Confident Readers, Capable Leaders

This post was originally authored for UnSectored, a blog to which I contribute. UnSectored explores the intersections among the government, private, and nonprofit sectors. While some segments of the post were edited for inclusion on UnSectored due to the fact that they strayed from the purpose of that blog, the original post appears in its entirety here. You can find the UnSectored post here.

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I’m passionate about my work. It’s rare that this passion creates anger. But, most definitely, that happened last week when I read the EdWeek blog post of Tom Vander Ark, a Venture Capitalist working in the educational space.

Never before have I seen such a clear indication that the “Ed Reform Movement” is built on the maintenance of strict sectors. Mr. Vander Ark not only fills his writing with factual inaccuracies, but he makes it clear that he thinks of charter schools and educational technologies as replacements of, not supplements to, our traditional system of education.

It is worthwhile for us to start by identifying the public system within the three-sector framework often used on this blog. Traditional public schools fall under the responsibility of government; they have an obligation to serve every child that walks through their doors.  Many charter schools, academic support services, and enrichment programs are traditional nonprofit organizations; these groups have an obligation to their mission, and they must produce results to please funders. Lastly, some charters, some academic consultation models, and most of the educational technology sector fall in the category of for-profit; these organizations have an obligation to produce financial return through sales. These three groups, by their nature, do not work well together. They have different interests. Collaboration requires thoughtful strategy.

While I’d love to ignore Mr. Vander Ark’s inaccuracies, I think it important to outline a few here.

• In a quote that opens his post, he quotes a veteran DC educator talking about the great improvement of DC NAPE [sic, it’s actually NAEP] scores.  Reality: Since 2005, DC NAEP scores have shown improvement, but I’d struggle to call it considerable. In 2005, 11% of DC 8^th grade students read at grade level or above. In 2011, that number was 15%. With 15 years of charter school magic, shouldn’t we see more growth? During that same period, those students reading at the below basic level (functionally illiterate) fell from 56% to 54% – hardly considerable.

• Mr. Vander Ark goes on to credit charter schools with the excitement surrounding education reform in DC. To demonstrate success, he points out tremendous charter school growth and that “DCPS enrollment is flat.” Reality: He’s absolutely right that DC charters are growing incredibly fast. He fails to mention that only one-third of those schools rank as Tier 1 schools on the DC Public Charter School Board’s own performance framework – including only one of the four he specifically mentions in this first paragraph. It should also be noted that DCPS enrollment is not flat. This year, it started ticking up, reversing a decades-long trend.

•  Mr. Vander Ark then goes on to say that Chancellor Henderson is simply carrying out the priorities established by Michelle Rhee, all with the support of Rhee’s team. Reality: Turnover has been significant. And, to be fair, it was Henderson that released the recent strategic plan, a strong statement about DCPS’ plan moving forward. To imply that she is simply Rhee’s puppet is entirely unfair.

Mr. Vander Ark then goes on to brag about charter graduation rates (which one might expect to be different given their control over student entry and exit points) while noting that charters work with a higher poverty population (again, expected given the fact that charter don’t dare compete with traditional schools in DC’s richer enclaves). He also lists all the great reforms coming – a term used liberally given that many of the organizations/products he labels great are either currently being piloted or are yet to launch. Many organizations have learned the hard lesson that replication in DC is no easy task.

I could go on, but I hope the point has been made. A growing subset of the private education sector – both nonprofit and for-profit – is founded on the idea of destroying the government’s role in education, not acting as a strategic supplement. Worse, as Mr. Vander Ark typifies, the for-profit sector has the ability to bend and stretch the truth without any real accountability. And non-profits (disclosure: I run one, and we battle this on a regular basis) have an obligation to produce results for funders. Whether we want to admit it or not, this creates a significant pressure to work with those students who will produce those needed results. It is a factual reality that the government-run traditional public school system is the only institution with an obligation to every child. They have a much more difficult job than the rest of us – charters, nonprofits, ed tech companies, etc. The traditional public school system does not have access to the pressure release valves the rest of us enjoy.

This is why I don’t envy Chancellor Henderson. To this point, she has taken the high road – lauding effective charters and the for-profit companies that effectively support DC students. Unfortunately, she’s often walking alone on that road. I want Kaya to fight. I want her to publicly acknowledge that many in the “Ed Reform Movement”, something of which she’s a part, are trying to destroy our traditional public school system. We have to fight back. Education serves not only a utilitarian purpose with economic repercussions, but it serves as the foundation of our struggling democracy and the basis of hope in communities in need of transformation. DC Public Schools are a big part of the growing excitement in this city, but their high road posture allows other sectors to win the marketing game – right now, it’s not even a contest (though it has been fun to follow #WeRdcps on Twitter). It’s like two fishermen standing on a dock discussing their shared interest in a strong fishing industry while one saws a hole in the other’s boat.

And, though this is a separate blog post entirely, it should be noted that we haven’t yet even mentioned the bigger issues in the DC education landscape. Our nation’s capital has the largest achievement gap and largest wealth disparity in the country. We’re building a system where success is defined by getting out of your neighborhood, forgoing an opportunity to have education transform neighborhoods. With one of the country’s most active Ed Reform communities, we continue to build structures on a little-discussed foundation that is crumbling at our feet. The potential is here; the shared strategy is not.

At UnSectored, we talk of creating true partnerships across sectors. We want people to consider the larger goals and to determine how different sectors might contribute significantly to those larger goals. This requires introspection (knowing your strengths), sacrifice (of resources, ease, and/or profit), and credit sharing (oh, the horror!). That, if done well, could create an Education Revolution.

For now, we’re stuck with reform.