Charter schools spend more on administration

I thought charter schools were supposed to be the less-expensive, more-innovative alternative to traditional public schools, but a brand-new study from Columbia University says they spend more on administration than on instruction.

I guess this means traditional public schools are more cost-effective at educating children, after all.

Here's the news, published this morning by Education Week magazine.

One of the most frequent criticisms put to traditional public schools is that they waste money on administrative bloat, instead of channeling more funding where it belongs—the classroom. A much leaner and classroom-centered model, some say, can be found in charter schools, because of their relative freedom from stifling bureaucracy.

A new study, however, concludes that this hypothesis has it exactly wrong.

The study, released by the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, at Teachers College, Columbia University, examines school spending in Michigan and concludes that charter schools spend more per-pupil on administration and less on instruction than traditional public schools, even when controlling for enrollment, student populations served, and other factors.

Researchers David Arsen, of Michigan State University, and Yongmei Ni, of the University of Utah, found that charters spend $774 more per pupil on administration, and $1,140 less on instruction, than do traditional publics. To come up with their estimates, the authors analyze the level and source of funding for charters and traditional publics, and how they spend money, breaking it out by function. They then use a statistical method known as regression analysis to control for factors that could skew their comparisons of spending on administration and instruction in various schools.

Of the extra $774 that charters devote to administration, $506 went to general administrative services, such as the costs of charter school boards, or the fees of the organizations managing the school.

While Arsen and Ni don't examine in depth the causes of charters' relatively low instructional spending, they speculate that a couple factors could be at work. An obvious one is that more than 80 percent of traditional public schools' spending goes to personnel costs, mostly salaries and benefits—which would presumably drive instructional costs up. Charters, on average, pay lower salaries for teachers with similiar credentials to those hired by traditional publics, and also employ a less experienced and less costly teaching force, the authors say, which would keep instructional costs down.

Imagine that: Offer lower salaries to teachers, and you get a less-experienced and less-qualified teaching workforce, but it's cheaper than getting a more-experienced, more-qualified set of professionals in front of your classrooms.

All you need is orange juice and Nilla wafers, and you have a bonafide day care center.

In addition, some charters rely on highly scripted teaching practices, in an effort to help a "low-cost, high-turnover teaching force," Arsen and Ni say—which could drive up charters' administrative costs.

"Charters' outsized administrative spending ... is simultaneously matched by exceptionally low instructional spending," the study says. "If one were searching for a contemporary reform to shift resources from classroom instruction to administration, it is hard to imagine one that could accomplish this as decisively as charter schools have done in Michigan."

And while there's no guarantee that higher spending on instruction will benefit students, "the normative standard—that instructional spending is good and administrative spending is wasteful—cannot be ignored," they say, "simply because it has been advanced so relentlessly by critics of traditional public schools."

Judge rules vouchers unconstitutional in Oklahoma

Last week, a judge in Tulsa ruled that Oklahoma's private-school voucher program for special education students violate that state's Constitution.

This is interesting because of the judge's rationale, explained by reporter Nirvi Shah of Education Week magazine:

Reports by the Associated Press and Tulsa World say that Judge Rebecca Nightingale agreed with the school districts that the law violates an Oklahoma constitutional prohibition of public money being used directly or indirectly for any sectarian institution.

South Carolina's Constitution contains the same prohibition.

Two school districts sued parents of six children with disabilities last fall over the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarships program. The scholarship program, created in 2010, initially required districts to administer the vouchers. Several districts refused to do so, and they were sued by parents. The districts eventually countersued.

While several states have voucher programs just for students with disabilities—a strategy some school choice advocates push for as a gateway to other voucher programs—Oklahoma's is one of just two that has faced legal challenges. Arizona's is the other.

Tuesday's ruling opens the door to an appeal to the Oklahoma Supreme Court. The parents' attorney, Eric Baxter of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in Washington, said he will file an appeal. He told the Tulsa World he will also file a motion for a stay to keep the law intact until the appeals process is completed—149 students use the vouchers now—and a final ruling is rendered.

So, could the U.S. Supreme Court be called upon to rule on this matter in the next few years?

And if so, what are the odds that the Court will rule that public dollars proscribed for public uses in state constitutions must be used for public purposes only?

Zais insults students, schools receiving awards

Last week, local and regional newspapers trumpeted the announcements that various schools in their coverage areas had been recognized with Palmetto Gold and Silver awards for student achievement.

And why not? In South Carolina, where public schools are denigrated daily by ideologues who favor privatization, corporatization, segregation and elimination, the news that so many students and schools have earned a little recognition is wonderful news indeed. What a boost to students' morale, educators' morale, entire communities' morale.

And, in any other state, the state superintendent of education would have appropriately held a press conference, invited all the state's media and surrounded himself with cheering children and educators. Even better, a state superintendent worth his salt as an education leader would have spent the entire week on the road, repeating that spectacle for local media from Caesar's Head to Port Royal.

Not here.

We don't have an education leader in the office of state superintendent; we have Mick Zais.

Zais responded to the good news by insulting the achievement of every one of our hard-working students, educators, parents and administrators. He suggested that the high number of award recipients means the standards had been watered down.

What a maroon.

As usual, national education observers took note of Zais's bone-headed comments and showcased him as South Carolina's embarrassment of the week.

Veteran education reporter Sean Cavanaugh of Education Week published this note:

South Carolina schools are seeing a lot of gold and silver this year, but that sound you hear is the skeptical eyebrow of the state superintendent hitting the ceiling.

The state education department announced March 20 that 853 schools in the state were winners of the Palmetto Gold and Silver Awards handed out for strong general academic performance, or for closing achievement gaps, or both. Of that number, 354 received Gold Awards.

However, that means nearly 70 percent of the state's schools qualified for a Palmetto award of some kind, the state education department noted in a release today. It's not quite "everyone gets a trophy" but it seems like the kind of thing that would irritate Glenn Beck.

By contrast, two years ago, only 403 schools in South Carolina received Palmetto awards.

The department's release notes that this is the first year that schools could qualify for a Silver Award if their ratings were above a "School At Risk" rating during the most recent year. Such a school also has to achieve a certain score on the state's growth index for three consecutive years in order to qualify. This is the first year that three years' worth of such data on the Palmetto Assessment of State Standards are available.

The department noted that under these new criteria, an additional 312 schools this year qualified for a Palmetto award.

"While congratulations are in order for many schools, it cannot be overlooked [that] the new criteria added by the Education Oversight Committee drastically increased the number of award recipients.

This issue should be corrected by the Education Oversight Committee so the public is not misled and those schools that made real gains in student achievement do not have their recognition diminished because of award inflation," State Superintendent of Education Mick Zais said in a statement accompanying the department's release.

But the Education Oversight Committee Zais referred to never intended to dilute the awards, said Melanie Barton, the committee's executive director.

Barton told Shawn Cetrone of The Herald in South Carolina that the committee had to revamp the award criteria in 2008 in order to match the Palmetto Assessment of State Standards, which were new at the time. (The Palmetto awards program began in 1998.)

"We had to get it up and running immediately," Barton said.

One other note: Of all the schools receiving awards, the vast majority (612) were recognized for general performance only, while only 39 were recognized only for their work in closing achievement gaps. The remaining 202 were recognized for strong ratings in both categories.

Is there no one who will yet offer themselves as candidate for state superintendent of education?

Surely there is a serious education leader who can bring sufficient organization skills and acumen to mount a reasonable campaign, in either major party.

Show yourself soon, and let's get back to the work of educating South Carolina.

Imagine South Carolina public schools, governed by educators

What a concept. This column appears in the current edition of Education Week magazine, co-authored by a set of "2011-12 U.S. Department of Education Teaching Ambassador Fellows; participants in the program must be practicing teachers with a minimum of five years' experience and demonstrated leadership."

They describe a world so incredible that it's difficult to visualize, at least here in South Carolina. Educators governing education? People whose passions and preparations are rooted in a desire to educate children, allowed to create and implement the system of education in our state?

Dare to dream.

"Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let's offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility: to teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren't helping kids learn." —President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, Jan. 24, 2012.

President Obama said in his State of the Union address to Congress what many teachers in America have been yearning to hear from their president: Teachers matter, we change lives, and we do this hard work to make a difference in the lives of students.

He also acknowledged what every good teacher knows: that an accountability system that puts too much emphasis on test scores undermines a well-rounded education. But implicit in his speech was a challenge to America and to teachers to rebuild and strengthen the profession—a challenge that teachers are more than eager to accept.

As 2011-12 U.S. Department of Education teaching ambassador fellows, we have heard from many teachers that the field has lost its luster. In our role as teaching ambassadors, we have met with a wide cross-section of teachers in town halls and smaller discussion groups across the country. In these conversations, we have heard real despondency over the constraints of the No Child Left Behind Act that have caused schools to focus on testing and teacher evaluation in ways that are oppressive and rob our profession of much of the joy of teaching and learning.

We've listened to countless stories about a law that has raised standards without providing support for schools to meet them. And we have cringed when some of our most effective colleagues acknowledged that they can no longer afford to stay in a difficult profession that asks so much of them but barely affords a middle-class lifestyle. "We didn't get into teaching to be millionaires," they say, "but we have to be able to feed our families."

What we like about the president's speech is not that he acknowledges our grievances, though, admittedly, it feels good to be heard. What appeals to us is that President Obama understands that as a country we must do much more than simply tweak a structure that is not working. Educators want to lead the transformation and rebuilding of teaching so that our work improves students' lives and restores pride in our profession.

Teachers welcome this transformation. Neither students nor teachers are served by a structure that treats some teachers like interchangeable cogs in a machine. We long to lead our own profession because when we drive our craft, we will see huge shifts in responsibility, leadership, pay, and respect for us. As National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel describes in the NEA's "action agenda to strengthen teaching," issued in December, "I see this as the essence of a true profession: putting teachers in charge of the quality of their profession."

What would teachers do if they ran the schools? We would raise the bar for membership in our profession, recruiting the best candidates and insisting that teacher-preparation programs become more rigorous and relevant. About 62 percent of all new teachers—almost two-thirds—report they felt unprepared for the realities of their classrooms. As Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said, "Imagine what our country would do if 62 percent of our doctors felt unprepared to practice medicine—you would have a revolution in our medical schools."

A transformed profession would give teachers much more responsibility and flexibility to make decisions that meet their students' educational needs—allowing access to and training with technology, shifting class sizes, and restructuring the school day so that they have time to collaborate with colleagues and engage in professional learning and problem-solving.

"Educators want to lead the transformation and rebuilding of teaching so that our work improves students' lives and restores pride in our profession."

We would offer teachers a professional salary and career pathways that acknowledge their skill and commitment in one of the most complex, demanding, and important jobs in the world. We would insist on great school leaders, with principals who have high expectations; develop all teachers as lifelong learners; and create positive school cultures where students and teachers succeed.

As President Obama acknowledged, teachers are creative and passionate. But like workers in many other professions, we expect to be held accountable for results. We yearn to help create fair and thorough teacher-evaluation systems and have access to data to make informed decisions about what is working and what isn't, to direct our professional learning, and to help decide who stays in our profession. The president was right when he said, "That is a bargain worth making."

Now more than ever, teachers long to lead their profession so that we finally resolve the important educational challenges in this country. A quarter of our children fail to finish high school on time, and barely four in 10 earn any type of postsecondary degree. For children of color, outcomes are even worse. When we see the statistics—that 7,000 students drop out of school every day—we feel pain for those teens and shame and guilt that we were not able to prevent this tragedy.

On top of that, school districts are getting ready to slam into an awful reality, that before the end of the decade, more than a million baby-boomer teachers—fully a third of America's teachers—will retire or leave the teaching profession. To recruit and retain the best teachers, we need to offer rewarding jobs and competitive salaries.

We were especially pleased to read, in the recently released "Blueprint for an America Built to Last," that the president plans to ask Congress for funding that will "challenge states and districts to work with their teachers and unions to reform the entire teaching profession—from training and licensing to compensation, career ladders, and tenure."

Educators want to take on this work. As highly skilled specialists, we are not afraid of owning our profession. We are not afraid of being held accountable for results when we are given the responsibility and flexibility to craft our profession. We are confident that the president understands what it will take to transform teaching to meet the challenges of the 21st century, and we are eager to join with our colleagues across the country in moving the profession forward.

The authors are 2011-12 U.S. Department of Education Teaching Ambassador Fellows; participants in the program must be practicing teachers with a minimum of five years' experience and demonstrated leadership. Geneviève DeBose, a 5th and 6th grade teacher from the Bronx Charter School for the Arts, in New York City, works on middle school reform in the Office of the Secretary. Claire Jellinek, an 11th and 12th grade social studies teacher from South Valley Academy Charter High School in Albuquerque, N.M., works on issues related to educational technology and international education in the Office of the Secretary. Gregory Mullenholz, a staff-development teacher at Twinbrook Elementary in Rockville, Md., works on teacher-quality issues in the Office of the Secretary. Shakera Walker, a kindergarten teacher in the Young Achievers Science and Math School in Boston, works for the department's early-learning initiatives. Maryann Woods-Murphy, a Spanish teacher at Northern Highlands Regional High School in Bergen County, N.J., works on labor-management issues in the Office of the Secretary. This Commentary also appears on the ed.gov website.

Why must educators be professionally, politically organized?

"Union" is a bad, bad word here, unless we're talking about Union County and its county seat, Union, so named because abolitionist Quakers met with regional clergymen at the old Union Church. Governor Nikki Haley picked her new Secretary of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, Catherine Templeton, precisely because she had "taken on unions," presumably while training under industrial titan Roger Milliken in Spartanburg. Templeton's law-firm biography lists "union avoidance" as a specialty.

But it was hard not to laugh at Nancy Flanagan's blog post in yesterday's Education Week online edition, and her perspective on South Carolina's comic fear of unionism. (What's not comic but importantly historic is South Carolina's violent and self-defeating reaction to people wanting to organize themselves in defense of their dignity, their economic freedom and their civil rights, as in the cases of the Honea Path Massacre of 1934 and the closing of the Darlington Manufacturing Company in 1956. Google away.) Flanagan warns you, it's a true story from 1993.

It's 1993, and the United States Department of Education is hosting the first of a series of eight National Teacher Forums (a wonderful initiative that disappeared when the Bush administration moved in). As Michigan Teacher of the Year, I am in D.C. representing my state, watching a presentation by four South Carolina state Teachers of the Year on how to create a statewide teacher forum. Three of the four SC TOYs--all earnest, articulate women--are wearing pink suits.

The SC teachers describe the essentials of creating a state forum: Secure outside funding from a business that supports education. Invite honored district TOYs to a day-long event with "business trappings"-- a hotel meeting room, meals and mileage provided, professional attire required. End up with an advocacy product--a pamphlet, white paper or videotape. This, evidently, was the formula for how to get the voices of the most accomplished teachers to the proverbial table, to "dialogue with key leaders and policy-makers" about educational issues.

I am sitting next to the Wisconsin Teacher of the Year. I murmur, "Wonder what their union thinks about the Teacher Forum?" So he asks the presenters.

The pink-suit teachers look at each other, shrugging. "The Association, you mean? I think some of our Forum teachers actually do belong to the association. You know, to get the insurance." But none of the presenters did. Their husbands already had insurance plans.

My take-away from this experience: Some teachers work in a parallel universe, where access to control over their own work and well-being is determined through winning over a succession of principals--a dicey business. If they're deemed outstanding instructors, they get to put on a pink suit and meet in a hotel once a year to "develop leadership" and "provide a voice" on the critical issues that shape their daily practice.

This model of teacher-as-compliant-servant (probably wearing high heels) resonates in the business community, where a malleable, dependable, economical workforce is always desirable. And if their husbands' employment provides benefits, so much the better. Convenient and cost-effective.

This is not the path to building a genuinely professional cadre of highly skilled teachers, however--or to invest in the creative human capital that we need to retrofit our aging approach to public education in America. Teachers need an active, ongoing presence in policy creation. Not a token "seat at the table" where their voice can be co-opted, but real influence over what matters most: classroom teaching.

Flanagan is sweet not to name the ladies who represented the rest of us at this event in Washington.

But she slices us to the quick on the rest, doesn't she? We educators are taught that organizing is ugly -- especially when unions are involved -- and dirty, and its results are such that we can't begin to calculate, so why don't we just stick to doing what we're told? And we do, so many of us, do just that: We fear and obey our principals, who fear and obey their superintendents, who fear and obey their school board members, who fear and obey the loudest and wealthiest parents, who fear and obey their children, who fear and obey hardly anyone. Many of our colleagues have adopted a ga-ga attitude: go along, get along.

Sadly, what that means is that far too many of our really great colleagues, particularly when issues like pay-for-test-scores are being discussed at the State House -- and NOT being discussed at the schoolhouse -- keep their heads down, keep quiet, avoid the spotlight, color inside the lines, make no waves, question no decisions, and hope to get through the next semester/year/two years or more without incident, and maybe make it all the way to retirement eligibility safely and then get out. Does this sound familiar to you?

In her post, Flanagan doesn't say whether or not she has faced similar circumstances in her own education career. She does say this:

If I don't speak up, I have only myself to blame.

Occasionally, I will hear teachers lament that labor tactics--demanding, marching, picketing, adversarial relationships with the public education hierarchy--are "unprofessional." Better we should meet over a chef salad and have a nice, civilized conversation. Perhaps the union label should be replaced by "guild" as we strive for more professional credibility. And so on.

I'm thinking that the Wisconsin Experience--the union politely conceding all the economic bargaining chips, and still getting shafted in a naked, thoroughly undemocratic, demoralizing power grab--might serve as lesson to those who believe that activist teachers are unprofessional. We organize, because without such allied strength, we have even less control over difficult work for which we must accept accountability.

There's more to her post, so read the full text here.

If you're feeling especially subversive today, forward the link to this post to your colleagues. Or print it and post it on the bulletin board in your staff workroom. Or send me a quick note describing the state of affairs where you work. The opposite of suffering in silence is speaking up.