Dodgeball Okay!

At the State Risk Quarterly Meeting on Friday, Brian Nelson had some great news.

Using a dodgeball as a prop, he announced that, while Risk was previously against the sport in schools, now Risk has developed protocols under which this most glorious of schoolyard games gets the stamp of approval.

I've always said that the best part of teaching is being able to throw balls at little kids.

Davis District has banned it anyway, and they let everyone know of the horrible consequences of this barbaric sport on the psyche of the poor kids who are forced to play it.

I say bunk.  Dodgeball rocks.

Happy Halloween.

The sad decline of the Deseret News

I like to link to articles in the Deseret News.  I prefer their site to the Tribune because they've always kept their stories online perpetually, while the Trib would deactivate links after two weeks.  But the News really has almost nothing worth linking to anymore.

They still have an Education section of their news site, but it's full of old stories, recycled stories, and imported stories from other states.  Why does the News think its readers care so much about education funding in Kansas?  Not to mention the stories that really have nothing to do with education.  Somehow, stories about the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control end up on the Education page, probably because the story mentions what college someone went to.

It's sad to see, but the News is a shell of its former self, and has been for some time.

The study I'd like to see

Studies of charter schools across the country, like this new one, have shown mixed results.

Focusing on math and reading scores, the authors find compelling evidence that charters under-perform traditional public schools in some locations, grades, and subjects, and out-perform traditional public schools in other locations, grades, and subjects. However, important exceptions include elementary school reading and middle school math and reading, where evidence suggests no negative effects of charter schools and, in some cases, evidence of positive effects. 

Charters can be good, or not so good; but some are really good, but some exceptions exist.

But I think the studies (and the one referenced here is just a study of the literature from other studies) are largely focused on the wrong thing, and therefore leave several questions unanswered.  And we need the answers to these questions.  After all, I'm not a charter school advocate as much as I'm a quality education advocate, and I think that the choice represented by charter schools (as well as other forms of choice) will have a positive impact on public education as a while.  (I define public education as all the resources available to the public that can educate children.)

Here's what I'd like to see answered:

• Is there a model of charter school that works better than others?  Looking at all charters in aggregate will of course result in a mixed bag of outcomes.  That's the nature of new models--some work and some won't.  Let's identify the models of curriculum, teaching, governance, and practices that actually get positive results.
• What are the results of all education when charters come around.  I don't care that charter schools compare better or worse than any other school.  I care that students at all schools compare better than they did a few years ago.  Part of the rationale of choice is that the establishment schools will respond to competition by offering programs and improvements that parents value.  There's anecdotal evidence (see Park City's all-day kindergarten and Alpine's move away from Investigations math) in Utah that such happens, but the studies all compare performance between schools, instead of trends over time.
• Finally, how satisfied are parents?  If parents are happier with more choices, and the results are at least comparable, what should we do at that point?  Do we say that parents can't have choice because society judges the value as not much different, or do we continue to let parents exercise choice because they're getting at least something they want out of the bargain?
• And one more, how do different levels of autonomy and freedom affect performance.  Utah's charters are held to almost all the same hiring requirements, reporting requirements, licensure requirements, funding mechanisms, and all that as public schools.  What about states where charters have more flexibility in whom they can hire as teachers?  Or more flexibility with dollars?  If we're serious about finding new models of education, let's really pull the strings off and let schools innovate like crazy.  Unfortunately, there's no currently existing model to allow for such a study, so let's create one.

We need answers.

Freedom Academy recognized at White House

Freedom Academy in Provo (a UAPCS member school) was recognized by First Lady Michelle Obama and invited to the White House for its successful and healthy school wellness program.

"One of the great areas of focus at the school is offering students healthy menus at both breakfast and lunch. In addition, the entire school environment is designed toencourage healthful choices. For instance, only non-food rewards are offered to students. These rewards include things such as extra recess, class activities, or other privileges."

More choice?

The Legislature's Interim Education Committee heard plans yesterday for a bill that would give tax credits to individuals and corporations that make donations to non-profit scholarship organizations that provide scholarships to students who attend private schools.

"I realize this is a controversial issue, but I do believe with all my heart that these children at the left of the bell-shaped curve deserve better than they’re getting," said Stephenson, R-Draper, referring to low-performing students. He said it could benefit public school teachers because they wouldn’t have to spend as much time focusing on struggling students.  

Some have labeled Stephenson’s proposal as another effort to implement school vouchers, but he reiterated Wednesday that’s not the case. Lawmakers attempted to implement school vouchers for private schools several years ago, but Utahns voted the measure down in a 2007 referendum. 

"This is clearly not a voucher," Stephenson said. "I do not want a voucher. I think the public has spoken."

How is this bill different from the universal voucher program that was repealed in 2007?  First, it's not universal.  Only students at failing schools or with identified at-risk factors would qualify.  Second, the scholarships granted by private organizations would be for up to $5,500--nearly double what would have been available under the school voucher plan--significantly higher than the average private school tuition in Utah, making the program more effective at bringing real choice to more families.

But the opposition to this bill is from the same sources and based on the same fallacies that opposed vouchers--and that oppose charters.  The quotes in the linked article are all about how we need to focus on improving "neighborhood" schools, in other words, eliminate any financial consequence for failure and instead reward failing schools with more money when they don't educate students, and how private schools aren't accountable to the state and might not do a better job, or parents are too stupid to make judgments about what education is best for their own children.

There may be legitimate reasons to oppose any sort of tax incentive that provides choice to private schools as well as public and still support the concept of choice that includes charters, but if so, I haven't ever heard it.

Charters tear it up

While I can't link to the report online because users have to put in their own parameters at the state's PSD Gateway here, data show that charter high schools are performing incredibly well.

When comparing school performance on Language Arts proficiency across the state, six of the top ten (actually, the top nine) of the top performing high schools are charter schools.  They are: UCAS (1), NUAMES (3), Success (4), Tuacahn (6), Itineris (7), and Salt Lake School for the Performing Arts (9).  That's an impresive list.  Intech and Karl G Maeser come in at #s 13 and 14, respectively.

UCAS and NUAMES are also numbers one and three in Science proficiency, with Summit Academy High at number eight.

These results are incredible when you consider that students in charter high schools are only about seven percent of the total high school enrollment in the state, but charter schools make up 60 percent of the top performers in Language and 30 percent in Science.

In Math, the results are also impressive, but not quite as much.  Charters have nine of the top thirty (thirty percent again), but only one (InTech--number two) in the top ten.

Congratulations to all the charters that performed so well, showing that offering specialization and choice can lead to superior academic achievement across all subjects.

Also, congratulations to the many district schools whose students achieve at a high level.

DaVinci Academy gets a new gym

DaVinci Academy just opened their first school gym and christened it with a girls' basketball game.

Thoughts on boundaries

Two recent news articles have me thinking.  The first is this op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about how parents in Ohio and elsewhere have actually been arrested for sending their children to schools to outside-their-boundary schools, and even sued for back tuition.  Praise the Lord for Utah's open enrollment law that allows parents to send their child to any school in the state.

The second piece is this one about the Canyons district drawing new boundaries for all schools as it changes its grade configuration.

I have some unsolicited and sure-to-be-ignored advice for Canyons: eliminate your boundaries.  I know, I know, boundaries mean something to you, especially when it comes to transportation.  But why not make school boundaries just transportation boundaries.  Tell parents that we'll give you a free ride to School A, but just fill out a simple form and you can attend School B, or C.

Want to find out what parents really value in education?  Let them choose among many options.  You'll find really fast what parents want to see in a school.  Worried about parents all choosing to attend the same few schools?  Why?  What about those schools is drawing parents to them?  (Hint: It's not small class sizes if parents all choose to attend schools that get crowded through the exercise of choice.)

It would also give the district a chance to try pilot programs with curriculum, schedules, teaching methods, and more to find out what works.

Make your school boundaries nothing more than free bus ride lines, and you'll see what your customers truly want from you.

First school day in Japan

October 10 is a holiday in Japan.  Not Columbus Day, but Athletes' Day, to commemorate the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.  That seemed to me like a funny reason for a holiday, but for Japan hosting the Olympics less than 20 years after the end of its defeat in WWII was a real sign that the war was over and its imperial aggression forgiven, and its arrival back into the world of nations as a global power.

The point is that I didn't really see any school children until today.  I headed out on the train early to get to a popular mountain hiking park outside of Tokyo in rush hour traffic.  And rush hour wasn't just workers heading into the city (though there were thousands of those).  There were also school children, even some elementary children, riding the subway alone on their way to school.

They were easily identifiable by their uniforms, but I tell you that Japanese school's don't have the "four inches above the knee" rule for girls and skirts.  Their skirts are short.

Because Japan uses characters for its written language instead of a phonetic alphabet, learning to read takes a lot longer here.  I spent a lot of time over the weekend with a seven-year-old Japanese boy, who seems very smart and confident, and who read a map of the prefectures of Japan.  (That's kind of like a state or province.) He did well on identifying them by reading their characters.  I found out that students typically learn 140 characters a year in school, and that there are nearly 3,000 characters in the commonly written language.

It makes me glad I'm hooked on phonics.

Japan edition, part 1

I arrived in Japan on Friday at 11 p.m. local time.  That's my mother's birthday.  It's now 6:30 on Monday morning, so I've been here only while school is not in session.  But wait, in Japan, most students attend school on Saturday also, and walking through parts of Tokyo on Saturday I did see several children in school uniforms.

There are no charter schools in Japan, but there is a fledgling movement to bring them.  Shoji Sugita has written a little piece about bringing charters to Japan.  He's met with charter founders from the U.S., and describes here several charters that would like to open in Japan.  Hiroshi Ohashi, an economics professor at the University of Tokyo, has published a white paper on the topic also, which is here.  Looking to find information about Japanese charter schools, I also came across this charter school in Oregon, which seeks to serve Japanese and other students in that state on the Japanese model.