December 14, 2011

 

To the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education:

 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.

 

My name is Pat Jehlen.  I’m the state senator for the Second Middlesex District and Senate Vice-Chair of the Committee on Education.   Before I was a legislator, I was a School Committee member for 16 years.   I’m the mother of three Somerville High School graduates.  My two granddaughters go to the Healey School.   For all of my adult life I have worked for equal and excellent education, for progressive education, and for immigrant learning opportunities.  I believe in, and have worked for, public schools of choice as a way to create change and progress in a community with diverse expectations.

 

In 1982, after several years of organizing and advocacy, I helped establish the CHOICE program, on principles of learning by doing, project-based learning, and parent involvement – principles now called “progressive.”  It was located in a school next to a housing project, and so allowed low-income families to attend without needing to drive, while attracting middle income families from across the city.  That program grew to 2/3 of that school, and this year is merged; now the entire Healey School is based on principles and practices very similar to those of this proposal.  

 

I know and respect many of the proponents of this charter, and believe that we share the same values.

 

But I ask the Board in the strongest possible terms to deny this proposal.

 

I believe it is likely to reduce the opportunities and choices available for other families, and to increase class segregation in the city.

 

I want to stress that this proposal does not meet the letter or the legislative intent of the law under which it was filed.  An Act Relative to the Achievement Gap lifted the charter school cap in districts with low MCAS performance, which of course correlates with social class. 

 

The purpose of the law is to raise the achievement of low-income, limited English proficient, and special education students.  The law requires the board, in schools subject to the raised cap, to approve only applications from “an applicant, or a provider with which an applicant proposes to contract” which has a record of operating a successful school or program serving a student population similar to that of the proposed school. 

 

The intent is to use charter schools as a way to increase target groups’ achievement, and to use proven techniques and providers to do so.  I wanted to make sure I had the same understanding as the legislators who worked hardest on this provision, so I talked to some of them. 

 

Rep. Marty Walz was House chair of the Education Committee at the time.  She said that “we had in mind that people running the school have proven success with that subset of kids… A person on the board available for consultation doesn’t meet that standard.” 

 

Sen. Sonia Chang Diaz, who is now Senate Chair of the Education Committee, concurred in this description.

 

Rep. Jeffrey Sanchez, who was deeply involved in writing the language and in advocating for English Language Learners, said that we wanted to “make sure that the operators of new charter schools had a track record of successful experience in curriculum and assessment for ELLs according to the state immersion law.”  He pointed out that the DESE is being investigated by both the federal Department of Justice and the Office of Civil Rights of the federal Department of Education for violating the rights of ELL students in both the granting of charters and in failing to ensure trained and qualified teachers for ELLs.

 

1. Who are the “proven providers” required by law?

1. The role of the two “proven providers,” sitting on the board of trustees, is insufficient. 

 

While the proposal does not specify the number of meetings of the board, it does state that the Neighborhood House Charter School Board of Trustees meets six times a year.  This is not the kind of day-to-day responsibility the legislature intended.

 

2.  The schools the “proven providers” work for do not serve comparable populations.

 

Neighborhood House does not have a comparable population to either Boston (its host community) or Somerville.  While it has a similar proportion of low income students, it has lower numbers of special education students, and minuscule numbers of Limited English Proficient and First Language Not English students. 

 

 

                                                            Neighborhood House        Boston        Somerville

Limited English Proficient                              2.1%                            28%                 18%

First Language Not English                            6%                               43%                 52%

Low Income                                                    71.9%                          74.4%              68%

Special Education                                           13.8%                          19.4%              21.1%

 

The lack of experience with Limited English Proficient students, especially beginning learners -- Neighborhood House has no students at levels 1 and 2 – is especially troubling since the proponents have portrayed it as especially valuable for ESL students.  (see the Boston Globe report attached, “Proposed Somerville Charter School to Focus on Immigrants” and the Somerville Journal report which begins: “A group of education advocates is hoping that by this time next year, the Somerville Progressive Charter School will open its doors to 180 city students, with a particular focus on students who speak a foreign language at home.”)

 

International Charter School, as a fully Two Way Bilingual program, has a 50:50 ratio of native speakers of English and Spanish or Portuguese.

 

3. This proposal is not a replication of a successful model. 

 

Neither of the schools where the “proven providers” work operates a program like the one proposed. 

 

International Charter School is a fully two-way bilingual program, like Somerville’s successful UNIDOS program, not like the proposed school.   The proposal cites the proven success of two-way bilingual programs.  But it does not come near meeting the federal government’s definition of a Two Way Bilingual program, or the International Charter School model.

 

Neighborhood House does not seem to have a program for LEP students, because it serves only a few of them.

 

2.  During the regular day, the proposal offers little that is different or superior to programs running in district schools.

 

Many components, such as TERC, Reading/Writers Workshop, looping, Lego engineering, and mixed-grade classes, are already in place at the Healey School, and in several cases throughout the district. 

 

The UNIDOS program offers true Two Way Bilingual instruction for the most common language group in Somerville: 38% of students in Somerville list Hispanic as their ethnicity.

 

62% of Somerville’s ELL students showed progress on their latest MEPA test results, compared to a 58% progress rate state-wide.

 

 

3.  A problem with the lack of a proven model is that the proposal is deficient in meeting the needs of target populations: low-income and English language learners.

 

a.       The after school, optional, fee-based program is badly misaligned with the needs of the group the proposal is intended to help: low-income immigrant families.

 

After school is the only chance these students will have for native language instruction and    support.  While there is a provision for waiver of the fees (which would apparently depend on wealthier families contributing more than the cost of the program), this is inherently unequal.

 

The low-income LEP students can’t attend the after school program without a hardship exemption.  I am sure that, had they been asked, immigrant parents would not have designed a program their children could not enter without a fee or a special exemption.

 

The operating budget seems to list only $9477 in “fees,” which would be only $50 per child, far from adequate to support even a week of an after school program.  It is hard to understand how the afterschool program will be funded.

 

b.       Low-income families with multiple jobs; limited English; and/or struggling with health, housing, or unemployment may have trouble regularly meeting the four hour a month volunteer requirement in order to vote for the trustees.

 

Once again, such families will be able to receive a hardship waiver, but they could well      feel like second class citizens.

 

With waivers required for two aspects of full participation, how will low-income families    will feel equal or welcome?

 

4. The proposal lacks focus.  It attempts to meet too many needs with too few resources.  It tries to provide for parents who want bilingual education, parents who don’t want bilingual education, ELL and SEI for three different language groups with five different levels of proficiency, children who want to study three different world languages, nine grade levels, and special education.

 

a.      Even the limited ELL instruction described seems impossible to deliver with the proposed staffing.

 

There will be one teacher/coordinator, one teacher and one teaching assistant for ELL.  Each, according to the proposal, will work 8 hours a day and have 2.5 to 3 hours of prep and meeting time.  If the teacher and assistant each offer 5.5 hours of contact a day, and the teacher/coordinator offers 3, that’s fourteen hours a day of instruction for 40 students in 9 nine grades and at least three levels of fluency.  If those at levels 1 and 2 receive 2 -3 hours of ELL instruction a day, and if students of all levels are in the same instructional group, this could possibly work, but only if one assumes that the assistant is in charge of a group.  Generally, assistants are supposed to work under the direct supervision of a teacher. 

 

In practice, the promise of this school to offer support for ELLs will be difficult to achieve with its size and resources.  This is demonstrated by looking at the proven providers cited by the founders.  

 

Neighborhood House simply has fewer than 20 ELL students.  They have NO students at levels 1 and 2, and so have no experience serving such students.  Somerville, like the state, has 18% of its ELL students at those levels, which are the most challenging and require the most resources.

 

International Charter is almost twice as large as the proposed school in its first two years, but offers only two languages in six grades.  Thus International Charter can provide appropriate grade-level and fluency level instruction, with peer support.

 

Most charter schools start smaller because of the predictable problems of the early years.  The “proven provider” Neighborhood House started with 51 students and 8 teachers.  International Charter School has only grades K-5, and after 10 years has 300 students.

 

b.      The proposed school is too small to serve the needs of so many different ELL groups.

 

If there are, as they hope, 40 ELL students in the first year, and they mirror the district’s demographics, there would be 4-5 ELL students per grade level, 2 of whom would be Spanish speakers, 1 each Portuguese and Haitian Creole, and probably at least one other language.  It’s hard to imagine an after school program providing academic support at grade level in three languages for such small and unpredictable groups.  If the program attempts to mimic two-way bilingual, it will have to make sure there are equal numbers of English speakers at each grade level for each language group.  In addition, at each grade level, students are likely to be at different levels of proficiency. 

 

Students from each language group, with such small numbers, may find few peers at their grade level.

           

The provision of advisors for all students in their home native languages is extremely admirable.  With dozens of languages spoken in the Somerville schools, this will require remarkable flexibility, depending on which children are chosen by the lottery.

 

The “proven provider” model of the International Charter School is quite different in both size and ratio; it has a 50:50 mix of native English speakers and native Portuguese and Spanish speakers.  It provides a reasonable number of peers at each grade level by focusing on just two languages, although it is twice as large a school.

 

The board may want to consider whether, in order to secure successful two-way bilingual charter schools, schools should have separate lotteries for native English speakers and English Language Learners, so that there can be an appropriate balance.  This would require legislation, which I would be happy to sponsor or support.

 

c.         The proposed “world languages” program seems impossible to deliver with proposed staffing. 

 

It is not clear how the school will offer instruction in three world languages every day in each class; the staffing pattern is unclear.  No world language instructors will be hired, so I assume the classroom teachers will have to provide this, although this is not listed as a required competency.  Even so, there would have to be four staff (including ELL) for each 2-grade grouping during the world language period, since the proposal suggests that every language will be offered at every level.

 

5. The proposal anticipates hiring staff with more expertise than is likely to be available at their proposed salaries.

 

The charter school expects to hire nine teachers with “(1) a minimum of five years experience teaching K-8-aged children in a progressive program or school; (2) experience teaching students from diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, (3) a strong commitment to SPCS’s mission, vision and educational philosophy; (4) bilingual in Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole or French in addition to English, (5) ELL certification.”  These teachers will be expected to work a longer school day and a month-longer school year than Somerville teachers – and will be paid about $3000 a year less than a Somerville teacher with a BA and five years experience.

 

Applicants with such credentials are rare.  Despite extensive recruitment and close ties with teacher training programs for ELL teachers, Somerville receives only 4 to 5 applicants a year with ELL credentials, and few if any of them are bilingual.  Currently Somerville has no certified ELL applicants for a kindergarten opening, despite ongoing outreach.

 

Charter schools generally do pay less and expect longer hours, but they also generally hire less experienced teachers than district public schools.

 

In summary, the proposal simply does not meet the statutory requirement that a charter only be granted to a proven provider.  Nor does it seem likely to meet the needs of the target populations, or to be able to deliver on some of its promises.

 

Finally, the proposal has had one very important and encouraging result.  Parents across the city have mobilized to support their children’s schools and are prepared to work together for positive change within the school system. 

 

Best wishes in your deliberations,

 
Patricia Jehlen

The board shall only approve an application for the establishment of a commonwealth charter school if an applicant, or a provider with which an applicant proposes to contract, has a record of operating at least 1 school or similar program that demonstrates academic success and organizational viability and serves student populations similar to those the proposed school seeks to serve, from the following categories of students, those: (i) eligible for free lunch; (ii) eligible for reduced price lunch; (iii) that require special education; (iv) limited English-proficient of similar language proficiency level as measured by the Massachusetts English Proficiency Assessment examination; (v) sub-proficient, which shall mean students who have scored in the “needs improvement”, “warning” or “failing” categories on the mathematics or English language arts exams of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System for 2 of the past 3 years or as defined by the department using a similar measurement; (vi) who are designated as at risk of dropping out of school based on predictors determined by the department; (vii) who have dropped out of school; or (viii) other at-risk students who should be targeted to eliminate achievement gaps among different groups of students.

n  MGL Ch 71 Sec 89a (i) (3)