Good Choices, Bad Choices, No Choice, and Hard Choices. What about Strategic Choice?

Monday's Board Meeting agenda is posted and we have before us for Dr. Atkinson's first Monthly meeting some items I'd like us to reflect upon.

Lifting from the blog of our suggestions for Dr. Atkinson I made this comment:

"I don't blame parents for seeking a better school for their child - I blame our decades long system of offering "escape" hatches to those who have the wherewithal to find it. We have a system that only responds to squeaky wheels and rearranges funding to support those emergency responses. What we need is a carefully thought out system that offers quality neighborhood schools - AND a few selections for those who wish for something different. But people shouldn't have to seek something different in order to escape the situation at their home school. That is wrong-headed thinking. And it's a self-perpetuating vortex of destruction.

Our system has for far too long been reactive. We need to become proactive. We need planning. We need to offer alternatives that have reasons to exist other than escaping the alternative. We need education-focused leaders - not leaders who simply respond to the most vocal in the community and let the others flounder."

Items 7&8 of Monday's agenda are an amendment to the charter for the International Community School and acceptance of a Letter of Intent to lease Medlock Elementary School to them. Both are recommended for approval. For those of you who are not familiar with this start-up charter school, it has existed in 2 rented church buildings for nearly 10 years. Here is a link to a year's worth of international press coverage that they got in the Christian Science Monitor a few years back. Article #10 discussed some of their struggles to find a permanent facility: http://littlebillclinton.csmonitor.com/littlebillclinton/

Item 9 is the presentation of a 5 year charter contract for the Museum School of Avondale Estates. Here is a link to the board item, which has a lot of text about the proposed tiered attendance zone for the school as well as the full text of the charter (THANK YOU!). The tiered zones would allow it to be a "community school" for the Avondale, Midway, and Knowlwood zones before admitting additional students county-wide. It has received much support and assistance from the city of Avondale Estates:

http://decatur.patch.com/articles/museum-school-celebrates-at-kidsfest

https://eboard.eboardsolutions.com/Meetings/ViewMeetingOrder.aspx?S=4054&MID=17931

In a highly unusual move--the sentence that contains the superintendent's recommendation to the board has a blank where normally approval or denial is requested. Every other item on the agenda has a recommendation for approval.

So my friends. If you were Dr. Atkinson--what would you say to the board on each of these items?

No Hope for Peachtree Hope

As the AJC is reporting,

Peachtree Hope charter school officials were slated to make a last minute bid to renew the school's charter Tuesday night at a DeKalb Board of Education meeting. But instead, Deputy Chief Superintendent Robert Moseley read a letter to the board, announcing Peachtree's withdrawal of its application. No explanation was offered. Peachtree Charter founder Lonnie King declined requests for comment to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. All of the affected students, about 600, will get letters informing them of which DeKalb school they should enroll in.

Boy, I hope they are able to scramble to accommodate 600 students returning to DeKalb schools in 2 weeks. I wonder, if these students are assigned to a "failing" school, will they have time to apply for a transfer? Also, what's up with the International Community (Charter) School's request for a building to house their program? They are a proven program providing an important contribution. They deserve a building to call home. We have plenty of shuttered buildings scattered all over the county from which to choose. Moseley and the board need to hand one over.

BTW - Below is a press release regarding the AYP transfers for 2011-2012

Event: The delay in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of (1965) Public School Choice Open Enrollment period

July 15 - The Georgia Department of Education has not released the final AYP Report. This official report is needed to determine all schools that must offer ESEA Public School Choice. This will delay the planned open enrollment period for parents to exercise ESEA Public School Choice. ESEA Public School Choice open enrollment period will begin the day after Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) official results are released by the State Superintendent, Dr. John D. Barge.

Once the report has been released enrollment will be located at the Administrative and Instructional Complex, Computer Labs 102 and 105 from 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Contact: Dr. Linda Crowley (678.676.0309) Dr. Cleophas Jones (678.676.0381)

National School Choice Week - Rally at the Capitol

January 25th, 10am – noon

The Georgia State Capitol steps on Washington Street

Charter schools supporters in Georgia are joining with the Center for an Educated Georgia to participate in a “National School Choice Week” rally at the Georgia Capitol in support of parental options being made available in Georgia and across the nation. Thousands are expected to participate in various National School Choice Week events across the U.S. during the week of January 23rd – 29th.

Here in Georgia, a rally in support of “school choice”, will be held on the front steps of the Capitol on January 25th, 2011 at 10 A.M.

Whether it is in support of your charter public school or to support more charter schools in communities across Georgia, the time to act is now. Let your voice be heard. Let’s tell our state’s leaders, “Charter public schools are NOT a Republican or a Democrat issue. It’s an American issue – and we have to provide a good education to every American child.”

With the 2011 legislative session in the beginning stages of their three month process, and many key charter school bills dealing with facility funding, autonomy, and flexibility under the law, being proposed to assist your school, the charter public schools of Georgia must show our commitment to this cause.
To make the rally a success, we need your help. We need you and your school to set aside January 25th to bring your school children, parents, staff, and supporters to the Georgia Capitol. We need to show our state’s leaders that they can do more to support Georgia’s charter public schools. We are hoping you will send 25-100+ children, teachers, parents and advocates to the rally on the 25th.

Opportunities to speak with your legislative leaders can be arranged. Please let us know if you would like school leaders, parents and children to have the opportunity after the rally to speak with your house or senate representative(s).

Please do not hesitate to contact Andrew Lewis at GCSA if you have questions regarding the event.

It’s time now to bring parent revolution here

Check out the editorial with this heading at the AJC written by Glenn Delk, an Atlanta attorney. Say what you will about the dangers and ills of charter schools, I have to believe that we have come to the point where a charter school simply cannot be nearly as corrupt and wasteful as some of our current billion dollar school systems. School systems have been found to be nothing more that money troughs for those who are big enough and powerful enough to barrel their way over smaller, weaker beings to gorge.

Enough. We have to try something else. Give the power to the people. Some may do a better job, some worse. But at least we wouldn't feel so hamstrung and ripped off.

Here are some quotes from Mr. Delk's column -

...But if the Atlanta cheating scandal has shown us anything, it’s that the wrong people control public education and that real accountability in the traditional public school system does not exist.

Neither the parents of students attending the 58 schools, nor Atlanta’s taxpayers footing the bill, have any real alternative to the status quo.

But what would happen if we changed the current system of governance and offered parents and taxpayers the chance to assert control over public education in Georgia by convincing local school districts and the General Assembly to pass Georgia’s version of the Parent and Taxpayers Trigger? ...

The problems facing Atlanta’s parents and taxpayers are certainly not unique to Atlanta.

Whether it’s the soaring costs of public education, abysmal test scores and graduation results, loss of accreditation by Clayton County, or alleged corruption in DeKalb County’s schools, the simple fact is that we have a system of public education in Georgia and throughout the country in which the people who pay for the services (taxpayers) and the people who use the service (parents) have little or no real power.

It’s time for a coalition of parents, taxpayers, business and political leaders to join forces to bring the parent revolution to Georgia by implementing Georgia’s Parents and Taxpayers’ Trigger that will provide:

• 51 percent of the parents whose children attend any public school in Georgia can, with a petition, trigger one of three options — charter conversion, closing the school, or use of tuition tax credit scholarships to enable students to attend a private school;
• Fifty-one percent of the taxpayers of a county or city can, at a specially-called referendum, vote to trigger one of the three options for all schools in its jurisdiction;
• the trigger applies to all public schools, not just failing schools;
• charter school funding will equal that of traditional public schools;
• parents and taxpayers can elect to close the schools and give parents a tuition tax credit-funded scholarship. Georgia currently has a $50 million annual cap on the scholarships; the cap should be lifted.

Some people will argue that such a mechanism will cause chaos in our public schools, or that the approach is too radical. My response is that perhaps the chaos resulting from a parent and taxpayer revolution is necessary to bring about real change, since I believe AJC columnist Maureen Downey was right when she wrote: “cheating on the CRCT did not help the children of APS, many of whom have poverty and family chaos already working against them.”

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For more on the subject, read this post about Arnold Schwarzenegger's article on the subject in the Washington Post.

For more conversation on the topic of education reform, check out these two grass-roots blogs I recently discovered.  We are certainly not alone.

Knitting With Pencils - A Failure of Imagination

Dr Kwame M. Brown: Move Theory - Child Development Specialist, Thought Leader, Change Agent

Good schools should be a civil right

This is partially reprinted from the AJC opinion pages. Please click here to read the article in it's entirety.

By Graysen Walles
Monday, August 30, 2010

. . . We all know that the public school system as it is now designed cannot be the answer for the growing needs of our diverse community.

We have seen time and time again by means of reliable statistics and research that most of our public school systems are failing to prepare students for the 21st-century global community. These are facts, whether we want to face them or not.

The consistent message from families of all ethnic, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds in communities like Atlanta is that they want quality educational choice for their children.

In most cases, a traditional school system is not able to accommodate these choices as they are challenged with a myriad of complex issues, even much deeper that what can be seen with the naked eye. . . .

The charter school movement is an answer for many families around the country, as they provide what most traditional public schools cannot.
Quite honestly, at the current time, many of the students benefitting most from the charter movement are minority students and exceptional needs students.

That is why it is so difficult to digest the negative commentary that some civil rights organizations, such as the NAACP, have purported about charter schools.

On the contrary, charter schools are an answer to the challenges of our special education communities and minority communities, as charters provide specificity, flexibility and a level of nurturing for our students that traditional public school have a difficult time mastering.

I was encouraged to read recently that the leader of the National Urban League has clarified its position on charter schools, noting that it “wholeheartedly supports high-quality charter schools and the outcomes they produce for our nation’s children.”

Indeed, if there were any organizations that would support the charter school movement, it is my belief that civil rights organizations would. I would encourage more leaders of these organizations to visit charter schools that have been successful in densely poor communities such as New Orleans, Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta and Chicago.

Undoubtedly, these school communities would definitely provide these leaders with a new perspective about charters and the need for charters as a viable educational reform tool.

Some of the best charters have clearly been documenting best practices and invaluable research that speaks to closing the achievement gap for at least a solid decade.

Charter schools have moved beyond test tube theories. They are now established, valued and successful.  . . .

Graysen Walles is the principal of Tech Charter High in Atlanta.

Weber pushes charter school charter school cluster concept

According to this week's Dunwoody Crier, State Sen. Dan Weber (R-Dunwoody) is pushing for the charter school charter school cluster concept for DeKalb county schools.

Weber pointed to a chart showing that the total education expenditures per pupil has doubled over the last 20 years, but achievement scores have remained flat.

“We’ve been researching for 20 years but haven’t found the magic bullet,” Weber told a meeting last week of the Ashford Alliance Community Association. The answer, said the chairman of the Senate Education Committee, is returning to a system where local schools rather than the superintendent and the central office make the decisions that affect the learning in their schools.

The model, called The High School Charter Cluster, includes the local high school as well as the middle school and all the elementary school that feed into it. Weber envisions that each cluster would have a council that serves as its governing body made up of administrators and parents and probably the local school board representatives.

Federal and state mandates would still have to be followed, and the local board of education would still be responsible for things like transportation and food service. In exchange for having local control of the charter cluster, the cluster council would be accountable for achieving results. Weber is hopeful that school board members, who have to approve such a move, will be open to these changes that are gaining support among parents and schools.

Weber, who authored Georgia’s charter school act, said charter schools can be hampered by decisions still being overridden by the central office.

“Neighbors should have more control of neighborhood schools,” argued Weber, which is why the state law he authored requires that to become a charter cluster, 60 percent of current parents and administrators within the charter cluster must approve the change.

Weber thinks the charter cluster provides the model to implement “what we’ve already learned. We know that increased discipline, longer school days, and teacher accountability already work.”

To read the article in the Crier online, click here.

What Educators Are Learning From Money Managers

One of our regular bloggers sent us the link below to a recent article in Forbes magazine. The article highlights the achievements of the charter schools in New York and elsewhere. The system that seems to work best is the one that that is very business-like. It tracks the minutia of individual student's progress, reports those details to the teachers immediately so that the teachers can make individual adjustments. Competition and accountability rule this kind of high tech teaching system. Below are a few points I have bulleted from the article:

• Innovative schools collect data, look for small changes, intervene quickly and move resources to the formulas that work.
• In the past four decades spending per pupil (adjusted for inflation) has gone up 2.6 times, but sat scores have not budged.
• Despite the $661 billion a year this country puts into public K--12 education, we are churning out a nation of mediocre graduates ill equipped to meet global competitors.
• Roughly 10% to 15% of its teachers quit each year; another 5% or so are fired for poor performance, compared with 9% attrition and 4.4% dismissal rates for public schools.

DeKalb's list of charter schools is growing each year.  This year, three new charters will open their doors: The Museum School, New Hope Academy and The Leadership Academy. 

In a recent post, titled "North vs Central vs South - what's the deal?", we highlighted DeKalb's variety of "choice" schools, including our charters, and tried to show where students are attending when they leave their neighborhood schools.  Those neighborhood schools in some areas have lost literally hundreds of students to the "choice" schools—charters, magnets and themes. At some point, we will need to decide how to consolidate these schools with dwindling populations or perhaps close them entirely and move toward a system of free-choice for every student.

Another charter school to open doors in Lithonia this year

Reprint from The Champion I thought folks might enjoy...

Academy designed to help students become leaders
by Jonathan Cribbs
jonathan@dekalbchamp.com

DeKalb County’s third charter school in two years will open in the fall in Lithonia: The Leadership Preparatory Academy, an elementary and middle school designed to instill leadership skills in students.

The school, which received its charter earlier this month, will be led by Frankie Callaway, a former DeKalb County School System deputy superintendent for administration, who retired in July after a 36-year career as an educator.

The school, which has been in the works since 2008, will open in the fall to grades kindergarten through fifth, expanding by another grade each year until the eighth grade, Callaway said. The school expects to enroll about 300 students in its first year, adding between 50 and 60 each year after, said Lonnie
Hall, a parent who helped organize the school.

It would be open to anyone living within the county’s borders, Callaway said. The school would meet all state educational and curriculum requirements, leadership teaching would be infused into the instruction, she said. Students will be taught from learned texts such as The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, a widely known book by business professor and author Stephen Covey. His book tells readers to, among other things, be proactive, visualize the end result of goals and learn the principles of integrity.

“It’s something we have always worked on in DeKalb but not to this level,” Callaway said. Prior to a similar charter school opening in North Carolina recently, Hall said the closest school with a similar goal and curriculum was in Virginia. “It doesn’t exist anywhere (in Georgia),” he said. “There was an opportunity that (organizers knew) we could be missing in terms of preparing children at the grade school level for the challenges they will be facing in the early part of the 21st century.

… Every child, we believe, can be a leader. But there’s not much opportunity left to develop those other skills that a child will need once they complete their secondary school education. Being educated and being prepared are two different
things.”

The school is hiring personnel, including teachers, and will open off Evans Mill Road in eastern DeKalb County near Interstate 20, inside a vacated academy, Hall said. Two fellow charter schools will also open their doors to students this fall: The Museum School of Avondale Estates and Peachtree Hope Charter
School.

Both were denied charters through the DeKalb County Board of Education but reapplied through the state’s charter school office – an appeal of sorts – and received their charters. These sorts of disagreements over home rule and state control over local money have sparked a lawsuit between several metro Atlanta school systems, including DeKalb, and the state Department of Education that has yet to be resolved.

The Leadership Preparatory Academy’s charter was initially denied in 2008, Hall said, because board members did not doubted the school was original enough. When the organization reapplied the next year, the board approved it, he said. If the school proves successful, Callaway said, it could expand through 12th grade.

“We want every child to believe that they can accomplish,” she said.

Charter Schools - Are they the wave of the future? Obama may like to think so.

Charter schools are on the rise and the Race To The Top may ensure their proliferation. Read the article we recently posted about the "RTTT Winners". Recently, representatives from the U.S. Department of Education made a visit to DeKalb and held a discussion about identifying turnaround schools, closing them and then reopening them possibly as charters. Go to Community Radar to download the Powerpoint used at the meeting to learn about Tier 1, 2 and 3 schools and how they are identified. For further explanation, and videos describing turnaround examples, visit this link at the U.S. DOE.

This is a new era - if you think No Child Left Behind was intense, stand-by for this initiative by Obama and Duncan - part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. They have no tolerance for severely under-performing schools and fully intend to shutter them and start them anew in one way or another. One way ensure your school system meets with Obama's approval is to allow flexibility in charter school creation. (Another is to tie teacher pay to student performance.)

If you're interested in charters, you will want to attend the Emory Lavista Parent Council meeting next Wednesday.

Emory Lavista Parent Council

Join us at 9:15 am

(refreshments begin at 8:45 am)

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Fernbank Elementary School

157 Heaton Park Drive, NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30307

Charter Schools

Everything you Want and Need to Know

Guest Speakers

Phil Andrews, former executive director of the Georgia Charter School Association, moderator

Gigi Connor, co-founder of Neighborhood Charter School and Atlanta Charter Middle School

Nina Gilbert, founder of Ivy Prep Academy, a GA Commission Charter School

Nicole Knighten, DeKalb County Schools legislative affairs

Final Meeting: April 21^st at Coralwood Elementary: State of the System Revisited

The Charter School Push in On!

It looks like the state is not one bit intimidated by the lawsuit filed by Gwinnett and DeKalb fighting the state's approval of the charter school, "Ivy Prep Academy".

As reported in The Weekly online,

The Georgia Charter Schools Commission announced Thursday that it has recommended five charter petitions for approval.

Charter petitions for the following schools were recommended for approval when the Commission holds its regularly scheduled meeting, Monday, Dec. 14, at 10 a.m.:

· Atlanta Heights Charter School. Originally denied a charter by the Atlanta Public Schools, the proposed school would serve students in grades K-8, and is backed by National Heritage Academies, Inc.

· Fulton Leadership Academy. Originally denied a charter by the Fulton County Public Schools, the proposed school will serve students in grades 6-12, and would be the nation’s first all-boys school with a curriculum based around aeronautics and science.

· The Museum School of Avondale Estates. Originally denied a charter by the DeKalb County Public Schools, it would serve students in grades K-8.

· Pataula Charter Academy would serve students in grades K-8, living in Baker, Calhoun, Clay, Early and Randolph Counties in southwest Georgia.

· Peachtree Hope Charter School. Originally denied by the DeKalb County Public Schools, the proposed school would serve students in grades K-12, and is backed by SABIS Educational Systems, Inc.

I am very happy to see that the Museum School is being supported by the state's commission on charter schools. I was very impressed with the detailed, exciting plans presented by this very hard-working group of parents and educators dedicated to creating an excellent school for their community. Hopefully, DeKalb will support them in their efforts.