Ensuring Quality in Charter Schools 1999 Charter Schools National Conference March 14-17, 1999 Denver, Colorado

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This morning session on quality in charter schools. We will be getting started in just a moment, in about a minute. Okay, I’d like to begin this session. I’d like to welcome everyone to this morning’s 7:00, very early, 7:30 or 7:45 session on quality in charter schools. I think it is a testament to people’s commitment to quality in charter schools that any of you are here at this early hour on the third day of the conference. So thank you very much all of you for coming to this really very important session with a really great set of panelists.

My name is John Schnur. I work at the White House Domestic Policy Council. I used to work at the U.S. Education Department and spent quite a bit of time on charter school issues and have worked with the great team in the Education Department that has put together this conference. I’d like to introduce the panelists before we get started. We have Milo Cutter who is the founder and codirector of the first charter school in the Nation, City Academy in St. Paul. Paul Schwartz who is currently the principal in residence at the U.S. Education Department and before that had been the principal of Central Park East High School in New York City. Joe Nathan is the director of the Center For School Change at the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota. We have Irene Sameda who was one of the founders and the codirector of the Fenton Avenue Charter School in Los Angeles. And we have Jan Bridal who is the assistant director of the Fenton Avenue Charter School, exemplifying the importance of a team be important to make a school work. We’re glad to have both of you on the panel.

The purpose of this discussion, and we have about an hour for it, is to really have a chance for the panelists and for all of you to think broadly and talk broadly about what it means for a charter school to be a high quality school and what are the central strategies across all of the issues that have been talked about at this conference, for really ensuring that charter schools reach a high level of quality. All of you are working hard on these issues in schools or in whatever organization you are a part of. You’ve been at this conference talking about and grappling with lots of issues, ranging from accountability to finances to governance to all kinds of other issues. The purpose of this session is to take a step for the panelists and for all of you to take step back and to really think -- What are the absolutely key elements to a quality charter school? If we look a few years from now at charter schools, how will we and how would you judge whether our charters schools a high quality school or not? And that really includes what you sort of think of how you would define quality and how you would measure quality. And then we want to get into discussion of what are the absolutely central issues and strategies and leverage points to be sure that a charter school reaches a high level of quality.

We’ll go, quick answers from the panelists and then, after each question, what I’d like to do is, with this wireless mike, have a discussion with the audience. So we’d like very much for you to ask questions, make comments. And I will, if you just raise, come to you and bring the wireless mike to you. Again, thanks very much for coming to the session. And we’ll get started. Let me start with the first question and start with Paul Schwartz. And I’d like all of the panelists to take two or three minutes to answer this question, which is -- How would you judge whether a charter school, a few years from now, really has reached a high level of quality? How would you define quality and how would you measure quality? Paul? In two or three minutes and then we’ll have a chance for follow up questions after that. Are the lavalieres turned on?

Are my two or three minutes up yet? Any questions? You know, I think you ought to look around at the number of people in the room. I am awed by how many people there are here. It’s amazing. This is the last day of the conference and it’s 7:30, 7:45 in the morning. I think you ought to give yourselves a hand right now. When I came in and looked at this room earlier this morning, I was hoping that the panel didn’t outnumber the participants. Technology. Let me begin by answering. Let me begin answering that question by talking about a concern that I’ve had for the last couple of days here in the conference. And that is when we talk about accountability, when we talk about quality, ensuring quality in schools. It seems to me that one of our immediate reactions is that give another standardized test to the kids. And I’m concerned about it because, in my mind, ensuring quality is not a one to one relationship with standardized tests. And the issue with it is that if we define quality as being in direct relation... Hello? Testing. Can you hear in the back? Raise your hand if you can hear. Okay, thanks. Standardized test scores today, it seems to me, are the coin of the realm. And we have to pay attention to them. But I also think that we folks in the charter school movement have to use our creativity, have to use our innovation, have to use our thoughtfulness and our experience to think of other ways, ways of supplementing standardized test scores. There are a lot of issues with standardized test scores, and I’m not going to go into them now. But I want to give you a couple of ways of thinking differently about quality than making a one to one relationship between jacking up standardized test scores a couple of points and saying, therefore, we are ensuring quality.

The first one is what percent, if you’re a high school charter school, what percent of your students have to take remedial courses when they go to college? And that might be something that we can track over the long run or one of the things that we try to promise to students at Central Park East Secondary School is that if they graduated from our school, they wouldn’t have to take remedial courses in college. I want to know -- I think some of us are going to have to bite the bullet, and we’re going to have to begin some longitudinal long-term studies of where our kids are not six minutes after graduation and not during school, but what are their intellectual habits five years after they’ve graduated from our school? What do they look like? Do they vote? I’d like to know if they vote. Do they vote more than other students? Have they finished college? Have they found themselves in productive work after high school?

One of the things that we did at Central Park East is we let students choose two pieces of writing that they thought were particularly good pieces of writing. So it was their choice, and it was writings that they had chosen about topics that were important to them. And we convened a group of college people, college teachers of writing, and gave the writing to them and said, "Grade this writing as if it were writing passed in, in the freshman year of college." Thinking that if our standards were high enough for freshman in college then we were holding our students to high and consistently high standards. I think our challenge is to hold all our students to high and consistently high standards without standardization. Standards which recognize the uniqueness and the individuality of all the students in our schools. Thanks.

Paul, let me ask one follow up question to that. Essentially, you are making the point that quality in a charter school or in a school is whether all students in that school can meet high academic standards without defining those standards simply through standardized tests.

Right.

And you’ve got a number of specific suggestions for ways that you might be able to look at that. We could get more into some of those ways during the discussion. But are you limiting your definition? And I don’t mean derogatoratively at all. But are you limiting the definition of quality to the academic achievement of the students? And you sort of got a little into some other issues. But I’m wondering would you add anything else other than high academic standards to that definition of quality?

In two or three minutes, John?

If you know.

I think that there are other things that you can talk about. I think that structuring, which provides for people regularly talking about standards and the standards of kids work in the school is important. I think that is stuff that can be built in that will support that. But the bottom line is the achievement of the kids in the school.

Thank you. We’ll go to Milo Cutter. Milo.

Okay. First and foremost, I am a teacher. Okay. So my tendency is to go right to the student level and explain quality. But because I am also an administrator in a charter school, I will put out two other points before I get to the third one. I think ensuring quality in a charter school in our Country definitely does have as number one, public. And that means meeting public laws, public accessibility and the civil rights of every student. And that one, I would put up there as a very important one. The second one, and I think it’s a point of pride for all of the charter schools is that we’re accountable, that are we are willing to talk about and know what it is that we’re doing that is making a difference in the lives of students. And we talk about that in terms of the success of those students. And I think our accountability in providing students who feel competent, who know what their strengths are and know how to access those strengths to become productive citizens. And I realize these are all big words that have many ways of measuring. And again, I think that that’s the beauty of charters is that each school has the ability to set out those measurements and define what they think a competent person is. Who you want to live next door to you and who you want to see leading our Country, our cities, our schools. That kind of competency. Mastery is another key element, I think, in success. And that’s that a person knows an area, a subject matter, has a skill or an ability that they do well and can demonstrate that. Not necessarily my choice for mastery, their choice. Then I guess the last one, and this is probably the most intangible of all, but I think it’s the one that we’ve seen as our students moved from high school to college is that curiosity, the love of learning, the, "Ah hah, I get it." And that it’s a constant thing. So that when you move from generation to generation and the world of information around you changes, you don’t feel paralyzed, that those of us who grew up with beginning radios that switched to televisions and now computers are the tool of communication, there is still a love and an interest in learning. The spark that gets you going. And then with the other two, the competency and mastery, you’re still a learner, a life long learner. And I think those, if we take some different ways of measuring. And I agree, beyond test scores. And really allow individuals to demonstrate. Then we would have quality. Charter schools, hopefully, that will be replicable in all public schools.

Well, I thank you. So if I could, well, I won’t try to summarize. I’ll wait until we get to the end of all your first answers to these questions. Joe.

Thanks, John. I want to thank the Department for putting this all together, and I want to apologize because I’m going to take 30 seconds to not respond to the question but to try to say something a little different about the charter movement. In this Country, we believe that it makes more sense for people to chose the people who represent them at legislatures and in Congress. We can’t prove that. We can’t give a grant to a consulting firm in Washington to prove that. We believe that. We believe it’s better for women and men to both have the right to vote. We believe it’s better for people of all races to have the right to vote. We can’t prove that. We have a documented study by this group or that group that says it. And I think that we are, we are, on the right side of history. Think it’s very important to recall that, for example, Rosa Parks. Yes, that Rosa Parks. Recently applied to create a charter public school in Detroit, Michigan. We are on the right side of history. We are on the side of history that says, "Let’s give people opportunity to carry out their dreams. Let’s give people the opportunity, all families, not just the wealthy who already have choice. Let’s give all families some choices." But let’s also recognize that in this society, we don’t have absolute rights. We have rights that are somewhat limited. The classic argument being you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater. And so it seems to me that this is a very thoughtful approach to school choice.

But you know what, we’re not going to be able to prove those things with a contract and a study. The people in Minnesota, for example, decided 12 years ago that cross district public school choice was not a good idea. 32% of them were in favor and 60% of them were opposed. Two to one opposed. And then because of the courageous effort of a variety of people, including our Governor, including some legislators, bipartisan basis, they decided. The legislature decided to move ahead with this idea. And recently, a poll was done by the teachers groups and the school boards and superintendents, and it’s now 72% are in favor of this and 15% are opposed. And that is an enormous shift in public opinion. It didn’t happen because of a study. It happened because people have the opportunity to exercise freedom. And there were a lot of valuable, important things that happened. Including, frankly, hundreds and hundreds of kids who came to the legislature and talked about why the opportunity to select public schools made sense. So I think that when we talk about a charter movement, we have to think about historic. We have to think about history and we have to think about what does it take to change history. And I think that’s what we are about. And I think that this room is full of pioneers who are willing to stand on the right side of history.

And I think it’s important to understand that as we think about effective schools. I believe that effective schools are schools which produce young people who care passionately about the world and who believe that they can and should help make a better world. That doesn’t argue for one side or another on a political issue, but it says, "Of course young people have to know how to write. Of course young people have to know mathematics. But also, young people have to know how to speak in public. Young people have to know how to analyze a problem. Young people have to have experience working on problems as a part of their course work." Young people have to believe that they can and should make a difference in the world. And in this world we stand on the backs of people in history like Dr. King, like Caesar Chavez, like Susan B. Anthony and so on. We also stand on the backs of people like Wayne Jennings, Allen Dicker who, for 25 years, have been involved in this effort to expand opportunity.

So I think we need to understand that. And I think that we can and should look at measures of young people as to how well they have not only academic skills but what kinds of people are they? And I agree with Paul. We need to do longitudinal studies. But I think that part of a quality school is a school that’s very aggressive about communicating to the community, to the State legislature, the elected officials and to families what the school is about. I mentioned, some of you heard, that I think effective schools start off the school year with a family student teacher conference in August. Every kid, every year. I have some material about that, if some of you are interested. But effective schools are schools that produce people who believe in democracy and are truly good citizens with all of that and all of which. And truly good citizens are people who act to better the world.

Joe, thank you. Irene.

I think there’s so many indicators of quality in quality schools. And when I think of the history of Fenton and how we have judged quality, I remember a time back in 1994 when we first became a charter school. And we were trying to remain focused on what our goals were at the school. But the main question we asked ourselves at that time -- Fenton is a very large urban school, 1,340 children -- think we’re the largest independent public elementary charter school in the nation. We have a staff of 65 teachers, an overall staff of 150. To keep us really focused and looking at the goals that we have set for ourselves, the one question we’ve asked continuously is -- Is this school good enough for our own children? And that’s how we have measured quality. Would you put your own child in Fenton? And to be quite honest, in 1994 we hung our heads and said no. But now, we have many staff members who brought their children to Fenton. And I feel that’s a very important indicator of quality.

Jan is going to continue.

Another point too that is -- What is going to happen? Fenton was 57% (inaudible). When you’re a (inaudible) school, the teachers go on vacation for four weeks throughout the year. So the teacher could go on vacation and come back. And (inaudible) And you know, how can you make it quality, how can you make it standard if your population keeps changing. It’ll be even more. When a parent checks their child out of our school and comes back the following day and said, "Oh, I tried to check them in somewhere else and I didn’t like it. I love Fenton. I want to come back." It’s not something you can really measure, but you know that that happens over and over again. And this is my first year in the front office and you see that happening on a, I think, fairly regular basis.

The other part I think about Fenton that when we talk about quality is we always focus back on the child first. At a charter school and at Fenton in the last year, we’ve made a lot of hard decisions. And many times we’re sitting in a meeting and there’s parents and teachers and other staff and we’re going around in kind of what seems like circles, but the question always comes back, "What is important for the children?" If you think about the children first, what is good. It may not be what I personally think or what I personally feel, but once you get re-focused that way, I think come up with some really good answers. And I think that really helps to bind it.

Okay, thank you. Before we go to your questions on comments on this, and we’ll spend a few minutes having a discussion on this -- As I listened I came up with perhaps five different kinds of answers, five different answers not usually exclusive, by any means, to the question about quality. And this may not be the right division, but one is that all students should have, there should be high standards and have the knowledge and skills that are associated with high standards, measured in a number of different ways and not just standardized tests. The second was a set of other issues related to learning that are not probably as easily quantified, related to curiosity, love and a passion for learning and understanding of a student’s strengths and weaknesses and ability to figure out how to keep on learning throughout their lifetime. The third is citizenship, that students should really be citizens in the democracy and really believe that they should, can and should make a difference in this democracy. The fourth is meeting the public obligations of accessibility and openness, including civil rights obligations. And the fifth is, essentially, the quality defined as providing freedom and opportunities for families to choose within the certain parameters, however they’re defined. But there’s just the right and ability to choose and exercise that freedom is, in a sense, and one of the panelists, Joe, suggested a measure of quality. So I heard those five answers. Did I miss anything that you think is very important? Then there is a broad question that Irene raised across these issues. If she would, she and many of Fenton, would look at -- Is this a school that we would send our children to this school? And if you can’t answer the yes to that question, it hasn’t reached a level of quality, if you wanted to. Before we go for questions and discussions with the rest of the audience, is there anything that I missed in that summary that you’d like to reinforce? Okay. Why don’t we... Oh, who has got thoughts on that or questions on a different way of thinking about that? A question for one of the panelists about what they mean? Yeah.

And when you, could you introduce yourself and where you’re from.

Meredith Miller and I work for the Department of Education in Evaluation. And I’m helping with the National Evaluation of Charter Schools over the next four years. And one of the things we are looking at very closely is student achievement. And I agree with all of you about all the different measures that you have mentioned that are even not quantifiable. But I’m in a quandary as how do you quantify them. So if you have any strategies for us on how to quantify these contextual issues and secondary monitoring, if you could help us on that, we would appreciate it.

There clearly is, from not just evaluation to researchers but from many policy makers in States and school districts and the public, a demand for wanting to know, "Well, how are schools doing?" And that drive sometimes the pressure for standardized tests. It drives the pressure for like how you know, from ranking. How are we doing? And there are lots of places that that demand is coming from. How would you respond to that, other measures that people should be thinking about and how would you respond to that challenge for charter schools? Hello.

I think one of the interesting pieces to this whole thing is how you do explain and how you document the things that you’ve chosen as you benchmark for success in your school. And I think the difficult thing is that the individual school may be very clear. You know, maybe if you happen to be dealing with a population that has certain issues, if it’s maybe something as simple as improving attendance. You know, from zero attendance to 100. That one you can definitely quantify and that’s a real measurable. A waiting list is another one. But the other things that you were talking about --Would you send your child to this school? A survey of your staff, would you choose to have your child in your school? Why or why not? I think the difficult thing and the reason we fall back on those test scores is they’re quick and easy. I mean, we can massive minister a test and get an answer. And it takes time to go the next step.

And I hope that charters stay in the position of saying, "Don’t lump us." Okay. Our school is not necessarily the same as your school. And the measures that you choose, hopefully, will be as you said, student focused. They will be based on that population that chose to go to that school. They are not less because of that. Hopefully, they’re more meaningful and that people who want to learn about a particular school are going to learn more because we stay true to the measures and the mission that we’ve set out for each school. I do think it’s a tougher job for evaluators though.

Here’s a prophecy. The National Charter Evaluation will find in a year or two that some charter schools do better than other traditional schools in the neighborhood, and others don’t. That’s not it’s going to be a shock, but I think that’s what it’s going to find. The measure, it seems to me, of this movement is not whether most charters do better or most charters are... Because we have very different definitions of better. There was a recently a study done in our State that said, "Charter school students score below other public school students." And this has just been the subject of a big article in a national education journal. And what wasn’t in that national education journal was that we’re talking about apples and oranges because the kids who go to charter public schools in Minnesota are twice as likely to be special ed. or three times as likely to not speak English in the home and a series of other things. Also, that journal didn’t happen to mention the fact that about half of the kids in the charter public schools in that sample were kids who were in the school for their first year. It was just sort of avoided. Those facts didn’t appear in this article. So and I think that evaluation is an intensely political thing. And I think that it’s important to look at issues like -- have people step forward to do this because when this was proposed eight years ago, the opponents said they would. Have people step forward to work with low income kids. Opponents said that they would only, that people such as yourselves, would only work with affluent kids. Has progress been made? I think this is a really critical issue. Has progress been made with kids?

A whole lot of studies that compare and this and this, I think we ought to be talking about progress. I think we ought to be talking about what’s happened to the kids after they graduate? I think we ought to be using some nontraditional measures. The Alverno College in Milwaukee has developed on writing, on performance assessment in public speaking. But I think we need to be aware of the fact that if we set ourselves up for the charter school movement to be judged on is it better or worse than traditional, it’s going to be a mixed message. We don’t say in this Country, democracy is maybe not such a good idea because we periodically have corrupt politicians. I think we need to be very aggressive about explaining to communities and explaining to political leaders what progress has been made. In our State last

Joe.

Just last sentence. And if our State

No long sentence.

Last sentence.

Well, Mr. Humphrey. We get to take a vow, you know, you’ve got to speak longer. Last sentence. In our State 200 kids went to their legislature last week to talk with legislators about why charter schools were helping them. And I want to tell you, that had a lot of impact. More than a test score or more than the test results which are very, very questionable.

So I mean, there are a lot important issues there. One clearly, you’re saying again, that the test scores and measures of achievement shouldn’t be the only. And there are a lot of other things, including the progress that’s been made, the opportunities achieved, the student’s engagement. Second, there are a lot of complications even in the use of tests and scores. You can’t compare the absolute levels of scores from one school to another because the student populations may differ. They need to look at change and improvement. Students being tested may be in their first year, which is, that obviously has an impact what the relationship is between the test score and the student. So one, you have to know a lot of other important measures that shouldn’t get lost in this. And second, there are a lot of complications even in the use of test scores for determining how well a school is doing. Okay. We’ve got a question back there and then we’ve got a couple up here. Yes.

Yes. I’m Dudly Brodget from the Boston Red Sox Charter School. And just on the comments initially by the panelists, it struck me, with the exception of choice, that, largely, you’re describing outcomes that any public school, good public school, would want to have as outcomes. Which is the right thing to do, but I think a critical issue of measurement five years from now is to what effect are charter schools, what effect charter schools are having on the larger public school system. And maybe that’s implicit. But it seems to me, it’s got to be a critical outcome because good charter schools that exist in isolation are not doing what they need to do, in terms of a reform movement in public education.

Thank you. So the sixth, and essentially a suggestion for a sixth element here, which is aside from the quality of that school, has it had an impact? Has that charter school and charter schools, more broadly, have they had an impact on public education? Any comments from the panel on that.

I think you’re absolutely right. And I think it is important that the dialogue between the regular public schools and the charter schools is maintained and supported. I think you’re absolutely right.

What lessons can we learn from one another?

Official of the National Upkeepestry. Official of the National Teachers’ Union said to me yesterday that it would be important not just to criticize what this organize did seven years ago, but to look at what they’re doing now. And I think that’s a good point. And I think we ought to look at how have other public schools responded. And I think -- last sentence -- we ought to recognize that there are some marvelous things happening in public schools that are not charter schools and that one of the next things we ought to be doing is to spend a lot of time having conferences that focus on student achievement and bringing together people from charter public schools and district run public schools to exchange and learn from each other.

Thank you. We’ve a comment or question up front.

I am JoAnn Benson, and I am starting a charter school, but my previous life was Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota for the last four years. And two times I had delegations of educators and policy makers from Singapore come to Minnesota to learn from us about education. And we were in the throws of all of this, "Woe is me. We’re not doing well enough." And our scores weren’t as high as we wanted. And so my first question to this delegation was, "Why are you coming to look at us? When we see the international test, you’re always at the top and we wish we could figure out how we could get where you are." And their answer was very interesting to this discussion. They said, "Our students perform very well on the test, but they don’t know how to solve problems of life." And so I think one thing that we could add to this list, and I’d like for comments of the panelists on this, is how do we? Let’s have a measure that shows that our students are curious enough, are creative enough, are innovative enough to take the information and knowledge they have, which they gain in the school, but then to apply it to life. And how do you solve the problems of life? That’s where the United States of America has always excelled. And while we’re looking at test scores and all of those things, we don’t want to lose that which has made us great in the first place. So how do we evaluate that?

Thank you. Milo, in particular, talked a bit about that. Milo, do you want to respond or expand on that?

Well, I think and I guess it isn’t a, you know, an either/or with the test scores. I get a little baffled as a teacher because I thought part of the reason that we used assessment measures wasn’t so much for, you know, public perusal and acclaim. It was to help us identify ways of helping students learn. And so, you know, we give a test and we don’t see the results for two months, and it goes to the press. And who is this about? It isn’t about the students. That business about children being able to apply learning, you’re right. I can show you two students, one can test off the boards, and you wouldn’t put them out there in a difficult situation for anything without help. Another student who is going to be kind of average, you know, do all right, get through, and we’ll walk into a classroom with some very difficult discussions and handle them, handle themselves in public, hold down a job, maybe take care of their own children, as well. And you think, "Now, who is going to probably survive, thrive and be a good citizen?" And so how we do that, I think, is really demonstration. We need feedback from the community. We need involvement and partners. We need students to be able to be their own advocates and identify what they’ve done and be able to report it back with pride. So it does go beyond filling in the bubble sheets a long way. Our asking open-ended questions and seeing what kinds of responses we get. Being open to saying there’s more than one right answer.

We had the same experience with visitors from other countries. I remembered when we were talking about Japan being way out there when it was, you know, and really being top in everything. And a Japanese delegation and the TV people came and were interviewing, and we wondered why because we’re always hearing we’re supposed to have our students be like yours. And there’s, it’s the same thing. "Our students do not have creativity and we want to learn that from the American schools."

And that, you’re saying, an explicit focus of charter and other schools.

I think it ought to be, you know, partner being mirrored. I mean, I think there’s so many strands for this. And that’s a key for this, that the testing is a way. It gives us, you know, another window to look into the soul of the student and see how we can help. But it shouldn’t be a put down.

One observation from students, and a comment. I visit a lot of comprehensive high schools in my work around the Country, and I often shadow students. And one of the issues that I think that we have to face in this Country is not about standards and not about assessment, but schools are often boring places to be. And if you watch students over and over again in school, it is tough to shadow a student and watch the routine that they go through every day, day in and day out. At Central Park East Secondary School, every student in the school has community service. And I’ll make an admission now, the reason that they had community service in the beginning was so that we could get rid of a group of kids and the teachers could have professional development during that time. Well, the fact is that as we interviewed kids who came back to the school after they graduated and talked to them about what were important learning moments in the school, they didn’t talk about performance assessment, they didn’t talk about portfolios, they didn’t talk about habits of mind, they talked about community service. And they said it was real. And they said in their own words, they said it was the first time we were in a situation at an institution that hadn’t been created for us. It wasn’t a family, it wasn’t a school. This was the real world. And it was scary. The doctor said to me, "I don’t care if you get, have a good learning experience, be sure you take the messages correctly and put down the right phone number so I can call these people back." That reality was a problem of life. And that reality was sort of scary. And they said, "But they were treating us like grown-ups, and they were trusting us with important work." And I think there’s a lesson in that.

A question or comment.

Thank you. My name is Thomas Skidd. I’m representing the Heed School of Washington D.C. And I’d like to, I’m curious to know the panelists thoughts about this issue within the context of the copies theme, which is strengthening network. And a lot of what we’ve done over the last few days is talked about how we, as charter schools, can network and support one another. What about external supports? What has been important external networks for you all and what networks you think will be important to sustain in charter schools?

In California we have a very strong network, Charter School Connect. And that has been a very important organization within the charter school movement in California. Fenton often participates in a number of different organizations just to be on top of the various issues. For instance, tomorrow Joe Vicente, who is Executive Director, will be traveling and going to a casual conference, the California Association of School Business Organizations. So he can get the same information that all of the school districts around California receive, so that we can keep abreast of anything that’s happening within the State.

Let me use that to transition into the second question and ask each of you to give a very brief answer to this question then we’ll go back to more questions and comments. Which is you’ve all talked about different ways of thinking about what is quality in a charter school. Could you, very briefly without explaining, almost listing, what are the essential factors or components or strategies, you think, that will make a difference for a particular or single charter school to achieve a high level of quality? And if you’d like to add -- What will be important to help charter schools, more generally, reach the level of quality you’ve described. And I realize you could talk for an hour for this, but if you could just list these very quickly within less than a minute each, then we’ll go back to comments and questions and you’ll have a chance to expand.

Who would like to start, Paul?

About one?

In one minute? I’m going identify two things. I think that every student and every school in this Country ought to be known well by some adult. And what I find as I go into high schools and junior high schools is that the majority of students are not known well by any adult in that school. And by knowing well, I mean that some adult in the school knows what homework that student has tonight, what grades they got last semester, what grades they’re getting this semester, what courses they’re taking, whether they’re better in math or in reading. And without looking at a piece of paper. And I think that we have to create structures to guarantee that for every student.

And second is that I think that we have to create structures where the adults in the school have conversations on a regular basis about standards, where and that’s the professional development aspect in schools. And I think that you have to have conversations and develop vocabulary and develop structures in which we talk about kids work and teachers teaching on a regular basis, so that’s a habit of the institution.

Thank you. Irene?

Well, Jan and I will talk about this together. I think we’ll even ask our Fenton team to join in with what they think about this. But I think we start with our vision and continue to focus on that vision. We have a very strong governance process. And again, such as Paul said, we believe in a very strong professional development for all our staff members. And we think what is really particularly of importance is strong teacher leadership. The majority of our team that came us, 15 of us, have participated in this conference and have led sessions. And I think that’s been a very important aspect to develop that teacher leadership to sustain a charter school.

Beyond, just having the vision written on paper. It’s very operational to everyone at the school. They know what that looks like, in every classroom. They know what it means. When we say high school education, everybody is talking about the same thing. And we’re talking about content standards. Everybody understands. They understand the terminology. They understand what that means to that child in that classroom. It’s not something that’s on a poster in every room in the school. It is something that we work with every single day. And I think, in terms of the teacher development and the presenters that we have here, it is very important to encourage teacher leadership. We have 65 teachers on staff. And with just 65 people, they come and go just because they move or whatever. And you have to keep developing that. We also try, I know,

I’m sitting up here with no notice, and so I thought, "Oh, this is pushing the comfort zone just a little bit." You know, we tend to do that a lot. We just push that.

I did drag her up here.

Yeah, she did.

This morning about 10 minutes before we started.

And I think pushing that comfort zone a little bit makes, it just makes it so important for the teachers. It makes them feel important, makes them feel that their voice really does count. And it helps them to grow tremendously.

Maybe they would like to share something.

I’m glad that this conference has pushed your comfort zone.

Well, everybody.

Yeah, everybody’s comfort zone.

Yes.

Okay. Really, at Fenton, we are encouraged to stretch out of our comfort zone and, as teachers, there is a feeling of collaboration and cooperation. We don’t leave anyone stranded or stressed. We all try to help each other work to the standard. We have a vision -- children first. And that’s what’s ultimately important to us. And our standards are for everyone. And we feel that every child can achieve the standard.

I’d say two things. First, I think the school ought to be real clear about what it means by learning. I tend to be with a number of the people here. I think that learning is, as I’ve said and I won’t repeat it. When young people have strong academic skills but they also have a feeling that they can and should help to develop a better world. But whatever your vision of what learning is, I think it ought to be discussed. I think it ought to be clear. And I think it ought to be assessed. And then I think effective organization, schools and otherwise, every year take a look at, comprehensively, what have we done well this year? What do we need to improve on? And in schools in which I work, one of the things that’s been helpful is to survey graduates and to survey students. We heard something from the young people that many of us hadn’t thought about two days ago, and I appreciate the Department’s being willing to have a session about extracurriculars. But we need to listen carefully to kids and to parents, as well as the educators and the broader community, and say, "What do you know about this school? What is the school doing well? What is the school not doing so well? And what is information that you don’t have about the school that you wish you did have?

Milo?

THIS IS THE END OF SIDE ONE

I want to refer to something a little more basic. And we’re talked about in conversation abut the boredom. And the boredom that people, that the students have. 20 years ago -- We’re the smallest county in Georgia. We began a comprehensive high school with the next county. And we bussed our students to that county, our high school students. We kept the elementary. We now have a 58% drop out. I don’t think this is unique to our country or our area. It’s a tremendous drop out all across this Country. And that’s one of the things that we need to address and measure. How many kids are we losing just out of the school system, period, before they’re able to do anything?

Are there other? I know people in the rear have not necessarily had a chance to ask questions or comments. Are there people in this half of the room who would like to ask a question or make a comment? Yes.

I’m Virginia Maloney from the Sterm Family Foundation. In Colorado a couple of years ago, we did an interesting study on quality in child care. And one of the interesting things that it said about, oh I’d say, 60 or 70% of the parents and teachers thought they were running programs. And when the same programs were evaluated by independent people, like only two or three in the entire State met quality standards as established by NAYC. I’m worried that charter schools may fall into this same problem of thinking we’re doing a good job, especially if we do a lot of self evaluation. What are your ideas about how we can get sort of outside standards of what does a quality school look like? I think NAYC has done a lot for early childhood. Is there anybody out there doing that for schools?

You know, that brings us right back to the first question that was asked. It was Meredith’s question. And I think it is a central question for all of us in this room. How do we make peace with and how do we guarantee or assess our schools? And I don’t think we have nearly enough, nearly good enough answers to that question. The thing that I think, I was a kindergarten and pre-kindergarten teacher for 20 years. And I thought a lot about assessment of very young students. And I come from the land of Debbie Meyer and Ted Seiser, where we think a lot about performance assessment and portfolios. And for the last year and a half, I’ve been in Meredith’s world and in the world of the Department of Education where people ask questions about -- How are the schools in Michigan doing? And that’s a whole different world. And I think the implication of that is that the Department of Education and others need to convene groups of people who come together and have important conversations about this. People who recognize the uniqueness of individual children and people who need numbers. And begin to have conversations about the compromises and the ways of developing measures of success and measures of achievement that are good for both of us.

You know, at Fenton we have been evaluated yearly. People come to visit. They all would like to evaluate you, big school in California, largest elementary public charter school. And so every year, someone has come and conducted an extensive study. Hudson Institute. We pulled for a study, the University of Southern California. We felt it was in our best interest to show that we were making progress. And then our own school district paid a great deal of money to evaluate all five charters that were up for renewal. And ultimately, it helped us renew our charter without question. Unfortunately, they do look at your standardized test scores. That’s a big element because it is something that either is making. You are either making progress or you aren’t. One thing that the evaluators, and this was West Ed who conducted the evaluations, saw when they came to Fenton, they could see an increase over time. But they saw such quality in the school that they were concerned. They wanted to come up with other ways of evaluating the school because they felt there was even more than was showing on paper. And I think it’s a wonderful opportunity for all of us to think of how, what is this assessment that Milo is talking about that we can put together for charter schools? And for all schools. Even a company such as West Ed felt that there were other indicators of our success beyond our test scores. They did everything they possibly could with the statistical information. One thing they used was over time. Students who stay at Fenton over time do much better than students who leave or come to us in 2nd Grade or 3rd Grade. If you stay at Fenton from Kindergarten through 5th Grade, the test scores showed a significant increase. They also found schools that had the exact same demographics as Fenton and there was an incredible difference in the increase at Fenton compared to that school.

Irene, isn’t that one of the things too that we’re at the beginning of, okay. And charter schools are in a position to explain. And it isn’t that it shouldn’t be an outside evaluator, but it is going to take more on our part to explain why we’re doing what we’re doing, why, you know, one method is not enough to explain what’s happening in a charter school. And I do think evaluators that the different schools that are here today have worked with have been, for the most part, very willing to say there’s more to this. There’s certainly more to education than a test score. How do we express that? But I do think it’s at the beginning of another new way, even change.

Let me ask a follow up question on that for anyone on the panel, which is the question that was just asked. There are surveys that have been done showing that a very high percentage of parents are satisfied in this Country, a fairly high percentage, satisfied with their local public school. But overall, they think public education is not necessarily doing that well. Somebody else raised a point earlier in the conference in stating the purpose for argument and for raising the question, somebody else earlier in the conference raised the question, raised the issue that parents in a particular school community may be comfortable that the school is doing well, things are going pretty well but, in fact, the school may not be meeting the standards even set out in the school’s charter. There may be some tension between what the parents and the people in the community believe and the expectations that have been set out for the school. Do you? Let me ask. I guess the question -- Do you think that there is risk of that? And if so, how would you address it? How would you, essentially, to make alignment, expectations of the parents and people in the school community have with expectations that are either in a school’s charter, at a sponsor or that others might have for the school?

John, was that? Perhaps, I wasn’t clear about a couple of things. First, I believe that effective charter public schools are going to use some form of standardized test, period. But I also think that we need to use a variety of other measures. We have some so called performance measures in writing that are pretty good, that can be validated. It’s not just what the local teacher says, it’s what you can involve people in the broader community. You can get some other outside group to help you with this. Options, we’ll use a charter in California did this with a James Caterol. And a number of wise charter schools have had writing assessments done by outside folks. So I think we can have performance assessments. I think one of the central questions, as Paul said and Irene and Milo said over the next five years is what are we going to do about some of the things that we have been talking about for 25 years and that, frankly, Federal money has gone into to try to help assess and so far, we don’t have a good assessment. We ought to know. Can young people solve problems? Not just math problems, but other kinds of problems. Can young people think critically? Do young people know how to work effectively in a group? And I’d say one of the challenges for foundations and for the Federal Government is to really come to terms with how do we assess that in a thoughtful, constructive, valid and reliable way. It is, by the way, also true that while many Americans think that their schools are doing a marvelous job, inner city parents, in many cases, are enraged. And there are a number of people in rural areas who are also deeply frustrated. So I’m familiar with those surveys too. I think those surveys often mask what’s happening in many communities.

Very good point. We’ve got a question or comment right here. Can I? John, John.

I’m Ronald Reagan. I paid for this mike, can I use it? My name is not Ronald Reagan. It’s Gordon McKinnis and I’m from New Jersey. And I wanted to give the panel a second chance. There was an earlier question about the impact on public schools of charters. And it was quickly and easily disposed of. It seems to me, for 35 years, foundations, the Federal Government, State governments, universities have believed that if you provided a quality product near a public school or in another public school, that all public schools would rush to adopt it and that education would be changed. And I’ve been hearing this for 35 years, and it hasn’t worked. Do we in the charter movement really want to be judged by how successful we are at stimulating the adoption of approaches, etc. that we take in public schools? That’s something we have no control over and should it really be a part of the quality measurement for charter schools?

Yes. Anyone on the panel.

I think it should. And I agree with you that we cannot control. But I also think that if the charter movement is successful, there is going to be change in the existing system. And I’ll give you a very quick example. Minnesota adopted a law in 1985 that allows high school kids to go to colleges and universities with the dollars following the kids. Enormously controversial plan when it was proposed in ‘85. Today very, very popular. 85,000 kids have used it. Dah, dah, dah, dah. But equally important, hundreds of new courses have been created in high schools all over the State of Minnesota in response to the fact that if the high schools didn’t change, the kids were going to leave. And I think part of, one of the central parts, of the charter idea is to say, "We can." If it is done in a real way, not as is done in some States where people don’t have any choice of the school. The only kids who go to the charters are kids who are being pushed out. And let’s get clear about what the charter idea is. It isn’t just let’s let school, local school boards, decide what the charter idea is. Let’s make sure that several different groups can authorize these things. Let’s make sure that the schools really have autonomy about who they hire and how much they pay, so on and so forth. But given those things, yes, I think part of the way we ought to look at this is what changes are taking place.

Now, I’ve also seen surveys that I thought were ridiculous. Ask superintendents two years, "Well, is the charter movement changing what you’re doing?" Well no. The superintendents, by and large, are opposed to this. Big surprise. We spend $200,000 in a study and find, "Oh, superintendents don’t think much of this." What a surprise. What a use of $200,000. Well, I think over five to ten years, we ought to see some changes. And I’ve already eluded to the fact that I think some major education groups have changed their attitude toward this thing, toward this movement. And I think that’s part of the way we ought to be looking at this.

Paul. Milo.

I understand what he’s saying too. I mean, yes, that is certainly a hope. Right? And that would be a disappointment if 20 years down the road, we didn’t see something that was tangibly changing in the other districts. But I wouldn’t be able to close a charter school because other districts haven’t seen the light. And I mean, if that’s part of what you were saying, yeah, I think it should be a consideration. But certainly, my heart is not going to be totally broken, and I won’t feel like a failure if the district that we’re in doesn’t decide to create a number of small high schools. I’ll be sad because I think we need them, but I’m not going to say that everything that we’ve done with our kids has been a failure because of it.

I certainly agree with that also. But I know that there are people here, and Allen Dicker is one of them, who are from central offices and who believe deeply that there are lessons to be learned from this. And, "We’re going to watch and find out how we can change our behavior in the central office on the basis of lessons learned from the charter schools." And I don’t think negates what you say at all, Milo.

So perhaps a goal is to stimulate, in a number of ways, broader change and improvement in public education, but the school, a charter school, specific charter school, should not be help accountable for whether that happens.

Well, and some of it we won’t even be able to really say, "Oh, that’s because of the charters." I have an opinion, and I don’t know that you can back it up with any factor at all, but in the last couple of years in Minnesota at the legislature, we’ve been hearing much more of the dollar follow the child. And I do believe that language really gained its strength through the charter discussions and charter legislation. And it has made a big difference at the local level in all of the schools. Some have not appreciated it so much because it really changes business as usual at the central level. But I think it’s going to have a major impact for students and the individual schools in all public schools.

So one way that charter schools could drive change in public education is through, essentially, through competition. Another is through developing ideas and having lessons that are learned that are adopted by other schools and school districts. And still another is charter schools driving policy changes in public education more broadly that could stimulate change. We’ve got a question or comment here.

I’m Lloyd Bernett, and I’m Ronald Reagan. I’m just from a little ‘ole hick town called Arco, Idaho. Actually Moore, Idaho. It’s even smaller. In the opportunity of being here and listening to some of the tremendous comments and sharing, you know, I think too often we don’t share, as teachers, the great things that are out there for us to keep education moving. I think one of our problems always, it deals with how we look, how we act, what we say in developing these things. I mean, as I look over the people that were here in this conference, you look at some of them and you would say, "Gosh, I’m not sure to be in a classroom with that individual, just from the looks of the situation." The comments that we say and talk about. I think of one session where they were talking about drug-free schools. And a good time, well, it brings back the thought of we’re trying to have a drug-free school and here comes the principal on a weekend out of the bar drunk. And I’m sitting here saying, "What kind of education are we putting forth to these people?" I look at charter schools and we say we want to have the freedom to try new and innovative things, and it comes back to standardized testing or whatever. There’s those kids, kids are different. A standardized test isn’t going to fit every one of these kids. And there’s got to be other modes of evaluation or whatever that’s going to show and be meaningful. I mean, we have kids who are 4.0 in high school that leave to go to college and don’t make their first year. And so I think there are other ways, and innovative ways, that show progress and show success within the youth of America.

Other questions or comments? Yes.

I think when we talk about quality of charter schools, we also have to think about what we think is quality in -- Oh, Stella Young from Racine, Wisconsin -- what we see as quality or not quality in the public schools. And I think that as we assess that, that our reason for pulling away from the public schools should be for the promotion of academic excellence. And I believe that we may be moving into the same problems or see the same problems, if we don’t go in with the right attitudes and understanding about why we’re doing it -- is that the problem that public schools have is that there’s an assumption that all children arrive at the school door with the same abilities and the same resources. And that isn’t true. And so it seems to me that quality charter schools ought to focus on making children better, making children more able to enter into life as productive, contributing citizens. And I think that we, as charter school people, ought to lose some of the labels. Since I’ve been here, I’ve heard "at risk" so many times until I’m blue in the face. And it’s hard for you to tell that because I’m an African American, but I am blue in the face. These children do have some barriers, but I think we need to stop labeling them and looking at them in certain ways. I think that what we’re doing as charter school people is pulling these children aside. And "at risk" to me, I always say that all children are at risk. Those, the ones that excel in schools are those that don’t to do so well. And we ought to, if we chose those gifted and talented children, to work with then we ought to be doing it to make them better. If we address the needs of the children who aren’t doing as well, then we need to come up with systems and ways of having them do better. And if keep those things in mind and stop getting the problem mixed up with the symptoms. Low test scores and all those things are symptoms. They are not problems. The problem is we try to put all of these children in the same situation, in the same box. And we can’t do it. So I hope charter school people will do what they say they’re going to do, and do some new and innovative things without the labels.

Thank you. This opens up a whole other discussion. But I have just been informed by the Conference Chair that our session is coming to a close. So before we do, let me just ask each of the panelists. If you had one question that you could leave on the minds of everyone here, you’d like people, particularly people in schools to be thinking about as they go back to their schools to focus on helping their kids, what question would you have them think about? Anyone? Paul.

How are we going to hold our children, our students, to high and consistently high standards without standardization?

Good question.

Anyone else on the panel?

How are we going to get young people involved in efforts to improve their community as a part of efforts to help them develop strong reading, writing and math skills?

Are you, as educators in whatever you play, going to ensure that each student is the number one priority every moment of your school day?

How would you get the intangible things that make a charter school so wonderful a quantifiable aspect that can be represented in a study or an evaluation?

How will you continue to focus on instruction in the charter school? Remember that it is a school, first and foremost in spite of all the other things that happen. We’re very, very busy at Fenton. I think we always have to get back to this -- Remember how do you focus and remember that this is school and that’s why we’re there.

Thank you. We’ve got, apparently, a couple of housekeeping items. So before we go to those, let’s give a round of applause to the panelists and all of you for the discussion.

Thank you very much. I also want to thank all of you for coming early this morning. Obviously, it’s been very worthwhile and our panelists did an excellent job. But you’ve also made a tremendous effort to get here and stayed through this early morning, and I appreciate that. I just have a couple of key announcements. Number one, there are several changes to the agenda again. Sessions that were moved to today or rooms that have been changed to accommodate travel schedules. There’s a yellow conference addendum. Make sure you get a copy of this before you go to the morning sessions, and look it over. Secondly, we would like to get your program evaluations for the overall conference. Before you leave today, make sure to fill out the program evaluation that was in your bag and turn it in. If you’re going to be around at the end of the last session, in fact, we will, as you give your program evaluation, you can enter a raffle to earn a valuable prize from Colorado Charter Schools. So make sure to fill out your program evaluation. And as you turn it in, enter the drawing. Thank you very much. That’s the evaluation for the overall program, not for this individual session. But there are also evaluations for this program that can be brought up front.

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