UC study: 50% teacher turnover rate in L.A. charters

"It has a huge effect on student morale," she said, especially for students who lack needed stability in other parts of their lives. "By the time students graduated from my school, there was not a single teacher who had been there the whole time." -- Charter school teacher

L.A. Times reports that about half of all  teachers in charter middle and high schools left their jobs each year over a six-year period studied by UC Berkeley researchers, who released their findings last week.

Why such an incredibly high rate of attrition?

• They hire heavily from Teach For America, a cadre of recent college graduates who commit to teach for two years.
• Some young teachers find the intense, demanding charter experience more than they bargained for, suggested Berkeley education professor Bruce Fuller, a study co-author.
• Leaving for better pay and benefits at traditional school districts.
• Lack of promised input into school decisions, an unceasing workload and few job protections.
• "Teachers feel so beleaguered because everything is presented to us as a problem we have to solve. But we can't fix all those problems, like when a kid misses 60 days in a semester."

It's hard to lose something you were so involved and invested in"

Interview with a Green Dot Animo Justice student and a teacher

I spoke with a teacher and a student from Green Dot's Animo Justice Charter High School, to gather material for a larger piece I'm working on. Green Dot founder, Steve Barr, had earlier told me that the school has been marked for closing by Green Dot's board of directors, on recommendation from the management team, on grounds that it's not cost effective to run the school with 450 students and that the school has been the "lowest performer" among a cohort of Green Dot schools.. The announcement has led to ongoing student protests and an angry response from parents.

Ismael is a 17 year-old senior at Animo Justice and vice-president of the senior class. He's on his way to college in the fall and doesn't have to worry about where he will attend high school next year. But he still sounds angry and frustrated about the closing of his school and was a participant in the student sit-in.

"I was one of the students who built this school from the beginning. I felt like it was my school," Ismael said. "They should have consulted with us and our parents and not just told us they were closing our school. If they told us earlier, maybe we could have come up with some alternatives."

On of the things that angered Ismael the most was that, "the CEO didn't even come to tell us face-to-face, but sent someone else to tell us the school was closing."

When I asked Ismael his thoughts on Animo Justice's "low performance." He responded with praise for Green Dot's teachers and pointed out that the school had been moved three times in three years and had a string of principals. "It's true that our scores should be better, but we aren't a bad school. We could improve if we were given the support we need."

One of Ismael's favorites is science teacher Judy Riemenschneider, who is in her third year at the school. Judy told me that she chose to teach at Green Dot because she wanted a small-school environment, teachers being involved in decision-making, and a union contract. But like Ismael, she was dismayed at the lack of consultation with teachers, parents and students over the decision to close Animo Justice.

"The biggest issue for me was lack of input by teachers, parents and teachers on the decision to close the school. Green Dot says that we are critical to the decision making process. But things don’t happen overnight. By involving people in advance we could have worked to resolve the situation."

While students and teachers have been told they will all be placed at other Green Dot schools, Riemenschneider is not so sure:

"Animo students are guaranteed a spot. There’s a process in place. But they’re laying off teachers from Locke [Green Dot's other cohort]. They’re going to lose some teachers. We'll all be notified on April first who will be lay-ed off and who will stay. So to say that we will all have jobs is somewhat misleading."

When I asked her about the school's dwindling enrollment and lagging performance, she responded:

"We came together. We built the school. But how can a school stay enrolled if you move around so much and have 3 principals in three years? And with all that instability, how do you make an accurate assessment of the school's progress?"

She pointed out that Animo Justice was now competing for students with a rapidly multiplying group of charters. There are now six others in the neighborhood around Jefferson High.

"But I’m passionate about this community we've built. It's hard to lose something you were so involved and invested in," she said.

Green Dot's board

Here's a list of Green Dot board members who made the decision to close the Animo Justice school.

• Steve Barr – Founder & Chair Emeritus, Green Dot Public Schools
• Shane Martin – Chairman of the Board, Dean of Loyola Marymount Graduate School of Education
• Charisse Bremond-Weaver – President & CEO, Brotherhood Crusade
• Oscar De La Hoya – Professional Boxer, Philanthropist and Businessman
• Glenn Dryfoos – Senior Vice President - Business Affairs, Univision Communications
• Susan Estrich – Professor, University of Southern California Gould School of Law
• Abigail Garcia – President, Asociacion de Maestros Unidos
• Mike Garcia – President, Service Employees International Union Local 1877
• Richard Leib – Executive Vice President, Liquid Environmental Solutions
• Noah Mamet – President, Mamet & Associates
• Pam Rector – Director of the Center for Service and Action, Loyola Marymount
• Richard Schaefer – Chief Executive Officer, Golden Boy Promotions
• Jeff Shell – President, Comcast Programming, Comcast Communications
• Timothy Watkins – President and CEO, Watts Labor Community Action Committee
• Ted Mitchell – Chief Executive Officer, NewSchools Venture Fund
• Don Shalvey – Ed.D. Senior Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

GREEN DOT'S PROMISE TURNED INTO A LIE

Green Dot founder Steve Barr originally offered some hope to a struggling L.A. community. He promised a viable alternative to the large, under-resourced, often violent, traditional neighborhood high schools, run by an incompetent, demoralized, stultifying bureaucracy. He also promised that Green Dot, unlike the dozens of other market-driven, privately-managed charter school chains, currently favored under Duncan's Race To The Top reform strategy, would empower teachers and respect their rights, codified in a new, model, union contract.

But this morning, it is clear to hundreds of students, teachers and parents who bought into Barr's promise, that Green Dot is no different and in many ways worse, than any of the other of the new breed of privateer charter school operators who trade in the hopes and dreams of children and their parents for a better future.

Green Dot's money man Marco Petruzzi announced yesterday that the company's Amino "Justice" School is closing and that its students and teachers will be dispersed around the city. To Petruzzi & Co., it was strictly a bottom-line decision. The school wasn't making its enrollment quotas and despite tens of millions in corporate donations as well as huge Broad and Gates Foundation grants, it was running at a deficit. Rather than carry it as a loss-leader, Green Dot's unelected, unaccountable corporate board decided not to throw good money after bad.

The announcement sparked a sit-in by some 400 Amino students and outrage from parents and teachers.

"We had no idea that closing was even a possibility, and then we received the information on Friday morning," said Judy Riemenschneider, who teaches chemistry and environmental science. The ultimatum is at odds with Green Dot's principles, which call for teacher input into critical decisions, she said.

Animo Justice senior class president Eduardo Campos, 17, credits the school for his ambition to graduate and go to college and also for developing student leadership skills. "We built the school from scratch," Campos said. "We chose the name of the school and the colors. And now all of that is being taken away." (L.A. Times)

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Pedro Noguera: NCLB contributed to de-facto segregation

"Where we are now as a country is accepting the idea of segregated schools and I think it’s like Plessy. The idea of Plessy vs. Ferguson was separate but equal. I think that’s where we are now. We’re still not at equal, but I think that many people are satisfied with separate. I think that that is a huge political problem." (Big Think)

Charters find, it's not so easy

Functioning as a neighborhood school remains beyond the experience of nearly all charters except Green Dot, which broke ground by taking over low-performing Locke High in July 2008. It has struggled with the challenge of managing a typical urban population. "People are moving in and out of homeless shelters and housing projects in the neighborhood," said Green Dot Chief Executive Marco Petruzzi. "Fifteen to 20 kids show up almost weekly." (L.A. Times' Howard Blume)

What exactly is the reform plan for Central Falls?

It’s not union protectionism stymieing education reform. It’s union busting under the guise of education reform. Again, where’s the reform plan for Central Falls? Is the solution, fire everyone, hire up to half of them back, fill out the staff with other hires, and “poof” everything will be perfect? That seems to be the fantasy that’s being pushed. (Rhode Islands's Future)

Wake up Pres. Reback!

“No one anticipated this. I’m not sure even the Obama administration anticipated that as a result of their regulations, there would be mass firings,” said Marcia Reback, president of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers. “I think this resonates with teachers across the country. Everyone looks at this as establishing a national precedent.” (Providence Journal)

Of course they knew.

Green Dot's takeover at Locke

Locke, which holds its graduation today, remains a troubled school, and Green Dot's strategy has relied on extra funds that may not be sustainable or readily replicable. But despite those caveats, a qualified turnaround appears to be emerging....

...Academic growth over the last year has been uneven, according to Green Dot data. And that has prompted concern. "My nightmare is that the state test scores come in and you're judged by that," said Green Dot founder Steve Barr. Leaders of traditional schools frequently complain about being evaluated mainly by test results; such concerns are often dismissed by charter school operators, including Green Dot. (L.A. Times)

Historic union/charter school contract in N.Y.

Days after a trend-setting union vote in Chicago, the UFT and Green Dot Charter Schools signed "an innovative and pioneering collective bargaining agreement in New York." The contract was approved by Green Dot's Board of Trustees on Monday, and ratified by the UFT Tuesday.

UFT V.P. Leo Casey:

The 29 page agreement breaks vital new ground, and not simply because it brings together leading forces in the ranks of the charter school movement and teacher unionism. Just as importantly, the contract embodies a new model of labor relations in education, based on a disarmingly simple proposition: that a school which respects, nurtures and supports teacher professionalism in all of its work will provide the best education for students.

Related:

Green Dot visits Chicago 16 Aug 2007
I moderated the panel which included Green Dot's Steve Barr, CTU Prez Marilyn Stewart, and the IEA's Jo Anderson. It was a little strange, I mean, a pro-union charter operator and two union leaders voicing support for Al Shanker's 1988 ...

Summer Quotables

How Steve Barr is spending his summer

"When I first wrote about Barr three years ago, he said he had no interest in taking Green Dot outside of Los Angeles. Last fall, however, he opened a new charter school in the Bronx, in partnership with New York City's teacher's union. Now, he says he's going to 'spend the summer' thinking about whether he'd want to become the administration's go-to guy on high school turnarounds and turn Green Dot into a national organization. 'It's Obama,' Barr said after the hearing. 'He's the reason I am even considering this.'" (Lesli Maxwell, Politics K-12)

Bloomberg's campaign manager?

Education Secretary Arne Duncan offered a stern warning that placing restrictions on mayoral control could “turn back the clock and halt progress” and have “profoundly negative consequences for New York City’s students.” (Gotham Schools)

Teaching social justice

Now that 8 years of neocon power have been replaced by Obama's people and virulent anti-democratic voices at the DOE have shrunk into the background, will new space open up for social justice teaching? The latest issue of Ed Leadership has an interesting piece by Laurel Schmidt, "Stirring Up Justice" which calls on teachers to promote "active, inquisitive citizenship."

So social justice is untidy, exhausting, discouraging, even dangerous work—which may be the reason why it's not on the top ten list of social studies projects in many schools. Better to have kids build a model of a rancho (a group of huts for housing ranch workers) or recreate a potlatch (a festival ceremony practiced by the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest) and be done with it.

Detroit or Destroit?

It was a great victory for Michigan State over UConn in the Final 4 in front of a huge hometown Detroit crowd and the game's heroes were two Motown kids. Hopefully, they'll beat the Tarheels tonight.

Detroit can use a lift now that their new state-appointed emergency financial manager, Robert Bobb, facing a huge deficit and falling enrollment, wants to close 50 more schools and lay-off thousands more teachers. Public education in the Motor City could well go the way of the auto industry. Seeing the writing on the wall, some teachers want the union to support a group of Green Dot-type, in-district charter schools, staffed with union teachers. The DFT, which has always opposed charters, now has plans to organize some existing charter schools. But can (will) they really do it? Something's got to change.

******

George Bush had his Ownership Society bumper-sticker slogan. But count on GM, with their bottom falling out, to launch a new ad campaign titled, Reinventing the Ownership Experience.

Quotables

My favorite quote this week comes from wing-nut Bill Kristol's column, "Can Obama Save Liberalism" in today's NYT. It goes like this:

This is William Kristol’s last column.

A Journal-Constitution reader at The Vent asks:

Am I just being ignorant for failing to understand that with Bill Gates’ net worth of $58 billion, it can still be OK to have 5,000 jobs cut at Microsoft?

Deb Meier at Bridging Differences:

The “other guys” have had their little experiment with our kids. It isn’t working. How can we at least open the doors again—as they were for a short period in the 80s and early 90s—for those who want to really be experimental? I had hoped that charters would at least produce some fresh ideas. In fact, constrained as they are by the same set of shabby goals (higher test scores) they’ve mostly “pioneered” only more of the same.

Gotham Schools on LD-H and the Bolder, Broader/EEP debate:

The wide distance between Darling-Hammond’s proposals and those favored by the current reformers seemed to me to be highlighted by the fact that the panel moderator, Deborah Meier, who despises No Child Left Behind, nodded appreciatively at what Darling-Hammond had to say. Yet one person on the panel, Thomas Payzant, of Harvard and formerly of Boston, insisted the differences between the two groups of Democrats are overplayed. And indeed, there were some points of agreement even between Darling-Hammond and the nameless reformers.

National standards guru, Mark Tucker quoted at Education Blog:

Among the best known of these entrepreneurs are people like Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, which recruits graduates of elite universities to spend two years teaching at some of the country’s worst schools. The line of limousines gathered for a recent fund-raising benefit the group held in New York reportedly went around an entire city block at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. Five million dollars was raised in one night. Other well-known entrepreneurs include Green Dot and KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program), which operate charter schools.