Choice and Chance

This weekend, I had the privilege of drawing names for the E.L. Haynes Public Charter School enrollment lottery. E. L. Haynes is a high-performing charter school located in what a real estate agent might describe as a “transitioning” neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Its Board of Trustees is full of influential local leaders from the field of Education and beyond.

E.L. Haynes is a public school of choice, open to all residents of the District. But its enrollment lottery isn’t about choice. It’s about chance.

Few students choose to leave E.L. Haynes from year-to-year, and the school gives enrollment preference to siblings. That means there were no spots available for new families in Kindergarten, 1st grade or 2nd grade. In Pre-Kindergarten, after siblings, only 14 spaces remained. As I drew 154 names for those 14 spots, the E.L. Haynes staff dutifully recorded who was 98th on the waiting list and who was 105th. The school regularly enrolls some students from the waiting list, but can’t provide parents with much information about how many or when.

One woman and her toddler whooped and celebrated when they were chosen. The room buzzed when I drew a twin as #9, guaranteeing the sibling a spot. With one draw I had given away two spots! The pressure grew. I looked at the faces of the waiting parents and began to wonder which card in the box was theirs. Had I inadvertently buried it? Was it stuck against the side of the box? How much fishing was appropriate, or should I just draw whatever card was on top?

If you move to the block of Otis Place NW where E.L. Haynes’s shiny new building is located with a 6-year-old child, enrolling is extremely unlikely. In fact, the parents who lost in this year’s Pre-K lottery might have better odds of getting their child into E.L. Haynes if they have another child and enter the Pre-K lottery again, hoping to sneak the older child into a primary grade as a sibling.

When I drew the last name for an official Pre-K berth, a woman in the crowd drew a sharp breath. I had drawn her son’s best friend. She sat quietly as I started to draw the waiting list. When I hit #20, tears began to run down her face. Sometime after #50, she left the room.

Pulling Back the Welcome Mat

The front page of Saturday's Washington Post included an article on why there are so many charter schools in D.C. and yet so few in neighboring Maryland and Virginia. The article does a good job of outlining how differences in state law impact whether charter schools open - in Virginia, for instance, charter schools must get approval from the district they're proposing to take students away from. This is a likely reason that three of the four charter schools in Virginia target students at risk of dropping out - basically students the district was likely to lose anyway.

But what the article only briefly touches on is how, once a charter school has been approved and opened, districts can essentially pull the welcome mat out from under the school's (and the students') feet. Districts are under no obligation to be easy to work with in getting adequate facilities or ensuring funding is sent to the school in a timely manner, and in fact have motivation to make those processes as difficult as possible. Take the example from the article of KIPP's school in Anne Arundel County, Maryland:

In 2005, the Anne Arundel County school board rejected a charter for the Knowledge Is Power Program, one of the most successful charter-school operators in the nation, for fear of losing students. Two weeks later, amid public outcry, the board reversed itself.

But the school closed in 2007 in an acrimonious dispute over classroom space. It was the first time in 13 years a KIPP school had shut down. "Clearly, we weren't welcome," said Steve Mancini, a KIPP spokesman.

Parents and students lost a good school option, despite public demand, because the school district was able to play enough political tricks to get KIPP to leave, and the district was under no obligation to assist the school or the students attending it. When districts are able to put up political hoops that charter schools must jump through, it is the students that suffer most. These games distract charter school operators and teachers from their core mission of serving students, and instead focus attention on adult interests.

A charter school planning to open in Richmond, VA in 2010 is staring down the same obstacle course that the KIPP school faced. After getting a hard fought approval from the Richmond City School Board (it would be the only charter school in the city), the school faces continued resistance from the Board and an uncertain future because the school board--an elected body whose membership changes regularly--can revoke the charter at any time.

It is not enough to change the charter school laws in these states to make it easier to open a quality charter school - the laws also need to ensure that charters are sufficiently insulated from the politics and obstacles that districts can throw their way. Improvements in state charter school laws wouldn't just help make the lives of charter school operators a little easier - it would also protect the interests of the students and families that choose these new, public school options.

Superlatives and Scales

A friend from the business world responds to my recent post on teacher evaluations in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to describe her company's personnel assessments:

We rate employees on a 5 point scale with 1 being the best. So, say out of 100 employees, maybe 10 would be a 1. There would be a lot of 2's, maybe 20 or 25. Most employees would be a 3, maybe 50. There would be some 4's, maybe 15, and there would be just a few 5's. Fives would be on warning, they would receive no bonus, and have a limited period of time to improve or they would be terminated. There's even pressure on the 4's. I don't think a 4 is sustainable over a long time. And, of course, all this is measured against goals that we set each year.

We wouldn't want evaluations to run on a perfect normal curve, but this business model seems a lot more reasonable than one which rates a super-majority of employees as above average.
And, it prescribes specific outcomes that depend on an employee's performance.

I also got some feedback around the choice of words CPS uses from people wondering if I'd find it more palatable if they used terms a little less positive than "superior" and "excellent." That would be a start, but it would still be remarkable that 61 percent were placed in the top category and 32 percent in the second, compared to only 0.3 percent receiving the lowest mark. There's also little room for differentiation. A first year teacher who shows promise should, in an ideal system, earn a label of "developing" or "needs improvement."

Other comments suggest it won't make a difference, that tenure would protect under-performing teachers even if they earned less generous evaluations. Maybe, but these ratings are the backbone of personnel files, and any employee with superlative-laden evaluations is harder to terminate than one who has more honest appraisals.