Washington Post columnist Sebastion Mallaby offers a heartwarming story for a Monday morning:

A few weeks ago I met Mark Kushner, a charismatic product of Harvard and Oxford who dumped lawyering in favor of crusading. Kushner opened a high school in a tough section of San Francisco and took in kids who never counted on making it to college. By demanding high standards, Kushner succeeded in producing them: More than 95 percent of Leadership High School's graduates attend college, and most go to four-year programs.

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With the help of a former AOL executive, Scott Pearson, he has launched an organization to repeat the success of San Francisco in 25 other locations. In 2003 he opened a school across the Bay in Richmond, the most crime-ridden city in California, and another one in East San Jose, where 87 percent of the pupils are poor enough to qualify for free or subsidized school lunch. A lot of the incoming ninth-graders have reading skills somewhere between the second- and sixth-grade levels. Kushner is opening two more schools this year. All his new ventures will be in poor neighborhoods.

Taking ghetto kids and turning them into college kids sounds like a romantic fairy tale; it's mostly plain hard work. Visiting a class at Kushner's Richmond start-up recently, I suppose I was looking for the column writer's vignette: the one that conveys cheery inspiration in a sentence or two. Instead I found a bunch of ordinary teenagers struggling, rather ploddingly, with a history project. Releasing their potential is not like smashing an iron lock and opening the jail gates. It's a work of immense patience, the more heroic for that.

Public-school authorities across the country tend to reflect the education establishment, which in turn resents the newcomers. And so they make life difficult for charter schools by denying them good premises.

To set up his Richmond school, Kushner was given an empty lot in the toughest area of this tough city, right across from an academy for teenagers who've been thrown out of regular high school. Kushner put up portacabins and a defensive wire perimeter, but there wasn't enough room to fit all the pupils. The city authorities then offered some space inside the remedial school, where maintaining discipline will be challenging. As Kushner has said sometimes, giving school boards power over charter schools' facilities is like entrusting decisions on Wal-Mart to Costco.

Some enlightened cities take a less hostile view. They want to manage a good portfolio of education options, and they're happy to let innovative start-ups provide some of them; they are not slavishly loyal to the teachers union. But in much of the country, charters face an uphill battle, even though the balance of the evidence suggests that they do better for pupils. Because high schools require large premises and are complex, opening a charter high school is particularly tough.

I was involved in a project about challenges facing DC charter schools a year ago. Increasingly, securing adequate educational facilities has been a major challenge for charter schools in DC. I analyzed data from site visits that suggested the schools were in pretty bad shape - broken windows, water damage, grafiti, and electrical problems plagued a number of facilities.

It seems as though the traditional public school system (DCPS)is able to block charter access to the vacant and underutilized buildings they control. The District of Columbia School Reform Act has been revised several times in response to persistent complaints by the District’s charter schools on facilities issues, but these changes have had little impact. Some charter school founders have been creative in using nontraditional spaces. Others are forced to move around fairly frequently. For example, I think the SEED academcy moved their students around a number of times during thier first year of operations - though this program did have special needs.

"giving school boards power over charter schools' facilities is like entrusting decisions on Wal-Mart to Costco"...it's even more peculiar than that, because charter schools are, after all, government schools, even though their administrative arrangements are somewhat different. The analogy would be if the grocery product manager at Wal-Mart were given authority over the general merchandise displays, while still being measured only on grocery results. You'd look long and hard in a Wal-Mart to find anything other than food...

School boards aren't the sole charter granting authorities in every state. Some states allow for independent boards. In DC the State Board of Education and the Public Charter School Board can authorize charter schools. In New York, the local district, Board of Regents, or SUNY Charter Board can authorize charters. Its not clear though (at least to my knowledge) whether the schools chartered by independent boards are significantly different or better than those authorized by the local school districts.

Doesn't matter who the granting authority is...it is still an agency of the government. Friendly competition between charter and non-charter schools would be fine; attempted sabotage is not.

I don't disagree that making a monopolistic provider of education responsible for sponsoring and overseeing their competition is a serious conflict of interests. The local school boards clearly have incentives to undercut charters and probably lack the resources to manage a charter sector even if they were inclined to do so.

However, it seems plausible that the independent boards - despite being government agencies - have incentives (and the resources) to create and support successful charters. A successful charter sector ensures the agency's continued existence. This argument would apply more to charter boards whose sole purpose is supporting a charter sector (such as the PCSB in DC) than to existing organizations (Board of Regents in NY) who have taken on charters as an added responsibility.

To the extent that class mobility is declining in the US, the situation is to a large extent the doing of the educational establishment. K-12 schools are clearly failing on a very large scale. At the same time, higher education has over-hyped its own importance, resulting in a degree requirement for many jobs in which college degrees really aren't required.

So, if you're from an impoverished background and you're trying to make it, then it's likely that (1)the public education industry will fail to provide you with a K-12 education of even minimal quality, while (2)the same industry will do everything it can to block you from having available alternatives (charter schools, vouchers), and (3)you will find many career paths closed to you because of over-emphasis on college degrees.

There are certainly many high-quality individuals in the education field, but increasingly it seems that the word that applies to the field as a whole is "irresponsible."

A very interesting and hopeful story....I'm not an educator but I care about these issues, and want to mention something: with the exodus of white collar middle-class jobs from the U.S., the sharp increase in social inequality, and the resultant "one job loss away from poverty" (or "race to the bottom" as it has been dubbed) that so many college-educated, ostensibly "middle class" Americans are living with, I can't help but wonder if the over- emphasis on college education per se might prove to be short-sighted. Will the jobs be there? They certainly aren't for many educated individuals. Paul Krugman had an excellent piece last Saturday in the NYT called "Losing our country"--a real counterpoint to the ideas presented by Thomas Friedman in "The Earth is Flat." I don't have a link for the Krugman piece, but it's blogged in its entiry on my blog,

In other words, the economic context for which these kids are being so vigorously prepared is a far less hopeful one than their committed teachers realize. Perhaps vocational education is being overlooked here?

I have to disagree with David. Lack of class mobility the fault of poor schools? There are a few other factors. The over-generalization often repeated by those who wish to remove public funding from schools is just that: an over-generalization. I'm not against charter schools or against holding schools accountable, but i do question the ways in which it's done.

Many people seem to look at learning as a one-way street. No matter how undisciplined or lazy the students the "good" teacher will magically bestow knowledge upon them. One part (sure there are some poor teachers/schools) of the education problem that is rarely addressed is the student side of the equation. This includes students without adequate parental involvement (so then the school gets yet another job). Parents who demand that their child pass no matter what (if they don't do work all semester they get extra-credit at the end). Students who refuse to do any kind of assignment (parental involvement is an issue here). Many students are failing themselves.

And at least some schools have been working hard. Look at what grade levels some subjects are introduced: algebra, foreign languages, science, etc. The high schools in my town offer programs for their students to earn free college credits by attending college classes at the local college (where i teach--bias disclosure). The problem? Honors classes aren't filled to capacity, but gym classes are; students don't take advantage of the opportunities available. Schools deserve some of the blame, but there is much to go around.

And what happens to those students whose parents don't care enough to send them to charter schools? (By the way, wouldn't those charter school-parents encourage their children to succeed at any institution?) Those students will go to schools that lose funding, and that can't attract quality teachers, or keep quality teachers because of the school's reputation. That's the irony of NCLB: it should be Many CLB.

Obviously, parents have something to do with how much kids get our of schools--they have *a lot* with how much kids get out of schools. But the situation is what it is. Schools must do the best they can in the environment that exists. The probability of a society-wide conversion such that all parents will begin immediately valueing academics is miniscule.

In business, I have noted that people will often seek to excuse their weak performance by pointing to the weak performance of others--as in, "yes, the marketing collateral package is late, but manufacturing doesn't even have the tooling ready yet." (Manufacturing, of course, will have its own excuse--"Doesn't matter about the tooling because the assembly line layout isn't done"..and ad infinitum) These situations are *doom loops*, and a good executive works to suppress them.

Yes, my point may sound like a doom loop--part of my point was that is part of what's happening in education. People are blaming the failure of their children on the schools. It must be the schools because they aren't doing anything wrong--besides raising their children with the television.

My complaint is that there is no good executive trying to suppress this doom loop.

And many schools spend much time and money dealing with the situation as it is--there are strict standards and schools are force to teach regurgitation-style (we all know how well that works beyond elementary school) for tests imposed on them.

My point is that many schools are working to improve their situation (without some big societal change), but receive very little credit and are indeed hampered by different policies (some from those who study "education"): memorization over thinking, no red pens, high standards with no enforcement, distractions like television, cell phones, and fast food in the classroom, stone-age science--intelligent design, and so on.

Can anyone explain why parents (and our society in general) offer weak excuses for their (and our) children's performance in school by pointing to the weak performance of others--as in, "yes, my child can't write a complete sentence, but she doesn't like her teacher and says school is boring." and "no I couldn't check her homework because I worked late and CSI was on."

Plus, this doesn't explain all of the students who manage to succeed in our horrible schools. Are they rare examples of genuis, or hard workers?

oops--"are forced"

The big push to do in the charter schools is the NEA (and its subsidiary local unions), and the multitude of Democratic Party pols who the NEA effectively owns. The unions don't want charter competition.

Jason..a few points:
1)In suppressing doom loops, you have to focus on things you can control. In my business scenario, you can tell the VP of marketing to stop whining & making excuses and just get the brochures done, or you'll fire his ass. You can't tell the customers to stop being so irrational as to have silly feature preferences and unreasonable schedule expectations--the best you can do is to try to educate and persuade them. Similarly, we have (or should have) direct control over the school administrators, and should tell them to stop focusing on things like "no red pens" and get on with serious teaching, or we'll fire *their* asses. With parents, the best we can do is to attempt to persuade them to pay more attention to academics...which we should indeed do, but the impact will be slow and uncertain.

2)I agree with you that many of the problems are brought about by "those who study 'education'".
3)The question of thinking vs memorizing is too complex to go into here, but they are not mutually exclusive. You can't think without something to think about.
4)"..all of the students who manage to succeed in our horrible schools. Are they rare examples of genuis, or hard workers?" There are indeed some kids who are so smart and hard working that they would do fine in there are no schools at all: clearly, this isn't a valid argument for abolishing schools. Similarly, the fact that some kinds manage to survive bad schools doesn't mean they shouldn't be fixed.

The quality of schools obviously varies widely, and the worst ones are precisely in the areas where good schools are most needed. I am appalled by the resistance of the ed establishment to the common-sense idea of paying higher salaries for those who teach in tougher schools, thereby attracting more experienced teachers to the places where they can make the most difference.

Another issue in the charter school/private school debate is discipline. The charter/private school can have high discipline (which is good); however, any problem students are easily expelled and thrown back into the public school system.

Consider the side effects of this: as public money goes into these other schools the public school system loses money; meanwhile, the charter schools can purge any non-performers/disciplinary problems and their success will increase; the public schools can't expel these students (someone has to attempt to educate them) and their success decreases (and funding is withdrawn). I've heard teachers in the "bad" schools complain about this problem--many of these schools are "the end of the road." And they are operating in a society that doesn't support them; indeed, our society sees them as lazy, unqualified, union protected slackers causing all the problems in education. It's simply not true. I think we should continue to improve the school system, but we have to ask "what happens next?" of any improvements that we make. Nobody seems to care about the many children left behind by the NCLB.

People are quick to criticize school performance, yet reluctanct to fund it or really invest the time, effort, and money that is necessary to address this complex problem. A standardized test that "measures" schools' performance is a simple solution to a complex problem; it doesn't work. It's a way to turn the complexity into a sound-bite and to divide people into a liberal/conservative, dem/repub, union/administration, shouting match that disguises the fact that nothing has been accomplished.

I probably agree with David about a lot of things. I just think that the saying our schools are failing is dishonest. Our system is failing, the students are failing, their parents are failing, our government is failing, and yes, some schools are failing because of poor teachers, poor programs, and a whole host of problems.

The real problem is people want a quick fix to this mess, and it ain't gonna happen.

There's no law of nature that public schools can't expel disruptive students. I can't think right off of any ofther institutions in which one can get away with behaving toward those in authority in the way that public school students routinely behave toward their teachers. If the teachers unions really cared about their members and about education, they would make the restoration of classroom discipline a centerpiece of their lobbying and negotiation.

See my post "Penny in the Fusebox" at:
http://photoncourier.blogspot.com/2005_05_01_photoncourier_archive.html#111697211443154968