I just finished completing a survey sent to us by the US Department of Education. Amazing. It asked a lot of questions about numbers of students, numbers of teachers, reductions this year compared to last, etc., etc. I was fine submitting all that data, (well, really, Jan and Beverly had to help me out with a lot of employee and enrollment numbers,) but I got through all that OK. Seemed to me like reasonable data to collect.
Then the survey took a turn. They asked if we had "choice", if we had charter schools, and if not, how we supported charter schools. They asked if we paid incentives to teachers for student performance on standardized tests. They wanted to know how many charters and how much we paid in incentives. Unlike the earlier questions where if you selected "None" as a response you were then directed to a later question, this section continued to ask the same thing over and over. The implication was clear, if we were not supporting charter schools and paying teachers incentives for TAKS or STAAR outcomes, we were somehow out of the loop, going against the flow, not with the program. My blood pressure rose. Hence, this post, tapping keys rather than popping pills.
Salary works but incentives do not. I do not know why that is so hard to explain to folks outside our profession, but it is true. We lose staff in the summer interim to other systems that pay teachers or administrators more than we pay. Once a school year begins, contracts are signed and staff is assigned, we are pretty much set personnel-wise for an entire year, barring medical, marital, or reproductive events. Teachers do not scan the vacancy postings in October and say, "Hey, there is a district in another city where I could earn $2,000 more per year. I think I'll quit here and go there!" Doesn't happen for a variety of reasons, but mostly because our staff signs a professional contract whereby they are committed to working with us for a school year, and we are loathe to let them escape that contract midstream. Summers are different. We have lost some good folks who are willing to move or commute to earn more money in another system.
Once signed up for a year, however, teachers and principals are going to do the best job they can possibly do. I have never, ever, experienced a staff member who drove to work in November thinking, "Today, I will work harder than usual because my kids might perform better on a test in April so I might get more money next September." The fallacy in the belief that someone might operate that way is so blatant to me I cannot fathom why anyone would support it, but it is the rage, the new assumption about one strategy to improve public education. Say to a teacher, "I will give you $100 extra if you will do bus duty today," and you may get a bunch of takers. (In fact, say to a teacher, "Will you cover bus duty today, I really need some help" and you will get even more takers. That is the nature of our profession.) Say to a teacher, "I will give you $1,000 one year from now if your 11 year old students do better on a standardized test 6 months from now," and most will simply look at you like you are nuts. Salary works, incentives do not. We all do the best we can do every day.
(The real underlying problem here, however, is basing all of this on high stakes standardized tests. It remains ludicrous to judge kids, teachers and schools on one standardized test, but that is fodder for another feast.)
The same mindset that supports teacher incentives supports charter schools. I do not have that mindset. Charter schools as I use the term here, are state-funded, taxpayer supported, alternative schools that are not based on school or district boundaries. They are optional schools, schools of choice, meaning that parents can opt to enroll their kids in these schools rather than the resident public school. By the same token, the charter does not have to take the kids and does not have to keep the kids for the duration of a school year. They take the same high stakes standardized tests we take, but they do not have to take the kids we have to take, or keep them. What taxpayers are doing is depleting the funds for public schools by supporting another "public" school that operates under a different set of rules and is held accountable in different ways.
Let's be candid: the kids who do the best on the high stakes test tend to be more affluent than the kids who do poorly. That is the consistent conclusion apparent from every analysis of test score outcomes. The other conclusion that is consistently true is that the schools that spend more money per kid have the highest outcomes. Got to admit that makes sense. (If it were based on teachers alone, then all we would have to do is move the teachers from high performing schools to low performing schools and the outcomes would change. I would argue that moving teachers from high performing schools to low performing schools would likely make the low performing schools more so.) It should come as no surprise that the highest performing schools have two attributes: wealthy kids and/or more money spent per kid. Charter schools drain both variables of import, that is, kids whose parents earn enough money to be able to provide transportation to and from the charter may enroll in the charter. There are no bus routes for charter schools. The very existence of the charter drains money from the public school because we are funded based on enrollment.
If you want to compare charter schools to public schools using the high stakes outcomes, you might conclude charters do better because they are an alternative to public schools and they do things better. No way. (In fact, the studies comparing outcomes have very mixed reviews. Recent studies tend to indicate that students in public schools are outperforming students in charter schools.) I argue that the very best teachers teach the kids who are most likely not to do well. Very bright, affluent kids are going to pass the standardized tests no matter who the teacher is. (That is not to say that the teacher of wealthy kids does not make a difference. They do. But the role of the teacher of wealthy kids is to promote extended success, not just mere passing.) The one thing charter schools have going for them is parental support. Clearly, if my kid can get kicked out of your school I am going to do all that I can to promote his or her success, ensure they do their homework, and back teacher expectations. Elsewise, you will be removed from the charter, and (gasp) returned to public schools.
Perhaps the real answer to these two programs is simply to ensure that all teachers are highly paid and that public schools have choices as well. Suppose we the public school could ask non-compliant, non-conforming kids to simply leave our system? Wouldn't that be interesting?
Meanwhile, I do not support incentives or charter schools. I deeply, deeply support public schools and the professionals that work therein. I believe public schools are the very best hope for the future of our democracy. Period.
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