In a notable development last week, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the Palm Beach County School District in Florida over what it claims is a violation of its students' basic right to quality education as promised in the state constitution.

In the lawsuit, the ACLU argues that the county school district has failed its students--especially minority children--by not offering a "uniform, efficient, safe, secure and high quality education." It is, on the face of it, the same argument that has been made to varying effect in more than 20 states to date: states are not providing children the quality of education that they promise either implicitly or explicitly in their constitutions. But the ACLU has taken a different angle in the latest lawsuit, because rather than suing for a more equal distribution of school spending and other resources, the group is instead suing for the district to improve high school graduation rates, particularly among low-income and minority students.

It may sound like a minor distinction, but it is a meaningful one in both legal terms and practical terms. Legally, any precedent set by decisions such as the ones in New York State, and New Jersey does not apply because the existing suits challenged resource distribution within the state. ACLU is making no such complaint in this case, arguing instead that it is the responsibility of the Palm Beach County School District, and not the state of Florida, to make the needed changes.

Practically, I think the lawsuit is, perhaps regrettably, loaded with potential pitfalls. For starters, while the focus on graduation rates is on-point to the degree that a HS diploma is virtually a necessity to compete in the 21st century job marketplace, the ACLU's suit fails to acknowledge that a HS diploma is only valuable if it actually represents real skills and knowledge learned. By concentrating on a single measure of output (graduation rates) without regard for whether the measure is an accurate representation of student learning, the ACLU may just be trading one education injustice for another by a different name (would the ACLU be happy with this news headline in 2012: 100% of Palm Beach County Students Graduate High School; Only Half Can Read"?)

Secondly, the lawsuit fails to recognize the fact that the Palm Beach County School District is not singularly accountable for law student achievement. If anything, the lawsuit sends the onus of legal accountability in the wrong trend from state-level suits. If states have not been able to level the educational playing field in the past two decades, how much less successful will we be if we try to rely on individual school districts? From a scale perspective, is the ACLU going to file a similar lawsuit in the 15,000 other school districts in the country? To improve educational outcomes for all youth--including low-income and minority youth--we need to be talking about this as a problem of a crucial, national scope.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 01:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It has been raining for the past 48 hours in St. Louis, and my school is leaking.

I get to the building at seven every morning, but on rainy days I am confronted with a vexing decision: which staircase should I take to my 3rd floor classroom?

If I take the south stairwell, I will have to step through large puddles and risk slipping and falling on the stairs--puddles generated by the large holes in the ceiling that you can see in the above pictures.

If I take the north stairwell, a different source of unpleasantness confronts me: a school security guard who believes that every teacher in the building is her enemy. Her particular gripe with me? I think it is that I am too kind to students when I ask them questions like "what are you doing," "where are you going," and "why are you doing that" instead of immediately assuming that they are guilty of something and writing them an office referral.

This choice that I face on each rainy morning conveys a challenging, parallel problem that faces our nation's efforts to improve chronically failing public schools much like the one where I teach. The problem is this: with a scarce amount of resources available, should it be a priority to fix physical capital shortfalls, or human capital problems?

It's a tough choice to have to make. But it's an even harder admission: do we really have to tell parents that either the building their child attends will have roof leaks and ancient textbooks, or their child's teachers and other personnel will be lackluster?

The answer? Yes... in the current political climate. WIthout a sea change of political will to bring about smarter, better resource allocation and tough, common sense policies, principals will continue to face impossible decisions. We have one working water fountain and, for a time, we had one working boys bathroom in our entire building. But we also had several negligent teachers who were wasting hundreds of hours of students' lives each week. With a budget already $600,000 in the red, what room is there to fix both problems?

Posted by Aaron Tang at 05:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

California's Second District Court of Appeals issued a ruling last week that declared thousands of parents who currently home school their children to be in violation of the law. The ruling represented a stunning reversal of a growing trend in American education, as the number of children being home schooled has grown steadily to a total of over 1.1 million children last year.

The ruling received immediate criticism from key policy makers in California, including the state's chief of schools Jack O'Connell and from the Governator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger. It is almost certain to be appealed to the California Supreme Court on a fast track.

What were the grounds for the decision? To begin with, the ruling all stemmed from an isolated incident in which two parents, who happened to homeschool their children, were suspected of child-abuse. The Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) then sought relief from a juvenile court, asking the court to send the children back to a public school where they would be safer and where teachers could spot signs of physical abuse. The juvenile court judge ruled, however, that the parents had a right to homeschool their children. Last week, however, the LA-based 2nd District Court of Appeals ruled that no such right existed in the state constitution and that consequently, only parents who have credentials from the state department of education to teach in a public school should be eligible to home school their children.

Forget the glaring irony of the ruling, which is that the state is now requiring home-schooling parents to have a teaching credential that tens of thousands of state-paid public school teachers are themselves lacking. The question we should ask about this decision is whether, in the end, it helps or hurts children. Will students have more access to quality educational opportunity if parents are forced to get a teaching certifiicate in order to home-school, or less access?

In my estimation, they will have less access to quality educational opportunities if the Appeals Court decision is affirmed by the state Supreme Court. But I believe this for a different reason that you might think. Educational opportunity will, I believe, not suffer principally because home-schooling parents do a better job than the public schools. It will suffer because of the implicit foundation of the court's ruling: that somehow, going through the process of getting a teaching certificate makes a person a better teacher than they were before.

How long will it be before policy makers, educators, and judges recognize that a piece of paper, a "teaching certificate" earned through taking an arbitrary number of fluffy, un-rigorous, and un-proven education classes does not make someone a good teacher? There are many homeschooling parents who do a better job of educating their children than their public school counterparts today who are not credentialed, and plenty of credentialed teachers who are worse than teachers in the next room over who are teaching on emergency certificates. Until education starts hiring, retaining, and rewarding teachers based on the quality of their outputs--that is, student learning--and not on the quality of their inputs--a fancy piece of cardstock issued by state bureaucrats--precious little gains will be had for our students, in California classrooms, kitchens, and anywhere in between.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 08:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I find it fascinating every time I hear about the achievements, struggles, and general state of charter schools in cities across America. Amidst all of the mistakes, failures, and outright tragedies that have taken place at my first-year charter school in St. Louis, It is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture with the charters movement. It is a truism nowadays to observe that charter schools, in the aggregate, are similar to traditional public schools insofar as there are some that are exceptional, some that are in need of shuttering, and a great many more whose quality is in between the two extremes. And while the charter school I work at is a definite example of a case where greater autonomy has not led to improved outcomes for our students, it is always refreshing to watch videos like the one below that show how charter schools can thrive on the other end of the achievement spectrum:

What is it that makes some charter schools first-rate, and others not? From my vantage point, it's all about the people. The obvious manifestation of this is how even the best of intentions in classrooms cannot succeed without high quality teachers to implement lessons, follow up with parents, manage classroom behavior, and contribute to a positive culture of high expectations. But human capital issues play out in many more ways in schools than just the one-on-one interaction with students.

The best example of this is with how decisions are made by school leaders in charter schools. Because charter schools are bound to a lesser degree to specific state and district processes on resource allocation with schools, principals and other decision makers have the ability to leverage their budgets and staff hours in much more fluid and effective directions. But a necessary quality for these decisions to take place is that the school leaders must be wise enough to make the right choices. In the absence of this wisdom and sound decision making, the absence of beauracratic red tape over school-level decisions can actually make charter schools comparably worse than traditional schools.

Think about it this way. It does no good for an NFL head coach to install a new offense where the quarterback has the freedom to call whatever plays he sees fit from the line of scrimmage, without knowing who his quarterback is! Of course if you have Peyton Manning or Tom Brady to make decisions you want to empower them to make calls on a case-by-case basis. The same is true in charter schools. Allowing dedicated, intelligent principals to make decisions instead of a far-removed assistant super-intendant over a curriculum decision, school day schedule, discipline process, or staff placement can have positive effects. But what if you have a rookie quarterback who has not shown the ability to make good decisions? In this case, increasing the amount of devolved autonomy can actually hurt the team--or the school in the case of a bad principal.

It seems to me that the Boston Charter Schools have some talented principals and strong teachers who are willing to work extra hours and have the right expectations for students. In St. Louis, sadly, we do not yet have these kinds of people in numbers sufficient enough to make charter schools any better than the traditional alternative.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 04:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)