Winger's perspective on charter schools, ctd

Lots of passionate reader feedback on Dr. Winger's comments and charter schools in the SCV in general. Where to start?

How about with this concept: The SCV is public school rich, but private school poor and that one-size-fits-all approach at public schools doesn't work. At least that's how I read this comment:

The thing in the SCV is that yeah, we totally have the traditional education thing down. We are good at that. What we aren't as good at is recognizing that one educational model is not the best fit for every child. Outside of the SCV you will see schools of choice, whether public or private. In the SCV the only secular school of choice outside of the charters is West Creek, which sadly I hear increasingly loses the focus (or attempt at a focus) that was to make the school special, to set it apart from every other traditional school in the valley. Despite what the charter opposition and the traditional school system wants to think, our area is seriously lacking in secular choice (even w/SCVi and AEA). 

Don't you think I and the other 600 or so families at SCVi and however many families at AEA would much rather be happy with our neighborhood schools? We drive past dozens of schools to get to our choice school - we're not gluttons for punishment! We don't enjoy putting extra miles on our vehicles and taking hours a day for pick up and drop off. We do it because that's what we need to do in this valley if you want something that goes beyond the traditional system, that is willing and able to step outside of the box. 

Like I said in the first post, such parents are obviously very active in their kids' education, and no one can condemn them for that. But we can ask whether the push for charters in the SCV is a good thing at large for our community, or whether it harms public schools the rest of us go to, as seems to be Winger's contention.

Another reader borrows from Pink Floyd and looks at SCV public schools as robot factories:

Why do parents opt out of traditional schools?  Maybe the better question is why are so many Hart graduates in need of remedial college courses?

Because, by and large, traditional schools only work: A) for kids who are auditory learners, and are disposed to longs spells of sitting still, and like to please those in authority; and B) because of A, churn out largely group-think widget assembliers.  A kid who thinks outside the box, a kid who is self-led learner who is sidetracked by is the meaningless lesson de jour, a kinesthetic learner, a kid who is not motivated to fill in bubbles or perform busy work, etc., these are the kids who need something other than traditional school.  And God help us all if we lose these kids who aren't satisfied to sit in chairs all day and perform disconnected work, done 20 different ways, as mandated by an unknown authority.

And here we see the distrust and dislike for the traditional top-down school hiearchy I mentioned in my post yesterday. With views like that, is there any wonder why Albert Einstein organizers have been trying for almost two years after repeated failures to get their charter status? They just don't like the traditional public school environment and don't trust it as an institution.

One wonders if this reader ever tried to take advantage of programs like GATE within traditional schools.

And yet, this reader has a point when she refers to the Signal's article about the Hart District's seemingly endless supply of remedial students who are passed on to College of the Canyons. We should be upset about the fact that we're paying for students to learn the same things over and over again from the time they're 15 or 16 years old to the time they're 19 or 20.

Another reader says she did try to work through the public school system to get her child's special needs addressed, but in the end, only SCVi's approach helped:

Our reason for choosing charter:  our son has visual perception problems.  “Traditional” classroom methods were not working. By second grade he hated school, called himself “stupid” and was barely passing the language arts.  It only got worse. We had tutors, we were involved parents, and we had the Student Study Team meeting. We were desperate to help our son when we heard about SCVi and project based learning.  Four years later, we have a high school boy who loves school, gets good grades, and did better than he ever has on the STAR testing.  He even talks about college.  We hear this same type of story over and over at SCVi~ kids just like my son who need a different approach to learning.  And why shouldn’t public money fund this?  Public money would have funded all of the testing and extra assistance he would have required had he stayed in our neighborhood school. 

We don’t “distrust” the “traditional top-down school district hierarchy”.  We have another child who attends our neighborhood school and is doing great.  It has nothing to do with the quality of the schools in our area.  SCVi has a different approach and that happens to work for one of my children.  “Does it work for the rest of us?”  If the goal is to have all of our children complete high school, aspire to higher learning, and become productive members of the community~ then, hell yes, it works for all of us. 

I'm glad it worked for your son and that traditional public school is working for your other son. But I worry charters cure the disease by killing the patient.

Another parent whose child is at SCVi levels the "teaching to the test" charge against public schools:

I'm very conflicted on the question of charter schools, and I say this as a parent with two children in a charter school. Whether we made the right choice is an open question. The STAR test results lag behind NSD/SUSD schools, but it's unclear if that indicates a deficiency of basic skills or just less time spent on test prep, which is a very big deal in the mainstream public schools.

In the mainstream schools we had some teachers with incredible professionalism, along with a bad apple that has no business working with children (and should have been fired long ago). The system was rigid, even robotic, and the curriculum was built around STAR testing, to the detriment of other subjects.

The charter is more open in its approach, though lax in execution. Things that happen, no matter what. in a regular public school are treated less urgently at the charter. And yes, you do have the added benefit of everyone there by choice. More purpose, less compulsion.

My feeling at the moment is that certain kids can really soar in this environment. It's too soon to know if my kids will. The utility of any publicly-funded charter should be generalized enough to serve anyone who walks through the doors. If they cater too narrowly to given temperament (or a certain culture), then I have a real problem with such schools getting public funding.

Well, that's the worry. Look at the parent above who writes about the long drive her family has to make to take their kids to the charter school when a neighborhood school is just a few blocks away. Only parents who have the means and time to do that for their children will.

A couple readers suggested to me that Albert Einstein Academy is a "boutique" charter school, the kind profiled in this Bloomberg story about Los Altos California, a Silicon Valley community in which median home prices are $1.2 million and average household income is north of $200,000 a year. Parents there revolted against the high-performing local school district and built their own "public" charter school in 2003 where only 1% of students get free lunches and few materials are printed in Spanish despite the area's large Latino population.

In contrast to the parents above, one reader says SCVi isn't very good at helping special education children:

An issue that has come up in previous Einstein applications is how to serve the number of special education students who will apply for admission to the charters in the SCV (kids with IEPs for learning disabilities, ADHD,high functioning autism, etc.). This is a problem at most charters.  They either aren't willing to take these students (illegal as a public school), or once they're there, they aren't willing to provide access to specialized instruction or provide support services (also illegal, but hard to enforce). There have been many problems with providing required services to special education students at SCVi, to the point that SCVi dropped its affiliation with the local special education agency here and is overseen by an out of area agency. I can only speculate as to why they made that change; farther away, easier to keep them out of their business?  SUSD is right to question how Einstein plans to serve these students because they know they will apply in numbers similar to those at SCVi and they know what happens when the plan is inadequate.   

Assemblyman Smyth acknowledged as much regarding Einstein in yesterday's Signal when he said, "There's something that's not working that's preventing [Einstein] from getting their approval."

What is that something?

Another reader also touches on process and the intent of California's charter school law vs the reality in the SCV:

I thought what you posted was thoughtful and balanced. You set up the dilemma of charters because, from a social policy POV, they have created a force that has the potential of undoing what public schools are all about – opportunity, equity and access for all.

 Here’s what the CA Charter Schools Act says is its intent:

(a) Improve pupil learning.

(b) Increase learning opportunities for all pupils, with special
emphasis on expanded learning experiences for pupils who are identified as academically low achieving. (Education Code 47600-47616.7)

[Charter school] petitioners are also responsible to show how the student body of the charter will be reflective of the chartering district.  Even a cursory look at the data – not the propaganda – of Einstein or SCVi shows that the intent of the law has been ignored.  They do not serve, nor do they want to serve, low achieving students.   

This same reader on Einstein Academy concludes:

Six different school boards – over 30 board members at the district and county level- have denied or indicated that they would deny Einstein elementary.  That’s because no matter what else the applicants say, these boards have seen that they do not intend to serve low achievers, as the law requires.

This is about serious, bedrock, public school-as-an-American institution stuff.  Put Einstein in the vacant Tersierras market store on Newhall Avenue and then we can see how they do. 

The odd thing is that even if you believe SCVi pulls the best students, the most active parents and money from our traditional school district it is, by some of our readers own admission and by the Signal's own reporting, it's a poorer performing school than many SCV public schools.

Keep sending your comments in; jeff@scvtalk.com

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