Behind a kerfuffle, important questions.
Last month I read Tom Toch’s commentary and the related Education Sector report on the scale-up problems of charter management organizations. Little did I know until I read Debra Viadero’s Ed Week piece today: drama! It is no secret that the guys at the top of Ed Sector love them some charters. But I have always felt that when it comes to research, the organization shoots straightest, and aims best, of anyone.
I respect all parties in this disagreement, admire what they have built and don’t like seeing them spat (in the newspaper, no less). In the case of this report, I was glad to see these issues addressed at all. But I will say this: I really hope several of the more dramatic parts* of Tom’s original draft of the report were removed because of space or research-related reasons, not because of ideology and an affiliation with people who have bet big on charters, as he suggested.
Forget the gossip and think about the research, and the schools. Take the politics out of it; for financial and personnel reasons alone, it will be no small feat, if it is even possible, to replicate today’s most successful charters. Hell, it will be no small feat to even keep the existing ones going. So let’s discuss those challenges fully and honestly.
*“Historically, CMO people haven’t wanted to sit in the same room with school district people,” says Colby of Bridgespan, the San Francisco consulting firm. “They were the enemy.”
I respect all parties in this disagreement, admire what they have built and don’t like seeing them spat (in the newspaper, no less). In the case of this report, I was glad to see these issues addressed at all. But I will say this: I really hope several of the more dramatic parts* of Tom’s original draft of the report were removed because of space or research-related reasons, not because of ideology and an affiliation with people who have bet big on charters, as he suggested.
Forget the gossip and think about the research, and the schools. Take the politics out of it; for financial and personnel reasons alone, it will be no small feat, if it is even possible, to replicate today’s most successful charters. Hell, it will be no small feat to even keep the existing ones going. So let’s discuss those challenges fully and honestly.
*“Historically, CMO people haven’t wanted to sit in the same room with school district people,” says Colby of Bridgespan, the San Francisco consulting firm. “They were the enemy.”
Says chief executive Toll: “Amistad is not sustainable with current funding. I wouldn’t start the school now knowing how much additional money the school has to raise to educate its students successfully.”
Many teachers and principals in leading charter networks respond to interviewers’ questions about their working conditions with answers like, “We’re exhausted.”
posted by Linda Perlstein at
1:38 PM
4 Comments:
Claus von Zastrow's Public School Insights blog gives a pretty good summary of the situation, based on comparing the original draft to the propagandized version.
(And Linda, you should NOT respect liars, which is what the Education Sector folks have clearly revealed themselves to be. Why would you give them the benefit of the doubt? Journalists are supposed to be skeptical, not bend over backward to make excuses for dubious (at best) behavior. Maybe that's harder to do because you presumably know these people personally, but isn't it your job to get past that and look at their actions and motivations, not their winning personalities?)
Von Zastrow:
"The draft, which (bloggers Alexander) Russo and (Marc Dean) Millot posted on their site, cuts deeper than the official version. The language is more intense, the examples more vivid, the implications more starkly drawn."
Here's what von Zastrow said he took from the draft:
"You can't expect superstar teachers to save the day. Young, eager teachers in charter schools are exhausted, burning out, too busy to have children of their own, and cycling out of their jobs soon after they enter. That situation is barely sustainable, much less "scalable," as the current jargon goes.
"CMO bureaucracies are beginning to look like school districts. And maybe that's not all bad. Charter schools need central office support (gasp!), and that costs money. The best CMOs have learned that their schools will not flourish in splendid isolation. Tell this to the True Believers of the charter movement, who have long seen central offices as just so much bureaucratic bloat.
"The best charter schools cost money. A lot of money. Toch breaks down the high costs of operating some of the nation's most successful charters. Why do they cost so much? Because they offer longer days, longer years and extra services to make up for the challenges of teaching students who live in poverty.
"It has become fashionable to claim that money barely matters, or even that our benighted public school leaders could benefit from belt tightening in these lean years. As it turns out, the CMOs that were meant to teach traditional public schools about efficiency have a very different lesson to give.
"For-profit "education management organizations" have fallen far short of their hype.Toch's story includes a fascinating sub-plot that Education Sector left on the cutting room floor: the struggles of for-profit school management outfits. The draft suggests that profits and student learning do not always mix. What's good for the shareholders is often not good for the kids."
WHEN will we see this in mainstream news coverage?
Here's what von Zastrow says about that: "For the most part, major newspapers have been happy to keep the emperor in his imaginary clothes. Too many pundits have been naive cheerleaders for rapid charter school growth.
"Even worse, journalists barely flutter an eyelid when think tanks churn out reports pushing radical changes that rest on little or no evidence. For example, proposals that we hand all schools over to CMOs (Tough Choices or Tough Times) or abolish all but a few school districts (Lou Gerstner) go basically unchallenged. The Education Sector report pops both of those bubbles.
"Let's see if any big newspapers notice. Hope springs eternal."
Caroline again: The trusting belief by so much of the press in the miraculous powers of charters and privatization schemes just astounds me. Look at the journalistic triumphs and failures of the past. Are the triumphs based on trustingly believing the forces of power and refusing to listen to challenges, to the voices of experience who labor in the trenches? Is that solid journalism? Is trusting the mighty and wealthy to act in the interests of the powerless and downtrodden what we set out to do when we went into journalism?
Here's more from Von Zastrow -- the rest of this post is a quote from his blog, a post titled "Alert the Media":
"Education Sector's charter school report has not yet got the media's attention, and that's bad news.
"For those of you who don't already know, the report questions the ability of the best Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) to expand without damaging their schools' quality. And the final report is much tamer than the original draft, leading some to argue that Education Sector censored the report to please its patrons.
"This tussle has gotten attention in some quarters. Blogger Alexander Russo was the first to report that something was amiss. Blogger Marc Dean Millot found and published the original draft. Deborah Viadero at Education Week wrote a story on the controversy. Linda Perlstein covered it in her blog. Tom Hoffman zeroed in on one of the most startling passages in the original draft. And Millot questioned Education Sector's ethics.
:But only education insiders got to see any of this. The report has yet to make a ripple outside the eduworld.
"Note to journos: This is a great story. Neither version of the report will make everyone happy. The biggest opponents of charter schools hardly come away unscathed in Toch's draft. And, as I've noted before, the final version should be enough to curb the enthusiasm of politicians and pundits who are peddling charter expansion as some kind of magic pill.
"But the story goes way beyond possible indiscretions at Education Sector. Think tanks are often in the opinion business. When they do original research, we have to treat that research with caution. Education Sector seemed different from most. The outfit produced lucid, compelling and balanced reports even though staff members let their opinions fly freely on its two blogs. The current drama over the CMO report shakes that credibility.
"But I'm more concerned about the news media than about the think tanks. We all know that think tanks can lean this way or that, but we expect more from the press. So far, they've been very disappointing."
http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/reporters-interesting-story
I find this attack weird, specifically because (lacking all the facts, like all these other people) I didn't pretend to know exactly what happened, I didn't speculate, I didn't come to a conclusion. I just laid out what the disagreement was.
I didn't mean it as an attack. This is where I felt you were bending over backward to give Education Sector the benefit of the doubt:
"I really hope several of the more dramatic parts* of Tom’s original draft of the report were removed because of space or research-related reasons, not because of ideology and an affiliation with people who have bet big on charters, as he suggested."
If we the public could have any confidence that the mainstream press would dig into this, I wouldn't feel so much that your comment is likely to hang there without a response. You can see from Claus von Zastrow's commentaries (sorry I posted inappropriately long excerpts) that those of us who follow these issues but don't have a mainstream media platform are incredibly frustrated by the apparent lack of interest from the press. Am I just out to lunch to think this is really important, given the relentless push for more charter schools in Race to the Top, and the money being directed their way?
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