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Rise Up for Students is a blog advocating for racial equity and radical empathy in our schools, in Seattle and beyond
Yet again, charter schools and the principle of school choice prevailed this week in Washington’s courts.
Great, wonderful, fine, etc. This is important, but at the same time, we’ve had this conversation before. It’s time to dig deeper.
Why has all this been happening? Moving beyond talking points and rhetoric, why have people and organizations really been fighting charter schools so vehemently?
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Classroom teachers have always been the biggest agents for change in our education system. Most reform ideas have come from teachers, who shine a light on inequity and invent new ways of organizing schools and delivering instruction.
Teachers unions, on the other hand, are increasingly out of step with their younger members and often stand in the way of change that would both help students and support teachers. If they want to remain relevant, they should read Coggins’ book.
Today, teachers unions are stuck in an antiquated, industrial-style model, focused on working conditions, job protections, wages and benefits. We all agree teachers should be well-compensated and work in healthy, productive environments. After all, teachers work where children learn.
Read More"As we greet a new school year and say goodbye to another summer, I can’t help but notice that the rabid fervor over charter schools in Washington State has mostly flamed out.
At this time last year, everyone was still up in arms. The Washington Education Association had just led the filing of another lawsuit against the charter sector in an effort to maintain its monopoly on free public education.
Our state attorney general had just entered the fray, and the NAACP had issued its first suggestion of a nationwide moratorium on charter schools.
By February of this year, however, a judge had ruled in favor of charter schools, and the several months since have seen them slip — at last — out of the limelight for a moment. "
Read MoreEach state is currently in the process of establishing a comprehensive education and accountability plan under ESSA, which they'll submit to the federal government for approval.
These plans will determine, among other things, how each state will address its opportunity gaps, how they'll measure progress toward closing those gaps, and how they will help struggling schools.
Our nation has been built on a sturdy framework of systemic racism, and that reality is quite evident in our public school system. If we want to close gaps and change outcomes for low-income students and students of color, this is where it begins.
States don't have a great track record of upholding human rights when they don't "have to," however. The federal government has been more likely to carve out new protections for human and civil rights than the states. Of course, those protections are always gradual and reluctant, but it's still typically the federal government leading the way with policy that leads to implemented changes at the state level.
Examples do exist, though, of states going out on a limb in the name of equity, and those bold moves have a way of impacting the nation. Washington State did that for marriage equality earlier this decade. We have a chance to do the same for educational equity if our leadership makes brave, potentially unpopular decisions during this critical time.
The state superintendent's office in Washington (OSPI) has convened an Accountability System Workgroup to work on these issues. Under the direct leadership of Michaela Miller and Ben Rarick, the committee currently consists of a whopping 39 members.
As I understand, OSPI promised to reduce the size of the workgroup, but this promise was then broken. This is especially problematic because many members of the group are redundant in their role and voting interests, allowing the WASA/AWSP/WSSDA contingent to largely vote as a bloc, effectively negating any diversity of opinion or perspective in terms of outcomes.
In the end it will mean district staff are unchecked in designing a system for holding themselves accountable to student outcomes.
Our state has appalling opportunity gaps along racial and socioeconomic lines, and it is time we held our education system to a substantially higher standard than the level of systemic oppression it's currently operating.
We know the current fascist-leaning federal administration doesn’t care about public education. We need OSPI to refuse to participate in perpetuating the failure of our kids. The time is now or never.
Attorney Rob McKenna, who represented intervening charter school parents and families in the recently settled case, speaks alongside a group of charter school students and parents in January. (Photo by Matt Halvorson)
Hey, great news! The charter school lawsuit is over! A judge upheld the law as constitutional.
It's time to celebrate and put all this hyper-political nonsense behind us. It's time to move forward, building a network of great schools with the ability to operate outside the purview of our systemically racist, intentionally colonial public school system.
Wait... didn't we already do this?
Yes.
First, the details, courtesy of Paige Cornwell of the Seattle Times:
A King County Superior Court judge ruled Friday that the plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging Washington’s charter-school law didn’t demonstrate that charter schools are unconstitutional.
Friday’s ruling is part of an ongoing legal battle over the constitutionality of Washington’s charter-school law. The lawsuit was filed by a coalition of parents, educators and civic groups.
Coalition members haven’t decided whether they’ll appeal yet, said Rich Wood, spokesman for the Washington Education Association.
The state’s eight charter schools are public schools, open to any student, but they are run by private organizations. About 1,600 students attend charter schools in the state, according to the Washington State Charter Schools Association.
"With [this] decision, students can return their focus to learning, and parents can rest easy knowing their kids’ schools can continue to provide their kids with the quality public education they deserve," said said Tom Franta, CEO of WA Charters.
But can they?
After all, Rich Wood and the teachers union "haven't decided whether they'll appeal yet." They haven't decided yet whether they will continue this specific version of their dogged defense of the status quo. They haven't decided yet whether they will needlessly repeat history for a third time.
"We face a group of politically motivated and powerful organizations who want to keep us in court and attempt to make our future uncertain," said DFER's Shirline Wilson at a press conference last month prior to the final hearing. "In the case of El Centro vs. Washington, I want you to understand that this is purely an attempt to shutter these effective public schools and remove our choices for gap-closing education. We refuse to be intimidated, and we refuse to stand down."
I like to think maybe the WEA and its cronies might give up this costly, distracting fight against its own past and future, but history tells us this lawsuit isn't over.
At least we can rest assured, based on that same history, that school choice won't go down without a fight in Washington.
"We will not be silenced by lobbying groups that value politics over truly improving public education outcomes," Wilson said.
And for now, we get to celebrate again, and breathe a rare sigh of relief. Whatever the politics suggest, whatever the status quo would have you believe, public school choice is an important civil rights issue, and it won the day again in Washington. Thank goodness for some good news.
A coalition of unions, led by the Washington Education Association, is once again pushing to eradicate charter schools in Washington State. That’s nothing new. The WEA has been fighting hard to maintain its monopoly on public school choice across the state for years now.
In fact, it’s been such a long and dogged battle that it’s easy to get lost in the fray. Let’s catch up.
Washington State is currently home to about 1600 charter school students, and plans are in place to open Willow School in Walla Walla next fall, along with a Summit school in West Seattle and a Green Dot middle school in South Seattle.
Everything is on track to continue.
Also set to continue, often seemingly to infinity, is the coordinated opposition to our state’s charter school movement.
The Washington State Supreme Court questioned the constitutionality of charter schools in 2015 based on a technicality around such schools’ oversight. The court’s initial opinion was lifted almost word for word from a document produced by the Washington Education Association (WEA — the state teacher’s union.)
The unconstitutionality loophole was closed last spring through a partnership with the Mary Walker School District near Spokane, which agreed to host the state’s existing charter schools and designate them as Alternative Learning Environments (ALEs).
This action was based on a resolution passed by the district’s board, part of which read, “the District believes that all students should have a choice in their educational program.”
Another key part of last spring’s decision is that funding for the charters in Washington comes from a specially designated lottery fund, which is separate from the pool of money used for public education.
But the saga does not end here! The Charter School Act was challenged again late last summer so the movement remains under fire.
This time around, the plaintiffs have been led in name by El Centro de la Raza, a Seattle-area non-profit that receives grant funding from the WEA, but the case is almost entirely union-driven. Many unions involved have ties to education, but many don’t. Here’s the full list of plaintiffs (unions in bold):
This list is significant because it shows that the WEA views charter schools as a threat to unions, not to education. They are not looking at this through an equity-based, student-first lens, but rather through a lens based on the best interests of teachers and their union as an institution. As a result, the WEA has pulled together a group of unions and of predictably supportive grantees to protect their own self-interest, disregarding the specific needs of the students they serve.
A hearing last November before a courtroom packed full of charter teachers, parents and students saw a slew of procedural decisions, almost all of which fell in favor of charters.
The primary question at hand was, do these unions have standing in this case? Can they even claim they are somehow impacted by the charter law?
The judge struck down most of the plaintiffs as not having taxpayer standing, but left an opening for them to come back with a named party leading the way with a rewritten complaint. They will basically return as individuals representing their unions and organizations.
One claim from suit is that the ALE designation was more workaround than satisfactory solution, and the plaintiffs wanted to make sure the ALE wasn’t an option again. Judge John H. Chun said essentially said he considered this too much supposition and too little substance — that he wouldn’t rule on something that wasn’t presently an issue.
Chun also threw out the plaintiffs’ red-herring claim that charters shouldn’t be funded before we have met the McCleary mandate to fully fund our broader public school system, calling it speculation at best. The state legislature will have to to do something about McCleary no matter what, and charters are unlikely to impact McCleary as the two are funded separately, pulling from separate pots of money.
All of this is building toward another hearing on Jan. 27, 2017, to debate whether charters are constitutional and whether the money funding them is still somehow affecting the common fund. They will argue the meat of the case and the judge will rule. And then we’ll keep on going.
So, the existing handful of charter schools continue to operate, offering much-needed school choice to hundreds of families in different communities. They will keep moving forward as well and keep running good schools. The proof, ultimately, will be in the pudding. Great schools will overcome great opposition in time.
In the meantime, even as the charter school association and its attorneys work to take the burden of this distraction off the schools and their students, the environment created by this union battle axe remains unsettling for all involved. It’s scary for families, nerve-wracking for teachers and administrators. It’s exhausting.
But we will keep on moving. Change isn’t always comfortable, but the status quo won’t do any longer. We need more and better school choices for our students, and we need better outcomes in our traditional schools. If the price for that is being exhausted, so it goes.
The web of lawsuits around Washington State's charter schools has gotten tighter and more tangled.
Parents and students involved in the charter school suit stand behind lead attorney Rob McKenna at Tuesday's press conference.
Led by Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s office, the State of Washington filed a motion today to dismiss two of the plaintiffs’ core arguments in El Centro de la Raza v. Washington, another lawsuit filed against charters under the leadership of the Washington Education.
"Those arguments are (1) an attempt to tie charter public schools to the state’s underfunding of basic public education, which is a separate matter that is under active supervision by the state Supreme Court, and (2) an attack on last academic year’s operation of charter public schools, an argument that a court cannot entertain because, in these circumstances, the plaintiffs’ argument can only be read as assuming too much or too little, too late," said the Washington State Charter Schools Association in a statement, "In either case, both arguments are also meritless."
Today’s filing follows yesterday’s announcement that 12 families representing the charter sector filed a collective motion of their own calling for the dismissal all of the organizational plaintiffs named in the lawsuit.
"The motion was filed on the grounds that the advocacy organizations are merely attempting to rehash policy arguments in a courtroom by recasting them as constitutional concerns – policy arguments that were decided at both ballot box and in the 2016 Legislative session," said the WA Charters statement. "The Washington Education Association, the League of Women Voters and El Centro De La Raza are among the lobbying groups the intervenors are asking the court to dismiss."
The state’s existing charter public schools opened after voters passed a ballot initiative in 2012. When the Washington Supreme Court identified a glitch in the voter-approved charter school law that conflicted with the state constitution, a bipartisan group of lawmakers studied, vetted, and in March 2016 passed a bill specifically designed to address the Supreme Court’s concerns. Legal experts from both sides of the aisle, including non-partisan staff attorneys, combed through SB 6194 to ensure it would pass constitutional muster and restore the will of the voters by creating a path for charter public schools’ long-term success.
Washington’s operating charter public schools began their second school year this month, having quickly become a vital part of Washington’s public education system for the students and families they serve. The schools already are making a quantifiable difference in the lives of hundreds of Washington families, particularly in historically under-resourced and under-served communities.
More than 67 percent of charter public school students in Washington are students of color, as compared to 43 percent of non-charter public school students statewide. In addition, approximately two-thirds of charter public school students qualify for free or reduced-price school meals. At four of Washington’s charter public schools, that number exceeds 70 percent.
Charter schools are a type of public school, approved and overseen by a state or district authorizer. Like all public schools, they do not charge tuition, they are open to all students, and they are publicly funded. However, charter public schools are held more accountable for showing improved student achievement. In exchange for greater accountability, teachers and principals are given more flexibility to customize their teaching methods and curriculum to improve student learning.
By Matt Halvorson
That's right. Sixty percent of 4th-graders in Washington State do not meet the national standard for proficiency.
And it gets worse.
Before we get to the numbers, here's the foundation of what we're talking about (courtesy of WhyProfiencyMatters.com):
"Proficiency means working, in-depth knowledge of a subject. Setting the academic bar at proficiency ensures students are on track for college or a career after graduation.
"WhyProficiencyMatters.com determines the adequacy of each state’s reading and math proficiency requirements. It does so by comparing the percent of students deemed proficient on state tests in 2013 versus the percent deemed proficient on tests administered that year by the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
"[The] NAEP is considered the gold standard of measuring academic proficiency. A large gap in results indicates that a state needs to set the academic bar higher for its students."
Here's what that gap looks like in Washington State for 4th-grade reading proficiency (again from WhyProficiencyMatters.com):
Looking at all those numbers, my brain tries to take me in a lot of different directions at once. I'll get to a couple of those paths in a few lines. But first, here's how WhyProficiencyMatters.com is looking at these figures:
"A proficiency cut score is an actual number (score) on an assessment that draws the line determining where a student is proficient. States use different tests and set different proficiency cut scores to determine the proficiency level for knowledge and skill mastery. When proficiency cut scores are set too low, it conveys a false sense of student achievement."
In other words, we're telling some of our kids (not to mention their parents, their teachers and ourselves) that they're ready for college when they're really not. And we're not setting a bar for any of our kids that's in line with national expectations.
That's not good. But it's good to know that it's happening. Seems like a good thing to speak up about.
But mostly, I look at all those numbers, and I can't help feeling like by focusing on the proficiency gap, we're just pointing out a particularly wet spot in a state that's completely under water. Look at those numbers!
Only 40 percent of 4th graders in Washington can read well enough to be considered proficient by national standards. Three out of five 4th-graders aren't proficient readers. What?
Only 25 percent of black 4th-graders and 17 percent of Latino 4th-graders are proficient readers.
That's so terrible! A full 83 percent of Latino 4th-graders can't read up to standard, and 75 percent of African-American 4th-graders are in the same boat.
White 4th-graders, on the other hand, are 49-percent proficient. Which is way better, and also still so terrible. More than half of white 4th-graders in progressive Washington State have not been taught to read as well as we believe they deserve.
Only 23 percent of 4th-graders whose families qualify as "low-income" have been taught to read to the national standard. How is public education the great equalizer if the wealthier among us are paying for better schools and better neighborhoods?
Not only can we not rely on our state government to fix this problem, they are (at best) years away from addressing it. We are (at best) a few years away from fully funding our public schools, and then it will be years from there before the data bears out the truth that money makes a difference, but it isn't everything.
Not only can we not rely on our teachers union to fix this problem, the WEA is actively clinging to this miserable status quo, fighting tooth and nail against racially conscious innovation in such forms as Teach For America and the establishment of a charter school network. And speaking of money, the WEA won't talk about anything but money until our schools are fully funded, so until we take that escape hatch away from them, they'll continue to use it.
We are not teaching our kids in this state.
Why are we doing anything but changing?
By Matt Halvorson
Every day this school year, every kid in every charter school classroom in the state has studied and learned without knowing if his or her school would be allowed to stay open.
Every day this year, every teacher in every charter school classroom in the state has worked hard to teach every single kid, all while knowing the schools that pay them might be forced to shut their doors.
Every day this year, each one of the 1,100 charter school students in our state -- including some in my neighborhood, and probably in yours -- have heard the daily expressions of systemic and overt racism and classism directed at them and their school.
They have felt attacked and unwanted by their own communities and their own state, even as a wall of teachers, administrators, parents, friends, advocates and legislators did their best to shield them and fight for them.
But today, finally, we are on the verge of something different.
The Washington State Senate voted in favor of equity in education today, approving a bill by a 26-23 margin that will save public charters schools and create a long-term path for their success.
The vote comes on the heels of yesterday's bipartisan show of support in the House. The bill now heads to Gov. Jay Inslee's desk to be signed into law, finally putting to rest this last-ditch effort on the part of the state teacher's union and other stagnant education organizations to block charter schools from gaining a foothold in the state.
“We expect Gov. Inslee will respect the bipartisan legislature’s vote, respect the will of the voters, and most of all," said Tom Franta, CEO of the Washington State Charter Schools Association, "respect the parents and students who worked so hard for this victory today on behalf of not just their schools, but every kid statewide.”
Advocates mounted a powerful grassroots campaign which, coupled with a paid effort, called steadily on legislators to reinstate the 2012 law overturned by the State Supreme Court last fall.
More than 1,100 families already benefitting from public charter schools were joined by many more voices from Yakima to Walla Walla, Spokane to West Seattle, all advocating for equity in education.
The bill that passed today reflects that effort but does contain some clear compromises that differ from Initiative 1240. The bill eliminates charter school access to local levy monies, and it removes provisions authorizing the conversion of traditional public schools into charter schools.
Still, this bill's passage represents a resounding success for low-income families and families of color in Washington State. And we may see the charter school movement bloom even brighter for having gone survived this assault.
Many, many of those 1,100 students and parents and siblings became activists and advocates in recent months. At first it was simply a fight for themselves and their own schools, but they became part of something much bigger.
For all the dark sides this unconstitutionality business has evoked, and for all the ignorance and fear it has revealed, this is at least one glimmer of a silver lining. In the midst of its shadowy maneuvering, maybe the WEA and its fellow clingers-on to the status quo accidentally activated the Puget Sound's next generation of homegrown advocates for equity in education.
I hope they did. It would serve them right.
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