Charter Schools - Part 1: What are they?

One of the questions I get most from friends who are not educators is, "what is a charter school?" While charter schools are a contentious issue within the education community, the fact is that few people really understand what they are and how they function. Hopefully, I can present a crash course that is balanced and accurate.

For most of the modern era, students have had two options. They either attend their local public school, or they go to a private school such as Catholic school or some other private institution. Local public schools are operated and overseen by the local community. For example, the Plymouth Public Schools in Plymouth, MA, operate as a town department with an elected school committee that oversees policy and and recommends a budget to the town. For some, their children attend a regional school district. This has a similar structure, but since there are multiple towns involved, the nature of the school committee and how the funding is apportioned varies. Local public schools are funded with a combination of state education money and local contributions.

Since a major piece of legislation was passed called the Education Reform Act of 1993, Massachusetts has offered another kind of public school: charter schools. Charter schools are similar to traditional public schools in that they are funded with taxpayer money. However, most charter schools (called Commonwealth Schools in MA) operate outside of the jurisdiction of traditional public school systems. For example, if a charter school opens in your hometown, it is probably operating outside of the control of your local school committee. It has a separate board of trustees, and a separate administration. There are some charters that operate within a school system, called Horace Mann charters, but there are more of the other kind here and in most other states.

But, why?

The history of charter schools begins in a state most would not name when asked to guess: Minnesota. Minnesota opened the first charter school in 1993, during a time when many states were beginning to explore the idea. Massachusetts passed the legislation in 1993 that paved the way for charters, as did states like California in 1992. Many would say that charters were originally designed as an experiment. Could small, locally managed public schools, become centers for trying new education methods that, if successful, could be brought to scale in entire districts? That was what many early proponents of charters wanted to find out.

Ways in which charter schools could operate differently than a traditional school include the length of the school day, what courses are offered, different instructional methods, etc. One could call them "laboratories of best practice." A charter school can be proposed by a wide variety of stakeholders: teachers, community members, etc. Charters must show that they offer an educational program that is substantially different than the one being offered in a traditional public school. Some charters offer an emphasis on a particular subject, like the performing arts. Conservatory Lab Charter School in Boston incorporates learning stringed instruments into the regular education curriculum. Sturgis Charter School in Hyannis operates on the International Baccalaureate program that is used in most European countries.

The oldest charter schools in Massachusetts go all the way back to education reform in 1993. Some schools, like Boston Collegiate Charter and Academy of the Pacific Rim, have been around for most of that time. Many schools, however, are much newer. The reason is that there was a renewed push for charter schools in the early 2000s as a possible solution to failing schools under the landmark No Child Left Behind legislation passed by Congress in 2001. Massachusetts currently has a limit on the amount of charter schools allowed to operate, but pro-charter organizations are trying to lobby the legislature to raise or remove that cap.

That's the basics of what they are and how they started. As you can imagine, this quickly turns into a debate about competition for resources, equity, union busting, and more! I'll cover the politics of charter schools in my next post.

Teacher Pensions - A Dying Benefit?

I am not sure what this space will really become, but I felt the need to park some thoughts on education issues away from my Facebook timeline. I'd love for this to become a blog for both those who are in education and those who are outside the biz. Talking pensions right off the bat is probably not the best way to bring 'em in the door.

But we'll do it. Because it's on my mind.

For those of you who aren't teachers - and those of you who are teachers but don't know anything about it - teachers, administrators, and support staff in Massachusetts pay into the Massachusetts Teachers Retirement System (MTRS). Teachers pay anywhere from 9% to 12% of their gross salary into the system. Every year you get a statement in the mail that makes it seem like you're rich (or poor, depending on how you view it) by showing what you've paid in to date. The idea is that when you hit your magic number combination of years served and age, you'll get 80% of the average of your last five years of salary.

Compared to a 401k, I'm told this is pretty good. Compared to Social Security, this is awesome. Pensions are especially awesome because, unlike a 401k, they are insulated from market downturns. If the bottom falls out of the economy again, you're hypothetically OK. Alas, nothing gold can stay, can it? Pensions, like many social safety net programs, are facing issues regarding solvency. While Massachusetts is one of the better state governments when it comes to having our fiscal house in order, we are just like many others in that we have grossly underfunded our public pensions. According to a recent study, the unfunded liability on the MTRS is somewhere in the neighborhood of $22 billion. There will be a reckoning someday on either the taxpayer side, the beneficiary side, or both.

While I offer no fiscal policy solutions to this issue, I've been thinking a lot this week about a recent piece by Teach Plus CEO Celine Coggins regarding how pensions affect millennials in education. You should absolutely give it a read. She is absolutely correct to point out that, with a teaching force that is increasingly younger and more mobile, pension reform is an important issue that is not being discussed by the "new majority" of educators. She does a great job explaining how salaries have not kept up with cost of living, making it more difficult to achieve the middle class dream of our parents, and putting more pressure on the need for a shorter-term compensation solution to bridge that divide. And sadly, as Celine predicts, any future modifications to account for mobility and a changing work force will probably result in a loss of benefits in some way.

This has me thinking. If the purpose of a pension for the baby boomer generation was to reward long-term employees for decades of service, why can't that still be the case? I realize that teachers don't last as long in the field today and they are likely to move around much more, but shouldn't that be all the more reason to reinforce the concept of a pension plan? In other words, shouldn't we be looking for more incentives that keep great teachers in the classroom (preferably the same one) for the bulk of their careers, and not catering to the current trend of mobility? Critics will say pensions cause ineffective teachers to overstay their welcome so they can cash in on the retirement, but that's an accountability issue, not a benefits issue.

I think the conversation around pension reform could be a great chance for us to reconsider what it was that kept our fantastic baby boomer educators in the classroom for so long, and what it will take to replicate that with millennials. It will need to be some combination of financial incentives (such as a pension plan that young teachers can actually care about) and non-financial incentives like teacher-leadership opportunities.

Either way, I don't believe that rolling new teachers into 401k-style plans and/or tying yet another aspect of compensation to arbitrary and unreliable performance ratings systems is the best path forward. I'm not opposed to flexibly compensation or rewarding great teaching, I just don't think we have the capacity to do those things correctly at this time.

Celine's post has left me with more questions than answers, but if nothing else, I think I've discovered that I'm old for 29.