My friend Deborah Meier tells me she loves this school in Long Beach, California. It is a charter school that fulfills the original vision of what charters were supposed to be: innovative, risk-taking, open to all kinds of kids. That’s what this school is and does, but its test scores are low. The Long Beach school board wants to close it; they should not.
To the members of the Long Beach school board: Save the Néw City School. Let innovation thrive. Let this functioning community live.
This is the letter that Deb Meier forwarded to me:
Dear Dr. Ravitch:
Several hundred low-income kids in Long Beach, CA need your immediate help. Their teachers and parents are desperate.
I have been following your work over many years, in particular the series of letters between you and Debbie Meier – she is a friend of mine whom I met through the North Dakota Study Group. It is for this reason that I dare to write a request, will the full knowledge that I might come off as a bit crazy.
15 years ago, I co-founded the New City School in the center of our city. Long before most had heard of charter schools, we rescued an abandoned hospital building [and later a warehouse] and turned them into learning oases in a blighted community that had long been without a small, loving neighborhood school. Consistent with the original intent of charter school legislation, our school would innovate in a district that has a single-minded focus on Broad-funded test-prep. Our school is fully bilingual – Spanish speakers learn English AND English speaking students of many backgrounds learn to read and write in Spanish too. We feature lots of art, great literature with read-alouds every day in every grade, 2 huge libraries, and music instruction for all students, grades TK-8. Members of our community built the area’s biggest playground AND a 1/3-acre working organic farm, growing fresh fruits and vegetables with our students and their families.
Scholars, including Deborah Meier, Stephen Krashen, and Constance Kamii have visited and worked with our teachers to help them be the best they can be. Students share their accomplishments via quarterly public exhibitions in two languages. We are a neighborhood school that does not prequalify students for enrollment. Parents love the school and would do anything to help it survive.
The problem is that The Long Beach Unified School District cannot stand us because we don’t get high test scores and we won’t stop our teaching and learning practices in order to simply prepare students for exams day in and day out. For years, the LBUSD has threatened our school with closure for refusing to comply with their dystopian view of education as standardized test preparation. Two years ago they nearly closed us down, but we closed our high school and combined our 2 small elementary campuses into one, and kept moving forward. In addition to ideological blindness, LBUSD seems hell-bent on reclaiming the meager per pupil allocation our school manages to live on. We have no corporate sponsors or celebrities hosting galas on our behalf, just working-class parents and highly professional constructivist teachers sacrificing to save a school they love.
As you might imagine, the constant threat of closure distracts us from our mission of educating young people.
This Tuesday, November 18th, the LBUSD is holding ANOTHER hearing to discuss whether or not to renew our charter or close our school. When this happened a few years ago, the school district police ended up dragging parents out of the meeting and turned off their cameras! One parent was hospitalized in the melee.
You have an enormous platform to generate assistance for us. Would you please consider writing a letter of support? I would appreciate it so immensely if you could ask your colleagues and readers to do one of the following:
Send a message of solidarity and support for The New City School – a small community-centered, authentic public school – to the Long Beach Unified School District Board [Diana Craighead, President] and Superintendent Christopher Steinhauser. Long Beach Unified School District Board of Education – 1515 Hughes Way, Long Beach, CA 90810…send letters to info@newcityps.org
Visit the New City Public Schools (Long Beach) Facebook page or the New City Farm Facebook page and leave an encouraging message there – we will collect and send them as well – say why it matters to stand up to relentless testing and “accountability” that discounts parents’ involvement in teaching and learning, as well as their children’s development and interest!
For any support or encouragement you could offer to us, I will be forever in your debt.
Sincerely,
Stephanie nicole Lee
Public school educator since 1990
Diane Ravitch's blog 
was this school discussed in the recent election between torlackson and tuck?
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“When this happened a few years ago, the school district police ended up dragging parents out of the meeting and turned off their cameras! One parent was hospitalized in the melee.”
This is the America that the oligarchs and their corporate driven fake, fraudulent, public education reform movement is forcing on the United States.
When the oligarch’s armed troops act with force on teachers parents and children, force might have to be the response.
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Am I reading this wrong? I read that this is a PUBLIC charter school. This is the establishment doing this to these parents. This is WHY these parents will turn to corporate people for help!
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I think they call themselves a public charter until they get the public’s money and then they convert to a private sector Charter.
The front door where the money comes in from taxes is a public Charter and the back door where the money leaves into someone’s bank account is the corporate Charter that the courts keep saying don’t have to reveal where the money goes.
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This will be an interesting discussion. This school seemingly does many of the things routinely condemned here. One of the most obvious is that it is defying the elected school board, leaving the parents who attend the school with no voice in how the school is run.
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That depends if the board has been influenced by corporate money. Long Beach is less than an arm’s length from LA which is the epicenter of the Broad Virus.
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Broad has given countless awards to Long Beach Unified and its homegrown (cradle to Supt), superintendent.
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Mike,
It seems to me that if you want elected school boards to make policy for all public schools, you have to live with the decisions they make until you can defeat them at the next election.
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TE – Classic obfuscation from you which sounds like it came from Eli’s playbook. You took a fundamental example of democracy (elected school boards) to deflect attention away from a disturbing issue (private money influencing public elections).
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Mike,
This is a post about a charter school using it’s independence to defy the elected school board. Charter schools are ROUTINELY criticized here because they are not under the control of an elected school board.
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No, TE, charter schools are criticized for cherry picking their students and then boasting about their test scores, or about outrageous salaries for their executives.
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Dr. Ravitch,
The next time that the lack of democratic control over charter schools comes up I will be sure to cite this post as evidence that you don’t think it is a great concern.
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TE –
“…you have to live with the decisions they make until you can defeat them at the next election…”
That idyllic image of democracy is dying because the 0.01% use their money to influence elections. Are you aware of the war chest amassed by reformers’ school board candidates in the last two school board elections in LA?
I don’t live in CA, but I assume (based on Dr. Stager’s comments) Eli Broad controls the LBUSD board. I worked in a Broad-led district. Broad districts use their search firm for hiring a superintendent and pay for school board retreats to influence their policy (i.e. closing schools based on test scores) among other tactics.
Yes, I understand this charter is trying defy the elected school board, but many urban school boards aren’t elected free from corporate influence. THAT is the point I’m trying to make. Voting them out sounds simple but its hard to compete against kind of cash flowing in from around the country.
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How do we tell which school boards have been overly influenced by special interest money and which have not?
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I do not know how many board members are bought and paid for with corporate money, but I do know that LBUSD is part of the CORE (districts that have special waivers from NCLB and must implement Duncan’s virus-like reforms if the waiver is extended). I wonder how much of the waiver affects–if any–the district’s desire to close the school.
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A few details about our school:
• Our students are accepted in a “lottery” which is an annual public random drawing. We offer regular and special education in compliance with IDEA and we collaborate with the district under a contract for special education services.
• Our teachers are public employees and are fully credentialed, as required by CA law, in addition to being bilingual! We administer all required state tests and we follow the Common Core, as adopted by CA [CA added extra standards in addition to the national version]. Our credentialed teachers pay into the public teachers retirement system, and our staff participate in the public employee system. We are one of the few charter schools in this area in which all full-time employees and their families [spouses and children] are fully covered by our health insurance plan + life insurance.
• We are organized as a public benefit non-profit 501(c)3; our board follows the Brown Act and our meetings are always open, with agendas and minutes, public speaking time, and teacher participation. • Our 990s are published online publicly each year. [I know that many of these aspects of our organization are not required or are not practiced in some places, thus I share the rules under which we operate in good faith.]
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TE, re: which boards are corrupted by corp influence– a number of board races around the country have made the news when ‘outside $’ swamps a populist candidate with enormous support for a pro-corp $ candidate. That’s a good indicator.
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S&F,
There are other ways in which school boards might be thought to be illegitimate. The East Ramapo School Board comes to mind.
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TE– re: East Ramapo– you are right as rain on this one. Illegitimate board for sure: local demographics favor the religious private schools; minority is all black & Latino– so locals are able to elect religious-private-school advocates who then set about impoverishing the local public school budget so as to enhance their own ability to pay for their private religious schools. Echoes Southern Baptist locales, & no doubt a case for fed civil rights intervention. Perhaps what this shows us is that democracy in public-school governance clashes with local factional demographics– that the path ahead suggests a more socialistic path be taken, i.e., equal ed funds for all?
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That’s exactly the reason why charters are getting criticized: business executives throwing money to bribe school board seats, stealing good students and dumping struggling ones, and fattening themselves while hiring unqualified teachers with a skimpy salary. Typical industrialist mindset screwing the community.
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We opened a small school in a neighborhood where hundreds of kids were getting bused out daily to schools in a part of town their parents couldn’t access, due to over-crowding. We live in this town and we send our own kids to school – NCS founders were all teachers and parents from Long Beach – no corporations, no outside corporate money funds us – we get a per pupil share for ADA, and due to the CA formula, it is lower per pupil than the local districts receive. I say this not to contradict what you have experienced, only to share that in this case, our small charter is not at all about corporate $, stealing or dumping students, and especially not unqualified teachers! Our teachers are highly skilled, passionate, and work tirelessly to implement curriculum they help to design and analyze. Next week we will hold our trimester-end student-led conferences; typically 90% or more of our parents participate!
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I agree, teachingeconomist. And Lloyd (above) who is “they?” The district doesn’t want to lose the ADA from their district charter school, but because they made it a charter school under their auspices, they want to see instant improved score results, regardless of the number of second language or special ed kids. Sounds just like the accusations against those “other” charter schools, which are probably sometimes true as well.
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I have been a supporter and volunteer with The New City School for years. I am not typically a supporter of charter schools, but this school has filled a need in the community, does a terrific job of providing a comprehensive education for neighborhood children, and has been distracted by constant threats by the test-prep crazed LBUSD. The Board seems immune to public sentiment and holds its public meetings at 5 PM in a location inaccessible by public transportation. Board member contact info is unpublsihed.
The New City School values the arts, literature, and has brought hope to a community that had given up any dream of the soft of education enjoyed by suburban children.
PLEASE send email messages of support to the Board Secretary at LRodriguez@lbschools.net
and the Superintendent of Schools, Christopher Steinhauser’s Secretary at lbetschel@lbschools.net
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• In an era in which large school districts were implementing scripted language arts curricula out of textbooks with strict pacing plans and multiple choice tests, we committed to teach with trade books, big books, poetry, and a rich reading environment. We write story problems for kids to solve and then discuss strategies. We teach hands-on science + include social sciences, all from TK-8th grade. We go camping in the mountains every spring – and we have old-fashioned bake sales and carnivals where everything costs $1.
• When area districts were cutting arts, raising class size, and taking few or no field trips, we offered something parents were asking for…we have chorus and music for all students, regular trips into the community, and we try to keep classes smaller, especially in the primary grades. Per pupil funding in CA is slightly less than in the traditional public schools, but we prioritize teachers and TAs, and have few administrators.
• Many districts cut or ended library funding on elementary campuses – we have 2 libraries on our campus that are full of beautiful books [mostly donated and collected by families and teachers] – our kids LOVE to read!
• We are open from 7am before school and until 6:30pm after school – more than 80% of our students qualify for free meals, and we provide healthy breakfast, lunch, and hot supper too! Our after school program offers physical education, science experiments, violin, and even a marathon team – the only middle school SRLA [Students Run Los Angeles] team in a Long Beach middle school for 6 year running, pun intentional 🙂
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I think it might be difficult to find supporters of the school among the orthodox posters here. I would expect most would agree that the board should take back the money spent on this charter school and spend it on “real public schools”.
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You would NOT believe the meager budget this school has operated under. You could not send a kid to summer camp for what the per pupil spending is at this lovely school.
I’m against charter schools, but have long volunteered at New City because they love children and do the right thing by them.
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Why do you feel the need to prejudge everyone else’s opinions about this school, TE? My guess is that most posters probably do not know enough to say either way.
I actually live fairly close to this school and I don’t know enough to take a position on it.
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TE speaks for those of us who lack a voice and can not speak for ourselves.
He is kind of like Anne Sullivan was to Hellen Keller before she learned to speak.
Or like Stephan Hawking’s voice synthesizer.
Hope that helps.
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TheMorrigan,
I am not prejudicing anyone against this school, just pointing out that most who post here argue passionately against schools like this.
You might be interested in how students are admitted to the school. First, of course, they need to be interviewed. If they are found satisfactory and there are more applicants than available seats, there is a lottery to determine admission. Have you found orthodox posters here to be supportive of this kind of admission criteria? I have not.
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No one, TE, absolutely no one, argues against schools “like this”. Most of us would like *all* schools to be like this.
What we argue against is charterization. The problem isn’t teacher led, child-centered schools, the problem is taking resources and creaming the “best” (easiest, most functional) students/families from the public schools, thereby increasing the chances that the public schools will be “failing”.
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BTW, I’ll say it again, TE, if this is the kin of charter school you value, you should be the first and the loudest protesting the giant chain charters which will sooner or later eat charters like this for lunch.
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Dienne,
No orthodox poster here leaves room in their arguments against charter schools for this school. Does this school divert resources from traditional schools to itself? Yes. Does this school require all aplicants to be interviewed as part of the application process? Yes. Does this school opporates under a different set of rules than traditional schools? Yes. Does this school operate without any democratic control? Yes. Does this school put public money into private hands? Yes.
I do agree that it will be interesting going forward to see how you and others will give arguments against charter schools that leave this one untouched. You can be sure that I will be around to help.
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Dienne,
I have suggested in the past that if people don’t like schools to have more than one location, it would be a easy to write the appropriate regulation. No one, including you, took up the idea.
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Well, well, well, an economist complaining about “orthodox posters” on this site: that’s rich.
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Michael,
I am not complaining about orthodox posters, just characterizing what it means to be an orthodox poster here.
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Would those be Eastern or Western “orthodox posters”?
How can you tell?
From domes in their avatars?
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SomeDAM,
I think it is fairly clear, or was right up until this post. The Orthodox position on charter schools is that there should be no charter schools.
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To be perfectly clear – there is absolutely NO kindergarten interview – entry is lottery based and it is an annual Public Random Drawing. I am not sure how that statement was made about pre-requisites or anything else related to pre-qualifying. All children are welcomed [regular ed and special ed], and there are NO criteria except that they must live in California, per CA charter law. The vast majority of our students live within walking distance of the school, but some choose to come from other neighborhoods as well – our city has “school choice.” In order to transfer in to our dual language Spanish-English program after grade 2, we “interview” students to make sure they & their parents know that 1/2 of their classes are in each language, since it can be frustrating to older monolingual children – we hold NO enrollment or entrance interviews for the TK-K-1 students. There are no entrance tests or required knowledge of reading/writing/numbers/etc to enroll – that is what kindergarten & 1st grade are spent learning, in addition to all of the art, music, gardening, science, and social studies. NOTE: Some of the local traditional school programs [not charter] in our area DO give entrance tests and interviews prior to enrollment. We do not, and have never done this – it is not legal under CA charter law, nor is it a good practice.
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“I am not sure how that statement was made about pre-requisites or anything else related to pre-qualifying.”
Ms. Lee
Your guess is probably as good as anyone’s.
Perhaps “TE” would be so kind to explain the origin of his above claim:
“You might be interested in how students are admitted to the school. First, of course, they need to be interviewed. If they are found satisfactory and there are more applicants than available seats, there is a lottery to determine admission.’
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Stephanie,
What about entry after kindergarten?
From your web site:
“We are now accepting applications for grades TK-1-2. Admission to grades 3-7 is based on interview process and Spanish language assessment. Enrollment is based on the amount of applications received. If we receive more applications than available seats as of February 28 we will hold a public random drawing on March 7, 2014 at 10:00 a.m.”
http://www.newcityps.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=121513&type=d&pREC_ID=239363
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When the LBUSD last threatened the school two years ago, I sent the following list of questions to the superintendent @SuptSteinhauser and Board members. NONE bothered to answer any of my questions. They remain relevant today.
http://stager.tv/blog/?p=3392
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This is indeed a courageous and lovely little school. Unfortunately the Charter Model is what birthed it and now what consistently threatens its death.
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Agreed! If you are a supporter of charter schools you must recognize how they live or die at the mercy of petty local politics or corporate influence. Sarason made similar arguments decades ago – http://amzn.to/1xyyk7U
That said, I am able to put aside my opposition to charter schools as an hack in order to preserve a school that is genuinely serving kids.
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Yes..there are a few charters out there worthy of our support… most started a while back when we were looking for innovation and hoping that this was a way to it.
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Here’s what’s interesting. Go to this Charter School’s FAQ page and you will find this under “What is a charter school?”
“Charter schools must meet all of the student performance and operational goals listed in their charter, or their charter may be revoked.”
http://www.newcityps.org/about/faq.jsp
If this Charter made claims in “their charter” that they said they would achieve and they didn’t, then they may be closed. Isn’t that happening to thousands of public schools across the country, public schools that never had a say in the goals set by NCLB, RTTT and the CCSS?
And this was a “charter” with goals written by the people that run this school. They were allowed to set their own goals. If that is not how it happened, then correct me.
If they did not achieve the goals they claimed they would achieve—isn’t that why they got the charter from the local democratically elected school board in the first place because they promised they could do what the public schools they were replacing couldn’t do and then they failed—they should stand up and admit that they were wrong and walk away.
In addition, all across the country corporate, private sector Charters are failing to meet their stated goals—the outrageous promises they made to fool the public. In some cases failing Charters have been closed and in other case in other states the failure has been ignored and they are allowed to stay in business and even expand.
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Thank you to everyone who is reading and discussing this – we appreciate the ongoing conversation and we hope to share our learning as we continue forward.
Whether or not you live and work in California, I know that the challenges to authentic, place-based public education we face in Long Beach are common to many parts of the country…and charter law varies widely from place to place.
I have read the comments above, and we have received questions both here and in emails as well…I will answer some and share a few things to know about our unique school and situation:
• We opened in 2000 in the face of 3 “propositions” that had been passed by CA voters in the 1990s – against immigrants in public schools, against affirmative action, and against bilingual education. That was the climate. We became teachers studying Piaget & Kamii & Duckworth, Freire, Krashen & Cummins, and we followed Deb Meier’s work in NYC and Boston. We travelled to visit those schools and others, looking for how parents and teachers worked together to make schools relevant and democratic, in their unique communities.
• We opened a small school in a neighborhood where hundreds of kids were getting bused out daily to schools in a part of town their parents couldn’t access, due to over-crowding. We live in this town and we send our own kids to school – the founders were all teachers and parents from Long Beach – no corporations, no outside money.
• In an era in which large school districts were implementing scripted language arts curricula out of textbooks with strict pacing plans and multiple choice tests, we committed to teach with trade books, big books, poetry, and a rich reading environment. We write story problems for kids to solve and then discuss strategies. We teach hands-on science + include social sciences, all from TK-8th grade. We go camping in the mountains every spring – and we have old-fashioned bake sales and carnivals where everything costs $1.
• When area districts were cutting arts, raising class size, and taking few or no field trips, we offered something parents were asking for…we have chorus and music for all students, regular trips into the community, and we try to keep classes smaller, especially in the primary grades. Per pupil funding in CA is slightly less than in the traditional public schools, but we prioritize teachers and TAs, and have few administrators.
• Many districts cut or ended library funding on elementary campuses – we have 2 libraries on our campus that are full of beautiful books [mostly donated and collected by families and teachers] – our kids LOVE to read!
• Our students are accepted in a “lottery” which is an annual public random drawing. We offer regular and special education in compliance with IDEA and we collaborate with the district under a contract for special education services.
• We are open from 7am before school and until 6:30pm after school – more than 80% of our students qualify for free meals, and we provide healthy breakfast, lunch, and hot supper too! Our after school program offers physical education, science experiments, violin, and even a marathon team – the only middle school SRLA [Students Run Los Angeles] team in a Long Beach middle school for 6 year running, pun intentional 🙂
• Our teachers are public employees and are fully credentialed, as required by CA law, in addition to being bilingual! We administer all required state tests and we follow the Common Core, as adopted by CA [CA added extra standards in addition to the national version]. Our credentialed teachers pay into the public teachers retirement system, and our staff participate in the public employee system. We are one of the few charter schools in this area in which all full-time employees and their families [spouses and children] are fully covered by our health insurance plan + life insurance.
• We are organized as a public benefit non-profit 501(c)3; our board follows the Brown Act and our meetings are always open, with agendas and minutes, public speaking time, and teacher participation. Our 990s are published online publicly each year. [I know that many of these aspects of our organization are not required or are not practiced in some places, thus I share the rules under which we operate in good faith.]
Again, we appreciate this dialogue tremendously – thank you for taking time out of your day to think about our school and our local struggle. ¡Gracias a todos – vamos adelante! [Thanks to all, onward we go!]
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Thanks for the important work that you are doing, Stephanie.
Could you please say a little about the goals established in your contract with the district, which you have met and which if any you have not? What is the contract language, if any about what percentage of the goals you establish that you have to meet?
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[I think my attempt to post was too long, so I am breaking it into bits]
Thank you to everyone who is reading and discussing this – we appreciate the ongoing conversation and we hope to share our learning as we continue forward.
Whether or not you live and work in California, I know that the challenges to authentic, place-based public education we face in Long Beach are common to many parts of the country…and charter law varies widely from place to place.
I have read the comments above, and we have received questions both here and in emails as well…I will answer some and share a few things to know about our unique school and situation:
• We opened in 2000 in the face of 3 “propositions” that had been passed by CA voters in the 1990s – against immigrants in public schools, against affirmative action, and against bilingual education. That was the climate.
• We became teachers studying Piaget & Kamii & Duckworth, Freire, Krashen & Cummins, and we followed Deb Meier’s work in NYC and Boston. We travelled to visit those schools and others, looking for how parents and teachers worked together to make schools relevant and democratic, in their unique communities.
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I hope that this post will help all of us not to stereotype ALL charter schools or ALL public schools. Sometimes the problem isn’t who’s giving the money but plain ignorance on the part of the school boards. I have been present at school boards where the elected officials have proposed that the science textbooks that were approved by parents should be re-looked at to make sure there is nothing in them about evolution. We have people on our school boards who only ran because they want the health benefits and as a stepping stone to something else. They don’t know about second language or special ed issues. If they get a complaint they order the superintendent to fire the principal and then try to construct bad evaluations on them. California’s system is broken. And now that Torlakson has been re-elected he needs to deal with some of these issues.
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As long as they(charters) function as what Albert Shanker suggests, we would have fewer issues than we are having now. The one shown above is a good example of what Shanker envisioned.
It’s really hard to find a good one among charters nationwide since many of those have so many problems in terms of school management and accountability. The most undesirable schools are the ones funded by billionaire philanthropists and hedge-fund managers. Yep, the ones which I call charcoal schools. The ones that have no obligation for accountability; fail to declare taxes; treat teachers and staff with contempt; put students into test drills; dump students with special needs; attempt to make an unnecessary popularity contest with public schools to please politicians.
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Ken,
I have repeatedly suggested that requiring charter schools to be nonprofit organizations. You have repeatedly said that it would make no difference. What set of regulations for charter schools would make you a supporter of charter schools?
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TE:
You’re missing the point. The only condition that charter may work is that they strictly follow the vision Shanker suggests. And it totally depends on who is going to found schools in the first place.
I said “for-profit” or “non-profit” doesn’t make much difference, by ignoring these conditions, because 1) too many charter founders don’t comply with the set of accountability for school management; and 2) pro-private politicians and state-governors give businesses and investors leeway for school opening.
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Ken, what Shanker suggested was already happening all over the country, long before he recommended it. He suggested that groups of teachers be allowed to create new options within school districts. As he correctly noted, educators who tried to do that often “were treated as traitors or outlaws for daring to move outside the lockstep.”
Sometimes local district boards agreed, often they did not. And as Shanker noted, if the teachers were able to get permission to start a new program, they “could look forward to insecurity, obscurity and outright hostility.”
So some of us suggested that a chartering process be created by state legislatures that would allow teachers, parents and community member to propose new k-12 schools to organizations local school boards AND groups such as colleges/universities, or state boards of education, or other groups. That would be the chartering process.
That’s the idea that’s been adopted in a number of states. It’s sometimes been used badly, sometimes very badly. It’s like other freedoms in this country – sometimes used well, sometimes badly. And sometimes in need of refinement.
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Ken,
Can you put Shanker’s vision into a set of regulations to govern charter schools? That would be a good place to start a dialog with people who support some, but not all, existing charter schools.
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TE,
Are you really expecting each state to happen what you describe in your post regardless of what is going on around the nation?
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Ken,
I think you have been victimized by autocorrect. What did you mean to say?
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TE,
Autocorrect? Victimized!? Sorry. I don’t know what you are talking about.
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Ken,
I had trouble understanding this post you made:
TE,
Are you really expecting each state to happen what you describe in your post regardless of what is going on around the nation?
I found “each state to happen what you” to be especially confusing, and suspected the computer took liberty with your typing. Perhaps I was mistaken.
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TE,
You still don’t make sense–especially your weird quoting and last words are quite baffling. It just sounds like the one seen in an apologist/stalking website called “Japologism.” I’m sure there are plenty of those in the US or eslewhere. Oh well, who cares?
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Ken,
Your comment does not make any sense. Is it possible that English is not your native language?
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Ken,
There are already states where for-profit charters are not permitted, such as IL and NY, so the schools are non-profits, which enables them to be tax exempt, but they get around the law by being managed by for-profit companies.
Another law charters are able to circumvent is the cap on charters, through a loop hole which permits increasing the number of charter campuses. That effectively discounts the actual number of charters and encourages the expansion of chains.
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TE,
Told you so. Your habitual behavior of nitpicking and word-twisting at almost anyone in this site shows it doesn’t really matter. It’s getting so tedious that you reach to the level that your language just sounds like insulting and condescending at the same time before you knew it. Like I said, who cares?
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Ken,
I am simply trying to understand what you meant when you asked
TE,
Are you really expecting each state to happen what you describe in your post regardless of what is going on around the nation?
It is fine if you don’t wish to tell me, but it does make it impossible for me to answer your question.
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It’s really funny to suddenly see TE arguing against a charter school because he thinks that in doing so, he is bringing down Diane. He is making himself look like a fool again by narrowly focusing on the matter of elected school boards, in order to sustain his attack on Diane.
Nothing could be further from the truth, considering all the posts from Diane about billionaires trying to buy school board elections, as well as her practice of regularly urging people to support the best interests of children despite political or financial influences, whether from appointed or elected officials.
I don’t happen to agree with Diane about this particular school, but I have not doubt she firmly believes that, as Thomas Jefferson said, “When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.”
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Veteran,
I am not arguing against it. I am simply pointing out that if the folks who post here actually believe the arguments they give against charter schools, they should argue against the continued existence of this charter.
This charter school was founded by a TFA teacher who had five weeks of training. This charter school was a chain charter school. This school is highly segregated. This school requires potential students to apply for a lottery if they are relatively young, and requires an interview for older students to check if their language skills live up to the standards of the school. This school is defying the elected local school board. This school diverts funding from real public schools to itself.
No one has ever objected to schools like this in past posts, have they?
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And many of us do not think this charter school should be supported. That’s not because of who said so, which were clearly your primary aims of focus initially, Diane and an elected school board. We are critical thinkers, looked into it and found mounting evidence indicating that things are hinky with this school –most of which you only just referred to now, except for the entrance requirements that you previously described.
Forget it, TE. Your tearing down of this school in your rage against Diane and the supposed infallibility of democratically elected school boards (which Diane never claimed) is a bell that cannot be unrung.
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Veteran Educator,
The orthodox posters on this blog have given many reasons why charter schools should not exist, almost of which obviously apply to this charter school just like every other charter school. The most startling comment here was, I think, poster Deinne’s statement that “No one, TE, absolutely no one, argues against schools “like this”. Most of us would like *all* schools to be like this.” (https://dianeravitch.net/2014/11/17/long-beach-california-save-this-school/comment-page-1/#comment-2261951)
My reading of posts here is that people give arguments against charter schools that leave no room for schools like this one to exist.
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Not falling for your attempt to divert attention away from your very obvious railing against Diane.
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Veteran,
I am not railing agenst Dr. Ravitch, but pointing out that the orthodox poster here has to grasp a horn. If a poster actually believes that public money should not go to private hands, that all schools should be under democratic control, that all schools should accept any student that lives in a politically defined geographic zone, that poster should reject this school. If the poster wishes to accept this school,as a legitimate school, the poster needs to understand that the orthrdox reasons for rejecting charter schools are not the real reasons to object to charter schools.
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TE, there was a vision of charter schools that is described in my book “Reign of Error,” in which they would take the neediest students, find innovative ways to help them, and share what they learned with public schools. Some advocates said they would be more accountable and cost less because of the absence of bureaucracy. What we have now is a rapacious sector that cherry picks the best students, excludes the neediest students, and boasts about its test scores. This sector is public when it comes to getting money, but defines itself as “private” when it is time to be audited or to submit to a state law it doesn’t like. 90% of charters are non-union, so they have become the darlings of union-busting organizations like the Walton Foundation.
If you had read “Reign of Error,” you would know that there is a chapter in which I propose ways in which charters could play a positive role in American education. A first step would be to ban for-profit charters. There is more. But, you are clearly not informed about my views, so you are wrong to criticize them. I oppose for-profit charters; I oppose charters that cherry pick students; I oppose charters whose executives are paid far more than local superintendents. I oppose boasting and greed. Got it?
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Dr. Ravitch,
The typical criticisms here leave ABSOLUTELY NO ROOM FOR ANY CHARTER SCHOOL.
Let’s do a simple test,
1) should public funds go to private hands?
2) should resources be taken from real public schools and given to charter schools?
3) should schools be allowed to screen students, either by requiring them to apply to be part of a lottery or to interviewer students to judge their academic suitability to attend the school?
Is there any doubt at all about the answers to these questions before the current post?
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TE, do me a favor. Go to the library. Check out “Reign of Error” and read the chapter near the end about how charter schools can play a useful role. Very few are playing that role. Some are outright frauds. I will not discuss this with you any more because you refuse to read what I have written on the subject and you are uninformed.
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Dr. Ravitch,
I have no doubt that you are much more moderate in print than are many of the frequent commentators here on your blog. I look forward to more posts extolling the virtues of the charter schools you like, and more comments arguing against blanket claims about charter schools. I could use the company.
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Try to deflect all you want. Your rage against Diane is self-evident.
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Veteran,
Either posters actually believe in thier stated arguments or they don’t. If they believe in them, they should applaud the efforts to close this charter school. If they do not believe in the arguments that they make, they should make other arguments.
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TE is deaf and blind by choice. Not only does he refuse to hear Diane, but he also won’t hear those of us who have said that we looked into it and see no good reason to support this charter. Great example of how choice is not a miracle!
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Veteran,
My point was that the orthodox poster need not look very hard to reject this charter school. The lack of democratic control, the siphoning of funds from “real” public schools are all apparent in the original post by Dr. Ravitch.
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I am who you regularly stereotype as “orthodox” but, as others here, was willing to consider a constructivist school started by teachers. At first it was funny that you, the charter lover, complained about that. Now you are keeping it up just so you can continue to trash Diane and the rest of us. Drop it, sicko.
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Veteran,
You might want to address my argument rather than evaluating my character.
My view is that the orthodox viewpoint on this blog about charters is that there should not be charters. Certainly most of the arguments presented against charter schools leave little room for any charter school to exist. They all put public money into private hands, they typically exist outside the authority of the local school board (though that is not true for the Walton Community Roots charter school), they all require students to do some kind of application to attend, etc.
If you disagree with my view of of the orthodox viewpoint of posters here, fine. Argue that there are diverse schools of thought about charter schools here and support it with some evidence. No need to resort to calling posters names. It does not help your position.
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TE and Veteran Educator, there are plenty of posters here who don’t support the central ideas of chartering as incorporated in many state laws.
These include that there will be more than one organization in a state that has the authority to review applications and decide which if any will be approved; that the schools approved must be non-sectarian and may not use admissions tests, that the schools will operate under a contract specifying certain goals to be accomplished for the school’s contract to be renewed, that the school must follow federal laws, that the chartered school will receive waivers from state rules, that teachers who work in a charter may form a union, and that the school will be held accountable for not only goals specified in its contract, but also accountable for state designated financial and governance laws.
Some groups that “authorize” charters don’t do a good job in requiring schools to follow these rules. There has been and is an active effort to push authorizers to carry out their responsibilities.
I’ve expressed no opinion about the particular charter being discussed here as I’ve asked for but have not seen information shared about what the goals were in the contract, and how well the school has done in reaching those goals.
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People who choose to be deaf and blind to what others say and persist in monotonously railing against them are in fact very ill. Get professional help. I’m all done with you.
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Joe,
The problems they have are so profound and out of control that even Shanker gave up on his initial idea. Too bad. Many of those charters deserve what they get.
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TE, whether charters are required to be non-profit is unimportant, since the current laws defining non-profit are rigged. Unlimited amounts of corporate donations create an unregulated pile of $ w/which a charter can pay 6-fig salaries to administrators, buy fancy eqpt, & pay a nice chunk of change back to the corp via leaseback arrgts on RE or other shady deals [so they shouldn’t be getting any school tax $]. “Non-profit” charter schools can legally be managed by for-profit corporations. Etc.
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S&F,
For the sake of the discussion, lets assume that you are correct that there is no practical difference between a for profit and a nonprofit charter school. Are there a set of regulations that charter schools could operate under that would satisfy the majority of posters on this blog? I don’t think so. Do you think there are?
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There are differences between non profits and for profits.
It also would be good to know what the school’s response is to my question about what explicit goals were included in its contract with Long Beach Public Schools. In many places, charter public schools and authorizers (such as a local district, a state charter board, a university or another group serving as an authorizer) have developed explicit and measurable goals.Schools are measured against these goals when it comes time to determine whether they remain open or closed.
It would be good to know more about whether there are goals in this case, and if so, what they are and what progress the school has made.
I realize that some posters don’t want to have any charters except those approved by a local board.
But the conversation began with a request to encourage support for the school’s renewal. Before taking such a step, I’d want to know whether there are goals in a contract, and how well the school has done in making progress toward those goals.
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Joe,
One thing I find fascinating about this post is that many of the regular posters here are arguing that in this case it is a good thing that this charter school is not under the control of the local school board. Even Dr. Ravitch does not think that the lack of local control through the school board is an important criticism of charter schools.
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I live in Long Beach and might support this school. First, I would like answers to these questions:
Is this school run by the teachers? Do the teachers select their head teacher, approve the budget, make decisions about curriculum and instruction? Do they select faculty and vote on their retention?
Do teachers have due process? If so, what kind?
Is the money going to student services and normal (i.e. same as other teachers in district) faculty salaries (as opposed to large salaries given to “managers”)?
Is “creaming” taking place?
Are children learning at this school? What authentic forms of evaluation are taking place?
In my opinion, charter schools are here to stay because citizens want them. The only real choice for teachers is this: Will these schools be run by teachers or by entrepreneurs?
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Hello Linda,
I appreciate the questions and will try to answer those I can here. Since you are local, I would really appreciate a chance to meet you – we have 2 tours per month in the day [during classes] as well as a monthly evening tour – please call and let us know if you can join us to see what we are doing. I will introduce you to teachers and students [and/or parents, admin] when you come out, if you are able to do so. Human resource allocation: there are 16 regular classroom teachers, 1.5 full time credentialed music teachers, 1.5 credentialed intervention teachers [one is 1/2 time music and 1/2 time reading intervention] – two teachers have worked here for 1 year, two people have taught at NCS for 13 years, and the rest are somewhere between. We have 16 Teacher Assistants [one per class, 5 hours per day including 40 min of lunch supervision], 1 librarian, 1 counselor, 1 student support coordinator. The non-classroom based employees are 3 office/admin [2 out front and one in the back office for accounting], 1 Ed. Pgm. director [me – I teach only 8th grade advisory now but I taught full time for 8 of the years since we opened], and one Executive Director.
Teachers here make almost all of the decisions about instruction and hiring. They form over 50% of hiring committees, choosing teacher peers, admin, and teacher assistants [from initial screening through interviews, teaching demos]. Teacher satisfaction surveys [anonymous] were used in making major budget revisions for the 2014-15 school year. 2 teachers [selected by peers] and 2 admin form the committee to create the “matrix” for teaching assignments. All teaching and planning is done in teams of 3-4, and each team has 1-2 veteran teachers who mentor the early-career colleagues. Teachers create their curriculum maps annually during our 2-week summer PD.
We hold student-led conferences 3x/year [90%+ parent participation] and 8th grade committee presentations on the same schedule. Student evaluations are done with a combination of our Learning Record [developmental scales for English and Spanish reading and writing, Math, 2nd Language Oral, and Moral Reasoning], scored work samples, and teacher’s anecdotal comments. We use the Developmental Reading and Writing Assessments annually to analyze cohort progress and set internal goals.
Teacher Evaluations are done formally 3x/year in the 1st two years, 2x/year thereafter. Teachers choose their goal or goals and they choose 2 PD days per year [subs covered in addition to their 10 sick days] during which they either attend off-campus PD or stay to work with a peer. If a teacher is not meeting expectations, we [teacher & admin] create an improvement plan, set goals, and outline steps of support [peer, PD, admin, etc].
There is a teacher and TA in every class. All of our class sizes are slightly lower than district. Teachers start at the step/scale where they would be in LBUSD [sponsoring district], but we do not follow the step/scale for following years. Since we are so small, and CA had 5 straight years of cuts until 2012-13, we had modest or no raises in several years – in one year we had furlough days [same # as sponsor district]. The last 2 years have seen small COLA raises for all equally; we hope to improve this in coming years and it is a major priority for the teachers. We do not use any performance bonuses nor do we tie any evaluations to student test score performance [as is practiced in some places]. Our administrators [2 in all, I am one of them] are paid at rates lower than the district positions for the same years of service and credentials. Our teachers [and all full-time employees] have full medical benefits for themselves and families and pay into state retirement systems.
For a simple answer to those who wonder if we might be “creaming” [asked in 2 other posts as well] – I would point to the reason we are threatened with closure – our test scores are lower than the district. If we were pulling off high achievers or getting rid of low achievers, we would not be in the news for the reasons we are. Many parents come here [self reported] specifically because they feel their children would have difficulty in the primary programs that emphasize speed tests and lots of seat time, opting for our open model with more collaboration and movement. For kids who transfer in at the higher grades, parents frequently tell me they are looking for another chance for their child to try again, experiencing failure at an early age for two main reasons 1) behavior or 2) academics. Those kids make up the majority of students who come in after grade 3 – the others are mainly people who are new to the area. We take very few transfers since we fill spaces only as students leave – this year there are 7 new students in grades 3-5 and 5 in grades 6-8 [compared to 70 in grades TK-2].
Thank you for your interest, and patience if you read this far –
Stephanie
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Thanks for responding, Stephanie. I enjoyed reading your entire comment.
I will try to visit your school, especially since I have two grandchildren who I believe would benefit from a dual language program.
From your description it sounds as though teachers are very involved and all money is going to student services as opposed to private pockets. That’s a good thing.
Linda
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As much as I support constructivism, I would not be so quick to defend a Spanish immersion / bilingual charter school that was established by a TFAer with a BA in French literature: http://www.newcityps.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=121492&type=d&pREC_ID=239358
A lot of the negative comments about New City on the Internet are regarding how much more instructional time is spent in Spanish than in English and how native English speaking students have gotten lost due to that. This practice might contribute to the low scores of ELL students as well. (BTW, Internet searches indicate they have had multiple campuses.)
I also have a serious problem with charters which don’t accept all children who want to enter their doors and have differing entrance requirements for students who seek to enroll during the testing years, as well as charters that don’t backfill when students leave and spaces become available. Considering this school seems to pride itself in not being like most other charters, I find it ironic that they play these same games, which are efforts to increase the likelihood of higher test scores.
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CaresAboutKidsandTeachers– I followed your link & also looked further on links to yelp & greatschools, & find positive stuff. If what you’re saying is simply that this school rates low on CA standized tests, I don’t get your point. I think we all understand on this forum that CA stdzd tests, like all top-down stdzd tests promulgated ultimately from US DOE–but most especially CA DOE home of Broad Academy Gates-funded stdzd tests– are geared to close public schools, targeting especially those that serve the poor– –including this sadly-obsolete Shanker-type publicly-funded charter– w/the ultimate goal of shifting public funding onto the private sector.
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Bilingual education is as much a hot button issue as charters are, so I don’t think we should expect to see that matter raised in the same breath with this school, except by those who do not feel well served, which appear to be primarily those that are native speakers of English and who are in the minority at the school.
It’s not just a matter of new tests when, in the past four years, only ONE class scored ONCE above a 50% proficiency level in ELA.
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Well this little school puts the lie to Broadies being all about school choice, doesn’t it. This charter opened because its local district could not provide the sort of education its parents wanted– same motivation as evangelists wanting public $ to teach curriculum matching their bible-thumper curriculum. But the shoe’s on the other foot: in an area where public schools have been warped to follow a Friedmanesque dogma, same physics apply in reverse, parents & educators seek public $ to run a school on an earlier [obliterated] public model. Sounds a lot like the Satanists in Orlando who want equal rights to hand out their pamphlets.
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An unanswered Q in this comment thread is whether New City School is threatened with closing due to not meeting its own charter goals. A 2010 article describing the first such threat clarifies this. http://lbpost.com/news/12817-state-might-revoke-new-city-school-charter The school’s own goals are summarized at its website & read in part in the last para quoted below (the list of achievements ignored by the API).
“The first question that comes to mind is how the CDE can suddenly revoke the charter of a school of which it is not directly involved?…how can the DOE simultaneously override the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD), the entity that originally granted New City its charter in 2000 and renewed it subsequently in 2005 and 2010?
“The answer begins in an agenda item on the Board of Education’s November 2010 meeting, which involved changing the California Code of Regulations to allow the CDE to override school districts’ authority in charter schools. This change in code was enacted in February of this year. Due to New City’s low-end Academic Performance Index (API), a standardized scoring system used to assess school performance, the CDE felt that the school has fallen under ‘substantial and sustained departure from measurably successful practices such that continued departure would jeopardize the educational development of the school’s pupils’.
“…Despite New City’s curriculum strictly following California state standards, despite its record of innovative education — enforcing and encouraging multiple languages, providing students with electives that range from yoga to photography, having curriculum that requires lessons in healthy environmental practices, human nutrition, and globalization… — and despite the fact that many of their 8th graders successfully matriculate to the top high schools in Long Beach, the CDE seems particularly focused on one thing alone: that API score.
“Detrimental to New City’s fight for its charter, the API does not include measuring a school’s innovation or offerings, nor does it have a comprehensive review of the critical thinking skills of a school’s student population. In other words, things like the school’s urban farm (the only one in the city), their students’ bi-lingual proficiency, their students’ artistic or creative abilities, their students’ communal contributions and activities, et cetera, are entirely ignored. Even worse for the measurement of student success, API scores in English are the only one’s adopted in a school’s given score; considering many New City students are English-as-Second-Language (ESL) learners, the test does not take into account their ability to comprehend and apply the English language.”
It seems clear this school is threatened with closure for the same excuse used to close traditional public schools under NCLB & RTTT: failure to meet an arbitrary standardized assessment cooked up & imposed top-down by state bureaucrats, w/ no regard to district goals for a specific population, nor probably with much educational merit & quite possibly not even synched to curriculum!
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I found this charter school’s website and sent them a direct e-mail with these questions a few days ago. They have had plenty of time to respond.
1. Do your teachers belong to a teachers’ union?
2. Do your teachers pay into and/or belong to CalSTRS with matching funds from the school?
3. What do you pay your managers, CEO’s or principals?
If you do not reply to my questions with answers, then I will assume you don’t want those answers made public and I will share the lack of a response publicly with others.
They never replied.
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I think someone from the school tried to answer some of these questions above.
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Do you mean this one?
I must have missed it. If this is true, then why should the school not respond to the same questions.
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Your email may have come across as hostile. If I received an email from a complete stranger who demanded that I respond in writing by a date certain and who seemed likely to post my response online, I might consider not responding. I certainly wouldn’t be in a hurry to respond, and I wouldn’t feel bound by any ultimatums or deadlines set by the stranger.
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That’s possible but if they have nothing to hide, then there is no reason to hide.
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“That’s possible but if they have nothing to hide, then there is no reason to hide.”
That’s what the police sometimes say, but that doesn’t mean you should answer all their questions. And you don’t even have a badge.
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Transparency! That is the key word here.
I usually go on line and search for any public school and find this information without any problem. Sometimes I have to go through a few links.
What is there to hide? If they have nothing to hide, make the information available 100 percent on their site. If not, I think the school should be closed. I will not support any school that is opaque with their information on their site.
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I don’t know what the salaries of the teachers at my kids’ schools are. It’s not on the school web sites, and it would be insane if it were. If I really wanted to know, I could find out for the most part, but it would take me more than a few clicks and an hour of spreadsheet-sorting. And the only reason I could find that information out is because the disclosures are required by law.
You can argue that transparency is a good thing, and you can argue that charter schools should be required by law to disclose the salaries of their employees. If that’s what you’re really trying to say, then that’s a reasonable position. But to argue that a school should be closed because it doesn’t disclose things that it’s not required to disclose, that’s a bit quirky.
BTW, if you’re willing to put in a few clicks, I’m sure you could find out what this school pays its officers.
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After all, the public schools are so transparent there is no reason to ask such questions. If you want to find an answer to any of these questions, it will be on a public school, district or state website. The fact that I had trouble finding the answers to these questions on this school’s website is cause for concern. What are they trying to hide or did they just forget to list what all other public school list as a matter of transparency?
If this public Charter pays its staff the same as the Long Beach public schools do, why not just say so?
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Lloyd, are you trying to use this point to make the argument that charter schools are generally less transparent than public schools? If so, I agree. But I don’t know why you think it’s a cause for concern that a charter school doesn’t list the salaries of its staff on its school web site. I’ve never seen any school do that, and frankly I find it hard to believe that you actually think it’s strange that this school doesn’t do that.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t ask the school for this information. It would be interesting to know. But you shouldn’t be surprised that the school isn’t putting it on its web site, or isn’t treating your e-mail like a government subpoena.
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Public school districts usually post the salary schedule on the district website. You can’t find out what specific teachers are paid, but you can discover what the starting salary is to the highest salary, what it takes to get there, and this includes administration.
Click on the .pdf links for Rowland Unified where I taught for thirty years.
http://www.rowlandschools.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=30132&type=d&pREC_ID=299431
And here is a post on the district website talking about salary negations.
More than 20 percent of Rowland instructors earn $80,000 to $90,000 a year. They would get close to $9,000 more with a 10 percent raise, bringing them to almost $100,000 a year.
Another 37 percent receive $70,000 to $80,000, meaning that 57 percent of the teaching staff earns more than $70,000 a year now.
More than a quarter of the instructors (27 percent) earn from $60,000 to $70,000, while 9 percent get $50,000 to $60,000. Only 6 percent of the teachers make $40,000 to $50,000.
Overall, the average teacher earns $71,484.77 a year in Rowland Unified, according to district officials.
http://www.rowlandschools.org/apps/news/show_news.jsp?REC_ID=368982&id=0
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Lloyd, I don’t see where it says that their teachers are unionized and paid according to the same pay scale as union teachers, do you?
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Someone calming to work at the school said it in an earlier comment in this thread. But if that information is not on the school’s site, how do we verify what the commenter said is true? If an employee was willing to comment about it here, why not there?
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The founder of this school answered my questions at 2:43 p.m. above and does address some of your concerns.
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I think Lloyd’s points are important and valid. If you only look at the spin put out by this spokesperson/TFAer who established the school says, you overlook what she doesn’t say. For example, she didn’t mention unionization, and when asked about enrollment policies, she only addressed entrance during the primary years and didn’t answer questions about their differing policies for students entering later on, during the testing years, when it looks like Spanish proficiency is expected by the school of older students enrolling.
Personally, I think this model is unsustainable because of the focus on Spanish, resulting in not enough kids becoming proficient in English to be able to score well on standardized tests. It looks like they are catering to a highly segregated Spanish speaking population and, considering all the controversies around this matter in CA and other border states, my guess is that this is probably the main reason why it’s a step-child charter school without corporate funding.
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CaresAboutKids&Teachers- Do you have any backup for your speculation about the focus on Spanish causing kids to perform poorly on standardized ELA tests?
I’ve been browsing the articles about why the CA DOE challenged this charter, & the only thing I can find is that students there perform relatively poorly on CA’s “API”: “The API is calculated using results of the STAR (Standardized Testing and Reporting) program and the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE). The Public Schools Accountability Act (PSAA) stated that the Academic Performance Index should include multiple indicators. Criteria other than test scores—such as school staff attendance and student graduation rates—were supposed to be added when deemed reliable. But so far the state has only used test score results.” http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/Pages/UnderstandingTheAPI.aspxt
It also should be noted that CA suspended the API for 2013-14 due to the transition to Common Core & PAARC. (It may be reinstated, for high schools only [which this school is not] in 2016.)
Meanwhile we’re talking about a charter approved by the district in an area where public schools were closed– presumably due to similar issues, i.e., a poverty-stricken & mostly immigrant population performing poorly on stdzd tests– authorized to try something different– critical thinking, exposure to the arts– not state-standardized testing.
I’ll grant you there’s undoubtedly an anti-Spanish-speaking-immigrant prejudice that may be motivating the CA DOE attack on the school. Yet I hear in your comment a knee-jerk reaction against bilingual education. Frankly that’s an old canard perpetuated in states such as CA, fearful of cultural takeover by immigrants. Bilingual immersion schools elsewhere are much in demand.
If we separate the wheat from the chaff, the attempt by the CA DOE to quash this school looks to be just the usual ed-deform attempt to close publicly-funded schools in poor areas so as to lower school taxes, because poor kids- and SpEd kids– and ELL kids– are too expensive to educate.
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Where is the evidence that their bilingual program is effective in teaching English, when only 16% of their 7th graders AND their 8th graders scored proficient in ELA last year? http://www.greatschools.org/california/long-beach/11734-New-City-School/quality/
I happen to support immersion and dual language programs. However, when I see complaints from parents and students, on sites like Yelp and Great Schools, that most instruction is conducted in Spanish, that’s a red flag for me, It harkens back to the “bilingual” programs that used to dominate my district, where students were actually taught in Spanish the majority of the time throughout K-8 and many never achieved proficiency in English.
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Is this New City School in Long Beach affiliated with the ones in Minneapolis? Is the one in Long Beach part of a chain and if so, is there a link to any of the oligarchs and their organizations?
I wonder if there is a way to follow the money.
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No, they have nothing to do with each other. Each founded by local people. Not connected.
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CaresAboutKidsAndTeachers – Details on those parent reviews:
There were only 6 reviews at yelp (fairly recent, mixed). But I went thro 85 reviews at greatschools (77 were averaged at overall 4 out of 5 stars). There were twice as many hi ratings (mostly 5 stars, a few 4’s) as lo (mostly 1’s a few 2’s & 3’s). Almost all of the lo comments came in 2009-2011 (perhaps some problems were corrected?). There was a small handful calling out too much instruction in Spanish, & a somehat larger # specifically happy with dual immersion results. By far the preponderance of hi *’s were in it for the innovative sort-of ‘open school’ approach, & the [1/2 as many] low *’s found it too unstructured & lagging academically.
To summarize: most were seeking relief for their child from highly-structured test-prep/ testing & output/achievement focus in public schools & found it at this school.
I don’t have the same confidence you place in judging the school as ineffective for ESL due to low 6th/7th-gr ELA stdzd test scores. Looks like many are enrolled there due to problems w/test scores (so might have been providing the low end at another school). We also don’t know at what point those kids entered the school & what their Eng ability was at that time. Also can we show comparison CA schools which successfully raise Sp-speaking-family kids into at least the middle ground? One recent paper suggests 1 in 3 CA schoolkids are ‘long-term Eng-learners’ (i.e. still at very low Eng reading/writing ability after 6 yrs’ schooling).
The other issue which gives pause to those w/little faith that state-stdzd tests measure real learning: if one were to place mostly-Sp-speaking students in a sound ed setting where they proced in mixed-age settings to learn at their own pace, wouldn’t one expect slow growth as measured by the Engl-speaking ‘standard’?
The main issue is should CA taxpayers support such a school, or should they close it. As a taxpayer I would be hesitant to close an experimental, innovative school which trials methods opposite to the mainstream, has no connections to corp $, puts most of their funds into the classroom, provides an alternative environment for some who would be chewed up & spit out by the mainstream. If LBUSD is willing to continue their charter, why should the state intervene?
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Our country has not had a great track record of meeting the needs of English Language Learners since bilingual education was first implemented: http://www.users.interport.net/r/e/readinst/guide.html
It’s your prerogative to pick and choose what you want to quantify and you can discount complaints such as this on Great Schools, but I cannot:
“i have been a student at the new city school for 8 years. and to start off idd like to point out that i have been lectured for voicing my opinion honestly about this school. we learn everything in spanish;math science pe electives music INSPANISH. kids are failing because majority of them cant understand spanish.they teach us the same stuff over again in math,and they never told us how to multiply right or do long division as brenda says,”you will learn that in high school” i want to be a cartoonist when i grow up,and go to wilson to get a scholorship(or rennescaince) but i cant do that with my poor grades. i do not like this school and i reccomend everyone not to go to this school,and leave while you can. take this from a student whos had experience.shut this school down immedietly!!!!!!”
When I see reports indicating that the majority of instructional time in “bilingual” programs is in Spanish and I can find no evidence that high numbers of children are reaching English proficiency, I think that’s a serious problem. (And yes, I’ve taught ELLs myself for many decades.)
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BTW, I don’t happen to think that newer laws which limit participation in bilingual education to one – three years is sufficient for a lot of older students who are new immigrants, but in my professional experience, that works fine for most younger children.
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Thanks for much food for thought from the ELL perspective. We cannot know precisely what goes on at New City School without observation, but– despite the preponderance of happy commenters– numbers do seem to show a resounding ‘F’ in ESL.
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You’re welcome. S&FF. Thanks for acknowledging the concerns.
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