In this episode, Susan Pendergrass is joined by Steven F. Wilson, senior fellow at the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research and author of The Lost Decade: Returning to the Fight for Better Schools in America, to discuss the rise and decline of the “no excuses” charter school movement.

They examine how once high-performing urban charter networks lost their focus on academic achievement, why ideological shifts around DEI and anti-racism took root, and what it will take to re-center public education around effective instruction. Wilson also explains the importance of urgency in school leadership, the evidence behind student outcomes, and more.

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Transcript: The Lost Decade – Steven F. Wilson with Susan Pendergrass

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(00:00) Introduction and background

Susan Pendergrass: Well, Steven Wilson, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. We were just speaking before we started recording about how long you and I have been kind of working in the—you completely in the charter space and me somewhat adjacently in the charter school space—and have just seen things change and evolve over time in ways that… some are great and some are less great.

You have a new book out, The Lost Decade: Return to the Fight for Better Schools in America, which is fantastic. You know, 20 years ago, I thought charter schools were going to be part of the answer—to competitively spur non-charter schools to do better and to give parents options and lifeboats in some of our worst urban districts. There were so many high-flying charter school networks emerging, like KIPP—the Knowledge is Power Program—that were like, “Look, it’s not the kids.”

These kids can do as much as any kids—even if they’re poor, even if they are in an urban district, even if their mom is single and has two jobs. We’re not going to give them excuses. We’re going to have high expectations and we’re going to instill discipline. And they started this whole “no excuses” thing. And I thought that was such a great thing for kids. Then… I don’t know. Please, you tell me. I’m sure you know more than I do.

(01:10) The shift away from academic excellence

Steven F. Wilson: Well, first of all, Susan, I’m delighted to be with you—and I’m even more delighted that you’ve read the book. That’s thrilling.

Yes, I think your introduction really nails it. We had found a once-in-a-century educational intervention that had extraordinary effects: the so-called “no excuses” school. (Terrible name, by the way—maybe we should clarify that for listeners.) Around 2000, or in the few years leading up to that, urban charter networks were posting extraordinary effects. They were beginning to show a way out of educational inequality in this country—and then they lost the thread.

They turned away from the North Star of achievement—of great instruction—which is what drove them and their success. And they began to embrace another ideology, another purpose, that I think has been quite destructive. That’s the theme of the book. I refer to it as anti-racist education or social justice education.

Look, we all thought we were doing social justice, right? We thought we were doing anti-racism. We thought that by providing an instructionally effective path—where children could enter the middle class and not be consigned to a life of the minimum wage—we were addressing inequality in America. But we’ve unfortunately turned away from that.

I called the book The Lost Decade because we are now exactly halfway through it. We need to make a sharp pivot back to what was working. My book is really a call to action—a call to return to what works, and pick up where we left off.

(03:47) Mislabeling structure as racism

Susan Pendergrass: So when you say the anti-racist movement, I think what I remember hearing is… making kids stand in line is racist?

Steven F. Wilson: Yeah, that’s right. So a whole lot of things were labeled racist when, in fact, they were just creating the conditions under which children could be safe, respected, and have an opportunity to learn—conditions where teachers could teach.

People forget what the urban classroom looked like 30 years ago when all this began. There’s a book called Let the Lady Teach by Emily Socker. She was an education journalist who taught for a year and took stunning photos. You see New York City classrooms with graffiti-covered walls, broken desks—a scene of abject neglect and contempt for students.

The founders of the no-excuses schools did two things. First, they established order. Children needed to feel safe from gangs, violence, and low-level disorder. The balled-up paper no one picks up, the broken pencil, the kids talking over the teacher—all that had to stop. That was the foundation for joyful, effective learning environments.

Second, they adopted the pledge of no excuses. As professionals, we agreed to stop blaming poverty, racism, or lack of resources for why students weren’t learning. Those challenges are real—but we cannot let them prevent us from doing our job: educating children. That was an ennobling cultural decision—and it drove the successes that followed.

(06:38) School uniforms and equality

Susan Pendergrass: I also remember how those high-performing charter networks were some of the first public schools to require uniforms. At the time, people said, “You can’t make low-income students wear belts,” and yet… they did. Schools helped them. They found a way.

Steven F. Wilson: Exactly. Uniforms did a couple of things: they created a sense of order and purpose and they eliminated status anxiety about clothes or sneakers. They created a level playing field where all kids could feel safe and focused.

(07:54) Why charter schools changed

Susan Pendergrass: So why did things change around 2005 or so? Why were charter schools so susceptible to this shift?

Steven F. Wilson: Good question. My view—and it can be contested—is that charter schools were uniquely susceptible because of their reliance on young, novice teachers, and because they experienced higher staff turnover than traditional districts. So you had more new teachers arriving, often from elite universities. These teachers had been acculturated in anti-racist ideology and brought it with them.

With 20 to 25 percent staff attrition over four years, you can essentially have a whole new faculty. These new teachers weren’t part of the early TFA generation who felt called to close the achievement gap. Instead, they came in animated by the ideas of Ibram Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, and more radical voices like Tema Okun—who claimed that objectivity and love of the written word were traits of white supremacy.

So teachers began to question whether enforcing discipline or holding students to high standards was racist. Some networks—like Success Academy and Brooke Charter Schools—held their ground. Others capitulated. They didn’t make the case for their methods or explain how they aligned with a true liberal arts education.

(11:35) Parental demand and satisfaction

Susan Pendergrass: And these were the very things that parents wanted, right? The structure, the discipline?

Steven F. Wilson: Absolutely. These schools conducted annual parent surveys—Ascend, KIPP, Achievement First. Satisfaction rates were consistently above 90%. I’ve never heard of a parent asking for more anti-racist programming. What they wanted was a better education and a secure path to college and career. That path has eroded horribly over the past five years.

(14:52) Test score declines

Susan Pendergrass: So what were the actual outcomes of the shift?

Steven F. Wilson: In New York City—the nation’s largest market—urban no-excuses charters used to dramatically outperform traditional schools on state tests. That performance premium eroded by two-thirds over five years. Now, many of them perform just slightly better than the city average. But the networks that stuck with their methods—Success Academy and Classical Charter Schools—have either maintained or improved their results.

(16:29) Can “anti-racist” schools succeed academically?

Susan Pendergrass: And you couldn’t find any high-achieving schools that had adopted the anti-racist framework?

Steven F. Wilson: I looked, and no—I couldn’t find any.

(17:24) What should we do now?

Susan Pendergrass: So what now? How do we turn this around?

Steven F. Wilson: We need to have honest conversations—conversations that have been avoided for too long. And then we need to win the contest of ideas. The no-excuses model works. RAND found that students who attend KIPP middle and high schools have nearly the same college completion rates as white students nationwide. That’s an astonishing result.

There’s growing recognition that the ideological shift hasn’t worked—but fear still dominates. I think that will change within the next year.

(19:47) DEI and illiberalism on both sides

Susan Pendergrass: Meanwhile, terms like “equity” and “DEI” have been politicized. What’s your take on that?

Steven F. Wilson: I support DEI—when it’s done right. Diversity, equity, and inclusion should foster a sense of belonging. What doesn’t work is dividing people into affinity groups or pushing a worldview of oppressors versus oppressed. That’s deeply harmful.

And the answer isn’t to fight illiberalism with more illiberalism—banning concepts, censoring teachers. That’s not how we solve the problem.

(22:24) Accountability, data, and racism claims

Susan Pendergrass: In Missouri, we’ve got very low accountability. Our state system gives almost every district an “A.” When we created our own school grading system, we were told assigning D’s and F’s is racist—because those schools mostly serve Black and Brown students. But parents know when their child’s school is bad. They want a way out.

Steven F. Wilson: Right. The claim that it’s racist to report poor outcomes is a distraction—usually from the teachers’ unions or anti-reformers. They say schools are just reproducing structural poverty and racism. Horace Mann would roll over in his grave.

We need competition. In many communities, the majority school systems are unreformable. The faster path to success is to build new schools around them.

(26:05) Urgency and action

Susan Pendergrass: I hear “fix the schools we have” all the time. But people have been trying that for decades. If your house is on fire, don’t just stand there—build something next door.

Steven F. Wilson: Exactly. People cling to the existing system out of habit or emotion. But it isn’t working. And as you said, we need urgency. That’s another value some now call “racist.” But if your kid is in a broken classroom, you feel that urgency.

High-performing charter schools acted on it. They made staffing changes midyear. They reopened quickly during COVID. They didn’t let failure sit.

(28:22) Conclusion

Susan Pendergrass: Yes, and that urgency made a difference. Our unaccredited districts have been that way for so long a child could attend from kindergarten to 12th grade without any improvement.

The Lost Decade: Returning to the Fight for Better Schools in America couldn’t be more timely. Steven, thank you so much for coming on.

Steven F. Wilson: Such a pleasure, Susan. Great to see you.

Susan Pendergrass: Same. Thank you.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

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The study examined 13 KIPP middle schools that had more applicants than seats available, so researchers were able to track the kids who got into the KIPP schools and those that didn’t. The groups of students are comparable because they all applied to KIPP schools, and thus have similar qualities like motivation and parental support. The results show that students enrolled in KIPP middle schools were 13 percent more likely to enroll in a 4–year college than students who did not. The study states that “the impact of attending a KIPP school would be almost large enough to erase the nationwide racial disparity in college enrollment rates.”

Nationally, KIPP has 242 schools and serves more than 100,000 students. St. Louis currently has six KIPP schools, including two middle schools and a high school. Kansas City has just two, including one middle school. There are so many more disadvantaged students outside of St. Louis and Kansas City who could benefit from a high-performing charter school like a KIPP school. Under Missouri’s current charter school laws, only the three percent of Missouri students in the St. Louis City or Kansas City school districts even have the option to apply for lottery admissions to KIPP schools. Charter school expansion could bring effective schools to students all over the state, giving students in urban and rural areas access to quality education.

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When you have always come to expect something done one way, it can completely rock your world when you see someone doing it differently. That was the case when I visited KIPP Delta, a charter school in southeast Arkansas, midway through my doctoral program. I spoke with a staff member who told me about their mission to get students to, and through, college. The school was using business software to manage contacts with graduates and ensure that each student would have a KIPP staff member following up with them periodically post-graduation. Graduates within a certain distance would even receive a visit from someone from KIPP.

When I heard this, my first thought was, Why hadn’t my school done something like this?

Recently, The 74 reported that just 9 percent of students from the bottom fourth of the income distribution graduate college within 6 years. For a number of charter school networks, however, that figure is significantly higher. Nationwide, 38 percent of all KIPP graduates go on to graduate from college within six years. That’s more than four times the national average!

I’m sure it isn’t just KIPP’s post–high school follow-ups that have led to this dramatic increase in college graduation; KIPP schools also appear to provide their students with a firm K-12 foundation. Whatever they’re doing, it seems to be working.

Yet, in Missouri we continue to restrict where charter schools can open. Both my experience visiting KIPP Delta and the evidence presented here suggest that we would be wise to remove these unnecessary restrictions. Doing so could help more of our students from low-income families get their college degrees.

For more information, read: “Charter Schools: Do They Work?” by Michael McShane. 

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In a new paper, Juliet Squire, Kelly Robson, and Andy Smarick look all the way back to the 1890s to track private schooling’s long rise to its peak in the mid-1960s and its decline to today. The trend line is shown in the graph above.

In recent years, numerous states have passed private school choice programs that have helped turn these trends around, at least locally. But even the growth in school choice programs has not been enough to stanch the decline. 

Into that context jump Squire et al, documenting a new phenomenon called “Private School Management Organizations” (PSMOs). Much like Charter management organizations like KIPP or Green Dot work to help organize and supervise networks of charter schools, PSMOs like Wisconsin’s HOPE Christian Schools  or Memphis’s Jubilee Schools  work to help organize and supervise networks of private schools. These groups are organized around one of two major goals. Some are designed to shore up the finances and management of existing private schools and help put them on a sustainable long-term trajectory. Others are designed to help open and expand new private schools.

Charter management organizations have been extremely successful in spreading charter schooling nationwide. KIPP schools, for example, started in Houston in 1994 with only 47 students in one school.  They now educate over 70,000 students in 183 schools in 20 states and the District of Columbia.  It would be wonderful if private schools could learn from them.

Kansas City has the Strong City Schools and St. Louis has the ACCESS Academies, which are kind of proto-PSMOs, but private school leaders across the state could look to the examples Squire et al highlight and the lessons from nascent efforts to see how such organizations might help students looking for a private education in Missouri.

I worry that when the happy day comes that Missouri passes a school choice program, so many private schools will have closed that the options available to students will be limited.  Clearly, help is needed to keep private schools alive until more sustainable support, in the form of vouchers, tax credit scholarships, or education savings accounts, arrive.  PSMOs are one path to achieving that.

The post Private School Pioneers in Kansas City and St. Louis? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In Missouri, students in unaccredited school districts can now choose to enroll in neighboring accredited school districts. Some students who have elected to leave their struggling school now find themselves riding a bus for more than two hours a day. This has led many to question the school transfer idea and look for alternative solutions. Some have begun to ask, “What if instead of busing students from failing school districts to accredited ones, we bused great teachers from accredited schools into the failing districts?” It is an idea that has won a fair amount of attention.

Last November, the Cooperating School Districts of Greater St. Louis pitched the idea of providing high-quality teachers as instructional coaches in struggling schools. A similar idea was raised by CEE-Trust, the consulting firm that the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education hired to address problems in the Kansas City School District. The CEE-Trust proposal called on accredited school districts “to play a significant role in helping [unaccredited] systems improve.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch heaped praise on this idea, calling it among the “more promising ideas.”

However, there is one easily overlooked obstacle standing in the way of turning this localized version of a teacher peace corps into a reality in Missouri’s two biggest cities: the incompatibility of different pension systems.

With the exception of Saint Louis and Kansas City, which have autonomous pension systems, all of Missouri’s school districts are part of the Public School Retirement System (PSRS). If a teacher moves from PSRS to one of the city plans, he or she will incur a significant loss in pension wealth. Koedel, Ni, Podgursky, and Xiang, economists at the University of Missouri and authors of a recent report from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, put it this way:

Consider two teachers who work thirty-year careers in the profession. The first teacher works all of her thirty years in a single plan. The second teacher works fifteen years in one plan and then fifteen years in another. Because of the way pension wealth accrues in these plans, the latter teacher will have less than half the pension wealth of the former teacher at age fifty-five.

Though this may sound like a Missouri problem, it has bearing nationwide. As the Kauffman report notes, Missouri’s separate pension systems are “a microcosm of larger national issues concerning teacher pension systems—particularly the ability of teachers to move between systems.”

Just as teachers in Missouri cannot move between pension boundaries without incurring a financial penalty, teachers cannot move across state pension boundaries without incurring similar costs. Which means, a charter operator with campuses in multiple states, like KIPP, Uncommon Schools, Achievement First, or Rocketship Education, cannot freely move a teacher or school leader between their schools in various states. Indeed, these systems punish all teachers who move from one state to another.

Koedel, Ni, Podgursky, and Xiang liken the costs associated with switching between pension systems to a tariff, “Rather than promoting free trade and labor mobility, the pension plans effectively are imposing a tariff on the import or export of human capital between” the separate pension systems.

This “tariff” on labor is not a new problem, but a longstanding one that Saint Louis and Kansas City have been struggling with for years. Prior research has demonstrated that the separate pension systems create a barrier to recruiting school leaders into the two urban school districts. The separate pension systems also limit the pool of teachers who are willing to work in the cities. Jeffrey Kuntze, chief operating officer of the Confluence Charter Schools in Saint Louis, says “the separate pension systems make it extremely difficult for us to recruit veteran teachers from the county. We can get them when they retire, but not mid-career.”

Missouri’s pension boundaries would make it practically impossible for high-performing school districts to operate a program, run a school, or loan teachers within the Saint Louis or Kansas City boundaries, just as state pension boundaries would make it impossible for schools to effectively work across state lines. They simply could not move teachers or school leaders across pension boundaries without making them suffer great financial penalties.

The only real way to solve this problem is to close the current systems to new entrants and place them in a new, statewide system that participates in Social Security and has smooth wealth accrual. Before this idea causes mass hysteria, let me stress that this would not affect current employees’ or retirees’ pensions. They would remain secure in their current system. It would, however, remove the artificial pension boundaries and allow us to create a better pension system for teachers and students.

Opponents of this idea claim that closing the current defined benefit systems would be financially unsound, as it would lead to considerable “transition costs” that would far outstrip any benefits that we may receive. This is the very issue tackled in a recent Show-Me Institute policy study by Andrew Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Biggs examines the evidence for “transition costs” and concludes that the concerns are “largely mistaken and should not stand in the way of public employee pension reforms.”

Whether you believe busing teachers into failing schools is a viable solution or just another feel-good proposition, fixing this pension problem should be a top priority for Missouri and other states throughout the country. Missouri should not have a system that puts our neediest communities at a disadvantage when it comes to recruiting talented teachers and states should not impose a tariff on attracting quality teachers and school leaders.

James V. Shuls, Ph.D., earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in elementary education and taught for four years in the Republic School District. Currently, he is an education policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy. His wife is currently vested in PSRS.

The post Current Teacher Pension Systems Impose A “Tariff” On Labor appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As a result, the class of fifth-graders who entered KIPP Inspire Academy in 2009, many with a third-grade understanding of reading and math, completed eighth grade last week, bound for some of the most prestigious college prep high schools in the region.

However, what struck me most about the story was the fact that KIPP puts its students on an entirely new trajectory.

One student, De’Ja Wood, might have been attending Riverview Gardens High School next year, a perennially under-performing school. Instead, she will attend Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School (MICDS), a premier private school, on a full scholarship. In fact, many of her classmates are bound for “some of the most prestigious college prep high schools in the region.”

For many of these students, an elite private education was out of the question just a few short years ago. That is what KIPP has done. It has taken these students who were performing at very low levels and raised their level of achievement dramatically; it has instilled a tremendous work ethic and drive; and it has put a great high school and college education within their grasp.

KIPP Inspire Academy is a young school and there is certainly much room to improve. Still, it is exciting to see a school making such an impact on the lives of so many students. To me, this illustrates the point that poverty does not determine a student’s future. It may be difficult, but schools and teachers truly can change a student’s path in life.

KIPP Inspire students will be attending a host of great high schools in our region. Below is a list of just some of the schools to which KIPP Inspire students have been accepted:

The post KIPP: Putting Kids On A New Trajectory appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Mathematica, a leading education research firm, recently released an impressive evaluation of KIPP middle schools (the Missouri schools were not included in this study). Using a rigorous gold-standard research design, the researchers explored the impact of KIPP schools on student achievement.

What they found was not surprising to me: “KIPP middle schools have positive and statistically significant impacts on student achievement across all four academic subjects examined . . .”

I have written fairly extensively about KIPP schools on the Show-Me Daily blog, in Phi Delta Kappan, and in two pieces that are forthcoming in peer-reviewed journals (Social Science Quarterly and The Rural Educator).

KIPP’s success is often chalked up to hard work. While that is certainly a large part of it, I believe there is a bit more that we can learn from KIPP schools. In the Phi Delta Kappan piece, which I penned with Bob Maranto, we wrote:

What distinguishes KIPP is not just hard work, but thoughtful work linking the daily processes of schooling to the goals of schooling, in this case, success in college. Day-to-day tactics reflect broader themes: having a clear mission and hiring staff who support the mission, building student culture to sup­port the mission, ensuring consistency, building rela­tionships, empowering principals to lead, and using frequent measurement of success to motivate teach­ers and students.

Not all schools will share the same mission as KIPP or be just like KIPP, nor should they; but every school leader can learn from KIPP and apply these lessons to their schools.

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Below I display a graph of KIA student achievement in math and communication arts. Please note, the graph has two separate figures for each subject, cohort and overall. The overall figure contains all students tested in a specific subject. The cohort figure follows one group of students as they progress through the grades. Thus it contains students in fifth grade in 2010, sixth in 2011, and seventh in 2012. I display the cohort figure because Kelly and others involved with KIPP believe students continue to grow the longer they stay with KIPP.

As it turns out, the cohort of KIA students have shown impressive growth in both math and communication arts for the past two years. As always, one must be concerned about selective attrition, where lower performing students leave the school at faster rates. Without having examined the attrition rates, I could not address that directly. Nevertheless, the test score results are improving not only for the cohort of students, but for all students.

It seems safe to say, at least from this snapshot, that KIA has a positive impact on student achievement. I hope to see these numbers grow even more in the coming year.

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St. Francis de Sales, where KIPP Inspire Academy is located.

Photo Credit: (CC) Phillip B. Roussin

At the corner of Lynch Street and Ohio Avenue in South Saint Louis stands one of the city’s most beautiful buildings, St. Francis de Sales Oratory. Walk just past the church’s exquisite edifices and I believe you will see something just as wonderful: students learning.

In the adjacent building, students of KIPP Inspire Academy are working hard to “climb the mountain to college.” The school, part of the national network of public charter schools known as Knowledge Is Power Program, opened in 2009 and is now in its fourth year. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of visiting KIPP Inspire Academy. The school’s executive director, Kelly Garrett, took me on a tour of the renovated facilities, pointing out upgrades that KIPP has made and introducing me to faculty. We popped into several classrooms and saw students and teachers hard at work. As is characteristic of KIPP schools, classrooms were well-managed and full of learning.

After our tour, I had a chance to sit down with Mr. Garrett. He had been pouring over recently released achievement data from the state. I have yet to examine these data myself, but he showed me numerous graphs he had made and noted on several measures that the students of KIPP Inspire were outperforming state averages. Though, he always paused and reminded me of the long road ahead and how the school must continue to improve. That constant desire to evaluate, celebrate success, and continually improve is also a hallmark of every KIPP school I have visited.

Today, KIPP Inspire serves students in fifth through eighth grades and is the only school from the nationally renowned KIPP network in the Saint Louis area, but that may change because Garrett has plans to expand. The biggest obstacle to growth, as he sees it, is finding talented individuals to staff the classrooms. Hopefully, the success of KIPP Inspire will inspire more individuals to take up the mantle of education and will increase the pool of talented teachers in Missouri.

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The National Center on Time and Learning reports that more than 170 schools around the country have extended their school year to more than 190 days, including at least two schools in Missouri. Both schools in Missouri and the majority of schools across the country that are opting for longer days or longer years are charter schools. For example, the renowned national charter network Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) lists “more time” as one of their strategies for delivering a high-quality education to their students. Students at KIPP Inspire Academy in Saint Louis attend school from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. every other Saturday. Additionally, students are required to attend summer school. Having visited several KIPP schools, I commend their efforts to improve education outcomes for disadvantaged students. Nonetheless, I do not believe their strategy should be mandated everywhere.

As Hess notes, many families are able to provide enriching activities for their children in the summer, like vacations and summer camps. For these families, summer school may stifle their learning. On the other hand, some students may benefit from the additional learning time. Too often, researchers and policymakers develop a “we know best” mentality. When they believe a program or solution will benefit individuals, they attempt to mandate that strategy for everyone. In reality, people are different and need different solutions.

When we mandate solutions, we stifle innovation. Rather than dictate how, when, and where students must attend school, we should give families the ability to choose the school that best meets their needs.

The post Extending The School Year: Good Strategy, Bad Public Policy appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I am optimistic about the future of K–12 education, because certain schools and education innovators have proven that what researchers and education administrators thought was impossible is, in fact, not.

For example, the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools have been especially effective in reducing, if not eliminating, the achievement gap:

Students in at least half the KIPP schools Mathematica studied gained the equivalent of 1.2 years in mathematics and 0.9 years in reading three years after enrolling. The results effectively cut the racial achievement gap in half.

Another example of what is possible are the incredible gains made in Harlem, N.Y., by educational advocate Geoffrey Canada. He chose to attempt to “change the odds” of low income children in central Harlem — an area the New York Times reported had a poverty rate of more than 60 percent, and where three quarters of students were scoring below grade level on state aptitude tests. Today, we know Canada’s education nonprofit as the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ).

HCZ reports that 90 percent of its high school seniors were accepted into college this past year, and that those students received more than $6 million in scholarships and grants. HCZ also reports that of the four-year-olds that entered one of its programs, nearly one in five were initially achieving educational scores so low that they were classified as “delayed.” By the end of one year in the HCZ program, none of those students were delayed, and the percentage of students in that class that were classified as “advanced” had doubled, to more than 40 percent.

Canada was featured extensively in Waiting for “Superman.” Besides showing the struggles of students, the documentary’s broader message is about the big failures of traditional public education — including rapidly increasing education costs with no change in student academic achievement, the extreme difficulty of firing an incompetent teacher, and the seemingly endless bureaucracy that impedes educational innovation. The documentary’s strength is that it juxtaposes the flat-lining of student academic achievement in traditional public schools with what education innovators, like Canada, have been able to accomplish.

After watching the movie, the panelists took questions from audience members. About halfway through, Chris Guinther, the president of the Missouri National Education Association (the state’s largest teacher union), stood up to rail against the movie. I could write a series of blog posts responding to the statements she made — but space is limited, and you, reader, can only take so much.

I was most disturbed by Guinther’s objection to Canada’s success, because he had, according to her, made money by running the school. Now, after some brief research, I can’t find any indication that Canada has made outsized profits from HCZ, especially because the organization is a nonprofit. However, for the sake of argument, I’ll grant Guinther’s claim that the man who turned around student achievement in one of the most dangerous places in Harlem made a lot of money doing so.

I would be ecstatic if Canada were one of the most wealthy people in the United States. He has unarguably helped some of this country’s neediest children — in an area with extremely high foster care rates — gain an appreciation and mastery of education. I am more excited about Canada potentially reaping financial rewards for his risk taking and success than I am for almost anyone else. Why would money invalidate the success of the HCZ program? If the only criticism of Canada and his work encouraging low-performing Harlem children to succeed academically is that he might be making more than the average teacher, then that’s really no criticism at all.

In fact, I wish there were more potential for great rewards for people who work hard and take risks to vastly improve K–12 education. That might encourage more people to work to solve some of the shortcomings we are seeing in U.S. schools.

The real scandal is that, although educational innovators can make great strides and perhaps be begrudged for their relative financial success, teachers who fail their students can be nearly impossible to fire. For example, New York City’s school system has managed to fire only three teachers during the past two years. Or, as Waiting for “Superman” director David Guggenheim illustrated, in Illinois, only one in every 2,500 teachers lose their credentials, while the disbarment rate for Illinois lawyers is roughly one out of 100. Florida has difficulties firing bad teachers, too. Missouri, at least, appears to have a slightly higher rate — about 2 percent.

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One comment blames this state of affairs on charter schools:

There’s seems to be this disturbing trend today, seen specifically in the development of the charter school program, of pushing the education system to higher standards in the name of achievement.

Are charter schools really the culprits? I don’t think so. The article describes public kindergartens run by traditional districts, and at least some of the impetus for drilling kindergartners comes from Utah’s education department:

“Doubling time in kindergarten should mean twice the time for instruction,” said Reed Spencer, a curriculum coordinator at the state office of education who is designing a uniform testing tool for Utah’s full-day kindergarten programs.

I’m guessing whoever wrote the comment would say that the traditional districts are responding to competition from charters. There’s pressure for traditional districts to win back students from charters, and the way they attract them is by ruthlessly pursuing higher test scores.

If districts are pressured to improve, that’s a good thing. However, improvement doesn’t have to mean forsaking common sense. As an illustration, look at some of the new charter elementary schools in St. Louis. There’s a Montessori school, a Spanish immersion school, and a French immersion school. None of those charters takes a drill-and-kill approach. A district that wants to compete with them would do well to avoid standardized tests for five-year-olds and instead replicate what the charters are creating.

As for charters like KIPP, that are known to focus on academic skills, they find ways to do that through age-appropriate activities. Here is a sample schedule from a KIPP elementary school in Houston. There are long hours, lots of time on reading, math, Spanish — what you would expect from a KIPP school. But interspersed throughout the day are blocks of time dedicated to “circle time,” “creative play,” “”storytelling,” and “project-based learning.” (And see this article about the creative ways KIPP is teaching reading to older children in St. Louis.)

It’s not all about textbooks and the blackboard. In fact, any charter that did torture kindergartners with uninterrupted test-prep would have trouble attracting students and would be very easy for any district to compete with. There would be no need to change the kindergarten curriculum in order to compete with such a poorly designed charter.

The post Do Charter Schools Take the Joy Out of Learning? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Here are a few of the criticisms of charters that come up time and again, each followed by my answers:

Charter school students’ gains are a result of their intrinsic motivation, not superior schools.

I don’t want to dismiss hard work on the part of students; obviously, learning can’t be forced on anyone and the children should rightly take credit for their own accomplishments. However, we observe that some schools allow children to succeed through hard work and others do not.

This is from an article about KIPP:

Typically students are two or three grade levels behind when they enroll at KIPP as fifth graders. A KIPP study shows that the average fifth-grade student beginning in KIPP scores in the 40th percentile in math and the 32nd percentile in reading based on norm-referenced exams, which compare a student’s performance to their peers nationally. After four years in KIPP, the youngsters tend to score in the 82nd percentile in math and 60th percentile in reading.

If KIPP’s success could be attributed solely to motivation, why were those extremely motivated students so far behind to begin with? The motivation was probably there in fourth grade as well as in fifth grade, right? So the traditional public schools could have taken that motivation and run with it, before these students ever set foot in KIPP. And not every city has KIPP schools, so we should see large groups of traditional district students making sudden, large gains during middle school in the cities where KIPP can’t siphon off the motivated children. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen.

You don’t have to take my word for it — researchers like Roland Fryer and Caroline Hoxby take the motivation problem into account. When they look at student achievement, they compare students who attend charters with other students who entered charter lotteries, but who randomly were assigned to traditional public schools. Their studies find that students who attend charters do better than students who were equally motivated to apply to charters. The only difference between the two groups is that some had the luck of the draw.

It is possible that attending a school your family chose increases your motivation over time. Maybe at the beginning of the study, the charter school kids are no more motivated than their counterparts who lost the lottery. But after a few years in a charter school, they feel a sense of ownership about their schools. They could always choose to go back to their assigned district, so there’s no attitude of “I have to be here, but I don’t have to like it.” Instead, students may think, “My family made this choice, and now it’s up to me to follow through and do my part.” If it turned out that charter school students actually have extra motivation stemming from this reason, that’s an argument in favor of more charters and choice.

Charter schools can be super-selective and set strict rules, while traditional public schools have a disadvantage in that they must accept all comers.

Charter schools are public schools, and they don’t do anything that public schools can’t do. Remember the Clyde C. Miller Career Academy? I wrote a post about how wonderful this “charter” school is, only to find out it’s a district school. If the Career Academy can make students write essays and do interviews before they’re admitted, other district schools could do that too.

Traditional districts like SLPS have the talented people they need to succeed, but political forces just don’t allow them to realize their potential.

I agree completely. As competition with the charters heats up, we’re going to see more district schools like the Career Academy that are just as good as charters. SLPS has the necessary raw materials; choice is the catalyst. The district should view charter schools as its partners in battling political inertia — they’re not enemies.

The post Answers to Charter School Criticism appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I think he’ll learn that the only way to compete with KIPP is to beat it at its own game. Parents are impressed by KIPP education, not by promotional materials. The pictures in the article show the KIPP principal advertising the school by just walking around with a signup sheet and talking to people — hardly cutting-edge marketing. (I know, KIPP puts out advertisements, too, but its work canvassing neighborhoods is what really gets parents involved.)

The fact that advertisements alone won’t work doesn’t mean the district’s hands are tied. There’s nothing to prevent SLPS from starting its own KIPP-style school, accepting fourth graders. It could offer long hours, accelerated academics, and Spanish classes— like this KIPP elementary school in Houston. If families like it, they can stay on for fifth grade — no need to switch to the “real” KIPP middle school.

SLPS actually has an advantage over brand-name charters — it accepts students at all grade levels. The charter school startups are limiting enrollment to a few grades: KIPP is only taking fifth graders, and the language immersion schools are accepting kindergartners and first graders. SLPS just has to open comparably themed choice schools for a wider range of student ages, and the charters will be left scrambling to catch up.

I know SLPS can do it — I was so impressed by its Career Academy that I unquestioningly believed a report that it was a charter. District schools that look and act like charters won’t have trouble competing, because no one will be able to tell the difference.

The post How to Compete With Charters appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I highly recommend reading this chapter. You’ll be inspired by Marita’s determination and by the many examples of how KIPP has changed people’s lives for the better.

Here are some thoughts on “Marita’s Bargain”:

1. I was annoyed that Gladwell doesn’t identify KIPP as a charter school, instead calling it an “experimental public school.” KIPP is indeed innovative, but not because it’s been given some license to experiment that other public schools are denied. KIPP’s policies and curricular choices would be legal for other schools to adopt; it’s just that traditional public schools usually don’t go out of their way to find best practices. I would expect a book like Outliers, which is premised on systematic generalization, to point out the different incentives that charters and traditional schools face, as well as the divergent outcomes for students that result.
2. Gladwell seems to imply that KIPP’s success stems entirely from the extra time its students spend on schoolwork. The omission is understandable, because there isn’t space in a short chapter to analyze all the causes of school achievement, but readers should keep in mind that dedicated principals, well-qualified teachers, and sound instructional methods enter the mix. Which adds to my frustration with Gladwell — why doesn’t he ask what brought these factors to the “experimental” school? Was it a stroke of luck?
3. I love the quotes from Marita, especially her comments on how hard she’s working at KIPP, and how her friends and family respond to her efforts. This middle-school student is making great sacrifices to get the best education she can, and I’m sure she’ll go far. Maybe she’ll appear in another Gladwell book some day, for her own scholarship or research.

The post More Thoughts on Outliers appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In 1994, Dave Levin and I started KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) with 50 students in Houston after completing our two-year commitment to Teach for America. Our first year in Houston, two-thirds of students came to KIPP with a "bilingual" label. By the end of the first year, two-thirds were "gifted and talented."

Feinberg explains that KIPP schools, rather than skimming the cream from diverse traditional public schools, cater specifically to students who have fallen behind:

We are not achieving results by "cherry-picking" students. All schools are open-enrollment public schools. There is no admissions test. The average student enters KIPP two years below grade level in fifth grade, and leaves KIPP in eighth grade achieving at a ninth-grade level. Over 80% of KIPP students nationwide are low income, and 95% are African-American or Hispanic/Latino.

Feinberg also writes about KIPP’s projected expansion in Houston, where it hopes to capture 10% of the public school market and thereby pressure the traditional public schools to shape up.

I doubt KIPP will cause any improvement in the stagnant St. Louis public schools, which have proved themselves resistant to change from all quarters. But KIPP will provide some students who are currently trapped in SLPS with an attractive alternative. And it may pave the way for other charters and more choices for students.

By the way, I should mention that Kansas City already has a KIPP charter school, the KIPP Endeavor Academy. Here you can learn more about the school and see cute pictures of students and teachers working hard.

The post More About KIPP Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The announcement today from the San Francisco-based Knowledge is Power Program makes Washington University the sponsor a cluster of five tuition-free, hard-work public schools, aimed at serving roughly 1,500 St. Louis students over the next 10 years. The first, a middle school, would open in the fall of 2009.

This is great news for children in the city, although they’ll have to wait until 2009 to attend. Here’s a map of KIPP schools already operating. These schools share a rigorous academic program and have been very successful. Now some students in St. Louis will have the opportunity to benefit from KIPP.

The post KIPP Schools Are on the Way appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The article mentions KIPP’s great track record in improving test scores, and brings up the usual objections: KIPP schools take the cream of the crop; not everyone is able to spend 10 hours a day in school; it won’t work everywhere.

I hope those arguments won’t stop the mayor from bringing in KIPP. After all, KIPP schools are free public charter schools that specifically target poor urban areas. They can’t be accused of admitting only wealthy, ready-for-school students. And if they accept a lot of motivated students who want to work hard, is that really a problem? Kids go to school to learn, not to be a good influence on everyone else. When you look at the before-and-after test scores of KIPP students, it doesn’t make sense that these kids would have done well anyway, because they weren’t doing well in their traditional public schools before they came to KIPP. So much for the "cream of the crop."

The KIPP school day is longer than many kids can tolerate, but we have other charter schools with shorter school days. I hope Mayor Slay’s plan goes through — then we’ll have even more charter schools to choose from. That’s not a reason to keep out KIPP.

"Policy leaders have said the schools are great but can’t be widely replicated," according to the article. But the vast majority of KIPP schools have done very well, as the article reports. We can’t predict for certain whether the model will work in St. Louis. But you never know until you try.

The post St. Louis May Get KIPP Schools! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.