Most failing schools desperately need new principals, but talented leaders are in short supply. Maryland superintendent Nancy Grasmick has inaugurated an effort to bring well-regarded principals from suburban districts to lead failing schools in inner city Baltimore. Beginning now, three superstar principals will be paid $125,000 annually to spend three years turning their new schools around while training interns who will replace them as principals when they return to their former schools. About 35 experienced principals from around the state applied for the program, dubbed the Maryland Distinguished Principal Fellowship. The president of the Baltimore principals union has (predictably) complained that the program is likely to anger principals already teaching in inner city schools, who can earn a top salary of $109,000, and said that it will be difficult for an outsider who doesn't know the city's culture to make an impact on a school in three years. "Suburban administrators to lead 3 failing city schools," by Liz Bowie, The Baltimore Sun, July 17, 2002

In "Serving Students With Disabilities in Charter Schools: Legal Obligations and Policy Options," Paul T. O'Neill, Richard J. Wenning and Elizabeth Giovannetti provide a concise, lucid and much needed explanation of the formal legal obligations of charter schools vis-??-vis disabled youngsters, note key state-level policy variables that bear on these obligations, and suggest several policy options for improving the fit between special ed and charter schools. This is immediately useful for charter school people and state policymakers and should also help federal officials weighing the reauthorization of I.D.E.A. This 20-pager is available at http://www.charterfriends.org/SpecialEdChartersArticle.pdf.

Amanda Datnow, Lea Hubbard and Hugh Mehan
2002

This is a fascinating book about efforts to replicate "school reform designs" across the United States. The authors, writing for the Educational Change and Development Series (an English/Canadian/American research initiative), note the sheer number of schools that have "redesigned" themselves based on external models developed elsewhere. For example, more than 2000 schools are implementing the New American Schools reform designs. The authors contend that the growth in pre-packaged curricular and instructional models is directly related to the increased political pressure educators feel to improve test scores. Schools that are seen as struggling or failing are often given an ultimatum by district or state administrators-either redesign what you are doing yourself or find a model that works and implement it. Many principals choose the latter course. The authors make clear, however, that reforming a school is a messy undertaking, and that "schools change reforms as much as reforms change schools." There are many reasons why successfully importing an educational model into a successful real-life school is devilishly difficult, and much of this book is dedicated to understanding these reasons. For example, in the final analysis, teachers will make or break any effort at redesigning a school. If teachers feel change is being forced on them, they will merely resist the effort as little more than the reform du jour that simply needs to be waited out. A second lesson could almost be called the John Lennon principle- "life is what you're doing while you are busy making other plans." Reform efforts often dissipate over time as school leaders and teachers get swamped by the mundane, never-ending details of everyday life in a school-holding meetings, assigning tasks, carrying them out, settling petty feuds, etc. Time is not a reformer's best friend. To learn more about this book go to http://www.routledgefalmer.com. (Click on "catalogue" and search by title or author)

Bryan Hassel, Education Commission of the States
May 2002

The Education Commission of the States has just published a trio of short papers (drafted mostly by Public Impact's Bryan Hassel, one of the country's foremost charter-school experts), dealing with various aspects of the charter-district idea. If you don't know much about charter districts, check out these papers. The longest of them, a ten-page policy brief called "Charter Districts, The State of the Field," explains and illustrates the concept, using a generous definition that encompasses five categories. These range from tiny districts that have converted all their schools into charters, to state-takeover situations (Philadelphia, for example) that include the outsourcing of some schools, to municipalities (like Indianapolis) that have become charter sponsors themselves. I'm not sure the categories add up to a coherent whole and there aren't many real-world examples of any of them. In other words, charter districts are more idea than reality. But in this and the two companion papers, the authors explain their possible benefits and "challenges," offer initial impressions of how they're working (mostly dwelling on autonomy and accountability) and pose questions by which state and district officials can determine whether this reform might suit them. See "Charter Districts, The State of the Field" http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/37/04/3704.htm; "Key Questions for State Leaders in Creating and Supporting All-Charter Districts" http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/35/79/3579.htm; and "Key Questions for District Leaders in Creating and Supporting All-Charter Districts" " http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/35/80/3580.htm.

Deborah Nelson, Consortium for Policy Research in Education
May 2002

In this brief brief from the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, CPRE research assistant Deborah Nelson explains how school districts that took part in the Third International Math and Science Study-only a few did-have been able to use these results to "benchmark" many aspects of their education programs. For example, "comparative achievement data allowed jurisdictions to rank their performance by global standards...while contextual variables provide broad conclusions about the particular practices of higher achieving nations. TIMSS has thus been a critical tool in highlighting important areas of reform." Still, Nelson explains, in the end any real reforms hinge on the district's own capacity to change its practices in complex and integrated ways. It seems to me this paper is mainly useful to districts wondering whether to participate in future international assessments. You can have a look at it by surfing to www.cpre.org/Publications/rb36.pdf.

Marie Gryphon and David Salisbury, CATO Institute
June 10, 2002

In the latest installment of CATO's Policy Analysis series, Marie Gryphon and David Salisbury propose a plan for IDEA reform that goes farther than the Presidential Commission on Excellence in Special Education was inclined to go. (The Commission's recent report was the subject of a Gadfly editorial at http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=51#755). Agreeing with the Commission that IDEA has become mired in process rather than results, the CATO authors suggest that far more drastic change is called for, much of it at the state level. They suggest that states unilaterally assign a predetermined amount of funds to each student diagnosed with special needs, then make those funds portable. Parents could choose from a menu of services offered by the public schools or opt to take their funding to the private sector. Copies of this brief report are $6.00 each and can be ordered by calling 800-767-1241 or at www.cato.org. The report can be found at http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa444.pdf.

Paul A. Herdman, New American Schools
April 4, 2002

In the decade since its birth, the charter school movement has focused on growing the number of these independent public schools. Now that many charter schools have been in operation for several years, the dirty work of evaluating and improving them-and re-appraising the idea behind them-has begun. To that end, Paul Herdman explores the autonomy-for-results swap that lies at the heart of the charter school concept to see if it is working as planned. Through case studies of six charter schools in Massachusetts and Texas-some highly successful and others facing sanctions for poor performance-he concludes that schools are generally given ample autonomy. They need help, however, to increase their capacity to handle the administrative challenges that come with that autonomy, such as facility management and start-up costs. Herdman also observes that existing accountability procedures run the risk of motivating only those schools with test scores so low as to be threatened with closure. The challenge, given that innovation and diversity are central to the mission of charter schools, is to customize their evaluations enough to be helpful to people within the schools while keeping them sufficiently uniform to allow comparisons with other schools. The 111-page report can be downloaded from the New American Schools website at http://www.naschools.org/contentViewer.asp?highlightID=8&catID=408.

Paul E. Barton, Educational Testing Service
May 2002

The Educational Testing Service's Policy Information Center recently published this forty page report, prepared by the prolific Paul E. Barton, documenting the shortage of minority group members in the fields of science and engineering, showing that this shortage is apt to worsen in the future (though the data suggest that it improved during the 1990's), and offering suggestions for rectifying the situation. The latter range from pre-school through college counseling and financial aid. You can find a PDF version at http://www.ets.org/research/pic/meetingneed.pdf. Hard copies are available for $15.00 (prepaid) by writing Policy Information Center, Mail Stop 04-R, Educational Testing Service, Rosedale Road, Princeton, NJ 08541-0001.

Richard Noeth and George Wimberly, ACT
2002

This policy brief from ACT was written by Richard Noeth and George Wimberly. 47 pages in length, it's actually the first report from ACT's new Office of Policy Research and was done in conjunction with the Council of the Great City Schools. The "seamless" transitions that it seeks involve high school to college moves. The paper is based on a survey of 293 minority high school seniors in five big urban districts as to their "postsecondary planning" and what they found helpful in the process. (Nearly all of these young people were headed toward college.) The findings are fairly predictable, as are the recommendations for schools as to what services and information to provide their students, including the suggestion that schools would be well advised to use ACT tests and other products! (I wonder whether the beady-eyed folks who check to see whether think-tanks publish self-serving stuff ever cast their skeptical gaze upon the non-profit and for-profit firms that do that sort of thing.) You can download a PDF version from http://www.act.org/research/policy/pdf/2181.pdf.

Yesterday brought the official release of a much-hyped and professionally leaked "study" of U.S. charter schools by the American Federation of Teachers, timed to coincide with the union's convention in Las Vegas.

In a word, it reeks.

It reeks of error, distortion and untruth about charter schools, how they're working, what effects they're having, what we know about them. It also reeks of politics and self-interest. But why expect otherwise? As Lawrence Patrick of the Black Alliance for Educational Options remarked, "An AFT study on charter schools has about as much credibility as a Philip Morris study on smoking." Everybody knows that the teacher unions find both their monopoly and their memberships threatened by an education reform that focuses on independently operated (and staffed) schools that compete for students, money and teachers. The bigger the charter movement has grown, the more threatened they feel. This "study" illustrates one way of containing that threat.

What's dismaying is that some people take the AFT seriously when it declaims on education policy issues. There were grounds for that response when Al Shanker was in charge. Today, there are far fewer, and none at all in the increasing number of policy domains-charters being a prime example-where the AFT is driven by politics rather than by education.

Every place across the land where the AFT has a presence, its state and local affiliates are doing their utmost to maim and kill the charter school movement. This has been true for years. Ask any legislator or governor. (Increasingly, you could also ask judges, as the latest tactic-in Ohio, for example-is to ask the courts to quash a charter law that elected officials seem disposed to keep.) Wherever there's a push to re-regulate charter schools into pale facsimiles of conventional public schools, you find the union's fingerprints. Wherever there's a move to "cap" the number of charters, the union is involved. Wherever there's an effort to take money away from them, the union is lurking. Wherever there's a campaign to elect to candidates bent on throttling the charter idea, the union is at work.

The union wants to kill off charter schools. Where it cannot do that, it wants to contain them in the smallest possible box with the maximum possible rules. That's its agenda.

This is true of both teacher unions, to be sure. The difference is that the NEA wouldn't have the chutzpa (or brains) to issue a "study" of charter schools and pretend that it's objective. Nor does the NEA have a track record of respectable policy analysis.

The AFT, however, can trade on its track record, which over the years has included solid reports on issues (e.g. state standards, reading instruction, core curriculum) where its agenda is pro-reform. This legacy traces to long-time AFT leader Shanker, an undisputed education reformer and statesman, who hired able people, gave provocative talks, wrote interesting articles and columns, launched a first rate magazine and had his organization issue some insightful reports on serious education issues. (Partly because of that history, Bill Clinton's Education Department lavished money on the AFT to study, among other things, charter schools. No doubt Uncle Sam thereby subsidized this squalid report!)

In Shanker's day, the AFT had a split personality. Al and his Washington team engaged in reformist pursuits even as the union's state and local affiliates (with a tiny number of happy exceptions) were busily subverting every sort of reform, including many of those that Shanker championed.

The subversion process continues. Without Shanker at the helm, however, the union's Washington apparatus has now been enlisted in it. This new "study" is a case in point.

Authorless-a hallmark of Sandy Feldman's regime is that no AFT staff member gets public credit-and glossy, with beguiling photos and the trappings of scholarship, it's simply a hatchet job on charter schools. Though it purports to review a decade of research, in fact it chooses its material from the most critical studies and harps on problems rather than accomplishments. Its conclusion-that policy makers ought to cease any charter-school expansion "until more convincing evidence of their effectiveness or viability is presented"-is precisely the opposite of that reached in the recent RAND review of research on charters (and vouchers), namely that the evidence to date is so spotty that further experimentation is essential before any policy guidance can confidently be drawn. (Rhetoric vs. Reality: What We Know and What We Need to Know about Vouchers and Charter Schools)

But further experimentation with charters (as with vouchers) would threaten the AFT's self-interest. So it couldn't be the conclusion of an AFT "study" of this topic even if it's the conclusion that any objective analyst would reach.

This "study" trifles with the truth. It stretches the facts about charter-school enrollments (which are more heavily minority and low-income than their states' student populations). It fibs about charter-school finances (which in most jurisdictions are far lower than the per-pupil allotments of conventional schools). It simply lies about charter-school innovation and experimentation (much of which involves staffing, compensation, and management, areas where the AFT does not want anything to change). It fudges about school accountability. It is disingenuous about the effects that charter competition is having on regular public schools-as yet, few places have enough charters to pose much competition-and it selectively reports the data on student achievement. No, we oughtn't be content with overall charter performance, but there are some stellar schools, some states where the charter results surpass those of regular public schools, and numerous situations where-considering that most of these school are just 2-3 years old-it's way premature to draw firm conclusions about their instructional effectiveness. (Some serious research indicates, for example, that new schools often have an achievement drop at the outset but make it up-and more-once they get a few years under their belts.)

Then there is the overt and implicit "spin." Consider this sentence (from page 58): "Of the more than 2,327 [charter] schools that have opened, only 206 have closed." The reader is supposed to think "Good grief, why so few?" To me, however, it says that, within a single decade, the accountability mechanisms bearing on charter schools have produced a closure rate of 9 percent. How does that compare with the closure rate of failed schools in such AFT-ruled systems as New York, Philadelphia and Chicago?

Which brings us to the most distressing part. The Education Department recently estimated that some 8900 public schools in the United States are already-today-subject to the NCLB provision that says they're so ineffective, and have been for so long, that their students have the right to exit for other schools. Because of establishment lobbying, however, much of it by the AFT, Congress only assured these youngsters the right to transfer to other public schools in their own districts, INCLUDING charter schools. Not to other districts. Certainly not to private schools.

I don't know about you, dear reader, but most of the failed schools I know are located in districts where there aren't a heckuva lot of successful public schools with space for those kids to transfer into. That leaves charter schools as the only other option under federal law. Now the AFT would halt their spread, too.

Coincidence? Hardly. Politics is politics and organizational self-interest must be assumed. What's disgusting is to see it masquerading as disinterested research. And to see people taken in by it.

"Do Charter Schools Measure Up? The Charter School Experiment After 10 Years," American Federation of Teachers, July 2002