Listening to the rhetoric of the teachers unions, one might have thought the teachers’ strike in Los Angeles was about charter schools. “When someone says there’s no money, why isn’t there money?” National Education Assn. President Lily Eskelsen García asked on MSNBC the first day of the strike.
“A big reason is because they’ve given it away to for-profit charters. If you’re in the charter industry, what do you want to do? You want to create horrible public schools…. The billionaires who are behind this, the venture capitalists, the Wall Street guys, are out to make money on public schools.”
This was nonsense: California never had many for-profit charters, and last year the legislature banned them entirely. Most of the people “behind” L.A.’s 277 charter schools are dedicated educators who work 60 hours a week to help low-income children. They’re more like Peace Corps volunteers than “Wall Street guys.”
But Garcia’s comments were illuminating. Clearly the unions saw the strike as an opportunity to discredit charters.
“Coats off, scarves off, hats off! Belts on; shirts tucked,” Stacey Stewart, Thurgood Marshall Academy’s director of student affairs, yells at the two lines of students waiting to check-in and begin the school day.
“Ms. Stewart, I’m early today,” a student says as he approaches check-in.
“It’s 8:29. You are not early; you are on time,” she says, exasperated and amused. Check-in runs from 8 to 8:30 a.m. After students check in, they head downstairs for breakfast.
Nothing about morning check-in at Thurgood Marshall Academy (TMA) hints that there’s anything exceptional about the school, but a glass case near Stewart, filled with academic awards, reveals the truth: this is an extraordinary school.
Consistently ranked as a top-tier public charter school in Washington, D.C., Thurgood Marshall Academy is a law-themed school that serves about 400 students in 9th through 12th grade. Over 90 percent of students live in Wards 7 and 8, the city’s two poorest neighborhoods. Nearly 100 percent are African American, and 61 percent are designated “at-risk” by the Office of the State Superintendent, meaning they are at greater risk of dropping out based on their receipt of public assistance, food stamps, involvement with the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency, homeless status, or being older than expected for their grade.
As a wise person once said, our words think our thoughts for us. A quarter-century ago, then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich taught the Republican Party to be very deliberate in its choice of words. Ever since, Republicans have carefully avoided the word “vouchers” — which are not terribly popular — in favor of the phrase “school choice.”
Who can be against giving families a choice of schools? We all know that children learn differently, have different temperaments, and come from different backgrounds. So it’s only logical that different children need different types of schools. On top of that, families that get to choose are usually more committed to their schools, their children more serious about learning.
But there are different kinds of school choice, and the type most Republicans favor would dramatically accelerate inequality in American society.
Artwork and projects decorate the light blue walls of Inspired Teaching Demonstration School, an inquiry-based learning public charter school now in its eighth year.
A colorful “body map,” with the organs labeled, covers the door of one prekindergarten classroom. On the wall outside the other pre-K classroom hang drawings of guitars because the class read a picture book about the childhood of Jimi Hendrix when learning about musical instruments. Down the hall, the 3-year-old class has been experimenting with paints, both watercolors and temperas.
Everything displayed on the walls of the three-story building on Douglas Street NE in D.C.’s Ward 5 is student-made.
“Teachers really value our creativity here,” says Takhari Millner, a seventh-grader who has been attending ITDS since kindergarten.
Ranked a tier-one public charter school by the D.C. Public Charter School Board, ITDS opened in 2011 and serves 472 students in prekindergarten through eighth grade. There’s two classes per grade, except for seventh and eighth grade, which will each expand from one class to two when the school reaches its roughly 525-student capacity in 2020. For the 2018-19 school year, ITDS received 1,745 applications for 125 spots. Its waiting list currently has 913 students.
ITDS students have consistently outperformed their peers in both the public charter school sector and District of Columbia Public Schools on state exams, yet test prep and standardization are the antithesis of the school’s model. Born out of a partnership with the Center for Inspired Teaching, ITDS operates a demonstration school for the best practices in inquiry-based teaching and active learning methods.
Congratulations on your election to the U.S. House of Representatives! In addition to winning your own race, you are part of something larger – the first wave of a progressive resurgence in U.S. politics.
The midterm elections gave U.S. voters their first opportunity to react to the way Donald Trump has conducted himself in America’s highest office. Their verdict was an emphatic thumbs down. That’s an encouraging sign that our democracy’s antibodies are working to suppress the populist virus of demagoguery and extremism.
Now that Democrats have reclaimed the people’s House, what should they do with it? Some are tempted to use it mainly as a platform for resisting Trump and airing “unapologetically progressive” ideas that have no chance of advancing before the 2020 elections. We here at the Progressive Policy Institute think that would be huge missed opportunity.
If the voters increasingly are disgusted with their dissembling and divisive president, they seem even more fed up with Washington’s tribalism and broken politics. For pragmatic progressives, the urgent matter at hand is not to impeach Trump or to embroil the House in multiple and endless investigations. It’s to show Democrats are determined to put the federal government back in the business of helping Americans solve their problems.
We think the House Democratic Class of 2018 should adopt this simple mantra: “Get things done.” Tackle the backlog of big national problems that Washington has ignored: exploding deficits and debt; run-down, second-rate infrastructure; soaring health and retirement costs; climate change and more. And yes, getting things done should include slamming the brakes on Trump’s reckless trade wars, blocking GOP efforts to strip Americans of health care, as well as repealing tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
PPI, a leading center for policy analysis and innovation, stands ready to help. We’re developing an extensive “Do Something” Agenda. Today, we are releasing the first in a series of concrete, actionable ideas designed expressly for Democrats who come to Washington to solve problems, not just to raise money and smite political enemies.
As you get settled into your new office, we’ll look for opportunities to acquaint you and your staff with these pragmatic, common-sense initiatives, and to discuss other ways we might be of service to you. That’s what we’re here for.
Regards,
Will Marshall President Progressive Policy Institute
First and foremost, it’s time for Congress to start doing its job on trade. A key step is enacting the Trade Authority Protection (TAP) Act. This balanced legislation would rein in Trump’s abuse of delegated trade powers, require greater presidential accountability, and enable Congress to nullify irresponsible tariffs and trade restrictions.
For the last two decades, different versions of net neutrality have bounced between Congress, the Federal Communications Commission, the courts – and most recently the states – but the issue remains unresolved.
It is time for Congress to solve this problem for good by enacting a strong, pro-consumer net neutrality law – an outcome that is politically possible even in this era of maximalist gridlock and deeply divided government, given the broad consensus that has formed around the vital issue of ensuring an open internet.
The number of large U.S. manufacturing facilities has dropped by more than a third since 2000, devastating many communities where factories were the lifeblood of the local economy.
One promising way to revive America’s manufacturing might is not by going big but by going small – and going local. Digitally-assisted manufacturing technologies, such as 3D printing, have the potential to launch a new generation of manufacturing startups producing customized, locally-designed goods in a way overseas mega-factories can’t match. To jumpstart this revolution, we need to provide local manufacturing entrepreneurs with access to the latest technologies to test out their ideas. The Grassroots Manufacturing Act would create federally-supported centers offering budding entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized firms access to the latest 3D printing and robotics equipment.
As many as 4.4 million U.S. jobs are going unfilled due to shortages of workers with the right skills. Many of these opportunities are in so-called “middle-skill” occupations, such as IT or advanced manufacturing, where workers need some sort of post-secondary credential but not a four-year degree.
Expanding access to high-quality career education and training is one way to help close this “skills gap.” Under current law, however, many students pursuing short-term career programs are ineligible for federal financial aid that could help them afford their education. Pell grants, for instance, are geared primarily toward traditional college, which means older and displaced workers – for whom college is neither practicable nor desirable – lose out. Broadening the scope of the Pell grant program to shorter-term, high-quality career education would help more Americans afford the chance to upgrade their skills and grow the number of highly trained workers U.S. businesses need.
America’s massive health care industry faces three major challenges: how to cover everyone, reduce costs, and increase productivity. Telehealth – the use of technology to help treat patients remotely – may help address all three. Telehealth reduces the need for expensive real estate and enables providers to better leverage their current medical personnel to provide improved care to more people.
Despite its enormous potential, however, telehealth has hit legal snags over basic questions: who can practice it, what services can be delivered, and how it should be reimbursed. As is the case with any innovation, policymakers are looking to find the right balance between encouraging new technologies and protecting consumers – or, in this case, the health of patients.
Telehealth policy has come a long way in recent years, with major advances in the kinds of services that are delivered. Yet a simple change in Medicare policy could take the next step to increase access and encourage adoption of telehealth services. Currently, there are strict rules around where the patient and provider must be located at the time of service – these are known as “originating site” requirements – and patients are not allowed to be treated in their homes except in very special circumstances. To expand access to Telehealth, Congress could add the patient’s home as an originating site and allow Medicare beneficiaries in both urban and rural settings to access telehealth services in their homes.
As many as 41 million Americans live in “higher education deserts” – at least half an hour’s drive from the nearest college or university and with limited access to community college. Many of these deserts are in rural America, which is one reason so much of rural America is less prosperous than it deserves to be.
The lack of higher education access means fewer opportunities for going back to school or improving skills. A less educated workforce in turn means communities have a tougher time attracting businesses and creating new jobs. Congress should work to eradicate higher education deserts. In particular, it can encourage new models of higher education – such as “higher education centers” and virtual colleges – that can fill this gap and bring more opportunity to workers and their communities. Rural higher education innovation grants are one potential way to help states pilot new approaches.
Regulation plays a critical role in refereeing competition in a free market economy. But there’s a problem: Each year, Congress piles new rules upon old, creating a thick sludge of regulations – some obsolete, repetitive, and even contradictory – that weighs down citizens and businesses. In 2017, the Code of Federal Regulations swelled to a record 186,374 pages, up 19 percent from just a decade before. PPI proposes a Regulatory Improvement Commission (RIC), modeled on the highly successful Defense Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process for closing obsolete military installations. Like the BRAC process, the proposed RIC would examine old rules and present Congress with a package of recommendations for an up-or-down vote to eliminate or modify outdated rules.
Jumpstarting U.S. production and purchase of Electric Vehicles (EVs) would produce an unprecedented set of benefits, including cleaner air and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions; a resurgence of the U.S. auto industry and American manufacturing; the creation of millions of new, good, middle class manufacturing jobs; lower consumer costs for owning and operating vehicles; and the elimination of U.S. dependence on foreign oil. U.S. automakers are already moving toward EVs, but the pace of this transition is lagging behind our foreign competitors. A dramatic expansion of tax credits for EV purchases could go a long way toward boosting the U.S. EV industry as part of a broader agenda to promote the evolution of the transportation industry away from carbon-intensive fuels.
More American workers would benefit directly from economic growth if they had an ownership in the companies where they work. To help achieve this goal, Congress should encourage more companies to adopt employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), which provide opportunities for workers to participate in a company’s profits and share in its growth. Firms with ESOPs enjoy higher productivity growth and stronger resilience during downturns, and employees enjoy a direct stake in that growth. ESOP firms also generate higher levels of retirement savings for workers, thereby addressing another crucial priority for American workers.
Americans are fed up seeing corporate profits soaring even as their paychecks inch upward by comparison. Companies need stronger incentives to share their prosperity with workers – something the 2017 GOP tax package should have included.
Though President Donald Trump promised higher wages as one result of his corporate tax cuts, the biggest winners were executives and shareholders, not workers. Nevertheless, a growing number of firms are doing right by their workers, taking the high road as “triple-bottom line” concerns committed to worker welfare, environmental stewardship and responsible corporate governance. Many of these are so-called “benefit corporations,” legally chartered to pursue goals beyond maximizing profits and often “certified” as living up to their multiple missions. Congress should encourage more companies to follow this example. One way is to offer tax breaks only for high-road companies with a proven track record of good corporate citizenship, including better wages and benefits for their workers.
Three rows of second-graders stand facing the front of the classroom. A speaker emits sounds. First, a door creaking. Then, footsteps thudding and a wolf howling, all followed by the unmistakable opening riff of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”
The students put their hands on their knees and take four big steps forward before swinging their arms quickly from side to side. When they’ve finished performing this simplified version of Jackson’s choreography, many fall to the floor, giggling.
Jordan Daugherty teaches dance at Center City Public Charter School’s Petworth campus. Today, her second-grade class is learning the difference between improv and choreography.
“That’s great,” Daugherty says. “Now face me upstage. That was choreography. Remember, improv is when you feel the music and move with it. Choreography is when you make up the moves in advance to match the song.”
At Center City Petworth, all students take dance year-round as a part of their regular schedule. It’s an enrichment course, along with STEM and physical education, all components of the school’s commitment to providing every student with a comprehensive education.
“We believe that we need to develop good citizens and well-rounded people, as well as scholars,” says Principal Nazo Burgy. “To do that, our students need to be socially and emotionally healthy. Play is really important to early childhood, and this is a place where kids can be kids. We have schedules, procedures, and routines, but our hallways are not silent.”
Center City Petworth is part of Center Public Charter Schools, a network of six intentionally small schools operating in four of D.C.’s eight wards. Each school has between 200 and 270 students in grades pre-K through eight and only one class of about 25 students per grade.
The Center City network began when a group of private Catholic schools, experiencing financial problems, was on the verge of being shuttered. Many of these schools, like Petworth, had occupied an important place in the community for nearly a century.
Charter schools are tuition-free public schools operated by independent organizations. Freed from many rules and topdown policies constraining district-operated schools, charter school leaders have direct control over most school-level decisions.
Indiana has the best charter school law in the country, according to the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, because it allows full operational flexibility and provides true accountability for school performance.
Indiana’s brick-and-mortar K-12 charter schools serve a higher percentage of students of color and low-income students than the traditional public schools. Yet, on state standardized tests, these charter school students outperform their peers at traditional public schools. In both 2016 and 2017, the state rated a higher percentage of charters as “A” schools and a lower percentage as “D” or “F” schools than traditional public schools serving similar student populations.
Tall and bespectacled, Ferebee is an affable, soft-spoken leader with an easy smile and a low-key manner. A former public school teacher and assistant principal in his native North Carolina, he says his leadership journey began when, at 25, a superintendent asked him to become principal of his worst elementary school. “He gave me the keys and said, ‘Lewis, you have carte blanche authority. If anybody comes to you about a decision you made, have them come to me.’ ”
That autonomy was the key to his success, Ferebee says. “At the end of the day, if principals feel handcuffed, if teachers feel handcuffed, you’re stifling their creativity. Your best teachers are your most innovative and creative teachers, and they know their learners. So when you don’t give them the full opportunity to make informed decisions about what they know, you’re limiting the opportunity for them to be successful.”
As a strong proponent of 21st century school systems, Reinventing America’s Schools would like to highlight Bellwether Education Partners’Eight Cities, a project that attempts to answer the question: “How do you build a continuously improving system of schools?”
The Eight Cities website, https://www.eightcities.org, profiles urban districts that have managed to get “more students into better schools, faster,” by implementing some combination of school-level autonomy, partnerships with charter schools, replacement of chronically failing schools, systemwide school performance frameworks, public-school choice, and strategies to recruit and develop talented teachers and principals.
Local context matters, and each of the eight cities profiled (Oakland, Chicago, Newark, Camden, New York City, Denver, Washington, D.C., and New Orleans) followed a unique path. And sadly, politics occasionally stopped progress in its tracks. But these cities not only grew the number of high performing schools at a faster pace than other areas, they also created education systems that continuously improved.
Their leaders shared some central beliefs, according to Bellwether:
Schools are the unit of change
Families should be able to choose what’s best for their children among a diverse array of high-performing schools
Systems should be responsive to the needs and desire of the communities they serve
Those overseeing schools should ensure that they don’t fall below a minimum quality bar
The big takeaway from Bellwether’s project is that systemic change that benefits all students is possible, even in the largest and most politically charged environments. We encourage you to exploreEight Citiesand learn more about the nation’s most successful urban education reforms.
This week, Mayor Muriel Bowser named Dr. Lewis Ferebee as the next chancellor of District of Columbia Public Schools.
We at the Progressive Policy Institute have had the privilege and pleasure of working with Dr. Ferebee on several occasions. When working on his book, Reinventing America’s Schools Project Director David Osborne interviewed Dr. Ferebee, and Dr. Ferebee recently joined us as a panelist for our 21st century school system workshops in Baton Rouge and Memphis.
For the last five years, Dr. Ferebee’s work as superintendent of Indianapolis Public Schools has served as an inspiration for those dedicated to empowering educators, expanding options for families and students, and closing the achievement gap. Throughout his tenure as superintendent, Dr. Ferebee pushed decision-making authority down to the schools and championed innovation. He ended the acrimony between the district and the city’s charter schools; created 20 “innovation network schools,” with full autonomy and accountability; expanded decision-making authority for all other district schools; created exciting new choices for families; and supported the implementation of a unified enrollment system for most district, innovation, and charter schools, to give all families an equal shot at quality schools. This fall voters rewarded his leadership by passing a $272 million tax package, the first in a decade.
Welcome to Washington D.C., Dr. Ferebee! We at the Progressive Policy Institute are excited to see what you and your staff can do to increase the number of quality public schools in D.C., particularly in the city’s poorest wards, where they are so desperately needed.
Reinventing America’s Schools Project Director David Osborne appeared on the The Report Card, American Enterprise Institute’s education podcast hosted by Nat Malkus.
On this episode, Malkus and Osborne discuss the history of charter schools and the future of chartering. They also highlight some of the lessons learned and challenges faced by charter proponents over the last two decades.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) today released a national opinion survey that highlights the surprising resilience of America’s pragmatic political center two years into Donald Trump’s deeply polarizing presidency. The poll reinforces a key takeaway from the 2018 midterm elections: Suburban voters – especially women – are repelled by the president’s racial and cultural demagoguery and are moving away from a Trump-dominated GOP.
“Our poll suggests that Donald Trump’s election in 2016 is more likely to be an aberration than any permanent shift in America’s political course,” said Anne Kim, PPI Director of Social and Domestic Policy and PPI President Will Marshall. “The defection of suburban voters creates a political landscape that favors Democrats in 2020 – if they stick to the ‘big tent’ approach that proved so effective in the midterm.”
The poll conducted by Pete Brodnitz at Expedition Strategies contains findings about what’s top of mind for voters, their ideological outlook and leanings, and their views on health care, trade, growth and inequality, the role of government, monopoly and competition, and other contentious issues.
“The agenda that could help Democrats sustain a governing majority, our poll suggests, is one that is progressive yet pragmatic—one that’s optimistic, aspirational and respects Americans’ beliefs in individual initiative and self-determination; one that broadens Americans’ opportunities for success in the private sector and strengthens the nation’s global economic role; one that demands more from business but doesn’t cross the line into stifling growth; and one that adopts a practical approach to big challenges such as immigration reform and climate change,” write Kim and Marshall.
“For Democrats to maintain and expand this near-majority advantage, they must craft a broadly appealing agenda that brings or keeps independents and less committed partisans—the majority of whom call themselves ‘moderate’—under the tent.”
On Tuesday, Democrats won control of the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures across the country thanks torecord-breaking turnout among young voters. Now it is time for newly elected Democrats to stand up for the interests of their constituents by supporting an economic agenda that funds America’s future.
The reckless policies of the current administration, and many of its predecessors, have slashed critical public investments that most benefit young Americans while simultaneously burying them and future generations under a mountain of debt. In a recent report, the Progressive Policy Institute documents these trends and explores how these reckless policies could drain America’s economic strength and seriously harm young Americans for decades if no action is taken to change course.
After two years of teaching pre-kindergarten, Cristina Guadalupe was ready to transition to the elementary level. Dedicated to working with low-income students, she began applying to schools in underserved communities across Camden, New Jersey. She sent out application after application but heard nothing back.
“Each application took me hours to complete, and I couldn’t even be sure someone read it. It was getting hard to stay hopeful,” she says.
Then, she found Selected.
Launched in 2016, Selected is a hiring tool for schools, but Waine Tam, the app’s developer and company’s CEO, describes it as a “dating app for teachers and schools.”
Teachers fill out a profile where they relay their qualifications and experience. Then, they answer questions about desired school culture and pedagogical preferences.
Director of PPI’s Center for Funding America’s Future, Ben Ritz, participated in two radio interviews this week to discuss his new report, Defunding America’s Future: The Squeeze on Public Investment in the United States. The report explains how short-sighted fiscal policy is undermining critical investments in education, infrastructure and scientific research that are integral to the long-term health of our economy.Read the full report here.
The first interview was on Facing the Future with host Chase Hagaman, which airs on New Hampshire’s WKXL radio station.Listen to the WKXL interview here.
The second interview was on Reality Check with host Charles Ellison, which airs on Philadelphia’s WURD radio station.Listen to the WURD interview here.
“Good morning, scholars!” principal-in-training Jackie Navar yells, kicking off the community meeting at Ogden Elementary School, part of the 78207 zip code on San Antonio’s struggling West Side.
Hundreds of children echo Navar’s salutations.
“What’s a college-ready word for ‘good’?” Navar asks the room. Hands shoot up into the air: “Amazing.” “Fantastic.” “Great.”
“Excellent. Here’s a new one for you — ‘phenomenal.’ Can we all say that together?”
At Ogden, each school day begins with breakfast followed by community meetings like this one. Preschoolers eat in their classrooms, kindergartners through third-graders in the cafeteria, fourth- and fifth-graders in the gym, and sixth-graders upstairs. Ninety-eight percent of Ogden’s 650 students qualify as economically disadvantaged, and every one receives a free school breakfast.
“The community meeting helps our scholars start the day with a positive mindset,” says Tim Saintsing, executive director of teaching and learning labs at Relay Graduate School of Education, which was brought in to run the school after years of poor performance. “It lets students and staff reflect on our core values and our sense of self as a school. It gives us a chance to celebrate our successes and discuss our challenges.”
Today, a first- and second-grade class are being honored with attendance awards. As a prize, the students get to sing their homeroom chants, and then, in what’s known as a “thunder clap,” the room simultaneously brings their hands together once — loudly — in their honor.
“Remember,” Navar yells across the cafeteria, “If you miss school, you…”
“Miss out!” the kids shout back in unison.
It’s a vastly different atmosphere from the Ogden Elementary of 2016.
