While our greatest hope is that our (and your!) recommendations here create an environment that establishes successful public charter schools, we do recognize that there comes a point where a school has been chronically failing its students, and should ultimately be closed down. In fact, in several cases where these failing schools have been allowed to remain open, they have been doing their students and their families a disservice, as students lose valuable years off of their education. The school where I currently teach can provide a perfect example. My school has been the picture of chaos for the last two years. We have seen five different principals, an 80% staff turnover rate, teachers quitting regularly throughout the year, unqualified administrators, a million dollar budget deficit, and insufficient space to even provide each grade level its own classroom. As a result, our test scores last year on the DCCAS were 13% proficient or advanced for Math and 34% for Reading. Our mission guarantees that our school prepares students for college in a rigorous and arts-infused environment, but when only 1 in every 10 students scores proficient or advanced in math, what are we really preparing our students for? Additionally, our students take the NWEA test in the Fall, Winter, and Spring, and during the 2008-2009 school year, scores actually dropped between Fall and Winter in the 4th -6th grades. Students knew less as the year went by. My school is now in its fifth year of operation and we are in the process of having our charter renewed. We have been placed on “charter warning”, but not for the leadership turnovers or for our students assessment data. When the PCSB discovered that we had several different Boards of Directors over the past few years, only then did alarm bells start going off. Unfortunately, the story of my school is not an isolated case. As Meaghan mentioned, her school has existed for 10 years without making AYP—that is a student’s entire education. Schools cannot continue to be held to such a low standard. We believe that a more rigorous evaluation system for charter schools will help to identify and, hopefully, solve challenges that schools may face before they make it to their 5 or 10 year mark. The second prong of that recommendation is, however, that schools who continue to fail their students after all support systems have been exhausted should be closed down. We also encourage the PCSB to reprioritize what information truly determines whether or not a school gets its charter renewed. While it is important to note that the Board of Directors has changed several times during an evaluation, in no way is that more important than the achievement of the students and the consistency and qualifications of teachers and administration. We can no longer allow schools to squander our students’ growth; those who do not meet a high expectation for performance on a consistent basis need to be closed so that the students of the District of Columbia do not lose any more time.
Readers, when do you think it is clear that a school should be closed? What criteria should be used and who should be consulted?
Bravo, Maggie, for your fine assessment of "failing schools" and the higher standard to which charter schools need to be held. I, too, believe that too many schools are in a constant state of flux that cannot be healthy for young minds or the overall positive atmosphere one hopes to find at a school. One way this could perhaps be "marked" would be through the implementation of a scoring rubric in which schools are "graded" on their classroom environments and teacher practices. One such rubric can be found in ELLCO - the Early Language and Literacy Classroom Observation Tool. The ELLCO, when used by an unaffiliated third party, provides a snapshot each classroom in the school and allows teachers to and administraters to see where they are excelling... and failing. Such a tool could easily be administered by the CSRB through the employment of some temporary trained staff. Then, schools who do not make the grade could be given a timeframe to "shape up or ship out". AI agree that many children are being failed by the current state of charter schools and many parents simply don't know. It is an unacceptable state of affairs, and we must find a solution before time runs out for our future leaders.
ReplyDeleteAt the last DC charter board meeting, the Young America Works school officially had its charter revoked. Seeing this decision being handed down brought to life both sides of the debate about school closure. On the one hand, there were many staff and students in the audience who were visibly upset at the decision and stormed out of the meeting room. It was tough to see students so upset about the school closing and to see the looks of defeat in the eyes of the school staff. However, leading up to the vote, a staff member of the board read a very disturbing list of the reasons the school was being considered for closure. Below are just a few of those reasons that stood out to me:
ReplyDelete1. YAW failed to maintain health and safety. There were numerous acts of violence and disorderly conduct including thefts, threats, attacks, insubordination, class cutting, loitering, persistant tardiness, persistent and even a student stabbing.
2. YAW failed to operate in accordance with their mission statement. Specifically, the public charter school board documented that YAW has experienced unacceptably low attendance and truancy.
3.Irregularities that compromise the educational programs’ viability as relates to scheduling, diploma requirements. Fourteen students were officially scheduled with no official transcripts. Forty four tenth graders not scheduled for any math courses. Proficiency on the DCAS in math was as low as 4%. Scores were similarly low in reading.
Clearly this closure needed to happen and I commend the board for doing so. But at the same time, this school operated for over 3 years at such low rates of acheivement and with significant violations. How was it allowed to go on that long?
-Meaghan
On the subject of when to close a school. :) Imagine Charter Schools just had a NY Times article written about it called "For School Company, Issues of Money and Control By Stephanie Strom. The link is
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/education/24imagine.html
It appears there are some shady things going on...
I was also struck by the events that took place during the charter board meeting. Though I felt the dismay in the room and saw the pain on the students' faces when the charter was revoked, I have to agree that this action needed to happen. I do not feel the need to reiterate the numbers Meaghan posted above, but I will say that as testimony was being read about the staggering failure rates in 2009, 2008, and 2007, I wondered why this meeting had not happened in 2008 or earlier. I understand the value in examining the whole situation and working to give schools a chance to make their school better. However, I also feel that charter schools have a specific and urgent mission to provide a better alternative to DCPS. If DCPS schools with better performance rates and compliance rates exist, perhaps it would be better to suspend a school's charter and send students out to higher performing public schools until the school management team has gone through an extensive amount of training, or been removed and replaced.
ReplyDeleteI was also intrigued by the board's concern that the school was not maintaining adequate health and safety standards. This school's actions defiantly warranted action. However, I think that this action should have been taken much more quickly. I have seen excessive violence in other charter schools and often wonder why the board sees this happening and does not work more quickly to secure a safe environment for students. If a child does not feel safe, they will not learn. Does anyone have a suggestion or practice from another district that penalizes schools for having excessive violence? If so, are there ways to adapt that to DC's charter schools?
I'm new to following your blog, but I wanted to try and shed a different light on the subject matter of closing under-performing schools if I may. As a Teach for America alum, I was placed in a very impoverished, low-performing high school where the graduation rate was around 45% and state test scores were abysmal. But year after year, the school managed to stay open and the same administrators got to keep doing their sub-par jobs. At first, I was very frustrated with this system, and even more frustrated with the higher-ups who were allowing this sort of thing to happen. However, as I continued to work in the school, I realized that all of the resources necessary to produce great student minds were in that building. Not only that, but the environment was more than saturated with qualified teachers who wanted to do a good job if given the chance. So you might ask, "Well what went wrong?" In addition to having a teacher's union that allowed bad teachers to keep their positions, the school also had plenty of systems that allowed administrators to keep their jobs. In Teach for America one of the first concepts that we were taught was that a strong school needs strong leadership. Pioneers in the charter school movement like Steve Perry (of New Jersey) have shown America that you don't need lots of money or an amazing board of directors to get the job done. I say this because in my opinion before we apply yet another rating system to each charter school or look at another round of standardized test scores we need to be working to find the solutions within our schools. In my opinion, applying a rating system or judging our students (who are already behind) by their test scores just perpetuates the ideas and practices that have led to the atrocious situation that public schools currently face. We cannot adopt a one-size-fits-all model and hope to accomplish any sort of true educational enrichment. Don't get me wrong, if schools are under-performing and have been doing so for years and years, then shutting them down may be the right answer. But before that we need to reassess the leadership models in the school. All of the power to make decisions shouldn't lie in the hands of a principal or a superintendent. It should be equally held by all of the teachers who serve as the direct lines of communication between the students, community, and higher ups. If these empowerment strategies, once tried, have failed then we should seek alternatives like shutting a school down.
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