Wednesday, October 6, 2010
A charter school teacher on what works.
I have been disappointed in how the charter debate—the next great thing! the worst thing ever!—obscures what to me is the most important question: What makes successful charter schools successful, and how can those pieces be incorporated in regular public schools that need to improve? The journalism on this is lacking, which is why I was glad to read this post from a teacher at the SEED School in Washington, D.C., on Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet blog. Dan Brown points to specific approaches that he thinks make his teaching work, approaches he believes need not be the domain of charters only. (They aren’t, necessarily. But if you teach at a traditional public school and get the kind of meaningful oversight, support and feedback from your administrators that Brown does, raise your hand.)
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If you teach at a traditional school and get to kick out 70% of your students, as the NY Times reported that the SEED school does, you are also at an unusual advantage. Though I would view that as a two-edged "advantage," since it so conveys giving up on the challenging students whom you were trying to support. I'm surprised that this asterisk is given such short shrift.
ReplyDeleteCarolineSF - I'm interested in that 70 percent attrition rate. Can you tell me when that NY Times piece ran? I've found one from 2009 but it doesn't provide that figure. Thanks!
ReplyDelete(It appears to me that the reporter was grappling with trying to get this information in while downplaying it with the oddly mooshy language. I would question that from both the standpoint of news judgment and, possibly, ethics -- why protect SEED by softening information that doesn't reflect well on it? -- but there you are...)
ReplyDeleteThanks. I'm actually wondering why the reporter chose to focus on the attrition rate in the first year and not the more recent year. Both deserve attention. If the first year's attrition rate was indeed 70 percent, why not say so outright? And if the attrition rate was cut, in fact, by more than 50 percent, why not talk about what steps were taken to make such a vast improvement?
ReplyDeleteOf course, the attrition rate for traditional public schools is never zero. Students are counseled out, suspended, expelled, etc. from neighborhood schools - or, more likely and more frequently, they're voting with their feet. Which is why some charters are so successful. Attrition rates for all schools should be examined more thoroughly.