 
|
|||||||||||||
              
|
Benchmarks: Regions taking varying paths to education reform
Sunday, October 22, 2000 By Rhonda Miller, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
As education reforms swirl across the nation, Pittsburgh and the state are on the front lines of several prominent issues, most notably charter schools and cash rewards for improved test scores.
"We're beginning to see, in a pretty traditional state, some dynamic new thinking in education," said Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Eugene Hickok, who has gained prominence as chairman of the Education Leaders Council, a reform-minded group headed by the education chiefs in eight states.
The most visible sign of reform in Pittsburgh and the state is the charter school movement.
Charter schools are independent public schools that have wide latitude in developing programs and curriculum. There are 2,000 across the country this year, primarily in cities where they offer an alternative to struggling urban schools.
There are 67 charter schools operating in Pennsylvania, serving 22,000 students. The city of Pittsburgh has four -- Manchester Academic, Northside Urban Pathways, Urban League of Pittsburgh and Career Connections.
Supporters look at charter schools as the main component of choice, offering innovation and generally encouraging strong parental involvement.
Opponents are concerned that funding to charter schools will drain much-needed money from public schools -- an issue highlighted locally in the financially strapped Wilkinsburg School District, where it's feared that the Thurgood Marshall Charter School will add to a budget deficit already projected to be $600,000.
Pennsylvania is a leader in charter schools because of its strong charter school law, which went into effect in 1997, said Gary Huggins, executive director of the Education Leaders Council, or ELC. The state ranks 11th nationally in the number of charter schools.
Several PG Benchmarks cities in ELC states -- Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Texas, Virginia and Pennsylvania -- are showing strong growth in charter schools.
Arizona is by far the national leader in the charter school movement.
Phoenix has 102 charter schools covering a variety of subjects, including science and technology, gifted education, agribusiness, performing arts and Montessori curriculum. There is even one for pregnant and parenting teens.
California ranks second in the nation in number of charter schools, including the 16 in the PG Benchmarks city of San Diego.
Florida ranks fifth, including 21 in Miami and 10 in Tampa.
In Minnesota, where the charter school movement began nine years ago, 25 charter schools are operating in Greater Minneapolis, including one for deaf students and a dual language academy.
Kansas City has 18 percent of its public school students enrolled in charter schools, in part because of the poor condition of the city's public schools.
For profit
The charter school movement also has provided a new forum for for-profit educational management companies to get involved in local schools.
Ten percent of the charter schools nationwide operate on a for-profit basis, according to Dave Deschryver, a research fellow at the Center for Education Reform in Washington, D.C.
In Pennsylvania, for-profit companies are allowed to contract with charter schools to operate them, and Hickok would like to see more. "We need to rethink the nature of public education," he said. "What matters is not who runs the school, but the education that the students get."
America's largest for-profit manager of public schools, Edison Schools, operates two schools in Eastern Pennsylvania and opened a charter school in York this fall for 750 students in kindergarten through fifth grade.
In all, Edison operates 108 schools in 21 states, including schools in Atlanta, Denver, Kansas City, Milwaukee and Minneapolis.
Edison manages the schools through contracts with local school districts and public charter school boards in return for per-pupil funding based on public school allotments.
Edison Schools completed its initial public stock offering in November 1999, raising $122.4 million.
Other for-profit educational companies, such as Mosaica Academy, also are expanding. Mosaica operates four schools in Pennsylvania and plans to open its fifth in the state next fall. None is in the Pittsburgh area.
Timothy Potts, director of the Pennsylvania School Reform Network, said his organization "has a real problem with for-profit charter schools run by national organizations." Potts said his group favors locally owned and operated charter schools, rather than corporate-owned schools with a "cookie-cutter approach."
"By law, corporations are responsible to their stockholders, not to their customers," Potts said. "When push comes to shove, parents and children are second. A corporation's main goal is to make money, not to educate kids."
Vouchers
Giving public money to attend private or parochial schools, in the form of vouchers, continues to be one of the most hotly debated issues in the nation.
Supporters of vouchers, including Republican presidential candidate George Bush, say giving poor families vouchers for private school tuition not only gives the students a better chance to succeed, but also encourages public schools to improve.
Democrat Al Gore, meanwhile, has repeatedly said in his campaign that vouchers will drain needed resources from public schools.
"Vouchers can be life preservers for failing districts," Deschryver said. "But they are not a stand-alone solution. We have to question their impact."
A hotly debated initiative of Republican Gov. Tom Ridge, vouchers are dead in Pennsylvania for the moment. The push for vouchers was dropped for lack of adequate legislative support. But for education secretary Hickok, a resurrection of the voucher issue would be welcome.
"I think it's only a matter of time before school choice in the fullest form becomes part of the national landscape of education," said Hickok, referring to the inclusion of vouchers. "I hope that it becomes part of the landscape soon in Pennsylvania. When we feel we've got the momentum and votes, we will try to bring vouchers up again."
Cleveland launched a voucher program in 1996 when it offered 2,000 scholarships to low-income, inner-city families to send their children to participating public, private or parochial schools. Milwaukee instituted a voucher program in 1991.
While there have been some studies on the Cleveland and Milwaukee voucher programs, results have been debatable. There are varying opinions whether and why there has been student improvement, depending on who finances and interprets the studies.
Florida enacted a voucher law in June 1999 that allows only students who attend a school designated "failing" to qualify for vouchers. However, the state-instituted A-F grading system of schools, which is needed to qualify for vouchers, has itself created a dispute.
Vouchers are a sizzling topic in California, where a proposition that would offer a $4,000 voucher is on the state ballot for November. The results of the referendum will play a role in the educational options in the Benchmarks city of San Diego.
As for another hot reform issue, the development of academic standards, Pennsylvania is about in the "middle of the pack," said Potts of the Pennsylvania School Reform Network.
Academic standards in reading, writing and math are being put into place in schools across the state. Standards for other subjects, including science and technology, environment and ecology, civics and government, economics, geography, and arts and humanities, are being developed.
It is not the curriculum standards that are controversial; there's been substantial public input on choosing them. It is the testing on these standards, including how each district develops and interprets its tests, that brings the debates, said Potts.
Pay for performance
Cincinnati broke new ground last month with its approval of the first plan in a U.S. public school district to base teachers' pay solely on performance. Salaries under the new plan, which will begin to affect paychecks in two years, will be based on a review of individual teaching skills, not seniority or student test scores.
Although the 3,100-member Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, the largest teachers union in the nation, approved the plan by a majority, 1,000 teachers voted against it. The kinks must be worked out by May 2002, when the teachers union has the right to call another vote. If 70 percent of the teachers vote against it then, the plan will be dropped.
Concerns about the pay for performance plan include whether it will be applied fairly, how teachers with difficult students will be affected and whether busy administrators will have time to conduct adequate reviews.
Supporters of the pay for performance plan say it will benefit children by encouraging and rewarding good teachers. If successful, it also would attract top teaching candidates to the struggling Cincinnati school system.
To pay for the pay-for-performance plan, Cincinnati Public Schools is seeking a 5-mill, 4-year levy that would generate $29.8 million a year. Cincinnati already instituted a school incentive award plan this year that pays teachers $1,400 if their school reaches predetermined academic achievement goals.
In Montgomery County, a suburban Pennsylvania school district made history by giving cash rewards to its top performing teachers. But teachers in the Colonial School District don't want the money. The teachers said the bonuses of up to $2,800 for 10 percent to 20 percent of the staff would pit one teacher against another.
The other objection is that the bonus is based on how well students perform on standardized tests, which may not be completely within the teachers' control.
The Denver Classroom Teachers Association agreed to a four-year pilot program of performance-based pay. Teachers played a substantial role in shaping the plan, which goes beyond using standardized tests to measure performance.
In Pennsylvania, schools that improve each year in two categories, achievement and attendance, are eligible for cash rewards. Achievement will be measured by Pennsylvania System of School Assessment reading and math tests.
Attendance rewards will be based on increases in student attendance rates. Through 2001, schools that improve will get a total of $74 million in these performance incentive grants.
Teacher quality
Pennsylvania also recently passed new professional development requirements for teachers. They must complete 180 hours of post-degree instruction every five years. Those hours can be completed in professional development and subject classes, which often are taken in seminars or graduate courses.
A new Pennsylvania program, said to be the first of its kind in the country, will allow teachers to complete this training over the Internet. Online courses, in which teachers show what they learned by developing lesson plans, will be free to state teachers.
The issue of teacher quality is tied to other reform issues. "The question of teacher quality is taking on new dimensions, especially because of charter schools," said Deschryver, of the Center for Education Reform. "It is no longer restricted because schools don't have to stay with salary schedules."
In Pennsylvania, 75 percent of teachers in a charter school must be certified, so qualifications and salaries can vary, either up or down from past pay schedules. But Potts, of the state reform group, is troubled by the 25 percent of teachers who do not have to be certified.
"Pennsylvania has to seek treatment for its schizophrenia on teacher quality," he said. "On one hand we're raising standards for teachers and on the other we have 25 percent of teachers in a charter school who don't need certification. This Jekyll-and-Hyde approach to teacher quality is not a very sound approach."
Pennsylvania has an advantage in teacher quality, because it has a large number of colleges that train teachers -- so many that the state has a surplus and exports teachers. The Pittsburgh area schools -- urban, suburban and rural -- reap the benefit of this with a choice of top quality teachers.
Putting professionals into the classroom who are not certified in education is a reform issue under heavy debate across the nation. Bringing in specialists in subjects is seen as a way to alleviate teacher shortages, especially in areas such as science.
Other reform issues confronting Pittsburgh and the state:
|
||||||||||||
Smaller, more personal schools. The move to personalize high schools, create smaller groups within a school, and create a strong and close relationship with at least one adult in school is being pushed by Educators for Social Responsibility, a Cambridge, Mass., nonprofit organization. Its major thrust is "to teach conflict resolution in order to create caring and peaceable communities of learning," said Larry Dieringer, its executive director. Pennsylvania, according to Potts, "is bringing up the rear" on this movement.