This article by Edward B. Fiske appeared in the For Your Consideration section in our June 12th e-Newsletter and originally appeared in the News & Observer.For Your Consideration* provides an open forum for individuals to voice their opinions on various public education issues.

As a longtime supporter of charter schools, I am distressed to watch Republican legislators attempting to hijack this once-promising notion for school improvement and transform it into a force for undermining public education in North Carolina.

Charter schools are publicly funded schools that are given flexibility in areas such as curriculum, hiring and scheduling in return for being accountable for positive educational results. There are now 5,600 charter schools in the U.S. and 107 in North Carolina. I helped establish a charter school in Durham in 2002 and continue to serve on its board.

The promise of charter schools was many-faceted. Charters are free to innovate and to explore new curricula and teaching methods that, if successful, could make their way into traditional public schools. Since one size does not fit all when it comes to schooling, charters offer parents and students a wider range of educational options. Charter schools at their best give teachers space to work in collegial fashion around innovative educational visions.

From the time charter schools first emerged in Minnesota in the early 1990s with broad bipartisan support, proponents recognized that they are integral parts of established public school systems. In North Carolina, where charters date to 1996, this means that charters are part of our constitutionally mandated “general and uniform system of free public schools.”

Significantly, proponents have long recognized that charter schools can best fulfill their promise of enhanced quality and choice when they remain on the edges of the system. The number of educational visionaries is limited. Making charters the norm would require a cumbersome bureaucracy that would eventually stifle the educational creativity for which they were established. Students whose experience in a charter school does not work out well need access to a traditional public school.

Republican leaders in the legislature are pushing a charter school “reform” program that would undermine all of the fundamental principles that have driven the charter school movement in North Carolina and elsewhere.

Senate Bill 337 and a parallel bill in the House would strip the State Board of Education of its responsibility for overseeing charter schools and set up an 11-member governing board mostly of charter school advocates appointed by the governor and the legislature.

Such a dual system would make a mockery of the notion that charters are part of a coherent statewide education system with an obligation to serve all students. Freeing charters from any obligation to pursue goals established by the State Board of Education would inevitably lead to two classes of schools: some free to avoid enrolling students who are most challenging to teach, others required to serve all comers. A charter board would also become a new bureaucracy – exactly what charter supporters feared.

Since the board would not be bound by conflict of interest laws, members would include profit-making charter school operators who would then be in a position to shape policies favoring their own private economic interests, including the blocking of applications from potential competitors.

The legislation would allow charters to hire fewer teachers with professional credentials – scoffing at the concept of teacher professionalism that has been a point of pride among successful charter schools. It would further jeopardize the status of teachers who, thanks to the Republican legislature, are already staring at the loss of tenure, shorter contracts and fewer teaching assistants.

The Republican agenda thumbs its nose at the implicit bargain of the charter movement – flexibility in return for accountability – by eliminating the second half of the equation.

Charter schools have long fought against critics who, often with justification, accuse them of becoming, in effect, “private schools with public funding.” Far from seeing this critique as a problem, the Republican legislative agenda would make it into a virtue.

The pending charter school legislation does not reflect any clamor from North Carolina residents. To the contrary, Republican leaders have essentially downloaded model legislation formulated by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing corporate group that mounted a multi-prong attack on public education throughout the country.

The timing could not be worse. Republican efforts to set charters and traditional public schools against each other fly in the face of a national movement that has developed in about 20 cities to create mutually beneficial “compacts.” Charters typically accept responsibility to educate the full range of students, while local school boards, acknowledging the autonomy of charter schools, agree to cooperate on issues such as professional development, school safety, transportation and school lunch programs.

Talks are actively underway in Durham between the public school system and local charters to work toward such a compact.

All North Carolinians who believe in the importance of quality public education for all children should resist the Republican proposals. At the front of the barricades should be advocates who still believe in the promise of charter schools and do not want to see a good idea hijacked.

*Please note the views expressed in For Your Consideration are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MeckEd.

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This article by Clifton Vann IV appeared in the For Your Consideration section in our June 6th e-Newsletter and originally appeared in The Charlotte Observer . For Your Consideration* provides an open forum for individuals to voice their opinions on various public education issues.

Last year, my company spent more than $100,000 with headhunters, trying to find talent to fill the gaps we have in employment. Sadly enough, the vast majority of the people we found did not come from North Carolina.

It is not just occupation skills that are hard to find. Too many young people entering the workforce lack the “soft skills” – communication, collaboration and critical thinking – that can spell the difference between success and failure in today’s business world.

As we enter another graduation season, we should examine if students are developing the skills they will need when they enter the workforce.

Our education system is so focused on memorization and “making the grade” that we are not helping enough students “learn to learn.” They need to have a strong command of core academic content but they also need a strong command of the increasingly important soft skills.

Most businesses demand these skills in all levels of jobs. Yet six out of 10 surveyed N.C. employers reported communications skills gaps among job applicants – and close to half reported deficiencies in critical thinking and problem-solving abilities.

Take manufacturing – with which I am very familiar. If you have the right skills, the jobs are definitely out there. But the Manufacturers Institute has reported that 67 percent of manufacturers have moderate to severe shortages of available, qualified workers.

How critical is education in establishing a career in our region? According to a report from the business leaders group, America’s Edge, by 2018, two thirds of all new jobs in North Carolina will require some type of education beyond high school. That percentage rises to 91 percent for science, technology, engineering and math jobs. These benchmarks will be hard to meet when 22 percent of our students do not graduate on time and only 30 percent of the North Carolina Class of 2012 graduates taking the ACT college admissions test met college readiness benchmarks.

The outlook is certainly challenging. But it is solvable.

We must train and re-train our workforce and attract skilled workers to our region and state. But we must also embrace innovative education models that will develop necessary skills in the next generation.

One solution? Make what children learn at school relevant to the business world, so they can develop the skills businesses look for in new hires and continue the implementation of our new rigorous standards and assessments.

High schools across the country, including in Charlotte, are already working to incorporate these ideas, by integrating career relevance training with rigorous academic curriculum. Students take classes together as a cohort with a career-themed curriculum that helps them see the connections between academic subjects and their real-world applications. By working in teams and gaining actual work experience, students begin to understand the importance of professionalism, reliability, teamwork and clear communications skills.

The business community knows what we need in our workforce. Innovation in our schools will create innovators in our workforce.

*Please note the views expressed in For Your Consideration are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MeckEd.

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This article by Stuart Watson appeared in the For Your Consideration section in our May 29th e-Newsletter and originally appeared on WCNC.com . For Your Consideration* provides an open forum for individuals to voice their opinions on various public education issues.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — I’m one of the biggest critics of CMS. Because I have the most invested. I have two daughters who graduated from Northwest School of the Arts and two more kids who are going to North Meck High School – the same North Meck locked down in February when a 15-year old brought a gun to school and the same North Meck in the headlines in April when another 15-year old was charged with attempted murder for allegedly attacking a girl on campus.

Who sends their kids to such a school? I do. And I’d do it again.

Why? Here are 10 reasons, plus one:

1. North Meck offers my kids teams and clubs and school spirit than Cato Middle College High School doesn’t – even though Cato’s scores are much better from a purely college prep perspective.

2. Because a school is more than its test scores. A lot more.

3. North Meck offers more IB and AP courses than a charter school.

4. North Meck has a superb Speech and Debate team with a rich tradition (Thank you Mr. Rocca for all the hours).

5. North Meck has many great teachers. Not good teachers. Great teachers. (Thank you all).

6. North Meck’s diversity exposes my kids to students from around the world – and across town.

7. North Meck’s adversity teaches my kids you can’t just run away when things are tough.

8. My daughter’s boyfriend went to North Meck and got a full ride to NC State. And an education.

9. North Meck students taught us an alternate definition of the word “ratchet” – which North Meck is not, BTW, you haters.

10. My own education at an all-white private school was the product of white flight and that education helped me a great deal with book learning but did little to prepare me for my first real job 30 years ago interviewing all types of people in Mississippi.

11. The boogaloo.

I say all this for several reasons:

A) Reporters cannot be perfectly objective– especially about their kids
B) People should know where a reporter is coming from.
C) I’ve been doing a lot of reporting on schools so you should know where I’m invested

I reserve the right to criticize CMS and ask hard but fair questions, precisely because I’m invested.
So there. Now you know.

*Please note the views expressed in For Your Consideration are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MeckEd.

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This article by Ann Goodnight and Richard L. McNeel appeared in the For Your Consideration section in our May 22nd e-Newsletter and originally appeared in The News & Observer. For Your Consideration* provides an open forum for individuals to voice their opinions on various public education issues.

To meet the future demand for a more skilled and educated workforce, North Carolina must invest in what works: high-quality early care and education.

We agree with Gov. Pat McCrory and many of our state lawmakers that proficiency in reading by the third grade will help children succeed in our K-12 system and graduate from high school ready for college and career. High-quality early-learning programs are crucial to achieving that goal.

Children who participate in these programs are more likely to graduate from high school, hold a job considered semi-skilled or higher, attain a four-year degree and earn more as adults. And that is good for our businesses and our state’s economy.

Key to these economic outcomes are two critical factors: the quality of the programs and access to the programs.

• Quality: Some policymakers have been led to believe that improvements in school performance for children in early learning programs diminish as they get into elementary school. Some call it “fade-out.”

But decades of data and longitudinal studies do not support this conclusion when early learning programs are high-quality.

A 2012 Duke University study of our state’s early learning programs shows North Carolina third-graders have higher standardized reading and math scores and lower special education placement rates in those counties with more funding for those programs. In fact, researchers found that the expected savings in reduced special education and instructional costs for children in these programs is at least equal to the cost of the programs – a break-even or savings of taxpayer money.

This study is not alone. A quantitative statistical analysis of 123 studies across four decades of early education research – a meta analysis – found that by third grade, one-third of the achievement gap can be closed by early education.

North Carolina is already a national model for high-quality early learning programs, being the second state to enact a Quality Rating and Improvement System. North Carolina’s programs have the quality components that get the results businesses want: appropriate teacher-to-child ratios, teachers educated in early childhood development, strong parental involvement and coaching, and screening and referral services to catch problems early.

North Carolina also leads the country in tying subsidies for child care to the quality of the programs. Programs receiving subsidies must have a star rating of three or higher.

Today, 70 percent of all young children in North Carolina’s regulated early learning programs attend high-quality programs rated with four or five stars.

• Access: Currently, parents – our workforce – can receive state financial assistance to place their children in our quality early learning programs, such as N.C. Pre-K, if their income is at or below $33,021 for a family of four. Some lawmakers are considering cutting that eligibility in half, which would make our state among the five most restrictive for accessing early learning programs.

Cutting eligibility is not good for our businesses. In North Carolina, 65 percent of children under age 6 have both or their only parent in the workforce. The median income in North Carolina is $44,083, while the annual cost of a quality early learning program is $7,803.

It does not take a financial expert to understand that these programs would simply be out of reach for too many working families without financial assistance.

We support McCrory’s proposal to pay for 5,000 more children in our N.C. Pre-K program.

We also support maintaining current levels of eligibility so children can access the quality programs our state has created. The definition of “eligibility” should not be tied to a single year’s budget target.

It should be tied to ensuring that North Carolina working families can place their children in programs that will strengthen our future workforce and economic growth.

If we are serious about improving North Carolina’s economic future, we must address the issue of our sadly leaking education pipeline.

Our children’s educational needs should be served at the very beginning by investing in high-quality preschool rather than trying to remediate later.

*Please note the views expressed in For Your Consideration are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of MeckEd.

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This article by Sean F. Reardon appeared in the For Your Consideration section in our May 15th e-Newsletter and originally appeared in The New York Times. For Your Consideration* provides an open forum for individuals to voice their opinions on various public education issues.

Here’s a fact that may not surprise you: the children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families. Students growing up in richer families have better grades and higher standardized test scores, on average, than poorer students; they also have higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities and school leadership positions, higher graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment and completion.

Whether you think it deeply unjust, lamentable but inevitable, or obvious and unproblematic, this is hardly news. It is true in most societies and has been true in the United States for at least as long as we have thought to ask the question and had sufficient data to verify the answer.

What is news is that in the United States over the last few decades these differences in educational success between high- and lower-income students have grown substantially.

One way to see this is to look at the scores of rich and poor students on standardized math and reading tests over the last 50 years. When I did this using information from a dozen large national studies conducted between 1960 and 2010, I found that the rich-poor gap in test scores is about 40 percent larger now than it was 30 years ago.

To make this trend concrete, consider two children, one from a family with income of $165,000 and one from a family with income of $15,000. These incomes are at the 90th and 10th percentiles of the income distribution nationally, meaning that 10 percent of children today grow up in families with incomes below $15,000 and 10 percent grow up in families with incomes above $165,000.

In the 1980s, on an 800-point SAT-type test scale, the average difference in test scores between two such children would have been about 90 points; today it is 125 points. This is almost twice as large as the 70-point test score gap between white and black children. Family income is now a better predictor of children’s success in school than race.

The same pattern is evident in other, more tangible, measures of educational success, like college completion. In a study similar to mine, Martha J. Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski, economists at the University of Michigan, found that the proportion of students from upper-income families who earn a bachelor’s degree has increased by 18 percentage points over a 20-year period, while the completion rate of poor students has grown by only 4 points.

In a more recent study, my graduate students and I found that 15 percent of high-income students from the high school class of 2004 enrolled in a highly selective college or university, while fewer than 5 percent of middle-income and 2 percent of low-income students did.

These widening disparities are not confined to academic outcomes: new research by the Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam and his colleagues shows that the rich-poor gaps in student participation in sports, extracurricular activities, volunteer work and church attendance have grown sharply as well.

In San Francisco this week, more than 14,000 educators and education scholars have gathered for the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. The theme this year is familiar: Can schools provide children a way out of poverty?

We are still talking about this despite decades of clucking about the crisis in American education and wave after wave of school reform.Whatever we’ve been doing in our schools, it hasn’t reduced educational inequality between children from upper- and lower-income families.

Part of knowing what we should do about this is understanding how and why these educational disparities are growing. For the past few years, alongside other scholars, I have been digging into historical data to understand just that. The results of this research don’t always match received wisdom or playground folklore.

The most potent development over the past three decades is that the test scores of children from high-income families have increased very rapidly. Before 1980, affluent students had little advantage over middle-class students in academic performance; most of the socioeconomic disparity in academics was between the middle class and the poor. But the rich now outperform the middle class by as much as the middle class outperform the poor. Just as the incomes of the affluent have grown much more rapidly than those of the middle class over the last few decades, so, too, have most of the gains in educational success accrued to the children of the rich.

Before we can figure out what’s happening here, let’s dispel a few myths.

Read more

*Please note the views expressed in For Your Consideration are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MeckEd.

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This article by Kathleen Oropeza appeared in the For Your Consideration section in our May 8th e-Newsletter and originally appeared in The News & Observer. For Your Consideration* provides an open forum for individuals to voice their opinions on various public education issues.

As a Florida mom, I find it hard to watch states with veto-proof majorities push and pass the same education reforms that have hurt our children and harmed our public schools.

North Carolina parents are right to worry about SB 337/State Charter School Review Board, which bypasses the authority of elected school boards to give political appointees the power to grow and fund charter schools. Equally concerning is SB 361 by Sen. Phil Berger – the Excellent Public Schools Act – that implements Florida’s A-F school grading system and ties high-stakes student test scores to teacher evaluations.

Florida has spent 14 heartbreaking years at the epicenter of a “Bold Education Reform” experiment brutally imposed by single party rule. We know where this is going. Mandatory third-grade retention morphs into fifth, eighth and 10th grades. For-profit charter chains, virtual charters and voucher schools are held to lower standards than traditional district schools. Diverted tax dollars fund separate and unequal school systems while drastic funding cuts starve traditional district schools.

Because of one, lone standardized test score, some AP high school students with 4.0 GPAs are forced to spend 90 minutes a day in “remediation.” We are not anti-test. We object to using a single test with known statistical flaws as the judge and jury for schools, teachers and students.

Raleigh has signed on with powerful outsiders who travel state to state pitching the “Florida Miracle” like so much snake oil. A few graphs and percentages persuaded North Carolina politicians to subject every public school child to a flawed experiment. It’s the same drill in 20 other states.

Lobbyists, virtual vendors, chamber types and politicians all sound the same frightening public school crisis alarm while scheming to divert public tax dollars meant for our neighborhood schools straight into private pockets.

North Carolina has been told its public schools are in dire straits, national rankings have fallen and there is a bad/greedy/lazy teacher behind every desk. Don’t believe it. Every one of us remembers at least one teacher who changed our lives. Millions of children have passed through your public schools and gone on to be successful citizens. The vast majority of children in North Carolina attend your vibrant public schools today.

Don’t believe the story about the A-F school grading system. Grades are based on high-stakes test scores and have little to do with what really goes on in a school. Tying teacher evaluations to student test scores monetizes our kids. Think about it. When every reward and punishment revolves around high-stakes test scores, an undeniable burden is placed on the shoulders of children.

There they sit, little third-graders, pressured to deliver the scores that will earn money and an A for their school, help teachers keep their jobs and save themselves from being labeled losers by the state.

For the record, Florida’s policy of mandatory third-grade retention is a proven drop-out predictor. Florida legislators refuse to add robust wrap-around services that improve student reading levels while allowing children to advance with their classmates. Why? When low-scoring third-graders are held back, a guaranteed bump in learning gains appears in fourth-grade test data. It’s this sort of slender “proof” that is used to convince states like North Carolina that Florida’s education reform agenda is a miracle.

There is no miracle in the heartbreak of defeated 14-year-olds trapped in fifth grade by an unforgiving policy.

For more than a century, hard-working people on every level have faithfully spent precious tax dollars building North Carolina public schools brick by brick. This extraordinary asset belongs to you.

Parents have the power to stop politicians from breaking public schools and selling them to the highest bidder. Your children are watching and innocently waiting. Demand something better for them. Despite overwhelming odds, a million empowered Florida parents stand in a diverse rock-solid alliance determined to change Tallahassee by making education a single voter issue.

Florida parents are with you. We know what it means to walk the path you now face. When it comes to our children, we are the Florida miracle. The “North Carolina miracle” will come from you.

*Please note the views expressed in For Your Consideration are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MeckEd.

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This piece by Joanna Schimizzi, a 2012 Teacher of Excellence, appeared in our April 17th e-Newsletter.

What do aliens, aloe vera and crickets have to do with each other? These are the inspiration for lessons that help me make Biology exciting to every student. We’ll examine what it would mean for life to be on other planets, how aloe vera plants heal your wounds and how crickets compete to attract a mate. This is the pleasure of teaching Biology – finding ways to reveal that our everyday lives are surrounded in beauty – out-of-this-world, gooey and creepy-crawly all at the same time! This also describes what being a MeckEd Teacher of Excellence is for me.

When I received the touching video message from Bill Anderson announcing the honor, I was transported. This honor has been an out-of-this-world experience with the chance to be on a panel at a community breakfast, be on task forces through CMS and discover the amazing world of advocacy. Being a MeckEd Teacher of Excellence opened my eyes to the important role of being informed and engaged. During the ceremony, I cried. Multiple times. You will too if you attend. The honest, raw love these teachers have for their students is palpable, and Bill Anderson does a wonderful job of honoring each teacher individually, as well as creating a fellowship. This fellowship brings educators together for important collaboration in their classrooms and the community, and you can’t help but feel inspired by the energy that pulsates through these teachers. That energy continues to creep in at the most unexpected moments, sometimes quite unnervingly. At this time last year, I thought I was working as hard as I possibly could, and yet, somehow this year, I have worked even harder because of that creeping feeling…that every small thing I do could have a dramatic impact on a student. I hope you’ll come meet the new class of MeckEd Teachers, as well as come visit our classrooms. Your support nourishes both us and our students.

This article by Nancy Flanagan appeared in the For Your Consideration section in our April 17th e-Newsletter and originally appeared in Education Week. For Your Consideration* provides an open forum for individuals to voice their opinions on various public education issues.

A couple of days ago, I had coffee with Betsy Coffia, who ran last November–unsuccessfully–for a seat representing the 104th district in the Michigan House of Representatives. Coffia and I had never met, although we have several mutual friends. We found each other on-line, in a Facebook argument over Detroit Public Schools’ Emergency Manager. She liked what I had to say, and suggested we meet.

It was a great conversation. Coffia plans to run again, and asked lots of questions: What did I think about cyber-schools? Charter chains? The value of early childhood programs? Well-known education non-profits in Michigan? Although she worked for a time in a Head Start program, she admitted there were lots of theories and ideas in education policy she found murky.

Then she said this: Wouldn’t it be great if there were a guide for legislators to making useful education policy? So here it is:

#1) You don’t know education just because you went to school. Even if you were paying attention in high school, your perspective as a student was extremely narrow and is now completely obsolete. Study the issues, which are more complex and resistant to change than you think. Here’s a brief list of things that, in my experience, legislators don’t know diddly about:
• A cooperative classroom and how to achieve it.
• Formative assessment.
• Impact of class size on daily practice (not test scores).
• Difference between standards and curriculum.
• Special education.
• Research-based value of recess and exercise.
• Differentiation vs. tracking.
• What quality teaching looks like in practice.
• The fact that all learning is socially constructed.
And on and on.

#2) Plan to pay many non-photo op visits to lots of schools. Do things while you’re there. Read with 3rd graders. Sit in on a high school government class or small-group discussion about Shakespeare. Play badminton in co-ed gym class. Take garden-variety teachers out for coffee after your visit; let them talk and just listen. Resist the urge to share the “good news” about legislation you’re co-sponsoring. Ask questions, instead.

#3) Take the tests that kids have to take. Then you’ll understand why “achievement data” and what to do with it are sources of high anxiety for public schools, teachers and students.

#4) Be picky about what you read, listen to and believe. Media is not fair and balanced, and in an online world, information and sexy, upbeat storylines are for sale. At the very least, read both sides, with your crap detector on full alert. Consider that media often enshrines flat-out lies in the public consciousness simply because they’re a good headline or the deliverer is charismatic.

#5) Examine your assumptions. When teachers roll out unsubstantiated chestnuts (“no wonder he’s the way he is–just look at his parents!”) it’s lounge talk. When elected officials say clueless things, voters pay attention. For example: “ Incompetent teachers are being allowed to teach and substandard service is being tolerated.” Whatever your deepest convictions about unions, teacher pay, urban poverty or kids today, check those biases at the door. It’s your job to represent everyone in your district, not just the people who agree with you.

#6) Follow the money, not the party. A lot of what’s happening in ed “reform” today is centered around taking advantage of the large, previously untapped market of K-12 education. Before you get on any partisan policy bandwagon, just for the thrill of passing a law, ask yourself: Who really benefits from this? Who loses?

#7) Remember you were elected to create policy that represents your constituents’ goals and desires, not ALEC’s. Even if the pre-packaged legislation is slick and convenient, and the Koch brothers are willing to fly you someplace warm with golf courses–do the work yourself.

#8) Be like Rob Portman and change your mind and your public proclamations when the evidence is convincing. Changing your mind–if you do it publicly, and don’t try to sneak the shifts past voters with tap-dancing and weasel language–makes you stronger, demonstrating that you have confidence in your own core values and leadership. Diane Ravitch altered her views, and earned herself a few million devotees, after all.

Corollary: Admit when you don’t understand value-added methodology, the reason STEM is so hot, or constructivism in mathematics education. There is nothing more pathetic than a legislator trying to act like he knows something by tossing out a few buzzwords.

#9) Big and bold gets headlines, but tinkering around the edges gets results. Want to raise teacher quality? Don’t endorse firing the “lowest” quintile, publicly rank-ordering them in the newspaper, or bringing in untrained but photogenic Ivy Leaguers. Do it the old-fashioned way: careful recruitment, building teachers’ skills and knowledge, investing in their capacity and leadership over time.

#10) Honor our democratic foundations. Public education is the most democratic of our institutions, one of our best ideas as Americans. Public schools may be tattered, and behind the technological curve. But systematically destroying the infrastructure of public education is a profoundly selfish and immoral thing to do. Don’t be that legislator.

*Please note the views expressed in For Your Consideration are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MeckEd.

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My name is Alvaro Moreno, and I am a senior at Zebulon B. Vance High School—which was one of the first schools in CMS to pilot the Career Pathways Program (formerly known as MeckTech). The Career Pathways Advisor, Ms. Verea, told me about an AT&T Job Shadowing field trip, which was pretty great. Through the field trip, I was able to learn more about the industry and many of the different jobs that they offer that you wouldn’t normally have an opportunity to hear about. The field trip also helped me with my Senior Exit Project. I did my project on “The Dangers of Texting While Driving Amongst Teens,” and I was given many materials related to their “No Text On Board: It Can Wait” campaign.

The AT&T experience was great, but it wasn’t quite what interested me, so Ms. Verea, told me about an internship opportunity with Livingston and Haven. At first I was intimidated by the big company name, but once I met Mel Radford, my supervisor on the Genesis Research and Development Team, I felt more comfortable generating new ideas and helping with some of the top secret Solar Projects.

Then, Ms. Verea asked me what college I was going to attend, and I wasn’t quite sure, so she encouraged me to apply to Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC). I was accepted, and that is where I am going to take my core classes. I will then transfer to The University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC) to take all of my engineering courses—which is where my main focus and interests lie. It is my ambition to become a top engineer one day.

A couple weeks ago there was an entrepreneurship event that separated groups of students into 12 groups of four and had each group create an invention or innovation and make a business plan. Then, we were judged and ranked, until there were four top groups. My group was one of the top groups, and I am confident that my group innovation will be most successful among the rest. I think the drive for my teammates was that all students in the top group would get an iPad. But I know material things will not get me further in life. Having the opportunity to participate in the entrepreneurship event and share some of my creative ideas, as well as the possibility of turning those ideas into a real product someday, was the real motivation for me.

All of these opportunities are just small steps toward reaching my goals and becoming someone known for their achievements. Ms. Verea has really put my name out there and helped me find many of these amazing opportunities. I just wish there were more people out there who can help students discover what they love to do and make their dreams and ambitions come to life. The Career Pathways Program is just amazing, and the Career Pathway Advisors are great at what they do. I hope the program continues finding opportunities for many other students who need help finding their desire to achieve and be successful.

This article by Jack Schneider appeared in the For Your Consideration section in our March 20th e-Newsletter and originally appeared in Education Week. For Your Consideration* provides an open forum for individuals to voice their opinions on various public education issues.

Charter schools are a silver bullet for urban education. But not for any of the reasons you might think.

Charters, as research reveals, don’t achieve particularly impressive results. In a study conducted by the Stanford University-based Center for Research on Education Outcomes , or CREDO, 17 percent of charters outperformed their traditional public school counterparts. But nearly half performed no differently. And more than a third—37 percent—produced results that were worse. Other studies have produced similar results. In short, charters are on average not that different from traditional public schools: Some are high performers, some are basement dwellers, and the vast majority are someplace in between.

Yet ask Americans what works in urban education, and you’re likely to hear something about charter schools. As polling data reveals, support for charters has grown nearly every year for the past two decades and now hovers around 70 percent. And with backing from the Obama administration, the movement is booming. Roughly 2 million children in 40 states and the District of Columbia attend charter schools, with enrollment growing every year.

This widespread faith in charters is particularly surprising because public confidence in the nation’s schools is at an all-time low. In the most recent Gallup/Phi Delta Kappa poll,only 19 percent of Americans gave the public schools an A or B grade, and 30 percent gave them a D or an F. Charter schools, of course, are public schools. Yet, somehow, they have been immune to the national panic about education, even without producing demonstrably different results.

Many supporters of the public schools are outraged at this uncritical faith placed in charters, and for good reason. Charter boosters have frequently worked to make charters look good by making traditional public schools look bad. And just as troubling, charter supporters have often gone after teachers, making the case that traditional public schools are rendered ineffective by one-sided collective bargaining agreements. Consequently, charter skeptics have tried to chip away at the public’s faith in charters, believing that if they can burst the charter bubble, they will restore the place of traditional public schools. But they are wrong. And in turning their backs on charters, they are missing a tremendous opportunity.

Schools, whether or not we choose to admit it, operate on faith in their quality. Such faith is what attracts and motivates capable teachers. It is what draws the most active and concerned parents. And it is what keeps young people showing up each day. High or low test scores certainly can corroborate what we already believe about a school. But ultimately our decisions about where to teach or where to send our children are driven not by careful analysis so much as by unreasoning belief. In the second half of the 20th century, Americans gradually lost their faith in urban education. Believing city schools to be inadequate, middle-class parents moved to suburban districts or sent their children to private schools. In so doing, they left a stain on the systems they exited—marking them as the sole domain of those without better options. Without a way to inspire faith, urban schools have been unable to turn back the tide. They are a failed brand.

Charter schools, however, present an opening. Because regardless of whether people should believe in charters, they do. Capitalizing on that faith, leaders in urban districts should seize the moment and append the “charter” label to their schools. Think of it as a massive rebranding effort.

This, certainly, will not be the most substantive of recent school reform initiatives. Yet it just might be the most powerful. Why? First, because such a rechristening would collapse the divide between public school supporters and charter boosters, bringing badly needed resources and enthusiasm into traditional public schools. Second, such a move might give quality-conscious parents a new perspective on urban education. As the president of the St. Paul (Minn.) Area Association of Realtors put it in an online news article: “It’s all about reputation and word of mouth, and people see that as the truth.” In the same twincities.com story, she said the city’s schools “just don’t have a good reputation out there.” But imagine if they did. Imagine what city schools would look like if teachers, parents, policymakers, and students began to believe in them again.

In considering a districtwide rebranding, leaders should establish two conditions. First, to prevent the weakest schools from sinking to the bottom, these new charters should initially operate under the aegis of the district, much as traditional public schools do. And second, to prevent the exploitation of teachers, rebranded schools should recognize current collective bargaining contracts.

Charter boosters, no doubt, will raise objections to these conditions, claiming that they undermine charter autonomy. But savvy district leaders will frame their efforts as a transition, not a ruse. Although districts would at first grant little autonomy to these new “charters,” they could promise increasing independence to schools that demonstrated effectiveness. And while the district would initially control labor contracts, effective charters might begin to negotiate school-specific collective bargaining agreements. Such moves, of course, might not satisfy charter zealots, but they would appeal to the movement’s moderate majority. And though refashioning schools as charters might irk defenders of traditional public schools, it just might restore the support they so badly need.

For decades, socially mobile parents otherwise happy with city living have worked to get their kids out of urban schools. In the process, they have turned perceptions of low quality into reality and delayed the pursuit of educational equity. But with a deft and simple policy move, leaders in urban districts might manage to reverse the equation. Building on faith in charters, they might begin to restore the confidence required for making city schools great again. And eventually, they might even give us reason to believe.

*Please note the views expressed in For Your Consideration are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MeckEd.

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