After a year of discussion (and many blog posts from me), the School Board is heading for a final vote on the Madison Prep charter school proposal next Monday.
I have a lot to say about the proposal and how I intend to vote. But first, I’d like to clear through the rhetorical underbrush a bit, and briefly respond to six points that, for reasons I’ll try to explain, won’t affect my decision. I’ll add a final observation as well.
1. If it can’t be for everyone, it shouldn’t be for anyone.
Here’s a quote from an on-line comment of a Madison Prep opponent responding to one of the several op-ed pieces posted in the Cap Times in recent days: “There are barriers to students with special education needs, barriers to students with behavioral needs, and barriers to kids who rely on public transportation. These children are simply not the ‘right fit’. It is Madison Prep’s proposal to leave these kids in their neighborhood schools.”
The notion seems to be that Madison Prep may not be welcoming for students from all points along the spectrum of educational needs, even though our neighborhood schools are obligated to serve everyone.
I think the self-selection process for Madison Prep should be taken into account in assessing how its students perform. But it does not trouble me that the school is not designed to meet the needs of all our students. No one need apply to attend and no student will be denied current services or programs if Madison Prep is authorized.
The critical questions to me are, first, whether the problem the school is targeting is one that, for whatever reason, the school district has been unable or unwilling to address, and, second, whether the charter school’s proposed approach to the problem is promising enough to support.
If the answer to the questions is yes, then of course the target population of students for the school would be defined in terms of the problem sought to be addressed, and that target population would be some subset of our entire student population. Focus is different from exclusion.
2. The either/or fallacy.
This point gets expressed as, “Instead of approving Madison Prep, the school district should [fill in the blank].” The preferred alternatives extend from additional resources to the needs of preschoolers to expanding the district’s AVID/TOPS program in our middle schools.
Madison Prep is not an either/or proposition. It is not the case, for example, that either we approve Madison Prep, or we expand the AVID/TOPS program.
We surely do not have unlimited resources, but we can do both if we decide that both are worth doing. Subject to our state-imposed spending limit (which is not binding us at the moment), we just have to be willing to pay for both.
3. The appeal of imaginary alternatives
Related to the either/or argument is one that expresses a preference for imaginary alternatives. This one is stated in terms of “Rather than approve Madison Prep, you should [fill in the blank].” The alternatives here range from turning an existing middle school into a charter school, to aiming a new charter school at the needs of younger students, to significantly scaling back the Madison Prep proposal and insisting upon a different curriculum or different staffing model or, well, a whole different proposal.
We do not commission charter school applications. The Urban League didn’t ask us what we wanted to see before it put together the Madison Prep proposal. If it were up to me, I would have suggested different aspects of the proposal. But it wasn’t and I didn’t.
There can be and has been discussion with the Urban League on different components of the proposal, and the Urban League has responded to some of the concerns expressed. But ultimately we have to make a judgment on the proposal as it is presented, with such modifications as we may approve and the Urban League may accept.
It is not a requirement for me that the Madison Prep proposal be ideal from my perspective. The perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of the good. I also bear in mind that if we vote no, a preferred alternative will not immediately spring into existence.
4. “Why would you support a segregated school?”
This one make my teeth hurt. Most often, the point seems not intended to advance the discussion but to end it by detonating a rhetorical landmine.
As the result of a whole host of complicated factors that I cannot begin to unravel, many of our African-American students are either struggling in school or, worse, have given up the struggle entirely. The Madison Prep proposal is primarily though not exclusively designed to provide an alternative for those students. So, if the school is a success, it is likely that its student body will have a darker complexion than most of our other schools.
This is not segregation. Different programs in our schools serve the needs of different groups of students. Lots of African-American students at Madison Prep would be no more evidence of “segregation” than lots of white students in an AP physics class at West.
Instead, both are a reflection of the undeniable fact that we have quite the achievement gap here in Madison, something that Madison Prep is intended to address. Arguing against Madison Prep on the ground of “segregation” is like arguing against an offer of free haircuts because it discriminates against the bald.
5. Madison teachers are already working hard to address the achievement gap.
While talking about Madison Prep with teachers and administrators I respect, I have frequently heard pained questions about why are the proponents of the charter school attacking us?
Passionate feelings are on display and overheated rhetoric has come from all directions. But I don’t view the Madison Prep proposal as an indictment of our administrators, teachers and staff.
Instead, it’s born of the recognition that, despite the sometimes heroic efforts of our dedicated teachers and staff, our African-American students are, by and large, simply not succeeding in our schools, nor even doing as well as African-American students in other parts of Wisconsin.
Madison Prep is not an attempt to mimic our traditional approach except with “better” staff. Instead, it’s an invitation to try something completely different. Like it or not, that’s kind of the idea of a charter school.
6. It’s the first step toward privatizing public education in Madison.
There is an increasing and unfortunate trend toward the privatization of our public school system. I think that virtual charter schools run by for-profit operations are currently the most pernicious embodiment of the trend. I recognize that privatizers could support Madison Prep because they perceive that it advances their agenda.
But the Urban League is not K12, Inc. For years, the Urban League has been an important and valued partner with the school district in providing tutors and after school programming for Madison students. Madison Prep is better seen as an extension of this partnership than as a stalking horse for the evil forces seeking to destroy public education. (Through hard-earned experience, I have learned that any email on Madison Prep that mentions the Koch Brothers in the first paragraph is not one that will expand my understanding of the issues.)
One further point. Opponents of Madison Prep sometimes draw a contrast between what they see as the extra benefits that Madison Prep students stand to gain as compared to the students in our existing Madison schools. The sometimes implicit question is why should these select few students get a deluxe program while resources are so tight for our remaining students?
The answer is because a number of generous donors – most notably Mary Burke – have made financial commitments to Madison Prep that would allow it to implement its model without placing an inordinate financial burden on the school district.
This is a good thing. The students who would attend Madison Prep are our students, and we want the best for them, as we do for all our students.
We need to think long and hard before we reject the generosity of our community members who, through the Urban League, are extending unprecedented offers to help subsidize the education of some of our students.
Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t turn down the gift of a new car because I’d prefer a four-door to a two-door model. I’d say thank you and figure out a way to make that two-door model work for me.
Ed Hughes School Blog 
Lots of thoughts, but for now one big thing jumps out. The car metaphor is a bit off. MMSD is not being offered the equivalent of a free car, but instead a substantial discount (15%?) on the first five years of the lease of particular car. MMSD still has to make 85% of the payments and at the end of that five years no part of the car belongs to MMSD. Accepting the gift of most cars probably isn’t a difficult decision (most, not all, some cars don’t run or have other problems). Discounts on leases require more consideration.
I don’t mean to imply that you don’t give matters careful consideration, but rather don’t want the “free car” metaphor to become yet another simplistic way to frame a complex issue.
TJ —
Man, I hate it when someone actually thinks through a metaphor that captures my fancy. But I take your point — I probably over-reached.
“ultimately we have to make a judgment on the proposal as it is presented”
“whether the charter school’s proposed approach to the problem is promising enough to support.”
Ed, you have identified the crux of the whole issue with these two statements. You claim that the Board is ready to make a decision about “the proposal as it is presented,” and yet there has been absolutely no serious – or even shallow – consideration of the curricular and programmatic content of Madison Prep by either the Board or the professional educators on MMSD staff. None that is available to the public, at any rate. The lion’s share of the discussion – and all of the PR – has been focused on the business model and on the problem of the achievement gap. How on earth are you prepared to determine the promise of this proposed approach when details are so scant (what, for example, are the “special activities” they keep referring to?) and when there is no evidence anywhere that IB programming is effective in serving students of color who are struggling academically and are contributing to the poor graduation rate and standardized test scores. There is also no evidence supporting the claim that a shame based approach to the involvement of parents of struggling kids is effective.
Over this past year I have seen the Board and staff scrutinize one small program at Toki Middle school more closely for its academic and curricular content than you have done for Madison Prep. The whole process from start to finish has been problematic.
Rebecca —
Thanks for your comment. You raise an excellent point, and one that I have to wrestle with. I dislike it when a decision-maker reaches a decision and then attempts to justify it as if it were all a fore-ordained conclusion. That’s not the case on Madison Prep — I think there are significant considerations that point in either direction. The challenge for me is how to weigh one against the other, when you can’t calibrate them against a common scale. As Justice Scalia (of all people) once said, how can you tell if a rope is longer than a rock is heavy? I’ll try to explain how I ultimately come down in my next post, but it’s a bear to figure out.
Cryptic response, Ed!
Thank you. And only an hour after I inquired when it might come!
I will wait for Part II (I presume from title that it is coming — and I fervently hope you tackle the question “What reasons should I have to believe (or not believe) that this approach will work better?”, because no one seems to be addressing that really), but in the meantime, I was surprised at one comment of yours:
“… our African-American students are, by and large, simply not succeeding in our schools, nor even doing as well as African-American students in other parts of Wisconsin.”
The reason this (meaning the “not doing as well as” part) surprised me is that it goes against the post you made on Sept 2, summarized by your last paragraph then:
“So, our numbers are still nothing to brag about, but they show considerable improvement this year over last year and consistently exceed state and national averages in the areas that the Urban League highlights.”
Isn’t that saying Madison is actually doing a better (relative) job than Wisconsin as a whole, not worse? There is of course a lot of room for improvement, we want to do well by absolute yardsticks too, but I want to correctly understand the current baseline. Is perhaps your conclusion based upon the ethnic achievement gap (i.e. our non minority students are that much more successful)?
I am looking forward to Part II and appreciate your taking the time to share your thoughts. I agree with the concept of finding a way to make the current model work or at least give it a test run before we turn it down.
Mark —
Yes, you did prompt me to post the darn thing already.
My earlier post addressed the performance of our African-American students on the ACT and was in response to what I considered Madison Prep’s misleading assertions about college readiness of our African-American graduates.
The comment in this post refers to the performance of our African-American students in grades 3 through 10 on the WKCE tests of reading and math. I’ll include the figures in my next post, but from grades 3 through 8, the percentages of our African-American students who test proficient in reading and math are less than the statewide averages for African-American students. Our African-American students do better than the statewide average in both subjects in tenth grade.
Thank you Ed.
You say: “We do not commission charter school applications. The Urban League didn’t ask us what we wanted to see before it put together the Madison Prep proposal.”
Certainly you do not commission charter school applications. But you *do* commission equity task forces and strategic planning committees:
https://boeweb.madison.k12.wi.us/node/17
https://www.madison.k12.wi.us/node/2246
You finally said what I’ve been waiting to hear: “Madison Prep is not an either/or proposition. It is not the case, for example, that either we approve Madison Prep, or we expand the AVID/TOPS program. We surely do not have unlimited resources, but we can do both if we decide that both are worth doing….we just have to be willing to pay for both.”
Yes, let’s do both.
Go ahead and approve individual charter schools – but also continue to approve the expansion of programs like AVID/TOPS – and go back to smaller class sizes in low-income SAGE schools – and significantly increase after-school programming for at-risk students – and invest more funds in the PBS program in all middle schools – and make sure that we have adequate SEA and BRS and social work support in all schools. (…see recommendations of equity task force in link above for more examples of things I think we need to be doing.)
Be willing to pay for both.
If this debate has taught us nothing else – it has shown us that the Madison community is more than willing to pay for investments in education. We may disagree about issues like “instrumentality vs. non-instrumentality” or IB curriculum or single-gender education. But we all care deeply about education and are wiling to make the investment to close the achievement gap.
Amen! It never fails to surprise me how the fact that MMSD has been cutting back for years never or rarely seems to enter into this discussion. Hello!–what about adequately funding the things Kristen mentions above. Anyone who has worked for MMSD for awhile can tell you how cuts over the years have made things so much more difficult, while the needs of the kids and their families have been growing.
Ed,
As you noted in a previous blog, Kaleem Caire testified before the legislature, “I have presided over great charter schools – big ones.” I would think that, as part of the Board’s due diligence in evaluating Madison Prep Academy, you have gotten information about those great charter schools. Could you please let us know what those schools are, and other relevant information that you have about them? The performance of other schools over which Madison Prep’s principal proponent has presided will help us evaluate whether Madison Prep warrants the investment of scarce District dollars.
Thanks.
In your own words you state “Arguing against Madison Prep on the ground of “segregation” is like arguing against an offer of free haircuts because it discriminates against the bald. ”
I want to first define a few terms,
Racial segregation is the intentional separation of humans into racial groups in daily life.
Sex segregation is the separation of people according to their sex.
Do you seem, to feel that what is proposed with the Urban League, does not fit these dictionary definitions?
I am not sure, if you realized it but segregation is an important topic in education. One writer who has written about this is Jonathan Kozal, and a good book he wrote is Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. I am sure you would be outraged, if we used the term Apartheid which the award winning author Jonathan Kozal used.
In addition, one commonly cited statistic is the fact that charter schools, are more segregated then traditional public schools.
In fact the UCLA-based Civil Rights Project (CRP) released a study titled “Choice without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards.”
The authors of the Civil Rights Project report conclude,
“Our new findings demonstrate that, while segregation for blacks among all public schools has been increasing for nearly two decades, black students in charter schools are far more likely than their traditional public school counterparts to be educated in intensely segregated settings.”
By your comments, you appear to dismiss, anyone who brings up the topic of segregation in our schools.
Now to the topic of our specific situation
Here are some Madison Statistics,
Madison is 75.66% White 7.07% Black , our mmsd schools have a student breakdown of about 47% white and 54% non white.
The Urban League has stated explicitly they will enroll
“student body that is 80 percent non-white, 65 percent low-income ”
This does not reflect the make up of our district, nor the make up of our city. For the most part our schools, reflect the neighborhoods that surround them, and the students, which live in this area. No other schools, in Madison, break down, which % of students may attend. Can you imagine , the outrage if we said West High must enroll 80% white students, rather then the 55% which it currently holds. How can this be acceptable, in this instance, because it is the Urban League? The point is our schools, are open to everyone, they do not set quotas. As an non-instrumentality the school, could become 100% non-white, and the district could do nothing about this.
In fact the racial makeup, of my old high school LaFollette has changed greatly, since I attended, and now is nearly 50% minority. It was not intentionally made this way, but became this way as the neighborhood changed.
A comparison, of a west high school AP class, to what was proposed as Madison Prep, it appears you got this point from UW professor Gloria Ladson-Billings, who is on the board of Madison Prep, who said
“Go into West High School and tell me that there’s a full integration in its advanced placement classrooms, in its orchestra, in its honors classes,”
The students in the AP class, are often their because, they are good students, West High does not deny students because of race, it does not state what % of races may attend, like Madison prep intends to, and their is no barrier from minority students, entering the AP class, so I do not understand the comparison.
In addition an article recently published in the journal science, found that single sex education increases gender stereotyping and legitimizes institutional sexism. Social Science research has shown that racially segregated schools promote racial prejudice and inequality.
Their appears to be zero shred of evidence, that segregating students, will help the achievement gap, and evidence indicates it will actually have harmful effects.
We may wish to hide the truth, and wish not use certain language, but this is an important topic of discussion.
To point out the seriousness of the segregation issue, charter schools like Madison Prep are advocated by the likes of the KKK, because they segregate students.
http://kkk.bz/?p=2460
Is this the business of the school board to carry out policies of the KKK?
Ed,
I’m a ‘long time listener, first time caller/responder’. I love and appreciate your blogs and have great respect for you, but this one seems to less fact filled than most and it left me inspired to respond for the first time. I apoligize for the long response and thank you in advance for listening.
1) If it can’t be for everyone, it shouldn’t be for anyone. – We have a commitment to inclusive education in this community. I’m not saying that Madison Prep shouldn’t be for anyone, but I would argue that public funds should be used for public schools. Public schools in Madison do not exclude any children, including those with special education needs. I don’t know that we have any charter schools that we commit money to that exclude any children. If private schools want to do that then that is their choice.
2) The either/or fallacy – Unfortunately in these economic times ‘either/or’ is not a fallacy. I am usually very optimistic about these things, but not lately. I could go on and on, but I think that you know all too well the economic challenges we face and the countless great programs that are under funded or not funded at all
3) The appeal of imaginary alternatives – Please see Kristen’s response above, talk to folks on the strategic planning comittee, administrators, or teachers and tell them that the alternatives are ‘imaginary’. It’s insulting to the staff and community members that passionately work on solutions to the achievement gap and equity in our schools.
I know that we don’t commission Charter proposals, but I feel very strongly that we should be taking a more proactive approach. I want to scream PROACTIVE. I imagine that school districts will be bombarded with a lot more charter proposals in the coming years now that so many politians and lobbyists are pushing ‘school choice’ and increasing privitization. I hope that the boards time will not be completely wrapped up in responding to these proposals at the expense of other school business that needs to be taken care of. I suggest that the board and administration (perhaps with some school and community input) should have standards in place that charters need to meet in order to be considered for our public dollars. I am asking you as a board member to work to put these standards in place before the end of this school year. I hope that these standards would include instrumentality (so that the schools answer to the public/elected board members/tax payers/parents), include research based curriculum, an agreed set of standards for the quality of teachers and staff that work with our children, meet MMSD equity guidlelines, and share mutual goals/visions with our community and school (goal/vision should be spelled out) and have measurable standards that need to be met.
4) “Why would you support a segregated school?” – Indeed! I’m sorry if this ‘make your teeth hurt’, but segregation should not have any part in public schools. This is not just rhetoric, we have a high concentration of educated and thoughtful people in this community that feel strongly that desegration and inclusion are important values for many good reasons. Desegregation is good for people of all races. This is one of the great advantages and challenges of being a citizen of this great country. We should work to desegregate the AP Physics Class at West instead of segregating more. I know that you are a smart and thoughtful man. Think hard about this one. Think beyond this proposal to your life experiences and the experiences of those around you. Think about history and our community values. I hope that segregation in Public Schools is never a part of our vision.
5) Madison teachers are already working hard to address the achievement gap. – Madison teachers and community members wonder why Madison Prep/Kaleem is attaching them because MP focuses more on our/MMSD failure than on their own solutions. They talk more about our lack of progress than about how and why their methods will work better than our own. I haven’t heard any research based evidence or even about experiences of success with this type of proposal and I have been paying attention. The Urban League has stopped acting like a partner in addressing the achievement gap and begun acting more like adversaries under the leadership of Mr. Caire by repeatedly attacking our school and community efforts. It leaves me feeling a lack of trust and I don’t want them to recieve our funds without instrumentality. If they can’t act like partners now when they are trying to earn your vote, what makes you think they will behave like partners after the contract is in place?
6) It’s the first step toward privatizing public education in Madison – This actually appears to be true if MP moves forward without the requirement of instrumentality. I agre with TJ, Mary Burke’s donation makes the school discounted, not gifted. I would not whine that the MP students would be getting a deluxe education at the cost of our students. Wouldn’t that be great if it were true? Instead it appears that an extraordinary share of the MP budget goes toward administration and that the staff standards aren’t consistent with the standards in our schools. It has been my experience that this matters a great deal. I predict high rates of staff turn over and little (if any) improvement in the achievement gap across the district. MP and other charters might not even be held to the testing standards of our public schools in the future, but if they are held to the same standards they are likely to do well because they don’t have to include children with special needs or high rates of mobilty or students whose parents aren’t willing/able to be involved in their education.
Please do not approve this school without instrumentality or at the expense of expanding or funding other good programs. Thank you for listening.
Dawn — Very well put. Thanks for contributing to the discussion. I wish I had time to respond in detail to the good points and counterpoints you and others are raising.
I am, by the way, always extremely grateful for the thoughtful and civil comments that readers post.
Ed –
Long time listerner and poster ; – )
As always, whether or not I personally agree with your viewpoint, I do appreciate you taking the time to highlight your views.
Three comments:
1) You elude to, but do not actually call it, de jure vs. de facto segregation. Understand that the difference between a classroom for students of a certain achievement (AP at West) vs. a school that is extremely vocal about the color of its students is very different. Your teeth will contiue to hurt because this is a very slippery slope in the community. I do not wish to be in your shoes at all right now.
2) The whole issue of attacking teachers and administrators. I will be blunt to the point of potentially ruffling a few favors – there is a difference between efforts and results. There is also a difference between incremental results, modest results and outstanding results. The gap that we see in MMSD and Wisconsin is large. The narrowing of the gap, if it even exists, is minor. No one should be surprised that vocal supporters / advocates are pointing to the lack of results. If that upsets those that are working on improving the results, so be it.
3) Either – Or. Sorry, but when it comes to fiscal issues it is a zero sum game. You only have so much money to spend. As always, regardless of the state-mandated cap, you can always go to referrendum. If the community wants to support it, they will vote in favor. The spirit of the caps was to reduce the ability of a taxing authority (MMSD) from raising taxes to a degree without the consent of the community. As you have pointed out, MMSD is in a great position because the community voted to allow a higher increase. And as programs are added (4k for example) that eat into this buffer, it does become an either or – unless you wish to move to referrendum.
The 19th will be a most interesting meeting.
I am going to channel (without permission!) Ed here and point out that he has already addressed the cost comparison of MP to the 4K program, and pointed out that doing so is comparing apples and oranges. The 4K program should have only additional cost to the budget for three years & then will be self-sustaining, while this program will have open-ended, and actually escalating, costs going forward, as more classes are enrolled. In other words, the scope of the financial demands this program would put on future school budgets is in a completely different (larger) league than the 4K program. I just would hate to see someone say “they can find the money for mostly white 4K kids, but not this” — because the way this thing is going, I think it’s at least 50/50 odds this will come up Monday.
From a comment Ed posted to his 9/9 blog entry:
————-
Mad4Madison asks what’s the total cost to the school district of the four-year-old kindergarten program that we just got underway. My recollection is that the cost to the school district of the program is roughly $12 million a year, which is offset in part by about $4 million we have previously been paying for early childhood education programs. The makes the net cost about $8 million per year.
The wrinkle here is that the young students in 4K will boost the school district’s student count. This will help us out on both principal factors that determine the amount of general state aid we receive – the school district’s property value per student and our level of expenditures per student. The mysteries of the school funding formula are deep, but, by its fourth year of operation, our 4K program should generate more in state aid for the district than its net $8 million-a-year cost.
This means that we had to find the funds for what worked out to be about $8 million in year one of the program, $8 million in year two, and $4 million in year three, or a total of $20 million over three years. After that, the program should be self-sustaining.
Mark –
Thanks for the “channeling”. My comparison was simply for the sake of dollars and cents, not for the color of the participants. But you will find in your investigation that the proponents of 4k stated that it would help the same demographic that MP is being touted as assisting. The most recent numbers published from MMSD show that teh demographic using 4k is not the most needy.
As for MP, if you take the number coming from MP, you will find that there is a curve too – that is a point where the cost for MMSD becomes the same per student as they now have. Now I absolutely agree with anyone who questions the “quality” of those numbers.
In the end, however the $20,000,000 over three years did come at the cost of other programs. Again, it is a zero sum game – one intiative or program wins and another does not.
Perhaps I can weigh in here. From my perspective, we have not been faced with either/or budgetary choices over the last couple of years. We have been under our spending cap, and so we have been able to choose to fund whatever programs or initiatives we have thought was worth the investment by increasing the tax levy. I am more willing to increase the tax levy than some of my colleagues, so it may be that their fiscal prudence has allowed us to maintain the underlevy authority that provides us with this budgetary flexibility.
It is certainly true that if we approve Madison Prep, we will have less underlevy authority to work with. The time will likely come when we do find ourselves up against the spending limit. At that time, we could see a budgetary commitment to Madison Prep as foreclosing us from pursuing other options or investments. But the same could be said at that time about every other financial commitment we will have made.
The main point is that the cost of Madison Prep can come from an increased tax levy and need not be collected by dinging the programs and initiatives at our current schools. It also need not deter us from pursuing the expansion of other programs like AVID, so long as the total incremental spending remains under $8 million or $10 million or whatever our underlevy authority is these days.
Ed
I’d disagree that you have not been faced with an “either/or” choices. You have been faced with a big one. The choice was whether to use your full revenue authority to educate the students in your charge as well as possible or to hold the line on taxes. Over the last two budgets $20.5 M in authority has not been used and II firmly believe that there are many ways that some or all of this money could have been used which would have improved education.
TJM