Weak.

The Fear

Here’s the only reason I heard for disapproving: with 500 students enrolled in the KIPP school, my district will say goodbye to roughly 20 teachers. So even if KIPP better serves their specific population of students (as much standardized test and final grade data show), even if those students are in a better situation than we provide in our public schools, we should not allow it. Teachers losing their jobs was the sole argument I heard during a brief speech at the “inservice” meeting before last.

That’s It?

The way I see it, this is not a problem. First off, if fewer teachers is the big concern, there’s a predicted teacher shortage, so we shouldn’t be worried about losing anyone. Secondly, our school system needs to be about the students we serve. If there’s another model out there doing a better job than traditional public schools, we need to give that model a chance to thrive. If we question that fact, let the argument be about efficacy, not employment. Thirdly, charter schools focusing on specific populations allows public schools to do the same. 500 students will be in a school designed with them in mind. I imagine all 500 of those students coming from my school. The students that we’d be left with would have a narrower set of needs; we’d better be able to define and reach those needs.

I’ve written about KIPP before, visited a KIPP open house, received regular updates about KIPP. I’m familiar with the KIPP model and, while I wouldn’t work in such a school, am anxious to see how students from my district do in such an environment. What’s everyone afraid of? Worried you might actually have to compete for your job? Worried you might lose your job because someone else is doing it? Worried that the someone else is doing it better? If those things start to worry teachers, we are one step closer to actually working in a profession, not just a career.

KIPP doesn’t frighten me and it shouldn’t frighten you. If the KIPP model, or any other charter school, puts public schools out of business, maybe public schools deserve that.Similar Posts:

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Not As Selective, But Still…

To many charter schools’ credit, reports show a student population as mixed at a charter school as at an average public school. The students at a charter school don’t tend to be at either extreme end of the spectrum; overachievers and at-risk students tend to show up in equal numbers.

On my KIPP visit, the numbers thrown out were that about 80% of students are on the free or reduced lunch program and about 20% of students come from a household with any kind of college education in their background. Remember that these were just estimates. Those numbers indicate to me a wide variety of the student population, not dominated by high or low achievers.

The One Big Advantage

Public school is a no-brainer for parents, something they don’t even need to think about once they’ve bought the house. What high school to attend? Before the baby is even born, parents know the answer to that simply by looking at their mailing address. Before the baby was even considered, the parents probably made this decision, as school test scores are taken into consideration in many a home purchase.

Generally speaking, transportation to the local public schools isn’t an issue as they are within a perimeter of a few miles. I walked 3 blocks to my middle school and rode my bike about 1 mile to my high school. Even when parents do have to drive their children to school, it’s often on their way to work and not a terrible inconvenience in the grand scheme of things.

What charter schools have, without exception, is built-in parent interest in their child’s education. That interest is necessary to even know about the charter school’s existence, let alone the admissions process. Think about this: do you know where the local charter schools are? I’ve heard that there is a KIPP school in San Jose and I had no idea before another teacher told me.

By the very virtue of the fact that the student is being sent somewhere other than the school down the street, parents indicate that they care about education enough to explore options. Certainly, parents of students in public schools may have done the same thing and decided on the public school system; there are those that believe in public school education and see it as a better alternative. It is possible that public schools have just as many motivated parents as charter schools. But being a parent of a charter school student means that you are a parent who has necessarily explored options. It’s not only possible that you have looked at alternative houses of education, you simply must have done so. Those parents of students in public schools may not have been motivated or informed enough to look around; that means a very different environment at home, a huge factor in academic performance.

That’s What I Want

Even with charter schools, money is an issue. It almost always is.

Charter schools can charge tuition. This adds another layer of parent interest. You were interested enough to examine what options you had about where your child will get an education. Are you interested enough to pay for it? If you are, this is another step removed from the parents of most public school students. It also means that your household values education, literally. Education is important enough to shell out some hard-earned cash in addition to the hard-earned cash you already hand over to education via taxes.

If you are a parent willing to plunk down anywhere from $1000 to $10,000 a year for your child to attend school and get an education that would otherwise be free, I’d say that’s a bit more of an interest than most parents of students in public school. Parents of public school students may be interested in the education their children receive, but it says something when you’re willing to put your money on the line and pay tuition.

And charter schools are unfettered when it comes to soliciting donations. At the KIPP school I visited, the amount of money they have to spend per pupil is doubled by the donations they collect. This is both because they have the ability to scrounge up those donations and because their schools are smaller than the average public school. Due to the low numbers for whom they need to provide, the amount they need to gather is manageable.

I Believe The (Numbers Of) Children Are Our Future

A very quick point should be made about the size of the student population.

My school serves 2,500 students and we were built for 1,800. All schools in my district are well over 1,000 in student enrollment, with most schools right around 2,000 students large.

In the District of Columbia, there are 34 charter schools serving 14,000 students. That means that, on average, a school has only 334 students. The KIPP school I visited in San Francisco has about 180 students; there is a charter school in Florida that has about 180 students, too. That’s roughly the same number of students as I see in a single day, by the way. The average California charter school holds 332 students; Arizona, 173; New York, 305; the national average size of a charter school is 250 (US Charter Schools, NCREL).

This small school size is usually as much true for private schools as it is for charter schools. I wonder if this is the case for schools in other countries, too? If that’s a common denominator for all the schools so many folk think are better than public schools, we should be examining that. Perhaps that’s an explanation, not just a coincidence.

What Does This Show Us?

We cannot underestimate the impact of parent interest on the way students view their own education. Parents have an obligation to communicate to their children that education is important and should be taken seriously. Far too many parents do not have any way to send that message because they are too busy, uninformed, detached, disenfranchised, or truly do not see the value of education, likely an effect of their parents’ view of education.

Maybe we’ve given the public school system more than it can chew; maybe it’s the fact that public schools have promised an education to all that’s causing them to perform so poorly; maybe public schools, yes, even public schools, need to be more selective in the students they educate, causing a variety of student-specific public schools to pop up. Maybe it’s the wide variety in student needs that’s killing public schools. Maybe it’s just too damn much to do.Similar Posts:

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