Studies Illustrate Plight of Introverted Students

From Education Week, May 23, 2012

Demitri Lynch, a kindergartner at City Neighbors Hamilton Charter School in Baltimore, plays by himself in his classroom. The school is designed to be "introvert friendly" so that students have spaces to work alone or in groups on the school's project-based curriculum.

—Matt Roth for Education Week

By Sarah D. Sparks

Educators often look for ways to bring quiet children out of their shells, but emerging research suggests schools can improve academic outcomes for introverted students by reducing the pressure to be outgoing and giving all students a little more time to reflect.

"Whoever designed the context of the modern classroom was certainly not thinking of the shy or quiet kids," said Robert J. Coplan, a psychology professor and shyness expert at Carleton University, in Ottawa, Canada. With often-crowded, high-stimulation rooms and a focus on oral performance for class participation, he said, "in many ways, the modern classroom is the quiet kid's worst nightmare."

Susan Cain, the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, published by Random House this year, argues that such children often stop learning when they feel emotionally threatened in a class environment in which being an extrovert is considered the norm.

"There is too often a tendency to see it as inferior or even pathological," Ms. Cain said, "so teachers feel they have to turn the introvert into an extrovert."

Quiet as Stupid?

Take a typical class review session, in which a teacher asks rapid-fire questions and calls on students in turn.

"So if a teacher asks a question and the person doesn't answer right away," Mr. Coplan said, "the most common thing is the teacher doesn't have time to sit and wait, but has to go on to someone else—and in the back of their head might think that child is not as intelligent or didn't do his homework."

That slowness to speak can dramatically affect a student's success in classrooms where vocal participation and group activities are critical.

A 2011 study found teachers from across K-12 rated hypothetical quiet children as having the lowest academic abilities and the least intelligence, compared with hypothetical children who were talkative or typical in behavior.

Interestingly, teachers who were identified as and who rated themselves as shy agreed that quiet students would do less well academically, but did not rate them as less intelligent.

As many as half of Americans are introverts, according to the Center for Applications of Psychological Type, located in Gainesville, Fla.

There's a distinction between shyness—generally associated with fear or anxiety around social contact—and introversion, which is related to a person's comfort with various levels of stimulation.

A shy student, once he or she overcomes the fear, may turn out to be an extrovert, invigorated by being the center of attention.

By contrast, an introverted child may be perfectly comfortable speaking in class or socializing with a few friends, but "recharges her batteries" by being alone and is most energized when working or learning in an environment with less stimulation, social or otherwise, according to Mr. Coplan and Ms. Cain.

Tenth graders Kintaro Campbell, foreground, and Jamel Martin, make use of a hallway nook at City Neighbors Hamilton Charter School in Baltimore. The school tries to provide an introvert-friendly environment.

—Matt Roth for Education Week

Mr. Coplan and his colleagues found differences between shy and introverted students as early as age 4: In play observations, shy children tended to hover anxiously just outside a group of unfamiliar children, while introverted children played quite happily on their own and did not attempt to approach other children.

"It seems clear," the researchers concluded, "that 'solitude' is an insufficient criterion for characterizing children as 'socially withdrawn.' "

In the 2011 study of teachers, the educators were more likely to respond to an over talkative student with direct intervention or social-learning strategies, while, for a quiet child, they were more likely to simply watch and wait or report the child's behavior to the principal or parents.

"The kids who are bouncing around the room and punching people in the face need to be addressed right away. In a classroom of limited resources, that's where the resources go," Mr. Coplan said, adding that the quiet students often get ignored.

The research is mixed on when and why quiet students are academically challenged. Previous, separate studies by Mr. Coplan; fellow Carleton University psychologist Kathleen Hughes; Mary M. Reda, an associate professor at the City University of New York; and others have found that quiet and shy students often have difficulty with class grades, but that largely comes from lower levels of class participation and oral skills.

Test-Taking Advantage

Some studies show introverted students can be better than extroverts at taking standardized tests."Parents of extroverts have told me [those students] never actually learn to work alone, so when the time comes to take tests, ... they have trouble," said Ms. Cain, a former corporate lawyer and researcher.

On the other hand, she said, focusing too much on students' work in a 30-to-a-room class environment doesn't necessarily prepare students for the project-based group work more common in the workplace.

"I actually think our [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] shortages are a cultural problem as much as a pedagogical problem; the type of kid who likes to sit by himself and do math problems or science problems is not supported," Ms. Cain argued. "Most science operations are done as teams, but scientists still have quite a bit of privacy and autonomy to their workday," she said, noting that such environments are also hard to replicate in classrooms.

Friendly Setting

Bobbi MacDonald, the executive director of the City Neighbors charter schools in Baltimore, is trying to create a more introvert-friendly environment at the network's three campuses.

"We start with play-based kindergarten and give increased independence and autonomy each year that you are in school," she said. "It used to be everyone is seated at their desks in a row, and everyone is supposed to be thinking the same thing at the same time. Those days are gone.

"When an individual needs a minute, it's not unusual for that student to find a space."

Most City Neighbors classes have a mix of desks, tables, and small reading nooks with soft chairs, and some walls are lined with floor-to-ceiling whiteboard or tag board, so that students can work on the schools' project-based curriculum alone or in small groups.

"Each teacher does it a little differently," Ms. MacDonald said. "In science class, the students might be in small groups, with one person as the team leader, one watching the clock, one taking minutes, and so on."

Creating smaller groups, of two or three rather than five or more, and providing clear roles for each member can help quiet students make a contribution.

Studies of college students have found that particularly in larger and unstructured groups, more-vocal members can dominate, even when they do not have the correct answer.

"There are many situations in which so much talk is not helpful, and if there is so much talk, there is less time to sit back and think," said Diana Senechal, a former New York City public school teacher and the author of the 2011 book Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture, published by Rowman & Littlefield Education.

"Those times of not entering the conversation—listening to what others say, thinking about it—can be very important," she said.

In one small case study, Paul G. Barker, an educational leadership doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, and the president of Our Lady of Good Counsel High School, in Olney, Md., interviewed graduating seniors whose teachers considered them quiet. Particularly in subjects such as history, which call for students to think about connections between events and people, teachers should encourage all students to practice more listening and contemplation rather than rely primarily on class discussions and group work, Ms. Senechal argues.

The students said their teachers often perceived them as less engaged in class, but they actually considered the time they took to process ideas before speaking a "learning advantage," Mr. Barker found.

Finding Entry Points

"When you're teaching something challenging, where the answers don't come easily," Ms. Senechal said, "the students who like to talk will jump in quickly, and then, if the discussion is well-managed, they might find their answers are not complete.

"The quieter students who spend more time thinking about it than talking about it," she said, "may have an opportunity for entry here."

The evolution of educational technology may also help.

Ms. Cain found introverted students responded more frequently in class discussions held online, where they had time to gather their thoughts and could contribute without others talking over them. Similarly, research has shown introverted students answer questions more often when teachers use anonymous student-response systems, often dubbed clickers.

Passion can be the best motivator for an introverted student to get more involved, Ms. Cain said. At City Neighbors, for example, each middle school student is required to read 25 books during the year, and then to discuss them one-on-one with teachers.

The format is more time-consuming than the typical class-presentation book, Ms. MacDonald said, but it provides a safe environment for quiet children and those with reading problems to discuss what they read.

"Somewhere in that 25," she said, "the child will find that one book that they love, ... and when that happens, the teacher is right there waiting for them."

Triggering reform at public schools

Proponents of parent trigger laws must find ways

to promote stability in the aftermath of a successful petition if they are to avoid the recurrence of policy churn, inefficiency, and persistently troubled schools.


By Andrew P. Kelly


An intriguing experiment in direct democracy is afoot in some of the nation’s struggling public schools. Under new “parent trigger” laws passed in California and on the agenda in New York, Ohio, Colorado, and Chicago, parents of children in chronically failing schools can petition to unseat the schools’ current leadership and staff. If petitioners obtain signatures from 51% of parents, the school must undergo some kind of major change. The options include replac- ing the principal or existing faculty, converting to a charter school, or closing the school entirely. California’s first test case — McKinley Elementary in Compton — provoked considerable controversy, including a successful legal challenge by the district and charges that the school’s current teachers had harassed children whose parents had signed the petition.


The parent trigger gives reformers a new weapon in the battle to improve schooling, and the idea’s growing popularity has excited many across the country. After decades of a focus on parental choice as a way to pressure traditional schools to improve, reformers now have a more direct route to influence individual schools. The trigger gives parents an option other than “exit” through school choice or “loyalty” to the school. If parents can collect enough signatures, the school must listen to their collective voice.


Optimism surrounding parent trigger laws is understandable. We all should be in favor of giving parents the ability to demand more of their children’s schools. But the promise of increased democratic control is not without its pitfalls. In particular, parent trigger proponents must acknowledge that while mobilizing parents to overturn the status quo may be straightforward, encouraging stability and patience after the fact could be much more difficult. Without sufficient at- tention to the rules and institutions necessary to build stability into the process, parent trigger laws may lead to the same policy churn, inefficiencies, and persistently troubled schools that exist today.

California test

Parent trigger laws allow parents whose children attend schools that chronically fail to live up to expectations to band together to demand change.

The parent trigger is elegant in its simplicity: Parents whose children attend schools that chronically fail to live up to expectations can band together to demand change. In California, if organizers can convince a majority of parents to sign the petition and agree to one of the four turnaround models currently favored by the federal government, then the district must implement it. The four options are:

1. Converting the existing school to a charter in the same school building;
   
2. Replacing the principal and at least half of the teaching staff, and giving the new leader added control over staffing and budgeting;
   
3. Keeping the school intact but firing the principal; or
   
4. Closing the school and sending students to higher-performing schools nearby.
   
   
   
   
   In California’s first test case, a majority of parents at McKinley Elementary School in Compton signed a petition to convert the school to a charter man- aged by Celerity, a local charter management organization. Parent Revolution, a reform advocacy group that helped to push the Parent Trigger law through the California state legislature, choreographed the McKinley parent trigger. The move spawned swift and energetic opposition from the school board and the lo- cal teachers union, eventually culminating in a successful legal challenge that led a judge to dismiss the petition on technical grounds. When Celerity opened a start-up campus a few blocks away and attracted far less than half of McKinley’s student body (30%), critics argued that the demand for change was not as acute as the petition drive suggested.

As the McKinley experience shows, identifying, and mobilizing sympathetic parents is difficult, and can provoke fierce resistance from established interests. But, in theory, convincing parents at a failing school that anything is better than the status quo should be an easy sell. By definition, these schools are chronically struggling to make the grade. 

The real problems are likely to arise after the fact, when any new majority can threaten the agreement struck in the earlier round of petitioning. Just because most parents preferred one model to the status quo the first time around doesn’t mean they’ll stick with it the next year. Barring immediate and palpable improvement, the same frustrations that gave rise to the first petition may resurface to threaten the trig- gered reform plan. Political scientists and theorists call this phenomenon “cycling” and have demonstrated that it’s common to many social decision-making processes. Even if individual preferences are rational, majority rule can produce outcomes that are chaotic and irrational. Without built-in rules and safeguards to prevent cycling, majority rule systems can produce serious instability in policy outcomes. The cycling problem has implications for the parent trigger, and chronically failing public schools may be particularly susceptible to this kind of instability.  First, the set of stakeholders at a given school will change over time. Take your average high school: Every year, about 25% of the students move on after graduating, and a new class of freshmen enters. Add to this turnover some additional attrition by students who move or drop out, and the typical year-over-year change in constituents is probably something more like 30%. In other words, any majority coalition that successfully comes together to win a parent trigger petition in one year may no longer be the majority in the next year. Some parents who led the petition drive will move on, and an entirely new group of parents will take their spots. These new families may very well be up for grabs to any group that wants to revisit the earlier agreement. In particular, existing parents who lost out in the prior round of petitioning have incentive to enlist the new entrants in a coalition that overturns the current arrangement. Second, the challenge of turning around failing schools is extraordinary, meaning that bias against the triggered remedy could be strong. If the new reform plan fails to produce a quick turnaround in school quality, incoming parents are likely to question whether the current policy is effective and demand a change if it isn’t. Unfortunately, evidence suggests that turning around low-performing schools is difficult and that doing so quickly is exceptionally rare. In a study of California’s public schools over the last 20 years, Loveless (2010) found that only 1.4% of the schools that scored in the bottom quartile in 1989 had moved to the top quartile by 2009; 63% scored in the bottom quartile again. And when California in- tervened in the 20% of schools with the lowest scores on the Academic Performance Index, just 11% of the elementary schools among the low performers were able to make “exemplary progress” over three years; only one out of 394 middle and high schools were able to do the same (Smarick, 2010). In one of the largest studies of comprehensive school reform, WestEd concluded that only 12 of 262 initially low- performing schools were able to make sizable gains in math and reading achievement over a three-year period (Orland, 2011). The study concludes that “if history is a guide, few schools across the nation are likely to be making quick and substantial gains in student achievement that are sustained over time” (Orland, p. 1). Given the difficulty of quickly turning around failing schools, incoming parents may be biased against the strategy chosen in the first round of petitioning. After all, the logic of the parent trigger is to give parents a mechanism to fix a school that is chroni- cally failing. What’s more, parents who were initially sympathetic to the remedy may also prove impatient when immediate progress proves elusive. This pat- tern is similar to what my colleague Frederick M. Hess has dubbed “policy churn” — the tendency of school districts to adopt a particular reform strategy, grow frustrated with its failure to deliver immediate effects, and then discard it in favor of an entirely new approach. Policy churn can be just as trouble- some at the school level, resulting in inefficiencies and incoherence from year to year. A cure worse than the disease? How do you get around the potential to churn through one triggered reform after another? The key is to create rules and structures that prevent cycling — what game theorists call structure-induced equilibrium. Endowing one group with agenda-setting Evidence suggests that turning around low-performing schools is difficult and that doing so quickly is exceptionally rare. The cycling problem has implications for the parent trigger, and chronically failing public schools may be particularly susceptible to this kind of instability. First, the set of stakeholders at a given school will change over time. Take your average high school: Every year, about 25% of the students move on after graduating, and a new class of freshmen enters. Add to this turnover some additional attrition by students who move or drop out, and the typical year-over-year change in constituents is probably something more like 30%. In other words, any majority coalition that successfully comes together to win a parent trigger petition in one year may no longer be the majority in the next year. Some parents who led the petition drive will move on, and an entirely new group of parents will take their spots. These new families may very well be up for grabs to any group that wants to

power can lead to a stable outcome, as does eliminat- ing proposals that have been defeated from consid- eration, but both of these raise questions about how fair and democratic the process actually is. Policy makers could also build in a specified waiting period after policy choices are made, allowing time for implementation before a new coalition can revisit the decision. Unfortunately, California’s parent trigger law has few rules that will discourage policy churn. Petitioners can include signatures from parents whose chil- dren attend feeder schools, although these parents can’t be the only signers. Including these constitu- ents can cultivate buy-in among incoming parents and should help alleviate some problems posed by yearly student turnover. The law also limits the num- ber of schools that can be triggered to 75 in total, though it is not clear whether that limit corresponds to successful petitions or to schools (which could be triggered multiple times). Beyond this limit, there is no provision that explicitly prevents parents from petitioning each and every year if the school doesn’t make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). A school is eligible for parent trig- ger if its Academic Performance Index (API) is lower than 800, has been subject to “corrective action” un- der No Child Left Behind for at least one year, and fails to make AYP while under corrective action. (Schools must also be outside of the 5% of Califor- nia schools labeled “persistently low achieving.”) Im- portantly, the clock does not restart on these criteria after a successful petition. If a school is triggered and implements the remedy but still fails to make AYP and achieve an API score over 800, parents can pe- tition all over again. On its face, this is a recipe for instability and policy churn. A mandatory post-trigger implementation period also has drawbacks. Sources close to the drafting of the California rules said there was talk of building in a “cooling-off period” after a successful trigger. Proponents decided against it amid fears that doing so would go against the democratic spirit of the law. If the trigger were taken off the table for a set period of time, parents may be less likely to remain engaged and vigilant after a successful trigger. The ultimate success of the parent trigger experiment may rest on this trade-off between the desire to consistently empower parents and the need to protect against policy churn. The current incarnation of the policy seems to privilege the former over the latter, which is understandable in light of the law’s intent. But policy makers and other stakeholders must do what they can to confront the potential for cycling. The worst possible outcome for parent trigger proponents may be a string of chaotic, short-term interventions that are discarded before they even have a chance to succeed. It’s hard to believe that a school would have a chance of improving amid such upheaval. In the absence of some success stories, the law’s opponents will have a much easier time rolling it back. If the McKinley experience is any guide, there will be no shortage of opponents chomping at the bit to undermine the law’s basic tenets. Parent organizing groups, coupled with some rules governing the back end of the process, may be key to navigating this trade-off. In the last few years, grassroots groups have emerged to rally parents to the education reform cause. High-profile organiza- tions like Michelle Rhee’s Students First, 50 Can, and Parent Revolution have fomented a new strain of parent activism and won significant legislative and regulatory changes. Groups such as these typically are focused on organizing parents to promote policy change, including charter school expansion, transparency on teacher quality, or a successful parent trigger. But policy changes are often vulnerable to subsequent challenges that can undo them. In the case of the parent trigger, pulling the trigger may be the easy part. Institutionalizing this initial support so reforms can take root is likely to be more impor- tant to the long-term success of the school and the law itself. As such, the organizing prowess of these insurgent parent groups may be just as crucial after the trigger as before. Parent Revolution, the group that facilitated the trigger at McKinley, seems to have learned some of this through experience. The group spent consider- able energy on the front end of the parent trigger — getting the law passed, organizing parents in Comp- ton, getting the signature drive started and validated, and helping parents choose a charter provider. But as the Los Angeles Times recently pointed out, Par- ent Revolution’s proactive role in the McKinley trig- ger was criticized for “commandeering the process” (Watanabe, 2011). The criticism has led Parent Revolution to develop a new approach to organizing and change, one that may help prevent policy churn. The new model establishes so-called parent unions at low-perform- ing schools — voluntary organizations run by interested parents. Rather than a top-down movement to implement a particular change, these unions are designed to endow parents with the power to set their own reform priorities and choose their own strategies. One implication is that parents who come together to form these unions will then have an in- centive to push for policy changes and also to make sure those changes remain in place over time. In an ideal world, Parent Revolution could start these unions and then get out of the way, confident that the organization would provide the ballast necessary to see reform through. In reality, though, it seems likely that these fledgling unions will require continued support and mentoring from Parent Revolution and other groups, particularly if their triggered changes are challenged down the line. California is already providing a test for this model of grassroots education reform. However, even the most successful parent unions will struggle to maintain their initial focus and en- ergy in the face of collective action problems, turn- over, and challenges from organized interests. Policy makers should also consider creating post-trigger rules that would encourage stability while leaving parents empowered to make changes. Two poten- tial measures stand out. First, the law could require that any effort to petition again within a certain time period after a successful trigger win a supermajor- ity — three-fifths or two-thirds of parents — rather than a simple majority. Raising the bar would make it more difficult to immediately undo triggered re- forms while ensuring that parents could still force a change if the new direction turns out to be on the wrong track. Second, policy makers could make it easier for post-trigger schools to avoid being immediately re-triggered. Already, the law has a sort of safe harbor provision making triggered schools tem- porarily immune to another round of petitioning for a period of time. The law also could treat the triggered school as a “new” institution, thereby restarting the clock on the achievement standards that the school must reach within a certain time period. Both approaches would acknowledge that re- forms may take time to implement fully and would limit the tendency to cycle through remedies if the school doesn’t turn around immediately. It might also free new leaders and charter management or- ganizations to make changes that have long-term, rather than short-term, payoffs. At the same time, triggered schools would still have to meet strict standards to reach the safe harbor.

Don’t underestimate opposition


In reality, the potential for cycling may not be as great as predicted. After all, mobilizing stakeholders even once, let alone multiple times, is challenging. For its part, Parent Revolution has found that sim- ply locating a school’s parents is difficult enough, even before trying to mobilize them around a re- form agenda. These logistical hurdles suggest that the cards are stacked against repeated triggering and policy churn.


But this perspective downplays the fact that there will be winners and losers in each parent trigger fight, and that the losers may have every incentive to revisit the question as soon as possible. The education reform experience of the last 20 years has produced at least one clear lesson: Proponents must never underestimate the power of organized interests to block, water down, and undo promising reforms. There is no reason to believe that the parent trigger will be any different. In the McKinley case, the district and the local teachers union have vehemently opposed the trigger, leading to a messy legal fight. This kind of reaction is likely to be the rule rather than the exception.


In refining the parent trigger concept, policy makers and activists must acknowledge the promise and the pitfalls of direct democracy and majority rule. Without adequate attention to what happens after the trigger is pulled, this promising approach to reform may be hard-pressed to live up to the hype.


K
References
Loveless, T. (2010, March 17). The 2009 Brown Center report on American education: How well are American students learning? Washington, DC: The Brookings Institute.
Orland, M. (2011). The federal comprehensive school reform program and school turnaround: Key evaluation findings. San Francisco, CA: WestEd.
Smarick, A. (2010, Winter). The turnaround fallacy. Education Next, 10 (1), 20-26.
Watanabe, S. (2011, September 15). California parents test ability to organize for school change. Los Angeles Times. 

"One Size Fits All" Fits None of Our Kids

AlterNet / By Elizabeth G. Hines

 13 COMMENTS

A note from the Education Editor on this week's coverage.

May 29, 2012  |  

 

Photo Credit: Gow27 via Shutterstock.com

 

 

 

 

Diane Tran is a 17 year old junior at Willis High School in Houston, Texas. She’s an honor student who, in between taking advanced placement and college level classes, works two jobs to help support an older brother (a college student) and as well as a younger sister who lives with relatives. Because her parents have separated and moved away, Tran lives with the family of one of her employers, and readily admits that her hectic schedule often leaves her “too exhausted to wake up in time for school.” There have been many days, she acknowledges, that she has been late to class. And many others that she has missed school entirely. 

As a result of those late mornings and missed days, Tran was recently brought up on truancy charges in a Houston court, where Judge Lanny Moriarty decided to “make an example” of the girl, who, given her work schedule, sometimes goes days on end without sleeping. For this “offense,” Moriarty sentenced Tran to 24 hours in jail, and ordered her to pay a $100 fine. His rationale for taking such a hard line with a struggling student? Here’s how he explained it to Houston’sKHOU-TV: “If you let one (truant student) run loose, what are you gonna’ do with the rest of ‘em? Let them go too?”

Judge Moriarty’s sentiments should certainly give us pause. In his view, it makes no difference that Diane Tran is achieving great things against many, significant challenges; from his perspective, any person, apparently, is only as good as their least offense. The vicissitudes of life seem to mean nothing to Moriarty – in his courtroom, every truant is the same, and the way to solve the problem of children skipping school (for whatever set of inevitably complex reasons) is to punish them with jail time, take money out of their pockets, and permanently tarnish their records.

It is bad enough for the children who come into Moriarty’s court that his view of life should be so painfully absolutist (particularly when he, himself, has had a run in or two with the law). More troubling still is how not alone Moriarty is in his embrace of zero-tolerance, one-size-fits-all penalties for young people in this country. In fact, more and more, it is the approach that school systems across the country are taking to the treatment of our children, often to disastrous effect.

From the brutal handcuffing of disabled students to the race to insanity that is No Child Left Behind, this week’s newsletter offers a number of different perspectives on what happens when we stop treating students as individuals, and start treating them as problems to be solved or scores to be aggregated. And it also offers a look at what happens when concerned citizens push back: on funding cuts that leave teachers and students shortchanged, on policies that raise tuition on public education, and on penalties that cost our children far too much – sometimes even their lives.

There is no doubt in my mind that the protests we are now seeing in places like Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Quebec signal just the beginning of parents, teachers and others standing up to fight for educational policies that treat our children not as undifferentiated cogs in a wheel, but as the invariably unique human beings they are. Diane Tran is but one among millions of kids who have come up against the intransigence of a system that should have their best interests at heart but too often does not; I hope that you will join the movement to make sure that stories like hers become far rarer, indeed.

In solidarity,

Liz

'Firing Day' at the Charter School

After publishing this piece, a charter school teacher was terminated by her school and escorted from the building -- even though she had already resigned.

By Nancy Bloom

June 4, 2012  |  

 

Photo Credit: Karen Roach | Shutterstock.com

 

 

 

 

I just quit my job as a teacher in an urban charter school. Even though I still don’t have another job and I support myself entirely, it is the best decision I ever made. It was especially liberating to do as my colleagues – and after five incredibly stressful years on the education front lines, my truly beloved friends – waited for the June 1 ax to fall.

Every June 1, the exhausted teachers and staff at my school learn whether they will be rehired for another grueling year. Last year the school gave 43 staff and teachers the you’re-outta-luck-pal letters, including the entire three-man physical education department and the student support genius, Dany Edwards, who somehow made harmony out of the schools’ cacophony of crazy student behavior. This year the school’s three glorious new gymnasiums are largely unused because we have no gym teachers and Dany is dead of unknown causes. Whatever happened to this beautiful young man, firing him didn’t help him live any better or happier for his last few months on earth. And the kids he championed lost his tender, tough, hilarious and real guidance.

This post is dedicated to you Dany, one year after you ran from the building in frantic disbelief, waving your letter as you ran up and down Hyde Park Avenue, looking for people to share your grief. If they can fire you, they can fire any of us. Except they can’t fire me. I beat them at their game.

The first thing you need to know reader, is that there is no job security at a charter school. Even excellent veteran educators, like the three physical education teachers who were fired one year ago, are vulnerable. Between them these men gave something like 35 years to the school. They offered serious nutrition education in their fight against childhood obesity. They miraculously coached kids who have hair trigger tempers through team sports without break-out fights. They taught the kids good sportsmanship and how to represent themselves, their families and the school during games at other schools. They taught yoga, which the kids actually used to calm themselves in class. And they worked the kids hard. Oh how I miss seeing the kids come to class from gym all red and sweaty and happy. This gymless year, the kids seem fatter and more out of breath as they huff and puff their way to the third floor.

To you Michelle Rhee and all you anti-union fanatics, you are wasting your time waiting around for superman. They already fired superman at my school. You see a union would have protected Dany as well as these three talented teachers who provided quality physical education to all of our 1200 students. Meanwhile, some not-so-gifted staff and teachers get to keep their jobs every June 1. At least public schools and their unions have transparent guidelines for tenure and enough respect to let teachers know they won’t be rehired for the next school year by March or earlier. June 1 is late to jump into the teacher hiring season. I suspect the administration keeps it a secret to the bitter end because they don’t trust us to keep working hard. They are suspicious and we are paranoid. It’s part of my school’s culture.

The second thing to know is that we work very hard at my charter school, completing endless tasks that are not designed to instill habits of critical thinking in our students. Rather we are driven like cattle to collect mounds of data, to divvy the data up into tidy and irrelevant skill categories, and finally to create individual action plans to remediate each student’s poor data points. We are required to write lesson plans that note exactly which discreet skills we will be working on during every minute of every school day while delivering scripted programs. It takes hours to make these plans and we don’t use them. Can’t use them. Because kids are unpredictable and surprises happen. Most of us work at least ten hours on every weekday preparing our rooms and teaching. We continue working on weekends. The building is open on Saturdays and during vacations and there are a lot of cars in the parking lot on these days off.

This heavy workload doesn’t even take into account the trauma and anguish of working with urban children who suffer all the indignities of poverty. One day last week I had to file three mental health emergencies for neglect – two for kids who reeked of urine and one for a boy who was wobbly with hunger. One of our school psychologists once explained that many of our students come to school afraid and then stay afraid all day, afraid that their home or family may not be there when they get off the bus. These are the kids who constantly disrupt the classrooms. If Dany had been allowed to continue his ministerial work, he would still be providing discipline, safety and love for these broken children. And he would be giving us teachers rock solid support without judgement in our struggle to keep these kids learning. The school psychologist said she prayed for the students’ safety every night. In case you are wondering, she quit before they got a chance to fire her.

Our workload is a favorite theme of the school’s superintendent and CEO. Charter school leaders love these business style titles. Dr. CEO often chuckles during all-staff meetings at how we charter school teachers work harder than they do in Boston Public Schools and get paid less for our troubles. Apparently he doesn’t know how insulting this is. Last December a group of administrators entertained us during a holiday party with a school version of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas that included a verse about how little we get paid for our hefty workload. That was the last time I worked a ten-hour day and the moment I knew I had to quit.

The third and last thing for you to know is that psychological torture precedes the June 1 firing ritual in the form of annual performance reviews. It looks like our new principal has brought this final blow to a new level. I’ve talked to many teachers and they report the same experience. He begins the review with gracious smiles and copious thank-yous for our commitment and hard work. And then he trashes our performance. So many of us have “failed to meet professional standards,” you would think the school could barely function. Teachers are leaving their performance reviews convinced their June 1 letter will be very bad news. They have to sweat it out to June 1.

The most disturbing part is that the principal already knows who will be rehired. And he knows which teachers have especially compelling reasons to stay one more year. But he keeps them guessing. He doesn’t even give them a reassuring wink or a thumbs up. Just a fake thank you. Another administrator asked me last week if people were freaking out, and then changed our plans for getting a drink after work on June 1. “I don’t want be out when people are all upset about losing their jobs.”

Now, it feels like the school’s windows have been draped with heavy black curtains and the florescent ceiling lights are flickering. The kids are more difficult than ever and we don’t have Dany to let the sunlight in. No matter what happens Dany, I will never work in another charter school. That’s the least I could do.

Editor’s Note: The author of this post was terminated immediately and escorted out of the public charter school on the morning of June 4th, 2012. Although she had already given notice of her resignation, she wasn’t allowed to finish out the school year with her students and colleagues as is the school’s customary practice.

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Top 10 List of Public Education Success

By Patte Barth in the American School Board Journal

Policymakers and pundits have decried “our failing schools” so often it’s become an accepted truth. But the naysayers are wrong. To be sure, our schools need to do better. But we have much to be proud of, too, and it’s on this foundation that we can build a 21st century system that will work for all kids.

It’s time that we recognize our accomplishments and give our public schools a collective pat on the back. Here is my personal Top 10 list of things we’re doing right and where we should go next.

Click here to access the complete article.

Charter for Controversy

Charter for Controversy

 Despite Constitution, Some Charter Schools Promote Religion

June 2012
By Simon Brown, Americans United

When Greg Blunt pulled his 11-year-old daughter out of Life Force Arts and Technology Academy, a charter school near Tampa, Fla., it had nothing to do with her academic performance. Instead, it had everything to do with the fact that Blunt believed Scientologists were taking over the school.

“Everyone knows the easiest way is through a child,” Blunt told the Tampa Bay Times. “Here, little girl, have some candy. Here, little boy, have some books to read.… Kids are kids. They’re impressionable. If you can get through to the kids, trust me, you can rule the world.”

Life Force Arts and Technology Acad­emy opened in 2009, but it quickly went into deep debt and was taken over in 2011 by Clearwater, Fla.-based Art of Management, the Times reported. The group allegedly began pushing Scientology on students from the start, and some have accused the school of taking students to Scientology churches for programs, giving out Scientology DVDs and teaching les­sons from materials created by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, according to the Times.

Despite the questions, the school remains open and continues to receive about $800,000 annually in taxpayer funds, the Times said.

This situation seems to be just one of many examples of charter schools blurring church-state lines. Thanks to bipartisan backing from both Demo­crats and Republicans, charter schools – independent public schools run by private contractors or other groups – have flourished. The trend is bolstered by a perception that charter schools provide superior educational outcomes to traditional public schools.

But what proponents ignore is that charter schools, which operate with little accountability or oversight, sometimes entangle religion in their operations and underperform academically in comparison to traditional public schools. 

One controversial charter school system is Ben Gamla, which will have five schools in south Florida by fall 2012. The schools, built around a Hebrew-language curriculum, were founded by former U.S. Rep. Peter Deutsch (D-Fla.), and though they cannot legally discriminate on the basis of religion, Deutsch estimates that as many as 80 percent of the students at some of his schools are Jewish, according to The Jewish Week.

The New York publication also reported that of the four schools now in operation, three have Jewish principals (the fourth has co-principals, one of whom is Jewish), and three of the schools rent space from Jewish organizations. One of the schools uses a building that formerly housed a Jewish day school, and the majority of the students from that school simply transferred to Ben Gamla, along with seven of its 10 teachers.

The Ben Gamla schools are controversial even in the Jewish community, in part because some fear that they are undercutting church-state separation.

“I’m not sure the real objective of Ben Gamla schools is the teaching of the Hebrew language, but rather the infusion of this ‘Hebrew culture,’ which is really Jewish culture, which is really Judaism in another guise,” said Rabbi Bruce Warshal in the Florida Jewish Journal.

Americans United shares some of Warshal’s concerns, which is why AU in 2007 advised the school not to use a planned Hebrew-language curriculum that included theological concepts. The curriculum was “replete with religious content,” AU said in a letter, making it inappropriate for use in a public school.

Americans United also advised the Broward County School Board to review all materials proposed for use by Ben Gamla. (The school agreed to change its curriculum.) 

Life Force Arts and Technology Acad­emy and Ben Gamla are only two examples of charter schools that raise constitutional issues. Problems are occurring around the United States and involve many religious traditions.

Consider this:

• In Pennsylvania, the Pocono Mountain Charter School is the subject of an ongoing investigation because the school’s founder, Dennis Bloom, may have funneled taxpayer money to Shawnee Tabernacle Church, at which he is the head pastor, the AllentownMorning Call said; 

• In Texas, the largest charter operator is the Cosmos Foundation, which has been accused of benefitting the followers of Fethullah Gulen, a moderate Muslim preacher from Turkey. Based on the findings of The New York Times, it appears that the schools benefit Turkish contractors and teachers – at the expense of everyone else. On construction projects, the schools have reportedly ignored lower bids by non-Turkish contractors in favor of using Turkish firms, and they have hired many Turkish teachers, some of whom are not U.S. citizens, claiming that American teachers don’t have the proper skills;

• In Minnesota, the state ACLU affiliate filed a lawsuit in 2009 against the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, a charter school that allegedly promoted Islam.  ACLU-MN Executive Director Chuck Samuelson told Minnesota Pub­lic Radio that the school (The school has since declared bankruptcy and closed, but in March agreed to pay the ACLU attorneys’ fees in exchange for the suit being dropped. Litigation continues, however, against the school’s founder, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.)  

Still another issue is that many times when a Catholic school becomes financially untenable, which has become increasingly frequent, it reopens as a charter school. Such conversions have occurred in New York, Florida, Texas, Maryland and the District of Columbia. Often, administrators, teachers and students at the schools remain the same, while religious instruction and symbols are supposedly removed.

As a result, some question whether Catholic teaching really goes out the door along with the crucifixes. It’s a common issue, and AU has wondered whether church schools can truly change their stripes when they become public.

In Manatee County, Fla., Palmetto Christian School, a fundamentalist academy, converted into a public charter school, sparking concern among civil liberties activists.

“This is problematic particularly if you have the same personnel as when it was a private religious school,” Americans United Executive Director Barry W. Lynn told the SarasotaHerald-Tribune. “One wonders if the people running the school will treat it as purely secular, purely a public institution?”

Proponents of charter schools often overlook these negatives because of the supposed improved education they offer when compared with standard public schools. The problem is, studies on charters show decidedly mixed results.

In 2009, the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University found that “37 percent [of charter schools] deliver learning results that are significantly worse than their students would have realized had they remained in traditional public schools.”

Of the 2,403 charter schools studied, 46 percent showed student math gains that are “statistically indistinguishable” from the average learning growth among their counterparts at traditional public schools. Meanwhile, the study found that at 37 percent of charter schools, math improvement by students was “signifi­cantly below” what those same students would have achieved if they had enrolled in standard public schools instead.

 “The overall findings of this report indicate a disturbing – and far-reaching – subset of poorly performing charter schools,” the study said. “If charter schools are to flourish and deliver on promises made by proponents, a deliberate and sustained effort to increase the proportion of high quality schools is essential.”

AU’s Lynn says charter schools should be monitored closely to ensure that they comply with the law.

“We know that charter schools often blur the lines between public and private schools, so there is a greater risk that charters will illegally use taxpayer money to promote religion,” Lynn said. “We should monitor these schools closely, and I encourage people who think a charter school in their community is misusing taxpayer funds to contact Americans United.”