On the Great Charter Divide in Washington (and Shabby Adult Behavior)

Last Friday at 4:30 pm (Labor Day weekend) the Washington State Supreme Court threw a Molotov cocktail into the already volatile education policy debate here in Washington State. The court ruled 6-3, that because charter schools do not have elected school boards, they are not considered “common schools” and are therefore ineligible for the state funding they were expecting to receive. If you are reading this, you are probably familiar with the fallout.

The blame for this fiasco falls squarely at the feet of the Washington State Legislature. Because of the intransigent, donothing-ness of our our lawmakers, people and interest groups have increasingly turned to (our flawed) initiative process: reduction of class sizes (passed, but suspended by lawmakers), creation a state income tax (failed), background checks for firearms (passed), liquor privatization (passed), marijuana legalization [(for both medicinal and recreational purposes) pass and pass] and after numerous attempts to enact a charter law via the legislature, charter advocates turned to the initiative process in 2012, running Initiative 1240, which passed 50.69% to 49.31%. This fall seven charter schools began operating and one (in Seattle) was expected to continue its notably troubled operations. That was until last Friday.

Since last Friday we’ve witnessed a cavalcade of national media attention and some honestly gauche online behavior. Before I go further, I feel obligated to layout (for full disclosure) my stance on charters:

I am not an ideologue. I work in a public school in Tacoma, by choice; it is the highest poverty high school in our county. My views on charters are similar to my views on gay marriage: “I am pretty sure it’s not for me or my family, but I am often flummoxed as to why some people are so upset over the idea.”

I also believe that if the public K-12 system was serving the needs of the communities we are intended to serve, that there would not be a need/desire/appetite for charters. In many ways, the charter phenomenon is the natural consequence of communities--especially communities of color, in urban areas--dissatisfaction with the educational status quo.

Teachers United, an organization I am a founding member of, publicly supported I-1240, however I voted against that decision as a member of the board of directors.

I have met with the CEO of Green Dot Schools and was offered (and considered) roles within two of the charters that opened in Tacoma, but I declined them and remain (a) a charter agnostic and (b) a (mostly) happy employee of Tacoma Public Schools.

Long story short, I am very familiar with both camps and the contours of the charter argument.

There are no winners when adults behave poorly over issues that impact children: It is tough to watch people you respect and care about behave like children and I must say I was disappointed with the reactions I saw to the charter verdict. Celebrating the (potential) closing of a school is (never) a good look. Nevertheless, I saw substantial spiking of the football from “adults” whose social media bios proclaim them as “champions of education”. I found the celebrations and “we won” posts that erupted, to be very problematic. Closing schools, or throwing schools into uncertainty harms children. Period. I found it especially ironic that many of the same people who were “hashtagging it up” in support of schools in Chicago, late this summer, found cause for celebration in the possibility that charters would be shuttered here in Washington.

On the other hand, I found the response from many charter advocates to also be upsetting. The save our schools posts and demands for a special legislative session went out immediately. Many came from people who have been dead silent about the crippling underfunding of public schools here in Washington State [a situation that has contributed to the ongoing strike in Seattle and a contempt of court charge (and $100,000 daily fine) against the State Legislature].

During the budget crisis of in 2011, here in Tacoma, we closed Hunt MS, McKinley ES, and temporarily closed Wainwright ES. Earlier, but within recent memory, we also closed Rogers (now the site of Green Dot), Gault and Willard. Given that local history, I can’t help but ask: where were all these voices in 2011? Where were you when our school board voted to close three schools serving the Eastside (Tacoma’s most economically disadvantaged neighborhood)? Where were the calls for a special session? Statewide these eight charter schools serve a total of 1,200 students, fewer than four of the five comprehensive high schools in the City of Tacoma. Why are eight charters worthy of a national outpouring of support, but our “common schools” remain perpetually underfunded and allowed to be closed with nary a whimper?

Thinking about where this goes next and the political endgame: Since the decision, the charters have successfully raised enough money to maintain their operations for this year. So for 2015-16, Washington’s charters will actually be “donor/foundation funded, tuition free, private schools, targeting urban populations”. I am genuinely happy for the kids and relieved for the teachers (and families) of those schools, but the entire experience has left a nasty taste in my mouth and I find myself wondering about what lies ahead.

Republicans control the State Senate and I believe a “charter fix” would pass (with relative ease) in that chamber. Democrats hold a slim majority in the House, but there are enough pro-charter (or like myself, not anti-charter) Democrats that a “charter fix” will probably pass out of that body as well, however with greater difficulty. The charters have secured their funding for 2015-2016 (and I’m guessing could probably secure another year’s worth as this gets sorted out). A fix will certainly be a priority in the next legislative session. Therefore, the fate of the charters will reside with our Governor, Jay Insee (D). Insee is heavily supported by the Washington Education Association and signing the charter bill would anger membership and leave the union with a tough set of choices going into the 2016 gubernatorial election.

Conversely, vetoing the bill would greatly upset charter parents (many of whom are parents of color) and charter advocates--both powerful voices within the Democratic Party. Add to the volatility, that Inslee will probably face a strong challenge from a to be determined Republican challenger in 2016.

This fight is a long way from over. Sadly the only guarantees are more uncertainty and more kids used as pawns in the ongoing morality play.

Now, before you jump into the comments, please be aware, this is not a forum to debate the merits or faults of charter schools; that conversation is happening all over FB and in every newspaper comment section in the state. Nor are we going engage in ad hominems, namecalling or other petulant nonsense. I expect the same level of civility in the comments section that I demand in my classroom.

If you want to discuss the decision, share information, offer other perspectives, discuss the political implications or make predictions about what comes next, I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

The Enigma of Clock Hours for Teachers in Washington State

Update: NBCT facilitator extraordinaire and giant of the Washington State ed scene @maren_johnson weighed in with some detail and context in the comments. She touched on changes to the recert process and the importance of clock hours for NBCTs. She is always worth a read. 

Original Post: I am entering my tenth year of teaching and throughout (most) of my career I’ve dutifully filled out forms for, paid for and accumulated clock hours (mostly because the people at Evergreen told me that’s what I was supposed to do, back in the aughts).

I have to admit though, up until starting to write this, I didn't really understand how the clock hours system works. I’m not daft; I know that we’re accumulating training hours for our certs, but there’s a math that underlies it all that eludes me and many of my colleagues.

Let me start with the knowns of the system (and a few unknowns)

I know that our state salary schedule is complicated (and overdue for revision by the Legislature).

I know I graduated with an MA+45 (and will probably remain there until I die).

I know that I have to complete 150 clock hours every five years to keep my cert valid.

I know there is some magical formula whereby X number of clock hours (magically) become credits and Y number of credits moves one up the salary schedule [conversely, I have no idea of the values of X and Y (edit: just found the answer here)].

I know that despite dutifully (for the most part) turning in these clock hour forms for nine years, I remain in the same place on the salary schedule (although that doesn’t really matter to me, I just present it for context because I know my situation is not unique).

I know that if you complete you Pro-Teach Portfolio, which I did last year, you are automatically awarded 150 clock hours.

I know that… (no, I learned from Googling it five minutes ago that) people who complete their National Boards are exempted from the entire clock hours process (see image below). 

I promise you many NBCTs in Washington have no idea about this.  

If you’re paying attention you might notice an interesting connection between #3 and #6 that I didn't know about until this week:

• You have to complete 150 clock hours to keep your cert;

• The mandatory re-cert process grants you 150 clock hours.

So this leads me to my questions one systemic and one personal:

Systemic: Why do we continue to maintain the clock hour system and how does its continuation serve students? They're a hassle for practitioners. I don’t have to tell other Washington teachers about the rules: paying by check or exact change to have our training documented, hand carrying the forms to the district office, making their filing deadlines, lost/misplaced forms, being berated for late submission, being charged silly look-up fees for past trainings, etc.

Don’t get it twisted. I am not anti-PD. I am the opposite. I am a fierce advocate for high quality PD, but the clock hours system does very little (a bubble in evaluation sheet) to ensure the PD offered is of high caliber. More is not more. Who is this system actually holding accountable? A teacher would have to be in a coma to not accumulate 150 hours of PD over a five year period. Moreover, if the PD is lacking in quality (which much of it is) or the participant has no interest in improving their practice (which sadly is often the case) a teacher could accumulate 1500 clock hours with no impact on students.

Personal: Unless you’re doing it for the money, why should we bother with clock hours? Admittedly, I long ago forsook ambitions of the (alleged) raises at the end of the X & Y rainbow. Can't I just sidestep the entire system? In four years, to maintain my cert, I will face the choice of doing the NBCT process or going through the Pro-Teach Portfolio process (again). If I complete boards I am rescued, from on-high, from the clock hours system and if I (choose the other path and) do Pro-Teach I will be awarded all the hours I need regardless of how many forms I did or didn’t dutifully fill out, pay for for accumulate in the interim. What's the point?

I am bothered that it has taken nine years in the game to understand this math. I promise that few recent grads from ed programs entering schools this fall understand it at all. That's nuts...

 I need someone to talk me down on this... do you understand the system better than I do? Am I wrong? Did you actually get that magical X/Y pay bump? Is there a better way in other states? The questions posed aren't rhetorical… I’d love to hear your thoughts, questions, experiences, etc. in the comments.

What Teaching in China Reminded me about Being Black in America

For most of my life travel was something that other people did, other people who didn’t look like me. This isn’t a ‘hood movie--my family wasn’t poor or starving--but we didn’t have “oh, let’s go to Europe or Mazatlan money” like many of my white (read: non-black) friends in high school and college always seemed to have. For most of my life I told myself that traveling was stupid, a waste of money and time. I told myself a lie--a lie I needed to hear at the time--a lie that I told myself until I finished school and could afford to realize the truth.

I got my first passport at the age of 27. That summer, with two friends, I booked the cheapest int’l flight we could find and ended up traveling along the Caribbean Coast of Colombia for a month--I was hooked.

When I travel I feel accepted: I have found that as a black American abroad I am accepted and welcomed in ways and places that I simply am not here. My Spanish is decent and I can pass for a Panamanian, Dominicano or Colombiano in a crowded market. When I travel, especially in Latin America, I often feel more comfortable than I feel here at home. If you aren’t black or a part of some other group on the margins in American society, I can’t describe to you what it’s like to walk into a room, restaurant, cafe or an office building and feel despised, but it’s a feeling I am very familiar with.

When I travel I read and think more: My favorite saying from Mark Twain is about travel and prejudice. He said, “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the Earth all one's lifetime.” I love this corner of Earth, but I love getting away from it too. Since 2007, I have traveled internationally each summer after school gets out. As I travel I can see from abroad the light that creeps between gaps in American myth and reality. I don’t take it for granted because I remember what it was like before. 

My father has encouraged me to travel, saying that a black man who travels exposes himself to the lies that America feeds him about itself and himself. When I travel I read more, often nearly a dozen books per trip. Some of the most transformative experiences I have had with literature were from reading while traveling: Gatsby while battling seasickness in the San Blas Archipelago, falling out of love with Phillip Roth's writing while on a bus in Guatemala, reading Human Smoke (the pacifist case against World War II) while in the Dominican Republic.

When I am away from home I have time to read and process the gravity of texts in a way that just isn’t practical when I am home. I specifically remember sitting in a cafe in Spain with my wife in 2013 with tears in my eyes as I read aloud from Ta-Nehisi Coates’, How Can We Toughen Our Children Without Frightening Them? It was his second dispatch from his travels in Paris and he was describing his fears for and over his son. These were the seeds of Between the World and Me and in hindsight, I was realizing everything the #BlackLivesMatter movement is now teaching the nation. We are not safe. We are not loved.

One simply does not have these moments in the comfort of home. One does not have these moments while mowing the lawn.

My travel has evolved: I now travel with my amazing wife. She grew up overseas and is a polyglot. She may slip Tagalog into her Spanish and vice versa, but making that mistake means you have access to both in your brain. The last two summers, rather than just traveling, we have taught. This summer we ventured to Chengdu in China’s Sichuan Province for our second summer of learning in the city of 14 million. We were originally invited to China in 2014 to teach “American style” student leadership, college preparation & transition, and we have spent roughly eight weeks teaching and learning there over the last two summers.

Like most Americans, China fascinates me. It’s simultaneously very familiar and completely distant. When I was a kid, it was just a place in the textbooks and fantasy. My mental image was basically infinite people in karate shoes riding bicycles through massive, nearly car-less cities. I specifically remember in ninth grade when Mr. Wolfrom showed us a slideshow of the Terracotta Warriors of Qin Shi Huang in Xi’an. The idea that I would visit them (as I did last summer) was unimaginable. I remember when we learned about the looming handover of Hong Kong and how distant it seemed. He might as well have been talking about the handover of Jupiter’s Moon Titan to some Intergalactic Federation, yet we spent a week walking the streets of Kowloon this summer. 

Now I have a sense of intimacy with this place of mystery. The Chinese people are among the most hospitable I have ever encountered. This year we stayed with a generous host family, both parents employees of a Chinese telcom. My favorite person in all the nation was my Chinese grandmother or nainai who didn’t understand a word I said, but insisted on stuffing me full of some of the most delicious food I have ever tasted. And I found, even in China, an acceptance that I often find lacking here at home. When I walk the streets in China the children point at me and say “lowai” which translates loosely as “old outsider” or “foreigner”. I love this. Every time it happens, I reply “ni hao, xiao peng you” (hello, little friend). I love it when they call me laowai, because it’s the same term they call my wife in the streets. The don’t say “look, a black” they say “look, a foreigner”, to both of us. It’s equality. I can’t put it into words, but it is extremely satisfying to know that (for once) I am getting treated equally.

Our nǎinai in Chengdu: I never understood a single word she said, but she'd be an amazing partner for charades. 

Travel provokes reflection: One of our last night’s in China, I sat with my host family watching the coverage of the Samuel Dubose shooting on CCTV, China’s state-run media. My host asked me what I thought about the situation. I couldn’t even reply. It created a dissonance that just made my jaw ache.

Travel puts the contradictions of American life, in stark contrast: from slave owning-liberty loving-founders to a black President who has spent five and a half years running from racial politics. America’s unwillingness to reckon with race is criminal. Yet, there is nowhere else in the world where people who look like me fare as well as they do in the US. I’m not trying to move to Norway nor Namibia anytime soon. There is no black President in the offing anywhere in Western Europe and if black America were a nation it’d be among the 20 wealthiest in the world (with an earned income hovering around $1 trillion). But, at the same time, armed white vigilantes are allowed to patrol the streets of Saint Louis while unarmed blacks live under a curfew in their own neighborhoods. We live in a nation where the army gives rural police departments APCs, but unarmed blacks are shot at a near daily clip because officers “fear for their lives”.

Travel is the ultimate #staywoke. Being away from America makes me love and appreciate everything I have back home and exposes me to her shortcomings at the same time. We all know that absence makes the heart grow fonder. I'd add to that the words of James Baldwin: "I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."