One of the key issues that we identified with PCSchools was the review process, and how schools that seemingly should be closed, manage to get their charter renewed despite little proof of student achievement. I can imagine many of you out there have made the same observations and have your own opinions--we would love to hear them!
Please use this space to post any experiences you have had with this process, and observations you have made, or any questions that you have.
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My experience with charter schools has thankfully gotten more diverse in the last year. I began my teaching career at what I know to be a low academically performing school, and feel to be a toxic environment to the children who attend and the adults who work there. My current school, however, works extremely hard to comply with charter board standards and has nearly perfect charter reviews - our last review minimal and minor suggestions, such as ideas for enhanced parent involvement. I find my school's attitude towards charter board compliance to be the only thing maintaining my faith in the system.
ReplyDeleteWhat frightens me, is that my former school went through an exhaustive review. The board saw violence and a serious lack of resources and flexibility first hand, as well as interviewed a series of teachers that did not know what differentiating instruction meant or how to explain adapting curriculum. The school was slapped with an additional review the following year, but the published charter board report only indicated a very small amount of the many serious problems.
Though I am extremely thankful that there are charter schools that strive successfully to help their students learn, I wonder at what point the charter board's lack of attention to enforcing standards of excellence will lead the few that do a good job to loosen their standards and put less weight on compliance. I also wonder at what point will the board stop allowing schools to ruin the education of the same children year after year, until it is too late for those students to turn their educational potential in a productive direction.
From a Kindergarten colleague: "We have a School Improvement Plan and the week before our review our administration tells us to review it so we are all 'on the same page'. We also got a cheat sheet!"
ReplyDeleteThese School Improvement Plans (SIP) are put in place to help schools self-evaluate, grow, and improve. In theory. While schools are required to produce them, outside of their formal evaluations, charter schools rarely reference them--in fact, in two years of working at my school, I have never heard one mentioned. They are a requirement, but like the evaluation rubric, seem to be relevant for two weeks out of every five years.
From my own experience:
ReplyDeleteMy school recently got placed on "charter warning" after our five year review. If you asked me to theorize WHY this happened, here might be some of my ideas:
-We have had 5 principals in the last year and a half
-We fired 80% of our teachers at the end of the year last year
-Our testing grades (3-6 as of 2008-2009) scored about 13% proficient or advanced in math, and 38% for reading
-Since the beginning of the year this year, we have lost 3 administrators, 5 teachers, and our 1st grade classroom has seen 4 different teachers since August
-Our special education students do not receive the hours that their IEP (and the law) mandates because we do not have enough SpEd teachers. We literally cannot accommodate our population.
-We average around 50% for parent involvement in Parent Teacher Conferences
-We are thousands of dollars in debt
Sad, isn't it? Now here is the real reason we are on charter warning:
-We have had 5 different Boards of Directors.
As a school district, and as people who by choice have entered into education as a profession...where do our priorities lie???
My Charter School sounds very similiar in that we received a "cheat sheet" of what our "improvement plan" was before our school was reviewed. We went as far as role playing in a staff meeting what our answers should be to specific questions. When a staff member laughed or disagreed with an answer our principal exclaimed, "Well we want to keep our charter so this is what we say..."
ReplyDeleteThere was no role playing before my school's charter board review last year, however, the principal hand picked the teachers that would sit in on the panels. In my opinion, the charter board should have control over who is in the panel meetings. They should also not give advance warning for when that panel will take place. I think that an impromptu discussion with a teacher in a less formal environment, away from the ears of coworkers would be much more telling.
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