This past month, I stood in front of a room full of my students, mostly recent immigrants to the United States. They were taking a national exam that tests English-language learners’ (ELLs) ability to comprehend and work with academic language. I read my students the instructions and then each question, as required, in English. It was the last week of May, and for most students across the country, one of the final weeks of school before summer break. By now, most students have a year’s worth of instruction and practice to prepare for the exam. So why was I looking at a room full of blank stares?
For many of the students testing in my class, it wasn’t the end of the school year; it was their second week of school ever here in the United States. My school, a bilingual G.E.D. and ESL-based charter school in D.C., operates on a trimester system, and we had just begun a new one. Regulations like these are just one of the many examples demonstrating how policies made for a big (and often ineffective) school system run counter to the approach many students need. As an alternative school, it’s imperative for us to allow new immigrants and other disconnected youth to join classes outside of the traditional school calendar; but when those test results are compiled into the national average, outsiders undoubtedly think that my students (and many like them at alternative programs throughout the nation) have learned nothing this year. The truth is, because my students never took a pre-test, their results will likely be thrown out and the only real result of the two days of testing will be some deflated egos and a couple of lost days of instruction.
In every sense, the economies of scale are already working against smaller schools. It’s harder to afford technology, materials, programs, and services that are built for larger school systems. Beyond that, policy frequently encourages educators in the direction of what we know to be bad pedagogy and practice. For example, in D.C., the charter board accountability framework gives more weight to test results from larger classes (seeking bigger sample sizes). That approach, however, pushes schools like ours away from our very mission—providing a more intimate classroom environment for the type of students who need it the most. Both public schools and charters are encouraged by national tests to go faster and shallower, instead of slower and deeper, into content and key skills, preventing educators from the kind of differentiation crucial to our students’ success. The push for implementation of Common Core State Standards could help, but only if its implementation encourages a fundamental shift towards a skill-based approach over a contest-based race. Annual budgeting, test result frameworks, funders, and other factors encourage small and big charters alike to conform to the same practices as big school systems in large part because it makes for less administrative work in synthesizing and interpreting results.
Charter schools began as a way to encourage innovation in hopes that if given a degree of flexibility, they could find new best practices to apply in the public school system. Instead, policymakers dove into this new world of ever-proliferating charter schools with no mechanism or policy that determines which charter school experiments have worked by objective measures, nor how to motivate public schools to apply the practices that have a track record of success. Even worse, in many cases, policies are encouraging smaller schools, especially alternative ones like mine, towards pedagogical and programmatic policies that we know don’t work. It’s time for policy frameworks that fit the schools they are applied to. Accountability should be rigorous and we need some degree of standardization; but it should also be based less on what’s easiest for those who enforce it and more on what is right for the students we serve.
Scott Goldstein is a social studies and ESL teacher at a D.C. public charter school. He can be reached at scottaudc(at)gmail(dot)com.
In every sense, the economies of scale are already working against smaller schools. It’s harder to afford technology, materials, programs, and services that are built for larger school systems. Beyond that, policy frequently encourages educators in the direction of what we know to be bad pedagogy and practice. For example, in D.C., the charter board accountability framework gives more weight to test results from larger classes (seeking bigger sample sizes). That approach, however, pushes schools like ours away from our very mission—providing a more intimate classroom environment for the type of students who need it the most. Both public schools and charters are encouraged by national tests to go faster and shallower, instead of slower and deeper, into content and key skills, preventing educators from the kind of differentiation crucial to our students’ success. The push for implementation of Common Core State Standards could help, but only if its implementation encourages a fundamental shift towards a skill-based approach over a contest-based race. Annual budgeting, test result frameworks, funders, and other factors encourage small and big charters alike to conform to the same practices as big school systems in large part because it makes for less administrative work in synthesizing and interpreting results.
Charter schools began as a way to encourage innovation in hopes that if given a degree of flexibility, they could find new best practices to apply in the public school system. Instead, policymakers dove into this new world of ever-proliferating charter schools with no mechanism or policy that determines which charter school experiments have worked by objective measures, nor how to motivate public schools to apply the practices that have a track record of success. Even worse, in many cases, policies are encouraging smaller schools, especially alternative ones like mine, towards pedagogical and programmatic policies that we know don’t work. It’s time for policy frameworks that fit the schools they are applied to. Accountability should be rigorous and we need some degree of standardization; but it should also be based less on what’s easiest for those who enforce it and more on what is right for the students we serve.
Scott Goldstein is a social studies and ESL teacher at a D.C. public charter school. He can be reached at scottaudc(at)gmail(dot)com.
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