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1) “They Left Us in
the Cold.” NEA initiatives are
launched with champagne and streamers, but when they sink beneath the waves,
the union tosses no life preservers to the survivors, nor does it mark the
final resting place of those who went down with the ship.
The Progressive Policy
Institute of the Democratic Leadership Council (http://www.ppionline.org)
issued an excellent report called Catching the Wave: Lessons from
California’s Charter Schools. But author Nelson Smith missed the story
of one California charter school that reminds us why charter schools succeed
or fail. That school is – was – Kwachiiyoa Charter School in San Diego.
The word “kwachiiyoa”
comes from the Kumayaay Indians of the San Diego area and is loosely
translated to mean “everyone a learner, everyone a teacher,” which became
the school’s motto. The school was designed to serve some 450 elementary
students “as a model for improving student achievement by implementing
innovative teaching and learning practices, establishing and maintaining
strong school/community ties and enhancing professional development for
pre-service and in-service teachers.”
Kwachiiyoa was one of a
projected six charter schools that were to be part of the NEA Charter School
Initiative, launched in 1996 and funded with $1.5 million. Only four charter
schools ever opened. Then-President Bob Chase told a Congressional
subcommittee that NEA’s main goal was “to learn from this project and share
its findings with traditional public schools.” He added that when “charter
schools are created along the lines that our members have chosen –
professional educators applying best practices and teaming with parents and
community members – they do indeed offer hope for positive changes within
our public system as a whole.”
The Charter School
Initiative was part of the new NEA image. It was promoted in NEA
publications, and cited as an example of new unionism at work. “What better
way to lead in one of the hottest areas of school reform?” read one article
in NEA Today.
But the initiative ran
into many of the same problems of other charter school start-ups, and many
more that were unique. These were detailed in the 1999 EIA report Loving
Charter Schools – To Death (http://www.adti.net/html_files/education/Antonuccimay211999.htm).
Kwachiiyoa opened in September 1999, two years later than expected and after
a change of administrators, but the school had the financial and staff
support of the California Teachers Association, the San Diego Education
Association, the local school board and the teachers’ college at San Diego
State University. San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Maureen Magee
called it “perhaps the most enthusiastic charter school launch the city had
seen.”
The school was to be
run by a 12-member governance council, which consisted of six teachers, two
parents, two community partners, one classified employee and one student.
“The governance structure of Kwachiiyoa Charter School is based on the
philosophy that teachers are professionals whose voice in school management
and operations is essential to achieving academic goals,” read a school
goals document. Goal #1 was “high student achievement.”
By the time
Kwachiiyoa’s initial charter expired on January 14, 2003, enrollment was at
half-capacity, three classroom teachers were jointly running the school
without benefit of an administrator, and the school was the
lowest-performing of the 121 schools in the San Diego Unified School
District. It ranked lowest even when compared to other California schools
with similar student socioeconomic backgrounds. For the 2002-2003 school
year, Kwachiiyoa was forced into a state intervention program for
underperforming schools. Similar poor academic results were reported in 2000
and 2001.
Moreover, district
staff found the school “had failed to maintain adequate financial records
and adhere to commonly accepted accounting practices.” The district
concluded that the “lack of school leadership clearly contributed to this
breakdown of fiscal control and to the failure of the school’s academic
program.”
This year, the
Kwachiiyoa staff sought a new charter for the school, without union
involvement, but the San Diego City school board denied the application on
June 24, citing the school’s track record.
The lesson of
Kwachiiyoa is not a cautionary tale about charter schools in general, nor
about teacher participation in charter school administration. It is,
however, a cautionary tale about publicity stunts disguised as education
reforms. The NEA lost interest in its charter schools not long after the
press releases went out. “Somebody birthed this school and then they left us
in the cold,” said Kwachiiyoa teacher Rhonda Schwartz
For an organization
that claims to want “great public schools for every child,” the NEA failed
to keep its commitment to create one decent public school for 200 children.
Keep that in mind when the next press release arrives announcing the latest
initiative.
2) U.S. Department
of Education Finally Discovers DC Racial Achievement Gap.
Last week I was reading a rudimentary editorial in the Wall Street
Journal about the DC school choice bill. U.S. Secretary of Education Rod
Paige was writing about the most recent National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP) test results for Washington, DC, and my sleepy eyes widened
when I came across these sentences:
“The disaggregated
results from NAEP for the District of Columbia are particularly striking.
White DC 4th graders score the highest of any subgroup tested,
while black DC 4th graders score 60 points lower – an achievement
gap roughly double the average for both the country and for almost all the
other measured cities.”
EIA has spent years
trying to interest analysts, academics and reporters in the racial gap in
test scores in DC. Here is what I wrote in April 1999 in the EIA report
Measure for Measure: A Magnified Look at Standardized Test Scores:
“The comparison also
tells us that the states with low scores are low for blacks, Hispanics and
everyone together… except in one place. It bears mentioning that white
students in Washington, DC, have among the highest scores of any sub-group
measured by the NAEP. This occurs despite the fact that DC as a whole ranks
at the bottom of virtually every test ranking. It doesn’t seem unreasonable
to ask why the white/minority gap in test scores in our nation’s capital is
the widest in the entire country. When our representatives and federal
bureaucrats boast of sending their own children to DC public schools,
perhaps we should hold our applause until we determine which DC
public school they mean. Is it the one the white kids go to, or the schools
the rest of DC residents have to endure? This gap also begs the question
about per-pupil spending in the District, which is among the highest in the
nation. How equitably is that money distributed from school to school?”
Is there a two-tiered
school system in DC? Is there a logical explanation for such a disparity,
even when compared to other urban school districts? Perhaps now we will get
some answers.
3) NEA’s Real Beef
with NCLB. Since NEA General
Counsel Bob Chanin announced it just prior to the union’s convention in
July, national education observers have focused on the likelihood that NEA
will sue for “full funding” of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). But
there’s another lawsuit in the works that addresses the union’s major
concern with NCLB. It’s not testing, it’s not adequate yearly progress, and
it’s not even money. It’s collective bargaining.
Last week NEA filed a
complaint against the U.S. Department of Education, charging the agency with
failing to provide documents under the Freedom of Information Act. The union
is seeking “all written material that details why the department retreated
from its previous interpretation of a provision” of NCLB that ensures its
mandates “cannot override the rights of school employees under federal,
state, or local laws or collective bargaining agreements.”
As someone highly
experienced with public records requests, I can tell you that litigation is
useful as a last resort against obstinate bureaucracies. But the efficiency
of the Department of Education’s paper-pushers is a separate issue from the
purpose of NEA’s fishing expedition: section 1116(d) of NCLB.
With minor variations,
the law states what NEA says it does. The point of dispute arose when the
initial Department of Education regulations written to enact the law stated
that section 1116(d) applied only to laws and bargaining agreements in
effect prior to the enactment of NCLB in January 8, 2002.
After a number of NEA
complaints, the offending regulation was deleted from the final version. But
NEA is concerned that the official interpretation being made by Department
of Education officials is that the provisions of NCLB take precedence over
conflicting provisions of any collective bargaining agreement enacted after
January 8, 2002. The purpose of the union’s Freedom of Information Act
request is to find any documentation that states this interpretation
plainly. Should NEA find any reason to believe that NCLB will trump teacher
contracts, it will file suit. For months, union activists have been seeking
specific instances across the country where contract provisions have been
set aside or gone unnegotiated because of NCLB. The most brazen instances
will be used as the basis for court action.
EIA has previously
noted the irony of NEA angst over federal overreach, but lawsuits against
the U.S. Department of Education are particularly delicious, since that
agency came into existence largely due to the efforts of the newly
“unionized” NEA during the Carter administration. It’s hard to sympathize
with the mad scientist when his monster starts tearing up his laboratory.
4) Washington Pay
Raises “An Egregious Attack on Bargaining Rights.”
The Washington Education Association (WEA) is out to prove that teachers’
unions aren’t just about higher pay for teachers. In fact, WEA is
threatening to go to court to prevent the state legislature from increasing
the pay of new teachers.
“It’s an egregious
attack on bargaining rights,” said WEA President Charles Hasse in an
interview with The Olympian.
The union is happy to
use low salaries for new teachers as an argument for more education funding,
but when the state appropriated money for teachers with seven years of
experience or less, WEA announced it was “highly likely” to sue, saying any
state money is subject to collective bargaining at the local level. A WEA
spokesman said the issue was not about salaries but about local control over
salary negotiations.
But teachers’ unions
aren’t just about “local control” either. In California, a mandatory agency
fee bill was passed two years ago, removing that issue from the local
control of over 400 school districts in the state. Nary a peep was heard
about this, because it benefited the union. Introduce a similar bill in
Washington and watch Haase switch sides faster than you can say “egregious
attack on bargaining rights.”
5) Quote of the
Week. “Scot Danforth, chairman of
the division of teaching and learning at the University of Missouri at St.
Louis’ College of Education, said military discipline doesn’t work with an
8-year-old. ‘Public schools and children don’t work that way,’ he said. ‘The
chains of command are loose, authority is always questionable, even the
authority of teachers.’ Susan Adler, director of teacher education at the
University of Missouri at Kansas City, said she had her doubts too, but she
has seen her own ‘child of the ’60s., antimilitary bias’ crumble. ‘I
observed one who was strict, fun and fair,’ she said. ‘The kids knew what
was expected or there would be consequences. He had classroom management
licked. He was strict, but not in a negative way. That’s not untypical.’”–
from a story by reporter Cheryl Wittenauer on the Troops to Teachers
program. (August 3 St. Louis Post Dispatch) |
