Urban school reform in the United States is characterized by contentious, politicized debate. This course explores a set of critical issues in the education and educational reform space, with a focus on aspects of the field that have sparked controversy and polarized views. We will dig into these debates, situating them within the larger history of public education and school reform, and considering the viewpoints, the evidence, and translation of issues into educational policy. We will consider three broad topics in this course: 1. Federal Strategies in School Reform: How has the federal government legislated and incented public school reform? 2. School Choice: How does school choice aim to improve schools? 3. Accountability: What is the history of accountability in American public schooling? What are the policies and practices associated with accountability? Learning Goals This course will enable participants to: 1. develop an informed historical perspective about public schooling in the United States; 2. understand the unique contextual elements of the American approach to public schooling; 3. analyze and assess divergent viewpoints about American public school history and school reform policy. Teachers may be able to receive continuing education credit for successful completion of this course. To earn continuing education credits students must purchase and earn the Course Certificate, which they can then submit to the credit-issuing agency in their state. Students should also fill out the requisite paperwork stating that the affiliated provider is the Graham School at the University of Chicago, and that average time for certificate-level course completion is 18 hours. Students outside of Illinois should contact their state’s accreditation board to determine whether this course is eligible for continuing education credit. Note that it is up to the schools or districts that employ teachers to decide whether this course meet their requirements.
Part 1: The Theory Behind School Choice
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From the course by The University of Chicago
Critical Issues in Urban Education
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From the lesson
Interlude 2: Interview and Panel Discussion on School Choice and Charter Schools
We had the pleasure of interviewing several experts in the education space from around Chicago and the Urban Education Institute. Listen as they discuss issues surrounding School Choice and Charter Schools. They will have a variety of perspectives from that of a researcher to a practitioner. Which do you identify with? Did any of the participants resonate with you?
Meet the Instructors
Sara Ray StoelingaSara Liston Spurlark Director and Clinical Professor
Urban Education Institute
[MUSIC]
Welcome back, today we're going to be doing a culminating panel for
unit two focused on school choice.
As you may recall from across the segments in this unit,
we've discussed a lot of different aspects of school choice.
We started out by talking about the theory of action and the history of why school
choice, the idea of school choice came on the landscape in the first place.
And in that kind of summary overview we dug into questions of the individual
benefits of school choice, the possible system benefits of school choice, and
also the larger theoretical and ideological questions that school
choice raises about education as a public or a private good.
Today in this culminating panel,
we're going to be revisiting some of those issues and
trying to understand, at a deeper level, some of the controversies and
debates around the ways that we see school choice and charter schools in particular.
And how we have understood the positive and
negative effects of this approach to improving individual outcomes,
but also trying to attend to improving systemic and system outcomes.
[MUSIC]
So with that, I'm going to move into conversation with our panel.
And I'm going to start really with the concept of school choice.
I think it's important for us to revisit the idea of school choice and
why it is that we would want to think about adding
school choice into the mix to improve individual and system outcomes.
What are we trying to accomplish with this?
And so, Orrin, I'm going to start with you.
Can you talk a little bit for our course participants about what the theory
of action is behind school choice and your kind of perceptions about why
this concept emerged on the scene, the landscape in the United States?
And also at a high level talking about what the promises and
pit falls of that are?
>> Okay, thanks, Sarah.
So, my sense is that this notion of school choice came onto the landscape
as an opportunity to try and
figure out how to address some of the challenges that schools were facing,
a principle one being that you couldn't really get rid of teachers in schools.
So if you can't get rid of teachers in schools,
how are you actually going to change schools?
And so my sense is that one of the things that happens with this
notion of school choice is you give parents an opportunity
to take their kids out of a public school and move them somewhere else.
And you move them somewhere else where there are teachers who are no longer part
of a union, so that then you'd have this what is essentially a free market system,
where parents become consumers of an education system.
And they get to sort of engage in the system in
the same way that they are engaging in retail commerce.
So they go to the best restaurant, they go to the best clothing store, etc.
And the free market then sort of normalizes
the products to the extent to which they become more excellent.
So my sense is that this notion of free choice really revolves around
the sort of free market sense of how we fix schools.
We inject in schools this notion of choice on the part of the parents,
which then allows parents and students to shop around for
the best opportunity for the best educational experience for their children.
And again, it's something that parents who have had resources have done for
years by sending their kids to private schools.
And so this notion of free market is really at the core
of the theory of action around school choice.
And it comes up at this point in time because a lot of the energy around
reforming education is being injected by sort of a political,
conservative movement that is saying, we really need to break down this system
of control that essentially teacher unions have around what's going
on in schools, and put more power out in the hands of individual consumers.
So that's my basic take on the theory of action.
>> Bill, is there anything that you would add to that?
What else comes into play?
Why is it that this concept of school choice has become such
a kind of powerful lever or center stage relative to what's going on in schools?
>> [LAUGH] I really liked your explanation, Orrin.
I think that there's an issue of bureaucracy too, correct?
So that if you're, with on the resources given to urban schools under
the current bureaucratic situation.
>> Right.
>> People looked at that situation and said, there's no way it's going to change.
[LAUGH] Basically it's never going to change.
So then trying to inject this idea of competition with other schools by giving
other schools different set of rules, a different relationship to the bureaucracy
then meant that that could be a lever to create great schooling for students.
The individual change that Sarah talked about, but
also to force some conversation around systematic and bureaucratic change.
So I worry a little bit when it gets fun,
when the debate is only focused on union versus non-union,
because I think that it's complicated by the entrenched bureaucracy.
>> I would say, Orrin, that the free market and
getting rid of bad teachers idea was actually a super
imposition on what the original vision was, and
a lot of that vision was in fact driven by teachers and
in fact by the teacher's union itself.
So I think the point that you were making, Bill, about
the problem in fact being the kind of bureaucratic constraints that existed for
schools, and attempting to sort of liberate teachers and
other people with innovative ideas from those constraints, it
was really the fundamental reason for the creation of charters.
And I'm sure we're going to discuss how that's changed along the way,
but I think that's my perspective.
>> So why don't we stay right here with you, Marv, and talking about trying to
help course participants understand why the concept of school choice is so
controversial.
So if you look at the landscape, we see that relatively speaking,
there are not a lot of students in charter schools across the country.
I mean only about 5% if you look across the country.
Certainly there are certain local areas in which there's high concentrations of
charter schools, but relatively speaking, it's a small movement.
And yet there's a lot of controversy around it, so why is that?
>> Well I think we've discussed one reason for that already,
which has to do with this question of unionization and privatization, and
a lot of the sort of ideological conflicts that that imposes.
But I think there's also an issue of bringing
an important innovation into large-scale practice
when there's in fact very little research evidence
that supports this as a solution to the problems.
I'm speaking as a former charter school director, and
as a person who's served on a number of charter school boards, but
I think when we look at the movement as a whole, the question of whether,
in fact, it's been successful or is being successful is very questionable.
I think there's also a lot of controversy around the issue of
what the collateral damage is from the creation of charter schools.
What that's done to communities that have lost their neighborhood schools.
What that's done, again going back to the union issue, to teachers who are now
deprived of some of the protections that they had under the teachers union.
So those are some of the reasons for the controversy around charters.
>> Alex, do you want to add to that?
>> Sure, yeah, I think that the other piece, it's implicit in Oran's description
of the theory of action, is that part of the sort of design of school
choice is that you're opening new schools and that you're closing failing schools.
You're closing schools that parents aren't choosing.
And what we've seen over the past ten to 15 years is that
closing schools is a hard, fractious,
difficult thing to do, especially for impoverished communities.
The school, many times, is one of the sort of pillars of the community,
even if it's not performing well and
closing it creates a tremendous amount of controversy.
I would also add that a pitfall
of the sort of school choice theory of action, there are positives, but
another pitfall is it's created quite a bit of sorting or tracking in the system.
And so, often times in big urban environments,
you have selective enrollment schools, which take sort of the cream of the crop,
so to speak, the students with the highest achievement scores.
You have charter schools who take a sort of middle group of students,
students with okay, decent, you know,
entering achievement scores and parents who have sort of pushed them.
And neighborhood schools often times are left with a group of students who have
very low incoming achievement scores and parents who aren't as involved.
And that sorting, I think in some ways from what
many people sort of envision the school house as, which is a place of diversity.
A place where people from different backgrounds,
different entering achievement levels, can interact and learn from each other.
So those are two other things that I would add.
>> I think that's a really important point.
One of the things that we're careful to do in the course is to
make sure that we attend to the fact that there's more
types of school choice than just charter schools, right?
And I think the points that you're making about students testing into selective
enrollment schools, so opting into that as a form of school choice.
But also in some school districts, this kind of open enrollment system or
magnet schools in which students can opt in to certain options.
And the fact that different students are making different choices relative
to that and the kind of sorting that occurs.
So Oren what are your thoughts on this?
>> Well again, I continue to come back to this notion of this
idea of a free market system.
And the fact that at it's core, my sense is that school choice is really
about promoting a particular sort of political economic system called choice,
as opposed to a different one, which is a more, sort of, socialist where
everyone goes to the same place and we treat them more or less similarly.
And there isn't sort of tracking and elites and
this sort of movement that we see happening as a result of school choice.
But that was already in place because people who had means and
resources pulled their kids out of public schools and sent them to private schools.
Fundamentally, I think it's part of the tension that happens in this country in
terms of whether or not we think as a community we can rally together and
support and grow ourselves as a community.
Or if we have this notion that it's all about individuals and
individuals making choices to get ahead because there are quote unquote
scarce resources and so you have to accumulate those to move forward.
Everyone can't succeed, right?
>> Right.
>> That is at a, sort of, fundamental precept of this notion of choice,
because as Alex pointed out, with choice comes winners and
losers, and I'm not sure that when the growth of the charters was beginning.
And this notion of choice was an idea in people's minds that there
was an active consideration that what would happen is neighborhood
schools would effectively be bled dry and have to close.
I'm not sure the people actively had that in their eyesight.
Fundamentally, my sense is that this is a real challenge for the way that we think
about education, which is to say that some people are going to succeed and
some people are going to fail and
that, fundamentally, is at the core of this notion of choice.
And that it's okay for there to be winners and losers,
as opposed to this egalitarian sense that we're all in it
together as a community and we can help support people
at different levels to be more successful across the board.
>> I would just say, I agree that maybe charters in some ways
exacerbated that situation but didn't create it.
Right, it already existed with suburbs, it already existed with private schools,
it already existed with magnet schools.
So I think, has it brought it into a deeper focus?
Probably, right?
Definitely it has.
But when I think about the theory of action of charter schools,
I go back to what Marv said, about can educators come together,
and focus their understanding of the community,
their relationship to the community, their understanding of pedagogy and
content in teaching, and create brilliant schools for kids?
And the answer is yes, they can, right, if given that opportunity.
So that's, I wish it were, I wish it had turned out that way, completely.
[MUSIC]
So on one hand you have the idea of autonomy, that if given that chance,
to work together and have some autonomy and freedom from bureaucracy then
you could, as a group of educators, create an amazing school with deep trust and
deep care and high expectations, on the other hand, is accountability.
And that's the idea that if you're not actually doing it,
then you don't get to keep having a school.
>> Right. >> And this is where, you know,
to Mark's point about charters as overall,
kind of having results that are very similar to the results nationally.
This is where I think the theory of action was that with great
economy comes great accountability.
And so, just to connect to my personal experience,
I was a founding teacher at a charter school that was closed down.
And that was, I would say, it was difficult,
yes it was not easy but I really believe it was the right thing.
It needed to happen for the kids and for that community.
And people fought against that closing, but we had failed.
We had failed to serve students at the level that we had agreed to do.
And so I would say if the theory of action had been played out successfully,
we wouldn't be talking about a charter movement that's about
as good as traditional schools.
We would be talking about a charter movement that was much much better,
excellent, because you would have closed down the bottom 25% or 30% or
50% of the charter schools that were low performing.
So my advice to any charter authorizer is
you've got to take your position very seriously and charter schools
absolutely should be closing at a higher rate than traditional schools.
And they're probably not in some districts but they should be.
Because that was the promise, right?
That was the deal and that was the deal.
>> So, can I push back?
>> Yeah. >> Can I push back a little bit?
So I think that, and this may be odd that Bill and I are this side of the debate.
But I think that in some ways, what's hurt the charter movement
from the sort of experimentation, or this notion of getting
outside of the system that Mark talked about, in its original incarnation.
Is that we've held it to the same standards, and
maybe even tighter standards that we hold the public system to.
Which is to say that we hold it, we measure charter schools, and
now all schools, based on sort of test based accountability.
And I think that one of the unfortunate pieces of that, and
there are fortunate pieces.
I mean to your point, like if a school's not performing well it gets closed.
On the other hand, I think it's driven charter schools in a lot of ways,
to look very similar.
The notion of school choice should be that there are different options out there for
parents.
That there are schools that look dramatically different that aren't
better or worse, but that are doing education in very, very different ways.
I think that part of the unfortunate piece of the sort of accountability
system that we have, is that it drives most charter schools to what I
would call sort of a no excuses philosophy of education.
Which is, what we've seen at least, is maybe the best way to raise test scores.
And it's a fine mix for a fine school model, but it's one type of school model
and I think that what, if we really believe in a system of choice,
what there should be other options out there besides no excuses charter schools.
There should be charter schools that are adopting social justice approaches.
[CROSSTALK] >> They're pro excuses charter schools.
>> [LAUGH] >> Well there should be charter schools.
>> [CROSSTALK] [LAUGH] >> That's right.
There should be some excuses charter schools.
>> I mean, I think your point is really important relative to one of
the assumptions behind the creation of charters was innovation.
>> That's right. >> And the idea of innovating and
then having, promising innovative practices be disseminated.
So Mark, what would you add to this?
>> Well I would add that part of the blame lies with us
because in the early days of the charter school movement in Chicago,
we were invited to develop alternative forms of assessment and
I think we've, for the most part, failed at that effort.
So, by default we have dropped back to being that
tests evaluation kind of culture.
I agree completely that there should be other alternatives, but we
need to accept the responsibility for not having created those.
>> And just trying to have fun, but I also want to say
that part of I agree and it's a great point.
The accountability system has narrowed the focus in some really
super interesting ways.
And I think one of the pieces though to the whole accountability question is,
our students have to be able to read, write and do math at a high level, right?
So any kind of innovative school has to have those as components,
but I also hear what you're saying.
[MUSIC]
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