How To Destroy the Teaching Corps: Use Charter Schools

Charter schools have proven very useful to plutocrats for a variety of reasons:

- They help make already wealthy people even more money: see here, here and here for just a few examples. Those of you on newspaper editorial boards who live in denial of money making potential of charter schools are willingly obtuse.

- They provide an excuse for not raising taxes on the wealthy to full fund urban schools, as charter cheerleaders can claim they "do more with less." The problem is that they do not serve the same student populations as public schools, so the comparison is specious.

- They often engage in a pedagogy of compliance, training young people not to question authority through critical thinking. This, of course, is very useful if you have a corporation and you want servile employees who live in constant fear that you may take their jobs if you don't accede to their blackmail.

But there's another reason charters are so helpful to the hedgehogs and banksters and Masters of the Universe: they are breaking up unionized teacher workforces.

Here are some examples from my backyard [all emphases mine]. Let's start in Hudson County, NJ:

At least 63 employees of the Hoboken Board of Education will be laid off due to cuts in the board’s 2014 budget, Superintendent of Schools Mark Toback said on Thursday. Additionally, six of the district’s early childhood classrooms are being transferred to a contracted preschool provider, costing at least three teachers their jobs.

Toback said the layoffs are the result of a variety of factors, including a decline in the state aid typically offered to the district and the rising costs the district must pay the city’s various charter schools each year. 

[...]
Finally, the district will pay the city’s three charter schools $8.3 million this year, up from $7.5 million last year. That number has doubled since 2010, when the district only had to give $4.1 million for the charters. The district is given extra aid to cover the charters too, but recently the board has complained that the cost is still too much.

The board has aroused controversy recently by opposing the state-granted expansion of the Hoboken Dual-Language Charter School (HoLa) to eighth grade. The state is concerned that HoLa could cost around $1.25 million in the next few years – though it’s unclear how much of that would be covered by state aid. School officials have recently said the charters are “bankrupting” the district.

A spokeswoman for HoLa has called the district blaming layoffs on charter costs “unfair.”

Oh, it's "unfair" all right: unfair that Hoboken's charters serve far fewer kids in economic disadvantage proportionally than HPS does, all while getting results that are no better than other schools in Hudson County, which serve many more children eligible for free lunch:

Tell me: is the mediocre performance of Hoboken's charter sector really worth ruining the lives of the 63 families that will suffer from these budget cuts?

On to Camden:

Ever seen an old, worn-down punching bag hanging lonely in the back corner of a run-down gym? That's Camden, which has repeatedly suffered blow after blow following years of negligence, public corruption and gross incompetence.

It was delivered another body blow on Thursday, when news broke that in an effort to cut costs, Camden School District will lay off about 400 people, 300 coming directly from schools.

Noted in the news was the fact that enrollment has declined by nearly 1,000 over the last five years, making the current budget unsustainable. That decline isn't serendipitous or surprising - kids are increasingly being shifted to the 10 charter schools operating within the district. Four more charters have been recently approved.

In fact, back in March 2013, then-interim superintendent Reuben Mills told school board members that while he wanted to do everything possible to keep students enrolled in traditional schools, he expected about 900 students be lost to new charters. 



In 2012-13, Camden's charter schools enrolled 22.4 percent of all public students, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. 3,644 students are enrolled in Camden charter schools, up from 2,545 just five years ago. 

There are your 1,000 students, seems Mills was right on the money. Expect things to get worse, not better, for Camden's public schools.

[...]

Charters do have the advantage of selecting their students, allowing them to cherry-pick the best and brightest while relegating students in need to decreasingly-funded public schools. Is it any wonder charters tend to outperform their public school counterparts?

All I'm saying is don't get behind a podium and pretend the declining enrollment in Camden schools isn't premeditated, planned and encouraged by all the major stakeholders involved in determining the city's education future.

That's from the great Rob Tornoe: apparently, a sports cartoonist is capable of understanding the truth about charter schools while the editorial page chief of the state's largest paper, the Star-Ledger, is not.

Tornoe is absolutely right: the charter shift is certainly premeditated, and the outcome -- the decimation of the professional teaching staff in Camden -- is unquestionably a result both Chris Christie and George Norcross have sought for some time.

Of course, the template for all of this is Newark:

Newark school officials are considering laying off more than 100 employees in the central office, according to union and school officials. In addition, district officials will cut teacher ranks through retirements and by not renewing about 100 non-tenured teachers who work on annual contracts, officials said. 

Also, as part of the restructuring, school officials said, as many as 55 parent liaisons who work in the schools will be laid off but the district said many may be rehired. 

The potential cuts were announced at several meetings Friday and are part of the state-operated district’s attempt to close a $42 million budget gap, School Advisory Board chairman Rashon Hasan said.

You have to give state superintendent Cami Anderson's administration (many of whom, like Anderson herself, were under the anti-teacher tutelage of Joel Klein and Mike Bloomberg in NYC) credit: they know how to manage expectations. Back in February, Bob Braun was reporting that NPS was considering laying off 700 teachers; now, cutting 100 looks like less of a big deal.

And Anderson's staff is now saying they don't need to pursue the illegal waiver to seniority they sought before; again, it looks like a victory for the teachers when it's really anything but.

Newark's public school system is being systematically dismantled. The plan was evident years ago: underfund the public schools, allow charters to spring up, oversell those charters' "successes," and leave many parents with no choice but to abandon their neighborhood schools.

But in Newark, there's been an additional twist: under Anderson, a culture of fear has been imposed on the teaching staff. A merit pay system that's a scam. Principals fired for daring to speak their minds. Employees sanctioned for their bathroom conversations. "Renew" schools, where the entire staff has to reapply for their jobs -- even at schools that perform well when accounting for their student population characteristics. It all adds up to a culture of staff repression: speak up for yourself, and you'll pay a heavy price. 

Just yesterday, the entire administrative staff of University High was terminated, even though NPS itself, in the One Newark application (which is an unjustifiable mess), says the school is "Great." There's only one reason for this action: it's designed to put fear into "uppity" staff members. Standing up for yourself, you see, is just not allowed in Chris Christie's New Jersey.

Of course, this phenomenon isn't limited to the Garden State. Chicago, New York City, Tennessee, North Carolina... teachers are under attack everywhere. And everywhere teachers are under attack, you're sure to find charter schools on the rise.

Right now, it's the best union-breaking and teacher corps-busting tool the reformy class has.

Copyright 2011 Barry Deutsch

ADDING: It would be wrong to say the culture of fear is limited to Newark; after all, Paymon Rouhanifard, state superintendent of Camden, also made his bones in the Klein/Bloomberg NYCDOE. And it looks like he learned his lessons about suppressing teacher dissent well:

Following Wednesday's student walkouts protesting teacher layoffs, Superintendent Paymon Rouhanifard issued guidelines to district officials stating that while students should be shown some leniency, teachers who participated will be "disciplined." 

The email, provided to the South Jersey Times by the district, stresses that "students need to be in school," and that any protests should take place outside of the school day. He added that disciplinary actions against students who stage future walkouts should avoid suspensions and expulsions. 

"Students need to be in school, and suspending students will only take students out of the classroom," reads the email, sent shortly before 8 p.m. Wednesday. 

"If students continue to leave school, responses should be adjusted accordingly. 

"But now is the time to engage students, in school, to hear out their concerns and share accurate information." 

School employees will be shown much less latitude with regard to their behavior. According to the email, staff members who left school early on Wednesday to join the protests "will be disciplined." 

In the email, Rouhanifard asked school principals to provide the names, positions and departure times of all staff members who walked out. 

"Obviously, staff members have the right to share their opinions, too, but any demonstrating needs to happen outside of the work day," said Rouhanifard in the email.

I'm sure Paymon Rouhanifard, with his whopping two years of teaching experience, would have known just how to handle this situation. Better to, say, chain the students into the schools and create a potential safety hazard than allow them to express themselves safely...

More to come.

"One Newark": A Market For "Lemons"

I've got a new brief over at the NJ Education Policy Forum out today about One Newark. As usual, I present my geekspeak-free (mostly) version of this brief here.

Here's the background: Cami Anderson, the state-appointed superintendent of Newark, has put out a plan to restructure the district's schools. Bruce Baker* and I have written a lot about the flaws in this plan, called One Newark: see here, here and here for our critques. The central problems are:

• Certain schools were targeted for closure, "renewal" (where all of the staff is fired), or takeover by charter management organizations (CMOs), but the sanctioning of these schools, which are supposedly "ineffective," seems to be arbitrary and capricious.
• Newark Public Schools clearly did not take student characteristics into account when rating the schools' effectiveness. In other words: they don't seem to care that a school with many kids in economic disadvantage, or who don't speak English at home, or have special needs, has a far tougher job than a school that doesn't serve as many of these kids.
• The sanctions under One Newark are applied unequally under race and class lines: more kids who are black and economically disadvantaged will see their schools sanctioned, and more teachers who are black and teach the poorest students will lose their jobs.
• To be frank: NPS does not appear to have a very good command of statistical methods. But even when judged by NPS's own criteria, the plans they offer make no sense.

This last one is the focus of the new brief, and it relates to how NPS is "selling" Newark's schools -- both charter and public -- to its families.

Under One Newark, every family fills out an application, listing their top eight choices. These choices include some, but not all, of the charter schools in the city. What's really surprising (and, to me, more than a little disturbing) is that NPS rates each school on the One Newark application itself.

So as a parent looks at the choices for her child, she will see that each school is listed as "Falling Behind," "On The Move," or "Great." Here's a part of the paper application (click to enlarge):

Think about this a minute: Anderson's NPS administration says that some of Newark's schools -- schools Anderson and her staff themselves are ultimately responsible for -- are "Falling Behind." It's a remarkable assertion, and one that has profound consequences: would you enroll your child into a school that, on the very application you must fill out, is listed as "Falling Behind"?

If NPS is going to make claims about these schools, they must have the data to back those claims up. And logic suggests that they must be taking student characteristics into account; otherwise, how could a school that serves poorer children and more children with special needs possibly "compete" with a school that does not?

What I've done in this brief is use a basic statistical tool -- linear regression -- to show that, when accounting for student characteristics, many of the schools NPS says are "Falling Behind" are actually doing quite well. Conversly, many of the schools that are "Great" are really "great" only because they serve far fewer special needs, Limited English Proficient (LEP), and free lunch-eligible (FL) students than most of the other NPS schools. 

Here's the breakdown:

I want to make an important point here: the prediction model I'm using is a model that NPS's analysts themselves used when answering our initial critique of One Newark. NPS themselves said that averaging scale scores is the preferred dependent variable (the brief points out the problems with this); NPS themselves said that a linear regression with these covariates is valid. I'm not substituting their dependent or independent variables**; this entire exercise is based on what NPS's analysts themselves say is valid.

Except it's clear it isn't. In the One Newark application above, Miller Street is "Falling Behind." But look at the graph: Miller Street is above prediction, based on NPS's own model! How can they justify labeling this school as "Falling Behind" -- right in the application itself -- when their own model says it isn't?!

I've got some other stuff in the brief about SGPs, another component of NPS's rating system (a system, by the way, that they have not, to my knowledge, ever explained in detail). But here's the real kicker:

If the rating system in the One Newark application isn't telling us about a school's effectiveness, what is it actually rating? Well, if you look at the student demographics of the schools in each classification, a pattern emerges:

Under One Newark's rating system, "Great" schools are actually the ones that have fewer black boys who are economically disadvantaged and/or have special eduction needs.

This is an ugly truth: "Great" schools, on average, have only 8 percent of their student population classified as needing special education services; "Falling Behind" schools more than double that percentage. "Great" schools have fewer children who qualify for free lunch, and significantly fewer black children. Even the difference in gender is significant.

So the rating system of One Newark is really about who goes to the school, rather than how effective the school is as measured by test scores (a dubious way to measure "effectiveness" to begin with).

The title of the brief comes from a classic economics paper written by George Akerlof. The paper asserts that markets are skewed by "asymmetrical information": when the seller knows something the buyer does not. Akerlof uses the used car market as an example: he contends that the effect of this asymmetry is not only more "lemons" on the road, but fewer "non-lemons" available to buyers. 

This is exactly what is happening in Newark. "Non-lemons" like Hawthorne Avenue are being turned over to private charter operators, taking away families' options to send their children to a relatively effective school. "Non-lemons" like Miller Street are tagged as "Falling Behind" when they really aren't. Meanwhile, only one Newark charter school is tagged as "Falling Behind," while several don't beat prediction (including some that interestingly declined to be part of the One Newark universal application).

I think "portfolio" districts are a bad idea for any number of reasons (more on this later this summer). However, if NPS is committed to this structuring of Newark's schools, they need to take the role of an impartial arbiter and an unbiased source of good "consumer information" for Newark's families -- kind of a Consumer Reports for parents. This brief shows they are anything but. The information they are providing to parents cannot be justified; it doesn't make sense, even by the district's own criteria. 

We have lemon laws to protect used car buyers; shouldn't we have at least the same protections for families that are forced to be in "choice" districts? 

One Newark: buyer beware!

* Bruce Baker is my advisor at Rutgers in PhD program.

** I am adding gender as a covariate, which is not only perfectly acceptable, but warranted in this case.

Why Didn't Anyone Ask Christie About the Pensions in 2013?

If you are at all shocked by this, you just haven't been paying attention:

In a stunning reversal, Gov. Chris Christie today announced plans to grab, over two years, $2.43 billion meant for public workers' pensions to balance New Jersey's ailing state budget. 

The plan threatens to derail one of Christie's signature accomplishments in Trenton — a series of reforms to replenish New Jersey's strained pension fund over the long term — but it would solve an immediate crisis for the governor, who has to find $2 billion somewhere to cover budget shortfalls for the current and incoming fiscal years. 

At a Statehouse news conference today, the Republican governor said his plan is to take $2.43 billion budgeted for the pension fund during this fiscal year and the next one. He ruled out alternatives such as raising the state income tax or cutting funds for schools and Medicaid. 

A payment to the pension fund scheduled to be made before June 30 will be reduced — from $1.6 billion to $696 million — via executive order, Christie said. 

To all my fellow public employees who voted for Chris Christie: I hope you're happy. This clown broke an explicit promise to you, and now he wants to take money out of your pocket and put your pension at risk. But, hey, he was such a straight shooter back in 2013, dontchaknow! And you just loved his no-nonsense style! Plus, he was with you on marriage equity/guns/abortion/insert-your-favorite-conservative-social-wedge-issue-here...

Honest people can debate any of those social issues. But I've never understood how a public employee could think any of them are more important than being able to take care of yourself and your family.

Of course, back in 2011, when Christie - abetted by his Democratic allies in the legislature -- forced us to pay more into our pensions on the promise the state would start meeting its obligations, he told us that he was "fixing these systems in order to save them." Plenty of suckers appeared to believe this; only snarky teacher-bloggers, it seemed, bothered to point out that Christie had never put forth a plan to raise the revenue his legislation required. Over and over, the warning signs were there: without additional revenue, the payments required by Christie's law -- the one he constantly touted across the country -- would not be made.

Flash forward to 2013 and the gubernatorial race: Christie still had not told us how he was going to come up with in excess of $5 billion by 2018. He refused to raise taxes on corporations or the wealthy, both of whom had making out like bandits under New Jersey's regressive tax regime:

This was Christie's signature legislation; his shining, bipartisan moment... but he still hadn't let us in on the plan. You would think someone -- anyone -- would ask him about this.

No one did.

Don't believe me? Here are the two debates from 2013 between Christie and his challenger, Barbara Buono. Number one:

And number two:



There were lots of serious questions about serious issues asked in the debates: marriage equity, minimum wage, gun control, property taxes, etc. There were also plenty of questions about issues that I think are far less important: Christie's political ambitions, the Christiecrats who endorsed the incumbent over Buono, Wawa vs. 7-11 (seriously), etc.

But pension underfunding cuts right to the heart of the fiscal health of New Jersey. If anyone cared one whit about whether New Jersey would weather its budget crisis, they had to be concerned about the pensions. Why didn't anyone bother to ask about the pension payments?

To be fair: Barbara Buono, whom I like and respect, never bothered to ask Christie about this either. I suppose she avoided the question because she figured she'd have to admit that she would have to raise taxes to make the payments. From my perspective, she would have been better off doing just that... but that is, admittedly, Monday morning quarterbacking.

In any case, the press didn't need for Buono to bring up pensions; they could have addressed the issue themselves. Unfortunately, the editorial boards of the state's newspapers utterly failed in their obligation to get an answer from Christie on this most basic of questions.

For example: when Tom Moran, chief of the Star-Ledger's editorial board, famously published his mea culpa for the paper's endorsement of Christie, he couldn't bring himself to address the problem of the pension payments:

But there is more to it. Christie has made good progress on education with a focus on struggling cities, especially Newark and Camden. His pension and health reforms helped contain public costs that were spiraling out of control. [emphasis mine]

Dear lord, what an obtuse statement. There is no cost containment without the state making its payments -- and Christie never told us how he would make them. The S-L's original endorsement worried that Christie hadn't come up with the funds to pay for open space purchase and transit projects. But any worry about the pension payments? Nope: the pension bill was "important." Unfunded, but "important."

Let's be fair: the Ledger wasn't alone. The Philadelphia Inquirer said Christie put "pension funding on a better track." The Asbury Park Press editorial board said: "Public employee pension and health benefits have been reined in, with the largest impact on taxpayers still to be felt." The Bergen Record editorial board didn't even mention pension payments in their endorsement.

The Atlantic City Press, in their endorsement of Christie, proclaimed: "Whether those reforms succeed in shoring up the pension system will depend on the huge payments they require in future budgets, but this legislation, pushed strenuously by Christie, is a step in the right direction." But how could there be a "step" without a payment plan? Did it occur to the paper's editorial board to ask what the plan was?

Please.

Pension payments are the central fiscal issue in New Jersey, but not one editorial board in the state bothered to address it in the last gubernatorial election.

And so now here we are: Chris Christie has reneged on his promises, the state's bond rating is now in free fall, and we are no closer to pension "reform" than we were four years ago.

I want to be clear: there are some very good reporters in the state doing some very good work. But on pension payments, the punditocracy of New Jersey utterly failed their readers and viewers. What happens next is as much on their heads as anyone else's.

NJ's Editorial Boards take a stand on pension payments...

Chris Christie: Lying Liar, or Completely Clueless?

Give The Auditor, the Star-Ledger's weekly political insider column, credit for catching Chris Christie's latest lie - although, in my opinion, this merits much stronger language:

Gov. Chris Christie joined an exclusive club last week — governors who get shellacked with six downgrades of their state’s credit rating. The only other member in the entire country? Democrat Jim McGreevey.

The most recent ratings cut came last week from Moody’s Investors Service, a major Wall Street agency that found fault with Christie’s budgets and the slow recovery in New Jersey’s economy.

That downgrade, coupled with the previous five, hung over Christie like a rain cloud at an economic forum he attended in Washington with power players including Bill Clinton.

During a chat with CBS News’s Bob Schieffer, the Republican with an eye on the White House still called New Jersey’s recovery from the Great Recession "exceptional" and pinned some of the blame on his predecessors for skipping yearly payments into the pension system, which is now $52 billion in the hole.

"Christie Whitman, Jim McGreevey, Dick Codey, Jon Corzine made no pension payments," he said. "None. Zero."

While it’s true that Christie’s predecessors did leave him with a huge pension hole to fill, The Auditor notes that "None. Zero" isn’t quite right. Most recently, Corzine did pump more than $2 billion into the pension system.

Christie specifically says Corzine did not make pension payments. As The Auditor points out, this is patently false.

For years, we public workers have been required to fund the pensions. Until Corzine came along, the state refused to do its part. It's not that the governor "isn't quite right" when he says Corzine didn't make payments; Christie is, instead, glaringly and completely wrong.

But give The Auditor credit: at least they pointed this out. Politico couldn't even be bothered to check whether Christie was telling the truth.

Christie has always played dumb about the pensions: he's stated he "had no idea the pension system was about to go bankrupt," when, in truth, everyone who was paying the slightest bit of attention knew the pensions were in trouble years ago.

Christie signed the law that forced public employees to pay more into the pensions and degraded their value. He claimed, repeatedly, that he was "saving" the pensions. And yet, on this signature issue, he was so clueless during his first campaign that he didn't know the pensions were in serious trouble? And he still doesn't know, to this very day, that Corzine had made pension payments?

If Chris Christie isn't a liar, he is recklessly clueless. The six credit downgrades are entirely on him -- not any previous governor, but him. His ignorance and/or mendacity got us into this mess, and no one else's.

This state has an obligation to every teacher, every cop, every firefighter, every social worker, every DPW worker, every clerk, every secretary, and every other public worker who was forced to contribute to the pension system. Christie doesn't get to go to the state's vendors and say: "Hey, folks, I'd love to pay you, but I refuse to tax the wealthiest people in the state at comparable rates to the working poor..."

"... or stop my massive corporate tax giveaways that have been miserable at creating jobs, or stop the looting of the treasury by continuing tax expenditures that are inadequately reported. So, too bad suckers!"

If the state owes money to someone who provided a good or a service, they must pay. Public workers are no different. There is a contractual obligation, written into law, that requires the state to make good on these payments. If Chris Christie can't meet those obligations, he should resign immediately and let someone else take over who is at least willing to talk honestly about the issue.

I've said this before: Bridgegate was no joke. It may well be that people died because of it. But Chris Christie committed many sins well before the traffic piled up in Fort Lee. His reckless policies on the pensions, coupled with his disdain for the truth, are as worthy of derision as whatever role he had in Bridgegate.

Chris Christie is unfit for high office; that was evident well before the Port Authority nonsense blew up in his face. The sooner he leaves Trenton, the better off this state will be.

Just go away. Quickly.

Another Day, Another "Miracle" Charter School Debunked

Some of you who read this blog might think I've got something against charter schools. I really don't; I started my career in a charter. There are some good charters out there, and a few really excellent ones. We can even have a discussion about the similarities between urban families who enroll their children in charter schools and families who move to the suburbs to enroll their children in low-poverty public schools.

But here's the thing...

What really makes me freakin' bananas is when the press -- often abetted by the charter cheerleading class and charter school leaders themselves -- pushes yet another "miracle charter school" story that is based on nothing but half-truths and distortions.**

Let's go to Trenton for the latest example:

The city’s public schools saw a graduation rate as low as 48 percent last year, but at one charter school this year, officials expect not only to graduate every 12th-grade student, but also to see all 17 go on to four-year colleges. 

“There’s no secret to what we do,” said Graig Weiss, intermediate school principal for Foundation Academies. “It’s really, really hard work. 

“We will not make any excuses for why our students do not and will not achieve, because we believe in setting high expectations for our kids, both behaviorally and academically. And when you set high expectations for kids, they absolutely rise to the challenge, and our students are proof of that, year after year,” he said.

Let's stop right here and point out the obvious: in a city where the public schools enroll ten thousand kids and there are 492 seniors this year, this school is graduating seventeen. On that basis alone, the comparison is specious.

But let's continue to get to the heart of the matter:

In last year’s NJASK standardized testing results for eighth grade, students at Foundation Intermediate scored well above the average for Trenton and other urban schools in literacy, science and math. 

The numbers were striking. For math, students at Foundation scored 66 percent proficient, compared with 23 percent for Trenton students in general. And the statewide average for that subject, 69 percent proficient, was only a few points higher than what Foundation has achieved. 

It just so happens that, last month, I took a look at charter schools in Mercer County. And what I found was this:

Yes, Foundation Academy does well on tests compared to the rest of Trenton; here, the scores on the Grade 8 English language arts test are plotted on the vertical axis, meaning that the higher you go, the better your school did. There's no doubt: Foundation is at the top of Trenton.

But notice how many low-poverty schools in the exurbs (Princeton, Lawrence, the Windsors, Robbinsville, etc.) did even better. Foundation is actually in the same league with the inner suburbs: Hamilton and Ewing.

Is it fair to compare Foundation with an extremely low-poverty district like Princeton? Obviously not: so why is it fair to compare Foundation to the rest of Trenton? If you look at the horizontal axis, you'll see the percentage of students who qualify for free lunch. No charter school in Mercer County, including Foundation, has as high a percentage of free lunch-eligible students on this graph as any school in Trenton.

It would be embarrassing to Foundation if they didn't beat Trenton, given that, in Mercer County, 90 percent of the variation in Grade 8 ELA scores can be explained by free lunch eligibility (look at the number in the lower left corner - that's geek speak for: "Poverty matters!").

Now, let's be fair: Foundation does significantly beat prediction, which is the green line running through the graph. Proportionately, they have many more kids in poverty than the schools in Hamilton or Ewing (and that's not a knock on those schools, which are right where we'd expect them to be), yet they get equivalent test scores. Good for them.

But is something else going on here? Let's ask Weiss:

Though the school is not able to cherry-pick the best students from among the public school population, the charter manages to coax good results out of most grade levels, said Weiss, whose intermediate school handles students from 3rd through 5th grades. [emphasis mine]

Really? The school isn't "able to cherry-pick the best students"? Well, that must mean that the students are just like the students in Trenton's public schools, right?

Wrong:

Again, Foundation has one of the lowest rates of free lunch-eligibility in the area. But it doesn't stop there:

57 percent of Robbins Elementary students are Limited English Proficient (LEP). In contrast, only 1.4% of Foundation's students are LEP. And what about kids with special needs?

These are the special education rates for schools in Trenton. Foundation is on the low end...  but that's a bit deceiving. Because there are all different types of special education classifications:

Let's procede with caution: the special education data from the state is only at the district level (the state considers a charter school its own district), and there are rules that require the suppression of data when the numbers are low, ostensibly to protect the rights of the children who are classified. The asterisks here indicate suppressed data (although I personally believe the special education data can be dirty and we shouldn't assume anything - that said, it's the best we've got). With all that in mind...

Trenton Public Schools has to educate the nearly one percent of its population that has been classified as autistic; Foundation has no autistic students. Same with intellectual disabilities.

Specific Learning Disabilities (SLDs) can be some of the least onerous disabilities a learner has. Many times, children with SLDs have such mild learning issues that they spend most of their time in the general education classroom. That's certainly the case at Foundation:

All of the kids classified as having SLDs at Foundation are able to spend most of their time in a regular classroom. In Trenton, many of the children with SLDs need much more extra help outside of the general education classroom.

The point here is that this charter school's already low special education percentage is masking a reality: Foundation Academy isn't serving many, if any, children with profound learning disabilities. And that's not surprising: most charter schools aren't set up to handle the most difficult special needs. Charters overwhelmingly serve the middle-and-above of the bell curve.

So why don't they admit it? My guess is that if they did, it just wouldn't help tell the story certain politicians, the credulous press, and the charter cheerleading class wants to hear:

According to Weiss, Foundation differs from other public schools in numerous ways. 

Foundation students have a longer day, attending school from 7:15 a.m. to 4 p.m. — 8 hours and 45 minutes — with an additional hour for extra help or detention. 

By contrast, the average public school day is about 6½ hours long. The school year at Foundation is also longer, with 200 school days; the minimum required at public schools in New Jersey is 180 days.

That's nice, and it's probably a good idea for kids who don't have high-quality opportunities for extra-curriculars after school. But there's no evidence a longer day trumps poverty; when you look across the entire state, there's just no correlation between school day length and test score outcomes:

Continuing:

Juniors and seniors leave the campus at noon on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to take community college classes, for which they receive college credit. 

“College is definitely what we do at Foundation Academy, and we’re seeing it come to fruition, we’re seeing it come alive,” Falconer said.  

[...]

The high school is very tech-oriented, Falconer said. Sophomores get their own e-book readers for school use, every classroom uses an electronic whiteboard and teachers are equipped with laptops, smart phones and personal websites to assist their teaching. 

The Foundation intermediate and middle grade levels also put a special emphasis on individual achievement, focusing on each student’s strengths and weaknesses and adjusting their curricula accordingly. Much of this, Weiss said, is done through rigorous data gathering on students throughout the school year. 

“When a teacher says, ‘Well, I taught it,’ we want to be able to say, ‘OK, you taught it, but did the kids learn it, and where is the proof that the students learned that material?’” Weiss said. “The data allows us to meet the students exactly where they’re at and push them forward.” 

Teachers at the intermediate school, instead of teaching out of textbooks, use a “teacher resource room” where they can customize their teaching materials to fit the needs of their students, Weiss said. 

Textbooks are still used in the high school, though, Falconer said. 

Reading skills are a very important focus at Foundation’s intermediate campus, in particular, where students will spend three hours of their day in various reading and writing classes. 

The school uses a “guided reading” class where students of varying levels of reading comprehension are split into different groups and assigned different books that will challenge their skill level.

Those of you who teach are probably cringing, just like I am, at reading this. Does anyone with a background in education think any of this is "innovative"?

Every school with decent resources offers college courses in high school - it's called "AP"! Every reasonably funded school in New Jersey gives their teachers computers and websites! Every school worth its salt uses data! Every teacher who graduated from a real college education program learns how to individualize instruction! Every school expects its teachers to customize resources!

And "guided reading"? Seriously?! Maybe that was innovative back in the Carter administration...

I don't want to bust on the folks from Foundation too much here: as I always say, everyone should be proud of their school. I'm sure there are some good things going on at Foundation; maybe they have even come up with a learning strategy or two that's worth emulating. It's also worth noting that they have far more kids proportionately in poverty than any school in the outer suburbs of Mercer County.

But this "miracle school" nonsense needs to stop. There's no evidence that Foundation has come up with some pedagogical elixir that can overcome the correlation between poverty and academic achievement. Like so many other "successful" charter schools, they simply do not serve the same population of students as their neighboring public schools. The data is all there, if anyone cares to look at it*, and it doesn't lie.

The time has come for the charter cheerleaders to stop this mendacity: it's polluting the debate about education, and it's making them look like fools, charlatans, or both. If you really care about children and their education, the very least you can do is step up your rhetoric and set an example of integrity and self-respect. For once and for all, just cut the crap.

* I'm going to allow myself a little personal indulgence here (what's the point of having a blog if you can't even do that?):

Now that my public profile is a little higher, I've noticed that folks will sometimes act like what I'm doing on this blog is some big quantitative deal. As if the graphs and scatterplots above are the policy equivalent of brain surgery.

I'll let you in on a little secret, folks: they aren't. What I am doing here is really basic stuff; I mean, really basic. OK, maybe I'm a little more comfortable with numbers than the average jazz pianist... but nothing I've ever published on this blog rises above the level of a first-year undergraduate course in statistics. And that troubles me...

Because there are far too many people in the press and in policy making positions and in government who could easily apprehend what I'm presenting here if they truly cared to do so. This is not rocket science - it if was, I couldn't do it. Most of the graphs on this blog could be made by anyone with the patience to get through "Excel For Dummies."

The journalist who wrote this story and his editor could have easily spent maybe an hour at the NJDOE data website, after which they would have known that they were being sold a bag of magic beans. Again: this sort of analysis is not hard to do. I barely remember anything I learned in math after 9th grade, but guess what? That's all you need to understand this stuff.

This is, ultimately, a matter of will. I read stories like this one and I think, "That can't possibly be right." And it inevitably turns out that it isn't. With a little effort and a few tricks that even a music teacher can learn, it turns out that it's not very hard to get at the truth.

But if I can do it, why can't someone who is paid to get at the truth do the same? Why isn't it standard practice in the media, the think tanks, and the government to check claims of miracles with data that is publicly available?

The answer, I fear, can be found in the words of Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

** I've edited this sentence for clarity. Unquestionably, some in the charter industry have told outright lies about charters, but that's not the case here. This story is based on distortions: we are being told only part of the story, and that's giving a false impression of Foundation relative to the Trenton Public Schools. But I wouldn't say anything here is an outright lie. The way I wrote that sentence originally could have left that impression; if it did, I apologize.

Also: one of the commenters said Foundation has no art or music programs. But the website clearly lists music faculty.

Would Linda Brown's Parents Have Wanted a "Choice" District?

This weekend is this 60th anniversary of Brown v Board of Education, the landmark case that ended separate but equal public schools. The case was originally brought against the Topeka, Kansas school board by Oliver Brown, the father of Linda, a third grader.

Oliver had tried to enroll Linda at their neighborhood school a few blocks down the street; he was told instead that Linda would have to go to a segregated school a mile away. Apparently, the Topeka school board felt it would be better for Linda to attend a school far away from her own community, with children of her same race.

Keep that in mind as we get the latest news from Newark:

Yesterday, [State Superintendent Cami] Anderson released the results of the universal enrollment process, a key piece of the One Newark reorganization plan. She also announced the district will provide bus service for 3,783 students who were asked to choose a new school under the reorganization plan. 

In the first round of enrollment, Anderson said the district matched 63 percent of the 12,604 applicants to one of their top five school choices. Another 1,512 students were not matched at all, and 3,216 were matched to their sixth, seventh and eighth choices. "We are really excited about the number of participants and we are particularly proud of the equity piece," Anderson said. [emphasis mine]

"Equity piece"? You mean this? 

SHUTTLE SERVICE 

In addition to the enrollment decisions, parents were notified today the district will provide shuttle service to and from school for the 3,783 students who had to chose new schools. Thirteen schools were consolidated or relocated or turned over into charter schools or early learning centers. 

Officials said they plan to have the shuttle service in place for September but do not have the information on the routes or the cost. 

Currently, the district provides buses for special education students and city bus tickets to high school students who attend schools more than 2½ miles from their house and K-8 students who live more than 2 miles from school. 

This year, 6,527 district and charter school students are eligible for bus tickets, and 98 percent take advantage of them, officials said.

Say this about the Topeka school board 60 years ago: at least they had a plan to make sure Linda Brown could ride a bus to her segregated school. We're not sure Newark Public Schools can even handle that.

Linda Brown's parents fought for the right to send their child to a school in their neighborhood. The Christie/Anderson administration, in contrast, wants to bus Newark's children all over the city.

Keep in mind that the children who had to chose new schools are much more likely to be black:

In 2014 Newark, black children are being bussed all over the city, away from their neighborhood schools, which have been systemically underfunded.

How far, I wonder, have we really come?

Topeka, 1954, or Newark, 2014?

Where In The World Is Cami Sandiego?

UPDATE: Found her!

"Mayor-elect Baraka and I worked together at Newark public schools and had a productive working relationship which I have every intention of continuing," Anderson said. "While we may not agree on all issues, we certainly share a common passion for creating equity for our young people." 

Baraka worked as principal of Central High School for several years under Anderson before he took a leave of absence to run for mayor. During the campaign he harshly criticized the One Newark school plan and repeatedly called for Anderson’s resignation. As mayor, however, he has no authority over the district, which has been under state control since 1995. 

Baraka said Anderson called him today, and he will work with her. 

"As long as she is here we’re going to have to have some form of communication. That’s what we have to do," he said, adding that he will continue to raise questions about the One Newark plan and voice his wish for the state to return the district to local control.

This is going to be interesting...

***

Ras Baraka, an employee of the Newark Public schools, has just won election as mayor. Throughout the campaign, Baraka has been a harsh critic of State Superintendent Cami Anderson -- his boss -- and her plan for restructuring the school system, One Newark.

You would think, then, that Anderson would have something to say about Baraka's election. You would think the NPS website would have some sort of statement, even an innocuous one pledging to "work with the new mayor" or some such thing. You would think some local reporter would get some sort of reaction from Anderson, even if it's only a "no comment."

I've been searching around for a while, however, and I've found nothing. Have you?

As Bob Braun points out, Anderson has been missing from Newark almost as long as the Nets. She's been jetting all over the western part of the nation, ignoring summons from the state legislature to explain herself and her plan. The last I heard, she wasn't even talking to the president of the school board. Teachers I've talked to from Newark tell me they haven't seen her for weeks.

Where in the world is Cami Anderson?

Ras Baraka & Newark's Last Grasp at Democracy

If you believe that America is a democracy, you must also believe, a priori, that Newark, NJ, is not part of America.

For the last couple of weeks, it has become painfully, disturbingly clear that Newark -- like many other communities populated by working-poor and working-class people of color -- operates under a set of circumstances that simply wouldn't be tolerated in a free, democratic society:

- Democracies allow for full participation in governance by all people, regardless of their class status; Newark, however, is currently being threatened with the loss of its autonomy simply because it is an impoverished community.

When Newark's current interim mayor, Luis Quintana, dared to defy the state and hire his own appointees to run the city, Trenton decided the best course of action was to threaten to take over city hall. I wonder if Chatham's or Sparta's mayors have ever faced similar threats...

Some will argue that corruption in Newark is so bad that it requires state intervention and the disenfranchisement of the city's voters. Funny, I didn't hear many people make similar arguments about Toms River. Even Ridgefield escaped a state takeover; the threat would have gone away immediately had its mayor (later acquitted on corruption charges) resigned.

I haven't heard any charges leveled against any Newark high officials that reach these cases of malfeasance, especially under the last two terms of Cory Booker; why, then, is Newark increasingly likely to lose its ability to govern itself?

You tell me:

- Democracies support the development of a middle-class; Newark, however, suffers from segregation, taxation, and economic policies that all but guarantee that many of its citizens will remain mired in poverty.

You'll often hear that New Jersey is a high-tax state. The issue is far more complicated than that -- we're also a high-income state, and many of the taxes we pay don't stay here -- but the most important thing to understand is that we are a regressively taxed state:

This creates a disadvantage for communities like Newark, especially when the state's wealthiest families have essentially sequestered themselves away in economically segregated towns. Like much of the rest of the country, New Jersey has engaged in practices that create homelands where working-poor people of color are allowed to live.

We then stand shocked -- shocked, I say! -- that these cities can't raise enough revenue to support themselves. We stand amazed that there sometimes is corruption in these cities, as if the system itself didn't create the conditions for that corruption.

- Democracies allow citizens to direct the education of their children; Newark, however, allows its citizens no say in how its schools are run.

If you read this blog, you know the story of state-appointed superintend Cami Anderson and how she has lost the trust of just about every stakeholder in Newark's schools. Apparently, no one has seen neither hide nor hair of Anderson for some time, even as her One Newark plan has come crashing down around her.

There's no doubt that elected school boards can and do make mistakes when choosing their superintendents. But those boards are also quick to act when the pressure builds from their communities to replace school leaders who don't have the confidence of parents, teachers, and students. Newark, however, has its schools run by a superintendent who answers only to Chris Christie, a man the city overwhelmingly rejected in the last election. It doesn't matter what Newark's stakeholders want; all that matters is what Christie wants.

If that isn't anti-democratic, I don't know what is.

- Democracies engage in elections where campaign financing is transparent and driven by the citizens affected by the elections; Newark, however, is engaged in a mayoral race dominated by shadowy interest groups outside the city.

I guess we can't single out Newark too much on this; after all, campaign finance laws are a joke across the country. Still, it's stunning how much outside money has come into this race. As both Bob Braun and Mother Crusader have reported, the school privatization industry is pouring millions into Shavar Jeffries's campaign coffers, all with the goal of dismantling the Newark Public Schools and replacing it with a "choice" system that substitutes democratic oversight with consumerism.

Let's be clear: "choice" is not democracy. Affluent suburban communities in New Jersey have fought long and hard to keep "choice" out of their districts; that is their right in a democracy. Newark's citizens, however, have had a system of segregating charter schools dumped on their heads with no say in the process.

If school "choice" is so wonderful, why won't New Jersey's reformy plutocrats allow Newark's citizens to "choose" for themselves whether they want to turn over their schools to private management? Why does the "choice" for charter expansion rest in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, and not with the elected representatives of the local community? Do reformy types have so little faith in the attractiveness of their ideas that they are afraid to put them before a vote of the people who must live under their policies?

- Democracies have a press that serves the people, advocates for their rights, and speaks truth to power; Newark, however, has a hometown newspaper that has cynically given up any pretense of serving as a civic institution.

This morning's twisted endorsement of Jeffries by the Star-Ledger is almost as bad as the paper's previous endorsement of Christie. Bob Braun appropriately excoriates the S-L for its attack on Jeffries opponent, Ras Baraka. I'll add only this:

The S-L is quite correct in suggesting that this race has become a referendum on Anderson and the two-decade control of Newark's schools by the state. But the notion that One Newark is a "serious" reform plan, and Baraka's is not, is absurd.

Unlike Tom Moran, op-ed editor of the S-L, I've both read Baraka's education plan and studied One Newark. Baraka has not called for shutting down the Newark charter industry; he has, instead, called for adequate resources to be invested in schools that are democratically controlled. He has called for bringing all of the stakeholders of Newark together to reform schools, including building a coalition of both charter and public school parents. His plan is modeled on the Newark Global Village Zone, a program developed by noted education scholar Pedro Noguera -- a plan that was abandoned by Anderson and Christie in favor of One Newark.

One Newark, in contrast, is both illogical and innumerate. It turns over neighborhood schools to charter managers who have never proved they can serve the same populations of students better than NPS. The delays in informing families about their "choices" proves the district never developed the capacity to pull it off. And I'd even argue that One Newark is bad for the planet, increasing the carbon footprint of the city by shuffling children all over, rather than keeping their schools within walking distance.

The S-L editorial board has never bothered to inform itself, let alone its readers, about these realities. In a democracy, the press sees itself as a fair, informed arbiter of the truth. If Newark has one of those, it's certainly not to be found in the op-ed pages of its hometown paper.


The last thing the good people of Newark need is another outsider telling them how to vote. It's quite clear what's at stake in this election; Newark doesn't need me to elaborate any further than I already have.

But the rest of us should be watching what happens this week. Shavar Jeffries may well be a good man, but his campaign has become a symbol of everything that is wrong with our politics these days. 

If Jeffries wins, it's a confirmation that America's cities -- the ones where working-class people of color are allowed to live --  are being ruled from the outside. Jeffries' election will confirm these cities' institutions have been co-opted for cynical, self-serving interests, fully at the service of political machines and plutocrats. It will confirm that cheap political shots -- like the attacks on Baraka's family -- actually work, especially when they replace serious discussions of the issues.

I won't for a second make the case that Ras Baraka's election will transform his town. The forces that create cities like Newark are large and powerful; they have a vested interest in the real status quo, and they will only be contained when people of good faith, both in and out of Newark and her sister cities, no longer keep their revulsion at the abandonment of these communities in check.

But Baraka's election would send one powerful message: that there is still a place in our politics for people to gain autonomy, no matter their color, economic class, heritage, faith, or sexual preference orientation*. Let's hope we haven't sunk so far that people, no matter who they are, can't still enjoy some small measure of self-determination.

* I'm learning, thanks to all of you. Keep it coming.

What's Happening With B4K?

So, at the first glance, it looks like B4K is up to their old tricks again: putting money from billionaires David Tepper and Alan Fournier into local politics under the guise of education reform. They've done it before in Jersey City and Perth Amboy; now it's Trenton.

But hang on -- something seems different...

TRENTON — A nonprofit that gives free backpacks to school children has slung mud at mayoral candidate Eric Jackson.

A billboard linking Jackson to former convicted Mayor Tony Mack appeared Friday on Route 129 near Route 1, and attack mailers with the same message were sent out to residents paid for by Better Education for Kids.

“Eric Jackson endorsed Tony Mack. Eric Jackson worked for Tony Mack,” the billboard reads with “Same Old Trenton” written in big letters underneath with a link to a website continuing the assault on the former city public works director.

In fine print after the New Brunswick’s organization and address is identified, it states “not made with the cooperation or prior consent of, or in consultation with, or at the request or suggestion of any candidate or committee.”

But the group was founded by billionaire hedge fund manager David Tepper, who is tied to campaign donations to mayoral candidate Jim Golden.

[...] 

Tepper is not alone in his support for Golden.

An outreach coordinator with Better Education for Kids, Gerard Green, posted pro-Golden literature on his Facebook page, with the most recent coming on Friday afternoon.

Green could not be reached for comment and the number for the nonprofit was disconnected. [emphasis mine]

"Disconnected"?! Talk about burying the lede.

You see, NYCAN -- the New York branch of 50CAN, one of the reformiest groups around -- announced just last week that their new executive director was none other than Derrell Bradford, the former executive director of B4K.

When I found this out, I went right to B4K's website to see if they had acknowledged Bradford's departure. Weirdly, Bradford's bio is still on the site, although he's off the staff listing page. Maybe that's a mistake borne from the site being remarkable quiet: while you'll find a few cut-and-pasted repostings of writings by Rick Hess, Laura Waters, and other reformy all-stars, I couldn't find an original piece on the site's opinion page since last year. The opening slate links to a Star-Ledger editorial from 2011.

B4K's social media presence has also gone dark. Their Facebook page's last entry is over six months old; their last tweet is from 2011. As I've noted before, B4K's work rate has never been very high. But this is a new level of torpor.

I really have no idea how long it takes to make and buy space for a billboard. Maybe B4K is in stealth mode, working hard behind the scenes to influence races and unconcerned with their public face.

Maybe, on the other hand, this ad was already in the works when Bradford left -- a final gasp of life. Or is Tepper is keeping the group a shell of its former self, ready to disburse soft money when he wants to, but inactive otherwise? You don't need a working phone for that.

I hope a reporter picks this up. When B4K first came on the scene, the preferred story from establishment types like Tom Moran was that Tepper and Fournier's money was going to break the back of the evil NJEA.

Are the gloves still laced up? Will B4K be as active again as they once were? Will they really attempt to match the NJEA in terms of their influence? 

Or is B4K winding down?

The One Thing You Must Remember During NJ's Testing Season

Tomorrow, the 2014 NJASK testing season continues as Grades 5 and 6 give up a week of instruction -- all so politicians can moan and charter schools can brag and teachers can be fired and tablets can be sold.

It's all about the kids, dontcha know...

Let me make my little contribution to the chaos: here are three graphs to keep in mind as our students and teachers slog through the bubbles. These are "scatterplots": they show the relationship between two variables. In this case, the relationship is between the percentage of a school's students who qualify for free lunch (a proxy measure for poverty), and average or "mean" test scores.

See how the test scores rise as the poverty falls? Yes, there's some variation, but the correlation between  a school's test scores and its rate of poverty is quite clear. Statistically, nearly three-quarters of the variation in Grade 8 English Language Arts test scores can be explained by poverty.

The relationship is still strong in math: 60 percent of the variation in Grade 8 Math scores can be explained by free lunch eligibility.

And, of course, we all know what the SAT correlates to:

Over two-thirds of the variation in schools' SAT scores can be explained by their poverty rates.

Apparently, we need to pay millions of dollars every year, intrude into students' instruction, cause all sorts of angst, distort curricula, and provide incentives for cheating...

Just to prove, once again, the most obvious thing in the world. We are the only nation that tests all of its children this way; then again, we're the only affluent, developed nation that allows more than one in five of its children to grow up poor. If more testing really helped lift kids out of poverty, no American child would go to bed hungry.

Sleep well tonight, kids, no matter how empty your belly may be; after all, there are a lot of adults counting on you tomorrow...