Continued from parts one and two
And so it continues, and now yet another charter school is circling the not-yet-dead body of AUSD, from the Alameda Sun:
…According to AUSD trustee Mike McMahon, the district received a charter application Friday seeking to set up the Renaissance Leadership Academy, a new Kindergarten to 8th grade school.
…
According to district officials, Alameda Unified receives roughly $5,777 per student annually from the state. If both schools open and all 150 students at Nea and all 105 students from Renaissance would otherwise have attended an ordinary AUSD school, AUSD will see it’s state funding plummet by nearly $1.5 million per year.
Charter school supporters say the state funding, which is tied to where a student is attending classes, should go to whatever institution the student is attending. If the district gets less money, it’s because they are educating fewer students. Opponents retort that it isn’t that simple. State regulations and various fixed costs associated with running an entire district mean authorities can’t painlessly find $1 worth of cuts for each dollar in lost funding…
Hopefully Renaissance will submit their application electronically (or the school district will be find enough to scan it and put it up for us all) so that it can also be judged on its merits or lack thereof. So you may be asking, or rather you should be asking, what happens when a charter school doesn’t make it? And while I know (from the Sun article) that the financial side cannot be considered when approving or denying a charter application, I think its something that we as a community should keep in mind when we support or do not support these applications. From the Voice of San Diego:
…[W]hile charters can be snuffed, ending experiments gone wrong, the closures aren’t painless. In San Diego, shuttered charters still owe thousands to the school district and the state in unpaid fees. Public schools rarely recover those funds unless a charter director is prosecuted for a crime, such as fraud, and forced to repay the district. Ordinary debts go unpaid.
Nor does closure — or the threat of it — guarantee accountability, critics say. When fiscal problems crop up, district staffers say they lack the power to halt misspending, and don’t learn about issues until it’s too late. Closure is both a last resort, they say, and their only resort.
“Nobody’s monitoring charter schools that closely,” said Andrea Niehaus, the district’s director of audits and investigations. She recently asked to hire another auditor for her seven-person office, to specialize in charter schools. “They don’t keep the same documents. We can’t even see how they’re taking attendance — and that’s how schools are funded. We have no way of knowing.”
“It’s very disturbing,” Niehaus said. “I don’t see anyone doing any real oversight.”
Closures also have an emotional cost. Shut-downs are sometimes abrupt, with little advance notice for parents, stranded children, and even teachers, who scramble to find jobs long after most schools have hired. When Randolph Leadership Academy in San Diego dissolved, some graduates found their diplomas had gone void because the school never sought accreditation, said Peter Rivera, program manager in the district’s Office of School Choice. Others couldn’t retrieve transcripts to prove they had attended.
…
But revoking a school’s charter takes time — time the school district doesn’t always have. Charter schools get a chance to clean up problems and can appeal their charters, if revoked…
Short of threatening revocation, San Diego schools lack gentler tools to steer charters back into the black. If revocation is the “big hammer” [Director of policy for the California Charter Schools Association, Colin] Miller describes, [Director of San Diego Unified’s school choice office Kyo] Yamashiro and Rivera want a chisel.
For instance, San Diego Unified can’t cut off funding to charter schools, even if payment problems are rampant. San Diego Unified authorizes payments to charter schools from the county treasury, said Yamashiro, but only acts as a “button-pusher,” with no authority to stop the spigot of funds.
“We can bug the schools over and over again, but until we start threatening revocation, they won’t listen,” Yamashiro said.
And since charters rarely pay their debts after closing, revocation doesn’t pay off financially for public schools. Yamashiro stresses that the children’s well-being takes precedence over the district’s budget. Bad charters should be closed for kids’ sake, she said…
It’s interesting how much additional bureaucracy had to be created in the San Diego Unified School District to manage all the charter schools in its district. On the one hand charters want a certain level of autonomy from the school district to “do their thing” on the other hand, when the charter doesn’t go well the question is asked why the district didn’t do a better job at providing oversight to make sure that the charters are successful.
And finally, one more tiny thing about the ACLC/NCLC application that bothered me, there is a section in the application about the waiting list that has been touted by supporters as evidence that they will be able to better mirror the school aged population of Alameda. 60 some odd percent of their waiting list is decribed as not white, but has anyone actually looked at the waiting list profile? (p. 40)
AUSD 06-07 6-12 ACLC Wait List for 2007/08 Caucasian 31% 36.5% African American 13% 10.9% Filipino 9% 7.7% Hispanic 12% 5.8% Asian 31% 9.0% Pacific Islander 1% 0.6% Alaskan/Native American 1% 0% Multiple/No Response 2% 5.1% Multiethnic NA 24.4%
Yes, as you will notice there is an added category of “multiethnic” which contains nearly one quarter of the “not white” students on the waiting list. It is curious why it was necessary to include a “multiethnic” category which is not an option that they would report for API test scores etc… So where would these “multiethnic” students get categoried for official reporting purposes? And why couldn’t the “Multiple/No response” fulfill the same need the “multiethnic” appears to cover? What does Multiethic cover anyway? Is it what we commonly think of as Multiethnic, a child born of two parents of different races? If so, couldn’t that kid just check the “multiple” box? Or is it much more general such as, “Your father is Dutch and your mother is Italian? Well go ahead and check this ‘multiethnic’ box right here!” Is that just too cynical for this early in the morning?
Blogging Bayport Alameda 
Re, above
What does Multiethic cover anyway?
Those are the kids with freckles on their noses.
Comment by Jack Richard — December 31, 2007 @ 9:23 am
This whole race/ethnicty thing is getting really tiresome. Is eduactin being denied anyone in Alameda because of his/her race or ethnicty? No? Then why is it still a topic around here?
Comment by dave — December 31, 2007 @ 9:49 am
**education**
There’s a reason I got an F in typing in 10th grade.
Comment by dave — December 31, 2007 @ 9:50 am
The charter schools are going to take on the characteristics of the social networks of the founders. These will likely be well-funded white majority schools. If you look at the studies that I linked to under the “Chartered Territories” thread (entries 98-100), you will see that this is a typical outcome for charter schools. The multi-ethnic gambit is amusing.
As whites lose majority at Alameda schools, you will see an escalation in the number of charter school requests. Students will likely come from those schools in well-off neighborhoods where whites are no longer in the majority. For example, I would expect that a disproportionate number would come from Earhart, Bay Farm and Otis. Edison is a white enclave school and I would expect few students to come from that attendance zone. This scenario is drawn from the conclusions reached in the studies that I mentioned.
Under what circumstances would white families keep their children in non-white majority schools instead of moving to the charters? First of all, not all white families are going to be in the social network of those who found the charters. Not all white families feel the need to have their children attend white majority schools. Some families may not have the transportation options to send their children to schools outside of the neighborhood.
We may now also be seeing the formation of asian enclave schools in Alameda. In the very near future Bay Farm and Earhart will like become asian majority schools. If the charters draw enough white children from Otis, then Otis too could become an asian majority school.
As white students enroll in the charters and leave the conventional public schools, the district will be faced with having to close one or more elementary schools. The schools most likely to be closed are those with the fewest white students. I doubt if Ruby Bridges will be closed, so that leaves Washington and/or Haight.
If either Washington or Haight is closed, then where do those children go? How will the attendance zones be drawn? If Franklin receives many of these students, then it will lose white majority and those parents will be shopping around for another school.
The school board is facing a crisis. The charters could force the district into a death spiral as charters proliferate and the district budget sharply declines.
Comment by Alameda NayTiff — December 31, 2007 @ 10:05 am
Well like the fortune cookie says, crisis = danger + opportunity.
Danger is parents leaving a school system that isn’t meeting their expecatations and taking their state funding with them.
Opportunity is keeping those families AND improving overall district performance by offering more families a product that would meet their needs and expectations.
But that makess too much sense for ANT to grasp.
Comment by dave — December 31, 2007 @ 10:47 am
What if all of the students in Alameda went to charter schools instead of the traditional public schools? Would it be possible to educate the same number of students with the same amount of state funding using charters exclusively?
The part of this discussion that I find interesting is the apparent desire of many people to prevent charters in order to maintain the traditional format because of concerns about equal access to quality education. But what if all the students simply went to charter schools? Wouldn’t that address the concerns about “white majority” charters vs the ethnic makeup of the traditional schools?
Is something special about the traditional schools that makes them preferable to charter schools, and therefore worthy of protection from competition? The only “something special” that’s been advanced routinely is the argument about equal access.
Comment by Mike Rich — December 31, 2007 @ 11:30 am
Why so many charter applications? Great questions!
I think it’s way of fighting back against centralized, top-down rigidity and bureaucratic stupidity epitomized by NCLB.
NCLB is what you get when your tax money goes further and further away before it comes back as program funding. It comes back laden with mistrust of those doing the work, the teachers. It comes back with a bureaucrat’s bloodless sensibility about the customer in this case the student. It comes back with an ‘I know better than you’ attitude towards the buyer, in this case the parent.
This is the kind of arrangement that made the Soviet Union the great scientific, social and economic success it is today.
Of course, when education spending was more decentralized there were problems for which centralization seemed to be the cure. The pendulum is swinging back the other way now via charter schools.
Comment by another bob — December 31, 2007 @ 11:59 am
At the risk of being politically incorrect, public education need for protection is based on the complusory nature of the education provided. If all children opted in into public education with the same level of commitment exhibited by parents of children of choice, I would posit that public education would not need protection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education
Comment by Mike McMahon — December 31, 2007 @ 12:45 pm
Mike, from your post #8, can one conclude that opposition to charter schools is opposition to commitment?
Comment by dave — December 31, 2007 @ 12:52 pm
Actually one can conclude that we should be opposed to lack of commitment.
Comment by Mike McMahon — December 31, 2007 @ 1:25 pm
First, a thank you to laurendo for this and many other posts on contentious subjects in Alameda. I’m not a parent or a teacher so this doesn’t affect me as directly as it does some of the other folks who’ve commented. I find I have great sympathy for both sides of this issue. If I’m a parent I want the best for my child. I may think the best for my child is a charter school. I may think the best for my child is a good public school system.
I think that part of the problem is that a charter school has such a huge and immediate negative financial impact on a small school district like AUSD. So a relatively small group will have a much better educational experience than they would have in AUSD. However, the thousands of children left in AUSD have a worse educational experience as a direct result of the charter school. That is a classic crisis of the commons situation. The money for AUSD is a limited resource, it comes from everybody’s taxes, it is spent for everybody’s benefit. To what degree is it alright for a small group to benefit from using that limited pool of resources when their benefit comes at a direct cost to the larger community? In this very narrow and particular situation I think the cost to the larger community is much too great. Having a good school district strongly correlates to high property values, and whole raft of other things that we think of as making up a good community to live in.
Now, I am not totally against charter schools. But I do think that the way charter schools have been implemented in California is deeply flawed. There is a very high failure rate, lack of accountability, and a heck of mess for local school districts to clean up when charter schools do fail. (Just for the record, I think that this charter school would probably succeed if they were approved.) But, in this situation and at this time I think the financial cost to AUSD is just too high.
Comment by Roger — December 31, 2007 @ 1:28 pm
Happy New Year all… I admit that I’m being a bit swayed by the financials here… too bad the system is set up the way it is. (But no… Mark I isn’t turning me into a socialist… hardly…)
Post #2 – I totally agree. That argument is getting very tiresome. I don’t think ANY parents switch schools because of race. In 4th grade, the curriculum changes and the teacher/student ratio changes to 1/32 if I’m not mistaken. I could see THAT being a reason. Or maybe they’ve been saving up for private school as part of a long term plan.
Anyway,,,, if I felt like a charter was that much better for my kids than the public school, I’d be happy to pay for it… assuming it was in the range of our public school alotment or a catholic school… if we could pay for Head Royce/equiv obviously we’d just go private.
Comment by Jack B. — December 31, 2007 @ 1:50 pm
#6
“But what if all the students simply went to charter schools? Wouldn’t that address the concerns about “white majority” charters vs the ethnic makeup of the traditional schools?”
The public funding of the charters is just the beginning. Well-connected charters with well-off constituencies can raise significant amounts of private funds. It is all about the social networks that form the charter and their ability to raise cash from both the parents and from other private sources that make the charters so attractive. It is a return to separate and unequal.
When the well-connected and well-off leave the conventional public schools, they will gladly hand over the debt-ridden remains of the district to the less well-off and connected to run.
Comment by Alameda NayTiff — December 31, 2007 @ 3:09 pm
Well TIFF people are leaving the school district for alternatives because they’re not satisfied with the service. So it’s going to hell anyway if it stays status quo, right? (imagine all of the tax revenues you haven’t even considered losing w/ the deflation of housing values.) So maybe people of any and all colors better start networking and saving their hard-earned cash.
Comment by Jack B — December 31, 2007 @ 3:24 pm
A funding question. In balancing public school budgets, recurring costs cannot be offset by one time donations but must be directly accounted for with recurring funds, i.e. taxes. In a charter set up, can they take their ADA and add to it with donations, correct? Are there the same restrictions as with the public system. The accountability sounds funky.
To burden the public budget with the charter and then expect the public system administrators to exercise oversight on the charter to satisfy the state is ridiculous.
Comment by Mark I — December 31, 2007 @ 3:35 pm
“Funding levels are different. Charters tend to receive more discretionary dollars but less overall funding than regular public schools. The difference, according to a 2003 RAND evaluation of the state’s charter schools, is primarily because many charters, especially start-ups, do not participate in large categorical programs such as the federal Title I. In addition, many charter schools—in particular start-ups—must spend a portion of their funds on facilities. But charter schools tend to receive more revenues from nongovernment sources, such as private donations and foundations. RAND
found that charter schools on average received $433 per student from these sources while comparable mainstream schools received $83.”
Click to access EdSourceReport_CharterSchools_May06.pdf
Comment by Alameda NayTiff — December 31, 2007 @ 3:56 pm
…. and if the charter families start kicking in for fees (to cover admin fees) then it’ll be even more unfair in your eyes, right?
Comment by Jack B — December 31, 2007 @ 3:57 pm
#17
“and if the charter families start kicking in for fees (to cover admin fees) then it’ll be even more unfair in your eyes, right?”
The whole system of charters is essentially unfair as it diverts public education funds (my tax dollars) to social networks that are wealthier and better educated at the expense of others. It moves public education from a focus on “our children” to a focus on “my children.”
–
“Charters generally serve fewer English learners and low-income students. (The measure of low-income students is questionable for charter schools because
it is based on children eligible for free/reduced-priced meals, and some charters serving poor students do not operate such a program and thus are not identified as eligible.) However, if charters have fewer of these educationally
disadvantaged pupils, it should help them more in their performance starting point (Base API score) than in their ability to meet state-set improvement
goals (growth targets).”
“charter students were much less
likely to be English learners or to have parents without a high school diploma and were considerably more likely to have at least one college-educated parent”
Click to access EdSourceReport_CharterSchools_May06.pdf
Comment by Alameda NayTiff — December 31, 2007 @ 4:30 pm
Of course it would be. It always unfair when non-white person or anyone not named Alameda NayTiff acts for his own childrens’ education.
Comment by dave — December 31, 2007 @ 4:30 pm
It’s also unfair when a government monopoly is challenged to improve its delivery of services.
Comment by dave — December 31, 2007 @ 4:36 pm
re 19
Bad typing strikes again, should read:
“It is always unfair when any white, non-white, or any person not named Alameda NayTiff acts for his own childrens’ education.”
Imagine how bad my typing will be in a few hours:)
Comment by dave — December 31, 2007 @ 4:41 pm
#21
““It is always unfair when any white, non-white, or any person not named Alameda NayTiff acts for his own childrens’ education.””
You have somewhat made my point. The public schools are supported by everyone’s taxes and are to benefit all children, not those of a specific family. If you want to act for you own childrens’ education, you are free to do so, but don’t do it with public tax money.
Comment by Alameda NayTiff — December 31, 2007 @ 4:50 pm
Re, # 8, 9, 10
Interesting three posts, but the compulsory nature of education mentioned in Mike’s # 8 didn’t get addressed except by the link and the last ten works of his # 8: “If all children opted in into public education with the same level of commitment exhibited by parents of children of choice, I would posit that public education would not need protection.”
The point is, commitment to education by some parents will never reach the level of commitment by other parents. The compulsory nature of education penalizes those parents with high levels of commitment. Penalizes by forcing them to contribute to the education of all kids at the expense of contributing exclusively to their own kids’ education.
Charter schools appear to be an end run around the compulsory education but not committed parent conundrum. Charter schools suck committed parents and funds from public schools which were developed to cope with federal mandated compulsory education. Where this leaves public schools is going to be fascinating theater over the next few years.
Comment by Jack Richard — December 31, 2007 @ 5:26 pm
Charter schools are reform and improvement from within. I’m not surprised that ANT can’t grasp this, but I am surprised that JR doesn’t get it.
Charter schools (if they succeed, obvious caveat) are a very cheap way to improve the district’s performance. Far les expensive than new buildings, cheaper & less enervating than taking on the unions, etc
If reform from within is successful, then flight to without might be avoided.
What is so difficult to get?
Comment by dave — December 31, 2007 @ 5:53 pm
JR does get it and I get it as well. We all come from very different perspectives. JR does not believe in publicly funded compulsory education; therefore, to him the charter schools are only a reform of a corrupt system. I see public education as a common good which benefits all, not just the children who are being educated. To me the charter schools are an end-run around public education.
It isn’t that we don’t get it — we simply disagree because we come from different world views. If we all agreed, there wouldn’t be much discussion and Alameda would be a rather boring place to live.
Comment by Alameda NayTiff — December 31, 2007 @ 6:03 pm
Dave #24
“Charter schools (if they succeed, obvious caveat) are a very cheap way to improve the district’s performance. Far les expensive than new buildings, cheaper & less enervating than taking on the unions, etc”
The charters aren’t very cheap, they come at a very real expense to the remaining public system.
“If reform from within is successful, then flight to without might be avoided.”
They are not a reform at all, they are a Trojan Horse for private schools sucking off the public dollars.
Our charter laws are vague enough to allow some real BS to take place in the name of education. (I’m not saying here that the NCLC program is necessarily BS.)
Comment by Mark I — December 31, 2007 @ 6:21 pm
BEWARE: MEGA-POST
There are references here to the quality of “service” we get from the public system, and the term “product” is also used. And there are references to our schools in general being “competitive”, like GM and Toyota.
I understand the common fundamentals of business and commerce which apply to schools as being the logic for using these terms, but to me using them moves us away from the actual fundamental of what educating humans is all about. In the classroom that is fundamental is human interaction, not stamping, milling, grinding, or downloaded. Maybe the terms encoding and encrypting are more analogous, but that’s still a little sterile and Orwellian for my sensability.
On the one hand the NCLC proponents have complained about kids being stuck in the traditional “box” and being stifled by status quo regimens. In that context, it seems odd for people to use terms of production and delivery. like those for widget production to try to describe how to attain a better education outcome.
If you believe in public education at all you have to be willing to think of a joint enterprise and a somewhat communal undertaking with mutual responsibilities. Maybe we are like stock holders in a corporation with equal shares.
I’m not at all opposed to public schools offering innovative programs like ACLC. I think these programs can be terrific. I have a problem trying to deliver these programs in the current context of charters. I suspect that in an ideal situation where we were all getting the education “product” we feel our children are entitled to, that the modes used at ACLC would still not be in use for the majority of students. That suspicion is based on my gut (a la Dubya) not on statistics.
Anecdote:
Our family absolutely could not afford twelve years of private school for two kids ($250-$350,000), but we did make a decision to send one child for three years of middle school. It was costly. Our son got some music and dance he might not have gotten in public school. It was perhaps a bit broader than the education he would have gotten joining band at one of our middle schools. He got some art classes too. His private school Spanish instruction was taught in rotation with the art, music, dance, etc., over the three years, so that when he was ready for ninth grade his Spanish proficiency was not on par with his public school peers entering Spanish II. My wife tutored him over the summer to be prepared for Spanish II. The teachers at private school were all good, but not necessarily exceptional, and as a group they were not superior to most of their peers in the AUSD. The one absolutely critical difference in our son’s private education was CLASS SIZE. Seventeen kids to a room to be exact.
That is roughly half the number of kids in public, and we paid roughly twice the annual ADA for one student. If you approach education from a bean counter’s stand point, the important number is class size and all the economies of scale which go with that. Much of the “commitment” we’re discussing has roots in class size reduction. We attain greater commitment from teachers who are currently stressed out by kids in numbers which reduce them to the role of disciplinarians. We gain commitment from students who get enough individual attention from educators to be motivated and want to learn. And maybe more commitment from parents who feel they get the “product” they deserve. Maybe not.
We can’t deny public education to children of under-committed parents can we? Since we can’t police the home, if we believe in public education, we will have to accept inequities in the amount which parents participate in their children’s education. If you require exact parity on this account, a public system is not and will never be the place to look for it.
Now we get to competition. Our son’s private education did not compete well when it came to the bang for the buck, even though we did get some things the public system couldn’t provide. We might have gotten a better “product” at Head Royce, but we would have paid an even higher premium. Talking about competition between private systems may be valid to a point, but the public system can only provide so much on the budget we give it. I don’t see how fostering direct competition between private and public education systems is supposed to work as a force for improving the latter. We would have to move to a 100% voucher system to allow that to actually take place in the supposedly free market. Short of that, how does competition naturally lead to improving the public system? It doesn’t because it’s a red herring argument made for people who think running an public education system is analogous to running a ball bearing factory.
Comment by Mark I — December 31, 2007 @ 7:44 pm
Somehow I don’t think that this is what NCLC means by multi-ethnic
Beware: Good music ahead
Comment by Alameda NayTiff — December 31, 2007 @ 7:46 pm
Re. 24 & 25
Dave, it is unclear what you mean by the term “within”. If you mean that Charter schools receive their funding from the same pot as regular public schools, you’re right. They are publicly funded, a fact that ANT and Mark I gloss over because my interpretation of their belief is that, “public funding” (i.e., your and my tax dollars) are only to be used to fulfill the federal mandate of compulsory education for every kid.
Charter schools diverge from that mandate, so they are not “within” the public school system as identified by ANT and ILK and are by their definition a Trojan horse within the system. They predict dire consequences as a result of Charter schools succeeding. They call it a “death spiral”. They believe (correct me when I’m wrong, ANT) that society gains more by trying to educate every kid by mandating education even though compulsory education may mean lowering (leveling) the education of the brightest and failing to educate those that won’t be educated. I don’t agree with that society gains in that scenario.
ANT is right that we both “get it” but wrong that we have different world views. We have the same world view but different views of the basic freedoms this country was founded on and its uniqueness because of those freedoms.
Comment by Jack Richard — December 31, 2007 @ 8:44 pm
#29
“They believe (correct me when I’m wrong, ANT) that society gains more by trying to educate every kid by mandating education even though compulsory education may mean lowering (leveling) the education of the brightest and failing to educate those that won’t be educated. I don’t agree with that society gains in that scenario.”
Not quite. Children do not get to choose their parents. The brightest children may not succeed because of the failures of their parents, not because of their own failures. I am not giving anyone a free pass. Parents must be involved with their children’s education — but too often the parents are unable to do so because they lack the education, are absent, drug addicted or psychologically impaired. The children must be given the opportunity to succeed — not just for their benefit, but for the benefit of the community as a whole.
“ANT is right that we both “get it” but wrong that we have different world views. We have the same world view but different views of the basic freedoms this country was founded on and its uniqueness because of those freedoms”
Jack’s “rugged individualism” and my “for the common good” are both very entrenched in American history and culture. Perhaps it is best if both voices are heard and neither drowns out the other.
Comment by Alameda NayTiff — December 31, 2007 @ 10:16 pm
what makes anyone so sure that the kids in ACLC or the new charter are/will be the recipients of better education. Nothing in the new application offers anything other than hope, to substantiate the reason for moving a child to it. Our college bound kids from Encinal and Alameda stack up well against the general school populations–and most of the kids who do well at Encinal and Alameda received their earlier schooling at our elementary and middle schools.
Comment by Barbara Kahn — January 1, 2008 @ 6:59 am
Re. # 31
1. College bound kids would stack up well in any school population but this isn’t about college bound kids. Your daughter attended Chipman, Encinal and UC Berkeley. My daughter attended Edison, Washington, Encinal and graduated from UC Berkeley. My kids (and probably yours) could have gone to any school in the nation and still achieved the same education level, it’s not about these kids. It’s about regular public schools losing their monopoly on state funding.
2. One argument is the budget hole that will result in the regular public school budget if Charter schools keep siphoning tax money. The other argument (ANT.s and ILK’s) is that somehow public schools are for the “common” good and Charters are for the elite good (the un-common good). I don’t buy ANT’s view. But I do believe, primarily because of the SIM Fusion Project (well described by your daughter in # 8 of “Alt Ed, part one) that Alameda gains very little from K-5 Charters.
3. Regular public schools get a bad rap but most of it is due to requirements laid on them from local, state, federal and even the United Nations (Universal Declaration of Human Rights). When you have that range of bureaucratic meddling, it’s amazing, to me, our regular public schools are as good as they are.
4. I believe the single most important and fundamental tool kids can gain in K-5 is reading/comprehension. I believe the SIM Projects, being implemented in Alameda regular public schools, offers the best bet to implement the reading/comprehension skill.
5. The one aspect of regular public schools which differs from Charters is the “compulsory” nature of their mission. This mandate means these schools must exist if for no other reason than to warehouse kids who can’t go anywhere else, who don’t want to be there and will gain nothing (in the education sphere) from the experience.
6. Back to the budget thing. Rob Siltanen lays out an argument in # 90 “Chartered Territory” concerning the deleterious effects Chartering more public schools in Alameda will have on regular school budgets. His argument hasn’t been refuted by the Charters (at least I haven’t seen it refuted or even addressed in this Blog) so, I believe him.
7. Back to the budget thing, Pt II. Charter schools siphon money from regular public schools. Because of their mission mandate, regular public schools must get their funding somewhere. Therefore, my belief is that it’s safer FOR THE TAXPAYER to continue to fund a single provider of “education” for K-5. Eliminate the compulsory nature of the mission for public schools and change the funding model and I might change my mind.
Comment by Jack Richard — January 1, 2008 @ 10:39 am
Jack:
Not related to this thread but thought you would appreciate this:
http://www.libertarianism.com/differences.htm
Comment by Mike McMahon — January 1, 2008 @ 1:03 pm
The applicants claim that:
” In conclusion, a highly motivated experienced staff, a potential student body that is ethnically diverse (62.4% non-Caucasian), potential PCSGP startup funds, and unused public school facilities are all available at this time to make this new school a reality.”
They also claim that 24.4 percent are multi-ethnic (an undefined term, though I take it to mean multi-racial).
These claims need to be investigated. If they prove to be untrue, then the application must be denied and those seeking public funds turned over to the District Attorney for investigation. Taxpayers need to be assured that the claims of those seeking public funds can be verified and that criminal charges will be filed in those cases where public funds are sought under false pretenses. How have the applicants determined that 62.4 percent of the students for NCLC are “non Causasion?” The data backing that statement needs to be made public.
Comment by Alameda NayTiff — January 1, 2008 @ 7:16 pm
Why are you so obsessed by the skin tones of current or prospective students?
Comment by dave — January 2, 2008 @ 7:42 am
One big difference between the traditional public schools in California and the charter/private schools is that the latter are better able to involve parents and the community at large. Public schools routinely prevent parents from volunteering to help because the unions representing the school employees claim that it violates their labor agreement. So, it’s ironic when someone claims that public schools foster a communal approach to education as compared to charter/private. The only thing communal about traditional public schools is the pooling of public money to fund it.
Comment by Mike Rich — January 2, 2008 @ 8:29 am
Re. 34
“Caucasian” exclusively to identify people who are from the Caucasus region or who speak the Caucasian languages.”
If you want to count genes ANT, I’d bet the non-Caucasian percentage is probably 95+%.
Comment by Jack Richard — January 2, 2008 @ 8:54 am
Mike, my children attend public school here in Alameda, and I can tell you that you are misinformed when you state:
“Public schools routinely prevent parents from volunteering to help because the unions representing the school employees claim that it violates their labor agreement.”
Maybe this is something you read about happening in the state of California, but our school, (along with most of the public elementary schools in Alameda) have entirely parent-run Art Docent and Garden Docent programs. My children are in second grade and I have volunteered extensively in all three years of their schooling, and have never been told that I couldn’t. (Wacky Wednesday, anyone?)
The statement that “public schools do not foster a communal approach to education as compared to charter/private” is false. I have nieces at two of the private Catholic schools here on the Island and yes, their parents do volunteer in the classroom, but from what I have seen, it’s just about the same amount of parental involvement that is happening at our public school. The only difference I see is that at the Catholic schools, participation is not voluntary, there are a certain number of required hours for each family.
Have you ever been in the halls of one of Alameda’s public schools during the school day? Have you ever looked at the Visitor’s log in the offices? If you had, you would see that there is no Teacher’s union turning away the approx. 20+ parents a day that are volunteering at our public school.
Comment by Kerri L. — January 2, 2008 @ 9:32 am
I agree w/ Kerri. We feel more than welcome volunteering at Lum, and so do many others.
Comment by Jack B. — January 2, 2008 @ 9:38 am
Community Learning Center Schools claims that:
“The 6-12 portion of the new school will seek to recruit the 150 learners on the ACLC wait list, 63.4% of whom are non-Caucasian.” (Page 4 of the charter application.) Yet, the current enrollment of ACLC is 60 percent white. What accounts for the difference between current enrollment and those who are on the wait list?
Comment by Alameda NayTiff — January 2, 2008 @ 9:51 am
George Wallace. He’s standing at the door and he’s clutching the waiting list.
A combination of talking therapy & anti-depressants might help cure you of this obsession.
Comment by dave — January 2, 2008 @ 10:13 am
For those interested, here is a link to Single School Plan for 2006/07 ACLC. The Single School Plans are prepared by each school to help them focus on areas of improvement.
http://mikemcmahon.info/SSP/aclcssp06.htm
Comment by Mike McMahon — January 2, 2008 @ 10:26 am
I have already shared my point of view in a series of earlier postings here and I’ve written an Op-Ed piece for tomorrow’s Alameda Sun that attempts (in the 750 words or less the Sun allows) to summarize/restate my opposition to the proposed NCLC charter. But since the discussion here still seems pretty lively, I thought I would take a break from grading Alameda High 12th grade term papers and contribute some observations for whatever they might be worth.
First, if Mr. Rickard the apparent libertarian/freedom/rugged individualist and Mr./Ms. NayTiff the apparent communitarian/equality/common good-ist AGREE that the NCLC charter application should be denied, at least at this point in time, that has to be the right answer, doesn’t it?
Secondly, I really appreciate Roger’s post #11 above from December 31. His reference to “the crisis of the commons” (also known as the “tragedy of the commons”) incisively identifies and analyzes one of the core dilemmas in this and many other policy areas where an unduly rigid allegiance to/reliance on completely free markets and competition to solve problems can actually lead to inefficient outcomes. Usually, free markets and competition are wonderfully efficient, but not always, and perhaps not often when applied to the context of public education. In any case, whatever one’s view of the particular issues involved in the NCLC charter application, I hope any students of law and economics consider Roger’s thoughtful perspective.
Thirdly, for those who are still undecided, I’d like to suggest one other “lens” through which to think about the massive financial impact on AUSD of approving this new charter: The financial impact would be roughly equivalent to repealing the entire school parcel tax, all in order to possibly benefit a few hundred students. I am well aware that many readers of this blog aren’t fans of the (admittedly imperfect) school parcel tax, but more than two-thirds of Alamedans did vote for it in 2005 in what is the closest thing we have to a referendum on how well the public thinks AUSD is doing.
Finally, I agree with responses #38 and #39 to Mike Rich’s wildly inaccurate allegations in his post #36. I wouldn’t be surprised to find a case somewhere in the U.S. in which a public school “routinely prevent[s] parents from volunteering to help,” but I would be very surprised to find that in Alameda and I know that if it did happen in Alameda it would be the rare exception, not “routine.” To add to #38 and #39, I’ll share that my wife volunteers several hours every week in our daughter’s 3rd grade AUSD public school classroom, as do several other parents. Last year my mother and mother-in-law (my daughter’s grandmothers) did the same. At Alameda High where I teach, parents, professional visitors, and other volunteers are quite common.
I happen to think Alameda’s public schools are great, though of course also less than perfect. I respect and appreciate many of AUSD’s critics and think we can all always benefit from and improve based on criticism. But I’d like to suggest that those taking their shots at our public schools try a fact-based critique rather than employing baseless generalizations or abstract ideology.
Happy New Year!
Comment by Rob Siltanen — January 2, 2008 @ 11:17 am
there was a time in the far distant past, when parents were not welcomed in the classroom I vollunteered to do something about Hannukah in my daughters classroom and the teacher who could not refuse, instead, stayed home on the day I was there–but that was long ago, and now as a grandma I am still making latkes in my grandchild’s room, welcomed not only by is teacher but by anyone who smelled the cooking and checked in.
On a lighter note, there were people who fought WITHIN the system to make changes–changes that ultimately benefitted all children
Comment by Barbara Kahn — January 2, 2008 @ 1:06 pm
oops not lighter–
Comment by Barbara Kahn — January 2, 2008 @ 1:08 pm
Kerri and Jack B,
Thanks for sharing your experiences volunteering at Alameda public schools. I’m glad to hear that you have not been prevented from volunteering. It is true, though, that this is an issue in the State of California in general; the fact that it has not come up with you may have to do with the fact that the things you are volunteering to do are not in the scope or work performed by paid school employees. The examples that come up most often that I have read about are where parents try to volunteer to do maintenance work at the school (e.g., paint, build a fence or playground facilities, etc.).
My post was in part a reaction to an assertion made in one of the other posts that a communal approach to education was what made public education preferable to charters or private. I guess I should have counted to ten before hitting send.
Thanks again for sharing your experiences.
Mike
Comment by Mike Rich — January 2, 2008 @ 5:24 pm
No worries, Mike. Happy to say this is one of the big pluses of public over private.
To the wider thread…. I’d like to mention that I have an old friend who works with school districts all over the country. He covers a lot of California and comes through the Bay Area a couple times per year. Relative to California, he says we are very fortunate here in Alameda.
This funding problem has me changing my tune. I hope the discussion leads to a creative solution where we can have choices without shooting ourselves in the feet.
Comment by Jack B. — January 2, 2008 @ 6:28 pm
#42
From which neighborhoods does ACLC draw? The school is located in the west end, but the student demographics more closely match the east end. There are so few non-white students (37%) that API scores for each subgroup are not numerically significant.
http://tinylink.com/?Xq7Q6CWQIr
Comment by Alameda NayTiff — January 2, 2008 @ 6:57 pm
ANT: Page 96 in the demographic report shows ACLC residences.
Click to access Demographic07b.pdf
Comment by Mike McMahon — January 2, 2008 @ 7:24 pm
ANT:
Are you going to explain your bizarre obsession with race? Are you going to show any proof that the racial makeup of ACLC reflects anything other than free will? Do you have a rational point at all?
Comment by dave — January 2, 2008 @ 8:29 pm
California charter schools need to reflect the diversity of the chartering school district. Here is one of the requirements specified in CA Ed Code for a charter application:
The means by which the school will achieve a racial and ethnic balance among its students that is reflective of the general population residing within the district’s territorial jurisdiction.
Comment by Mike McMahon — January 2, 2008 @ 8:36 pm
51
So hire some Pinkertons and dragoon a few students of the proper hue. Or shut down ANT’s racist cabal. One or both should make the PC spreadsheet balance.
Comment by dave — January 2, 2008 @ 8:42 pm
#49
Thank you. Very interesting.
Comment by Alameda NayTiff — January 2, 2008 @ 8:49 pm
As you surely know by now, next Tuesday January 8, the School Board will be voting to approve or deny the application for the new NCLC charter school in Alameda. As we reach the end of this phase of this debate and “decision-time” approaches, I want to reiterate that I respect that reasonable people of good will hold diverse opinions about charter schools in general and about this proposed charter in particular. Whatever decision the School Board reaches, we should all be prepared to move ahead together after Tuesday.
For those who may be interested, I am including below a copy of an Op-Ed piece I wrote for today’s Alameda Sun that attempts (in the 750 words or fewer that the Sun allows) to summarize/restate my opposition to the proposed NCLC charter. (Depending on the size and ferocity of the storm scheduled to arrive later today, your copy of the Sun may be quite wet when/if you receive it today or tomorrow.)
– – – – – – – –
For your consideration, here’s the text of the Op-Ed piece:
Alameda’s great public schools are the foundation of our community. They benefit all of us by upholding the promise of equal opportunity for all, by strengthening our collective bonds, and even by helping property values. Now is not the time to cripple our public schools by gambling with charters, vouchers, or any other quasi-private school plan.
Providing equal opportunity through public education is a moral imperative. As the Supreme Court explained a half century ago in the Brown case, public education “is the very foundation of good citizenship . . . it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. . . . [it] must be made available to all on equal terms.”
Should the School Board approve a new charter school? No. Not now, when it would gut our public schools. Not for a risky K-5 plan. Not for the few on the backs of thousands of others.
If the Board approves the new charter school, the result will be a 1-2 million dollar hole blown in the AUSD budget. The result would be an acceleration and deepening of the painful cuts in student programs and services that AUSD has already endured in recent years, including, for example, the larger class sizes and reduced counseling services this year at Alameda and Encinal High; increased probability of school closures/consolidations, as almost occurred last winter with Wood Middle School; layoffs or reduced hours for the staff and teachers who serve the students, as happened with office and support staff at most school sites this year; and even more pressure to cut arts, music and athletic programs.
Would it ever be good public policy to make such harmful cuts (and more) affecting more than 9,000 students, all for an unsound, uncertain charter program that would at best only benefit a few hundred students? In 2008, with a projected $14 billion state budget deficit and the high probability that there will be statewide cuts in education spending coming this spring, the answer must be no.
Apart from its disastrous financial impact, the charter application should be denied for an equally important reason: the charter applicants (NCLC) are unlikely to successfully implement the unsound program they propose. NCLC has acknowledged publicly the risk surrounding the K-5 (elementary) portion of their charter by explaining that it would be “a bit of a trust walk.” That’s not good enough for our kids and it’s not good enough under the law.
As just one example, it would not be sound practice to have five to seven year olds in grades K-2 participate in a “democratic community” where they are not directly taught their foundational academic skills such as building basic literacy but are instead led by a “facilitator” to “understand the need to take ownership of their educational experience.” This approach is particularly risky and unsound for students reading below grade level (on the “downside” of the achievement gap) whom NCLC claims to be striving to attract to their new school.
Leaving aside for now the question whether ACLC’s good tests scores really tell the whole story about the extent to which their existing 6-12 program is as successful as claimed, there is no question that the ACLC/NCLC organization itself has no experience outside grades 6-12 in the very different world of K-5 education. Moreover, NCLC’s K-5 leaders lack recent classroom teaching experience and are unproven as administrators.
Finally, ACLC serves a skewed population, with certain groups overrepresented among those who enroll and different groups overrepresented among those who leave. This may not be ACLC/NCLC’s intent, but it has been its practice. Since the proposed new school has no significantly different recruiting or retention plan compared to the existing practices at ACLC (other than eliminating sibling priority), a random lottery for enrollment won’t change anything. A random lottery of a skewed population will still yield a skewed population.
It would be wrong to approve the NCLC charter to possibly benefit that small, skewed population when the budgetary impact of that decision would necessarily be borne by the thousands of AUSD students who will not be participating in the charter school.
Our strong public schools are Alameda’s most important asset. Let’s work together now more than ever to protect our public schools and to help them overcome the serious challenges they face, not turn and walk away. Contact the School Board and urge them to vote no on the proposed new charter.
– – – – – – – –
If you would like to speak out for or against the proposed new NCLC charter school, the School Board meets at City Hall on Tuesday beginning at 6:30. I think this issue will be somewhat late on the agenda Tuesday and will probably not be discussed until sometime after 8:00, though the agenda is still subject to change and sometimes meetings run much more quickly or slowly than one might expect.
If you not able to attend the Board meeting, you can of course still share your views with the Board. To send a message to all the Board Members at once, you can go to the AUSD website “Board of Education” page and click on the blue text. I think the following link will take you there:
http://www.alameda.k12.ca.us/education/components/scdirectory/default.php?sectiondetailid=2&sc_id=1199372056
Alternatively, you can email the Board members directly at the following email addresses:
dforbes@alameda.k12.ca.us
jgibson@alameda.k12.ca.us
tjensen@alameda.k12.ca.us
mmcmahon@alameda.k12.ca.us
wschaff@alameda.k12.ca.us
Comment by Rob Siltanen — January 3, 2008 @ 8:00 am
Hi — I’m a San Francisco public school parent, volunteer and advocate (and blogger), and a charter-school skeptic.
I saw your blog coverage of the proposed Alameda charter school and thought I’d share with you the charter homepage on an education website I co-founded, which lays out concisely the problems with charters.
http://www.pasasf.org/charters/charters.html
Comment by Caroline — January 4, 2008 @ 7:15 am
Have a look at Jeff Mitchell’s letter to today’s journal. It is full of offensive notions like accountability, efficiency & achievement.
Comment by dave — January 4, 2008 @ 8:15 am
It’s Jeffery Smith, not Mitchell.
The guy zig zags between various minor points but makes no real major point other than to defend the right of the charter to apply and be approved under the law, which we already know.
He conveniently sider steps the huge negative budget impact and this from his column is specious BS:
“Within the Alameda Unified School District (AUSD) everyone agrees that students have a right to choose their school; yet a clique seems unwilling to provide substantive choices.
It’s equivalent to a free press with no paper to print on.
De facto opponents of choice argue the great leap: Unless improvements to education instantly accommodate all students, then make no improvements. It’s the all or nothing approach. “
Comment by Mark I — January 4, 2008 @ 1:17 pm
# 57
Right Mark I. I didn’t care much for Jeffery Smith’s analogy. The one about the free press but no paper. A better analogy would be a pilot fish (ACLC) hooked on to a shark (AUSD). Shark would love to kill ’em but can’t quite figure out how to.
Comment by Jack Richard — January 4, 2008 @ 4:48 pm
For those of you who are not on my EMail list, here is the link to District staff recommendation to deny the charter application for the Nea K-12 school:
Click to access NeaRecommendation.pdf
Comment by Mike McMahon — January 6, 2008 @ 6:58 am