Milwaukee wins major Victory over Edreform. | BustED Pencils

Milwaukee wins major Victory over Edreform. | BustED Pencils:

Milwaukee wins major Victory over Edreform

In the state budget passed this year in Wisconsin was a provision that essentially legalized the theft of public schools from their local communities.  The Kooyenga-Darling heistproposal stated that,

select MPS schools with failing grades would become independent charter schools that do not employ unionized teachers or answer to the Milwaukee School Board.

Instead, those schools would be overseen by a new local board that would entertain proposals from charter-school operators and award five-year contracts to operators that present the most compelling plans, according to the proposal.

Within months, some Milwaukee parents, children, and teachers found themselves in “failing schools” that were now considered an “Opportunity.” These failing schools had the opportunity to be taken over by County Executive Chris Abele.   Abele would “name a commissioner with parallel authority to Milwaukee Public Schools.”  Also, teachers and staff,

at the public schools run by new operators — or directly by the commissioner — would have to re-apply for their jobs and, if hired, would waive their right to be represented by a union.

Demond Means—superintendent of the Mequon-Theinsville district— was appointed commissioner by Abele.  However, after a short time, it became obvious that the communities in which these failing schools were located had a problem being considered an “opportunity.” They realized quickly that Abele was going to use Means to implement the Kooyenga-Darling legislation and begin the privatization of their community schools.

From the beginning Abele and Means were met with skepticism.  An uncooperative group of teachers, parents and students resisted the privatization of their public schools  This promoted Abele and Means to issue a statement asking for local support and reminding the resistance,

You have clearly expressed your displeasure with this legislation and we have said from the beginning that this legislation is not how we would have approached a turnaround effort. We did not seek this legislation nor did we have any input into its drafting. However, as elected officials, we take an oath to uphold the law.

Cue the resistance!

And then yesterday came the stunning news that Dr. Demond Means was voluntarily Milwaukee wins major Victory over Edreform. | BustED Pencils:

Are Public Schools And Private Equity A Bad Mix?

6/30/2016 – Are Public Schools And Private Equity A Bad Mix?:

Are Public Schools And Private Equity A Bad Mix?

June 30, 2016, 2016 Subscribe

THIS WEEK: School Choice Is Chaos … Teacher Stress Hurts Students … Exercise Improves Achievement … Solve Inequality First … SCOTUS Got Fisher Right

TOP STORY

Are Public Schools And Private Equity A Bad Mix?

By Jeff Bryant

“It’s true … cities and towns are required to offer citizens a free education … That doesn’t mean that schools aren’t fair game for privatization … Charter schools, for instance, are fundamentally less democratic than public schools. And changing from traditional way of funding education – where taxpayers agree to share costs of schools, and those assets are handed from one generation to the next – to a system in which charter school real estate and operations are controlled by private equity takes control out of the community.”
Read more …

NEWS AND VIEWS

A Sea Of Charter Schools In Detroit Leaves Students Adrift

The New York Times

“Michigan leapt at the promise of charter schools 23 years ago, betting big that choice and competition would improve public schools. It got competition, and chaos … 24 charter schools have opened in the city since the cap was lifted in 2011. 18 charters whose existing schools were at or below the district’s dismal performance expanded or opened new schools … It can be a forbidding landscape for families trying to enroll their children, particularly in a city where, historically, federal statistics show that nearly half the adults are not literate enough to function effectively … ‘We’re spreading the money across more and more schools … They’re all under-resourced.'”
Read more …

Classroom Contagion: Stressed-Out Students More Common In Classes Where Teachers Are Burned Out

Medical Daily

“Teacher burnout may contribute to stressed-out students and vice versa, suggesting that stress may actually be contagious … This is the first time research has found a potential link between the two … When teachers get stressed from inadequate support in the classroom or poor educational systems, their lessons are less organized and managed. Students, then, are affected by the stress and burnout, in turn increasing their own levels of anxiety.”
Read more …

To Do Better In School, Kids Should Exercise Their Bodies As Well As Their Brains, Experts Say

Los Angeles Times

“‘Physical activity before, during and after school promotes scholastic performance in children and youth’ … What’s more, exercise and fitness ‘are beneficial to brain structure, brain function and cognition’”… Recess and physical education classes in school, organized youth sports leagues, and old-fashioned outdoor play … are still a good investment in academic achievement.”
Read more …

UN Report: Tackle Inequality To Prevent Children From Dying

Associated Press via ABC News

“69 million youngsters under the age of five will die from preventable causes between now and 2030 if all countries don’t accelerate action to improve health and education for the most disadvantaged … 167 million children will also live in extreme poverty, 60 million won’t be attending primary school, and 750 million women will have been married as children by 2030 unless inequality is tackled now … 147 million children between one- and five-years-old could be saved from preventable death ‘just with a 2% increase in expenditure in 74 countries.'”
Read more …

What Other Universities Should Learn From UT

Houston Chronicle

Education professor Julian Vasquez Heilig writes, “We are fortunate today that the Supreme Court ruled that the University of Texas admission plan ‘clearly reconciled the pursuit of diversity with the constitutional promise of equal treatment and dignity’ … Critics of affirmative action in admissions often frame the matter like that: as a rule that says when two exactly equal candidates apply for a spot in a university, the minority candidate is chosen each time. This is a gross and purposeful simplification of what actually occurs … UT was very thorough in its empirical process … This high standard will likely cause those that oppose the consideration of race … to sue colleges or universities that haven’t been so thorough. So my message to my academic brethren … Be sure that your admissions policies are in the best interest of your students and faculty.”
Read more …

 6/30/2016 – Are Public Schools And Private Equity A Bad Mix?:

Larry Ferlazzo: The best and worst education news in 2016 — so far - The Washington Post

The best and worst education news in 2016 — so far - The Washington Post:

The best and worst education news in 2016 — so far

Larry Ferlazzo is a veteran teacher of English and social studies at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, California.  Every year he writes a list of the best/worst education news of the year — but this, so much has been happening that he decided to take a look halfway through the year, and here’s what he’s come up with. Ferlazzo has written numerous books on education, writes a teacher advice blog for Education Week Teacher and has his own popular resource-sharing blog.

By Larry Ferlazzo

I usually do a recap of the year’s education news every December, but thought it would be useful to experiment with  doing a mid-year review.  As usual, I don’t presume to say it’s all-encompassing, so I hope you’ll take time to share your own choices. I’ll list the ones I think are the best first, followed by the worst. It’s too hard to rank them within those categories, so I’m not listing them in any order.

The Best Education News Of 2016 – So Far

* A major effort to decimate teachers unions and, in fact, all public employee unions, was defeated when the U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked in the Friedrichs case.

* New research on teachers unions proved to be a disappointment to many school reformers:

The data confirms that, compared to districts with weak unionism, districts with strong unionism dismiss more low-quality teachers and retain more high-quality teachers. The empirical analysis shows that this dynamic of teacher turnover in highly unionized districts raises average teacher quality and improves student achievement.

* The Gates Foundation offered a weak but, nonetheless, welcome mea culpa for some of their strategic missteps.  The Los Angeles Times followed-up with an equally welcome and flawedscathing critique of the foundation’s work in schools.  Anthony Cody and others pointed outThe Times neglected to mention their responsibility in previously promoting some of the policies for which they were criticizing the foundation.  Despite these shortcomings, these kinds of public admissions of mistakes and/or changes of mind by powerful institutions are always welcome news.

[Gates Foundation chief admits Common Core mistakes]

* A California appeals court overturned the infamous Vergara decision attacking teacher tenure in the state and dealing a setback to anti-union reformers.

* In a pleasant surprise, the Supreme Court refused to weaken efforts by colleges and universities to promote student diversity and supported the University of Texas’ affirmative action program.

* Research shows that health challenges provide learning challenges, and Obamacare has made a big dent in that problem.  The state of California has gone even further by providing health insurance to 170,000 undocumented children under the age of 18.

* In Chicago, educators continue to show their strength in the face of attacks.  Thousands of teachers participated in a one-day strike and a principal who was a vocal opponent of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s school policies (and who the district was trying to fire because of it) waselected to lead the citywide Principals and Administrators Association.

* No educator will be sad that Michelle Rhee’s organization, StudentsFirst went under (the word “merged” was used, but everybody knows what it really meant) this year.

* Changes in the GED, the high school equivalency test, have been disastrous for students, with the numbers of people taking and passing it plummeting since Pearson took it over.  Fortunately, the company has come to its senses and made some adjustments that should help.

* New research showing major student academic gains as a result of participating in ethnic studies classes has given even more momentum to districts and schools offering them.

* Millions of students had great learning experiences in their schools this year.

The Worst Education News Of 2016 – So Far

* Nine people were killed in Oaxaca, Mexico demonstrations against government reform proposals that scapegoat teachers as the cause of that country’s education ills.  Does that scapegoating strategy sound familiar?

* Teacher’s efforts brought national attention to the terrible physical condition of Detroit’s schools and the fiscal disaster of the school district.  Officials claimed teachers didn’t care for their students when they organized their sick-outs (including one who had earlier donated her kidney to a student). The state legislature and Governor responded, but their bailout package is The best and worst education news in 2016 — so far - The Washington Post:

Education Secretary John King Will Call for More Diverse Schools in Orlando Speech - The Atlantic

Education Secretary John King Will Call for More Diverse Schools in Orlando Speech - The Atlantic:

A New Argument for More Diverse Classrooms

U.S. Education Secretary John King will argue that interactions with children from different backgrounds prepare students for the workforce.

Perhaps no U.S. education secretary has had more personal experience with the power America’s public-school system has to lift up students who have the odds stacked against them than John King. At least when it works as intended.

A Puerto Rican and African American whose parents had both passed away by the time he was 12, King has repeatedly credited New York public schools for saving his life and shaping its trajectory. King attended P.S. 276 in Canarsie and Mark Twain Junior High School in Coney Island, at the time both diverse schools that exposed him not only to high-quality curriculum, but to students and teachers from backgrounds and cultures wildly different from his own.

“As a kid, it gave me a sense of different cultural experiences that people had and different traditions that people had, and as a parent, that has been an important part of thinking about the schools for my daughters,” King said during an interview at his Washington, D.C., office.

On Friday, Secretary King will call on parents and teachers at the National PTA Convention in Orlando to create diverse schools where students of all racial and socioeconomic backgrounds have access to good teachers and learning opportunities like he did. “Like math and reading, like science, social studies, and the arts, diversity is no longer a luxury,” King will say. “It’s essential for helping our students get ready for the world they will encounter after high school and, increasingly, throughout their lives.”

Research has long suggested that all students benefit when they attend diverse schools. But many schools remain largely segregated and those that serve children of color tend to have less-experienced teachers, fewer advanced courses, and resources stretched thin. And while more than half of the nation’s students are now children of color, more than 80 percent of teachers are white, and the majority are female.

Although many parents say they care about all children and support the creation of diverse schools, some, particularly affluent white families, have balked at attempts to integrate schools. So King will make the case that integration benefits not only black and brown students, who are disproportionately low-income, but their affluent white peers, too. “We have this emerging body of research around Education Secretary John King Will Call for More Diverse Schools in Orlando Speech - The Atlantic:

 

Charter Schools May Be Re-Segregating America’s Education System - In These Times - http://inthesetimes.com/article/17441/charter_schools_may_actually_be_re_segregating_americas_school_system

The Racist History of the Charter School Movement | Alternet - http://www.alternet.org/node/669918

Big Education Ape: Why the racist history of the charter school movement is never discussed - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2013/07/why-racist-history-of-charter-school.html

Big Education Ape: The Charter School Swindle – Selling Segregation to Blacks and Latinos | gadflyonthewallblog - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-charter-school-swindle-selling.html

Big Education Ape: Jersey Jazzman: Chris Christie LOVES Segregated Charter Schools - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/05/jersey-jazzman-chris-christie-loves.html

Diane Ravitch: Don’t use test scores to judge teacher quality - The Boston Globe

Diane Ravitch: Don’t use test scores to judge teacher quality - The Boston Globe:

Don’t use test scores to judge teacher quality

The Massachusetts Senate passed a bill repealing the mandate to use test scores in evaluating teacher quality. The approval of the House is needed to enact the bill. The Legislature should act promptly to endorse this bill. Test-based teacher evaluation has been discredited everywhere it has been tried and has been rejected by knowledgeable scholars. Massachusetts should abandon this harmful policy (as Oklahoma, Hawaii, and Houston recently did). The public needs to learn more about why this policy consistently fails.

The idea that teachers should be evaluated by the test scores of their students was a central tenet in former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top program. Massachusetts won a federal grant of $250 million in 2011 and agreed to follow Duncan’s wishes, including this untried method of evaluating teachers. The US Department of Education handed out $5 billion to states to promote test-based evaluation and privately managed charter schools. In addition, the Gates Foundation gave away hundreds of millions of dollars to five urban districts to use test scores to evaluate teachers.

Evaluating teachers by test scores has not raised scores significantly anywhere. Good teachers have been fired by this flawed method. A New York judge ruled this method “arbitrary and capricious” after one of the state’s best teachers was judged ineffective.

Test-based evaluation has demoralized teachers because they know it is unfair to judge them by student scores. Many believe it has contributed to a growing national teacher shortage and declining enrollments in teacher education programs.

A major problem with test-based evaluation is that students are not randomly assigned. Teachers in affluent suburbs may get higher scores year after year, while teachers in urban districts enrolling many high-need students will not see big test score gains. Teachers of English-language learners, teachers of students with cognitive disabilities, and teachers of children who live in poverty are unlikely to see big test score gains, even though they are as good or even better than their peers in the suburbs. Even teachers of the gifted are unlikely to see big test score gains, because their students already have such high scores. Test scores are a measure of class composition, not teacher quality.

New school testing measure under fire

The proposal is the centerpiece of the state’s efforts to evaluate the performance of educators.

Seventy percent of teachers do not teach subjects that have annual tests. Schools could develop standardized tests for every subject, including the arts and physical education. But most have chosen to rate these teachers by the scores of students they don’t know and subjects they never taught.

Scholarly groups like the American Educational Research Association and the American Statistical Association have warned against using test scores Diane Ravitch: Don’t use test scores to judge teacher quality - The Boston Globe:

Rick Roach Endorsed by the Network for Public Education Action in SD 13 race | The Orlando Political Observer

Rick Roach Endorsed by the Network for Public Education Action in SD 13 race | The Orlando Political Observer:

Rick Roach Endorsed by the Network for Public Education Action in SD 13 race

On Thursday, former Orange County School Board member and Candidate for Florida State Senate District 13, announced that he has been endorsed by Network for Public Education Action, an advocacy group, “whose goal is to fight to preserve, promote, improve and strengthen our public school system, an essential institution in a democratic society.”

“This endorsement is attached to one of the most courageous women in America, Dr. Diane Ravitch. She is a fearless fighter for our teachers and kids.” said Roach “I met her at a conference once as a school board member where she received a standing ovation. I asked her how I could fight the misuse of testing. She replied, ” Be ready to take the arrows out of your back, and don’t go it alone.” Later I led a state-wide task force on the topic. Proud to have this endorsement.”

Roach is one of three Democrats running to replace termed out Senate President Andy Gardiner. Other Candidates in the primary include former State Representatives Linda Stewart and Mike Clelland. The winner will challenge Dean Asher in November.

Network for Public Education Action director, Colleen Wood, said “Rick Roach’s support for public education, our students, teachers and communities is unwavering. He will be the type of Senator we need to push back against the ill-conceived and damaging Florida education reforms of the past sixteen years. Rick has always supported us and now it’s time for us to support him in his bid for Senate District 13.”Rick Roach Endorsed by the Network for Public Education Action in SD 13 race | The Orlando Political Observer:

With Kaya Henderson leaving, Bowser has a decision to make about the future of D.C. schools - The Washington Post

With Kaya Henderson leaving, Bowser has a decision to make about the future of D.C. schools - The Washington Post:

With Kaya Henderson leaving, Bowser has a decision to make about the future of D.C. schools

With D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson announcing that she plans to step down in the fall, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has a tough decision to make: Does she select someone who has worked under Henderson to replace her, or does she go outside the city to find the school system’s next leader?

Henderson unexpectedly announced Wednesday that she would leave after more than five years as chancellor and nearly a decade after she became joined the effort to carry out an aggressive set of urban education reforms. Bowser immediately tapped John Davis, the school system’s chief of schools, to serve as interim chancellor beginning Oct. 1 and said a national search for a permanent replacement will begin later this year.

Henderson has been credited with leading a troubled and under-enrolled school district through rapid improvements with test scores improving, graduation rates jumping and with more academic and extra-curricular options available in the city’s schools.

But critics argue that Henderson’s achievements — and the reforms initiated by her predecessor, Michelle Rhee — have not reached the city’s neediest students. The school system’s national standardized test scores have been among the fastest-improving in the nation, but there are still stark achievement gaps between white and black and wealthy and poor students.

Whom the mayor appoints could signal whether Bowser wants to continue along Henderson’s reform path or try a new approach aimed at lifting the city’s poor and minority students.

“Going with an outsider risks the possibility of changing up the agenda and the direction,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools. “It’s not unheard of that you could swap out the people and keep the same agenda, but you’ve got to be very strategic and thoughtful and deliberate about doing that.”

City law requires the mayor to assemble a review panel of teachers, parents and students to help her in selecting the chancellor; the panel will relay recommendations to the mayor for consideration. City law also requires that the mayor give “great weight” to recommendations With Kaya Henderson leaving, Bowser has a decision to make about the future of D.C. schools - The Washington Post:

Mexico teachers union threatens 'greater intensity' in protests over education reforms - UPI.com

Mexico teachers union threatens 'greater intensity' in protests over education reforms - UPI.com:

Mexico teachers union threatens 'greater intensity' in protests over education reforms

The Mexican government will not hold talks with the union until blockades end

Jose Luis Escobar, a spokesman for Mexico's largest teachers union, threatened actions of "greater intensity" as it remains deadlocked with the government over constitutional education reforms. Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, Mexico's secretary of interior, on Wednesday said that the government will not hold talks with the CNTE until the union stops the blockades. Photo courtesy of Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador

MEXICO CITY, June 30 (UPI) -- Mexico's National Coordinator of Education Workers, or CNTE, teachers union has threatened actions of "greater intensity" as it remains deadlocked with the government over constitutional education reforms.

The union has held protests over constitutional reforms passed by Mexico's Ministry of Education in 2013 that would force teachers to take examinations to be approved for employment, with further tests to maintain jobs. The intensity of the demonstrations -- which have been ongoing since 2013 -- have escalated to the teachers union setting up blockades that have created shortages of fuel.

Jose Luis Escobar, a CNTE spokesman, on Wednesday said President Enrique Peña Nieto's government must revoke or revise the law, but Peña Nieto's administration has insisted the law is non-negotiable.

"They hold the only solution," Escobar said, adding that though shortages have been created that Mexicans "have understood that this form of struggle is necessary in the face of the stubbornness and myopia of the government."

Escobar added that the CNTE will continue to block roads, also warning of "actions of greater intensity." The CNTE has most of its support in the Mexican states of Chiapas and Oaxaca, where the blockades and shortages are most intense. At least 100 gas stations in Chiapas are out of fuel.

In Oaxaca, at least 10 people died when riot police attempted to disperse blockading protesters. In Mexico City, tens of thousands of people protested in Sunday over the recent violent clashes between police and a teachers union.

Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, Mexico's secretary of interior, on Wednesday said the government will not hold talks with the CNTE until the union stops the blockades.

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 Mexico teachers union threatens 'greater intensity' in protests over education reforms - UPI.com:

The real problem isn’t teachers - The Washington Post

The real problem isn’t teachers - The Washington Post:

The real problem isn’t teachers

In April, an appeals court in California upheld the state’s laws regarding teacher tenure, dismissal and layoffs by overturning a lower court’s earlier decision to scrap job-protection statutes in the highly publicized Vergara v. California case. The plaintiffs in Vergara were public school students backed by a school reform advocacy group called Students Matter, and they claimed that job protection laws for teachers are the reason that poor and minority children wind up with more ineffective teachers who are hard to fire. The court found that “the evidence did not show that the challenged statutes inevitably cause” the impact the plaintiffs claimed. Reform and anti-union activists have promised to continue the legal fight against teacher job protection laws that they say work against students.

[California appeals court upholds teacher tenure, a major victory for unions]

Such legal challenges are just part of what many teachers consider to be a war on their profession by school reformers and policymakers who have attempted to “disrupt” public education with systems and programs that educators think rob them of their professionalism and hurt the learning process.

Teachers unions again made national news this week when the Supreme Court denied a petition from plaintiffs in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association to rehear the case. A group of California teachers had challenged a law that they said violates their First Amendment rights by requiring them to pay dues to the state’s teachers union. California is one of about 20 states in which public employees are required to either join the union or pay a fee to support the union’s collective-bargaining activities — which support all workers, whether or not they are union members.

With this decision, it seems to be a good time to look again at how teachers are faring. Here’s a post about how and why teachers have become scapegoats for problems in public education and what should be done to change the dynamic. It was written by Alexander W. Wiseman, associate professor and director of the Comparative and International Education (CIE) program at Lehigh University’s College of Education. He has more than 20 years of professional experience working with government education departments, university-based teacher education programs, community-based professional development for teachers and as a classroom teacher in both the United States and East Asia.

By Alexander W. Wiseman

Recent U.S. education reform efforts — such as the Vergara vs. California lawsuit filed on behalf of nine students and similar suits in Minnesota and New York — point to teacher job protections negotiated by unions as a root cause of a troubling reality: unequal access to high-quality education. But this is at the least a distraction and at the most a purposeful misdirection of attention from the real problem.

Critics argue that the rules governing the hiring and firing of teachers, such as tenure, have the unintended consequence of burdening the most economically disadvantaged schools with the least effective or prepared teachers, thereby providing a sub-par education to the very students who need public education the most.

It does not take an expert to spot the absurdity of blaming the unequal distribution of highly The real problem isn’t teachers - The Washington Post:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Broke on purpose: The price of 'reform' at CPS.

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Broke on purpose: The price of 'reform' at CPS.:

 Broke on purpose: The price of 'reform' at CPS.

Tim Cawley was Byrd-Bennett's and then Claypool's  attack dog. He cut the Children and Family Benefits Unit which provided support for CPS's neediest students. 

Late last summer, in it's haste to implement savage austerity measures, CPS leaders eliminated the 10-person Children and Family Benefits Unit, saying it was not vital to the core mission of educating children. The move turns out to have cost the district millions in poverty money that would have directly supported its neediest students.

Diane Fager, who launched the unit in 2005 and retired from CPS in 2014, tells Catalyst that she and others repeatedly told leaders that the unit brought in more money than it cost.

“People should know that this was not an accident. The reality is that without assistance from these kinds of programs, kids are going to school hungry so they cannot perform as well at school, and without health insurance they’re sick a lot Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Broke on purpose: The price of 'reform' at CPS.:

Advanced-Stage Charter Syndrome: What "Maturity" Means to the Charter Movement - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher

Advanced-Stage Charter Syndrome: What "Maturity" Means to the Charter Movement - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher:

Advanced-Stage Charter Syndrome: What "Maturity" Means to the Charter Movement

Education Week recently posted a fine series of articles on the 25th anniversary of charter schools--the exciting original concept winding down to the dismal, show-me-the-money reality. And yesterday, the New York Times deftly and accurately outlined what happened to one state (Michigan) that embraced the charter movement early, then crafted additional legislation to support "choice," chip away at public systems where the poorest children (and unionized teachers) are found, then provide cover for obvious failure of individual charters and CMOs.
If you want to know what your state may look like, given twenty-plus years' worth of burgeoning charterism, simply take a look at Michigan.  And keep in mind that #1) there is no foolproof charter legislation model (caps, authorizing agents, profit/non-profit, staffing requirements, etc.) that will guarantee control over charterism; and #2) the concept of a unique, mission-driven charter school is very different from the wide-scale rollout of an alternative organizing model for public education.
Here's the story of my personal aha moment, re: charter schools:
The year is 1994, and Michigan has spanking new charter-establishment legislation. Several colleagues and I have been kicking around the idea of starting a school-within-a-school for students who have a passion for the fine arts. The district has axed, then returned, arts courses, staff and extra-curriculars in a depressing cycle over the previous two decades. First there is a program, then there isn't--and then one music teacher is covering 1700 kids in three schools, so we can say we have music, when it's only one 35 minute period every other week. And just when our students begin winning scholarships and prizes for their artwork--boom, all the art teachers are gone. And on and on, up and down, for years.
Our thinking: We could re-structure the school day, infuse the arts into humanities courses, take a project-based approach to curriculum--all ideas that have been around for some time, but are difficult to roll out in a very rigid bell schedule/direct-instruction environment. The charter legislation would allow us to work under the unionized protections of a traditional public system, but provide a framework to innovate.
Our target audience--kids and families who wanted rich arts programming, but weren't tethered to 50-minute, single-grade classes. The teachers (K-8) who were interested in doing this were among the best, most creative folks on staff--all willing to forgo certain contractual guarantees (class size, student load, number of preps, textbooks, duty-free lunch) in order to launch our new school.
We also had a de facto leader--a helicopter-type mom who was determined to use the exciting new law to build her ideal school (and, naturally, provide a free custom-tailored education for her kids). We had a number of lunchtime dreaming-the-dream conversations, and precisely one meeting.
This was a long time ago, but I remember this moment clearly: We had sketched out an entirely new model for grouping students, covering curricular essentials, and operating as a teacher-led school. The mom--and friends she brought to the meeting--were thrilled. Outspoken Mom rubbed her palms together and boldly declared "We are going to have the cream of the crop at this school!"
The teachers looked at each other, dismayed. We were thinking about teaching and learning in new ways. The parents were thinking about screening and selecting the kids who would be their children's classmates--a real perk since it wouldn't cost them a penny in private school tuition.
We never met again.
I spent the next decade or so being cautious in my thinking about charter schools. I know teachers who have worked, long-term, in charters, earnest people whose vocation is promoting charters, and parents whose children attend well-regarded charter schools, folks who believe on the flimsiest of evidence that they have made the superior choice.  I've spent days and held meetings in boutique "public school academies" established in planetariums and museums, with clearly defined missions and glossy PR materials. I am friends with a woman who got so sick of seeing an underclass of poorly served students in her wealthy, high-scoring suburban alpha school that she started a charter on the poor side of town, the antithesis of no-excuses KIPP-ish academic culture.
I am well-acquainted with early-stage charterism: The exciting idea that public education can be tailored to individual children, instead of "factory model" learning. The noble goal of giving a select group of children whose education would otherwise be unexceptional or dismal a fresh start, ending with admission to a four-year university. No more red tape and stultifying restrictions--let freedom and flexibility reign!
Well. I am here to testify that all the good intentions in the world cannot override the conversion of a long-established public good into a profit-making commodity.  I no longer believe that there is a magic legislative formula that will allow "good" charters to exist harmoniously with public schools. I now understand that the end game of unfettered charterism is--and probably always has been--privatization and exclusivity. I live in a state where I am surrounded by hard Advanced-Stage Charter Syndrome: What "Maturity" Means to the Charter Movement - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher: