Charter Schools: Keeping the Promise, or Dismantling Communities

1
Charter SchoolsKeeping the Promise,orDismantli
ng Communities?

• March 28, 2007
• Center for Community Change
• The Forum on Education and Democracy
• Open Society Institute

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• Charter Schools Keeping the Promise? Or
  Dismantling Communities?
• Charter Schools Keeping the Promise or
  Dismantling Communities was held in Washington,
  DC on March 28, 2007,
• co-hosted by the Center for Community Change, the
  Open Society Institute and the Forum for
  Education and
• Democracy.
• The event was designed as an opportunity for
  dialogue about the promise, and the reality of
  the proliferation of charter
• schools in several jurisdictions.
• In preparation for the event, the Open Society
  Institute commissioned five white papers.
  Three of these focused on
• locales in which a significant percentage of
  students are now attending chartered schools.
  In each of these districts,
• the white papers argue, the size and scope of
  the charter system is undermining the co-existing
  public school system.
• In Ohio, charters have proven to be financially
  unaccountable and academically inferior, argued
  Amy Hanauer with
• Policy Matters Ohio. In Washington, DC, the
  charter movement has been orchestrated by
  Congress and local
• developers, and threatens the District of
  Columbia Public School system, writes Zein
  El-Amine with Save Our Schools.
• In New Orleans, now the nations largest
  concentration of charter schools, the city hosts
  two vastly separate and
• unequal school systems. The very existence of
  charters, argues Leigh Dingerson with the Center
  for Community
• Change, with their ability to tailor their
  student bodies, requires a parallel set of
  schools that provide universal access to
• students who are not chosen, or who choose not to
  attend a charter.

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Close to 100 attended the Keeping the Promise
forum, held at the Center for Community Change in
Washington, DC. CCC Executive Director Deepak
Bhargava welcomed participants and introduced
Kirsten Theodore, a student from New Orleans, who
read her essay about schools in New Orleans.
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• Kirsten Theodore wanted to attend Frederick
  Douglass High School in New
• Orleans. But her Aunt wouldnt allow it, sending
  Kirsten instead to a magnet-type
• program within the New Orleans Public Schools.
• At this choice school my dream to be a teacher
  slowly faded, because the majority of
• my teachers told me I was crazy for settling for
  something so low and I shouldnt want to
• help students who give up on themselves and would
  end up selling dope. I kept
• wondering how my Auntie could think this school
  was better than Douglass when all
• they did was put down people like me.
• But Kirstens time at this new school was cut
  short by Hurricane Katrina. She
• evacuated to Texas, where she attended school
  for the remainder of the 2005-06
• school year.
• When we returned to New Orleans in October,
  2006, a couple of months into my 11th
• grade year, one of the only schools with space
  for students was Frederick Douglass.
• My whole world lit up when I found out that Id
  be going to Douglass, my dream
• schoolLike most things in New Orleans, however,
  Douglass had changed after the
• storm. Now the state, which had never run a
  school, much less a school system,

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Moderator Dr. Darling-Hammond set the stage for
the dialogue. Its purpose, she stressed, is to
dig deeper into some of the issues relating to
the evolution of charter schooling. Where did
the concept come from, and what are the values
that we should look for in all schools? Where it
hasnt worked, why? Where it has, what can we
learn?
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Ted Sizer, the founder of the Coalition of
Essential Schools and an originator of the idea
of semi-autonomous chartered schools, discusses
his involvement in charter school leadership and
vision for progressive education.
Led by educators frustrated by large,
bureaucratic systems seemingly immune to change,
the push for charter schools was driven by a
desire to innovate on behalf of children. The
belief was that creative educators, freed from
myriad rules and regulations, would try new
things which, if successful, would influence the
entire system. The question the public must ask
is whether or not the charter school movement is
living up to its promise. Is it a tool to
strengthen and improve our system of public
education, or a devise to erode this most
cherished of Americas national institutions?
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George Wood outlines 5 values lenses through
which all schools should be assessed. They are
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• We are asking the following questions of any and
  all schools, be they chartered or within the
  traditional system
• Does the public system, through its use of
  charter schools, provide for a more equitable
  treatment of all students, adapting to their
  needs, rather than forcing students to fit the
  schools model?
• ???
• Does the public system utilize charter schools to
  provide for greater access to school choice for
  all families in the community?
• ???
• Does the use of charter schools further the
  purpose of public education, to provide all our
  children with the tools necessary for lifelong
  learning and engaged citizenship?
• ???
• In public systems that utilize charter schools,
  do the charters operate as publicly owned
  schools, with full transparency and community
  governance?
• ???
• In public systems that utilize charters, are the
  charters provided genuine regulatory relief, and
  is there a system to report widely on their
  innovations and results?
• Charter Schools Keeping the Promise, or
  Dismantling Communities March 28, 2007

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A warning from OhioCharters were begun in Ohio
amid many assertions that they would deliver
better educational quality to troubled
communities. But the largely for-profit charter
industry in Ohio has delivered on none of its
stated goals. Academic standards have been lower
than traditional public schools. Accountability
has been far below what is expected of public
schools. Class sizes have been larger.
Innovation, if it exists, has not been
disseminated to other schools.
Amy Hanauer, Executive Director of Policy Matters
Ohio, presented on her report, The Charter
Challenge in a Troubled State Ohios Experience
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Lack of Collaboration in DCAmong the many
concerns in the District of Columbia, said Zein
El-Amine with Save Our Schools, is the role
Congress, and the citys affluent developers are
playing in the creation of charter schooling in
the city. Despite the good intentions of some
within the charter movement, the broader context
of privatization and gentrification must be seen
as part of the scenery in which this competing
school system is developing.

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A potential model in Boston?The beginnings of a
significant charter school movement in Boston in
1995 sparked a response from the Boston Public
Schools, which was to offer real choice to
families in students in Boston, within the public
school system. Boston Public Schools and the
Boston Teachers Union entered into negotiations
around creating in-district charters. These
schools (there are now 20 Pilot schools in
Boston) have shown to be models for
semi-autonomous, fully public schools.
Dawn Lewis with the Center for Collaborative
Education in Boston, reports on her citys Pilot
Schools, which are fully public schools
operating on the same resources, and under the
same union contract as the public schools.
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Gabrielle Turner, a former student, now intern
with Students at the Center in New Orleans, reads
her essay about school choice.
This process of selective admission is a huge
stumbling block for parents and students. This
selection process weeds out a large number of
students who simply want to go to school. One
of the best ways to learn, is together.
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A free-market experiment in New OrleansIn New
Orleans, we have the most dramatic experiment in
free-market education. It is failing the
children of New Orleans, said Leigh Dingerson of
the Center for Community Change.In a school
system based on free market principles, schools
become individual contestants for the best
teachers, for the best students, for the most
resources, and of course, in the age of No Child
Left Behind, for the best test scores. And
theyre able to do this only because they are
schools of choice. They are not neighborhood
schools, required to provide access to every
student within their community. In the name of
innovation, they require that the student come to
them. They can shut their doors when their
optimal class size is reached.
And because of that very fundamental
characteristic of charter schools, there must be,
backing up every large-scale charter system, the
schools for the children who dont choose, or who
choose to stay with their universally open school
or who are un-chosen by a charter school.
The very existence of charter schools in New
Orleans, at this point, is dependent on the
availability of a universal access network of
schools alongside it. And those schools, the
schools in the state-run Recovery School
District, are struggling with more than their
share of kids with disabilities, less than their
share of teachers and resources. To win, there
must be losers.
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The dialogue

• I was thinking about the images that get
  conjured s we talk about these issues. So whos
  Luke Skywalker and whos Darth Vader? began
  Linda Darling-Hammond, of the conversation around
  charter schooling. The charter strategy can
  allow some great schools to be created. But
  governance changes dont necessarily produce
  better schools.
• Unfortunately, within both sectors (charter
  schools and traditional public schools) there is
  the quest for the freedom to not accept or keep
  some kids. This is reinforced by high stakes
  testing policies which reward and sanction
  schools based on the test scores of their
  students innovation and access may and do occur,
  but so do abuses.
• So what were looking for in this dialogue is
  Yoda... The wisdom to figure out how we think
  about building a strong, vibrant public education
  sector that ensures that all kids have access to
  the schools they deserve.

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Respondent Dr. Ramona Edelin, director of the
DC Chartered Schools Association. Chartering is
a management process. Its not a type of
school.I see this as an extention of the civil
rights movement, not some other abstract
movement. We will have change for these children
and if chartering as a management process is one
way of getting at that, then we welcome it and
see it as a public good. But wed like to say
today, collaboration must be our collective
vocation. It is not about winning and losing
among adults. Adults dont really lose. Its
the children who lose.
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Respondent C.J. Prentiss, Special Advisor to
Ohio Governor Ted Strickland. I voted for the
charter school bill in Ohio on the basis that it
would provide innovation that it would allow
neighborhoods to come together to craft and
shape. What it has done in Ohio is to rape the
public schoolsMost of the children in my
district attended the public schools. So I need
to make sure those public schools have the kind
of teachers they need, the kind of equipment But
when the dollars follow the child, and one
child leaves, it does not mean that you can
decrease custodial costs. You dont save on your
overhead costs. So what happens is that in fact
the public school is robbed of those resources,
based on this illusion of choice, without
accountability. The pain of it all for me is
African American children. Thats whos going to
these schools, where the promise is not kept.
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Deborah Menkart, director of Teaching for Change
Jill Weiler, director of the DC-based Tellin
Stories Project Ariana Quinones with Fight for
Children Deepak Bhargava with the Center for
Community Change Andrew Smiles, Gates Foundation
In Cuba, theres a sign over a classroom door
that asks three questions. One of them is, can
capitalism provide a quality education for all
children? Thats one of the questions being
debated here. Yet, charter schools are born out
of frustration with traditional public schools.
People are looking for autonomy, not
independence. We just want local schools that
function. How can we have that autonomy within
accountable public schools? (Deborah Menkart)
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Barbara Parks Lee, Save Our Schools
Above Ann Mitchell and Roger Glass, American
Federation of Teachers
Why are these markets (charter schools) in urban
America only? In Washington DC the black middle
class and white business sector engaged in a
conspiracy of silence, knowing full well that
poor children were not being served. All of a
sudden Congress stepped in and told us that this
was the answer. Were dismantling education in
Black America. (Emily Washington) We really
do have a question about the role of capitalism
in education. Education is not a private good.
Its a public good. We all benefit when children
are educated. We all lose when they are not.
(Amy Hanauer)
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Lori Bezahler, Edward W. Hazen Foundation
Public education has a collective purpose. And
it has a social purpose, over and above an
economic one. This conversation is about
democratic ownership of education. I have great
hopes for thatThis is not about individual
school choices for individual people. This is
about a system and a democracy and all of our
children.
Iris Lewis, City Lights Public Charter School
Im concerned about whats happening with
special education students in charter schools.
There needs to be a concerted effort to look at
whats happening for those students.
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Students at the Centers (from left) Jade Fleury,
Kirsten Theodore, Gabrielle Turner and teacher
Jim Randels
In New Orleans, the major innovations over the
last 20 years have come through the public
schools, under the protection of a union
contract. Many of the charters now in New
Orleans did their innovation within the public
school system, with the same resources. They
became charters largely because foundations and
others after Katrina offered them more money. My
need as a teacher is to see someone who will
come in and do a charter that works within the
attendance boundaries of a neighborhood, and can
demonstrate to us that innovation can happen in
a school thats like the majority of public
schools in urban settings. Will you commit to
work in an attendance boundary? Will you commit
to working with the same amount of resources that
all of us work with? (Jim Randels, teacher, New
Orleans Public Schools)
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One of the things thats been so dear to
Americans is the fact that we have a free
education system, available to all. And now were
at a crossroads because theyre failing some of
our kidsHow do we protect that free system? How
do we protect those principles of access without
pay, quality, choice within a free system. The
fear is for the for-profit market-place that is
making a profit off the whole notion of choice
and competition. C.J. Prentiss
Is it possible to have a conversation about what
it is we could do collectively to try to improve
public education in this city?.. Lets look at
some successful public schools and charter
schools and what they are doingthe bottom line
is that all our schools are dramatically
under-funded. We need to work together. We need
to expand this conversation. (James Foreman,
Jr. Maya Angelou Public Charter School)
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The key question is, if you have a decentralized
system of schools with autonomy, do you need a
back-up system? And if you need a back-up system,
how do you create a level playing field? (Nancy
Van Meter, American Federation of Teachers)
I dont think about competition or the
free-market. What I think about is making sure
my community, my people, my children, are getting
a quality education. I dont care where they get
it, whether its a great public school, or a
great charter school, or a private school. (Tony
Colon, National Assocation of Charter School
Authorizers)
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Jade Fleury, a student in the New Orleans Public
Schools and member of Students at the Center,
closes out the dialogue with a reading Bring
us together to make a change. We should be able
to collectively put our ideas together to help
one another. Bring us together! Why are we
developing more and more separate schools and not
more neighborhood schools that the whole
diversity of young people in the neighborhood can
attend?
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The conversation continues
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• Linda Darling-Hammond
• We need to ask the questions how
• do we get choice with
• accountability?
• How can we get neighborhood
• schools with the right to
• innovate?
• How do we think about what can
• happen in both sectors, to the benefit
• to public education?

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• What the best and wisest parent wants for his
  own child, that must the community want for all
  of its children. Any other ideal for our schools
  is narrow and unlovely
• acted upon, it destroys our democracy.
• John Dewey, The School and Society, 1907
• Of all the civil rights for which the world has
  struggled
• and fought for 5,000 years, the right to learn is
  undoubtedly the most fundamental....
• The freedom to learn... has been bought by bitter
  sacrifice.
• And whatever we may think of the curtailment of
  other civil rights,
• we should fight to the last ditch to keep open
  the right to learn.
• W.E.B. Du Bois, "The Freedom to Learn" 1949

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Panelists

• Linda Darling-Hammond is Charles E. Ducommun
  Professor of Education at Stanford University,
  where she teaches education policy courses and
  oversees the teacher education programs. She was
  the founding executive director of the National
  Commission for Teaching and America's Future, the
  blue-ribbon panel whose 1996 report "What Matters
  Most Teaching for America's Future" catalyzed
  major policy changes across the U.S. to improve
  the quality of teacher education and teaching.
  Her research, teaching, and policy work focus on
  issues of teaching and teacher education, school
  restructuring, and educational equity. Among her
  more than 200 publications is The Right to Learn,
  recipient of the AERA Outstanding Book Award in
  1998.
• Leigh Dingerson is the Education Team Leader at
  the Center for Community Change, where she has
  worked since 1998. She is the author/editor of
  Dismantling a Community, the story of the
  takeover of the New Orleans school system after
  Hurricane Katrina. Leigh coordinates the
  Centers Partnerships for Change Project on
  Union/Community Collaboration for Public School
  Reform, and is editor of Education Organizing, a
  quarterly newsletter, which shares efforts of
  grassroots organizations around the country
  working to improve public schools. Leigh is the
  co-author of the Co/Motion Guide to Youth-Led
  Social Change (1998, Alliance for Justice).
  Prior to her work at the Center, Leigh spent 12
  years in the anti-death penalty movement,
  including 8 years as Executive Director of the
  National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
  She worked as a community organizer with ACORN
  between 1978 and 1982, in Austin and Dallas,
  Texas Pine Bluff and Little Rock, Arkansas and
  Columbia, South Carolina.
• Zein El-Amine is a long time DC community
  activist, writer and poet. He is a founding
  member of the Save Our Schools Coalition, a
  grassroots organization comprised of teachers,
  parents, trade unionists and community activists,
  engaged in organizing against the privatization
  of the traditional public school system in DC.
  Zein is also a member of the Ella Jo Intentional
  Community Cooperative a housing cooperative for
  DC organizers. He is also a founding member and
  a regular contributor to Left Turn magazine, a
  trade magazine for activists
• Jade Fleury has returned to Eleanor McMain
  Secondary School in New Orleans and will graduate
  in May, 2008.  She has not returned to her home
  since Hurricane Katrina.
• Amy Hanauer is the founding Executive Director of
  Policy Matters Ohio, a non-profit, non-partisan
  policy research institute dedicated to examining
  issues that matter to working families in Ohio.
  Since the group started in January of 2000,
  Policy Matters has produced more than 160
  reports, generated more than 1,600 media stories,
  and begun to change the economic debate in Ohio.
  Amy has a Master's of Public Administration from
  the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BA from
  Cornell University. She has previously done
  research and policy work in Wisconsin, Colorado
  and Washington D.C. For Policy Matters, in
  addition to running the organization, Amy does
  research on work, wages, education, tax policy,
  energy policy and other issues. Amy is on the
  board of the New York-based organization Demos
  and on the national advisory committee to the
  Economic Analysis and Research Network at the
  Economic Policy Institute.
• Dawn Lewis is the co-director of the Pilot/Horace
  Mann Schools Network at the Center for
  Collaborative Education in Boston. Dawn has been
  an educator as a teacher and Principal for thirty
  years. She is the Founding Principal of the Young
  Achievers Science and Math Pilot School in
  Boston, MA. Young Achievers was one of the first
  pilot schools to open in Boston in 1995. She has
  focused her work in schools around leadership
  coaching, building and sustaining a culture of
  achievement for students of color, critical
  friends groups and creating inclusive school
  communities. She is currently working with pilot
  schools as a coach and also coordinates and plans
  Leadership meetings/retreats and annual Network
  events in collaboration with the Pilot Team. She
  is committed to providing families and students
  with real school choice in urban public
  education that makes a difference in their lives.

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Panelists, continued

• Ted Sizer is the founder of the Coalition of
  Essential Schools and the author of the three
  Horace books that describe CES's rationale and
  early years. He is professor emeritus at Brown
  University, where he served as chair of the
  education department from 1984-1989, and is
  currently a visiting professor at Harvard and
  Brandeis Universities. He and his wife Nancy
  recently served as the acting co-principals of
  the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School in
  Devens, Massachusetts. His latest book, What Is
  School Convictions From Experience, will be
  published next year. He is also working on a
  second book, written jointly with Deborah Meier
  and Nancy Sizer, called On Keeping School
  Letters to Parents.
• Kirsten Theodore As a middle school student in
  New Orleans, Kirsten participated in after-school
  programs at Douglass High School, where she was
  introduced to Students At the Center.  When her
  family returned to New Orleans in October, 2006,
  she enrolled in Douglass.  The high school she
  previously attended had closed.
• Gabrielle Turner has worked with Students at the
  Center in New Orleans since 2000, her junior year
  of high school.  A December 2006 graduate of
  University of New Orleans, Gabrielle continues
  helping SAC students produce videos and writings
  and assists in professional development with New
  Orleans Public Schools and at Frederick Douglass
  High School.
• George Wood serves as Director of The Forum for
  Education and Democracy. His 30 year career in
  public education has included work as a public
  school teacher of social studies in Michigan and
  a full Professorship of Education at Ohio
  University. Currently he is Principal of Federal
  Hocking High School in Stewart, Ohio where he has
  served for 14 years. During two of those years
  he was on-leave as he and his students and staff
  worked in Los Angeles to establish Wildwood
  Secondary School.
• Dr. Wood has published over 40 papers and
  articles on the role of public education in a
  democratic society. His two most well-known
  works are Schools that Work (1992, Dutton) which
  chronicled the outstanding work of teachers and
  schools in underserved areas and A Time To Learn
  (Dutton, 1998 2nd edition, Heinemann Books,
  2005) which told the story of the work at Federal
  Hocking High School. He is also editor of and an
  author in Many Children Left Behind (Beacon,
  2004).
• The following white papers, commissioned by the
  Open Society Institute for this event, include
• Charter Schools and the American Dream, by Ted
  Sizer and George Wood
• The Charter Challenge in a Troubled State Ohios
  Experience, by Amy Hanauer, Policy Matters Ohio
• The Evolution of Public Education, by Zein
  El-Amine and Lee Glazer, Save Our Schools
• Unlovely How a Market-Based Educational
  Experiment is Failing New Orleans Children, by
  Leigh Dingerson, Center for Community Change
• The Boston Pilot Schools An Alternative to
  Charters, by Dan French and Dawn Lewis, Center
  for Collaborative Education
• These papers, and a sixth piece, to be written by
  Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, will be published by
  the Open Society Institute in the summer of 2007.
  Draft copies of the papers are available from
  the Center for Community Change by contacting
  Leigh Dingerson, 202-339-9349 or
  Ldingerson_at_communitychange.org.