News broke yesterday afternoon that the teachers at Paul Public Charter School intend to form their own union entitled the District of Columbia Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff (DC ACTS) under the umbrella of the American Federation of Teachers.  This would be the first time a charter in the nation’s capital elected to become part of a teachers’ union.  Rachel Cohen of the American Prospect reported that 75 percent of teachers at Paul have signed a petition to join the new collective bargaining unit.  It is not a positive development.

Perhaps it is fitting that this effort is happening at Paul PCS, the only traditional school to become a charter.  As the story goes Cecile Middleton, the principal of Paul Junior High when it was under DCPS,  became so frustrated that she had to go through the central office to do simple things like get a light bulb changed, that she decided to form her own school.  Josephine Baker, former executive director of the DC Public Charter School Board, explains in her book The Evolution & Revolution of DC Charter Schools, that it took the leaders of Paul three application cycles of the PCSB to get the project off the ground.  Then, in 1999, the union came in:

“The announcement of the approval of Paul’s application to convert to charter school status was the beginning of intense activity to thwart the conversion.  First, teachers’ union members of Paul’s faculty organized a student walk-out to protest the conversion. The students, who may or may not have cared about the implications of the school changing its governance structure, seemed to offer little resistance to the opportunity to ‘spontaneously’ leave their classes at the suggestion of their teachers.  At least one teacher who helped facilitate teacher signatures of the conversion petition reported being harassed by the teachers’ union representatives” (p. 49).

Ms. Cohen indicated in her story that there were two primary factors that led to the charter school teachers currently at Paul embracing a union.  From her article:

“The first is that administrators brought in a consultant at the start of the 2015-2016 school year to launch a committee with teachers dedicated to discussing school improvements.  After a series of meetings, teachers submitted a list of proposals to their administration, including such recommendations as more transparent staff evaluations, caps on class size, and increased time for teacher planning.  But the suggestions went nowhere.”

Then at the conclusion of last year’s term the well-respected high school principal was not offered continued employment and the staff could not get an explanation for the change.  The instructors banded together to reverse the decision but apparently their viewpoint was ignored.

Four year history and government teacher Dave Koenig expresses the sentiment of the employees, again from Ms. Cohen’s piece:  “In my time here I’ve seen people who are really good, dedicated teachers shown the door because they have personality conflicts with someone above them.  I’ve also seen really good people leave on their own because they feel underappreciated or overworked to the point of developing [a] nervous breakdown.”

WAMU’s Martin Austermuhle explains that conversion to union representation is not a given:

“Though charter schools are publicly funded, they are exempt from the D.C. law requiring the government to enter collective bargaining agreements with public employees. An organizing effort in 2012 by the Washington Teachers’ Union — which represents teachers in DCPS — fizzled due to legal and political obstacles.

A decision last year from the National Labor Relations Board means the teachers’ attempt to unionize will come under the federal law that applies to private sector workers. That gives the school’s management two choices: willingly recognize the teachers’ request for a union, or call an election in which staff would have to vote on whether to unionize.”

If the drive goes through these teachers will be in for a tremendously rude awakening.  In my experience injection of a union creates silos between the front line staff and management.  Modifications to the work environment, from everything from working hours, pay, benefits, and evaluations, must be contractually negotiated.  As I related to Mr. Austermuhle, it is certain to diminish the ability for the charter to rapidly react to the needs and desires of students and parents.

Still, and we have to realize that we are hearing only one side of the story, when management does not effectively listen to staff it invites the introduction of union activity.  The move comes in the aftermath of the Public Charter School Board’s executive director Scott Pearson, publicly inviting unions into our schools.

The Ward 4 charter currently enrolls approximately 767 students in grades Pre-Kindergarten 3 to the twelfth grade.  Both the lower and upper schools are ranked as Tier 2 on the Performance Management Framework.

The Washington Post’s Jay Mathews revealed yesterday that Susan Schaeffler, the CEO of KIPP DC, is making some difficult decisions about the structure of her program that ultimately could impact the academic success of the children in her network.

As Mr. Mathews explains, KIPP DC now teachers more pupils than any other charter school in D.C. with almost 5,800 students attending 16 campuses.  There are now five early childhood learning schools, as well as five elementary schools, five middle schools and one high school.  The charter is also one of the highest academically performing in the city although it concentrates on educating low-income kids.  For example, of the 22 schools listed by the DC Public Charter School Board as top performing, meaning that they score above the state average on the 2016 PARCC Assessment, four of those institutions are part of KIPP.  Moreover, five out of 16 schools recognized by the PCSB as having improved most in 2016 from the previous year’s PARCC scores for the number of children reaching the college readiness grade of a four or five, are part of the KIPP network.

Some of the ways that KIPP DC has been as successful as it has been are that it has a longer school day, going from 7:45 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and through its offering of Saturday classes and summer school.  But  as the Post reporter indicated some of these schedules are about to be altered.

“Many people still think of long days when they hear the name KIPP, but the nature of that extra time has changed at KIPP DC. Saturday classes have been shifted from the middle to the elementary schools. The July summer school has moved to August, just before the regular school year begins. And the middle school day has been cut by an hour, running from 8 a.m. to 4:15 p.m.”

In a conversation Mr. Mathews had with Ms. Schaeffler, she stated she had mixed feelings about the moves.  She commented, “’It is one of the things we struggle with now.  The market for classroom talent is very competitive in the District.’ She did not want to lose good teachers to schools that offered a shorter workday, no Saturday classes and no required assignment in the middle of the summer. ‘It was tough because I felt for the first time I was making a decision based on adults and not children,’ she said.”

This story brings me back to the book The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way by Amanda Ripley.  In her excellent work Ms. Ripley discusses the fact that some countries such as South Korea elevate the value of education to such a level that teachers who tutor privately can become millionaires.  My hope would be that instead of Ms. Schaeffler having to modify her winning formula in order to compete for talent that we could as a society remunerate these instructors at such a level that they would not consider working for anyone else.

Yesterday was a truly amazing day.  Picture this:  over 400 charter school teachers, administrators, heads of schools, founders, and other stakeholders gathered standing room only in the elegant auditorium of the FHI 360 Conference Center participating in the inaugural 2017 D.C. Charter School Conference hosted by Friends of Choice in Urban Schools.  Representatives were in attendance from most of the 118 campuses making this the largest gathering of charter school representatives in the 20 year history of a local movement that now educates almost 42,000 children, or 46 percent of all pupils attending public schools.

I will have much more to say about this stellar event in the near future.  But for now I want to bring your attention to an early highlight of the meeting.  The Keynote Speaker was Dr. Howard Fuller.  I have had the great opportunity to hear Dr. Fuller on numerous occasions and he is always motivational.  But this was something different.  Dr. Fuller spoke as if every single atom in his body was united in a supreme battle to convey his beliefs to the guests.  In honor of this man’s passion and eloquence, for which he received a prolonged standing ovation at the conclusion of his address, I am reprinting his remarks in their entirety.

Dr. Fuller is a Distinguished Professor of Education and founder and director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  He served as the Superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools from 1991 to 1995. Dr. Fuller was a founder of the Black Alliance for Educational Options.  In the 1960s he became one of this nation’s most prominent civil rights leaders.  Dr. Fuller has received numerous awards and recognition over the years, including four Honorary Doctorate Degrees.

“Connecting Our Strengths”

I think our strength does not rest in the fact that most if not all of us in this room are here because we support charter schools. Our strength will be found in being clear why charter schools exist.

I will speak only for myself. I am in this room today because I care about the plight of poor children. And as a Black man who loves Black people down in the depths of my soul, I have a particular and special concern about Black children who come from low income and working class families.

I believe that education is one of the few levers of power that gives these children the possibility of being able to change the trajectory of their life chances while at the same time giving them the tools they need to engage in what Paulo Friere called, the “practice of freedom”- the ability to engage in the transformation of their world.

There is no way I can stand before you and talk to you about the education of our children and not acknowledge the national political environment that shadows all that we do right now today in America.

I have talked to many people of all races and ages since the election of Donald Trump as the President of the United States of America.  I want to put my view about this man on the table because it will frame some of what I have to say to you. I believe this man is a horrible human being.  I think he has said and done things that have been hurtful and painful to a lot of people. I believe the divides that were already in existence in our country have been and will continue to be exacerbated by President Trump.  He should read Thomas L. Friedman & Michael Mandelbaum’s book, That Used To Be Us. According to them there were five Pillars that made America great.  One of them was America used to have an immigration policy that recognized that America not only wanted immigrants with great minds but also people who just wanted to create a better life for themselves and their families.

But when I hear some people talk about the pain they are feeling, I am reminded of something Dr. King said in his book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community.

He said, “the central quality in [Black peoples’] life is pain-pain so old and deep that it shows in every moment of [our] existence.  It emerges in the cheerlessness of [our] sorrow[ful] songs, in the melancholy of [our] blues and in the pathos of [our] sermons.  Black people while laughing [are shedding] invisible tears that no hand can wipe away.  In a highly competitive world, [Black people] know that a cloud of persistent denial stands between [us] and the sun, between [us] and life and power, between [us] and whatever we need.”

Pain is not a new reality for Black people, particularly poor Black people. No matter who has been in the White House our poorest brothers and sisters have suffered. While it is true that President Obama cared about them and at a minimum represented the office in a way that made us proud, he was not able to alleviate the suffering that our poorest families endure every single day. Their situations could conceivably get worse under the current regime. But, let’s be clear: no matter who is the President, if we care about our low income and working class brothers and sisters we must be in a continual fighting mode. But political reality dictates that we must be able and willing to protest and where possible collaborate if it will benefit those among us who have the least.  They cannot afford for us to be political purists.  They need those of us who would exercise leadership to be clear that in a political sense we can not have permanent friends or permanent enemies -what we must have are permanent interests. We have to resist while at the same time seizing any opportunity to help our children and the families who need us the most.

Howard Thurman was one of the great African American preachers of the 20^th century. He was an author, philosopher, theologian, educator and civil rights leader.

In his book, Jesus and the Disinherited he talked about the plight of the masses of people who live with their backs constantly against the wall.  They are the poor, the disinherited, and the dispossessed.  He said, there is one overmastering problem that the socially and the physically disinherited face. Under what terms is survival possible? The position of the disinherited in every age is – what must their attitudes be toward the rulers, the controllers of political, social and economic life?

But what must also be confronted by those of us who purport to care about the plight of the disinherited is what is our attitude towards them?

So, it is not just what you think about Trump or whomever you choose to direct your attention. The deeper question for me is what are you doing in your school to equip your children to be able to transform their world?

Are we screaming about Trump (not saying you shouldn’t) while we are not creating strong learning environments for our children that are immediately in our line of sight every day?

The strength of the charter school effort is not just our existence; it is understanding the purpose of our existence.  I support charter schools as long as they work for our children. If they don’t work then they have no value. Work for me is more than test scores: It’s treating our kids with respect; It’s understanding all of the issues that impact them before they ever get to school; It’s confronting the issues of race and class in our facilities and in our behavior towards our children; In the rules and regulations that we set up in so many instances to control our children because we are unable to manage them. It’s recognizing that as Paul Tough said in his latest book, that poor children are capable of deep learning.

Yes we must advocate for charter schools. Yes we must celebrate our strengths while acknowledging our weaknesses.  Some charter schools in DC have done and continue to do great work for our children. Those that are well-serving our children should be celebrated and supported. Those that with help can be of value to our children should get that help. Those that nobody’s children should be in should lose their right to exist. Of course I believe that about the traditional system as well.

So my message is simply this, our strength flows from our commitment to purpose and not to the method to get to purpose. Because the moment you get committed to the institutional arrangements to get to purpose as opposed to the purpose you are on the way to becoming the new protectors of the status quo.

I leave you with the words of William Daggett, “We must be committed to our childrens’ hopes, dreams, aspirations and prayers more than to any particular institutional arrangements.”

The state of Virginia has almost no charter schools.  The reason is that their opening is dependent on approval by local county school boards.  Of course, no public body such as this would allow for one second an alternative to their monopoly over how kids are taught.

So now some charter enthusiasts are jumping for joy that a bill may reach Governor Terry McAuliffe‘s desk that would permit the Virginia Board of Education to form new regional public charter school divisions that could approve charters in localities with low performing schools.  The legislation is crafted so that charter schools could not be started n extremely small districts so the existing educational institutions in these areas are not harmed. In addition, in all jurisdictions no money for charters would be taken from existing traditional public schools.

It’s a really bad idea.  The bedrock of school choice is the competition for students.  Where good charter laws exist, like in the District of Columbia, the money follows the child.  Where is the strong incentive for the regular schools to improve if their budgets are not negatively impacted when a family decides to send their kids somewhere else?  I can see it now.  The teachers and administrators of neighborhood schools, faced with the loss of pupils, will justify the situation by claiming that the charter offers something they do not such as a robotics class or a chess club.  It will just be another day at the office.

If we as a society really want to jump-start an end to the status quo then the consequences of a scholar moving from one classroom to another needs to be extreme.  This is not a party where everyone gets along to get along so that feelings are not hurt.  This is a war against the dark stubborn mediocrity that has ensured that every country on the face of the earth is preparing their next generation to be more globally competitive than those living in the United States.  The situation is especially acute for kids in America living in poverty who today, right now, are performing academically two, three, four or more years below grade level.

We need to stop apologizing for asking politicians for school choice by crafting weak laws that create charter schools in name only.  Philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand pointed out that a thing is not a thing because it has a name.  An object is what it is because of its unique recognizable characteristics. It is much better to junk the proposed law in Virginia and start over with a bill that has guts and teeth.  You would think that it would be easier for legislators to be brave when it comes to the future of our children.