Transcripts For CSPAN High School Choice 20170822

Discussion on alternatives to traditional Public High Schools. This discussion hosted by the thomas b. Fordham institute and the American Federation for children. Live coverage now on cspan. I kept hearing the media as like we were going to go blank if we looked up at the sky. I am the senior vp for research here at fordham. We are pleased to have a Live Audience here today and we are pleased to have cspan covering our event. We want to thank our partners at the American Confederation for children. Federation for children. Im not on twitter, i am the last person on twitter. I dont mind that i am not on twitter. If you are on twitter, you can join the conversation by using the engaging choices. For those who like to engage in conversation on twitter, please do. When we get to the q a at the end, we will look and see whether we have questions coming in. Let me suggest that we talk about School Choice. Particularly at the High School Level. Im going to keep this overview brief. Mike told me to and he is not here today. Also, i have sat on panels like this and the moderator is usually the least interesting person on the panel so i will give that in mind. The point is that there is the growing sense that the comprehensive, typical American High School is not serving well all kids. It is a hard job to fill. We have so many different types of kids and childrens and these comprehensive high schools have been around a long time. There havew that been many studies of private and Charter Schools. Shown somet have pretty promising results. If you are familiar with run zimmer, they found that students attending Charter High Schools in particular where margaret more likely to graduate high school, persist in college and earn higher earnings. That was a cooler study, it was a unique study. Another study found that urban Charter Schools as a whole significantly post higher levels of annual growth compared to traditional schools. They do all this work where they translated to the number of age learning. Those gains are acquainted to 40 days of additional learning. That is a pretty big game, werecularly good results black, hispanic and low income students. I wont spend a lot of time on the research. I have a researcher year that will cover that. The point is that even some of the studies around vouchers post pretty good results for High School Graduation rates. We know this research is mixed, it is not all good news. There are enough good point about high schools of choice and we should want more of them and we should want them to succeed. There is this growing movement around multiple pathways to college and what those things look like. We will be looking at some of those things to that. Before i turn to the panel, i will do one where plug. Part of this is initiated by a study we did in june called what teens want. A National Survey of high school and student engagement. We surveyed about 2000 High School Students. Published schools, private schools and we asked them what engages them. What motivates you to learn . In a nutshell, we found that they all said different things. They reported different ways that they were motivated to learn in school. We gave them call names. One was the subject lover. That is the kid that loves the subject matter. Engaged they are engaged in learning. There is the social butterfly, the kids love the social aspect of school, they love sports and catching up with their peers during breaks. They want to hang out with friends and lunch. We all know those kids. Their other things that really connect with their teachers. They say that they need to have that connection with the teacher. I need to know they are invested in me academically and personally, that helped me to get engaged with the material. Please read the report. You will find other students that are engaged differently. One of the things i took away from that report was that students are not widgets. Agoad this report years that was the widget affect. Arereport was that teachers not widgets, they are not the same in terms of quality. Students are not either. They are all engaged differently. Different things get them motivated to learn. One thing in the report was that engagement and choice go hand in hand. We should have multiple types of choices for kids, different schools, instructional strategies, schools within school, different curriculums, the possibilities are endless and the choices we can provide kids. It doesnt have to be school. One of the things we have to is what it isay that prevents more High School Choice and schools from opening. What obstacles to the have and what can we do to help them succeed . I think what is cool about this panel is that there is a practice practical aspect to working in school. Also, researching these types of schools, so on. I think we are speaking from a variety of viewpoints. Kevin, john at the booking institution and zach in is the executive wisconsin. I will let them introduce themselves. I will have an x play differently how their background intersects with our topic today. I have also asked them to share a personal anecdote that speak to the choice at the High School Level. We can talk about all the stuff but until we see that this impacts real kid and real places on the ground, that helps us to get invested in the topic. To share athem personal anecdote about the pot topic in hand. That. Open it up after i will moderate a few questions for the group, maybe a few specific ones for the panelists. The goal is to stop between so we can and 5 40 partake in wine and beer and food over on the end. Im a former high school teacher, i like to tell people what is going on and what the agenda looks like so we can all be informed. Withthat, i will start john. Intro . Ut giving us your john i am a fellow at the brookings institution. Thank you to amber and to all of you for coming and joining in on what i think will be an interesting discussion of an interesting topic. I am an education policy researcher. Most of my work looks at the demand side of school issues and choice. School reform as a type of market reform weather is a supplyside and a demand side, there are questions about what it is that schools do when they have the autonomy that comes with these reforms and the demand side is the question of what it is that parents and families one. Ino a lot of that work now new orleans. The question of high schools a little bit nervous about how that works. What types of garb as we would need to put in for High School Choice in particular. A part of that reason is that it comes with the puzzling finding that comes out of the work from a years ago. That is my dissertation research. As part of that dissertation, i was running experiments here in washington dc and also in milwaukee. It was a very simple experiment. The idea was that we would randomly assigned some parents to get a booklet that would have information about schools. They would have this nice colorful booklet that was able types of programs the schools offer, how they score on tests and other information about schools. They had the School Rating which is a big, eyepopping rating. A green light, a red light, a yellow light school. He set up this experiment where we had a Treatment Group that was randomly assigned to get these booklet and a control group that would not. Giving people if this kind of extra information would get them to choose any differently and prefer the schools that were flagged as being particularly good. We ran the experiment, dana came back in and we looked at the results data came back in and week looked at the results. It was exactly what we would have guessed. Tended to choose the schools that were higher performing, better schools. For families moving from middle school to high school, families chose the ones that were lower performing. That is odd. Information interventions are not u. S. It is hard to come up with a story about why they would choose that. It showed up in both cities. We dug into the books and try to see if there was something we did not see. Was there a Graduation Rate that was inconsistent . We could not find it. The theory that emerged out of it was that there was one really fundamental distention is when School Choice at the elementary and middle school level and middle school and high School Choosing thet is kids that go to the schools. I went back to philadelphia and read a third experiment. It was at a High School Fair in philadelphia. We had a Treatment Group that got some information and a control group that did not. I went to see how that information affects what parents want and what kids want. What we saw was that parents respond the way you would expect. If you tell parents that certain schools are higher performing, they choose them. They know more, they are more competent, there is a series of what seems to be happy outcomes for parents. When you chosshow the same information to kids, we did not see any of those positive effect. S. It was consistent with what we saw in other cities. Is that we are talking about 13yearolds and they are prophetic decisionmakers and they are in a time of their lives that is stressful and tough. If kids are involved in choosing their own high schools, if we are asking them to do that, there is a risk. We have to be thoughtful about that. I think this stuff matters. Morewe are handing over choicety to kids with reforms, we empower them. We are also empowering them to put pressures on School Systems. We have to think a lot about what types of pressures we are getting in High School Choice. We have to think about what we can do to help. I am the president of opportunity america. Career and Technical Education are our big focus. At goodd to look a lot Technical Education Charter Schools. That is a really interesting overlap, imagine a vent diagram of schools that are the hot new trend in k12. Learning Technical Skills along with their Academic Skills and getting workbased learning experience along with it. There are a lot of advantages, it is not your parents, it is meant to open up choices and integrate the Technical Skills with the Academic Skills. It is showing a lot of benefits and nonCharter Schools. The way to engage kids that arent that interested in learning, suddenly there is hoping that seems relevant and a project they can do and something that is hands on and gets them excited about learning. There is also a way to make curriculums. If i met i met a kid who said that i did not know i needed math until i discovered welding. Kids see they might be good at coding or welding but the exciting new trend that has been slow to catch on in the charter for understandable reasons, the Charter Movement has been focused on getting kids to college and graduate from college. In big part because they were serving kids that had not come from families that had the opportunity to go to college. The Charter Movement was skeptical of anything that smells like the old education. That is where the populations were tracked in the past. Charter movement have been slow to come to the revolutions. Right in the last few years, a number of charter educators have started to discover that even though we are the best Charter School on the block, it is a challenge to get kids from low income and not academically engaged to college and beyond. Succeeding with everyone, maybe we should try that cpe thing. Of thateeing the middle been diagram get populated with a lot of schools area it is very exciting. I think it is to revolutions coming together. When it works, it is even more than some of the parts. The Charter Movement is just taking off and we are working with them. Cte schoolslls bring our this flexibility that we talked about where they can innovate on curriculum and merged it technical curriculum and the math curriculum. They can work with the employers that you need to work with to get kids out into the workplace and learn what skills they need. They can hire teachers out of industry more easily. They can break up the school day, school before school year. If you go to class for six weeks and then you get a week off where you get an internship. We will tell a story about a kid. Sometimes starts and middle schools but it is generally in high school. You have to have a Charter High School to do this. My story is about one of the met. Kids ive i was visiting the gulf coast had ais cte School Welding program. They had a prostitution ring running out of this high school. He had discovered that he had hanging on by his fingernails and suddenly he and it up he did not even know what welding was. He had to google it and figure out what it was. By the time i met him, he was just coming out of it. Weldersne of the best in the group and incredibly proud of it and he suddenly found something he was good at that the teacher was interesting interested in. There was this unbelievable transformation. There was the story about this and then i discovered i needed geometry. I connected with and a year later. There arey then tears of welding tiers of welding. He was an elite welder by then. He was making his way around construction project to construction project. He was on his way to making a six figure income that year. Who knows where this kid will end up. My point is can we combine that with the possibility of charters . Just a few quick images before my time is up, ive been to charters where there are no classrooms and there are all maker spaces. They cant hear up the classrooms and tear up the classrooms and make the maker spaces. There is a school that is focused on aerospace. Not only are you doing your math through aerospace and your science through aerospace, you are reading the Wright Brothers biography in english class and learning how to do your history through aerospace. The calendars where you do six weeks for school and then a week for an internship, you have kids spanning out into hospitals, software companies, nonprofits, you name it. There are really exciting possibilities and charters, we are talking about expanding High School Choice. I think this is one of the very exciting places you can go and one of either exciting places we will see a lot more school going in years ahead. Im excited to be talking about it. Hello everyone, my name is zach. I serve as executive director for Hope Christian schools. Nearlyols that survey 1000 students. We have started school already, we are busy and running at full steam. We have one high school in our network. The High School Space is particularly important to me. I really appreciate amber and for thedham and afc taking on ts important topic. High School Choice is so students andtal to parents. We are trying to unlock another chapter of ed choice in our country. I was formally the principle of a christian school. Taught in milwaukee, new jersey and houston, texas. Im really passionate about that High School Space. When i used to tour students and families, i would often talk to them about our mission, the three cs of college and character. The walk with christ, getting ready for college and forming character. Some parents would ask college is not for everybody. We would say that is right. The cool thing about milwaukee is that there is lots of options and opportunities for students and choice and parents. We dont need to be a comprehensive, onesizefitsall type high school i so many big, large high schools are. We can be a niche high school. Want thatparents who for their kid can have that for their kid. That is incredibly personal for me, as a parent, you dont make too many larger decisions for your children then how you will kind ofthem and what morals and values you will instill in them. If you want a certain type of high school and setting for your todents, we need to be able provide more choices for students and parents that want more choices like that. Boys, oneouple of named henry, one named tommy, they have a little sister named katie. Henry is mentally delayed, very shy and introverted, i worry desperately about the type of education he will have. I, a big,e and copperheads of high school is scary. We worry about him being bullied. Tommy ise brother, tracking ahead of where he should be emotionally and intellectually and he is a big, strong kid. We worry about him going to a big, copperheads of high school because we are worried he might become one of the bullies. Having the right opportunity and fit for our kids is incredibly important. We have the option we have been blessed in my family to be able to find a balance for what we think will be good for our kids. We were trying to fight the right find the right educational option. This topic of High School Choice is incredibly arsenal. Personal. Thank you for having me, my name is kevin. Im the founder and president of ge of Foundation Geo foundation. I come out of the School Choice wars. Book fromthis brookings about politics, markets and americas schools. It sets the country on fire when it starts to talk about choice. In the word choice, there is a lot of different definitions. There is private school vouchers, there are charters, they are the public School Choices. Lots of different definitions, i choicey in the School Battles back in the 90s in california. Kids aboutducate what choice was best for them, inter, voucher 1998i started Geo Foundation to promote choice as much as i could. In indiana, we dont take any credit for the charter law being passed. We decided it was time to stop talking about it and start doing it. We opened th one of the first Charter Schools and indiana. That was in 1992. Bigdid not start out as a organization, we have to charter in indiana, two in Colorado Springs and one in baton rouge. Highre looking to create quality Charter Schools. Today, my mission is not that, my mission is to beat poverty. You can have a highquality school just about anywhere. Try having it in a high poverty neighborhood. That is where i want to focus my attention. If we look every single year, indiana will do it soon. We all know where the students are failing. That is the student i want to serve. Schoolslly started k12 that are relatively innovative in the sense that they dont try to be the big, mega 5000 schoo mega, 5000 student high school. Students when i was in high school and that was a big high school. You can go to high school and get various light which whether it is latin, oren, french, spanish, name a language, our high school had it. You can go to architecture class, drawing class, lots of different music programs in the high school i went to. In the high school i have today, in the high schools that we had today, we dont actually have those programs on our campus. We do offer those programs to our students. Indiana,l in gary, some have heard about. They actually graduate from purdue university. It was company paid for. Sociologydegree in from purdue university. A four years bachelors degree completely paid for. We have students who graduate with an Associates Degree, twoyear college really paid for. The story i would like to share is, this school because we approach it from a different perspective, i am an administrator of a total of 900 students. That is k12. If we were to attack a school from a traditional administrative year and has 250 High School Student and make sure that every student gets a four night with credit to meet state standards, i only have so many dollars, i am going to pick french. We offer french class at our high school. That leaves out the kids that wanted to take latin, french, polish, that topdown thinking is what does happen in Small Schools around the country. Instead of that topdown thinking, we look at the student and say what do you want . I want to take french class. What do you want . I want to take spanish. We have to make it possible. Have indiana university, northwest, we have purdue university, northwest, a lot of colleges. Community andour school. Instead of hiring one spanish teacher and everybody else live with it, you have to take everyh,we tried to reach out to single student and say, what do you want . Take thatney to course before the university level. It may sound strange. The families that we had when we started this program said, what are you talking about . My kid is not going to college. Was 90 . Indiana, that about sending our kids to college in a community that is not really experienced in college or degreed in college. We started with a very simple premise. You can do college. You are smart enough. We believe in you so much that we are going to ask you to take the placement test the Entrance Test that most Community Colleges have. One part of the threepart test, we are going to take you to collegelevel courses while you are in our high school and we will provide staff, textbooks, transportation, all to ensure that you are successful. You may fail the placement test, but that is a life experience. You failed that and we will remediate you. You come back and take it again. Jobfully, we have done our to where you can pass the test. You are pass the test, in a specific number of courses. Shman english, math collegelevel. They Start Building their confidence. They are successful and they can do collegelevel material. Our kids would graduate with only three College Credits. The garye, today, school had 43 seniors graduate at least 17 College Credits. Six with associate degrees. Graduate withates 34 College Credits and 2 with Associates Degrees. Rise to are ready to expectations and they can succeed. Charlotte, inent, the news. I had a student that was in six different homeless shelters in gary, indiana, two different. Oster homes, did this kid have a life in gary . He graduated with more than 30 College Credits and got a full ride to the university of virginia. And is studying medicine. The lady that has a bachelors degree started talking about going to college when she was in sixth grade. Her mom is single and dad is not in the picture. What is the chances of her going to college . She came to us and graduated with a bachelors degree. Now, she is a reading interventionist at our school. These things happen when we em power the students. We have students choosing our high school. Parents are not involved. The students are choosing the high school. Thank you. That was helpful. You did good with anecdotes. Us. It real for i would like to hear about the difficult things. Things. Heard some happy lets talk about the obstacles that prevent these high schools from opening. We have talked about the different varieties that you mentioned. Just, really i will give you quick numbers 900 public magnet schools. We have 1500 Charter High Schools. We have 2700 private high schools. Guess how many traditional district high schools . Anybody know . No . 25,000. 900, 1500, 2700, 25,000. Is room for the secondary options to open and flourish. What is the problem . Problems in your neck of the woods. We will start with problems and work towards solutions. I will say that Christian Schools is representative of some of those numbers. Of elementary and middle School Operators and not as many high School Operators. High school is hard not for lack of innovators trying to get into the space but there are real challenges at the High School Level. Only one of our campuses is a high school because there are challenges unique to the High School Space that prevent us from opening up more high schools. Them o not have in st. Charter schools louis and phoenix, in addition to the publicly runprivately funded schools. This is a different thing because there are a lot of different parental expectations and students expectations at the High School Level. And studentsarents start thinking about things outside of just academic programming. They start thinking about the experience that they had. School reputation comes into play. Dominance of the athletics program. You think about the music program, auto classes, welding, shop. A lot of those things play into what people expect from a high school and all of those things are very expensive. Not just because of additional programming and staffing, but you need additional spaces to house the programs in. The cost of High School Goes up quickly. Unfortunately, the dollar charter and choice, whether scholarship, to wish and, or vouchers, it does not keep pace with parental expectations. You try to find specialized teachers, like a spanish teacher, a shop teacher, a basketball coach, a football teacher, all of these different specializations that you need with unique facilities that come with additional programming and costs. Funding has not kept up and it is hard for a High School Space to keep up with the lack of resources sustainably to do that. These are some of the baseline challenges of the high school. What you also run into at the High School Level that makes it challenging or difficult for operators that want to get into the space is that a lot of the accountability protocols that a lot of high schools are held accountable in the public eye by a state assessment. Entity is not responsible, in all cases, for what happened k8. There are different incentives and you realize that you have a smaller amount of time, but you will be held to an absolute measure. If you want to get into the high most needme, you to start with a k8. Otherwise, you are held accountable as a high school for what you can get done with just a couple of years. I will stop there for others to chime in. Cte charters, you have the expense and the accountability multiplied by a few factors. Even before you yet there, you have a stigma issue. People who are skeptical of anything but college. We sometimes call this the st strategy. Bu they have not seen a story about whod who got into coding ended up in college. Isnt a choice. That is an obstacle to people starting cte schools. Most parents say they want their kids to go to college and they dont say who is my kid . Then, you have the expense questions multiplied by several factors. It will be a school about thatpace, welding involves labs, robots. You want teachers out of industry and you dont want some old sop. You want someone who just came out of industry and knows how they are welding this year and what the jobs are. The teachers are expensive and the equipment is expensive. Cpensive is an issue for the te charter. To have these kids who go class for six weeks and then they are in an internship and doing competencybased learning. Youre not preparing him for a test, but they have to take the test. You want them to take the test. You do not want to tell them that they are not good enough for the test. Then, you have the problem of employers. The difference in making a relationship with the employers. The difference between the new is that you have to have a relationship with an employer to make sure that you are doing something that they hire for. It may be aero pathway for that kid and you cannot do that without a close employer partner who helps you with the curriculum and gives those kids a chance the aunt the job and the work place a little bit. If you dont have an employer, you cannot have an internship. How does the High School Principal build a relationship with a local employer . Not easy. Teachers have to make that happen and try. I sometimes say that employers are from mars and teachers are from venus. It is hard to build relationships. They work at different times and speak different languages. It is not easy. The payoff is worth it when you can do it. Host anything to add to that . I think that kevin can speak to this better than i can. One thing i have heard a few times is that starting a school where you pick up kids from the School System already is challenging. This is because those who start charter or middle schools and do not have faith in the Elementary School that could be accountabilitysystem related or the installation of ad habits. Bad habits. G of for a high school, this means starting a lot younger. It is just sort of a tough thing. K12. S is why we do we got asked if we could start a high school and i will not do it unless we start with k12. Our goal for the eighth grader is not to be going to a College Prep High school. To pass theeligible College Entrance exam as a ninth grader. Kids taking collegelevel courses in ninth grade. One of the big challenges is traditional thinking by all of us, including me. I am a dad and i have three kids. In indianapolis, they do not have a High School Like i have in gary, indiana. Graduatere going to with a high school diploma. But it isib or ap, still just a high school diploma. Raven has a bachelors degree from purdue and six other kids have an Associates Degree. That is a higher standard. Howeed to be thinking about we run the schools. The challenges of having staff and facility are expensive and we have to challenge our own thinking processes to solve those problems. Coloradooung lady in graduate with an Associates Degree in welding and i do not have a welding toward on my campus, but the Community College does. I had another pair of gentlemen, twins, one has a degree in won in and the other has auto mechanics. I dont have a garage on my campus and i dont have a car for kids to work on. If i were to limit what i can provide limit the kids, the students to what i could provide physically, it is tight. I dont have much money. If we take the dollars that each todent represents and try spend the dollar as far as we if you want french, you get french. If you want welding, you get welding. This is what we, as administrators, need to be making sure of. Spending that dollar well and getting it as far as possible. I hate doing this without fully thinking it through, but we need to take an amazon approach to public education. What can you get on amazon . Anything. We need to be able to provide anything. It doesnt mean i will provide you the teacher, the welding, the facility, but i provide you access to it. Host i feel like what i am hearing is i guess i want to say is, what is so bad with the comprehensive high school . Maybe we should back up a step. What is wrong with the comprehensive high school . If we think it can offer all of this choice, what is it that you guys are hearing from families and students that is the problem with it . Maybe i am beating up on it unnecessarily. It is hard to take out your classrooms. Not everyone is going to want to space. Maker and you areler allowing them to focus. I have a lot of trouble hitting kids out into workspace learning. So, you are try to get a 16yearold out for an internship and it is hard for you as a teacher at a school to do that. Anddo you get them there arrange for that . It is hard for the employer to do something with a 16yearold. It is hard to figure that out and you need some help figuring it out. Ct Charter Schools have a hard time integrating curriculum. To do aerospace curriculum, read about the Wright Brothers . If you go this different route, it is hard for them to do everything, too. I went to a comprehensive high school and had a fantastic experience and enjoyed it. Class,shop class, arts for dissipated in athletics, all well and good things. The family that does not want that may not have that choice. Tobe it is important for you know that your student is in a smaller environment where Everybody Knows them and checks in on them. Isbe faithbased education important. Maybe you are worried about social rushers and do not want to go that route. And do notressures want to go that route. I think that this provides a lot of benefits and opportunities. For the parents that dont want that, there are not enough options. R. I. M going to ask you a few specific questions for each of you. Going to ask you a few specific questions for each of you. This is a depressing factoid about kids. What do we do about this problem . A little you weave in bit about how choice programs should he structured that might benefit families better . Sure. There is a lot to like about High School Choice. Choice can be dignifying for kids. A student to a school they do not want to attend, that will not work out well. There are good things about having kids get involved in the process. , areestion is 13yearolds good guardians of their longterm interest . There are guardrails we can put isto help to make sure that looked at in the right way. You can imagine the parents and , choice where they can choose whatever school they want. Prescreen can options and pick out schools that they think are fine. That creates a safety net within the students choice. I hear about middle schools talking about choices and the motivation of that is good. I would like to see some of that conversation starts with mom and dad and draw in the child as the conversation gets moving. We aresystem side, talking about choices across schools and we should have all of these different high schools and these kids should be able to pick the high schools they can choose. You can also have a lot of different choices with in schools. Kids can choose programs with in schools, courses, teachers. A lot of what were talking about could happen in a comprehensive high school. Historically, the execution is not good. One of the benefits of doing Something Like that is that the risk of choosing poorly is not as severe. That think it is wonderful there is a school set up for welding and aerospace. What if it sounds like a good idea at 13 and not at 15 . It was a program and you are now switching to a different course, different program, but you are keeping your school and some stability while you have that choice. That is worthy of some thought. Can i speak to the issue of the kids who picked the wrong thing . Kids do the thing theyre ct school andhe they get excited about learning. The first project was their project and they were feeling like learners and achievers. They decide to do Something Else and that is something they dont expect. To getpect people excited about learning and to take the agency and do it somewhere else. That is why one of the challenges in the school is integrating the technical subject with your a sick math, english, learning how to read something, doing all the things you need to do in high school. A lot of kids go on to a different topic and want to go on to college. That is the point. This is a way into learning and you can go on to a variety of for things. Of different things. Host you were preparing for the challenges of Higher Education. Can you talk a little bit about the role of the Higher Education as an obstacle . The spectrum of non12 and what happens at that time has a lot of external pressures that folks to what they can and cannot do. Up higherght education requirements. If you want the possibility to go on and enter college, we have to align a lot of the curriculum and Credit Offering with what is required to get into the university of wisconsin Higher Education system. Dictates whaton you can and cannot do at the High School Level, a little bit stifling for those who want to do something innovative with the high school model, going the ct model, aerospace, whatever else. It closes doors for students. There is a requirement for the number of credit hours. Coupled with Parents Expectations for what high school should be, constrains how far you can push the envelope and innovate. Other societal expectations placed on high school and what is offered. If i could just chime in on indiana and colorado, ed institutions play a role. T. Is the sat and the ac i will tell you about this lady t her bachelors degree at purdue. Her. Nt a lot of time with my daughter is a senior and i said to raven, what was your act . On the sat or she didnt take it. She has a bachelors degree from purdue university. How did that happen . She has a twoyear Associates Degree. She she went to purdue, went in as a college juniorcollege transfer student. Purdue looked at her transcript ech and accepted her, based on the transcript. When purdue found out she did not have a high school diploma, the Admissions Office said they had to strip her of the bachelors degree because she does not have a high school diploma. You do not do that to raven. She said, i never represented that i had graduated from high school. Not names dropping, but he is a friend that was not going to happen. She graduated with her bachelors degree and graduated from our high school. One of the things i wanted to share is that this is a young lady who went around the system to get her bachelors degree. Very innovative, nontraditional. She didnt get the high school diploma, the a ct or the sat. Act or the sat. She took collegelevel courses. One semester of College Counts for a full year of high school in that particular subject, english, math, foreign language. A lot of schools require you to take two full years of foreign language. Ear inn do that in one y college. Now, you have the two years of high school taking care of. When i was graduating from college, one of my best friends graduated from a call for New California high school at age 16. Most of us graduated that 18 and graduated college at 22 if we did the traditional thing. Raven did the same thing, she graduated at 18 from high school and bachelors degree at 18. What im trying to keep harping is we have to get out of traditional thinking. I would encourage you to do that too. We dont need to have all these teachers are facilities in our building. Side andelding on one history and criminology on the other side. Accounting. We got all kinds of offerings. But because we look at it from a very different lens, we dont have to provide it. Tamar the exciting things about a lot of these schools is that they do have flexibility. We brought together students for a roundtable and they would get off the topic of the mar of the park test. If its in new york, they have to do the regents or whatever it is. Its a burden. They have to be ready for the Higher Education expectations. We have so much flexibility and then we have to go back in that little box. There was a moment at this roundtable where somebody said be careful what you wish for. We do not want to get out of those tests. Our kidsrt to say arent going to take those tests, everyone is going to say that we arent educating them well. If you can get them through college, you can point to something higher. If you are not getting most kids through college, you still want to prove you are getting the ready for whatever they want to do. You have to teach the kids aerospace and give them time to work in the aerospace shop but you also have to get the ready to take the algebra to the algebra 2 test. Most educators are not saying, get me out of those expectations. They are just saying, we have to work harder. Jon, did you get the opportunity earlier to discuss what you are learning in new orleans about structuring some of these programs . Jon new orleans has probably embraced School Choice reforms more than any city in the country. It is sort of growing out of the horror that is hurricane katrina. They have essentially an all Charter School system. I spent the last couple of years in new orleans. One thing that they are doing very well down there now is understanding the kind of infrastructure that you have to build around a School Choice system to make it work. This isnt where you just turn on choice and everything works really well. Theyve given it a lot of thought to the system they have set up in terms of giving people the help and support they need to get to school. New orleans is certainly not alone here, but parents have a single application they fill out to apply to all of their schools, which keeps them from having to run around and keep track of a bunch of deadlines, paperwork, all those kinds of things. If you imagine, now were thinking about this with High School Choice, that harms parents. If we have 13yearolds that are choosing these schools, it will be tough to keep kids from getting those deadlines. The have centralized enrollment, the application, and placement process. They have also been very good with transportation, making sure that kids can get to schools around the city, which is not true across the board. I think, increasingly, they are very good with outreach. My work now is what types of outreach we need to get to families where just putting information on a website might not be enough. Ill highlight one study from a number of my colleagues because i happen to like the study. Have dones and matt, a study on what types of characteristics of schools families look for when they are choosing schools. Nicely illuminates the way that elementary and middle School Choices differs from High School Choice. Indicators was whether the school had a band or football program. Band, you get to march at mardi gras. Theres a different set of considerations when there are families choosing for high school. I know im hopping all over the place but you guys mentioned some interesting tidbits when we were practicing for the event. One other thing i thought was when young was, zach, are talking about marketing for choice. ach thats another zach thats another interesting piece that weve learned. Has traditional Public Schools and there is variation within that, magnet, ap schools, schools of the arts, schools of the sciences. They also have Charter Schools which run the gamut similarly and then there is the Milwaukee Choice Program which has privately run, publicly funded schools. Theres lots of student and parent choice. What we have found is that we have really had to understand our brand and our value. What is it that we bring or offer that differentiates us from Just Another School around the block . To be able to have that Value Proposition that you can share with children and families, branding yourself as such, then marketing yourself as such, is huge for opening up School Choice options. Say nothing of the other ,hallenges, but, as educators we have to step up our marketing game. We have to identify who we are, what is the value we have for families. If you come from a place or an opportunity and you havent ever thought about having choices or options for shopping for a good educational opportunity. Youve got to think differently as educators around marketing as well because you are trying to open up an entirely different segment of choice for families historically havent thought about that. The value youare, provide to families. Find the students and families. Give us anyou example of a marketing thing you would use to recruit in your school like, hey, ive got Something Different . Cs. it is the three christ, college, and character. Anyshould be able to ask teacher, student, parent what is hopes mission, and they will tell you the three cs. You will deepen your walk with go to andt ready to through college, and be the kind of leader to make you a change agent in your community. Thats not something all schools can offer. When and where we can stick cleanly to that, whether putting it on a postcard or a billboard, talking to students and families, or even as our own students and families. I think this is tricky on the policy side, too. We have some of the tools that we have built for evaluating schools or communicating to the public about how schools are performing as clearly inble high school as they are in elementary and middle school. We have proof efficiency measures, growth measures, and various good reason to prefer growth measures in terms of indicators of how schools are performing. Its hard to know how much they are growing when you are only testing the wine store maybe not testing them at all. Some of these tools that we have, we can Say Something about how kids are learning. In the absence of that, i think a lot does fall on School Leaders to try and figure out what it is that families want. Whatsapp is talking about, i think, is great. Theres a risk of promotional material turning into one of the things that is driving School Choices. Its another risk where, if we are sort of handing this over to choice, you wonder what kind of choices people can make . Just to chime in and this isnt necessarily on point to your conversation about what is an obstacle, but you hit it right on the head. High schools dont have as much schools. Ility as k8 in indiana, High School Students have to pass a basic algebra 1, english 10, and biology 1 test. The High School Requirements is 40 high school credits. We only test three credits. What about the other 37 . Do we know anything happening in those classrooms where the 37 other credits are being taught. We dont. The acd. T sat scores, ib tests. Ap and im a practitioner now. We rely and awful lot on High School Teachers who are not showing any kind of standardized test results of any sort to prepare our students either for college or a cte program. We dont really know what is going on. I will tell you, honestly, ive walked into an 11th grade class before and seen fourthgrade standards being taught. Everything was eating it up. They loved it. Fourthgrade standards in 11th grade . No. If you are going to graduate from our high school, id much rather see you graduate with a whole bunch of College Credits that i can double count for high school credits. At least the kids graduated from my high school with a college transcript. We have basketball. We dont have football at our school. We usually make it to the final four, at least the last three or four years. That really has built a lot of spirit for the school. I always laugh and please when i amfunny at the basketball game and i think we have an advantage over everyone else. All the kids on my Basketball Team are not High School Kids, they are college kids. They may be high school aged, but they are going to college. Amber kevin, the one thing i wanted you to share with the audience is that you have Charter Schools in three different states. I want to know how these state and local policies are making it easier or harder . Local law makes it easier or harder. I wouldnt have necessarily known the answer to that question. We had a national audience. There were some folks from california who said what you are doing in indiana cant be done in california. Apparently , dont quote me on this, im just sharing what i learned from the audience. There are laws against High School Students taking a number of College Credit courses in california. Frankly, a lot of high schools will say that they are doing the the earlyt, doing college, but what they dont tell you is that they are limiting it. You can only take three credits per semester. A young lady who got her welding degree in colorado strain Colorado Springs and my high school is only about 75 kits total. I looked at brittany and i said, why are you coming here from a 2000 Student School . She said, number one, because of the Early College program. Im only a junior and if i was still in my 2000 student traditional high school, i would only be able to take a few courses. Adults are putting in these barriers to kids advancing. Heres this young lady, she came to us, she chose our high school. Amber are you saying that cant happen in multiple states . Kevin im not going to sit here and say im an expert of state law across the 50 states. I do know that a number of schools will say, yes, we do dual credit but you have to pay the tuition or you have to buy the textbooks. Textbooks are expensive. 150 for one textbook. Or you have to pay for the transportation. Or you have to figure out how youre going to do it along with the other High School Requirements we have. We built our high school on a block schedule. We changed our calendar. One of my daughters just started college this past monday. Some of the high schools we have have mimicked the calendar of the college because we have High School Kids that want to take college courses. What do they do if they are taking a High School Calendar school year and our spring break doesnt match up for our christmas break doesnt match up . Barriers to success and barriers to helping High School Students excel we dont fit their schedule. Here, theg to change students or the schools . We change. We are here for the students. Anything else you guys want to share before we open it up to the audience . Tamar one thing i didnt talk about, one of the answers come one of the hardest things but also one of the answers, is the weaving together of the two curriculums. It is well about that they can take the algebra test at the end of the geometry test. Schools put a lot of effort into that of, how do i teach geometry through the welding you can come out really knowing the geometry . How do i teach english through the aerospace so you can come out knowing enough reading. Thats hard work in a school. You are inventing your curriculum. Doe seen schools where they it well where they are getting synthesis. Ive seen schools where it is kind of a gimmick. You kind of have some clever thing that sounds like it is english or it is music or something, and it is math. Location, location, location. Employer, employer, employer. The second hard part is the integrating of the curriculum. Zach, what didnt we get to for you . Weve covered a lot of the challenges. Theres obviously work we can do on the funding side comedy accountability side. Some of the things that kevin mentioned before. I think, at the end of the day, if none of those things were to truly change, something ive seen kevin say previously is just to be clear about who you are and who you are not. If you can be really clear within current constraints about where you are, what your high school is, what kind of transformational opportunities to provide for families, and you scream that from the mountain tops, i think thats how we are, within current constraints, realize more High School Choice. Jon . jon one thing we havent really touched about havent really talked about is school size. Charter high schools in the u. S. Are about half the size, on average, up traditional Public Schools. Hear is that they feel very personal. It feels like relationships are maybe possible in that context. Thats not to say theres anything that would keep traditional Public High Schools from being much smaller than they are. Kevin i would just encourage the audience to think differently. We are always saying that we need more money to do this. One of the challenges to create High School Choices, what are the challenges we have . What are the services we can provide with those dollars . Turn it around. How much can we spend on the students and meet the students needs . I mentioned the amazon analogy. When you think about it, you go on amazon, you get on your phone and you can buy just about anything you want. Amazon doesnt make any of it. They provided to you. Your app is the opportunity to buy it. I think we ought to think a little bit differently about the schools. Maybe we need to be looking at more of a boutique place that is a doorway to a lot of opportunities. Our high schools are small and intimate. That is part of the intimacy that we all enjoy with amazon. It is specifically what youre need is. You can watch a movie, a tv show, by toilet paper or dog food, all on amazon. We need to maybe think about that for our high school approach. We dont actually have to provide it. We can give you access to it. , whenou think about that you think about your three cs christ and character in particular, we can think about the development of the individual and the relationship with the individual. I know the names of our students. We dont have thousands of them. We developed a very personal relationship and we open up the door of opportunity. I like it. Access and opportunity. I think its a different model. Karen, i think you have a question for me. You can pass the microphone around. If you could just identify yourself . I guess my question is there that to be an implication choice involves multisector choice. It seems that choice has exploded within the multihigh school round. We are talking about a traditional Public High School as if it is monolithic plan, in fact, that model is less and less frequent, the way i understand it. I guess, my question is, does sector matter in outcomes or the availability of choices . Or is one of the issues here that there already ample choices and growth in choices . Jon its a good question. It is certainly not the case that choice within high schools is a new phenomenon. Think it is largely a question of what it is that we think families or kids should be able to choose. To traditional public versus charter, i dont think many people have an inherent preference for one or the other. I think they do have preferences over what the programs are in those schools, what the experience of knowing there is . I do think, when it comes to private schools, there are sectorspecific preferences. I am certainly have the impression that a lot of what we crosssector choice, we could accomplish. A lot of cities now have quite a. It of choice they do open it up quite a bit within that traditional Public School sector. There you go. Reporter for inside choices. Is kind of for everyone but probably in particular for the school administrators. Ar made her thoughts on this pretty clear. It is kind of about the flexibility versus accountability portion. The question is, should these schools of choice be subject to the same accountability systems as their neighboring traditional Public Schools . And why or why not . Kevin we do participate in the same accountability as traditional publics. I think that is a challenge for those who want to be innovative and outofthebox. You have to, at some point or another, perform on those tests. If you are authorized, at least in a charter world, if youre authorizer doesnt like the results, you get an accountability grade of three fs in a row, you are shut down. In indianapolis, there was a school that was approved by an authorizer and the application specifically said we not going to teach to the test, we are not believers in the state standardized test. The authorizer approved that charter. The charter still had to administer those tests. Was anybody surprised by the results that the tests that the results werent so great . Fs school got like three in a row. The authorizers and others were saying you have to shut it down. They were doing what you are saying to do. It was a projectbased school. Frankly very upsetting, from a charter perspective, from an Innovative School perspective. It had 300 parents wanting to send their kids to this school. The government agency, the authorizer, said, sorry, you are not good enough. There needs to be a balance. When you to have some additional Accountability Measures in place. In my school, we dont get any credit for the College Credit that our students are earning. The state likes to look at ap test results. The u. S. News world report, the best high schools in the country, it is a bunch of nunk a bunch of bunk. It is basically about taking ap courses. It doesnt say how many of you past the course and doesnt say how many passed the test. It measures how many took the course and took the test. Thats ridiculous. Youve got a bunch of high schools saying, i want to be on u. S. News world report, im going to start offering ap courses. Thats crazy. Youve got a bunch of kids that b from their or teacher, but how did they do on the actual ap test . Twos and ones. Thats not cutting it. Is important, but i dont think it is sophisticated enough right now. It is too bland. I appreciate kevins sentiment, and i think it is less a question of whether or not everybody should be under the same accountability metrics but rather recognizing the unintended consequences of imperfect accountability systems. Ill use an example that jon brought up before. Most state assessments and accountability reports rely on overall student attainment. Test scores are determined largely at the state level. They deemed that may be all well and good for grading a school in certain areas of the state, but maybe not in other areas of the state. Our schools specifically, Hope Christian schools operate we price free and reduced lunch. The students we serve are coming to us behind. That attainment score judging whether or not our schools are any good isnt the best possible accountability metric. If you look at our nwa map , you would see a far different record. Because itneed to isnt of unintended consequences. It is not exactly black or white. State, to graduate you have to pass the regents test. There are five hard tests. Onect schools they can take of those tests and sub substituted. The American Welding Society credential come you can substitute that for one of your tests. There is accountability, but there is their relation to it. I do think that it is important, if youre going to have kids that are going to do that well, they are going to say i want to go to college, if you havent prepared them to go to college, one of those things that got those traditional skills, you are tracking them. Thosent to make sure bridges back into the mainstream still exist. I absolutely agree. Accountability metrics could be better. In the absence of those metrics, imperfect. That arerip away tests not working great, but what we substitute in there may not be. Ore rational i think it has been challenging the last five or 10 years, the debate about accountability in indiana, we have changed state tests three or four times. I dont know all the states and now they have done it, we are held accountable to do well on those state tests. They keep changing. Year there were 100 yards on the football field. This year it is 110 yards. , lets set the parameters and let us go at it. More than a couple of years. A few more minutes. Hello. Cte person from the u. S. Department of education. The competency levels that are set. Student to take a remedial course and they will get credit depending on what level it is, or i am going to give them the first level of course at a Community College. What is thestion is standard that is being taught they are and the question about what is the standard being taught in high school . I think the issue of accountability is to try and have some set standard by which we say this is a student who has completed High School Twitter level they can be successful in college or career. That is not really true. That is the trouble. We are not there. That wethat saying dont need something, that we are going to do a competency , itd bottle model becomes problematic at all three kinds of schools. I agree with that. You do want to say there is something you have to meet. I think there should be flexibility. We cant just say anything goes, good luck. We went from one community the spanishecause offered a Community College was not the same at the fouryear university. We have to be couldnt informed consumers. We cant just say you require to take a College Level course. It may not be quality. We have to monitor that quality. We are doing that. We are learning. We are Getting Better at it. We do listen to our students and look at the work they are doing. E do monitor the quality this year we switched from the twoyear to the fouryear. They are getting a Higher Quality program. Whether that continues, i dont know. It is all dependent upon the teacher. If the teacher does a great job it is going to be fine. Question, curating those programs. What about schools that dont do a good job . Of the wary as anyone government deciding these things. Trusting the schools is actual please dont think we just signed our kids up first school and then send them off. Use, ifogy i like to anybody in this room knows how to swim, learn to swim on your own. You probably didnt. You learn with your parent, a teacher, somebody was there the first time. Unfortunately what we are in inner cities across the country are families that dont have any college experience. We pretend to be college prep, we try to get these kids to go to college. Many will do. Now, how many are finishing college . How many are staying in college . Networks,he charter they are looking at how students are doing after they graduate from high school. I think that is important, that we do that. What we are trying to do is teach the kids to swim while they are in our high school. Build that confidence, the level of understanding what the culture is at the College Level while they are with us and the persistence rate is great. Class2 class, my first that i graduated with any significant number of College Credit, 60 have their bachelors degree. This is all africanamerican, all poverty. That is six times the national average. 10 that will get a bachelors degree. 60 has their bachelors degree. Pretty phenomenal. Share this with as many people as possible because i think we are onto something. Dynamic fromng the just getting a diploma to the kids in poverty having a fight in chance of swimming in college and completing the lap. Ignored myike i have twitter audience. I will make these points. One is just a comment that Higher Education, they heard Higher Education is providing a roadblock. That is what i did not hear you say. That it is creating a roadblock . Because of the credit expectations for entrance. Is that what you were explaining . Challenge more than roadblock. The College Track is the one you want to be on i would not see it as an obstacle. Operate in an entrepreneurial way that presents a challenge. A comment that they found it interesting, the charter education, providing access versus delivery. I think you are initiating that as a potential way to think about education. Im not talking about Online Education which does exist. Theres plenty of examples of that being successful. Im talking about the. Pportunity to access there lots of opportunity the community provides. I like theater and music. In indianapolis there is a youth symphony. As a school, do i invest in a bunch of symphonic instruments theo i say you want to take symphony. You get into the youth symphony. Nobody else wants to do that. You should not be denied your choice. I dont have one welding tool. Im going to send you to a center that does welding. But that is a different approach. Im not talking about the impersonal online experience. Im talking more about a personal experience. What is your interest . I want to know it. I want to try to fulfill it. Im going to be there with you to make sure you are successful. Learned a lot. I hope you found this interesting. Join me in thanking the panel. [applause] nice audience for a hot august day. Please stick around for drinks, wine, beer, snacks. Thank you. [inaudible conversation] our primetime lineup begins at 8 00 eastern with a forum on religion, ethics, and the media, comparing Civil Society and the news media to todays Civil Society. Meeting with jeff flake will take questions about policy and the current political climate. This leads to our coverage of President Trump who holds a rally in phoenix, arizona. Live coverage starting at 10 00 eastern. Mayorline in fox, phoenix warns trump not to hold a rally in phoenix. Is his second warning not to inflame racial tensions in his city. The oped reads in part america is hurting largely because trump has doused racial tensions with gasoline. I fear the president may be looking to light a match. That is from the mayor of phoenix where mr. Trump has a rally tonight at the Phoenix Convention center. We have it here on cspan. You can listen on the free cspan radio app. A conversation about the backlog of Immigration Court cases waiting to be resolved. Andrew arthur talked about his paper that found the doubling of the backlog of cases from 2006 to 2015 was not due to an increase in the number of cases but a doubling in the length of time it takes every case to be resolved. This runs an hour and 15 minutes