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National Charter Schools Week 2019

In the 28+ years since the founding of the charter school movement, tremendous progress has been made in the number of schools established, and in the wealth of innovative opportunities they offer to children, families, teachers and communities. In the 26 years CER has been leading the fight for innovation and opportunity in education, we’ve been privy to the best hearts and minds that one could ever hope to bring together under one tent to serve children and expand educational excellence.

They make up the world’s most dedicated advocates – parents, policy advocates, legislators – and some of brightest minds in the areas of education technology, pedagogy, curriculum, teaching and learning has helped create a vibrant community of charters. When we first started celebrating  National Charter Schools Week with events on Capitol Hill and in every city, it was still a novel idea. The power of that idea now has seen a payoff for children and families that has catalyzed cities, improved communities and created life changing futures for students once relegated only to failing schools.

So why then, tell me, do so many members of the education establishment not want to break out of their comfort and ideological rigidity and embrace a cause that has paved the way for innovations in teaching and learning? Why did they ignore the data that saw charter school achievement for the most needing of students soaring in many states on this year’s Nation’s Report Card and instead, dedicated their money, time and public relations army to convincing teachers to abandon their work and walk out of union and non-union schools alike?  Why are those same teachers unions trying to create unrest in the largest and most successful network of public charter schools, the Alliance College Ready Public Schools, even after 3 years of trying, 10 lawsuits and thousands of home visits have still turned up short of those committed teachers wanting to unionizes their successful independent public schools?

I’ll tell you why. Because even despite chronic underfunding and a constant misinformation campaign and attack by opponents of charters and education transformation, more than 7,000 charters serve more than three million children in urban, suburban and even a few rural communities across the country. Together with waiting lists over one million nationwide, and engaged adults and staffs around those kids that are close to 20 million all in, this is a movement that was once considered unthinkable but that is now unstoppable.

We are tri-partisan, we are mixed in race, creed and color, we are diverse in socio-economics and occupation and we count among us visionaries, parents, public servants, politicians, activists, lawyers, doctors, working class, poor and just plain old fashioned committed folks.

Together we believe that all children deserve a great education and we aim to make sure they get it.

Together we know that learning is a natural phenomenon and schools built around it will ensure the achievement of learners.

Together we believe that uniformity of educational pedagogy, pay scales or expected performance only produced mediocrity, at best.

Together, we believe that no child should be forced to attend a school against their wishes and because of where they were born.

Together we believe that those closest to our kids know best and that with parents engaged, educators, school leaders and community leaders know best how to serve our students.

Together, we know that the traditional factory model of education is to schooling today what landlines are to mobile phones. And together we have and will continue to fight to ensure that better education is accessible to every child, every learner, at every level.

We know that charter school students surpass their traditional public school counterparts in key areas of learning and proficiency. We know that the safe, supportive learning environments that charter schools provide makes them a far-and-away better choice for parents than many troubled traditional public schools. We know that traditional education changes when they are pressured with the availability of other options. And we know that when charter schools do not meet expectations or the provisions of their charter, they can be and are closed, something that seldomly occurs in the 180 year old system that is designed so that no matter what their performance, they remain open.

To our dear friends and allies and the many thousands who toil daily to work in, create, support and advance charter schools, we must band together even more to recommit ourselves to the strong policies and programs that put charter schools on the map and have given millions of students over the years a path to the future. For despite our success we are under siege.

This past year we have witnessed the unthinkable. A union boss race baiting over charter schools, the NAACP calling for their moratorium, school districts denying funding and fighting to recapture control.

There are legislators who refuse to fund laws they pass, or set bureaucratic limitations on the power of charter schools to set their own course for success. They fear political risks, and fewer and fewer legislators are willing to stand four-square behind the boldest of charter school policies - those that create the kinds of educational success we see in Arizona, Florida, and Indiana, to name just three. Best to keep your head down and placate the powerful special interests than to take the bold steps needed to deliver real reform via strong charter laws. Then there are those, including some mayors, who fear nothing and simply believe that their old tired and worn allegiances with big union money power are the only cause worth fighting for.

On the other side of the ledger, we have witnessed in recent years the well-intentioned but damaging work of those allies who help those legislators, or create those rules and believe that state-required and imperfect standards and assessments are superior judges of educational success.  Their “we know more than you and your parents” mindset has been on a downward spiralthat is discouraging the creation of innovative schools, new entrants to leadership and teaching, and the creativity that charters once protected better than any other educational entity.

If we shed the obstacles that bind limit our reach, our power and our work we can transform education for learners at all levels. The opportunities for education in this 21st global century are boundless. And necessary. As Jefferson argued “no other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness."

There is much to celebrate. This week we will bring you stories of success, captivating interviews with charter leaders, and data to bolster your arguments. Cheer them on, but remember they are under siege. We must fight for them, and remove the obstacles to the charter idea reaching more people. Only that way will the children be well and prosper.

National Charter Schools Week 2019 Day 2

Each year National Charter Schools Week gives charter advocates an opportunity not only to bring further attention to chartering and the myriad benefits it offers our children but to the elements critical for success. Let’s start the week with one major one – legislators.

Having the dedicated support of legislators as charter champions and policymakers dedicated to drafting strong charter laws that allow charter schools to maximize their reach and effectiveness is a major key. And, although there are current and former legislators who continue to push for increasing opportunity equity, autonomy and expansion of existing charter schools and construction of new ones, finding these champions is becoming a growing problem in many states.

Entrenched special interest groups wield an outsized influence when it comes to drafting legislative and developing policy. This, combined with campaigns to erode public support for charters and other reforms to expand education opportunities – and demonize their advocates – have had a chilling effect on elected officials in many states who don’t want to jeopardize their seats, or make their re-election more difficult by taking on the status quo.

This often leads “reformers” to seek out a legislative path of least resistance that will placate pro-charters people without antagonizing well-organized anti-charter forces. Unfortunately, such compromises typically lead to laws that are so diminished, or restrictive, that they do more to stifle charter growth than to encourage it.

In West Virginia, a year after the state’s 20,000 teachers struck to get a 5% pay raise and the status quo with an already generous benefit package, teachers walked off the job to kill an education reform bill that would have increased school choice and accountability.

Of course, West Virginia is not alone and that's the bigger problem. Too many state legislators believe that starting incrementally and growing strong over time is a great strategy, and do not want to spend the time and effort it takes to fight the status quo and craft the right policy to start. They believe that they can improve it over time. But that only happens when the law starts with the right building blocks – authorizers, autonomy, and funding.  And once a law is adopted, legislators are loath to admit that it is less than it should be and adopt an attitude of  “Our work is done here” in order to avoid the effort, and controversy, entailed in fixing problems of their own creation. Consequently, weak laws – and all the stifling impediments to charter growth that they create – tend to stay on the books, relatively unchanged, for years.

This, or course, isn’t always the case. Florida is an example of a dedicated, determined legislature that keeps the health of charters schools and other education opportunity initiatives at the top of its agenda. The state recently adopted a sweeping education bill that allows new Schools of Hope to be created out of the 208 failing schools in the state, as well as provided for direct funding for charter schools in recent months. House Speaker Richard Corcoran has fought lawsuits, proposals to reduce funding, add red tape and more, and each time his leadership stands as a model for how legislating can protect all schools from the intrusion of the education establishment, or the Blob.

On the other hand, as Success Academy founder Eva Moskowitz reports on Reality Check w/Jeanne Allen, policymakers who fall prey to charter opponents have allowed 17,000 students to be placed on waiting lists for her great schools. Had they the courage to follow Florida’s lead, they might be afforded the hope of accessing one of many new options that would open up if there were authority to provide more seats.

Or they could look to Arizona, whose new and increased student-centered funding extends across all public school students, including to charter school students – who are no less public because they attend a different kind of public school. Committed legislators make sure to include charter schools whenever there are important equities to be had.

It’s no secret what makes a strong law. CER has been researching, analyzing and reporting on it for 25 years!

It can be done. Legislators will listen, and will respond, especially if the chorus of voices is large enough and loud enough. It’s easy to learn how to sing when your choir includes a litany of great activists and policymakers who’ve done the hard work of figuring it all out – like Moskowitz, Governor Jeb Bush, Senator Michael Bennet, Governor Charlie Baker, Kevin Chavous, Dr. Howard Fuller.... These and thousands more are in the choir legislators need to hear.

National Charter Schools Week 2019 Day 3

The National Education Association and the exceptionally hostile American Federation of Teachers (AFT) continue to stand in the way of progress.

It’s no secret these two groups have always opposed and spread falsehoods about charters, working hard to convince teachers that they don’t serve kids. That has largely failed, but lately, the rhetoric and attacks by the union bosses have taken a troubling, destructive turn. Their increased hostility can only be a result of one thing – a threat to their power. Charter schools have gained strength and acceptance across the nation, threatening the unions’ power, influence, money and membership.

The National Education Association is projecting a nearly 8% membership loss over the course of the next school year, along with a $28 million budget reduction (due to the high court’s decision) strikes a blow for the freedom guaranteed to individuals under the constitution. No citizen of the United States can be compelled to support speech that he or she does not believe in or endorse, and by upholding that constitutional protection, the court has affirmed a critical principle of freedom.

This was good news for the nation, for thousands of educators who have long been exploited by the teachers unions, and for families whose educational opportunities have been compromised by their political activity. When it comes to education, the most fundamental of all policies that shape our futures, no longer can the union compel people to support activities and positions regardless of principle.

But rather than evolve and adapt to changes in the 180-year-old factory model system of education, rather than create a new path for teachers that supports their growth over mandating uniformity and lock step acceptance of rules, they have dug in their heels and decided character assassination and anti-charter propaganda is best, even declaring unfathomably that the charter school movement is rooted in racism and in the Jim Crow politics of the South’s past!

Over at their palatial building on 16th Street, NW in Washington the NEA has been sending missives out to teachers based on last year’s policy statement that – in the union mind and the union mind only - it “jeopardize[s] student success, undermines public education and harms communities” and thus they must “arm our communities and our educational professionals with the tools and voice we all need to ensure a better future for our youth.”

Of course, those tools should be making sure every child gets a great education no matter what the vehicle, but that would never occur to a union who derives its power from mandatory assignment and forced membership.

As absurd and as unfounded as their comments and actions are, they must not go unchallenged.  Nor should we ignore that they have tried to tie their school-funding/teacher-pay protests to charters. Make no mistake, these walkouts, sickouts and strikes are intended to build their union, pushing charter school teachers to follow them. Many have called them out in the news and in podcasts with important education leaders.

The good news is that there is help for charter schools and their teachers who want to resist the forced actions of unions to take over these life-saving schools.

The really good news however is that teachers love the autonomy and focus that charters allow them to teach and innovate without being bound by union rules that only hamstring those efforts. That’s why well over 90% of charter schools remain non-union and, as a result, retain the freedoms and flexibilities entailed in that independence. As such, charter schools continue to outperform traditional public schools at a rate that has helped drive advances in learning and pedagogy. 

National Charter Schools Week 2019 Day 4

Some of the earliest founded charter school advocacy groups had friends in their name, and for good reason. They wanted to be what most of us aspire to be in all walks of like – great friends to the new kid on the block.

Friends of Choice in Urban Schools was the first city-based organization to be formed. FOCUS was – and is – devoted to expanding opportunities for students, and particularly those in charter schools.  Friendship Public Charter Schools was the first community-based network to develop to support at-risk students in DC and remains one of the pioneers in successful community based, African-American led networks, which happens to lead in educational attainment and innovation, too.

The national leader at the time was Charter Friends National Network, started by our “friends” in Minnesota and devoted “from 1996 to March of 2004, to supporting state-level charter support organizations.” That group was part of a coalition that included CER and other national leaders that explored how best to coordinate our efforts nationally. Eventually the decision was made, with some pressure by foundations, to evolve into the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

But most of the friends of charter schools are largely unknown and unsung heroes who don’t show up on the conference circuit or in the press or get bandied around by all the pundits and newsletters. Yet it is they who are responsible for the movement's growth in encouraging and supporting these amazing opportunities for kids. Sarah Tantillo is one of those friends, whose leadership in the 90s in NJ catapulted that unlikely union state to become one of the earliest for charters. Our CEO Jeanne Allen discussed her work then and her recent book about the movement on this special podcast for #CharterSchoolsWeek.

At that time, charter schools were incubators for innovation, flexibility, experimentation and new ideas for how best to deliver quality education to children and there was a growing group of people – hundreds – putting their great ideas to the test, and to work for children. 

Today, those very tenets that these friends helped secure for our kids are under siege, some within the movement and some, as we discussed yesterday, from without.

This phenomenon has been articulated by many individually, and collectively in Charting a New Course: The Case for Freedom, Flexibility and Opportunity through Charter Schools, the result of the work of researchers, policy analysts and thought leaders who have been evaluating the activities and reactions of the educational choice frontier for many years. As our experts describe in the multi-essay publication, there are friends that have become enamored of the system, who seek to ensure they arrive at higher quality educational options by giving government structures more authority to decide what schools may open and what schools must close be using standardized test-scores largely to make data-driven decisions.

Then there are friends, much like the original charter pioneers, who trust parents more than bureaucrats when it comes to determining school quality. They want to see a more open and dynamic system, where there is greater freedom for educational entrepreneurs to open new schools and for parents to decide which schools should close and which should expand based on whether they want to send their children there.

System-centered friends have contributed to what is called “institutional isomorphism” in the charter sector—the tendency of charter schools to look and act more and more like the traditional schools they were intended to substantively supplement. Charter schools were supposed to offer a wider array of options, to help parents find schools based on the educational approach that fits their child best.  Today, in terms of financial support and organizational infrastructure, system-centered reformers have the upper hand. Their arguments are straightforward: we know “what works” to produce a charter sector that “outperforms” traditional public schools. Policymakers, eager to show that they’re pro- “accountability,” are increasingly adopting system-centered reforms. But student-centered reformers are more plentiful and as results from among the states lead by student-centered reformers come in – Arizona and Florida to name just two – there is thankfully that needed pendulum swing happening again among our friends.

Charters remain a beacon of innovation and opportunity and today more than ever they need friends united in the quest and the notion that there is no one size fits all that works for kids, schools or accountability, and that the core principles of the charter movement must be centered on the students, and their individualized needs if we are to succeed for the millions in and waiting to get into charter schools. It may be harder and more difficult to measure individual progress, but with good friends, anything is possible.

National Charter Schools Week 2019 Day 5

 Just ask any one of the nearly 1,000 charter schools led by people of color represented by the National Charter Collaborative. Ask Michelle Mason, the head of the Newark Charter School Fund­, Shantelle Wright, or former Detroit superintendent and edreform leader Deborah McGriff. Ask advocate, author and K12 president Kevin Chavous, Gerard Robinson of the Center for Advancing Opportunity, Sonia Park of the Diverse Charter Schools Coalition, or any of the thousands of leaders who reengaged the quest for civil rights through education opportunity rather than succumb to a system that for decades has failed the children.

As education & civil rights warrior Howard Fuller puts it on Reality Check w/Jeanne Allen, “I just find the whole discussion to be ludicrous, bogus, uninformed and while all of that’s going on, poor black and brown children who have for years been seeking out good schools… now [that] have them in some places they are being criticized for going to a good school.”

When the NAACP moratorium hit the front pages, David Hardy, founder and chair of Boys’ Latin Philadelphia Charter School, and Donald Hense, founder and chair of Washington, D.C.’s Friendship Public Charter Schools (both members of CER’s board of directors) issued a statement calling the NAACP’s campaign against charter schools “detrimental and disrespectful to all parents who struggle to ensure a quality education for their children.

“Rather than embrace, and work to expand, the opportunities that charter schools represent to America’s disadvantaged, and to families of color across the nation, the NAACP has chosen to stand as an obstacle, and work to stifle, a movement that, for thousands of children, is the greatest — and only – hope for achieving a quality education….[its] union-driven, anti-charter school agenda, and its “model legislation” effort is an outrageous political scheme to further support the union’s agenda by undermining the voice and will of parents who are fighting for options for their children’s education and for the right and freedom to choose.”

It is these outspoken leaders who are following the Dream. You need look no further for proof of that than to study the work of Wyatt T. Walker, chief of staff to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who helped found New York’s first charter school and advocated for this equity-achieving reform until his last days.

Charter schools are leveling the playing field and have not only equalized opportunity for millions but introduced the innovations normally reserved for the affluent to kids from Harlem to Hawaii.

So today as we continue to celebrate National Charter Schools Week, let’s resolve to lean in with all we have on those who misinform and are misinformed. No child should be relegated to attend any school based on zip code, and no parent forced to accept that which fails their children simply because that’s the way it was.

National Charter Schools Week 2019 Day 6

This is a country built on innovation, but when it comes to education we are far too cautious. We do not need a thousand flowers to bloom, as the saying goes. What we need is to have a thousand (or tens of thousands) of seeds planted. Those that are watered by parents and students and teachers, with money and time and loyalty, will succeed. The rest will become part of the fertile soil that will make more and better innovations possible in the future.

 The best and quickest path to unleash innovation is opportunity. Opportunities afforded today to communities thanks to charter schools, allows citizens to take control of their destinies, creating new avenues and alternatives to the tired systems of the past. Charter schools have transformed the education landscape and are continuing to serve as the driving force in reshaping and redefining education in America. Parents’ demands for access to new educational options for their children are being met. And millions of children are seeing doors of opportunity open.

Just in time to cap off National Charter Schools Week, 2019 comes the release of an important new report about these impacts.  The second in a three-part series, The Case for Education Transformation, Part II: Opportunity, argues for a shift not unlike that begun by charter schools in 1991, to provide widespread educational opportunity in the U.S. It offers a real understanding of what a new opportunity agenda should look like, offers recommendations for federal and state policy makers, opportunity advocates, teachers, parents, and students.

But if research isn’t your thing, how about examples of how opportunity and innovation together have fueled a movement?

Appletree Early Learning in Washington DC leverages charter school autonomy to provide exceptional, high quality early learning. Blended learning once a novelty, is now a mainstay not only at many charters but in traditional education, thanks to groups like Rocketship Education, Phoenix Academies in Massachusetts is a small network serving disengaged learners to get them to and through college (dropouts, justice system-involved, teen parents). High Tech High in California has 6 high schools offering a project-based learning approach, teacher credentialing program and graduate school of education. Idea Public Schools has more than 60 pre-k-12 schools across Texas where 100 percent of seniors are college bound. Even back-to-basics can be novel again, as the experience of as BASIS: Arizona charter schools, which garnered top spots in US News and World Report’s Top 10 high schools in 2019, shows us.

But even these are too few and far between to ensure that all children, and learners at all levels, have access to exceptional education, fueled by student centered programs and funding, and untethered to zip codes and other barriers to entry.

As we’ve often said, it shouldn’t take a hurricane to realize the potential for transformation across a grand scale.  Tragically, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina washed away much of the city’s education infrastructure. In the wake of the widespread destruction of property and the massive exodus of people, the state of Louisiana, with the help of education reformers, created autonomous charter schools to fill the void.

For education reformers — the people who dreamed of remaking not only schools, but reimagining school districts and entire education systems — New Orleans reminds us what is possible. The fact that schools have autonomy and parents have choices has helped to make the entire city a hotbed of innovation—from teacher training to curriculum to the use of technology in the classroom.

This is the closest we have come to realizing the groundbreaking vision of education innovator Ted Kolderie. Few imagined his prescription for creating new, responsive schools in the spirit of choice, innovation, and diversity would evolve into a nationwide movement. Describing the passage of Minnesota’s original charter law back in 1991, former state senator and bill author Ember Reichgott Junge explains, “Chartering trades regulation for results, bureaucracy for accountability, and we weren’t used to doing things like that. Resistance came from everywhere.

Thanks to the moral leadership of national advocates and the hard work of thousands the signs of success are everywhere. Charter schools are no longer a marginal experiment in U.S. education. In more than a dozen cities, charter schools educate 30% of or more of all public school students and are creating a ripple effect uplifting entire education systems, and seating supportive education leaders who helped create alternative opportunities in positions of authority at local and state levels.

And yet, if we as a nation are to be honest with ourselves, we must acknowledge that our efforts to drive change are meeting more resistance daily. Opportunities and Innovation about, but they are under siege. As discussed this week the data, demand and results are conclusive.

Along with the celebrations, however, we must face the challenges – and fight.