Yong Zhao: Outcome vs. Process: Different Incarnations of Personalization

Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » Outcome vs. Process: Different Incarnations of Personalization:

Outcome vs. Process: Different Incarnations of Personalization

There are different views of personalized learning. My advocacy for personalization has been occasionally misunderstood as supporting the narrow view of personalized learning driven by big data and learning analytics with technology or online learning in general. Below is an excerpt of a chapter from a book I coauthored with a group of teachers and school leaders: World Class Learners Bundle to be published by Corwin. Hope it helps clarify my take on personalized learning.–Yong

To personalize is to design or produce something to meet individual requirements. In education, personalization is often used in the forms of “personalized learning,” “personalized education,” or “personalized instruction.” The term personalization is often used interchangeably with individualization, and sometimes with customization. The general idea is to enable individual students to have an educational experience that meets their individual needs.

Although it is has long been recognized that individual students have different needs and high-quality education cannot be “one size fits all,” personalization in education has different meanings and realizations in practice because education has many components that can be personalized, individualized, or customized. For example, personalization can happen at the pace of learning by allowing students to learn at their own speed. Personalization can also be employed to enable students to choose when and where they learn. It can also be used in ways that allow students to have a choice of work assignments in the classroom. Furthermore, personalization is a strategy that enables students to demonstrate their learning by creating a product of their own choosing.

Generally speaking, personalization can be put into two categories: process personalization and outcome personalization. Process personalization enables students to enjoy choice in the learning process, whereas outcome personalization allows students to define the end results of their learning. Process personalization is by far the most prominent version in education today because the current education paradigm has a predetermined outcome for all students. That is, no matter how one gets there, we want everyone to get to the same place: mastery of the knowledge and skills prescribed in the authoritative curriculum or standards.

Personalization of the Learning Process

Although the outcome remains the same, the journey to the destination can be personalized to accommodate Education in the Age of Globalization » Blog Archive » Outcome vs. Process: Different Incarnations of Personalization:

NEW VIDEO: How California Organizers Won Fair School Funding | National Opportunity to Learn Campaign

NEW VIDEO: How California Organizers Won Fair School Funding | National Opportunity to Learn Campaign | Education Reform for Equity and Opportunity:

NEW VIDEO: How California Organizers Won Fair School Funding

Posted on: Monday July 13th, 2015

Last year, parents, students, teachers and community members in Los Angeles achieved a huge victory for the city’s public schools: they successfully pushed the LA school board to adopt the “Equity Is Justice Resolution," which will guide the distribution of new state funding to prioritize the highest-needs students and schools. Their victory is an important step and an inspiring moment in the fight for equity and opportunity in our nation's public schools. 

The Schott Foundation for Public Education and the Community Coalition, with support from The California Endowment, are proud to release this exciting new video highlighting the Los Angeles campaign and the hundreds of dedicated parents and young people who worked to make equity the guiding principle of their city's school funding system.

This video also functions as a valuable tool for organizers in California and across the country by explaining the steps this coalition took to build their campaign and push for change with local officials. 

We hope you find this story as inspiring as we do! Enjoy the video, and please don't forget to share it with your friends and colleagues on Facebook and Twitter.

NEW VIDEO: How California Organizers Won Fair School Funding | National Opportunity to Learn Campaign | Education Reform for Equity and Opportunity:

NYC Public School Parents: How the question left out of the DOE parent survey was the most interesting of all

NYC Public School Parents: How the question left out of the DOE parent survey was the most interesting of all:

How the question left out of the DOE parent survey was the most interesting of all

More on the results of the parent survey and the question left out in Schoolbook and the NY Daily News. 

When the results of the DOE's Learning Environment Survey were released yesterday,  the administration took credit for high rates of parent satisfaction, though reporters pointed out the satisfaction rates were the same for the last three years and this year, only about half of all parents bothered to respond to the survey.
 
Yet what was most striking was the question that was left out.  This question had been asked of parents since the survey was first given: Which of the following improvements would you MOST like your school to make?  Every year since 2007,  which was the first year the survey was given, smaller classes has been the top priority of parents by far, among ten choices.

The question was included in the survey because of the insistence of parent members of the focus groups organized by Jim Liebman, then head of the Accountability office, to give feedback on the survey's design back in 2006.    This year, the DOE revised the survey without holding any focus groups at all.

If you look at the 2014 data, smaller classes were even more clearly a top priority of parents;  and either their #1 or #2 priority in all but two districts out of 32:

In 2007, parents actually wanted separate questions on each of these issues, especially as regards class size and testing, but instead DOE decided to group them together in this way.  In any event, the results have been an important source of data that could have been used if the Chancellor or the Mayor actually wanted to be responsive to parent concerns.   Unfortunately, since 2007 class sizes have increased instead.

In 2007, Bloomberg tried to obscure the responses to this question during his press conference by grouping together many other options in a new category, called "more or better programs."  I and others, including Patrick Sullivan, called him out on this naked attempt to obscure that NYC Public School Parents: How the question left out of the DOE parent survey was the most interesting of all:

Whatever you call it, bribing voters is a bad idea - LA Times

Whatever you call it, bribing voters is a bad idea - LA Times:

Whatever you call it, bribing voters is a bad idea

Perhaps the leaders of United Teachers Los Angeles will learn a lesson from the May election defeat of school board incumbent Bennett Kayser, whom they backed, by upstart Ref Rodriguez. Unfortunately, that lesson may well be that they must back up their next candidate for office by offering voters a cash prize to entice them to come to the polls.

That's the problem with the Voteria, a gimmicky lottery of sorts run by the Southwest Voter Registration Project. The organization, which works to boost voter turnout, especially among Latino voters, dangled a $25,000 prize to anyone who voted in the Kayser-Rodriguez election. Late last week it was announced that the prize went to Ivan Rojas, a 35-year-old security guard.

Rojas was the second person selected for the prize. It's noteworthy that the first threatened to call the FBI because she didn't believe the contest was legitimate. Eventually, she turned down the money when told that her name would be made public.

That's an understandable reaction. The civic act of voting for elected representatives doesn't readily mix with cash prizes and lotteries. It's true that too few people vote, especially in local elections, and more should be done to help potential voters understand what they stand to win or lose at election time. But bribing them is a bad idea; and as pure as the contest organizers' motives may have been, there is too much about the Voteria that is redolent of bribery.

After all, when every voter is automatically entered, every voter has a shot at winning, and a monetary value can be assigned to that chance. The Voteria organizers weren't promoting any particular candidate, but the Southwest Voters Registration Education Project does have a constituency — Latino voters. The organization is adept at communicating with those voters, some of whom, presumably, were on the fence about bothering to cast their ballots but did so after they heard of the contest. In this election, the Latino candidate defeated his non-Latino opponent. Voters who were aware of the prize were more likely to vote for Rodriguez by 2 to 1, according to the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.

Suppose that next time the organization offering cash payments to lucky voters is indeed pushing a particular candidate and does its outreach among voters likely to back that particular candidate. Suppose it's UTLA, for example. Or the police union, a real estate developer, a political party or anyone else. Or all of them at the same time.

Cash contests like the Voteria leave too much space for mischief and require careful examination and perhaps rule-making. That's something the Legislature should consider during the remainder of its term.

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Charter schools: Give us public money but not public scrutiny | Bob Braun's Ledger

Charter schools: Give us public money but not public scrutiny | Bob Braun's Ledger:

Charter schools: Give us public money but not public scrutiny

Gov. Chris Christie and his powerful Democratic allies–most notably US Sen. Cory Booker and South Jersey political boss George Norcross–promote charter and voucher schools as a way of avoiding the two most pressing problems facing urban public education: Chronic underfunding of the state school aid formula and oppressive racial isolation. By favoring charter schools that can help a few students, Christie, Booker, and Norcross never have to face the problem of providing all children with the constitutionally required level of schooling that is their birthright.

Charter schools are politically powerful and receive enormous amounts of private funding from both Democratic and Republican sources. Because of that political support, they have been able to avoid the kind of intense  regulatory scrutiny that in imposed on public schools, especially in places like Newark and other state-controlled districts. They also  receive preferential funding, including a shameful diversion of  an additional $37 million in public school funding diverted to charter schools this year alone.

Christie and Booker want to make Newark the charter capital of the nation. Recently, in a deal with Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, the Republican governor agreed to remove the much-despised Newark superintendent, Cami Anderson, and replace her with former state Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf, a nationally-recognized champion of charter schools. Baraka has said he accepted to this “settlement” because Christie promised to bring local control to Newark after 20 years of state mismanagement. The nature of that return to local control, h0wever, depends on a 9-member committee, headed by Cerf, that is dominated by pro-charter Christie allies.  The agreement raises the question whether, in return for local control, Newark will become what Christie and Booker want–a charter school district.

On Monday, a subcommittee of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Schools, held a hearing on whether charter schools should be held to the same level of accountability as public schools. Charter school proponent–backed by the state–are resisting a proposal to require charters to under the same QSAC Charter schools: Give us public money but not public scrutiny | Bob Braun's Ledger:

Measuring diversity in charter school offerings - AEI

Measuring diversity in charter school offerings - AEI:

Measuring diversity in charter school offerings

Education, K-12 Schooling

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Key Points

• Part of the promise of charter schooling is that deregulation could allow for more diverse types of schools than would otherwise exist. Yet little attention has been paid to evaluating the diversity of the charter school market.
• After coding every charter school in 17 different cities, we found an almost 50/50 split between “general” schools and “specialized” options such as STEM, art, no-excuses, or progressive schools.
• We also found important differences in cities’ charter school markets, which can be attributed in part to demographics, the age and market share of the charter sector, and the number and type of authorizers.

Read the PDF.

Executive Summary

There are two main reasons given to support charter schooling: (1) that charter schools will improve academic achievement by taking advantage of flexibility not afforded to traditional public schools; and (2) that deregulation will allow for more diverse schools than would otherwise be created. The academic achievement argument tends to get the most attention, but research strongly suggests that parents want more from schools than just high test scores.

So what do we know about the diversity of charter school options across the country? In this paper, we offer the beginnings of an answer to that understudied question by coding 1,151 charter schools educating more than 471,000 students in 17 different cities. We searched the website of every charter school for descriptive words about their mission, vision, educational philosophy, academic model, or curriculum. We used these words to code the school as “general” or “specialized.” Specialized schools were further broken down into 13 possible types, including no-excuses; science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); arts; single-sex; and military schools.

Looking at the number of schools and enrollment data for each type, we uncovered several important findings. We discovered that there is an almost exactly even split between general and specialized charter schools, with the most common types of specialized schools being no-excuses and progressive schools. We also found significant variation in the charter market between cities. This can be partially explained by city-level factors including demographics, the age and market share of the charter sector, and the number and type of authorizers. For example, we found that the higher the percentage of black residents that a city has, the larger the enrollment in no-excuses schools (r = 0.491). We also found that the poorer the city, the more likely it is to have specialized charter schools (r = −0.394), and the more authorizers a city has, the more students it enrolls in specialized schools (r = 0.188).

To explain our findings, we offer three plausible theories. The first is that communities and charter operators might organize themselves around Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Academic achievement is often the primary concern for low-income communities; thus, there are more no-excuses and STEM schools in poorer communities. But in wealthier communities, families have the luxury of looking for specialized options such as international and foreign language schools, and thus we see the positive relationship between city wealth and enrollment in such schools. Second, operators and authorizers might be inclined to support established models over models that are truly innovative but harder and riskier to implement; hence we see replication of proven no-excuses models like KIPP. Perhaps as more purposefully diverse schools crop up around the country and demonstrate their ability to create high-quality schools, we’ll see an increase in the desire to scale them. Finally, it could be the case that market diversity is related to maturity, in which case it could be too early to judge market diversity in some of these cities, as charter schools are still a small part of their educational landscape. This paper is an attempt to bring some descriptive analysis to a question that we believe should be the focus of a more sustained inquiry.



Introduction

The growth of charter schools over the past 25 years has been quite remarkable. In 1990, there were zero charter schools in America. In the 2013­­–14 school year, 2.5 million students—more than 5 percent of American public school children—attended 6,440 charter schools, and those numbers are only increasing. Republicans and Democrats alike have embraced charter schools. Hillary Clinton is on record saying, “I stand behind the charter school/public school movement, because parents do deserve greater choice within the public school system to meet the unique needs of their children.”[1] The Daily Beast called charter schools “the issue bringing Ted Cruz and Black Democrats together.”[2]

The arguments for charter schools tend to fall into two buckets. First, advocates argue that charter schools will increase student achievement. Charter schools were created to give teachers more freedom to teach how they see fit. By removing regulations and red tape and decentralizing the operation of schools, students’ education will be more closely tailored to their particular needs. All of this is intended to improve the instructional quality of the education that children receive.

Twenty-five years in, we have a robust body of evidence examining this argument. From random-assignment studies of charter schools in Boston and New York to matched-comparison studies of tens of millions of students around the country to numerous smaller-scale studies of individual school models such as KIPP, we have an increasingly clear picture of the academic performance of charter schools.[3]

But in this quest to better understand the academic performance of schools, a second part of the argument for charter schools can get swept aside. Part of the charter school theory of action is that the freedom given to charter schools will allow for the creation of schools with more diverse offerings than might be created by traditional school management mechanisms. This is what Clinton alluded to when she argued for greater choice to meet the unique needs of children.

We know far less about this facet of the charter school landscape. This is unfortunate because we have reason to believe that parents want more diverse offerings. In 2013, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute released a survey entitled, “What Parents Want: Education Preferences and Trade-Offs.”[4] After using a polling firm to contact more than 2,000 parents, researchers were able to identify six different market “niches,” or preference clusters that would drive families to choose a particular type of school. One of these groups, “test-score hawks,” wanted—you guessed it—high test scores. These are the folks with whom studies that compare the test scores of charter school and non–charter school students particularly resonate.

But there were other groups of parents as well. “Pragmatists,” for example, wanted vocational preparation. “Jeffersonians” wanted citizenship education. “Multiculturalists” wanted to expose their children to students from diverse backgrounds. “Expressionists” wanted strong arts and music instruction. “Strivers” wanted their children to get into top-tier colleges. Clearly, parents want more from schools than just to maximize test scores.

Charter schools have seen large market penetration in several cities. More than 90 percent of students in New Orleans now attend charter schools. Around 50 percent of students in Detroit and Washington, DC, do as well. In Los Angeles, more than 117,000 students attend charter schools, which would make its charter school market the 20th largest school district in the United States. As these markets expand the number of families that they serve, they will increasingly serve families with distinct tastes. In order to grow and thrive, they will need to figure out how to meet these families’ needs. Failure to do so is a liability.

In this paper, we set out to ask a very simple question: how diverse are the offerings of charter schools today? We examined the charter markets of 17 cities chosen to reflect diversity in both size and charter market, comprising a total of 1,151 charter schools educating more than 471,000 students, and coded them by their curricular or pedagogical specializations.

We uncovered several important findings:

1. There is an almost even 50/50 split between “general” and “specialized” charter schools. That is, half of schools do not have a particular pedagogical or curricular emphasis; they are traditionally organized and operated schools that focus simply on providing a good education.
2. In terms of the number of schools, the two most common specializations are progressive and no-excuses schools, with 101 schools identifying themselves as no-excuses and 101 schools identifying themselves as progressive.
3. There is variation in the charter market from city to city.
4. There are city-level factors that appear to relate to the diversity of charter school offerings, including the number and type of authorizers, the age and market share of the sector, and the demographics of the community.

In the following sections, we will first describe our coding mechanism. Then we will present and discuss the results, taking city context into consideration. Finally, we will close with some reflections on diversity of offerings and policy.

Read the full report.

Measuring diversity in charter school offerings - AEI:

Group Created By Silicon Valley Millionaire Targets Teacher Evaluations In California

Group Created By Silicon Valley Millionaire Targets Teacher Evaluations In California:

Group Created By Silicon Valley Millionaire Targets Teacher Evaluations In California

This piece comes to us courtesy of EdSource, where it was originally published.

Students Matter, which is challenging tenure and other teacher protection laws in Vergara v. California, filed a second school lawsuit Thursday. It is suing 13 school districts that it claims are violating the state law requiring student scores on state standardized tests be a component of a teacher’s evaluation.

The lawsuit, filed in Contra Costa County Superior Court, says that the districts illegally agreed in contracts negotiated with teachers to exclude test scores. Students Matters is asking the court to order the districts to follow the Stull Act, as the 1971 law is known.

Students Matter is a nonprofit created and funded by David Welch, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. In a decision last year, it won the first round in Vergara, when a state Superior Court judge ruled that five state laws establishing teacher layoffs by seniority, a two-year probationary period leading to tenure and procedures for dismissing teachers violated students’ constitutional rights. The case is on appeal.

Attorneys for Students Matter say that Doe v. Antioch, their new case, is the logical next step. “In Vergara v. California, we proved that teacher quality is the most important in-school factor affecting student success,” Theodore Boutrous said in a press release. “Meaningful and reliable teacher evaluations are crucial to determining whether students are being taught by effective teachers.”

The 13 districts serve approximately 250,000 students. Along with Antioch Unified, they are Chaffey Joint Union High School District, Chino Valley Unified, El Monte City School District, Fairfield-Suisun Unified, Fremont Union High School District, Inglewood Unified, Ontario-Montclair School District, Pittsburg Unified Saddleback Valley Unified, San Ramon Valley Unified, Upland Unified School District, and Victor Elementary School District.

The issue of test scores has been litigated already. In a 2012 ruling, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James Chalfant agreed with Sacramento-based nonprofit EdVoice’s contention that the Stull Act requires the use of standardized test scores and ordered Los Angeles Unified to start using them. Chalfant left it to the district and United Teachers Los Angeles to agree on how and to what extent test scores should factor in an evaluation. With the departure of Superintendent John Deasy last year, the district and UTLA restarted discussions and have yet to reach a deal.

Chalfant’s ruling applied only to L.A. Unified and, since it was not appealed, gained little traction. In a report released earlier this year that sampled 26 districts’ compliance with the Stull Act, EdVoice found that 13 ignored the requirement to use student test scores in evaluations, and teacher contracts in San Ramon Valley and Upland -– both named in the latest suit -– explicitly prohibited using them. Others partially complied with the law, according to EdVoice.

Mary Shelton, superintendent of San Ramon Valley Unified, said Friday that she could not comment on the lawsuit, which she had not seen. She said that the district’s existing contract includes conflicting passages. One clause says that scores from any tests cannot be used for evaluations; another says that teacher evaluations should consider the progress that students have made toward meeting academic standards.

Shelton said that the contract is being revised. The district and teachers union have agreed to piloting an evaluation system that includes evidence of student progress. “It Group Created By Silicon Valley Millionaire Targets Teacher Evaluations In California:

The tyranny of top-down education reform (or, if everyone has school choice, is it still a choice?) - The Washington Post

The tyranny of top-down education reform (or, if everyone has school choice, is it still a choice?) - The Washington Post:

The tyranny of top-down education reform (or, if everyone has school choice, is it still a choice?)

So many of the changes being proposed today, regardless of where they come from, share a feature in common: the people proposing them see their reforms as silver bullets, and seem like they won’t be satisfied until their ideas are adopted by everyone.

That’s part of the post below about the problems of top-down education reform, written by Dave Powell, an associate professor of education at Gettysburg College who is also Education Week’s “K-12 Contrarian.” He was a high school social studies for six years in suburban Atlanta, where he earned a certificate from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in 2004. He lives in Gettysburg with, his biography says, “a strong woman and four above average children—just don’t ask for the test scores to prove it.” Last summer, he was project director of “On Hallowed Ground: Gettysburg in History & Memory,” part of the National Endowment for the Humanities’Landmarks of American History & Culture program, and he has mentored several students who have created self-designed majors in American Studies.

By Dave Powell

We have thrown an awful lot of solutions at our educational problems in the past 40 years, some of which have had a positive impact on the school experiences of kids, and some of which haven’t.

Choice? Check. Accountability? Check. Changes to the curriculum? Check. Changes to the way we assess it? Check. Should we hire more teachers? Of course we should. Are there some teachers that ought to be fired? Yes, unfortunately, there are.

And there’s a lot to like about some of the things we’ve done. It’s definitely true that some charter schools have opened doors for kids who might otherwise have been stuck in under-performing schools, and certainly true that the innovative curricula and expanded extracurricular opportunities offered at some schools have enriched the lives of many students and teachers all across the country.

Schools that have held the line on class sizes and prioritized the hiring of teachers — few and far between though they may seem to be — have done themselves, and the students they serve, a huge favor. It is also undeniably true that there are some teachers out there who ought to find work in some other field, either because their commitment to teaching has passed its expiration date or because they were never well-suited to the work to begin with.

Still, for all the terrible ideas floating around out there, there are an awful lot of good ones too. One of the things that makes our public school system so great is our willingness to try new things to make it better. Adlai Stevenson once said that the most American thing about America is the free common school system. Our inclination to experiment with it is quintessentially American too, and something we should be proud of.

That’s easy to forget in this age of top-down education reform. So many of the changes being proposed today, regardless of where they come from, share a feature in common: the people proposing them see their reforms as silver The tyranny of top-down education reform (or, if everyone has school choice, is it still a choice?) - The Washington Post:

Key education bills still in play as legislators take summer break | EdSource

Key education bills still in play as legislators take summer break | EdSource:

Key education bills still in play as legislators take summer break

Legislators who headed out of town on Friday for a month have already decided the fate of many key bills. Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a much debated child vaccination law that eliminates the personal belief exemption to school-required vaccinations. All of the bills to rewrite the teacher evaluation law have been defeated or appear, at least for now, delayed until next year. Efforts to rescind last year’s limit on school districts’ reserves have foundered.

But when they return in mid-August, lawmakers will take final action on key bills that remain very much alive: suspending the high school exit exam; expanding preschool for low-income children; and creating new options for high school students to take community college courses. Here’s an updated look at legislation that EdSource has tracked.

Reforming teacher evaluations – Democrat version

SB 499, by Sen. Carol Liu, D-La Cañada Flintridge, and Senate President pro Tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, would rewrite the Stull Act, the law outlining teacher evaluations, with a locally negotiated “best practices” system with at least three performance categories, instead of the current pass-fail system. The Assembly version is AB 575, by Assemblyman Patrick O’Donnell, D-Long Beach, and Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, D-San Diego.

Why it’s important: Lawmakers, in the wake of the Vergara lawsuit ruling, are facing pressure to rewrite the teacher evaluation law. This version would be more acceptable to teachers unions than Republicans’ alternatives.

Status:  The Senate passed SB 499. Its Assembly counterpart, AB 575, squeaked by with one vote to spare. But Liu and O’Donnell pulled their bills from further consideration amid substantial opposition from organizations representing school boards and school administrators, who oppose the provision giving local teachers unions the power to negotiate the content of a teacher’s evaluation. With a waiver from the Rules Committee, either bill could be taken up again next month. But unless there’s a breakthrough in negotiations, it appears that both bills will be taken up again next year.

Also of note: AB 1184, by Assemblywoman Nora Campos, D-San Jose, would permit a third year of probation specifically for San Jose Unified. It too is now a two-year bill; it will be reintroduced in the next legislative session. Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, presented AB 1495 as a compromise rewrite of the Stull Act, the law outlining teacher evaluations. Although Democrats killed the bill in committee, Weber’s impassioned call for fellow Democrats to support it went viral.

Reforming teacher evaluations – Republican version

AB 1078, by Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen, R-Modesto, also would have rewritten the Stull Act to require annual teacher reviews using four evaluation categories, instead of the current pass-fail system, with incentives to include the use of standardized test scores as a factor.

Why it’s important: Assembly Republicans introduced a series of bills in response to the Vergara decision overturning teacher labor protection laws. They included AB 1044, by Assemblywoman Catharine Baker, R-San Ramon, banning layoffs exclusively by seniority, and AB 1248, by Assemblyman Rocky Chavez, R-Oceanside, extending probation leading to tenure from the current two years to three years.

Status: All three Republican-authored bills were defeated in the Assembly Education Committee on party-line votes.

Funding Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment program

AB 141, by Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, would require all districts and county offices of education to provide and pay for the Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) program. This would be a state-mandated program.

Why it’s important: BTSA, once a national model for training new teachers, has withered with the end of state funding of the program under Key education bills still in play as legislators take summer break | EdSource:

Charter founder gets real with admission about improving schools - K-12 Zone

Charter founder gets real with admission about improving schools - K-12 Zone:

Charter founder gets real with admission about improving schools

“Let’s just be real,” Chris Barbicwrote last week when announcing his resignation as superintendent of Tennessee’s Achievement School District.

Then Barbic admitted what skeptics of charter schools have preached for years — “achieving results in neighborhood schools is harder than in a choice environment.”

Barbic, as founder of the highly acclaimed YES Prep charter school network in Houston, was used to starting schools from scratch, enrolling students whose parents chose to send them there instead of to their zoned school. Charter schools in Texas are supposed to be open-enrollment, meaning they can’t set admission criteria, but some people argue that charters benefit simply from enrolling children with more motivated parents.

Tennessee presented a different challenge for Barbic. There, he was charged with launching a special school district that included the state’s lowest-performing schools. A key part of Barbic’s mission was to recruit charter networks to step in and improve the schools. However, he ran into some trouble as most charter operators have a start-from-scratch model, rather than taking over existing schools. Even YES Prep withdrew from the experiment.

“As a charter school founder,” Barbic wrote in his resgination letter, “I did my fair share of chest pounding over great results. I’ve learned that getting these same results in a zoned neighborhood school environment is much harder.”

Houston ISD Superintendent Terry Grier picked up on Barbic’s comments and tweeted, “Chris Barbic–courage to tell truth!”

The Houston advocacy group Community Voices for Public Education also weighed in, taking Barbic’s statement as an admission that his success was “due more to smoke and mirrors.”

In fact, Barbic’s resignation letter does not go that far. He stands by his philosophy that good teachers and principals can make a significant difference in improving student achievement, despite the challenges of poverty.

“The ‘poverty trumps education’ argument sells our educators, and more importantly, our kids way too short,” Barbic wrote. “And it is perhaps one of the most dangerous propositions that exists in our country today.”

Barbic also appeared to take another dig at his former charter network for pulling out of Memphis.

“It’s time for more high-performing charters to step up,” Barbic wrote. “These are agile, fast-learning organizations that get better faster than big bureaucracies. I applaud the charter operators who have stepped up to do the important and difficult work of neighborhood school turnaround. We need more organizations to follow their lead.”

Barbic’s successor at YES Prep, Jason Bernal, left the top job shortly after recommending the withdrawal from Memphis. Bernal now will face a challenge similar to Barbic’s, but in Houston. Grier has hired Bernal to oversee HISD’s lowest-performing middle and high schools as a chief transformation officer.

Grier’s own reform program, called Apollo, has seen mixed results. Twelve of the 20 original Apollo campuses met the state’s academic standards in 2014. One of the Charter founder gets real with admission about improving schools - K-12 Zone:

The 2015 KIDS COUNT Data Book - The Annie E. Casey Foundation

The 2015 KIDS COUNT Data Book - The Annie E. Casey Foundation:

The 2015 KIDS COUNT Data Book 

 DATA BOOK

READ OR DOWNLOAD THE REPORT (56 PG PDF)

The KIDS COUNT Data Book is an annual publication that assesses child well-being nationally and across the 50 states, as well as in the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Using an index of 16 indicators, the report ranks states on overall child well-being and in economic well-being, education, health and family and community.

The 2015 KIDS COUNT Data Book focuses on America’s children in the midst of the country's economic recovery. While data show improvements in child health and education, more families are struggling to make ends meet, and a growing number of kids live in high-poverty neighborhoods. In addition to ranking states in several areas of child well-being, the report also examines the influence of parents’ education, health and other life circumstances on their children.

July 21, 2015

• ORDER YOUR COPY
• VIEW HOW ALL STATES RANK ON THE KIDS COUNT INDEX
• SEE YOUR STATE’S DATA PROFILE
• ACCESS NATIONAL AND STATE NEWS RELEASES

• News Releases for the 2015 KIDS COUNT Data Book

  A National Look at the 2015 KIDS COUNT Data Book

  • National News Release (view online)
  • National News Release in Spanish
  • National Fact Sheet
  • National Fact Sheet in Spanish

  
  State News Releases for the 2015 KIDS COUNT Data Book

  KIDS COUNT state organizations have issued news releases on how their respective states are faring on the KIDS COUNT Index.

  • Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California | Spanish version Colorado Connecticut
  • Delaware District of Columbia Florida | Spanish version Georgia Hawaii Idaho
  • Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts
  • Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri (no news release available) Montana
  • Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York | Spanish version
  • North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon
  • Pennsylvania Puerto Rico (no news release available)
  • Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas | Spanish version
  • Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin
  • Wyoming (no news release available)

The 2015 KIDS COUNT Data Book - The Annie E. Casey Foundation: