The School District has had involvement with a number of charter schools over the past ten years. The Sun Prairie School Board chartered the Dane County Transition School for five years until the charter ended and the school became an alternative school through consortium agreements. The district is currently a member of Jefferson East Dane Interactive (JEDI), which is chartered by the Cambridge School District. JEDI is the program that allows us to offer Sun Prairie Virtual High School and Sun Prairie Virtual Middle School, and may allow us to offer Sun Prairie Virtual Elementary School in the near future. This allows the district to serve families who previously open enrolled to other virtual schools.
On January 11, 2010, at the request of the District Administrator, the school board appointed two members to a study team to look at the concept of charter schools. The Steering Committee of this study team was composed of Alice Murphy, Marggie Banker, Rick Mueller, Chad Wiedmeyer, Tony Dugas, and myself. Quite a lot has been learned and this information has been catalogued for the district and community at Study Link .
In February 2010, four members of the Steering Committee visited an International Baccalaureate Elementary School with Chinese language instruction in St. Paul. This was done in conjunction with an overview workshop for the Primary Program of International Baccalaureate put on by the Minnesota Department of Education. We learned many things from this visit about reforming schools that had high levels of poverty as well as what it takes to become an “IB” program at the elementary level. Interestingly, we learned that the school we visited was designed as a “magnet” within the school system rather than a charter outside the school system.
In March 2010, the Steering Committee and two school board members attended the Wisconsin Charter School Conference in Madison. We learned about many unique and creative ideas and also about numerous political issues related to funding and control of charters. We learned of significant changes in the reauthorization of funding for charter schools to make them much more distinctive from “alternative programs” and/or magnet programs. To obtain funding under the new state grants, they must be independent of the school system from a governance point of view, though accountable to the school district via the negotiated “charter.”
In late spring, teachers and community members joined the Study Team. It was gratifying and interesting to learn of the interest in “doing something different” than what our schools currently offer. These people had very diverse points of view on which direction this study should take. But there was quite a bit of consistency in desiring some different options for some children. There was an intent that the Study Team would break up into 5 smaller groups to research and visit various types of schools to gain the experience of others. Perhaps because of summer break and/or the need to start school in the fall, this outreach plan for the most part was not accomplished.
However, in discussion with the Steering Committee, there was also a growing consensus that “chartering" a school “outside” the district, at least by district personnel, was an intriguing solution but perhaps not the one that makes the most sense at this point in time.
Einstein said that, “…the formulation of a problem is usually more essential than its solution, which may be merely matter of … skill.” It has perhaps been premature to study a “solution,” (even a potentially beneficial and interesting one) without giving greater consideration to what the “problem” to be solved is, or perhaps the strategic direction we want such a solution to take us in terms of what specifically needs to be improved.
Throughout this process we gathered ideas and suggestions from many about creating diverse kinds of new opportunities for Sun Prairie children. For example:
§ World languages in addition to English being taught earlier than middle school (either as exposure via ‘special’ or, more frequently suggested, intensively).
§ Immersion and/or bilingual 2nd language programs.
§ Teaching Chinese as a World language option.
§ International Baccalaureate program(s) at the elementary and/or high school levels.
§ Thematic programming (meaning emphasis across all courses); for example, Fine Arts School or Science/Technology/Engineering/Mathematics (STEM) Schools.
§ Schools within schools models.
§ Alternative primary education models such as Montessori, looping, and/or multi-age.
§ Alternative organizational structures, for example, single gender classes at the middle levels.
§ Alternative school calendar structure(s), for example, a 180-day year-round schedule with different breaks.
§ Choice of (versus assignment to) elementary and/or middle schools.
§ Magnet programs (perhaps any of the above types) located in selected schools to assist in balancing socio-economic diversity.
§ Self-contained gifted and talented classes.
§ Reserve Officer Training Corps programming at the High School level.
§ Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) programming from middle through high school to stimulate student achievement in alignment with priority Goal 5.
These are ideas that have been mentioned in various meetings; doubtless there are others.
The “problem” would not seem to be whether there should be a charter school, but rather which of these (or other) innovative, creative, and/or possibly “disruptive to the status quo” programs should be considered and/or implemented. Are any of the benefits worth the costs? Would doing any of these be perceived to “harm” any existing programming or expectations of services?
Policy BA states that our 3rd priority goal is to "Improve and expand learning opportunities so that every graduate is prepared and inspired to successfully and productively pursue any option after high school.” The most recent examples of such expanded learning opportunities have been Sun Prairie 4 Kids (four year old kindergarten), the Upper Middle School, and Sun Prairie Virtual High and Middle School. SP4K was a massive undertaking affecting all children and was accomplished only after 11 years of study and three task forces. The Upper Middle School combined both change in facility and philosophy and was completed after about 5 years of work. Because SPVHS and SPVMS were options affecting a small number of students, this improvement was accomplished in about a year of study and a year of approval process.
Some concepts from the list of opportunities above have been processed multiple times and ways and there seems to be consensus such a change would be beneficial. For example, the School Board has approved the AVID program in concept in three different grant proposals that have been submitted (unfortunately, none of which was successful).Some concepts have been discussed generally, or even explored, but have not (yet) obtained traction to become fully implemented improvements, for example, instruction in Chinese and looping.
The key question: How does an idea for improvement gain “traction” to move forward from passing brainstorm to reality? A system has to have a process to consider all ideas but ultimately choose to focus resources of planning time, energy and funding on those deemed to have the most impact on achieving the mission of the school district. The first step in doing so is to clearly identify and gain shared agreement on what the “problem” is that we are trying to solve.
I am not sure, at least at this time, that a charter school “solution” is needed to improve our school programming. What is necessary is consensus on strategic direction followed by thorough study and analysis. Concluding that process, chartering a school outside our system might possibly be the only way to provide certain choices or offerings that cannot be offered inside the system. However, right now we do not see insurmountable barriers inside the system that would prevent any of the example ideas on the list above from being explored in a thoughtful manner - - if a consensus is developed that such a change is important for improving student achievement. This is consistent with the School Board's primary responsibility to promote the educational achievement of students and the diligent management of resources available to the district.
Processes of study, evaluation, and development exist. If a person, group, teacher, administrator, or community member wishes to propose a significant program change, they can be aided in accessing information and understanding this process by which such changes can be proposed. Leadership can come from many places in a community. But even before such a study process is undertaken, there needs to be a consensus built on the definition of the problem and that a potential solution is at least desirable and feasible enough to merit the investment of time and energy in the study. The work in studying a proposed problem and solution can be large depending on the scope of the change, so conversations with many stakeholders (staff, parents, administration, School Board) are necessary to see if there is a shared agreement that will provide traction for something significantly different than current offerings.
Example 1: If a middle school principal was interested in creating some single-gender classes in certain subject areas, given the right level of interest among staff and parents (with critical mass of consensus), I see no insurmountable barrier to offering such change, just develop a process to assure all aspects and implications have been explored and resolved.
Example 2: If a principal was interested in creating a school-within-a-school program inside his or her school (bilingual Spanish, perhaps?), given the right level of interest among staff and parents (with critical mass of consensus), I see no insurmountable barrier to offering that option, just develop a process to assure all aspects and implications have been explored and resolved.
Example 3: If the school district was interested in creating a ‘magnet’ elementary school given the right level of interest by school board, administration, staff, and parents (which means a really large critical mass of consensus), I see no insurmountable barrier to creating that option (even school assignment policies could be changed, for example). There just needs to be a prioritized process to assure all aspects and implications have been explored and resolved.
The scope of these 3 examples goes from fairly small change to major change. The time frame, resource reallocations, and number of people to involve to accomplish any of these would be substantially different. The issue is whether our system is flexible enough to allow such changes or do people have to go outside the system?
If in the future a person, group, teacher, administrator, or community member wished to propose a charter school of some sort, my first question will be “what can such a school do that we are not able to in our system?” There might be valid answers to that question, in which case we will provide assistance in understanding our study process to answer the questions necessary to make a prudent decision on such a solution.
For now, the Steering Committee has determined to suspend study of developing a charter school, but to continue to explore and promote large and small improvements in schools consistent with the School Board’s priority goals.
Please contact me anytime and please keep speaking out with ideas to improve our schools.
Tim Culver
tculver@spasd.k12.wi.us
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Learning in Brazil
I have been fortunate over the course of my career to have been able to visit schools and learn about public education in Norway, Germany, Japan, South Africa, and last summer, Brazil. Learning how other cultures and governments address the fundamental need to educate their children has provided thought-provoking comparisons. I’ve learned new ideas that stretched my thinking about many things and worked on my cultural proficiency skills. I have also gained a deep appreciation of how blessed we are here in the United States that quality education for every child is has been a core value from the beginning of our democratic government. Our educational system (and our system of government for that matter) has challenges and imperfections that make me a little crazy at times. But having experienced other systems, I still firmly believe we are blessed in what we have. This belief is one of the things that inspires me to continue trying to address our challenges and imperfections.
Last summer, I was fortunate to have been selected as part of a team of 15 American high school teachers who participated in a Fulbright-Hays Seminar Abroad in Brazil from June 19 to July 14, 2010. We visited 9 different cities or regions, starting in São Paulo and ending in Rio de Janeiro. Our goal was to learn about Brazil with a focus on diversity in education and how Brazil has been attempting to bridge achievement gaps based on race, ethnicity and socio-economic class. I learned much about this amazing country that is becoming very important in the world. I also learned about efforts Brazil is making to deal with racism, socio-economic inequity, and a historically weakened K-12 public education system. This very much informed my own work as an educational leader.
One requirement was to create a project to share the experience. I developed a resource unit for social studies classes that weaves together my personal “travel journal” of observations and experiences with some important questions about Brazil, race, poverty, and education. It’s been quite a while since I had to write curriculum, so this project was also a good experience. It renewed my appreciation for what our teachers do all the time as part of their work. If you’d like to see the project (which includes quite a few pictures and observations about Brazil) you may check it out at Brazil Project Link. A warning: it is 104 pages long…I told you it was an amazing trip! I will just share briefly one of my key reflections from the experience. This will be simplified and I will use USA equivalent terms for schooling rather than the Brazilian terms for the sake of brevity.
Brazil is a country with vast resources, but also vast inequities in the distribution of wealth and power. Unlike the U.S. where the middle class is historically the largest socioeconomic group, Brazil’s poor are the largest group. Unlike the U.S., education is a right and a responsibility of government to provide guaranteed in the 1988 Brazilian constitution. Not only ‘free’ pre-K-12 education, but also 'free' all the way through graduate school! Unlike the U.S., Brazilian funding for federal universities was historically the greatest portion of education funding. The children of the wealthy and the powerful needed world-class universities, so that's were the funding went. Brazil has really great universities; free to students the same way our K-12 system is free to students. If a high school graduate can score high enough on the Vestibular (the “TEST”) he or she gets into university… a free ride all the way through medical or law school, for example, if that’s the “TEST” they pass. So, passing the “TEST” is a hugely important goal. In the U.S. we save money to send our children to college in the future. In Brazil, parents who can afford it spend lots of money on pre-school, tutoring, supplemental education, and K-12 education so their children will score well on the “TEST” and theoretically get set for life.
This sounds intriguing, but here are the rubs. First, K-12 public education in Brazil is only 4 hours per day (for 200 days a year). Secondly, until recently, funding for the K-12 public system was quite small. The dictatorship (under which Brazil was ruled until the 1988 constitution when they became a democracy again) did not value public education for all and allowed the public schools to wither away during multiple economic crises. Wealthy and middle class parents almost universally abandoned public schools for private schools (which also get some government funding - sort of like vouchers - to supplement the private tuition). Private schools operate 8 or more hours per day and pay teachers many times more than what most public teachers were reduced to. Families with resources and power gave up on the public school system and the public schools declined in a vicious doom cycle during the 1960’s 70’s and 80’s. In the past 15 years or so, with some prodding by the United Nations and a new government that valued public education for all (‘para todos’) for the future of Brazil, the country began investing in public education again. Brazil has made amazing strides in the past decade in terms of access to education by all children. For example, they went from about 60% attendance to over 90% attendance at the elementary level. In addition, I saw Brazilian school systems doing things with multi-cultural curriculum that were truly impressive. But, at core, it is still only 4 hours per day. So, who is typically not ready to compete on the "TEST" are those who did not attend full time private schools: mainly the poor and persons of color. That’s why, until very recently, in a country that is roughly 50% persons of color and 50% persons primarily white about 98% of university students are white. Resolving this inequity is one of the larger educational challenges with which Brazil now wrestles.
For me, the cautionary tale of this brief overview of one idea is the critical nature of public support of good public education for all. As important as this is, the public expectation of good schools for all can be lost, and once lost, is extremely difficult to rebuild. Regardless of the government in charge, or the economic times we face, we must keep public education for every child the cornerstone of our culture and democracy - - as it has been for over 300 years. We need to make schools perform well for all, the poor as well as those not poor; minority racial and ethnic groups as well as those in the majority. We certainly have our challenges and inequities with which to wrestle. However, we are fortunate that our governments and our people have never “given up” on our public schools or stopped expecting that all children have equal opportunity to become well educated. This American heritage is one of the reasons I am proud to be an educator in the United States and remain committed to work to make it ever better.
Finally, I wish to thank the U.S. Department of Education and the Brazil Fulbright Commission for the opportunity to participate in this Fulbright-Hays Seminar Abroad. It provided amazing opportunities for learning about another country, improved our cultural proficiency, and as well let us share what is happening in the United States with educators and leaders around the world. For more on this program: Fulbright-Hays Seminar Link
Stay inspirED,
Tim Culver
Last summer, I was fortunate to have been selected as part of a team of 15 American high school teachers who participated in a Fulbright-Hays Seminar Abroad in Brazil from June 19 to July 14, 2010. We visited 9 different cities or regions, starting in São Paulo and ending in Rio de Janeiro. Our goal was to learn about Brazil with a focus on diversity in education and how Brazil has been attempting to bridge achievement gaps based on race, ethnicity and socio-economic class. I learned much about this amazing country that is becoming very important in the world. I also learned about efforts Brazil is making to deal with racism, socio-economic inequity, and a historically weakened K-12 public education system. This very much informed my own work as an educational leader.
One requirement was to create a project to share the experience. I developed a resource unit for social studies classes that weaves together my personal “travel journal” of observations and experiences with some important questions about Brazil, race, poverty, and education. It’s been quite a while since I had to write curriculum, so this project was also a good experience. It renewed my appreciation for what our teachers do all the time as part of their work. If you’d like to see the project (which includes quite a few pictures and observations about Brazil) you may check it out at Brazil Project Link. A warning: it is 104 pages long…I told you it was an amazing trip! I will just share briefly one of my key reflections from the experience. This will be simplified and I will use USA equivalent terms for schooling rather than the Brazilian terms for the sake of brevity.
Brazil is a country with vast resources, but also vast inequities in the distribution of wealth and power. Unlike the U.S. where the middle class is historically the largest socioeconomic group, Brazil’s poor are the largest group. Unlike the U.S., education is a right and a responsibility of government to provide guaranteed in the 1988 Brazilian constitution. Not only ‘free’ pre-K-12 education, but also 'free' all the way through graduate school! Unlike the U.S., Brazilian funding for federal universities was historically the greatest portion of education funding. The children of the wealthy and the powerful needed world-class universities, so that's were the funding went. Brazil has really great universities; free to students the same way our K-12 system is free to students. If a high school graduate can score high enough on the Vestibular (the “TEST”) he or she gets into university… a free ride all the way through medical or law school, for example, if that’s the “TEST” they pass. So, passing the “TEST” is a hugely important goal. In the U.S. we save money to send our children to college in the future. In Brazil, parents who can afford it spend lots of money on pre-school, tutoring, supplemental education, and K-12 education so their children will score well on the “TEST” and theoretically get set for life.
This sounds intriguing, but here are the rubs. First, K-12 public education in Brazil is only 4 hours per day (for 200 days a year). Secondly, until recently, funding for the K-12 public system was quite small. The dictatorship (under which Brazil was ruled until the 1988 constitution when they became a democracy again) did not value public education for all and allowed the public schools to wither away during multiple economic crises. Wealthy and middle class parents almost universally abandoned public schools for private schools (which also get some government funding - sort of like vouchers - to supplement the private tuition). Private schools operate 8 or more hours per day and pay teachers many times more than what most public teachers were reduced to. Families with resources and power gave up on the public school system and the public schools declined in a vicious doom cycle during the 1960’s 70’s and 80’s. In the past 15 years or so, with some prodding by the United Nations and a new government that valued public education for all (‘para todos’) for the future of Brazil, the country began investing in public education again. Brazil has made amazing strides in the past decade in terms of access to education by all children. For example, they went from about 60% attendance to over 90% attendance at the elementary level. In addition, I saw Brazilian school systems doing things with multi-cultural curriculum that were truly impressive. But, at core, it is still only 4 hours per day. So, who is typically not ready to compete on the "TEST" are those who did not attend full time private schools: mainly the poor and persons of color. That’s why, until very recently, in a country that is roughly 50% persons of color and 50% persons primarily white about 98% of university students are white. Resolving this inequity is one of the larger educational challenges with which Brazil now wrestles.
For me, the cautionary tale of this brief overview of one idea is the critical nature of public support of good public education for all. As important as this is, the public expectation of good schools for all can be lost, and once lost, is extremely difficult to rebuild. Regardless of the government in charge, or the economic times we face, we must keep public education for every child the cornerstone of our culture and democracy - - as it has been for over 300 years. We need to make schools perform well for all, the poor as well as those not poor; minority racial and ethnic groups as well as those in the majority. We certainly have our challenges and inequities with which to wrestle. However, we are fortunate that our governments and our people have never “given up” on our public schools or stopped expecting that all children have equal opportunity to become well educated. This American heritage is one of the reasons I am proud to be an educator in the United States and remain committed to work to make it ever better.
Finally, I wish to thank the U.S. Department of Education and the Brazil Fulbright Commission for the opportunity to participate in this Fulbright-Hays Seminar Abroad. It provided amazing opportunities for learning about another country, improved our cultural proficiency, and as well let us share what is happening in the United States with educators and leaders around the world. For more on this program: Fulbright-Hays Seminar Link
Stay inspirED,
Tim Culver
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