Local control of school districts by elected board members is one of the unique aspects of educational policy in America. Reed Hastings, founder and CEO of Netflix is a strong supporter of Rocketship Education and other quality charter school organizations across America
In a speech Mr. Hastings gave at Rice University earlier this year he indicated his strong belief that public school districts should begin to farm public schools to non-profit organizations such as KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) and Rocketship. Unlike the County Board of Education, San Jose Unfied and Alum Rock’s Board of Trustees, Rocketship’s Board gets little public scrutiny.
No doubt the Rocketship Board has a well-respected collection of appointed members and advisors (as listed on their website) including:
Sehba Ali, Chief Academic Officer of KIPP, Bay Area
Shawn Carolan, Managing Director of Menlo Ventures
Jonathan Chadwick, CFO, Skype
Marcus Cole, Professor of Law, Stanford University
Steven Farr, Chief Knowledge Officer, Teach For America
Fred Ferrer, CEO, The Health Trust
Alex Hernandez, Partner, Charter School Growth Fund
Deborah McGriff, Partner, New Schools Venture Fund
Tim Ranzetta, President, Innovate Foundation
Eric Resnick, Managing Partner, KSL Capital Partners
Kim Smith, Co-Founder CEO, Bellweather Education Partners
Alex Terman, Co-Founder, Leadership Public Schools
As an elected official I must file a Form 700 on Conflict of Interest with public accountability and oversight. One question I think is relevant is do any of the above Board members and advisors for Rocketship file a Form 700? After all if we agree to allow Rocketship to expand to 15,000 students their budget will be well over $110,000,000 dollars of public money.
There are so many questions and concerns I have, including the one concern about leaving children in systems where they under perform. Too many systems in public education have been built around what is best for the adults than for the children for far too long. I am sitting in the position to help change that by my vote.
I ask you to help me understand whether moving to a system of public education whose governance is not encumbered by local politics is good ultimately for children, our democracy, and public education? At this juncture I continue to be confused.
Joseph,
What’s wrong with having RocketShip make the requests first to the local districts? At the end of the day, if their requests are legitimate, they’ll get approved, if not by the local district then by the county board of education. At the end of the day, you would have the 20 some extra Rocketship schools and probably without any extra delay for each school (given that Rocketship doesn’t plan to open all schools all at once)>
The difference is that the schools would be district wide vs. county wide.
Here’s what the education code says about countywide charters.
“A county board of education may only approve a
countywide charter if it finds, in addition to the other requirements of this section, that the educational services to be provided by the charter school will offer services to a pupil population that will benefit from those services and that cannot be served as well by a charter school that operates in only one school district in the county.”
To live up to its legal definition, a countywide school would require some kids to be bused across districts. How is it better for the children than a district wide school?
Over the course of human history there have always been moments where people or institutions have had to step around their confusion, fear and biases, over their internal conflicts and beyond their personal comfort zone to do the right thing. President Lincoln emancipated the slaves, President Roosevelt created the New Deal, the Supreme Court decided for Brown in Brown v. Board of Education, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, etc. None of these examples involved perfect people or a perfect solution. As we examine Rocketship’s proposal (or any other petition) we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. With this perspective, I am content with reaching or achieving ‘the good’ as requiring ‘the perfect’to move forward is pure folly and impedes the change our students so desperately need today.
Craig Mann
Member, Santa Clara County Board of Education
“There are so many questions and concerns I have, including the one concern about leaving children in systems where they under perform. Too many systems in public education have been built around what is best for the adults than for the children for far too long. I am sitting in the position to help change that by my vote.
I ask you to help me understand whether moving to a system of public education whose governance is not encumbered by local politics is good ultimately for children, our democracy, and public education? At this juncture I continue to be confused.”
So you state in the second-to-last paragraph of your post that “(t)oo many systems in public education have been built around what is best for the adults than for the children for far too long,” while in the last paragraph you ask for help in understanding “whether moving to a system of public education whose governance is not encumbered by local politics is good ultimately for children, our democracy, and public education.”
It’s easy to see why you would be confused about such a prospect, in that you, Mr. DiSalvo, are a part of the system that has placed the needs of the adults ahead of those of the children for a time period approaching two full generations.
The confusion you’re feeling, Mr. DiSalvo, is entirely normal, because you’re just now coming to grips with the fact that the Educratic world as you’ve known it is finally being proven as unsustainable.
> The confusion you’re feeling, Mr. DiSalvo, is entirely normal, because you’re just now coming to grips with the fact that the Educratic world as you’ve known it is finally being proven as unsustainable.
Nail on head.
Have to say that at least you are asking and searching not only yourself deeply, but the motives of the other parties involved. If only EVERY decision in public education were so reviewed and considered? I’d say the more crucial issue is whether or not you want to perpetuate more of the same or do you want to impact scores of kids year after year as soon as possible? Rocketship is coveted by many throughout the country so take advantage of their proximity and the wonderful results they show.
“For the last five-plus years I have attempted to write provocative columns about the number one issue of the 21st century: public education.”
No, perhaps the number one issue is the education of our children. But whether that is delivered through public education, private education, a mixture of both, homeschooling, internet teaching, etc., the question is how best to educate children in the 21st century. As long as you keep begging the question by asserting the public education is the default answer, you will continue to be criticized here and elsewhere. Inertia indeed.
We need change and improvement in public education, but we don’t need change that moves away from government transparency. Charter schools are public schools. And, to keep the “public” in “public schools,” we need Forms 700 and Forms 460 filed by public officials and candidates – including members of Boards of Trustees for charter schools.
We also need continued disclosure of Academic Performance Index scores and Adequate Yearly Progress scores – by site. The public deserves the right to track the success of charter schools and neighborhood schools – site-by-site, not just district-by-district (or via clusters of charter sites that appear like districts, but may not have to report scores by site). Without site-specific reporting for charter schools, our society lays the foundation for a new underaccountable bureauocracy that depends on public money, but in secrecy.
We need publicly posted Schoolsite Council meetings with open, consistent election processes for parents, teachers and other school representatives to be elected to oversee the expenditures of money and the adoption of Single Plans for Student Achievement at schoolsites. Charter schools should have the same requirements to involve parents in site management that neighborhood schools have. And the solution is not to reduce parent involvement in neighborhood schools so neither model has to keep transparency in decision-making.
We need more disclosure, not less disclosure on construction expenditures that often run into the millions of dollars. We need publicly-posted budgets with reasonable amounts of time for Trustees and community members to review and comment. We need more citizen review of government agency budgets and consent calendars and curriculum decisions. At the community college level, we need more public scrutiny of decisions by academic senates and the recommendations they make to Boards of Trustees who “primarily rely” on the recommendations of the academic senates. The courses offered by community colleges aren’t randomly pulled out of a hat, but the public rarely watches closely enough to ask questions about a District’s priorities. In an era of limited money, we need more community input, even if increased public interaction may perturb some longtime education agency leaders.
If charter school advocates overreach and become champions of shadowy administration with less (not more) academic disclosure, charters will lead the way towards less transparency in public education. This is an age when charters in general are moving from infancy to toddlerhood. Strong test scores and stellar preparation for college applications are two ways that many charters show leadership. But, if charters also lead the way in demanding and demonstrating transparency at every step, public trust will grow for this “new” model of education. Lead by example for sunshine in government, as much as in success in STEM and effective literacy.
All of us who serve as Education Trustees have to think big picture. The policies we choose today will have significant impact on tomorrow’s children. Confident community leaders always will be glad to put their organization’s data in the sunshine of public view. Embracing academic achievement should not require a price of secrecy or corner-cutting for public disclosure or tracking of academic achievement.
The public finally has earned the right to access and track government data – including and especially in the realm of educational agencies. There are no lasting benefits to foster false arguments that charters can be successful because they are able to operate with less public oversight. Our society can support parental choice through quality charter opportunities, while also protecting the rights of residents to know what’s going on with public money.
– Chris Stampolis
Trustee, West Valley/Mission Community College District
State Boardmember, California Community College Trustees
“Local control of school districts by elected board members is one of the unique aspects of educational policy in America.” That’s not an aspect of education policy, that’s representative governing.
Schools belong to communities: to taxpayers, neighbors, families that have come and gone and yet to come. They operate in partnership with city, county, state governing bodies. They manage not only public money, but a treasured community resource.
Reed Hastings has on many occasions stated publicly that he wishes to end elected governance of public schools. It makes sense when you’re thinking solely of “disruption” but not in the long view of civics and democracy. This position comes from a cynical belief that school boards are controlled by teachers unions, are entirely entrenched forever and cannot participate in any degree of reform.
I am a reformed-reformer. It took awhile, but slowly, through conversations with some of the very leaders involved in Rocketship, I began to realize some truths:
—In order to realize the gains necessary to justify expansion, charters cannot take all-comers. They must focus on the educable, the motivated, the invested. This is why KIPP won’t take on conversions.
—Charters are supposed to be incubators of innovation, sharing and transferring best practices to their neighborhood traditional schools. Reformers point to “defenders of the status quo” as justification for why this isn’t happening on a broader scale. The truth is, charter success is too dependent on the “who” not the “what” for large-scale replication.
—I get the fierce urgency of now behind the drive to expand charters that work. But I grew to despair what the lifeboat model of education means for our communities. Charters are about serving those that fit in the lifeboat. Kids don’t choose their families, but if you come from one that doesn’t understand how to navigate the education system, isn’t invested, or sadly just doesn’t care—the charters aren’t going to help you.
In my community, we looked at our charters and we looked at our neighborhood schools and we—parents, business owners, teachers—elected a school board majority that believes fiercely that every kid deserves a great school and every neighborhood deserves a great school. Our democratically elected board is transparent and accountable—and has been re-elected because they are delivering.
Here’s an example of why we need accountability in public school governance: In Reed Hasting’s own Monterey-bay area charter school, the board is hand-picked in a secret process. They are not ratified by their parent community, they refuse their chartering agency a seat on their board. This school demands a “voluntary” $3,000 per child per year contribution. Full-time staff are devoted to collecting from 100% of the parent community at this “free” public school. Parents are subjected to collection calls from their peers, the principal routinely writes to remind them that their pledged “donations” are due. A FIFA request will yield that this school banks those donations, yielding cash reserves of 64% of the operating budget (charters are required to maintain a 5% cash reserve). The school’s annual report makes no mention of these reserves, but does emphasize that the school cannot operate without the parent “donations”. Every donating parent at this free public school is listed in the annual report, by name and by donation amount.
Are the kids getting a good education? Yes, they are. But this is not transparent nor accountable management of a public resource. As Rocketship seeks to expand, and as more of our schools are managed by non-profit boards, be wary of the long-term consequences on our communities and our democracy.
Mr. DiSalvo.
If you look at any school district today there is great opposition to charters . It might be ‘true’ that charters offer new innovations in education that often are not found in public education .
I think that the only way to solve this problem is to change the education code that will allow local school districts to create and run their own charter schools.
A perfect example is the Cambrian School District here in San Jose . Most of that district schools are charters , and they have been successful to a certain point .
I believe that every school district should have a school that is a charter , but part of that school district . Not some independent group as like what happened to Moreland a few years ago . When a group of parents went to the county office and got the OK to set their school up basically in opposition to Moreland School .
Yes I believe that Charters are a innovation in education . School Districts need to be a little bit more creative , and use charters for their benefit.
Charters like Rocketship are showing some promise in terms of outputs (test scores, graduation rates) but until they show achievement using equal inputs (same population in a neighborhood school), it will always be about the “who”, not the “what”.
Rocketship wants to expand in order to rapidly build a set of data showing their program can work on a large scale. But their proposal still hinges on restricting admission to an opt-in population.
Expansion should be based on proving the model works for all students. Work with Rocketship leaders and local districts to identify a single low performing school for a charter conversion. Admit every student that currently attends that neighborhood school – invested and disinterested parents, high achievers, low achievers, special needs students, families of poverty. Success under these conditions must be the gateway to any further expansion.
> Expansion should be based on proving the model works for all students.
Why not apply the SAME requirement to the status quo public education system?:
—“Expansion OF THE STATUS QUO should be based on proving the model works for all students”.
Joe DiSalvo has been saying loud and long that the existing model DOESN’T work for all students.
Using the existing failed status quo model as the default solution against which all other solutions must “make the case” before we risk any change is just dumb.
After10 years of NCLB and 20 years of charters, the reform agenda IS the status quo.
I agree with the previous poster: equalize the inputs to verify the outputs. Until charters can show that their model yields results with the same demographics as traditional schools, they haven’t made a case.
It’s terribly short-sighted and dismissive to say that charters should not be asked to demonstrate that they can reach the same level of achievement with the children already attending a given school vs. the results gained with an entirely opt-in, self-selected population.
Want the public’s money? Prove your program works for the public’s children.
> After10 years of NCLB and 20 years of charters, the reform agenda IS the status quo.
Typical status quo sophistry.
Since the status quo is utterly bankrupt and indefensible, just claim that the OTHER GUY is the status quo and, hence, bankrupt and indefensible.
The Sophists were ancient Greek philosphers who focused on the practice of rhetoric and sought to perfect the art of “making the weaker argument seem like the stronger.”
It’s probably giving too much credit to call this “typical sophistry”.
It’s really a very lame, amateur attempt at sophistry, starting with a weak argument and making it seem like both a weak AND a stupid argument.
Back to remedial sophistry school.
It would be impossible to make any more sense than that. We’d then be comparing apples to apples.
Well stated!
“Make the Case” writes “until they show achievement using equal inputs (same population in a neighborhood school), it will always be about the ‘who’, not the ‘what’.”
“Make the Case,” I’m going to challenge you on your statement. It seems you are alleging that charter attendees are fundamentally more predisposed to higher test scores than neighborhood school attendees and therefore charter schools get it easy. Why do you allege this? Parental awareness? Inherently higher academic potential of charter attendees? More pre-charter attendance preparation than random neighborhood school attendees?
And, if you’re correct, if it’s true that charters attract a stratum of applicants whose parents want their children studying with children of other high expectation parents, and thus may have started their kids earlier on an academically-focused path, what’s wrong with that? I hope you’re not suggesting that economically-challenged parents who want high-achievement for their children should be less uppity since they can’t afford high-end private schools or neighborhoods that self-select based on income.
I recognize you chose anonymity for your post. Perhaps you can share a bit about whether there is an elementary school close to your residence – in your own home school district – that might be willing to adopt aspects of the Rocketship model or completely convert to a charter school.
Supporting the concept of charter schools doesn’t mean that one is attacking the personal integrity of neighborhood public school teachers or students. In a multicultural society, with all types of parental and educational challenges, urban public school teaching is not simple in 2011.
But we, as a state, have to expect that today’s youngsters will be well-educated, confident, sophisticated adults in 2031 – regardless of how much money the public school system has or does not have.
Let’s identify a couple aspects of what Rocketship claims to offer:
* Longer school day, meaning longer hours for teachers, (often with lower annual pay than many neighborhood public school teachers receive).
* An assumption that all students in the school can achieve math and language arts proficiency on the AYP standardized test model.
You write: “Expansion should be based on proving the model works for all students.”
I am concerned about scalability, but the Rocketship model shows that if you enroll students in a longer school day environment, with significant access to computer-aided hybrid pedagogy and high expectations, that many students achieve high AYP scores.
“Make the Case,” I appreciate that you are part of the dialogue. What do you suggest will eliminate the math and language arts achievement gaps evidenced by most neighborhood public schools in California?
– Chris Stampolis
Trustee, West Valley-Mission Community College District
408-390-4748 *
st*******@ao*.com
> “Make the Case” writes “until they show achievement using equal inputs (same population in a neighborhood school), it will always be about the ‘who’, not the ‘what’.”
I’m a bit fuzzy on exactly what “Make the Case” is trying to say when he or she writes that “it will always be about the ‘who’, not the ‘what’.”
I suspect that this has some cryptic edubabble significance which is lost on us real people.
It’s difficult to penetrate what “Case’s” issue is, but it sounds suspiciously like he or she is hinting that any school those student demographic isn’t exactly the same as the total public school demographic might be . . . are you ready for this . . . racially discriminatory!, and hence, illegitimate.
Chris,
A huge amount of money and effort is expended (fruitlessly, from my detached perspective) searching for the perfect model of public education. The way I see it, DiSalvo and the rest of the educrat establishment, has a tendency to completely ignore the single most important factor controlling the success or failure of educating children- the ‘teachability’ (for want of a better word) of a given student or group of students.
‘Make the Case’ is simply ‘making the case’ that the only way to know whether Rocketship’s model is superior to the traditional public school model is to allow for a controlled experiment in which Rocketship must prove itself by taking over the task of teaching the same population of kids with the same parents in the same facilities, then measuring the difference.
My guess is that, if it were allowed to happen, Rocketship would have no better success teaching this real world population of kids than does the system that’s struggling mightily to do so now. But I could be wrong. And there’s one way to find out.
Given that charters and neighborhood public schools are funded out of the same diminishing pot of resources, it is time to go beyond a
” controlled experiment” and ensure that charters enroll the same cross section of students and by extension serve the same parent base as their neighborhood schools.
The issue, to be blunt, is the unstated model Rocketship and other franchise charters use to “skim off the top” ; the motivated, the savvy, the engaged.
Their blueprint for success relies on an implicit plan to siphon neighborhood and community resource to fuel a model that only works when they target the top 15% or so of any community. And not 15% measured on NCLB, but the 15% of parents who come forward in any public school to donate, volunteer, fund raise, and work in the classroom. These are the families who partner with their local schools and are key to making any school successful. And when they are ” skimmed to become a partner with KIPP or Rocketship they are sorely missed by the neighborhood schools who by law accept and educate all comers.
Targeted ” skimming” is a cynical model under the guise of “innovation” and much like a shark these schools from this predatory model must always always keep growing into ” new markets” in order to remain successful.
The Santa Clara Board of Education with their sworn mandate to provide special services to all students should know better than to support a model that increases two-tiered public education
> Targeted ” skimming” is a cynical model under the guise of “innovation” and much like a shark these schools from this predatory model must always always keep growing into ” new markets” in order to remain successful.
There you have it: “COE etc.” is asserting that the “public education model” is a rigid socialist model which MANDATES the colorfully termed “convoy” method for the educatation of ALL children in America. And anything else is “cream skimming”, anti-special needs, anti-community, and the whole usual long list of malignant epithets that the levelers have for free people acting freely in a free society.
The current public education model is the classic example of the authoritarian statists using the “nose of the camel in the tent” to gradually infiltrate the entire camel into the tent and take over.
The American people bought in to the value and benefits of tax-supported “universal education”.
But a system of universal education DOES NOT require a monopoly of government operated schools.
Universal education could be achieved entirely with private schools funded through any number of mechanisms: vouchers, tax credits, scholarships, grants, etc. etc. etc.
If the current system of public education is required to be configured so that every school must be demographically identical and acheive identical outcomes, than it violates the expectation of the
American people for important and fundamental rights such as liberty, privacy, freedom of association, control over the nurturing and rearing of their children, not to mention free exercise of religion.
If the freedom of the American people is at odds with the functioning of a government operated edcuation monopoly charged with providing identical educational outcomes for ALL children, then the government education monopoly has to go.
The post by “CEO and privatizers” is one of the most honest posts I have read on an open blog. Yhe poster suggests that charter schools are attractive to highly-involved parents – and concurrently seems to conclude that pooling of highly-involved parents in charter schools is a systemic problem that hurts California. The poster also suggests that charters somehow should be mandated to identify and to enroll the children of less-involved or non-involved parents. Joseph, I hope you push this interchange further to an open and sustained discussion about the underlying interest, demand and resistance for charter schools.
If “the families who partner with their local schools and are key to making any school successful” want their kids to leave the neighborhood school, might that longing be one point that the entire existence of charter schools attempts to solve?
A question I pose to “CEO and privatizers” as well as to Joseph and the public is “Why is there demand for charter schools from the most involved, committed 15% of public school parents who, in the poster’s words, ‘come forward in any public school to donate, volunteer, fund raise, and work in the classroom’”?
Charters don’t create “two-tiered public education.” It already exists – too often based on the neighborhood in which one resides. If neighborhood public schools in economically-challenged communities consistently perform at high levels of achievement, demand to attend those schools – rather than charter schools – will rise.
– Chris
An interesting addition to this conversation is the movement of Assembly Bill 440 which would codify that charter schools should reflect the demographics of their surrounding community: http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/bill-seeks-standards-charter-schools-student-demographics-11366
Chris Stampolis seems to be arguing that public dollars for neighborhood schools should be directed to create schools for engaged and invested families—the traditional private school family. He posits that it is perfectly okay to create a parallel public school system to cater to these families. Yet in his own comment above, he affirms what many here are suggesting:
“If neighborhood public schools in economically-challenged communities consistently perform at high levels of achievement, demand to attend those schools – rather than charter schools – will rise.”
Elected officials like district and county school board trustees should be directing resources and policy toward this very goal. When entrepreneurs and philanthropists come to the table with great ideas like Rocketship, their contributions should also be in service of this very goal.
The proposed bill raises some questions on how this would work for the proposed countywide Rocketship schools. Should those school reflect the County demographics?
re: Chris Sampolis argument, he simply states what exists today. Charter School enrollment is very similar to Magnet School enrollment. Given that, shouldn’t Charter Schools performance be compared to Magnet Schools’ rather than Neighborhood Schools’?
If charter schools are nothing different than magnet schools, then why do we need charter schools? Why do they deserve special flexibility not allowed magnet schools if their mission and student body is no different?
> Why do they deserve special flexibility not allowed magnet schools if their mission and student body is no different?
Huh?
This is America. You should be asking just the opposite quesition.
Why should we be tolerating any bureaucrat or bureaucracy DENYING flexibility or freedom to charter schools? Or private schools? Or home schools? Or any other kind of school?
Howard Roark?
Yeah, right.
I knew Howard Roark.
You sir, are no Howard Roark.