The Education Gadfly Weekly

Minnesota passed the nation’s first charter school law in 1991, nearly twenty-five years ago. And it’s been fifteen years since we published Charter Schools in Action, which described this educational innovation as a promising path to stronger student achievement and an engine “to recreate the democratic underpinnings of public education and rejoin schools to a vigorous civil society.”

Since 1991, forty-three states and the District of Columbia have allowed for the existence and operation of these independent public schools of choice. Today, some 6,700 of them serve nearly three million students, almost 6 percent of U.S. public school enrollment. They are the fastest-growing school choice option in the country and already educate more than half as many children as attend private schools, which have been around for ages. They are, in fact, as close to a “disruptive innovation” as American K–12 education has ever seen. They have created a new market and an alternative delivery system that affords long-neglected families access to potentially higher-quality schools than they find within the traditional district structure.

Yet for all its promise, impressive growth, and visibility in the public square, the charter movement has ample room to improve. The first quarter-century of chartering has taught us much about what should happen in the second. It’s slightly embarrassing to acknowledge, with the benefit of hindsight, that putting a charter sign on a school building actually reveals surprisingly little—mostly just that it’s a “school of choice” with some freedom to be different.

Early advocates, ourselves included, were naïve about a few things. Here are five of them, a list that can easily be expanded.

First, not enough attention was paid to authorizing, governance, and quality control. We’ve focused on quantity rather than quality, assuming that a barely regulated marketplace would provide more assurance of school quality than it has in reality.

Second, we did not demand sufficient funding (or facilities). And while we welcomed the infusions of capital and entrepreneurialism that have accompanied private sector participation in the charter venture, we didn’t take seriously enough the risk of profiteering.

Third, we didn’t insist on sufficient school autonomy—nailed into place, not just vaguely promised. The result has been a large number of charter schools still fighting for operational, financial, and governance freedoms.

Fourth, the laudable impulse to concentrate first on poor minority kids trapped in abysmal inner-city schools contributed to an unfortunate perception of charters as merely schools for impoverished urban dwellers. There’s a certain uniformity across much of today’s charter world, and (save perhaps for virtual schools) not enough real innovating.

Fifth, the R&D quality of charters has eroded, along with the vision of the late Albert Shanker that charters would emerge as teacher-created, teacher-run schools.

And those are just observations in retrospect. Looking ahead, we can glimpse at least as many fresh challenges and unresolved questions. With the charter sector’s emergence as a durable—and in some places sizable—element of American public education, all sorts of new issues have come into focus. For example:

• As charters come to instruct large numbers of a given city’s children, who is responsible for the “education safety net” by which every kid has access to some school that can satisfactorily address her educational needs?
• What about the challenges of pupil discipline and the related question of whether charters must retain every youngster they admit, regardless of behavior or academic performance?
• Must every charter school be expected to accommodate the singular challenges of every child, no matter how difficult or esoteric?
• What about encouraging more charters to serve populations other than disadvantaged city dwellers: middle class kids, gifted children, just girls or just boys, children of military personnel, etc.?
• Why not select students—rather than conduct random lotteries—for some schools (perhaps gifted kids, Mandarin learners, or future violinists)?
• What about charters that want to deviate from state academic standards in order to focus on particular specialties, including some that opt to concentrate on high-quality career and technical education rather than academic preparation for college?

None of this is easy, and it isn’t helped by the continuing pushback against charters from many quarters. Yet charter promoters have sometimes also been naïve—and occasionally self-interested. And as we have noted, many of today’s challenges could not have been anticipated. In such circumstances, there’s no shame in acknowledging imperfection and incompleteness. Indeed, it would be shameful not to encourage recalibration and further experimentation.

Can the charter movement retain sufficient nimbleness and audacity, or will it ossify into a conventional interest group like so many other reforms?

Here are some reasons for hope:

• This movement is still basically bipartisan, a rarity in today’s polarized policy world.
• Most charters are free of unions and, in some cases, free from state licensure of principals and teachers, creating the necessary space for experimentation in staffing.
• There’s huge unmet demand for charters, both from kids and families wanting to choose and from people and organizations wanting to start schools.
• We already have some fantastic proof points about the ability of great schools to alter the life prospects of poor kids.
• Some “chains” of charters have managed to demonstrate sustained and widespread quality while also illustrating the concept of virtual school systems.

This is not the first time—and it won’t be the last—that a grand policy initiative has encountered bumps and yielded mixed results. When so many thousands of complex institutions are spread across so many thousands of jurisdictions, the challenges of politics, resources, talent, and implementation are profound. When what’s being changed contains as many ingrained practices, hidebound regulatory regimes, and vested interests as American public schooling, these trials are even greater.

Where it has worked well, the charter school movement has worked so well that it amply deserves to be sustained and perfected. Where it hasn’t, wise policymakers have and should push back against its tendency to turn into a self-interested protector of mediocrity. Millions of children’s futures—and billions of tax dollars—are at stake.

“Doing more for less” was a mantra for school reformers four or five years ago, when school funding across the country hit its nadir. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute frequently argued in favor of using the economic crisis to do things differently. (See here, here, and here.) Much pain has accompanied the recent tough times. But there are school districts and educators across the county that have managed to turn crisis into opportunity, many of whom I’ve met in my work (with Fordham until 2012, and more recently with Bluum and ROCI in Idaho).

Reynoldsburg, Ohio, offers a good example. The city is about ten miles east of Columbus and serves about seven thousand students. Its school district’s annual budget took a 10 percent hit from 2008 to 2011, while it simultaneously saw a 10 percent increase in economically disadvantaged students (who currently make up about half of all the district’s students). Reynoldsburg also eliminated about 20 percent of its staff between October 2008 and October 2009 (see here for details).

Fast forward to this month: The Wall Street Journal reports that Reynoldsburg is in the midst of an overhaul defined by “a personalized learning model combining computer-based and in-person instruction that the district says has held down costs, sustained above-average test scores and put students in greater control of their learning.” The district is not only doing more with less—it is doing better. The four-year graduation rate has climbed from 83 percent in 2010 to about 93 percent in 2013.

In southeast Georgia, the community of Dublin provides another illustration. Its schools sustained a double economic blow in recent decades. The textile industry that had long sustained the community was ravaged by NAFTA, and the district suffered when Georgia saw per-student spending decline by almost 15 percent from 2008 to 2014. Eight in ten students in Dublin City Schools are eligible for free and reduced-price lunch.

In response, the Dublin district made painful cuts, but it also embraced a change to state law that allows a portfolio approach to school governance. Georgia’s charter system builds on twenty-five years of the American charter school experience. The Dublin effort is showing its worth academically, and it offers important insights for districts seeking to improve their schools by embracing the charter bargain of greater freedom and flexibility in return for results.

Superintendent Chuck Ledbetter told me during a visit that “the charter system has given us the flexibility from rules that allow us to do more for kids.” Specifically, it “allows us to pilot new ideas.” He tells his building leaders “to break rules with integrity in order to deliver for kids.” The principal of Dublin’s Saxon Heights Elementary, John Strickland, argued that the district charter status allowed a “culture shift. It triggered a change in mindset. We don’t have to do things here because of the system. We do things because we think it works for the kids.”

But the charter district is not just about choice; it is also about accountability. It requires the district and its schools to work out their goals, how they define success, and how adults will be held accountable for delivering results. It provides transparency, as the goals and academic targets for the district and schools must be shared with the state. Most importantly, the district has seen declines in referrals for discipline issues, improvements in its academic performance, and gains in its high school graduation rate.

Beyond Textbooks (BT) in Arizona is a child of the economic crisis. When district funding was cut significantly in Vail, Arizona (the state saw per-student spending drop 17 percent from 2008 to 2014), Superintendent Calvin Baker and his team looked for ways to find “revenue sources for working through our financial crisis.” The district’s director of technology suggested creating an online system that included lesson plans and calendars for when certain concepts should be taught. It also featured a means for teachers to share materials online, breaking down barriers of time and place.

This was the genesis of BT, which in seven years has grown from a district-based solution into an online curriculum accessible through a wiki that allows over ten thousand teachers in more than one hundred districts and charters across three states (Arizona, Wyoming, and Idaho) to share their best lesson plans, ideas, and instructional resources. Participating school districts and charter schools have seen their spending on textbooks drop from an average of $55 per student to almost $0. For Vail, with an enrollment of twelve thousand students, this comes to an annual savings of around $650,000—and an additional $1.5 million that the district receives in fees from partner schools. These resources are plowed back into the work of the district and into BT.

Benson, Arizona Superintendent Micah Mortensen—Vail’s early partner in BT—told me, “There is no doubt in my mind that BT helps kids get to a higher level, and it helps close achievement gaps because it helps teachers work smarter.” Benson Primary School was the top-ranked elementary school in Arizona in 2014 and a U.S. Department of Education National Blue Ribbon School.

These are very different events in very different parts of the country, yet they share a few things in common:

• Economic pressures stimulate innovation. In all three cases, the changes were triggered by financial crisis. Leaders in these districts took a hit, took stock of where they were, and then worked with their communities to convert pain into an opportunity to better serve students by doing things very differently.
• Open enrollment supports innovators. All three districts utilize open-enrollment policies to allow neighboring students to enroll in their schools. They believe that their academic offerings are top-notch and make them as widely available as possible. They embrace choice and competition.
• The flexibility to do things differently is a precondition for action and success. Reynoldsburg embraced choice, charters, and blended learning, which empowered building-level leaders to customize education for every child. In Georgia, the change in the charter landscape allowed the Dublin district to structure its schools differently. Technological advances allowed the Vail school district in Arizona to create an online curriculum accessible to more than ten thousand teachers across three states.
• Student achievement and advancement is the Holy Grail. All three efforts define success as increased student achievement. Dublin’s superintendent summed it up thusly: “We do whatever it takes to generate productive students.”
• Leadership matters.  None of the innovations described here would have existed were it not for the respective superintendents’ exceptional leadership. Reynoldsburg has had three consecutive reformers at the helm for over twenty years. Chuck Ledbetter in Georgia and Calvin Baker in Arizona are both seasoned educational veterans who simply get things done. These people are not only district leaders, but also highly respected community leaders. They run school systems, but they focus on the betterment of their respective communities and states. They are extraordinary problem solvers who motivate the people around them to take productive risks for the sake of the kids.

Doing more for less is no longer just a slogan—it’s become a way of life for innovative educators and districts across the country. And it’s paying dividends for children and schools.

• Teachers have been complaining about it for years: American students are just too hopelessly infatuated with Sophocles, Shakespeare, and George Eliot to buckle down and read nonfiction. Oh wait, no one ever actually complained about that. But schools are nonetheless attempting a shift in reading instruction away from fiction and toward journalism, essays, legislation, and speeches. The move is a signature feature of the Common Core State Standards, which set out to shift the classroom focus to the kinds of informational texts that students will be faced with in college and beyond. Though pairing Romeo and Juliet with articles about teen suicide may seem quixotic, the new method has its proponents. Susan Pimentel, who helped author the standards, claims that “there is enough great literary nonfiction out there that there shouldn’t be a forced fitting” between novels and newspapers. And traditionalists can take heart in the fact that eighth graders will hate reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as much as they used to hate reading Silas Marner.
• When it comes to all the really sweet gigs, high school ends up being a little like Highlander—there can be only one prom queen, one first-chair piccolo, one class treasurer, one Jordan Catalano. But this year, Dublin, Ohio’s three high schools graduated some 222 class valedictorians. That figure represents about one-fifth of the district’s seniors. This pell-mell valedictorian inflation came as the result of new eligibility criteria, first instituted a few years ago, that confer the title’s waning cachet on any student who achieves a GPA above 4.0. Dublin locals are split on their town’s new status as the pointy-head capital of the Midwest, with some predictably grumbling that the “everyone-gets-a-trophy” approach devalues genuine academic excellence. As of yet, however, commentators remain silent about what this development holds for the fate of the endangered American salutatorian.
• To the cavalcade of reform-minded superintendents who have headed for the exits over the past year, we can now add one more name: Cami Anderson, the departing Newark schools chief. Anderson’s “One Newark” reorganization initiative has often been a bone of contention, though the city’s schools have made some impressive gains during her time in office. Aspiring reformers have some reason to rejoice, though—Anderson’s most likely successor is apparently New Jersey education maven Chris Cerf, often the subject of star-struck encomiums by Fordham’s own Andy Smarick. And though they’re probably happy to collect a scalp, the former superintendent’s adversaries will now have to go without the exquisite pleasure of spontaneously hopping on buses and hounding her at sedate D.C. education conclaves. The horror!

Who actually opts out of states tests, charter schools at twenty-five, Cami Anderson’s resignation, and the effects of non-public revenue on public schools.

Amber's Research Minute

Michelle:       Hello. This is your host, Michelle Lerner, of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, here at the Education Gadfly Show and online at edexcellence.net. And now, please join me in welcoming my co-host, the Amy Poeller, a.k.a. joy of ed reform.

Alyssa:           I saw Inside Out this weekend, and I am joyful to hear that pop culture reference.

Michelle:       I knew you would love that, so I had to give you that one.

Alyssa:           Thank you.

Michelle:       I didn't want to go with anger or passive aggressiveness or whatever other ...

Alyssa:           I will admit ... this movie is all about the emotions that live in this 11-year-old girl's head, and my favorite was disgust. And I feel ...

Michelle:       Do you relate most closely with disgust?

Alyssa:           Sometimes, I feel she and I are a little simpatico, but she's also a character, two or three years later, if this was a movie about a 14-year-old girl, I feel disgust would have a much more prominent role, so I was a little miffed on the part of disgust that she didn't have such a centerpiece, but the movie was adorable. I know you haven't seen it yet.

Michelle:       Yes. I will be seeing it this weekend, so we will have a full discussion Monday morning.

Alyssa:           Okay.

Michelle:       At 9 AM.

Alyssa:           Maybe Wednesday on the podcast again?

Michelle:       And Wednesday on the podcast ...

Alyssa:           Maybe.

Michelle:       If we're back as hosts. We'll see if we're ever allowed back on depends how the next 30 minutes go.

Alyssa:           Let's see how this goes.

Michelle:       Among the voices in your head, do you listen to joy most?

Alyssa:           Oh, God. I don't know. Today I'm ... they don't have it in the movie, "tired," but today I'm listening to tired a little bit.

Michelle:       That's because teenagers aren't supposed to have that. Kids are ...

Alyssa:           They really don't. Oh, my God. No. They're just balls of energy but, yeah. No. Joy, I think, would be a pretty predominant emotion. She definitely ruled the movie. She was amazing, and I saw the movie with my parents. I have this inadvertent tradition of seeing a lot of Pixar movies with my parents, even though I am far too old for that, but it was nice to be with them.

Michelle:       You did not make the big mistake of seeing Toy Story 3 with your parents?

Alyssa:           I totally made that mistake, and so it was actually super bad timing, too, because ... spoiler alert for those who haven't seen a movie that came out five years ago now, but at the end of the movie, Andy goes off to college, and Andy gives all of his toys who have loved him so much to a little girl so she can love the toys too. I saw this movie with my parents maybe a week after I'd graduated from college. The day before I left to go to join Institute for Teach for America, which was my next step after college, and my mother just walked out halfway through. I remember her coming back. She was like, "I'm really okay." I'm like, "No, Mom. You're not. No one is okay right now."

Michelle:       I have to say that after I saw that movie, I spent 20 minutes in a room just by myself with my feelings. Joy and all the others.

Alyssa:           Pixar's great at pulling each and every emotion out of each and every person that sees it, and I got to say, Inside Out carries that tradition on very, very well.

Michelle:       I like to hear that, and while I wish we could talk about Inside Out and Pixar all day ...

Alyssa:           Next week.

Michelle:       We have to play “Pardon the Gadfly!”

Alyssa:           All right.

Michelle:       Dominique, take it away.

Dominique:   Question One: On Monday, Cami Anderson resigned as the Superintendent of Newark Public School System. Is this a good thing for the city and the school district?

Michelle:       Maybe.

Alyssa:           Maybe not.

Michelle:       I think that this was perhaps a decision that the district did not want to go through ... the fight anymore of defending Cami. Her initiative, while I think they were good for the district, I don't think they wanted to relive D.C. with Michelle Rhee. I think they're still going to bring in an ed-reformer, the rumor is Chris Cerf, which would be awesome. But I don't think the anti-reform crowd can throw up their arms in cheers that they've won here.

Alyssa:           Yeah, no. She came into a district that was ossified, that had a lot of corruption, that was incredible poorly performing and she came in on the initiative of Cory Booker and Chris Christie. She had democrat and a republican that she was kind of working for. She came into a very, very tough spot. I'll admit, she made a couple mistakes.

                        I re-read the New Yorker profile of her tenure and the decisions around bringing ed-reform to Newark yesterday, and it was exhaustive and also very, very long. There were some missteps, but she had a really tough situation. She had some victories and at the end of the day, she did outlast ... I was reading on Great City Schools' website, guess what the average tenure now, in 2014, was for a big city superintendent?

Michelle:       Two years?

Alyssa:           Close! It was 3.2 years, so she beat the curve. Kind of like you said, I do hope that the state brings in somebody who can kind of play the Kaya Henderson role. Cami shook a lot of stuff up, it is definitely not the same district it was when she came to the district and I'm hopeful that they can bring someone in who can really continue to push to make these reforms but can also connect with the community and bring people into the decision making process and make them feel a little more included in what's happening to their kids in their schools.

Michelle:       I think we're both agreeing that the D.C. model is really what we want to see.

Alyssa:           Yeah.

Michelle:       It's the fastest growing urban district [crosstalk 00:05:18].

Alyssa:           It's a pretty good district too, and a good place to live.

Michelle:       ... all of their improvements over the years. But, the question I have is: did Cami Anderson push Newark enough, to the same degree, that say, Michelle Rhee pushed D.C.? And then the other thing is, we have to remember that Kaya Henderson was in DCPS while Michelle Rhee was there.

Alyssa:           Yes, exactly.

Michelle:       So, it was almost just a continuing of the ed-reform, but a very big change in personality and how to approach things, but the ed-reforms where the same.

Alyssa:           Yeah, and there's definitely ... and you know in D.C. Kaya Henderson came in after Vince Gray won mayoralty? Mayorship? Mayoralship, I like that. But, even though he had defeated Adrian Fenty on kind of this school reform ... like, around issues of school, he was still very supportive of Kaya Henderson and of changing the D.C. schools, and that's not quite the situation that we have, politically, in Newark.

Michelle:       Well, and in D.C., Kaya Henderson also survived another mayoral election.

Alyssa:           Yeah.

Michelle:       And she's still here.

Alyssa:           Still here.

Michelle:       I think there's just broad agreement in D.C., at least for now, that this is a good path that DCPS is on and I don't think anyone is willing to shake things up and they want to stay forward because I think people who ... if someone did do that, they would get a lot of flack.

Alyssa:           Yeah. To answer your first question, about whether or not she made enough changes, I don't know, what do you think?

Michelle:       I don't know, I think only time will tell and that's sort of sad, but hopefully they bring in an ed-reformer. Hopefully they bring in somebody who will continue this work but has a different approach because one of ed-reform's big failures is talking to parents, talking to communities and not talking with them. Not including them in decisions.

Alyssa:           Mm-hmm.

Michelle:       Not talking about what and why we're pushing these reforms and I think that's a tough thing to learn but I think it might've been a lesson that was learned here.

Alyssa:           Yeah, so we just solved Newark. On that note, question number two.

Dominique:   Over at the Brookings Institution, Matthew Chingos wrote about who opts out of state tests. Does this change the opt out discussion?

Michelle:       Some of the major findings here, it's a bit of a wonky piece, but really short and worth the read. Matt looks at 648 districts, which had an average opt out rate of 28%, but when you weigh the districts based on enrollment, the average opt out rate is 21%. Larger districts have lower opt out rates. Districts with higher opt out rates serve fewer disadvantaged children. Districts with lower test scores have higher opt out rates. We can only talk about districts here and not students. Of course, Matt notes many times, this is preliminary data, and it's also reported by districts and there could be a reporting problem.

                        I think, to answer your question Dominique, this is a topic where everyone had a opinion instantly. They are very firm in their opinions and those opinions were formed before we had this data, which is preliminary. Of course the state will come out with more firm data later. I think this will change exactly zero people's minds. Like most discussions.

Alyssa:           I mean, the more we learn about who's opting out and what's happening in [New York 00:08:47], like the more nuance it does becomes. At first, it was like, everyone's opting out. All of these kids are walking out of tests, everyone's throwing up their pencils, notebooks, everything's gone.

                        Then it's like, it's just the very, very yuppie districts, and then it's like well, it's more affluent districts, but it's not the most affluent districts. Now this kind of nuance around the test scores comes in and so I think it's not a black and white photo, it's not something that's immediately going to have a clear line between a cause and an effect. New York's a very tricky situation. There's the teacher evaluation movements, there are a lot of ...

Dominique:   They're further along in common core implementation than other states.

Alyssa:           They have a lot of charter schools, particularly in urban areas, in more suburban areas, there's a lot of private schools. It's a complicated and I think as more data comes out, it's only going to become more complicated. This was, I think, a very interesting look at, as much as we can know, what's happening.

Michelle:       Exactly. I think you're going to see the opt out discussion continue for a while especially if ESEA moves here in Washington because they whole question of testing is frankly what prevented ESEA from being passed a few months ago.

Alyssa:           Which time?

Michelle:       There's rumors that it's back and that it can pass. We'll see. I think there's a communications problem here of, yeah, taking a test is never fun, there's nobody who thinks that, but it does give critical information federally to schools, to parents, and really communicating this is really critical if we are going to stop and opt out movement.

                        Because this is one of those issues where people of very different political leanings are coming together on this one issue, and whenever that happens I always get a little nervous. That when the moderates agree, that's a good thing, when the extremes agree, that's a bad thing.

Alyssa:           That's true. All right, question number three.

Dominique:   Chester Finn and Bruno Mano wrote this week about what charter proponents can learn from the school's first quarter century, and why there are good reasons for hope going forward. What lessons should reformers heed in the next 25 years?

Alyssa:           So this Chester Finn guy sounds pretty smart.

Michelle:       Yeah, he is pretty smart. He's also a tough editor. I don't know if he's ever edited anything you've written.

Alyssa:           Maybe once or twice I've gotten a couple of comments back from him on something I've written. Maybe once or twice.

                        Bruno and Chester are both very noted experts and very thoughtful writers on the issue of charter schools, and are kind of just taking stock. Charter school started in 1991, they're now 25 years old, the same as Taylor Swift. We've seen some really great things, but we've also seen places where what was expected didn't quite go as planned and it's time to kind of take stock, see where it's going next. What did you think?

Michelle:       I thought this was a really great article, if you weren't making charter school policy back in 1991. It's a good read. It really dives into the history. It really dives into all of the missteps along the way as well as sort of where we should go in the future. The policy topics that still need work. I think it would ... well, not surprisingly, I agreed with most of what was said because I work at Fordham and Checker and Bruno are both affiliated with Fordham and here are the same ideas.

                        I think what we've seen is that there is a lot of difference between states, both in the chartered law and how school are performing. I like that Checker and Bruno highlight the authorizing piece which I think we feel, more and more, is so critical and that's obviously stuff we're trying to fight for in Ohio and then our Dayton team is certainly on the ground knowledge with.

                        I was just happy to see that Maryland had the worst charter school law instead of Virginia.

Alyssa:           Where do you live again? Okay. There we go.

Michelle:       Which could've very well have also been the worst charter state, but you know, Virginia was.

Alyssa:           You know, I'm just going to point out that while Bruno and Check are pointed out a lot of the mixed results in D.C., D.C. came out smelling like a rose compared to the M and the V and the DMV. Just putting that out there.

Michelle:       Yeah, and I have to say that there's this big competition between Virginia and Maryland and everyone in D.C., is like "We're just superior,

Alyssa:           On so many levels. Yes we are.

Michelle:       "Of both of your states, so just why are you arguing?"

                        It's a really fantastic piece, and I think the question is ... Charters are here to stay. What do we want the next 25 years to look like to ensure that they are serving more kids, I think that's what we want to see. They're in more states with stronger laws, but what are the things that we should really tackle in the next two decades?

Alyssa:           I mean, the things I think we should tackle, I think that was the inadvertent question there, is definitely authorizing. It's something that we've realized is never simple, never easy and chartering is not this clean cut premise that it was in 1991. So I think we need to reform authorizing, but the other thing I would really like to see, and they do get into a bit towards the end is, kind of shifting the paradigm on who charters should serve. The initial charter law was passed in Minnesota. 

                        Charters were initially supposed to be kind of bastions of innovations, laboratories of democracy, where all these new lessons on how to educated children and also what works, were going to be incubated. We've seen that to some degree for college prep charter schools for low income urban and minority students. We've seen so much success there. We have KIPP. We have Uncommon. We have all of these great networks. I would like to see a little more innovation for the rest of the kids. For rural kids, for kids who live in suburbs, for kids who just want new and different things out of schools. We've done one thing well now let's apply those lessons we've learned there and do other things well too.

Michelle:       There's a huge challenge to charter schools in suburban and rural neighborhoods because you can't have a ton of them because there just aren't as many people and the transportation is more tricky and all of these things so I think there's challenges that policy makers have to consider. I would like to see a transition from thinking that charter schools are this new thing that we have to have to the idea that this is the reality now so we have to transition from the "let's get rid of the establishment and do this" to "now we have defend what we've done and we have to make sure they're performing, and if they're not, we have to live up to what we said and make tough decisions where tough decisions are necessary."

Alyssa:           Like many things that are 25, the charter movement is going to start taking on a little more adult responsibility, to stretch this analogy even further.

Michelle:       We're done with the quarter life crisis; let's get to the mid life crises.

Alyssa:           Oh god, now we're all going to start driving Porches.

Michelle:       All right.

Alyssa:           Okay, so we solved Newark and we just solved charter schools.

Michelle:       We're on a roll today.

                        You know, more people should go on vacation, 'cause I think we solve all of the issues when everyone else is out of the office.

Alyssa:           I like it.

Michelle:       All right. That's all the time we have for Pardon the Gadfly. Thank you Dominique. Up next is everyone's favorite: Amber's Research Minute.

                        Welcome to the show Amber.

Amber:           Thank you, Michelle.

Michelle:       So, have you seen the new Inside Out movie?

Amber:           I have not. But I'd love to.

Michelle:       But you have to see it.

Amber:           I love Pixar Movies.

Michelle:       It's so good. You have to go this weekend.

Amber:           I know, Dara was just telling me I needed to go see Mad Max?

Michelle:       No.

Amber:           I was like, it's about car racing and lots of that kind of stuff.

Alyssa:           Yeah, no.

Amber:           I'm much more into cartoons.

Alyssa:           It's so good.

Michelle:       Inside Out will be much more you than Mad Max.

Amber:           That's awesome, yeah. I don't know. I feel like when I go to those movies, I'm the only ... me and my husband we don't have kids, and we go and we just sit with all the families.

Michelle:       Oh no.

Alyssa:           No, no! Wait! I was telling Michelle earlier, not only did I go see this movie with my parents, so I'm like getting up there in years, and I'm there with a bunch of kids and my parents, who are even older than I am. Shocker. I've seen like most Pixar movies, starting from Toy Story 1, with my parents.

Amber:           All right, I'm going to go then. Because seriously we have free movie tickets, because the last movie went to, a huge storm knocked out the power and we got free tickets. So I've been waiting for a movie to go see.

Alyssa:           Use them. This one is totally worth ... this is worth the admission price.

Amber:           Okay. Definitely.

Michelle:       Okay, so report back next week.

                        What do you have for us today?

Amber:           We got a new study out by some researches from the University of Arkansas. That didn't sound interesting, but it is, it's called "Non-public Revenue, In Public Charter and Traditional Public Schools."

Alyssa:           I heard you did Sesame Street a couple weeks ago, so you're going to have to sell me.

Amber:           All right so, this is ... we've worked with these guys before. This is just sort of an aside, but these are some of the same folks that worked with Fordham when we came out with our charter inequity frontier, I'm getting that title terrible wrong but. It was one of the first studies that looked at the differences between charter and traditional schools in terms of the revenue difference and that charters basically get the shaft. But they're back with another report. Here they are looking, in depth, at non public funds, for fiscal year 2011, in both sectors, in 15 states. So in 15 states, they're like "okay, we have good data here, we're going to go here." This is not a representative sample.

                        Anyway, they dig into sort of the non public funds and this includes things like food service, that yummy cafeteria food that kids buy, investment revenue, program revenue, so any kind of program, you charge kids for maybe participating in x, y, and z, rental revenue and philanthropic funds, and a couple other ares that I won't go into.

                        So, Key findings: They find that traditional public schools receive 6.4 billion and charters 379 million in 2011, in non-public revenue. For traditional schools, this amounts to about $353 per pupil. For charters, it's an average of 579 per pupil. Yet, they are quick to say that these numbers vary by state. For instance, in Michigan, charters receive about 50% less in per pupil revenue from non-public sources than do the kids in traditional schools, so you got to look at the state level data.

                        The types of non-public revenue coming in, also changes by sector. In the traditional public schools, about 1/3 of those non-public monies come from food service. Those kids are buying those made up chicken burgers, whatever's in them. And miscellaneous. We've got this category that they couldn't really figure out. In the charter sector, philanthropy makes up almost a half of their non-public revenue. That boils down to 264 per pupil in the charter sector, and about 18 bucks per pupil in the traditional sector.

                        They make the point that the difference is obviously driven by the large student enrollments in traditional public schools, so you've got more kids to sort of spread this around. And again, the traditional public schools receive about double the amount of philanthropy in the absolute sense.

                        And then ... it's kind of a neat little report. They've packed a lot into a short report, so I'll just highlight a couple other things.

                        Philanthropic funds also vary greatly among charter schools. You say, "okay, are these funds being directed to all schools equally or not?" And they're not. About 1/3 of charters receive no funds at all from philanthropy. In the end, they've got this sort of roll up take away and I cut and paste it in my research minute 'cause I thought it hit the nail on the head. They say "although charitable funds, from philanthropy, make up almost half of the non-public revenue in the charter sector, they account for just 2.5% of total charter revenues nationally, so a tiny little but, and therefore cannot be expected to close the 21.7% total funding gap between the charter and the traditional sector in these 15 states.

Alyssa:           Wow!

Michelle:       You're right. That was really interesting.

Amber:           Right? Sorry, there was a lot in there, but, people make this big deal about "oh, but charters get all this philanthropy," and we hear it all the time right?

Michelle:       Mm-hmm.

Amber:           That's sort of a throw-away line. They're like "okay, let's check it out, and see where that's the case." And, you know, it's a partly true statement, right? For the reasons I explained. It's also, in the end I think they called ... the main title of the report is "Buckets in the Water," which means, in the end, it doesn't really make up too much of the total pie.

Alyssa:           Mm-hmm.

Michelle:       Was D.C. included in this study?

Amber:           You know, I need to go back and look. I don't know. They list the 15 that were in there.

Michelle:       Right.

Amber:           I can't remember off the top of my head. I think they said that their sample, in these places, they are comprised of states in which charters generally take in more philanthropic funds than in other states. So, you know, all these things to keep in mind.

Michelle:       Who knew that food service took up so much?

Alyssa:           Yeah, when they say food service are they talking the vending machines where I got a Kit-Kat after school, which I don't think are in schools anymore, or are they talking about the mystery meat chicken sandwich that ...

Amber:           They didn't say?

Michelle:       Now made with real white meat!

Amber:           I know it's the cafeteria. I'm not sure about the vending machines. And adults are spending money on theses things too.

Alyssa:           Right.

Amber:           I was a teacher and I used to get the pizza on Tuesdays and I know it was terrible for me but, you know.

Alyssa:           My favorite was, they brought in Pizza Hut bread sticks on Fridays and I would line up very early to get those.

Michelle:       Of course you would.

Amber:           We needed this study though right?

Michelle:       Yeah.

Amber:           I just feel like we've been hearing this for a while and so I think that, to dig into these numbers, and Larry Maloney's been doing this for a while and Pat Wolf and the other guys, they know how to do this study well. They've got this nice little caveat bar that sort of speaks to the Bruce Bakers of the world that says "this is our methodology, this is why we did it this way, this is why it makes sense," and so on, and so forth.

                        I really think that anyone who cares about ed-finance, especially between the sectors, this is kind of wonky, but it's written really well, and I think they'll find it of interest.

Michelle:       I just find it interesting that 1/3 of charters don't receive any philanthropic dollars.

Amber:           Nothing, right?

Michelle:       I could understand a charter in, say, Michigan, not being able to get funding from a national funder, but there are so many foundations that are city or region based, that you would think that more of these cities would be able to grab this money.

Alyssa:           I mean, I think it depends a lot on the school. If the school is very competently run and has a lot of infrastructure in place, and has somebody who is chasing those dollars so they can get that $10,000 grant to buy violins for the orchestra or whatever, then, yes, they are getting their pieces of the pie, small or large as those pieces may be.

                        But if the school is not very functional and not very well run and they have low test scores, they're having trouble keeping kids, and they have so many bigger fish to fry and it's the same pressures, I feel, all schools feel. You deal with academic first, then you deal with everything else and frequently those extra dollars are going to support those extra things.

Amber:           I think the underlying assumption, right, is that the brand names are capturing the dollars and the KIPPs of the world.

                        They weren't able to actually back up that assertion with these data, but, I think that's what most people would hypothesize is happening.

Alyssa:           Well, and I think our D.C. spending map, just to do a Fordham flag, cause I have to.

Michelle:       This is your second today, good job.

Alyssa:           Thank you.

Michelle:       On the podcast.

Alyssa:           Is the idea that everyone thinks "oh, well traditional public schools are all funded at the same level and charter schools must all get the same funding, whether it's philanthropic dollars or not and how there's so much difference at the school level and I think that's a message that has to get out. School finance is very wonky, but really critical to getting all these other reforms done that people want so, I think it's worth folks diving in and learning how to understand this stuff.

Amber:           Yeah.

Michelle:       Absolutely.

Amber:           Mm-hmm.

Alyssa:           All right, on that little finance lesson, thanks so much Amber.

Amber:           You're welcome.

Michelle:       That's all the time we have for this weeks' Gadfly show. Till next week.

Alyssa:           I'm Alyssa Schwenk.

Michelle:       And I'm Michelle Lerner for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, signing off.

For two decades, The New Teacher Project, now known simply as TNTP, has been providing excellent teachers to the students who need them most. Its work has ranged from partnering with school districts to supporting teacher-evaluation policies. With new CEO Daniel Weisberg now at the helm, what is the future of TNTP? What role will teacher evaluations play in education reform in the coming years?

A new National Bureau of Economic Research study examines the impact of women’s participation in the workforce on their children’s college attainment. The researchers use data from the Norway Registry, which includes information on all children born in the country between 1967 and 1993 (roughly 725,000 males and 690,000 females). They match children’s data with their parents' earnings history when the children were between birth and age seventeen (among other information).

Descriptive data show that the employment of mothers with young children has increased from 10 percent in 1967 to 65 percent in 1993, while fathers’ employment has remained fairly constant—around 93 percent.

Controlling for various family and child demographics, the analysts find that a mother’s employment has a positive impact on her daughter’s college attainment relative to the effect on her son’s. Specifically, daughters are more likely than sons to have at least a college degree by the age of twenty-five. Mothers with more female children are also more likely to be in the workplace, after controlling for the total number of children. Interestingly, fathers’ employment also has a negative effect on boys’ college attainment and a positive effect for girls.

Increased time with sons already results in higher marginal gains in college attainment, so it makes sense that decreased time would have a higher consequence for them as well. For the daughters, the analysts reason that a working mother provides a working role model, which may increase her “expected return” from schooling. All of these data help to explain the narrowing and reversal of the educational gender gap since the 1950s—defined here as the difference in college attainment between females and males. The trend is both encouraging and troubling.

SOURCE: Xiaodong Fan, Hanming Fang, and Simen Markussen, "Mothers' Employment and Children's Educational Gender Gap," National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 21183 (May 2015).

In school choice debates, the role that magnet schools can and should play often gets drowned out by arguments over charters, vouchers, ESAs, and the like. That’s a shame. Many of our best public high schools are magnets, and there have been several compelling—albeit anecdotal— analyses showing that rigorous magnet programs can be a boon for low-income kids (including, of course, a book by Chester Finn).

Since the 1970s, however, the definition of magnet schools has broadened to include any kind of specialized curriculum, from arts and languages to experiential learning and STEM. In many cases, the schools are not selective (or particularly selective). Magnet schools have been created by district administrators for purposes beyond academic rigor—most notably to promote desegregation or to offer more choices to families. The American Institute for Research’s recent study takes a look at whether magnet elementary schools are able to achieve their intended aims.

The study follows twenty-one schools that receive funds from the Department of Education’s Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP) to convert into magnets. The analysts found a mixed legacy of success: The schools surveyed showed some indications of increased diversity, and “traditional magnets”—those with lower pre-conversion achievement rates—improved in English language arts performance. Yet these effects tended to be small, and many of the changes seen in transitioning schools, such as academic improvements among the population of interest, were illustrative of larger district trends.

Interestingly, most of the magnet schools were in districts that already offered ample parent choice—about 22 percent of the schools in any given district were schools of choice, and anywhere from one-fifth to one-third of students in a converting school already hailed from outside the catchment zone. To reach their goals in such a competitive marketplace, one can infer that magnet schools need to truly stand out. Magnets could take a page or two out of successful charters’ playbooks—philanthropic support of high-quality programming, for instance, or greater teacher autonomy—to set themselves apart from other schools with a specialized focus. Another thought might be for the magnets to return to their core promise of working with the most academically gifted students, a niche that lotteries prevent many charters from targeting. Either path would help magnets distinguish themselves again.

SOURCE: Julian Betts et al., “What Happens When Schools Become Magnet Schools?: A Longitudinal Study of Diversity and Achievement,” American Institutes for Research (May 2015).

This special edition of the Cowen Institute’s annual report marks the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a horrific event that devastated New Orleans and its people—yet also offered a unique opportunity to rebuild one of the poorest-performing school districts in the country. Authors Vincent Rossmeier and Patrick Sims offer a comprehensive look at the city’s progress thus far, as well as the unusual circumstances that have turned the Big Easy into a petri dish of education innovation.

The New Orleans system is unique for a number of reasons. Ninety-three percent of its public school students attend charters, making it the most decentralized education system in the country. (Detroit comes in second with 55 percent.) It relies heavily on nonprofit services, such as arts education, after-school programming, professional training, family services, and more. And while each charter management organization (CMO) operates autonomously, all schools in the Recovery School District work together to coordinate services that require economies of scale or are needed by every child in the district. These include a centralized enrollment system, city-wide transportation, standards of discipline and expulsion, and shared funding to special needs services and facility maintenance (demonstrating that commonsense policies can find a home in an education system free from DOE bureaucracy).

All this innovation has coincided with significantly improved student achievement. In 2005, 62 percent of students attended a failing school, the second-worst showing in Louisiana. But this past school year, that figure declined to 7 percent, outperforming twenty-five other districts. Graduation rates have improved from 56 percent in 2005 to 73 percent in 2014. New Orleans schools are still collectively below average on the state school performance score scale—but advancements abound.

The report’s tone is also praiseworthy, lauding the city’s accomplishments. Rossmeier and Simms' approach demonstrates their understanding of and respect for the cultural intricacies of a city that has seen its education system torn apart by both systemic injustices and mother nature.

Scott Cowen, founder and director of the Cowen Institute, believes that “the future of [New Orleans] is dependent on the quality of the public school system. If it does not thrive, this city will not thrive.” Indeed.

Going forward, education reformers should heed the lessons of the great education overhaul underway in New Orleans. This report is great place to start.

SOURCE: Vincent Rossmeier and Patrick Sims, “The State of Public Education in New Orleans: 10 Years After Hurricane Katrina,” Cowen Institute (June 2015).