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Monday, August 28, 2006
Roadblocks won’t deter charter school
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When the history of education reform in Georgia is written, the valiant struggle of parents determined to have an alternative to Atlanta public schools should be noted, for it is an example of the persistence required of pioneers and reformers.
Achieve Academy, the charter school the Atlanta Board of Education sought to close in July, was given new life by Fulton Superior Court Judge Constance C. Russell after parents challenged the board’s decision. The struggle now is to find a home, to reassemble staff and to attract parents, most of whom have already enrolled their children in traditional public schools, where classes started Aug. 14.
Principal David Morgan plans to have Achieve back together and running by next Tuesday in a new location. The school board denied Achieve parents permission to lease last year’s site, the old G. B. Peterson Elementary facility near Fort McPherson, a school that closed in 2004 because of low enrollment.
“From the taxpayers’ point of view, Achieve is turning out higher-performing kids at half the cost, and that school is sitting empty and is being vandalized on a regular basis,” says Glenn A. Delk, an Atlanta attorney who represented Achieve’s parents in contesting the school board decision. School officials have said they have other uses planned for the building.
When Achieve reopens, Morgan expects to have 200 children or more for grades 5-8, even though the new location will be “our fourth building in four years,” he says. “It’s been a team juggling act, but the reason we have been able to keep the overwhelming number of parents is because of the results we have produced year after year. They will go to the ends of the earth to keep this school going.”
Achieve’s predicament is partly self-inflicted. A former board of what was then called KIPP Achieve Academy decided last November to surrender the school’s charter. A new board notified the Atlanta school board that it wished to continue operations, but the APS board voted to close it. Parents sued and won a temporary injunction allowing Achieve to remain open.
Achieve’s struggle comes on the heels of a national study by the National Center for Education Statistics that fuels the debate about charter school performance. According to the data, fourth-graders in traditional public schools in 2003 did slightly better on average in reading and math than those in charter schools.
The center looked at 2003 data from 6,764 traditional public schools and 150 charter schools. After adjusting for family characteristics, such as income, traditional school fourth-graders scored 4.2 points higher in reading and 4.7 higher in math on a 500-point scale, according to the center.
The two sides of the charter school movement read the study differently. U.S. Department of Education officials called a news conference to distance themselves from it.
Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform in Washington, said in an interview Friday that the study “flies in the face of everything we actually know about charter school achievement state-to-state.” She continued:
“In every state where we have data, charter schools are in fact beating their traditional school counterparts by several points, sometimes 10 or more … The comparisons that were made in the recent government study are false comparisons. They were apples-to-oranges. They did not have anything to do with whether students are achieving in charter schools. They told a story about how charter school students performed on one test at one snapshot in time.”
The poverty data used to adjust scores were “seriously flawed,” Allen said in an earlier release. “The education establishment — teachers, unions, school boards associations and more —tout these flawed studies in an attempt to discredit new school opportunities for parents.” She urged parents to look at state-level assessments to “get a real picture of student achievement.”
On those, Achieve students have fared well, says Morgan, and deserve the chance to continue. “As long as we are producing results,” he said Friday, “the public will be on our side. I don’t want the public to be on our side if we are not producing results for our students. All eyes are on us and now the real work begins, producing children who are intellectually capable of competing globally.”
At Achieve, he said, “We work hard and stay in school longer and make sure what we are teaching them is what they need to know.”
Pull for them, and for the children and for their determined parents. They are pioneers struggling to survive in a harsh educational and political environment.
• Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column appears Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays.
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You rule New Orleans
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Katrina a year later. Anniversary updates fill the news. It’s another opportunity to bash Brownie. You can pretty much tell the leanings of a news organization with a Brownie meter. If Brownie — former Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown — is central to the anniversary updates, it’s of the the view that it’s President Bush’s fault and he’s an amiable dunce for the “Brownie, you’re doing a heckava job” quote.
As the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports, fault has many fathers, extending back 300 years. My candidate for most deserved blame is not Brownie, but the bumbling mayor, Ray Nagin, and the indecisive governor, Kathleen Blanco, though Brownie is fair game. But we’ve fought that war for a year and it’s hardly worth resurrecting. The federal government simply cannot be the first responder in planning, managing and reacting to disaster. With a costly war on terrorism at hand, the prospect of funding the bureaucracy, and buying and prepositioning the equipment, required to do the job of a mayor and governor in the event of disaster is mind-boggling. And, besides, it’s doomed to failure, Brownie or not.
Two questions arise as this anniversary approaches. One is how fair and balanced the news media is in telling the Katrina anniversary story. And the other question may reveal the differences in how liberals and conservatives see problems and solutions. Suppose you rule New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina and are empowered to rebuild it as an experiment in liberal or conservative governance. What are the elements?
In mine, public education is radically overhauled and reconfigured. Parents are held responsible for the financial support and conduct of their children. No more public housing projects are built. Easy loans are available for home ownership and for start-up businesses, but to prepare purchasers faith-based organizations are invited in droves to provide counseling, training and support. Homes are built above Katrina waters or not at all; those below would be required to have unsubsidized flood insurance for the full replacement value of the home or business. The state and New Orleans take responsibility for the levees. The dependent are encouraged to find jobs and stay where they fled. New Orleans is a responsible, working city composed of people who recognize a hurricane’s danger, prepare for it, and leave when their lives are at risk.
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