Charter School Resources

Having served on the board of a charter school and recently attended the NACSA meeting, it occurred to us that charter schools could use more help. Since we are a non-profit and focused on teaching, we felt like we could provide more resources to charter schools in the area of teacher quality.

So today we are launching CharterTeacher.com with the goal of working more closely with charter schools to ensure the every charter school student has a great teacher. To that end we have built this website so that it covers the various areas that impact teacher quality:

1. Teacher Recruitment: there is a job posting section so that charter schools can find the talent they need and a teacher resume posting area so that dedicated teachers can find the charter school that fits their skill-set.
2. Teacher Preparation: for the most part, charter schools can hire the talent they need and don’t have to worry about licensing. But making sure that a person is ready to teach and really knows their subject is an area where ABCTE can help.
3. Teacher Certification: some states require certification and some parents want their child to be taught by a certified teacher. ABCTE certifies teachers so why not take advantage of a rigorous program to certify your charter school teachers.
4. Professional Development: our resources, including phonics based reading instruction, classroom management, dealing with parents and subject matter workshops can help you improve your teaching workforce.
5. Charter Teacher Forum: the more you talk to charter school teachers and administrators the more you realize they really need more ways to share ideas and solutions. Our own ABCTE Teachers have a very strong online community through our forums so we know this charter school forum will get a lot of traffic.

So help us spread the word today so that all the great charter school administrators and teachers know about this new resource, provided for free, from ABCTE to build an even stronger charter school community!

Charter School Teachers and Virtual

NACSA held a pretty good conference here in Utah this week. A lot of talk about holding charter schools accountable including how to replicated great charter schools and close the weak. Virtual charters were a large part of the discussion since charter authorizers have to figure out ways to ensure that they can manage the growth in online learning.

That lead to some revelations on the insanity that in US charter laws. The first that obviously affects ABCTE teachers is that in some states there are requirements that all virtual teachers be state certified – sometimes at a higher percentage than in brick and mortar schools. The second is that seat time takes precedence over subject matter mastery for students.

Both are ridiculous. Online learning is supposed to fully leverage great talent regardless of geographic location. If a great physics teacher in Pennsylvania is available to inspire future scientists in Utah – they shouldn’t have to jump through hoops in all 50 states to become a teacher.

The real beauty of online learning is truly differentiated instruction. But in our system, if the student masters algebra in 3 months, they don’t get credit unless they sit in front an algebra course for 180 days.

Our laws need to help technology work to increase learning – not hold it back so that the adults can feel better.

Eduwonk, Flypaper and NACSA

Both Flypaper and Eduwonk pick up the New York Times story on alternative teaching. Been a great week for ABCTE even while I am down with the flu (not the H1N1 variety).

I am heading to NACSA in Salt Lake City next week to talk charter schools - we will be presenting at the conference on teacher certification. 15% of ABCTE teachers teach in charter schools and we are looking to help out even more. In a few weeks we will launch TeachCharters.com to help out even more with charter school teacher job postings, teacher resume posting, professional development and mentoring for teachers. Pretty exciting stuff!

Have a great weekend!

Bringing Ed Reform to Scale

Yet another data point on the selectivity model for improving education. By selecting teachers from top universities, charter schools in Boston are getting better results for their students. This is pointed out in an editorial over at Gadfly today by Steven Wilson from Ascend Charter schools.

There are 7 charter schools that are realizing significantly higher student learning gains on the state’s MCAS tests. Over 50% of the teachers in those schools are from elite universities compared to 19% at public schools.

But then Steven does something that most education reformers refuse to think about. Can you bring that model to scale. Can we slowly replace all 2.6 million teachers with teacher from elite schools (note I used a little thing called math to pull out the 19% already from elite schools). He thinks not.

From his editorial:“Each year, about 142,000 students graduate from highly selective postsecondary institutions (Barron's top two ranks). Even if one in every ten of their graduates entered teaching for two years (the average tenure at many no-excuses schools) before moving onto other careers, they would provide for only six percent of the 438,914 teachers currently working in the 66 member districts of the Council of Great City Schools (CGCS). Simply put, we might have enough of these teachers to staff a few hundred more No Excuses schools, but not a few thousand more, and certainly not enough to reach every disadvantaged child in America.”

This is the same problem with KIPP and TFA which are highly touted as the solution for education woes. While they are great programs we need to simultaneously invest in programs like ABCTE that can be brought to scale efficiently and effectively.

A GREAT week for education improvement

The "good weeks" in education improvement really keep you going. This week was certainly one of those weeks here. We had our 750th certification!! She is a health care professional from North Carolina who is moving to South Carolina to teach science. See what happens when you have the right program to attract career changers NC – you get the teachers you need!! (or if you don't, you lose a great science teacher)

Teach and Inspire – our scholarship program to recruit more teachers of color has had over 250 people attend information sessions in Florida in the last two days! Our very lofty goal is to recruit 350 science and math teachers of color for high needs schools - - we are well on our way right now.

Our charter school teacher recruitment event was amazing – we had 50 potential teachers come out last night in Tucson and have double that signed up for Phoenix on Saturday. Looks like that is going to work out well and we can expand that to other charter schools in the upcoming months.

And I testified in Florida about our Distinguished Teacher program – a lot of interest in this right now as state leaders struggle to find good performance pay programs.

Nothing like a great week in education improvement to keep you coming back for more!

Senator Kennedy on NCLB

Senator Kennedy has an op-ed in the Washington Post today to mark the anniversary of No Child Left Behind. It is a valiant effort to ensure that even with everyone focused on presidential politics, we don’t leave the legislation behind. I think it is a futile effort.

I thoroughly support his assertion that the law has helped put the spotlight on the achievement gap and gives schools the data they need to make improvements. Here some points where I agree with Senator Kennedy on changes needed:

• More information should be used to decide on failing schools – particularly growth models and NOT portfolios (where else but education could you hand in your best work to demonstrate your knowledge of the material?)
• More professional development for teachers – as long as it is not limited to schools of education• More mentoring for beginning teachers is absolutely needed – and we really need standards that define what great mentoring means
• More emphasis in placing good teachers in struggling schools
• More emphasis on the drop-out issue is desperately needed
• Fix crumbling schools and make sure that students have the right resources – but this is a district job and should not be in NCLB

What I can’t stand:

• Teaching to the Test – if the state standards which determine what students should know are done well and actually are the critical pieces of knowledge that every student must have to succeed in life and the state exam tests that knowledge – then teaching to the test is actually teaching students what they must know to succeed. How is that possibly bad??? If he means that student standards should be improved and the state exams must clearly test those standards then we agree
• NCLB discourages innovation?? When you have the data to see what works and what doesn’t, and the accountability to ensure you improve that data – you absolutely have to innovate and in every profession in the world: data plus accountability = innovation – so how does NCLB discourage innovation?
• Smaller class sizes – the data does not support this at all but this is probably a political play at appeasing the teacher unions that support creating more jobs for teachers
  My cynicism about reauthorization has grown exponentially.

NCLB will not be tackled until after the 2008 elections. And in a spirit of the new bi-partisanship from President {fill in name here}, it will not get any real focus until 2010 at best. So we are stuck with it as is for now - in spite of some good words from Senator Kennedy.

Charter Schools: help is on the way

The Issue:
• Teachers have the greatest influence on student achievement
• There are not enough great teachers
• School districts have TFA and TNTP to help them
• Charter schools need to start demonstrating that they are really increasing student achievement
• Charter schools are not getting the staffing they need

The Solution:
• Hold ABCTE recruitment events just for Charter and Private Schools

So that is what we are doing next week. In Arizona we will hold two teacher recruitmentevents just for public charter schools. Those career-changers that are ready to get into teaching will complete our preparation program to ensure they are ready to go and be ready to teach by the fall.

“Human Capital” is the new buzz word in education. It is just a fancy way of saying we have a severe shortage of great teachers. If we don’t all start working together to get more great people into the classroom, we can never truly impact student achievement and improve our schools.