Weekend greetings, CharterFolk.
I start out offering another thanks to DSST. As I wrote in my “Where Else Would I Rather Be” post in March, DSST’s signing day happened to fall on my 60th birthday, which was last week. So Nella and the team invited me back …
… to see it in person.
10,000 people in the Denver Coliseum celebrating 894 graduates, eighty percent of whom will be the first in their families to attend college.
At a surface level, the broader education landscape may seem to be a story of toxicity and pessimism. But go a little deeper, and maintain a little historical perspective, and you find something profoundly different.
Most would have said at the beginning of the century that it would be impossible for something like DSST to emerge from the brokenness of public education in Denver. And yet, here we are.
A trip to the oxygen bar every bit as invigorating as what I saw in Indianapolis the week before.
On we go, CharterFolk.
On we go.
Of No-Brainers and Non-Starters
For the heart of this week’s post, I would like to return to what I consider to be the main theme coming out of Andy’s and my recent conversation with DFER CEO, Jorge Elorza:
The jarring disconnect between what courageous Democratic ed reformers call for and what the Democratic Party is careening toward.
Jorge and Arne Duncan call support for the new federal education tax credit scholarship program a “no-brainer.”
Meanwhile, more than 30 Dems in the U.S. Senate are working to eliminate that very same program.
What our world calls a no-brainer, the Democratic mainstream calls a non-starter.
Developments in Jorge’s hometown of Providence only further illuminate the disconnect.
Three and a half years ago, Jorge and two past mayors of Providence called for an all-charter system.
Shifting to an “all public charter” district would empower all principals and school leaders with the flexibility to make the necessary changes. We recognize that charter schools are not a panacea but we also recognize that families cannot and should not have to wait any longer. Each year, parents are voting with their feet and the number of public charter school applications has soared as families recognize that public charter schools offer better options for their kids. We know this is a bold step and we do not make this recommendation lightly. But given what we now know, we would each choose this route and we recommend that you do so as well.
While this approach is bold, we believe it is the best and fairest one. The teachers’ union should be brought to the table and given the opportunity to help you change the management structure. If the union is unwilling to change this structural problem, then we strongly recommend that you pursue the all public charter route. Our schools require a dramatic change and we recommend that you not settle for anything less.
Today, Rhode Island Democrats in the legislature are attempting to impose a moratorium on charter schools.
For many years, Rhode Island’s governor found the idea of a charter school moratorium a non-starter.
Now, given how far behind he is in the polls …
… and how desperately he believes he needs to curry favor with the teacher union, he apparently finds a charter school moratorium a political no-brainer.
We will see.
There are currently more students on charter school waitlists in Rhode Island than there are students enrolled in charter schools.
And those schools were reported by CREDO a few years ago to be generating an additional 90 days per year in reading compared to what happens in district schools.
That means that, on average, students in Rhode Island charter schools achieve as much learning in two years as kids in district schools achieve in three.
District schools in Providence, as we have highlighted here many times over the years, are among the most abjectly broken we find anywhere in the country.
In 2019, the state of the district’s schools were enough to leave a review team from Johns Hopkins in tears.
Indeed, references to tears are literally contained within the report itself.
PPSD has an exceptionally low level of academic instruction, including a lack of quality curriculum and alignment both within schools and across the district. Very little visible student learning was going on in the majority of classrooms and schools we visited – most especially in the middle and high schools. Multiple stakeholders emphasized that the state, district, and business community have very low expectations for student learning. Many district team members and community partners broke down in tears when describing this reality, which classroom observations verified.
Four years later, Dems in the legislature commissioned a study of the district.
While there are no literal references to tears within it, the overall reporting is nearly as sorrowful.
It is indisputable that our public schools have the mission to provide a quality public education to every student, and Providence Public Schools do not fulfill that mission for thousands of students every year. For these underserved students, the success of some of their peers provides no comfort. Instead, the inadequate public education we provide these children becomes a devastating setback for their futures, a source of professional frustration for their teachers, a basic failure of our State to safeguard these children’s civil rights and basic needs, and an ugly stain on our social fabric. The persistence of these calamities over decades (even after accounting for the progress we have achieved) does not reduce the seriousness of either the severe challenges a new generation of students must overcome each succeeding year, or the urgency of bringing a definitive end to this ongoing and compounding tragedy; instead, the opposite is true.
The report’s findings sparked the introduction of three bills in March.
The president of the state teacher union became the President of the Senate in April.
All three bills died in committee in May.
In June, the Ethics Commission found no conflict of interest for the teacher union president to serve as the President of the Senate.
Ever since the 2024 election, people have been speculating about how the Democratic Party might begin to adjust its policies to become more in tune with what voters want. Considerable focus has been on Klein and Thompson’s book Abundance, which avoided any mention of how out of step with voters Democrats are on education matters.
This week, Klein and Thompson convened to discuss what they got wrong in Abundance.
Nowhere in their two-hour-long discussion did the word education even appear.
Other writers at the Times are suggesting that Democrats are coming to see a re-embrace of the policy positions advanced by Kamala Harris to be just fine, given how unpopular Trump is becoming.
I actually don’t think that’s the right take, at least on education matters, given what we’re seeing happen in places like Rhode Island.
If there is any place where letting charter schools continue to grow should be an absolute no-brainer, it is Rhode Island.
And yet, what we find is not just a whole party avoiding the very concept of abundance in public education, but a whole party actively embracing scarcity.
It’s a conscious effort to make their education policy even worse.
Rejecting no-brainers and embracing non-starters.
All in hopes of doing even more damage to our movement.
If they can do it in Providence, CharterFolk, they can do it anywhere.
It’s not Providence as the exception, CharterFolk.
It’s Providence as the guide.
The Rhode to Greater Advocacy Strength
It brings me then to the CharterFolk Chat I had with Andrew Broy this week.
If you haven’t found a moment for it yet, I sincerely hope you do in the days ahead.
Going straight up, no chaser, Andrew makes plain how important it is that charter school leaders provide increased dues to their membership associations to build the strong C3/C4 tandems we will need to succeed as a movement.
After I observed that charter school leaders often ask what it would take to build an INCS-like advocacy organization in their state, I noted that while extraordinary leadership from people like Andrew is certainly part of the answer, the other part is economics.
INCS now brings in four to five times more membership revenue per pupil than schools in many other states provide to their associations.
It led to this exchange:
Wallace: If there are any viewers from other parts of the country that have an association that is being funded at $5, $6, or $7 per kid, what would you say to charter school leaders in those other states about the wisdom of providing resources to their associations at higher levels?
Broy: I would say it’s essential. You’ve got to have recurring, consistent revenue as foundations come in and out of this movement to sustain your organization and to grow to a scale of staffing to be effective.
Each year, I do a deep dive into charter school association economics. This year I come away encouraged.
Membership revenue coming into state associations has grown to nearly $35 million per year, nearly a three-fold increase from when I first started tracking association economics in 2018.
This year we are seeing the largest annual increase that we have ever seen, nearly $6 million in additional dues funding. But in many places, charter school leaders remain unaware of what is happening elsewhere, such that we are seeing a needless slowing of the building of advocacy strength.
If you need proof of the importance of additional dues revenues, look at Rhode Island.
The charter school community there is demonstrating the Rhode to advocacy strengthening.
It starts, of course, with what Andrew implores us to do: evolve our associations into C3/C4 tandems.
Rhode Island, as I wrote several years ago …
… was one of our first states with a small association to build political infrastructure. In addition to that, members have been paying dues to the Rhode Island League at the second-highest per-pupil rate in the country.
Those resources are giving Chiara and her team the base capacity to advocate effectively at moments such as these.
And now the Mayoral Academies are joining forces with traditional charter schools to take the League to new levels of unity and collective impact.
If ever you wonder why one of the smallest charter school communities in the country has proven strong enough to weather some of the worst attacks in the nation – including the unbelievable circumstance of the president of the teacher union serving as the President of the Senate – well, now you’re hearing it, straight up, no chaser.
Schools that fund their associations at higher levels see advocacy support in their states improve.
And, look, there are no guarantees in Rhode Island. Just as there are no guarantees for us anywhere. The attacks keep coming with ever growing desperation and ferocity.
What should be no-brainers are going to remain non-starters for many years to come.
It’s why it’s so important we let Providence be our guide.
Many traditional school systems across the country are bringing tears to eyes.
And many charter schools generate as much progress in two years as the broken system does in three.
So keep growing the resources we’re providing to our state associations, CharterFolk.
It’s the Rhode to increased advocacy strength.
And more importantly, it’s the road to better outcomes for millions of students.