Learning From Charter Schools

The debate continues to rage as if the answers are all in black or white. Yet, when it comes to the role of charter schools in the educational process, the answers are not simple. It is seldom that people can look at the issue without becoming polemic, either offering anti-union screeds or making it sound as if charter schools are the educational version of a Faustian bargain.

Tod Roberson's piece in the Dallas Morning News (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-robberson_11edi.State.Edition1.bdf5ee.html) is an example of someone possibly giving charter schools more credence than deserved. In fact, Roberson’s opinion article is probably more interesting for what it does not say than for what it does say.

While charter schools have increased performance in some districts, they are not the panacea that advocates suggest. Nor are they the scourge that detractors portray. What Roberson lists as good charter school methods are simple "best practices" in pedagogy: Classroom management, discipline, incentives, group study, high standards and jigsawing.

The differences with charter and non-charter schools often have more to do with the flexibility that charters enjoy. For example, most charter schools get to pick students, as opposed to neighborhood schools in which no student in the area can be denied a seat. Charter schools often can send problem students packing for failure to comply with the rules of decorum. Most neighborhood schools cannot. Charter schools also do not have to adhere to the union contract, and some do not have to take the same standardized tests as neighborhood schools. While principals often micromanage even down to the "flow of the day" in neighborhood schools, charters often give teachers greater freedom to adjust instruction to fit student needs. Allowing teachers to adjust curriculum or instruction to fit student needs as opposed to a timetable is simply good educational practice. In addition, most public schools have gone through so many convoluted adjustments of the curriculum that it is hard for teachers to keep track. (The recent push by conservatives in Texas on the Social Studies curriculum is a good example.)

The problem is not necessarily the union, though many locals do not help in developing charter schools. Let us be frank: The role of the teachers union, like any other union, is to protect its members, not to promote the industry in which members work. Journalists often go to public unions for comment, but the fire, police, teacher and hospital unions are not there to improve those departments or agencies, but rather to keep the government from abusing members. (And unions have always withheld support from politicians who do not do labor’s biddings.) So why do we expect the teachers union to be any different than the United Auto Workers or the International Brotherhood of Teamsters?

In addition, people who often write about charter school successes fail to document charter school failures. Many charter schools have failed for the same reasons that neighborhood schools continue to struggle – poor management. There is often a lack of a concrete analysis or a detailed examination of charter school curriculums. In Roberson’s piece, for instance, it would have been nice if he had spent less time criticizing the union and more time explaining what he called "the general concept of a Harlem Children's Zone approach." Also, he could have explained in more detail what SLANT stands for and the reasons for it. (I believe it is from the KIPP schools and it is used to teach students how to listen.) Good teaching methods are not relegated to charter schools and are not a non-union versus union issue. In NYC, the teacher's union has started a charter school, though results are still out, and in Detroit teachers plan to open a principal-less school in September.

So if charter schools are not the do all and be all, then how do we improve the education system? For one, we must seek to remove as many politicians from the mix as possible. Whenever politicians are involved the emphasis is on everything but education. In Detroit where the school board is fighting an emergency financial manager for system control the last few months have been spent talking about a school board president who cannot write a coherent sentence. (That now former board president was also accused of fondling himself during meetings with the female superintendent.) In New York City some time ago, the animosity between one former schools chancellor and members of the board of education escalated to the point that the chancellor referred to a board member as a “political whore.” And in Texas, as I said earlier, conservatives voted to make the Social Studies curriculum kinder and gentler to conservative causes.

Once we remove the politicians then we must allow educators greater flexibility inside schools. That means that principals and other administrators cannot continue to micromanage each classroom. We must also recognize that while SLANT may work in KIPP, for example, it may not work in another school. But any school that believes a SLANT-like program can help students should be allowed to try. At the same time, if a school believes that the Teachers College writing program better suits students then that school should be allowed to add the program. And we must look at school start and end times. Recent studies have shown that teenagers perform better when schools start later, while elementary school students perform better when schools start earlier in the day. Yet changing school start and end times, as well as the length of the school year, would be met with immediate rejection from most adults who depend on the schools for childcare.

But the first thing we must do is tamp down the rhetoric and allow for pedagogical ideas to be floated, experimented with and discarded when unsuccessful. And we need to remember that the key to a good education is critical thinking and problem solving skills, not test taking.