New York Voices; 707; Do Charter Schools Work?

So [Men's voices]: All of our charter schools are really performing in an entiirely different level, and make no mistake about it. All parents are voting with their feet. Charter school reform cannot close the achievement gap by itself. There's no evidence that it will. There's no evidence that it has. There's no reason to expect that it will. My kids are achieving at or above the kids north of here, and some of them come from very difficult homes, very challenging situations. My kids in this school are showing the naysayers. Yes we can and yes we did. New York (street sounds in background) One voice at a time. New

York places. New York Voices is made possible by the members of 13. Additional funding by Michael T. Martin And Elise Jaffee and Jeffrey Brown. [Pi Roman]: Welcome to New York Voices. I'm Rafael Pi Roman. You know yesterday Governor Spitzer and state lawmakers reached an agreement to double the number of charter schools allowed in New York State to 200 which will mean 50 additional charter schools in New York City. Although details haven't been made public as of Friday afternoon, some are calling it a victory for Governor Spitzer who has pushed for an increase in the cap. Other reports, however, indicate that charter schools may lose some of their autonomy as part of the agreement. Tonight we'll look at the effect charter schools are having in the city and whether or not they're helping to bridge the achievement gap between the poor and the middle class. [Man's voice]: Call your side please. [Litt]: This school is my baby. I'm the founding principal. I can't possibly describe how proud. I eat sleep and breathe this school. This isn't my job. It's it's my mission. It's

my fabric. It's what I am; it's what I do. [man's voice]: Ross, nice to see you. [Pi Roman]: Jeff Litt became well known in education circles in the early 90s for turning around one of the worst public schools in the South Bronx. In 2001 He was tapped to start a new school and to design it exactly as he saw fit. [Teacher's voice]: We're doing decimals greater than one. [Pi Roman]: Class size at Icahn is capped at 18 students, and the school has only 278 kids from kindergarten through seventh grade. Litt picked the curriculum called core knowledge which emphasizes phonics, classic literature, and basic cultural facts. [Litt]: Many of our kids do not come from a literature rich environment. Many of our kids do not come from a home where the families have a lot of formal education which is why they must have a rigorous program with high expectations, high standards, exposed to the arts, exposed to the literature, exposed to music. My second graders can tell you about Beethoven. If the parent

can't provide what needs to be provided, well then, that's our responsibility to do it. [Pi Roman] Students at Carl Icahn take the same tests as the kids in regular public schools. Last year 83% of the students at Icahn passed the English exam which is 43% more than kids in regular public schools from the same district. 97 percent passed the math test which is 51% more than the rest of the district. Generally, charter school students have a passing rate of 5 to 10 percentage points higher than those in regular public schools. [Litt]: I think they've demonstrated that children in this community can succeed very well if provided with the right resources and the right education because many people outside of this community have very limited beliefs in what my kids can accomplish. [Pi Ramon]: Icahn is a charter school, meaning that it's part of the public school system, but it's free from the rules that govern regular public schools.

In addition to public funding, charter schools also receive limited financial support from foundations and philanthropists such as billionaire investor Carl Icahn. [Litt]: The beauty of charter schools is that you know where the buck stops. I can't point fingers at anyone. I selected everything that came in this building. If it works, wonderful, and my kids have a great shot at a future. If it doesn't work, then I shouldn't be their principal. (Teacher's voice) Tell me the vowels. (student's voice) a, e [Pi Ramon]: One of the most contentious issues about charter schools is that unlike regular public schools most of them are non union. That makes it much easier for principals to hire and fire their staff. [Litt]: I've terminated my fair number of people, and uh, I will tell you it's difficult. I serve at the pleasure of my board of trustees. The teachers serve in this school and in charter schools for the most part at the pleasure of the principal. (Teacher's voice) The question is always important. Remember what they're asking you. I think that we know that we don't need the protection of a union.

And it doesn't scare us. How does temperature affect humidity? [Pi Ramon]: Teacher salaries are generally comparable to those at public schools. But a school like Icahn can't afford to pay the salaries of veteran public school teachers, so their staff tends to be somewhat less experienced. [Litt]: I think if a teacher is in an environment where they're supported, respected, encouraged, guided, their fire is never never going to burn out, no matter how old they get. I think it's the responsibility of every principal to keep that fire going. [Pi Ramon]: Miss Phillips taught for three years at a regular public school before coming to Icahn. [Miss Phillips]: My first year I had 38 children in the class. I went into teaching to make a difference. And unfortunately the way the system is set up, I wasn't doing that there, and I actually didn't realize how much time was spent doing classroom management until I came here, and

I had so much time to do classroom instruction. (student's voice) And 7 divided by 7 =1. (Teacher's voice) And, my answer is. I phased out of the public school because at the time I wasn't a certified. I was working on my masters. Here I had the opportunity to work here and complete my masters. Well, if I need something simple as a marker, it's provided for me. If I need a book a grammar book or a reading book, an extra math book, it's there for me. In the traditional public school, it did take a long time to get copies. You have to go through (student voices in the background) four middle men before you actually get the copies made. You have to get signatures has to be approved, as opposed to here. I mean I'm getting it within minutes. [Litt]: Good afternoon everybody. (student voices) Good afternoon, Mr. Litt) [Pi Ramon]: say when he was the principal of a regular public school, he had less flexibility in managing his staff. [Litt]: Very often what happens is the most needy children in the most academically deficient

classes, we see the novice teacher. That's the class where the senior teacher should be. Very often the contract will prohibit that. What troubles me with collective bargaining in education is that the person who's held responsible, the principal, cannot always determine how to deploy the staff appropriately. Meaning that very often you'll find a teacher is in an assignment as a result of a contractual provision provided by the teacher's union. [Pi Ramon]: In the Bronx. Icahn has created so much demand from parents that Mr. Litt is opening a second school. [Litt]:This is a former,uh, warehouse, and of course the entire interior will be ripped out. There'll be elevators and air conditioning and floors and walls, and it's going to be cheerful, and it's going to be successful, and it's going to be another haven for kids. [Pi Ramon]: More than156 students are in the running to fill the 18 remaining openings for next year's kindergarten class. Principal Litt has plans for a third charter school based in

Far Rockaway, Queens. Now that the Governor and state lawmakers have agreed to raise the charter school cap to 200, that plan will likely move forward. Until yesterday, plans for that school were on hold because New York had reached its legal limit of 100 new charter schools. During the budget battle the powerful state teachers union opposed Governor Spitzer's desire to increase a charter school cap. [Man's voice]: Tax dollars should not pay for private school tuition. The tax dollars should not be used for more unregulated charter schools that aren't accountable to the public. It's a matter of principle. Let's provide great public schools for every child. [Woman's voice]: A message from New York State United Teachers. [Pi Ramon]: The State Teacher's Union and other critics point to charter schools like Harriet Tubman which is just down the street from Icahn. It's uneven performance has put it in danger of being closed next year. Overall 6 charter schools have been shut down in New York State since 1999. [Litt]: It's OK that some charter schools close because we wouldn't want any organization to carry on that wasn't delivering its products. (Student's voices)

I told everybody how proud I was of you in the math club of yesterday. You know that's high school math. I'm really proud you. My kids are achieving at or above the kids north of here, and some of them come from very difficult homes, very challenging situations. I think it's an excuse for failure by saying, "Well, what do you expect from those kids". The greatest thrill that I get is that my kids in this school are showing the naysayers, yes we can, and yes we did. [Pi Ramon]: Richard Rothstein is an education expert with the Economic Policy Institute. I spoke with him about charter schools like Carl Icahn which seem to be dramatically outperforming regular public schools. Richard, do you believe that charter schools are key to bridging the achievement gap between the poor and the middle class? [Rothstein]: Charter school reform cannot close the achievement gap by itself. There's no evidence that it will. There's no evidence that has. There's no reason to expect that it will. Can school improvement make a differenc? Yes it can. Can better teachers make a difference? Yes they can.

Can good charter schools showing a better way of doing things make a difference? Yes they can. Can these things alone close the achievement gap with children who come to school completely unprepared to learn in the way that middle class children can learn? No they can't. [Litt]: The reason that we have this gap is primarily because children come to school not prepared to learn, not prepared to take advantage of what schools have to offer because of a variety of social and economic disadvantages that directly affect their achievement. [Rothstein]: Some of the charter schools that we looked at, and one in particular that we studied, believe that the right curriculum, well-implemented as they have in their school can make up for that. I'm sure they say that, and maybe they're right. But there's no evidence over the last 50 years, that no matter - And there've been many. This is not the first school that's claimed to have made up for it. There have been schools, after schools, after schools. Articles, after articles, after articles, written, claiming that suddenly here's a

school which has shown that it can make up for all of these external forces simply by having good curriculum and high expectations. And it turns out not to be [Pi Ramon]: Every time, every time. [Rothstein[: Every time I've investigated one of these, yes. Charter schools by definition are not random collections of students. When these national studies came out that showed no difference between regular public schools and charter schools, I was surprised, because I would have expected, all other things being equal, even if charter schools were no better than regular public schools, their scores to be better because who goes to a charter school? You have to choose to go to a charter school. The students who choose to go to charter schools are likely to have more motivated parents that like to be moved by the more motivated themselves. The students who don't make a choice who just go to the school that's assigned to them are likely to be less motivated than those who make a positive choice to go elsewhere. I mean think of it here in New York City. Think of the Bronx High School of Science, and if you got every student in the city who was qualified to go to the Bronx High School of Science, who had high test scores and then pick a lottery from those students. You wouldn't say that because a Bronx High School of

Science picks students from a lottery that therefore, those students are representative of the entire city. [Man's voice, not sure who this is]:] Now you talked about test scores being more or less the same or sometimes even worse in some charter schools than in public schools. That comes from a big national study that. Could you talk me a little bit. [Rothstein]: Well there's been several national studies that have done this, and what they found is that on average, after you've controlled for the limited student demographic characteristics that we have available, that is comparing black students with black students, and low income students with low income students, we find that on average charter school performance on tests is no better than regular public school performance on average. Doesn't it seem to be just simply common sense that if a principal can get rid of a bad teacher and bring in a good teacher, can pay extra money for a teacher that perhaps a public school contract is not allowed to teach the toughest courses, that has the freedom to change things from one day to

the other that isn't working, doesn't common sense say that that's got to work better than an environment that doesn't allow for those things? [Man's voice, not sure who this is]: Well first of all there's too much of a tendency in education policy making today to operate on the basis of theory rather than experience. You can spin all kinds of theories about what should work, but the practical result is that these things don't work in practice. Now why don't they work in practice? You know these laws that have existed and grown up around public schools which are said to be bureaucratic and,and uh, um,uh difficult make it difficult for schools to operate didn't grow up for no reason. They grew up because there was favoritism that needed to be offset. The reason that we have all these civil service rules that protect people from being fired, is not because somebody wanted to invent a bureaucracy to make it difficult to run a public school. The reason was that we found that when you gave principals complete freedom to fire teachers, some good principals would fire their

bad teachers, and other would fire, uh teachers whom they didn't like for personal reasons or to make room on the on the staff for a friend. Well this goes on in charter schools now as well. But the point is that the good ones seem to be advancing over those that were not so good. The ones that are not so good seem to have the capacity to disappear. [Rothstein]: Well there's no evidence for that. Again you're asserting that but. But they're all expanding both good and bad ones are expanding. You suggested before that charter schools get shut down when they don't perform well. That's actually not the case. That's the theory of charter schools. That's how charter schools are supposed to work. But if you look at the charter schools that have closed around the country, there's a tiny, tiny number that have been closed for poor performance even though there are large numbers of charter schools that perform poorly as we know from these data that we investigate. When charter schools closed, closed down, it's most often because of, of corruption, because of some run off with the money, or because they weren't, uh, didn't handle their funding act adequately so that they ran out of month funding in the middle of the year.

[Pi Ramon]: So what is what is what is your prescription, your policy prescription, to eradicate that achievement gap? [Rothstein]: Well I think there are a number of things. If we really want to close the achievement gap, the first thing we need to do is provide high quality early childhood care to children of low income working [Man's Voice]: outside of the schools. In and outside of [Rothstein]: Well it doesn't matter who provides it. But typically early childhood centers are provided outside schools. You know we know that the achievement gap exists by age 3. By age 3. When we assess children at age 3, we find that middle class children have much larger vocabularies, much more complex vocabularies. The second thing I would do is do something about the scandalous health care system we have in this country today. Now even if we provide Medicaid, even if we provide health insurance to low income children, if there are no primary care physicians to give them the kind of routine and preventive care that middle class children get, they're not going to have as good health as middle class children have. 1 in 4 children in Harlem are coming to school with asthma. So unless we address this difference in

basic health, we're not going to close the achievement gap. [Man's Voice, not sure who it is]: But if you're right isn't it, isn't true. I mean those are pretty serious policy prescriptions, costly. Given the recent history, very unlikely to happen any time soon or very easily. So therefore, doesn't that mean that we have to assume that generations of young kids right now will continue not to be able to achieve the same kind of learning in education and therefore have the same kind of future as middle class kids? [Rothstein]: Well you know it's what's interesting about that comment,, which I hear all the time, is that you don't say Given recent history we know that charter schools aren't going to do it either or school reform isn't going to do it either. We've been trying to reform schools for decades now, and the achievement gap is not budging. And the reason that achievement gap is not, is not budging is not because we suddenly hadn't, have not found the magic bullet in school reform. The reason is because we're trying to do it in schools alone, and we have much more recent history to prove that than we do

for the other. [Pi Ramon]: To talk more about charter schools and other aspects of school reform I met with New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. Chancellor, you support the idea of more charter schools in New York. Why? [Klein]: Because I think you want to create new opportunities. You want to bring in new people with new ideas. And because our charters are working, particularly for kids in high needs neighborhoods. If you look around the City and you see in high needs neighborhoods how parents are looking for options, want to make sure they have better opportunities for their kids. I want to make sure we try every approach that I think will bring better educational opportunities outcomes, and our charters are doing that. [Man's Voice]: But I'm sure you're familiar with the study that came out in 2004 that seemed to show that charter schools were doing no better, in some instances worse as far as test scores were concerned, than regular public schools. Why do you think those are the results? [Klein]: Wel,l you have to look at the numbers actually and go behind in the first blush. People use numbers in a very

political way. First thing you point out is that our charter schools in New York City, if you compare them to the school districts they're in, they're outperforming the school districts. And that's because they're in high needs communities. Second, and most important to me, some of our charter schools are really performing in an entirely different level. And make no mistake about it, our parents are voting with their feet. What you'll see is time and again, parents lined up wanting to get their children in. Let's be honest why should we deny people choices? [Man's Voice]: One argument is made that simply by the fact that the parents go to the lottery, they show themselves to be the most motivated parents, and therefore, the kids tend to be the most motivated. So you're taking the best kids out of the regular public schools and putting them in charter schools. How do you? [Klein]: I don't think that's right. It is a very, very sort of cynical view of parents. In other words that somehow you're cherry picking kids because their parents are willing to look for an option for them. I mean the truth is our parents if given options will look for options overwhelmly. I'm not going say every single parent obviously, but overwhelmingly.

Then second, and more important, the numbers are there. I studied at great length Achievement First which started up in New Haven, and they took kids in the fifth grade, and they had the same average performance as the overall New Haven School District. By the eighth grade they were 40, 50 points ahead. Now that's not because they cherry pick kids because they had the same start point. [Litt]: You know one thing that we discovered in the course of doing this program, is that a lot of the teachers who are in the charter schools who are former regular public school teachers, and they told us stories about when they were in the former schools, how difficult it was to get even the most basic things that they needed, like magic markers, like textbooks, even Xerox copies of handouts. One teacher told us that he had to sign 2 forms in order to get a Xerox copy made. Is that still happening and why is it happening? [Klein]: We're trying to stop it. There's a lot of Mickey Mouse, you know, and there's a lot of what I call compliance in the system rather than performance, and I'm all about performance and I have to. One of the reasons we started this empowerment school initiative is to focus much

more on the performance, not on all the compliance and all the inputs. If you talk about education, people always say, "What you spend on X"? The question I want to ask is, "What are you getting for what you spent on X"? And a lot of these charter schools are doing it. and increasingly I think our public schools are doing that as well, but collectively that's what it's going to be about. And, as you say, if you've got to put down twice to get a handout and fill out all the forms, it deters sensible, intelligent behavior. We've got to stop all of that kind of stuff. [Litt]: The charter schools spend a lot less money per student by and large than the regular public schools, yet their classroom sizes are much smaller than uh than the regular public school classes by and large. Some people are saying, "Why can't we have the smaller classes in all our public schools"? In fact there's a law pending in Albany mandating smaller classes. How do you respond? [Klein]: I think smaller classes are a good thing, and actually under our administration we brought them down consistently. When we did the empowerment schools last year one of the things we found that people

hired more teachers to lower class size. On the other hand, I think it's got to be done intelligently. We know from what happened in California, that if you try to mandate lower class size, what happens is you see an outflow of teachers from high needs communities because they can now move into higher performing schools, and the result of that is to actually hurt the schools that are already hurt. So this has to be done in an intelligent flexible not in a mandated kind of way. So what we're saying is, we don't want to have a regulatory system that says everybody do everything the same way if we want to learn from each other. Therefore, we're going to have rigorous accountability because what you get from your students matters. By the same token you're going to have more authority, more discretion over your budgets, more authority about which people you hire. [Litt]: And you know we spoke to Richard Rothstein. He's an education expert that I think you're familiar with. And he told us that some of these restraints and some of these regulations on principals came from a very good, for a very good reason: that many principals

in the past were corrupt in that they were firing good teachers so they could hire their own friends of their own families and costing ultimately all students. And that, therefore, some of these regulations and restraints are necessary. [Klein]: Well certainly some regulation or restraint is necessary, but if you don't have a meaningful accountability system, then of course people can hire anyone they want. But if I say to a principal, "If you don't get real gains in your student's performance, then I'm going to terminate you", which is what I've said. They can't afford to hire their buddies and their friends because performance is what drives them. {Man's voice]: Now part of your plan,um, calls for the money that's given to the public schools to start following the students. I was surprised to read that, I thought it was already following the students. How is the money determined now? [Klein]: Too much of it's determined through all sorts of different formulas and a lot of it based on historical legacy. So in fact it was not transparent. We're going to make it

transparent. It was not equitable. We're going to make it equitable. And the other thing where schools got over funded, is some schools would have many more senior teachers. And that's always a good thing, but in high needs communities, sometimes it's hard to em. And going forward, not to destabilize any school, we're not going to hurt a school, but going forward as we get new dollars, we're going to try to equalize. And it's only fair. I mean because if a kid has a certain set of problems, the kid should be the one who's funded, not the particular school or the politics of this situation. [Man's Voice]:]: Are principals going to be able to determine teacher salaries or is that already determined in the teacher's contract? [Klein]: That's determined under the contract. However, what they will be able to determine; we have things like a lead teacher program. Pay the teacher 10 thousand dollars extra in order to attract a high quality teacher to a high needs school. They'll be able to mix and have greater flexibility in order to meet the specific needs, but the basic pattern of teacher salaries is something we negotiate with the unions of course.

[Man's voice]: You know, Chancellor, a Quinnipiac poll recently came out that showed that the Mayor's popularity was very high, but ironically in the one area where he has been saying from the beginning that he wanted to be judged on, education. By 30% of the the people who responded to the poll said that they'd rather go back to the old board of education system than the system that we have now. And you particularly have come under, uh, serious, heavy attack by the comptroller but also the city council, state legislators. Why is that happening? [Klein]: Well first of all, I think if you look at that poll, it doesn't say go back to the old way. I don't think that's right. It was a very sort of truncated question, and I'm not sure illuminated much. The mayor's overall rating on education was high in that poll. In terms of my job, look, I'm taking on some tough challenges. It's going to be a lot of pushback . You know, a lot of people say to me," We want you to improve things; just don't change em". You know that ,that's when you're making tough decisions, you know, this is not about popularity. In the end I think what's most important is whether we change the world for our

kids. I think if you don't do that in education, then we'll continue to have a two tiered education system and will continue to fall beyond, behind our global competitors. (music) And that's it for this edition of New York Voices. For more on this or any other New York Voices. log on to our website at 13.org. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next week. (music) New York Voices is made possible by the members of 13. Additional funding by Michael T. Morten, and Elise Jaffe and Jeffrey Brown.