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Will the Georgia charter ballot amendment improve student performance or be a Brain Drain?

With the Georgia Charter School amendment on the ballot, the question is; Do charter school improve student performance or move A-B students causing a Brain Drain, leaving the rest behind?

In November 2012, GA voters will vote for HR 1162 to bypass the GA Supreme Court ruling and reestablish the second state board, Georgia Charter School Commission (GCSC).

The November 2012 ballot reads as “Provides for improving student achievement and parental involvement through more public charter school options.”  Also “Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended to allow state or local approval of public charter schools upon the request of local communities?”

No where in HR 1162 does it say that charters will improve 'student achievement' or increase 'parental involvement.'  The local board and Board of Education (BOE) already approves public charters that meet their standards.  If voted yes, it will create another state board solely for charters – the GCSC.

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Herb Garrett, executive director of the Georgia School Superintendents Association, believes “The ballot question is intentionally misleading and is designed to elicit a “yes” vote from uninformed voters.”

Currently, charters are already approved by local school boards and the GA BOE, where approved charter schools get local and/or state funds.  If voters vote yes on the ballot, there will be two state education boards:  One for traditional public and locally approved charter schools, and the other solely for state-approved charter schools.

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The members of the GCSC are appointed by the Governor, the LT Governor and the Speaker of the House, not locally elected; which would not be local control.

The ballot also implies that parents only have 2 choices for education.  Currently parents have 5 public school choices like:  Traditional Public schools, Magnet schools since the 1970s, Charter schools since 1992, Virtual cyber Charter schools online, and Homeschooling since the 1990s.

If parents can afford $1,200-20,000 or more in tuition per month or per year, then there are 3 more choices for parents beyond public schools like:  nonprofit Independent Private schools that can be religious or boarding schools.  Parochial religious schools and Proprietary Private schools run by for-profit groups under the National Independent Private Schools Association.  For 2012 the Georgia Department of Education (GADOE) shows there are 949 GA private schools and out of 2,289 GA public schools, there are 217 for-profit public charter schools.

Dr. John Barge, the GADOE Georgia School Superintendent since 2010 and a Republican, supports charter schools as part of a broad educational options, but “cannot support the creation of a new and costly state bureaucracy that takes away local control of schools and unnecessarily duplicates the good work already being done by local districts, the Georgia Department of Education, and the state Board of Education."

Barge further said, "What's more, this constitutional amendment would direct taxpayer dollars into the pockets of out-of-state, for-profit charter school companies whose schools perform no better than traditional public schools and locally approved charter schools (and worse, in some cases)."

Lee Raudonis, communications consultant with Georgians for Educational Excellence said “If the amendment passes, the Commission could overrule the decision of local school boards.  The state BOE would no longer have the role of reversing a local decision.”

Since 1995, local school boards have created and converted charters, but some school districts have been skeptical of the competition and test scores, for students and tax dollars.  The GCSC was created in 2008, after 2007 had 26 petitions submitted to local school boards, and 26 were denied.

Yet the GADOE 2007-08 Annual Reports on Georgia charters, showed in 2008 that “17 new charter schools opened their doors, the largest annual increase in operational charter schools since the the Charter Schools Act was signed into law in 1993.”  So from 2007-08, before GCSC existed, there were 31 new charters approved in 2 years, opened by local boards.

From 2009-10, the GCSC approved 17 charters, denied 37 and 7 were withdrawn, out of 62 total charter applications.  The GCSC, made 75% of the time, the same decision to reject charters that the local board did.  The GCSC only approved 25% of all charter petitions, even if those same charters did not go before the local school boards, but instead the GCSC.  The local school boards, BOE and GCSC look at charters on the context of:  academic, financial, governance, compliance, legal requirements, needs, priorities, and other issues to approve a charter application.

Other than applications, the GA ballot is about student performance that has been of concern since 2001; where K-12 schools rely on standardize exam scores, to rate student's and the school's improvement.  Other than the AYP and CRCT tests, there are other tests like the:  EOCT, GHSGT, GAA, CCGPS, GPS, CRCT-M, Writing Assessments, GKIDS, AP, ACT, SAT and more; for schools to depend on for funding based on student's collective performance.  I wonder if lawmakers that support these exams, ever taken them and passed with high scores?

In the 1980s, public education depended on basic skill tests to determine student's performance, which morphed into GHSGT and later the ECT, but the increase in standardized tests, occurred after 2000.

“Teaching to the Test,” has become a common saying to not teach to the general subject and have schools dependent on these tests for funding, which started with Clinton and the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program, under President G.W. Bush.

Garrett believes standardize tests, “have been around for decades, but they were typically used for the purpose for which they were originally designed:  To give information to teachers about student strengths and weaknesses so that the teacher could make necessary instructional adjustments.  They were never meant as school rating tools.”

From the 1970s to the early 1990s, Garrett explains that “standardized tests were not 'high stakes.' Back then, test scores weren't used to 'rate' schools and try to 'embarrass' them into improvement (which is exactly what NCLB did).”  Garrett believes, “Folks were not as obsessed with 'measuring schools' as they are today.  We have No Child Left Behind to thank for our obsession with test scores.”

The AYP, a federal test taken from K-12 under the NCLB law, only applies to public schools that receive Title 1, yet private schools do not require AYP testing, because they are exempt from most educational laws, like for-profit public charter schools.  Each school has to have 95% of all students meet the minimum annual target.

After 2 years, if the school did not pass the AYP by 95%; schools then are considered needing improvement for “individual subgroups” on reading, math and language arts.  If after 5 or more years of failing the AYP, the public school either was:  reconstructed (or fired) the staff, contracted with an outside group, the state took over, was reopened as a charter school, or some other form of reconstructing (like becoming a theme school, closed or became a smaller school).

The 2010-11 Georgia Charter Schools Annual Report by GADOE found, “During the 2010–11 school year, Georgia had 162 charter schools in operation serving 56 districts. Of these charter schools, 70% made Adequate Yearly Progress this year. This is comparable to the 73% of traditional public schools that made Adequate Yearly Progress this year. “  The report goes further by stating that, “Over the past five years, the overall performance of charter schools compared to traditional public schools has been mixed but both groups have traditionally demonstrated the same general performance trends.”

The CRCT, is a GA test since 2000, for 1-8th grade to test English/language arts (ELA) and math, while 3-8th grade also test for science and social studies.  In 2011, when 178 GA teachers and 38 principals were found to be changing wrong answers or allowing students to make the changes on the CRCT exam this was, because of such draconian laws and testing linked to funding.

In 2012, GA improved in the CRCT scores and Dr. Barge say this was great news and that “Teachers are doing a great job teaching the more rigorous Georgia Performance Standards and they are to be applauded for raising expectations for all students.”  GA had gains in grade 5 Social Studies and grade 8 Science, but scores decreased in grade 3 Science, grade 4-5 Math and grade 8 Math.  Barge said, “While I am pleased to see an increase in the majority of the exams, I am concerned about those where we saw decreases or no change at all.”

The CRCT will be replaced by a new test, set on "common core" academic standards.  Barge said, “As we begin teaching the Common Core Georgia Performance Standards next school year, we know the curriculum and the tests will be more difficult...and will continue to offer, teachers the necessary professional development to ensure they are equipped to deliver these new, more rigorous standards and to prepare our students for the next step.”

NCLB allowed states to focus on “highly qualified” teachers and link test scores to school budgets.  Where if the students collectively failed, the school losses money, which makes it harder to improve scores, and the school fails:  A self-fulfilling prophesy.  Yet, if school budgets are cut, because AYP and CRCT test scores do not have 95% of all students in each school to pass the tests; how than can schools improve with less money, staff and teachers?

The teachers I have met say the same thing:  There is no one way to teach all children.  Yet students need to know the basic skills, before going to college or the workforce.  Why then create standardize tests to judge learning in all American students, if they all learn differently?  What is a better way to measure learning, beyond test scores?  Colleges do not have standardized tests for every class and year, only the SAT and GRE to enter the college; why then do this from K-12?

The Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) recently wants a waiver from NCLB, to adopt the Virginia and D.C. plan to have reading and math scores based on race and ethnicity.  Cheryl Etters, spokesperson for FLDOE wants to set “realistic and attainable” goals, not lower expectations.  Etters said, "Of course we want every student to be successful...But we do have to take into account their starting point."  The new test scores, would also be set for disabled and English learning students.

UCLA professor Jeannie Oakes said, “Once we put students in groups, we give them very different opportunities to learn — with strong patterns of inequality across teachers, experience, and competence.”  Oakes believed, “There was this pervasive view that Latino and African American kids can’t measure up in a way that more affluent or white kids can and we can’t do anything about it.”

 A 2004 report by Jeannie Oakes UCLA/IDEA tilted, “Separate and Unequal 50 Years After Brown:  California's Racial “Opportunity Gap,” showed that “(California) increased emphasis on teaching all students to rigorous academic standards and evaluating schools with standards-based tests, (which) requires sophisticated teaching, materials required to learn standards.”  Oakes also found what is:

“Making matters worse, California’s Public School Accountability Act (PSAA) and the Federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) blind us to the racial  opportunity gap.  Both reforms have strong test-based accountability systems that are meant to provide incentives that will improve educational outcomes.  However, neither attempts to ensure that all students have access to the knowledge and skills that the tests cover.  Their narrow focus on outcomes, while important, tends to make the gap in opportunities invisible or, to the extent they are seen, unimportant. As such, neither the PSAA nor NCLB reform has brought quality or fairness to California’s schools.”

In 2009, the CREDO study comparing charter and traditional schools in 16 states, including GA found that “This analysis shows that in the aggregate charter schools are not advancing the learning gains of their students as much as traditional public schools. The results are significant in both reading and math, though the effects are small in size...Charter students who are Black or Hispanic experience lower levels of academic growth than their peers in traditional public schools. Special education students fare about the same. The results vary strongly by state and are shown to be influenced in significant ways by several characteristics of state charter school policies.”

Other than worries about student's test performance, a study by the Center for Information and Research on Civil Learning & Engagement at Tufts University; found only 9 states require a civic education to graduate high school like, “learning about citizenship, government, law, current events and related topics.”  Currently 21 states require a state-designed social studies test, yet there was 34 states doing these tests in 2001.  GA was one of the 9 states that requires civic education, but will be phased out.

Since 2000, the study found social studies assessments shifted from multiple-choice and performance task essays, “to a greater extent, using multiple-choice only tests that focus primarily on memorizing information, rather than demonstrating civic skills;” thanks to both NCLB and Race to the Top for over a decade.

Other than changes in exams, some schools have focused on teacher merit-based pay programs; to link student exam scores to how well a teacher teaches.  Again, if most teachers believe there is no one way to teach all students; why then use a merit-based pay program to link student performance to teacher performance, if each individual student learns differently and every teacher teaches different?

One merit based study, by the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University, examined the test scores of 300 middle school math teachers.  The Project on Incentives in Teaching (POINT Experiment) studied from 2007-09 on 5-8 graders in Nashville public schools.  The study found little evidence that merit-based incentives improved student achievement, but did find improvement in 5th grader test scores for 2-3 years by teachers that earned bonuses.

POINT did not test for other types of teacher incentives or support systems, like instructional guidance or professional development.  Half of the 296 volunteers were given $15,000 per year to improve on the TCAP test, and the other half were not.  The first group got 33.6% of their bonuses, averaging $10,000.  Yet half of the 296 teachers remained by the third year of the study, because either they left the school system, stopped teaching math or moved on to teach other grades.  So, if around 150 dropped out, this affects the statistics and final results.

In 2010, GA Governor Perdue tried to propose a merit-based program on salary based on experience and academic degrees, not tenure, after getting a Race to the Top grant, but this was not implemented.

Marcus A. Winters, a senior fellow at Manhattan Institute and assistant professor at University of Colorado study entitled “Transforming Tenure: Using Value-Added Modeling to Identify Ineffective Teachers,” examined test scores to find how individual teachers contribute to the student's performance over time.  The value-added model (VAM) was created by lawmakers, which most never taught students, as a tool of accountability, but the computer program ignores other factors to judge a human teacher.

Winters used VAM scores from Florida's teacher data to predicted what teacher “were effective in future years in raising student achievement,” but Winters also said VAMs should not be used to decide a teacher's fate.  VAMs was found to be a better way to predict teacher's future effectiveness than other methods, but, Florida relied on VAM scores to keep or fire teachers after their first 3 years.

Winters believe “It is imperfect,” but “Can it improve upon our ability to identify teachers who, in future years, are going to be effective in the classroom?”  Yet, if schools are use different versions of VAM software, which creates different consequences, then human teachers are being judged by a computer.  So accountability by computers and test scores, is the problem, not teachers or students.

If VAM is nothing more than a statistical computer tool, much like the algorithm software programs used to judge if a mortgage loan is approved or predict how a stock in future will perform; then we are relying on computers to make human judgments?  These programs are not given all the various life factors by computer programmers; which is why people got mortgage loans they cannot afford, stocks crashed because other factors in life were not imputed, and this is why good teachers lose their job by the judgment of a computer program, created by human beings.

No evaluation system is perfect to measure each individual's productivity, nor can VAMs predict the future; yet Florida relied on software, much like banks relied on a computer to judge mortgage loans, and we see how well that reliance on computers, helped the Global Recession.

Diane Ravitch, a NY University professor that worked for Clinton and G.H.W. Bush as the U.S. assistant secretary of education , said when it comes to test scores “All of this is predictable...We're warping the education system in order to meet artificial targets.”

In a 2010 interview on Democracy Now, Diane Ravitch found working under G.H.W. Bush administration with ideas of school choice, vouchers, charter schools and accountability meant, “who should be punished...Teachers should be punished.  The unions should be demonized.”

Ravitch thought that education was a nonpartisan issue, but she also believed in equal educational opportunity for all children.  Working in the Clinton administration, both the Democrats and Republicans in Congress agreed on the theme of accountability, later adopted by both G.W. Bush and Obama.

Ravitch found in 1994-95 Lynne Cheney attacked history standards believing they were politically correct, so Congress under Clinton said, “Let's not touch this whole idea of standards.  Let's just stick with basic skills,” which is why reading and math, not science and arts are tested, because of the “argument over evolution if you try to talk about science.”

Ravitch found that NCLB, “believed always in a strong curriculum,” but she and others got caught up in the “choice rhetoric” and advocated for charter schools.  NCLB was a “failure” and “evidence says that charter schools are going to lead us into a swamp,” because national test scores and charter schools in 2003 “didn't do any better than regular public schools” and the same in 2005-09, where charters “have never outperformed regular public schools.”

The testing system, as Ravitch has found is the, “great legacy of No Child Left Behind...a system of institutionalized fraud.”  Yet, if states do not raise the bar on test scores, the school is punished, closed or turned into privatized charter schools.

This privatization is being done by what Ravitch calls “The Billionaire Boys Club,” under Obama's Race to the Top school reform grant of $4.35B, which is supported by the Broad Foundation, Gates Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation; “are committed now to charter schools and to evaluating teachers by test scores,” that has become the policy of the US DOE.

Ravitch found Obama's NewSchools Venture Fund that operates the Race to the Top, exists to promote charter schools because, “if you want to be part of this $4 billion fund, you better be prepared to create lots more charter schools,” which are influenced by these foundations.  So Race to the Top, “is not equal educational opportunity,” but “a race in which one or two or three states race to the top to have more privatized schools, more test-based accountability, more basic skills, no emphasis on a broad curriculum for all kids, and not equal educational opportunity.”

If for-profit public charter schools or Public-Private Partnerships, which outsource services to private companies; are dependent on tax dollar government contracts to operate. Why then are they not accountable to taxpayers by laws?  If all public schools become for-profit public charters without other choices of schools, like magnets etc. to be considered, then we are spending millions on an expensive education experiment, with the focus on test scores and teacher's merits?

A study by the Civil Rights Project found, “racially and socioeconomically isolated schools tend to have unequal educational resources, higher drop out rates, and prepare students poorly for life after high school. Furthermore, schools of white segregation - as well as those that concentrate students of color - do not provide the educational opportunities for students to learn to challenge stereotypes and live and work in a diverse society.”

Erica Frankenberg, co-author of the study said, “President Barack Obama just delivered his budget to the U.S. Congress which increases both incentives and resources to create more charter schools...charter schools, particularly those in the western United States are havens for white re-segregation from public schools; requirements for providing essential equity data to the federal government go unmet across the nation; and magnet schools are overlooked, in spite of showing greater levels of integration and academic achievement than charters.”

If Oakes and Garrett are correct about the ineffectiveness of relying on tests, then future schools will be educationally segregated by test scores.  Where gifted A students and average B-C lower income and lower middle class students, will be going to for-profit public charter schools; but are selected by lotteries and no law will accuse these lotteries of discrimination.  While the failing, disabled, and/or special educated students will have to go to traditional public schools, which have to accept all children by law.

This is nothing more than a Brain Drain by test score segregation from traditional public schools to for-profit pubic charter schools.  If budgets are cut in student programs, like special education or extra tutoring; why be surprised when collectively student scores go down?  Some student scores will go up, but if we add the other students lower scores, collectively; the scores show the school and teachers as failing the students by mixing A students with B-F students.  Only A-B students in one school will create high scores; so this is a brain drain or educational segregation.

So with the charter school amendment ballot, to divert control from local school boards to an Atlanta appointed state commission; does not seem like local control and is simply a way to privatize all public schools by some Democrats and Republicans.  The GCSC will be a second state board to create and convert public schools into charters; and have taxpayers, local parents and PTAs, as far out as Waycross and Dalton to look to their Atlanta board, for their local control.

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