NEWSCHARTER SCHOOLS

After hearing that class sizes in Detroit Public Schools could be raised to 62 students a class, voices around the nation were outraged.

The next proposal? Close half the city's schools. That didn't get any more support.

Severe budget cuts and mandates from the state meant Robert Bobb, emergency manager of the Detroit Public Schools, has been forced to make some drastic decisions.

But now he's proposing another idea that may mean schools stay open, but many teachers could still lose their jobs - massive charter conversion.

In New York City, two sides are battling over the fate of one school: Ross Global Academy. Started in 2005 by the widow of Time Warner executive Steve Ross, the charter school has failed dismally when it comes to state standards.

And yet Courtney Ross and her entourage of lawyers are begging the city to keep funding the school. But last week, a state education official threw up their hands, saying they didn't have the authority to keep the school open if the city decided to close it.

Parents from the New York Charter Parents Association have thrown their lot in with the city. They started a petition on change.org to close Ross Global Academy, citing its low test scores, horrible attrition rates and high teacher turnover as reasons why the school should close.

"The students are fleeing. The teachers are fleeing," said Davids. "They're on their seventh principal in 5 years."

Mona Davids, president of the New York Charter Parents Association, loves charter schools. She does not, however, love Ross Global Academy, a New York city charter school with a horrible record of serving students.

"Out of the 1,470 schools in New York city, this school is 1470. it is officially the worst school in the city," says Davids.

The New York City Department of Education agrees. They've recommended that Ross Global Academy's charter not be renewed for another five years. But the rich widow who started the school is using her big money to try to stop that from happening. She's hired a legal team and has been lobbying the Board of Regents to give her another chance. Davids, and other parent advocates, are saying: Not so fast.

Ross Global Academy was started in 2005 by Courtney Ross, widow of Steve Ross, who used to run Time Warner. She started an exclusive private school in the Hamptons - the Ross Institute for Advanced Study and Innovation in Education - and wanted to bring some of that success to New York's poorest kids by opening a charter school.

But it hasn't worked. Teacher turnover is at over 77 percent, says Davids. Students are leaving the school in droves - 90 out of 400 students left the school within the first three months of the year. Davids says a parent she knows has a child in the school - that child has had six homeroom teachers this year alone.

"The students are fleeing. The teachers are fleeing," says Davids. "They're on their seventh principal in 5 years."

It's no secret that the school is bad. But that hasn't stopped creator Courtney Ross from fighting its closure.

"She's hired a law firm in Albany to represent her, and also hired a litigation firm in the city.  About a week ago, she and the board of trustees met with Chancellor Klein to tell them not to shut down the school," says Davids.

But the parents in New York Charter Parents Association are saying enough, and demanding that the New York Board of Regents to shut down the school, despite Ross' high priced lobbying to keep it open. They  created a petition on Change.org to let the Regents and the Charter school office know that these kids need better educational opportunities.

"If this charter is to remain open, if [Ross] is able to bully the education department, this will destroy the premise of charters - that students deserve the best educational choices," says Davids.

When scarce resources go to funding and space for a poorly-performing school, it not only hurts the kids in that school, but it hurts the entire New York City school system by sapping money that could be used to better educate children. If the city wants to continually shut down poor-performing regular public schools, than they should do the same with lousy charters.

If it's all about results, than the results should be the only thing that matter - not how much money or power a school's founder has. Stand with Davids and tell the New York Board of Regents to revoke the charter for Ross Global Academy.

Photo credit: edenpictures

School reform - it's about kids, right? Making sure kids have the best possible environment to learn and grow. But too often, it turns from being about kids to being about adults.

This week, we wrote about California's new Parent Trigger law and a group of parents at McKinley Elementary in Compton who rallied to turn their kids' school into a charter school because of low test scores and lack of improvement.

But now, their actions have come into question. A number of parents who signed the petition to overturn the school's leadership say the process was flawed - parents were lied to about what they were signing or not allowed to be at meetings where important decisions were made. Other parents say the group Parent Revolution, which helps schools use the new Parent Trigger law, is corrupt.

All of this came to light at a Compton school board meeting this week. But the anti-charter parents weren't the only ones with complaints.

[Change.org welcomes writer and journalist Tarice Gray to the Education blog. -- Eds.]

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court made a groundbreaking decision: Schools could no longer enforce segregation. The Brown vs. Board of Education verdict was intended not so much as an invitation for educational unity, but for inclusivity in public schools.

Fast forward 56 years and one could argue that segregation is alive and exceedingly well in our school systems. Some educational institutes even embrace the concept. Charter schools have made it easier to do.

Two Minnesota charter schools cater to a specific group: Dugsi Academy, which focuses on the educational needs of East African children in America, and  Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, which focuses on immigrant children primarily from Islamic backgrounds. The Albert Einstein Academy in greater Los Angeles embraces the Hebrew language.

The existence and proposed ideas of these institutions have been met by criticism. Some who continue to hold fast to the idea of educational inclusivity feel these schools should be challenged. Earlier this year, the Albert Einstein Academy was dealt a setback by the governing board of their school district. According to the Los Angeles Times, opponents argued the school would impede ethnic diversity.

Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy was also accused of being exclusionary. Two years ago, a teacher in Minneapolis questioned what she saw to be required Muslim prayer in school, and was put off by the inclusion of Islamic studies.

Waiting for Superman, the new movie by the team behind the climate-change doc An Inconvenient Truth, is making waves among teachers, parents, and the media for turning a critical eye to the our nation’s education system. The doc has already gotten flack for vilifying teachers unions and touting charter schools as a panacea for education. But anyone who’s seen the movie can tell you that the message is loud, clear, and compelling: whether schools are really in crisis or simply leaving too many kids behind to tolerate any longer, there are some pretty big problems with the way things are going. And something needs to change, now.

Just what’s broken, and how can we fix it? Here are the top three issues the documentary hits on:

1. Tenure and Teachers Unions: Ugly Stepsisters?

Teacher tenure is a policy which gives teachers a permanent contract, effectively ensuring them a guarantee of employment … for life. Teachers that have tenure cannot be fired unless for “just cause”, such as severe misconduct or incompetence. Critics say that teacher tenure makes it virtually impossible to fire bad teachers. Once teachers earn tenure, which, according to a charter school leader quoted in the movie, is as easy as breathing for a few years, getting rid of them can involve years of review and bureaucratic hurdles, and can cost tens of thousands of dollars per teacher.

What if teachers made as much money as engineers? What if "master teachers" made more money, teachers could afford to support a family on their salary and sub-standard teachers were shown the door?

That's the vision President Obama laid out this morning on NBC's Today Show as he stressed that the economic success of the U.S. depends on our education system.

"I want to lift up the teaching profession to honor it the way it needs to be honored in our society," he said, relating a conversation with the mayor of Shanghai, China, who told him that teaching is one of the most prestigious professions and teachers are paid on par with engineers.

Obama, who sat down with Matt Lauer in the White House, also called for a school year that is a month longer, and 10,000 new math and science teachers. In the U.S., once a science powerhouse, students rank 21st in science and 25th in math, and students in other industrialized countries go to school a month longer.

He also sent a message to teachers' unions, whose public image has taken a hit recently in the new education documentary Waiting for "Superman." "We want to work with you," he said, but added that unions can't defend a status quo where a third of U.S. students are dropping out. 

From teachers and school administrators to politicians and pundits, the message is clear: the education system is in dire straits, and something earth-shattering needs to be done about it. It’s no secret that teachers are being laid off in droves, college is more expensive and selective than ever, and student achievement is, as a whole, nowhere near where we’d like it to be. But is the education “crisis” actually real?

Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, thinks not. In the forthcoming Sept. 27 issue of  The New Yorker, Lemann argues in that instead of recognizing what works, we are falling prey to a facile narrative which embraces heroes and villains while diverting our attention from real problems and solutions.

Lemann suggests that the system is no worse than it’s ever been in the past: enrollment is growing, college graduates continue to do better economically and student achievement is holding steady. But a narrative of systemic failure nevertheless holds the public in thrall. “In the current school-reform story,” Lemann writes, “there is a reliable villain, in the form of the teachers’ unions, and a familiar set of heroes, including Geoffrey Canada, of Harlem Children’s Zone; Wendy Kopp, of Teach for America, the Knowledge Is Power Program; and Michele Rhee, the superintendent of schools in Washington, D.C. And there is a clear answer to the problem—charter schools.”

Heroes? Check. Villains? Check. Insurmountable challenges? Double check. Education is getting the movie star treatment this Friday with the premiere of Waiting For "Superman," a new documentary that spotlights the tragedies and triumphs kids around the country face as they try to get an education.

All of the ingredients of a Hollywood blockbuster are here: stars, a spot on Oprah and - thanks to the action-packed mayoral race in Washington D.C. - a wave of new controversy surrounding the best path to education reform. It follows kids like Bianca, a kindergartner from Harlem, and Anthony, a D.C. fifth-grader, as they aim to "make it against the odds." Parents, teachers, mentors, reformers are all featured in the movie, looking for solutions in a system that fails so many children every minute.

Think education isn't the sexiest topic for a documentary? It's directed by Davis Guggenheim, who won an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth - the movie that made talking about global warming hot and Al Gore cool. The filmmakers are hoping to similarly electrify the national dialogue about schools, and motivate people to work for change. Buying a ticket gets you a $15 credit on DonorsChoose.org to donate to the classroom of your choice.

Advance screenings have already made waves. Many critics love it; but the president of the American Federation of Teachers lashed out at the documentary earlier this month, calling it "inaccurate, inconsistent and incomplete" and saying it lionizes charter schools while slamming "bad" teachers and teachers unions.

Dr. Edward P Fiszer, the principal at a charter school in the L.A. Unified School District, allegedly stole and misused as much as $2.7 million, auditors have revealed. The L.A. Times reports that the Superintendent of L.A. schools is moving to shut down the school, but the school board is resisting.

In a twist that only modern education reform would permit, minimal gains on test scores may save the school. The school board chair explained that they were the victim of fraud and that the children should not suffer further. True, the school should remain open (while its charter is reconsidered), but L.A. schools need to take a long hard look at all of their charter schools and consider whether its a model that can continue to work without much tighter regulation and oversight.

Stephanie Farland, who studies charter school policy for the California School Boards Association,  told Southern California Public Radio "A lot of these little charter schools just don’t have sophisticated boards and they don’t have the proper training, quite frankly, in how to govern a school."

So let's heed her advise and rather than see this case as a single bad-apple, let's see it as a symbol of what happens when you allow schools to operate with minimal oversight and regulations, paying attention to small changes in test-scores rather than the overall effectiveness of those running the school.

But if you want other bad apples then we've got a barrel of them: This isn't the first time that a charter school on the West Coast has had money troubles, and it's unlikely to be the last. A husband and wife team who ran Ivy Academia in the West San Fernando Valley embezzled $200,000 and were charged with 38 crimes in June.