Charter Churn

[tonysam]

What goes on in charter schools, in this case Texas, is underway in public school districts throughout the country, though the turnover isn't quite as bad--yet:

YES Prep, for instance, almost exclusively hires younger teachers who they expect to move on to other careers. They average teacher on their seven campuses averages only about 25 years old. Many are recruited by the Teach For America program, which requires only a two-year commitment to teaching.

“Many will move on to graduate school or law school,” says YES Prep spokeswoman Jill Willis. “We talk about our students getting long days and having teacher’s cell phone numbers and weekend enrichment opportunities. On the other side of that, there’s a teacher … and it’s a heavy lift.”

Still, YES Prep administrators acknowledge they are losing too many teachers each year. (Their internal figures show 22 percent rather than the 30 percent listed by the state, but Willis says either figure is too high.) YES wants more of those young teachers to become veterans and is considering a “master teacher track” that would allow teachers who don’t want to leave the classroom to make administrative-level salaries. Such teachers would likely take on additional curriculum development and training duties.

But there are some teachers who the schools are glad to lose. Charters have much more freedom to fire unsuccessful teachers, and many take advantage of it. Willis estimated that about half the teachers who leave YES Prep are sent packing. “We’re faster to dismiss teachers,” she says. “It’s not something that we want to do, but with the demographics that we’re serving, and what we’re trying to do to push them to success, we can’t afford to have four years in a row of a bad teacher.”

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This is an occupation which takes 5-7 years to get really good at, and these people want first-year teachers to hit the ground running?

The first year is almost ALWAYS a disaster for teachers, for they have to learn all kinds of things about their jobs. It's really, really, REALLY hard.

[tonysam]

1. How are they going to institute a "master teacher" track

by paying them more, if they aren't allowed to have mentors to become "master teachers"? One or two years to be allowed have a "career" doesn't cut it in teaching no matter how much the "teachers" are paid.

The high turnover is all about cost saving. They don't give a rat's ass about kids.

[tonysam]

2. I love this post from an NYC teacher

which was posted at Teachers.net:

There are a million reasons charters (and small schools) are a bad idea.

As for small schools, there's no evidence whatsoever that they perform any
better (in fact, they perform worse) than large, comprehensive high schools.
The ONLY reason to break up a big school into a bunch of smaller schools is that
it zeroes out the abysmal scores on English and math that caused the school to
be targeted in the first place. Problem is, they turn over so much of the
faculty and replace them with unlicensed and untrained fellows and TFA, and
other newbies who are licensed, but who have no inkling of an idea how to
teach/control a class and NEED to be surrounded by veterans who can show them
the way. The kids, however, remain the same dumpy kids that failed to succeed
with experienced teachers leading the way when the school was still a larger
facility. Just because you shut down a failing school doesn't mean you
eliminate the failing students. That's cultural and environmental and it
doesn't matter if you break a big school into twenty smaller ones with twenty
different principals, it won't change in the long run.

As for charters, there's no evidence that they would do any better than large,
comprehensive high schools. There is evidence that they would be run far more
poorly because the "principal" is a corporate bigwig who paid to buy the school.
They have no formal training in education policy or practice and run the school
like a business. Obscene hours, weird pay scales, no union protections and the
ability and desire to hire and fire at will if the kids don't do as well as they
would like. One of the charters recently was actually cited for being run like
crap and it's going to be shut down. What do you expect when you have a
businessman running a school?

I like to think that if I ever ended up working at a charter, I'd have the
cojones to tell the "principal" to stay out of my room and let the teacher (me)
teach, but I don't think I'd ever desire to work in a charter school, solely
because I don't like the idea of being told how to teach by a guy or woman who
never set foot inside a classroom (and the fact that we wouldn't be unionized).

In the meanwhile, we'll see what happens when they announce the decisions being
handed down on all the schools on the list. I hope we can file a massive
lawsuit to reverse the decision to do this. Many of the schools on the list are
good, and have been showing consistent improvement among all the years that were
mined for data. Additionally, the most recent years worth of data was not used,
which would be supporting evidence in favor of not putting the clamp down on us.
The worst part is, regardless of who is or isn't at fault for the closing of
these schools, all the faculties are going to be blackballed for being a teacher
at a school that was (or is going to be) shut down (eventually) and it'll be a
nightmare trying to find a new position anywhere. And for what? Corporate
greed? An irrational hate for unions? An irrational hate for dedicated
professionals?

[alstephenson]

3. You are replying to your own post???

Interesting.

[tonysam]

4. No, I am adding to it.

No nefarious stuff there.