Month: July 2017

The NAACP Tells It As It Is

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ 3 Comments

An English teacher friend of mine was a finalist for Connecticut Teacher of the Year in the mid 90’s.  As one of the culminating steps in the selection process, the four finalists were assigned a topic little was known about at the time. They were instructed to research it and present their findings to an audience.

The topic was charter schools.There were no charter schools in Connecticut at the time. My friend concluded that the worth of charter schools would depend on the answers to two questions:

1) Will the innovations created at charter schools inform and improve the public schools that the vast majority of children and adolescents in the U.S. attend?

2) Will charter schools be held accountable to address student needs as traditional public schools are required to do?

Fast forward to 2017: We now have had charter schools in Connecticut for 21 years. The answers to my friend’s two questions came from the NAACP.

The NAACP, long concerned about the education of children of color, in 2016 passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on opening any more charter schools across the country. Then, from December 2016 through April 2017, a NAACP task force conducted a listening tour, focusing on seven states (including Connecticut), to gather information about existing charter schools and K-12 public schools in general. The answers to my friend’s two questions were part of the report of the NAACP Task Force entitled “Quality Education For All … One School At A Time” . 

The NAACP Task Force Report answered the first question with an emphatic NO. The report states: “Charter schools were created with more flexibility because they were expected to innovate and infuse new ideas into the traditional public school system. However, that aspect of the promise never materialized”. There has been no carryover from the charter schools to the traditional public schools. Charter schools have not been learning labs, free from the restrictions imposed on public schools, which try out new ideas that benefit the larger population of students in public schools. Charter schools have failed in fulfilling their original purpose.

The NAACP Task Force Report also states that, in addition to not improving education in general, the education that charter schools provide to their students is questionable. The report quotes a large scale study of student data from the Center for Research Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute that found that 17% of charter schools produced academic gains better than traditional public schools, 37% of charter schools performed worse than their traditional public schools counterparts serving similar students, 46% of the schools showed no difference.  The NAACP Task Force Report goes on to state that there are better ways, other than charter schools, to improve student achievement, such as reducing class size.

The NAACP Task Force Report answered the second question with a resounding NOT YET and made specific recommendations for holding existing charter schools accountable.  The NAACP report criticizes charters for taking public tax money but not letting the public know how they spend that money. The report also criticizes charter schools for not accepting its share of children with learning issues and children who do not speak English as their first language and for counseling out students who will not be successful on measures such as standardized tests or graduation rates. In addition, the report criticizes charter schools for giving students inexperienced and uncertified teachers and for suspending and expelling students for behavioral issues at a much higher rate than traditional public schools.

The report recommends that only local boards of education, which are responsive to the voters in the school district, be allowed to authorize and supervise charter schools, not appointed state boards of education or appointed state departments of education.  Charters then would be required have the same level of fiscal transparency and accountability as the traditional public schools in the district. The report also calls for charter schools to have open enrollment and to “not select and reject students based on their educational or behavioral histories and needs”. In addition, the report calls for charter schools to hire certified teachers and to follow the same regulations as traditional public schools regarding suspending and expelling students.

The NAACP Task Force Report insists that children of color have the same rights as white suburban children. How sad that in 2017 that right still needs to be demanded. But it does. The NAACP Task Force Report must be listened to and enacted in order to make real the civil rights of children.

 

 

Something Is Rotten In The State Of Connecticut

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ 4 Comments

On July 19, 2017, the unelected, governor-appointed Connecticut State Board of Education approved 504 additional seats in state charter schools for next year, with 154 of those seats going to Capital Preparatory Harbor School in Bridgeport.

GO FIGURE:

Connecticut is in a budget crisis with every expense being monitored, yet new charter school seats, which cost the state $11,000 each, are being initiated. The cost will be more than $5.5 million.

PLUS

The new seats will cost the beleaguered and impoverished Bridgeport Public Schools money it cannot afford and will strip them of much needed resources. The Bridgeport Board of Education unanimously voted against the expansion plan because the cost of adding grades to Capital Prep Harbor School requires the Bridgeport Public Schools to pay additional costs for transportation and other services at an additional location.

PLUS

The expansion plan for Capital Prep Harbor School, approved by the State Board of Education in 2014, called for three grades to be added in 2017-2018, but Capital Prep Harbor School requested and was granted the expansion to six new grades, which increased the costs of services from Bridgeport Public Schools from $200,000 to $400,000 for 2017-2018.

PLUS

Capital Prep Harbor School does not serve the population of Bridgeport equitably. Based on the make-up of the community, nearly half of the students at Capital Prep Harbor should be Hispanic, but only 1/5 are, and Capital Prep Harbor has zero students who have English as their second language although there are ample children in Bridgeport who have English as their second language.

PLUS

Capital Prep Harbor School was approved by the State Board of Education in April 2014 as a school with its stated mission to serve the “diverse communities of Bridgeport and surrounding communities”. Capital Prep Harbor School has failed to implement that mission because of its small percentage of Hispanic students and its total lack of students with English as their second language.

PLUS

Steve Perry, the founder of the Capital Prep Harbor School and its chief spokesperson at the July 19th hearing, has been found by state auditors to have violated the lottery system at his former school in Hartford, Capital Preparatory School. Instead of the students at Capital Prep being chosen by lottery, he, as principal, handpicked a significant number of students (131 in three years), chiefly for their athletic talents. When asked by a reporter at the July 19th hearing if he was using similar illegal practices at Capital Preparatory Harbor School, he refused to answer.

PLUS

After the revelations about the lottery violations at Capital Prep in Hartford, state education officials were asked if they intended to audit the lottery at Capital Prep Harbor School. A State Department of Education spokeswoman replied, “Not at this time.” The Connecticut Post surveyed enrollment practices in the six charter schools in Bridgeport. Five of the six schools explained the methods they used to insure the propriety of their lotteries. The sixth school, Capital Preparatory Harbor School, wouldn’t answer the newspaper’s questions.

PLUS

The State Board of Education scheduled the meeting to approve the new charter seats without informing the Superintendent of the Bridgeport Public Schools. The Superintendent, Aresta Johnson, was told by the State Department of Education that she had until August 4, 2017 to file a written reaction to the Capital Prep Harbor School plan to expand the number of charter school seats in  Bridgeport.  She found out about the July 19th meeting by chance. She attended that hearing and strongly opposed the expansion of charter school seats, stating that the costs would present a severe hardship to children in the Bridgeport Public Schools.

PLUS

Nationally, charter schools have no greater record of success than public schools although the student population of charter schools is more select than the population of traditional public schools. Charter schools have fewer special education students, fewer ELL students, and fewer students from unstable homes. A report commissioned by the Connecticut State Department of Education entitled Evaluating the Academic Performance of Choice Programs in Connecticut compared student achievement in public schools, charter schools, magnet schools, and among those students bussed from urban areas to the suburbs and did not find evidence that students in charter schools had greater achievement than other students, even with their more select student body.

PLUS

Charter schools are not public schools although they call themselves that when it serves the purpose of getting public money but declare they are not public schools when there are requests for transparency in how the public tax money is spent. Charter schools violate the democratic principle that the people should have a say in how their tax dollars are spent. In public school districts, the elected school boards provide that oversight. With charter schools, it is all secret, and the profit motive is evident as the numbers of  criminal cases of fraud that have occurred in charter schools demonstrate.

PLUS

Charter schools promote segregation. The NAACP, in October 2016, recognized the racism inherent in the concept of charter schools and called for “ a moratorium on charter school expansion and for the strengthening of oversight in governance and practice”  because “the NAACP has been in the forefront of the struggle for and a staunch advocate of free, high-quality, fully and equitably funded public education for all children”.

ADD IT UP: There is, indeed, something rotten in the state of Connecticut.

Fighting the corruption is an uphill battle. Big money from the charter school industry funds political campaigns in our state. The State Board of Education and the Commissioner of Education are not elected; they are appointed by the Governor. Venture capitalists support charter schools because they are money-making operations. So how do we citizens of Connecticut make a dent in that monied political structure?

Well, we take a deep breath and remember what Edmund Burke said: All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. Then, we call one another, start talking, and get busy.

Future Birthdays: The Best Ones

~ Ann Policelli Cronin ~ 1 Comment

Over this July 4th weekend, I watched the classic movie, 1776, with my 12 year old granddaughter and was reminded that racism was at our beginning as a nation.

The Declaration of Independence had to be signed by all of the thirteen colonies.  South Carolin and North Carolina would sign only if a part of the Declaration of Independence, as originally written by Thomas Jefferson and citing slavery as a moral evil, was stricken from the document. Jefferson had written that slavery was “violating the most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither”.  John Adams from Massachusetts vehemently objected to cutting the section, speaking eloquently against slavery. Edward Rutledge from South Carolina pointed out that those in the Northern colonies also profited from the slave trade because they owned  the slave ships. After a lengthy debate, Jefferson cut the section in order to get the Declaration of Independence signed. Without eliminating that section condemning slavery, we would not have had a nation in 1776 and would not be celebrating its 241st birthday on this Fourth of July.

But that is not the end of the story of our country. Please listen to this valedictory speech, given recently at Hill House High School in New Haven. The valedictorian, Coral Ortiz, speaks to what we can yet become as a country. Coral, a graduate of a public high school in a city which struggles with poverty and racism, shows us a future worth celebrating.

May our country move forward and fulfill its promise, a promise that Coral Ortiz demonstrates so clearly.