AS DEMOCRATS NATIONALLY unite behind our nominee in Philadelphia next week, Massachusetts Democrats have the opportunity to unite behind a ballot initiative that would provide more high quality schools, especially for children in communities plagued by low academic performance.
My story demonstrates the challenges of bringing together the disparate parts of the Democratic Party.
In 2006, as a junior in college, I founded Students for Barack Obama to draft then-Sen. Obama into the 2008 presidential election. I went on to serve as national co-chair of Obama for America. In January 2016, again captivated by a candidate, I joined the Bernie Sanders campaign.
My work with the Obama and Sanders campaigns evinces my strong alignment with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Given my lifelong commitment to children in need, I considered entering the Obama administration in hopes of influencing urban education policy. A white girl from small town Maine, my education consisted of rural public elementary school, homeschooling, a private day school, and Bowdoin College. I knew nothing about the educational experiences of children growing up in poverty; a ruthless empiricist, I set out to learn.
My explorations first took me to an Early Head Start program in Dorchester. Anyone meeting the bright and curious children there without context would forecast futures of great potential. Despite their daunting struggles, nearly all caregivers expressed a common yearning for their children: a better life.
As director of StandUp for Kids – Boston, I worked with homeless young adults who were once just like the toddlers of Early Head Start. After nine to 13 years in the Boston public schools, these young people had abandoned their “what I want to do when I grow up” ambitions and succumbed to panhandling.
I had read of “90-90-90” schools — in which 90 percent of children are low-income, 90 percent are black or Hispanic, and 90 percent achieve grade-level academic standards. Many such schools were charter schools. Eager to learn more, I joined the founding leadership team of Alma del Mar Charter School in New Bedford. We spent the same dollars per child as district schools but engaged in practices not typically found in district schools, including a school day from 7:30 am to 5:00 pm for most students, home visits, mandatory uniforms, picking kids up if they missed a bus, and hiring and firing based on teacher performance.
Alma del Mar is now a high-performing school offering impoverished children from a high-needs community an education comparable to that of their peers in affluent neighborhoods. Nearly 500 children are on the waiting list.
While I am proud of my work in public education, I came to eschew questions about my non-campaign professional life from those within the Sanders campaign because of the disapproving reactions I often received. Even among the most informed progressives, myths surrounding charter schools abound: for-profit corporations run charters to make money off poor kids (in Massachusetts and most states, charter schools are public schools; for-profit charters are illegal); charter schools take money from public schools (the money follows the child; charter schools receive the same per pupil funding as any other public school); charter schools get results by cherry-picking kids (most charter schools select students through blind, public lotteries).
Charter schools are neither inherently good nor evil. Some are highly effective. Some flop. Charters operate within a framework of increased autonomy and accountability, at least in states like Massachusetts with strong authorizers. Where district schools may fail generations with no consequences, charters are rapidly shut down if unsuccessful.
For me, being a progressive Democrat and a charter school supporter are not antithetical. In fact, the values that inspired me to support Obama, Sanders, and now Hillary Clinton also drive my support for charters. Every child, regardless of her zip code, deserves to read on grade level by third grade, earn a high school diploma, enroll in college, and ultimately live a life better than that of her parents. Regardless of whether they exist within district schools, charter schools, or schools of some yet-to-be discovered type, we need more classrooms in which students succeed.
My friends and I chuckle now when we recall 2006, when they questioned why I was wasting my time on behalf of a little-known, first-term African-American senator. Like me, President Obama is a champion of high performing charter schools. Now is the time for Democrats to build upon the progress we have achieved during the Obama administration and support more charter schools in Massachusetts in the name of our common Democratic ideals.
Meredith Segal is an MPA candidate at Harvard’s Kennedy School and a member of the advisory council of Democrats for Education Reform – Massachusetts.
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I don’t understand how the author can call Alma del Mar Charter School in New Bedford a “high-performing” school. According to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education there’s “insufficient data” to assign an accountability level to the charter school.
The Alma del Mar Charter School in New Bedford wait list has 484 names of which 153 or 32% are for kindergarten. What’s interesting is while there’s such a substantial number of names waiting for kindergarten seats the actual number of students in kindergarten has decreased: 40 in 2012; 39 in 2013; 39 in 2014; 39 in 2015 and 38 in 2016. What’s the point of a long wait list for kindergarten if those empty seats aren’t filled?
Let’s look at one of the myths surrounding charter schools: “for-profit corporations run charters to make money off poor kids.” What’s the real story? There is in fact at least one “for-profit” charter school management company running charter schools in Massachusetts.
You wrote this lickety split to support Hillary, who was rightly booed at the AFT meeting for supporting privatized education. Don’t hide behind Bernie and Obama. “Democrats” for Ed Reform is a font group for corporate privatizers.
Another of the author’s so-called myths is “charter schools take money from public schools (the money follows the child; charter schools receive the same per pupil funding as any other public school).” Again, what’s the real story? The money that follows the child is based on the sending schools student body but what happens with charter schools is they get the money to educate English language learners and other high needs students but have a much smaller percentage of those students.
The author’s final charter schools myth: “charter schools get results by cherry-picking kids (most charter schools select students through blind, public lotteries).” The former head of Sturgis Charter Public School acknowledged the lottery is cherry picking students. And for the record, at Sturgis 40% of the incoming students are siblings of current students so the lottery is only blind for 60% of incoming students. .
New Bedford:
First Language Not English: 31.8%
ELL: 22.5%
Students with Disabilities: 21.1%
High needs students: 73.1%
Economically disadvantaged: 55.7%
Alma del Mar:
First Language Not English: 17.6%
ELL: 9.2%
Students With Disabilities: 14.4%
High needs students: 69.0%
Economically Disadvantaged: 54.9%
Are you unaware of these numbers? Or, if you are aware of them, how do you justify them to yourself? Is it the job of public education to exclude students whose first language is not English? What about students with disabilities? I don’t care about your test scores. You are unwilling or unable to educate a student body that mirrors the community in which you are located.
Hillary Clinton was booed at The National Education Association Convention (NEA) not to be confused with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). We’re AFL/CIO Proud!
Fortunately, Ms. Clinton must be a quick study since misspeaking and, at this weeks American Federation of Teachers 100th Aniversity Convention, she embraced and supports traditional public schools! Don’t be hoodwinked! Hillary Clinton will be KEEPING THE CAP!
https://dianeravitch.net/2016/07/05/hillary-clinton-booed-at-nea-convention-for-positive-reference-to-charter-schools/
“Non-profit” should be confused with charity! It is no “myth” that MassDevelopment has provided nearly $22 million in financing – a $12 million New Markets Tax Credit allocation and a $9.76 million tax-exempt bond – for Alma QALICB and the Alma del Mar Foundation, related entities to the Alma del Mar Charter School in New Bedford.
Urban charter schools are a vehicle for hedge and venture fund investors to receive federal New Market Tax Credits, Historic Tax Credits, QZAB’s and an array of money making financial strategies that recycle money back into their foundations and it takes that money out of the tax base that support Massachusetts public schools! New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) provides investors with a 39% ROI after only 7 years! WOW! Meredith Segal said charter schools don’t make people money! Don’t be hoodwinked!
Those Federal New Market Tax Credits could have been used to uplift New Bedford out of poverty if used for housing, community and business development, but charters are an easier “investment vehicle” to sell! Charter schools are not about “parent choice” or “the poor children” in Massachusetts urban communities, charters are about rich people making money off of them!
KEEP THE CAP!
http://www.massdevelopment.com/news/22-million-massdevelopment-financing-package-helps-new-bedfords-alma-del-ma/
MassDevelopment has a crazy approach to stimulate economic growth in this state. Basically the 280 students at Alma del Mar were already attending or could have been attending the New Bedford School District with existing buildings and teachers on staff. All MassDevelopment is doing is financing the creation of a duplicate or parallel infrastructure for $22 million…working out to $78,571 per existing student or $61,111 per authorized student. Does anyone else see the flaw in this development strategy? MassDevelopment is subsidizing the dismantling of public schools and calling it good for the economy. Where’s the logic in that?
I stand corrected. It was the NEA convention that booed her. AFT and Randi Weingarten have been in HRC’s pocket for years. Sometimes it almost looks like a cult, though I doubt many rank and file AFTers are on the same page as Randi re HRC.. Let me also just say I’m not impressed with the “revised” AFT language in the Democratic platform, which amount to the same mealy-mouthed position Obama and Clinton have been taking. (See here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/07/12/democrats-make-key-education-revisions-to-2016-platform-and-a-key-reformer-is-furious/). I doubt NEA or rank and file AFT teachers are either. As for AFL-CIO, enjoy your pride. A lot of the rest of us are less impressed by its vigor and commitment. So your faith that Hillary Clinton will keep the cap where it really
counts–on federal funding for charters–is itself an invitation to be
hoodwinked. If she wins we’ll probably get an Arne Duncan clone.
In any event, best of luck to all the good folks in MA fighting to maintain the cap.
We might think hard about this whole “election” thing, state and federal. What do we have going for ourselves other than liberal run “education” systems and liberal run “everything else”. What have we lost? Are things really that great here? Is it a case of “anything that’s going wrong is because of Republicans/conservatives”? If that’s the case, we need more liberals in power positions to make everything wonderful for everyone. Yay. (Meredith Segal… good grief: “Democrats for the Programming, Indoctrination and Mind Control of Children”.)
The “insufficient data” is simply a result of the number of year of operation. The best way to assess performance at this point is to compare the grade-by-grade levels of proficiency on MCAS and PARCC to those of the schools in New Bedford, the sending district.
The school’s charter (through DESE) has an approved number of students for each year for the total school, not grade-by-grade, so a slightly larger cohort in an older grade requires the school to accept fewer kindergartners.
Since you didn’t include Alma del Mar Charter School’s test results in your response, I looked them up and found out how “high performing” the charter school really is. The PARCC Math scores show 44% of your students met expectations and in English 46% did. That means 56% of your students did not meet expectations in Math and 54% did not meet expectations in English. And, according to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s website, Alma del Mar Charter School’s 2015 MCAS Science results shows only 28% of students are proficient in that subject. In other words, the percentage of Alma del Mar Charter School’s students with a Warning/Failing or Needs Improvement is far higher than those who are proficient. In fact, the percentage of students categorized as Warning/Failing at Alma del Mar Charter School’s almost equals the percentage of students Proficient. It appears Alma del Mar Charter School’s academic performance doesn’t match your characterization.