Guest column: Only six of 10 kindergartners will graduate high school. Vote “yes” on charter amendment to improve their chances.
Here is a pro piece in favor of the charter schools amendment by Atlanta educator Tyler S. Thigpen.
Thigpen is Head of Upper School at Mount Vernon Presbyterian School in Sandy Springs. A former teacher in Gwinnett County, Thigpen is co-founder of the Chattahoochee Hills Charter School of SW Fulton and continues as a voluntary adviser to the school.
By Tyler S. Thigpen
Money and control are at the heart of the current debate about our state’s upcoming charter school vote, critics argue, while innovation, choice, and opportunity are king for amendment supporters. But there is another, and more urgent, narrative that should move us when we vote next week: We are in desperate need of stronger leadership and higher standards in Georgia k-12 education.
Let us create a statistical snapshot of 10 children who entered kindergarten in Atlanta this year. These darling children have since been sounding out letters, singing songs, and writing the alphabet. It does not take more than a classroom visit to see that that their minds are open, their futures bright.
But if nothing changes in our schools, then by the time these 10 kindergarteners are 18, only six of them will have graduated from high school. And by the time these same young people are 21 years old, only two of them will have graduated from college.
Ten kindergarteners. Six high school graduates. Two college graduates.
Statistics statewide are equally as dismal, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports, with a mere 24 percent graduating from college.
That is, of course, if nothing changes.
What has been absent from the recent conversation about charter schools is that when the state-appointed Charter Schools Commission, in its day, authorized charter schools, in every instance the commission held its schools to a standard higher than the one to which their local district held neighboring schools.
When we applied for charter status for Chattahoochee Hills Charter School, we had to demonstrate our commitment and plan to outpace Fulton County Schools in absolute terms (that the percentage of our students scoring advanced or proficient on end-of-grade tests was greater than in other schools in FCS), in comparative terms (that we outperformed other FCS schools with similar demographic profiles), and in longitudinal terms (that the percentage score of individual students in our school increased over time at a rate greater than at other). Schools lacking either a similar plan or the expertise to execute did not make it past the first round.
The commission also has a track record of meaning what they say, having denied the reauthorization of underperforming charters like Imagine Marietta and West Chatham Preparatory Academy. Moreover, the commission was made up of uniquely qualified educational leaders, including a former University of Georgia president, who, unlike elected officials who navigate competing priorities, could be focused singularly on academic achievement.
Few to none would deny that what Georgia needs is 10-10-10. Ten kindergarteners. Ten high school graduates. Ten college graduates.
Every sector of our economy stands to benefit from achieving this goal. Business savvy college graduates will populate our state’s corporations. Well-trained administrators will fill our state’s public offices. Shrewd alumni will enter and positively shape finance, law, housing, and health.Georgia boasts the busiest airport in the world, the fourth busiest port in the United States, and, if Georgia were a stand-alone country, the 28th largest economy in the world. As a state, we are economically ambitious, yet we remain academically underperforming.
Within 10 years, more than 60 percent of jobs will require a college degree. Already, most new Atlanta jobs require higher education. And these jobs are quickly outpacing the number of college graduates that our state is producing.
In “Immunity To Change,” authors Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey suggest that at this moment in history, we are experiencing a mismatch between the world’s complexity and our own. To fix it, we can try and reduce the world’s complexity, or we can enhance our capacity to manage that complexity. The first won’t happen. The second, they argue, has long seemed an impossibility of adulthood and something too difficult to achieve in our schools.
But failing to prepare our children to navigate a 21st century marketplace is not a valid option. And 10-6-2 is absolutely unacceptable. We must confront complexity head on.
After the Georgia General Assembly established the Georgia Charter Commission in 2008, national leaders lauded our representatives for positioning the state to experience academic innovation and growth, and high-performing school leaders were drawn to Georgia where they have launched successful schools.
Charter schools are not a panacea. But they are a mechanism for change. And in a state where 10-6-2 is the reality, change is sorely needed. More school leaders in Georgia should be thinking about how to outperform neighboring schools and outdo their own growth year after year. And we need state leaders who demand it.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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141 comments Add your comment
Anotther comment
November 2nd, 2012
1:27 pm
The writer’s 10-10-10 Philosophy is so flawed it isn’t funny. It just shows the ignorance that permeates the State. The State Law in Georgia mandates that you must be 5 by Sept. 1 of the school year to start Kindergarten. Therefore, only students born between June-, July, Aug, stand a chance of graduating from college in 4 year with a 4 year degree. Therefore 2 out of 10 when you only have 2.25 of the cohort with that opportunity is excellent. Especially, when you consider, the better private schools will not take a boy with a birthday later March- April or Girls after June. Then the private schools put many kids with birth dates after Jan.1 in Pre-1st between kindergarten and First Grade. The privates all hold back at least 1/3 of their Kindergartners for prefirst. I met one Pace high schooler Saturday night who told me she did 2 years of Pre-first.
It is also completely unrealistic that everyone needs a college degree. I supervised a Facilities Management staff of 210 employees at one time. We needed our plumbers, electricians, welders, carpenters, custodians, groundskeepers, just as much as our Engineers and Architects. Even some of my best Engineers did not want promotions to management that would have brought them $30k plus a year extra salary. We had a generator that came off an old submarine, I had to find a navy vet who had worked on Subs in the Navy and was now and electrician to care for this gem.
I will vote No, this guy does not know what he is talking about and can not make a rational argument based on fact.
Maureen Downey
November 2nd, 2012
1:34 pm
@To all, The AJC has a page of charter school related stories and info. If you want to read a lot about the issue, go here.
Steve Hickey
November 2nd, 2012
1:39 pm
Thought leadership: clear and bold and free of conflict of interest. Are schools there to employ teachers or are they there to better our children?
Mountain Man
November 2nd, 2012
1:44 pm
The bloggers who talk about welding are correct – our local tech college says welders are hired directly out of their program. Our company has been looking for a mechanic for months (and our pay and benefits are excellent). One caveat: at our company and most companies you must have a high school diploma or GED, you must be able to read and speak English, and you must pass a drug test. You would be surprised how many applicants those requirements weed out. Then we want to know you have basic life skills such as being to work every day and on time. THAT weeds out a lot, also. So there are a lot of unemployed persons who are unemployed solely because of decisions that they have total control over.
bootney farnsworth
November 2nd, 2012
2:32 pm
@ mountain man,
charters are schools, not miracles. human nature being what it is, you may get a bump in parental activity for awhile, but soon it’ll be back to business as usual. parents who are far more concerned with
Honey Boo Boo and the Dawgs D-line 8th string backup than their own kids education.
bootney farnsworth
November 2nd, 2012
2:34 pm
@ steve,
reality is, schools are there to
-provide a home for football
-provide jobs for administrative wonks who never teach
-serve as day care for children.
education has almost nothing to do with education.
JJ
November 2nd, 2012
2:43 pm
Just curious. Does everyone feel the overall University system is failing?? Only around 50% of kids who start college finish. These kids are generally in the top half of their graduating class and have to pay a substantial sum for the privilege of going to college. Why do we not view this as failure???
Mountain Man
November 2nd, 2012
2:47 pm
“Only around 50% of kids who start college finish. These kids are generally in the top half of their graduating class and have to pay a substantial sum for the privilege of going to college. Why do we not view this as failure???”
Because they are there by CHOICE. Maybe we should tighten admission requiremnts so the bottom half don’t get in initially? Is that what you are advocating? Not everyone is cut out to have a college degree.
Jehosephat
November 2nd, 2012
3:03 pm
I think many of you are missing the point of this article. To be sure, he does not touch on every aspect of the issue. What I do understand Mr. Thigpen to be saying seems quite simple. Georgia needs to hold higher standards in education. For a school to maintain charter status, it must agree to outperform neighboring schools in a number of distinct ways. Therefore, a higher standard is being held, which will create healthy competition and all around better performance.
Ron
November 2nd, 2012
3:07 pm
So k-12 needs higher standards? Has the author heard of the common core curriculum? Hence, higher standards are already in place. Duh!
DeKalb Inside Out
November 2nd, 2012
3:08 pm
Bruce,
Nancy Jester is full of false assumptions – Really? Full of them? Please delineate.
Her numbers come straight from the DOE.
http://app3.doe.k12.ga.us/ows-bin/owa/fin_pack_revenue.display_proc
[Her numbers are] incorrect because the state has been underfunding education since 2003 – Nobody ever said the state was fully funding education. I don’t think the state has ever fully funded Q.B.E. Who said either of those?
I’m saying the local counties are making up for the austerity cuts by the state. I’m saying the school districts have received more and more money every year for the last 16 years while the quality of education has only declined. I’m guessing more money for the school districts is not the answer.
where will [the state] find funds for charters
Answer: Capital funds
The state’s total FY2012 appropriations: $15.9 billion.
Appropriations for Education: $9.97 billion
Amount of money spent on charters commissioned by the state: $56.1 million
So, 62% of state appropriates goes to education. 0.35% (less than half of 1%) of state appropriates goes to funding state charters.
I [Roach] support charters – Cool. How do you support charters?
Ron
November 2nd, 2012
3:10 pm
Here’s another view: the public schools are doing their part; are parents and students doing theirs? Many kids don’t want to learn and you can’t make them. So siphoning off funding from public schools is no assurance (or evidence) that such an amendment is necessary.
catlady
November 2nd, 2012
3:11 pm
I believe, most of the time, IT IS NOT THE SCHOOLS THAT ARE FAILING. It is the students who are failing (to use the opportunities available to them.) We must ask ourselves why? Few schools in the world come close to the opportunities available to the average kid in the United States. The opportunities are there. We cannot mandate that students use the opportunities many in other countries would die to have.
Do schools have problems? Yes. There ARE things that schools could do to make the opportunities more easily used by students. First and foremost, there must be the political will to get the misbehaving students OUT of the way of the other students. I believe in many countries, even very poor countries, students are required to behave in an appropriate manner or be dismissed. We need to return to this.
Second, I think schools have to resist being used as the agents of change for EVERYTHING. Fat? Out of shape? Need various services? Need to learn correct behavior? The schools are going to have to STOP trying to meet every need that “the public” tries to dump on them.
Ron
November 2nd, 2012
3:13 pm
@Bootney Farnsworth (2:34): I guess increased SAT scores and graduation rates are just fabrications if you think education isn’t working. It certainly is. Look at the middle grades curriculum and tell me we’re not pushing too much on kids to learn these days.
Ron
November 2nd, 2012
3:16 pm
Catlady, I agree with you. Good points!
Ron
November 2nd, 2012
3:19 pm
@ Jehosephat (3:03): I don’t think you’ll be satisfied unless every child is studying and doing homework 24/7, which is what increasingly the notion of “higher standards” results in.
DeKalb Inside Out
November 2nd, 2012
3:24 pm
Future Gov
If the Cherokee Acadmeny is doing so well, like you pointed out in your post, then why is it that one out of four students have left the academy and re-entered Cherokee County Public Schools?
Why did they leave? Because they didn’t want to go to that school and they have the choice to go to another public school. Heck Yeah, Future Gov !! That’s what I’m talking about. It’s nice to have choices … even in Cherokee County. That’s what state chartered schools are all about.
Nope
November 2nd, 2012
3:29 pm
I worked with a Charter School corporation on a project and I was APPALLED at how stupid, unorganized and unethical they were. It was all I needed to know I would NEVER support these schools.
Mountain Man
November 2nd, 2012
3:33 pm
“So k-12 needs higher standards? Has the author heard of the common core curriculum?”
We are not talking about higher EDUCATIONAL standards. Those are fine (and are being ignored in the lower-performing schools).
We are talking about general standards: discipline, attendance, social promotion, spending on special ed students, parental involvement. These are standards that traditional schools are in the gutter on. How many students in APS miss an inordinate amount of school from being late or absent? You can’t teach an empty desk. When they come back, does the teacher now have to take valuable time to “catch the student up”? How can a teacher teach when he/she is dealing with disciplinary problems? Will the administrators help? Of course…NOT!
Mountain Man
November 2nd, 2012
3:36 pm
“I worked with a Charter School corporation on a project and I was APPALLED at how stupid, unorganized and unethical they were”
Got any proof or you just want us to take you at your word?
By the way, I work at a charter school and 100% of our students scored a perfect 2400 on the SAT, even though they were only in the eighth grade. And 50% have scolarships to Ivy League colleges already.
Mountain Man
November 2nd, 2012
3:38 pm
“First and foremost, there must be the political will to get the misbehaving students OUT of the way of the other students. I believe in many countries, even very poor countries, students are required to behave in an appropriate manner or be dismissed. We need to return to this.”
No excrement, Mr. Holmes.
Just A Teacher
November 2nd, 2012
3:40 pm
These discussions have become tedious. Of course I’m not going to give Nathan Deal and his right wing, public education hating cohorts my permission to loot money from public schools. The only thing these pro charter people can do to try and sway voters is spend mega bucks on TV commercials and write in vague terms about how charter schools will improve education. The truth is their debate tactics are . . . WE CAN YELL LOUDER THAN YOU, SO GIVE US THE MONEY! I’m not a frightened child. I am an intelligent adult who understands that all children do deserve a good education. That’s why I’m voting not to siphon off any more funds from public schools.
DeKalb Inside Out
November 2nd, 2012
3:41 pm
Ron
SAT Scores – I don’t think SAT scores in Georgia could have gone down any further. As of 2011, average SAT scores had been declining for 4 years. Georgia was ranked 48th out of 50 states in SAT scores. 2012 did see an improvement in test scores.
Generally speaking, how would you rank education in Georgia and by what standards?
Mountain Man
November 2nd, 2012
3:42 pm
“I guess increased SAT scores and graduation rates are just fabrications if you think education isn’t working.”
Ron – in case you don’t know, the SAT is not taken by ALL students – certaily not by those who have already dropped out, so it is not a measure of general education.
Second – increased graduation rates – did you know that we do NOT require the GHSGT any more? Even when we DID require it, you could apply for and get a diploma (a variance) if you tried several times and still failed it. So what good are increased diplomas if they don’t mean anything?
jarvis
November 2nd, 2012
3:45 pm
Yes….vote with this idiot.
If you read that nonsense above, and think that a single causal relationship between this Amendment and the states 24% college graduation rate, by all means vote for the amendment. Because like the author, you are an idiot.
Let me be clear, I don’t think everyone voting for the Amendment is an idiot, but this author and anyone gullible enought to believe that schlitz is too.
Site your reports, and let me tell you 1. How you’ve misinterpreted the data to begin with. 2. How you have jumped to a nonexistent conclusion.
Mountain Man
November 2nd, 2012
3:46 pm
“WE CAN YELL LOUDER THAN YOU, SO GIVE US THE MONEY! ”
Sounds just like what the teachers and the traditional educational establishment have been saying:
“[Her numbers are] incorrect because the state has been underfunding education since 2003 “
Kris
November 2nd, 2012
3:46 pm
JJ “Just curious. Does everyone feel the overall University system is failing?? Only around 50% of kids who start college finish.”
Failed with a Big F (primarily the administration.).
There is a little Junior college in N Georgia ( impersonate a 4 yr.) Their first year students who get trapped in their development studies program have a 85% drop out rate…. The charge is 4 credit hours for the Development class vs a regular Credit class is 3 credits… What’s sad is that 90% of the trapped students can probably pass regular math and English classes if given a chance..Wonder why HOPE is broke. The math test is rigged. Most college grads cannot pass it….So we get them through K-12 then what over priced colleges that only offer a paper Degree…
Vote NO to Amendment 1
William Casey
November 2nd, 2012
3:51 pm
There is no way that schools directly controlled by a board appointed by governor Deal will be any better than what we have now. It would just create an expensive parallel bureaucracy of political appointees. I voted “NO.”
jarvis
November 2nd, 2012
3:53 pm
Free private schools do not exist.
Warrior Woman
November 2nd, 2012
3:54 pm
There is nothing inadequate about public school funding. There is, however, abundant excessive spending on cetnral office staff that are out of touch with reality; a shortsighted refusal to discipline and control students that don’t wish to learn; and inadequate opportunities for above average students. More charter schools could help with two of these three problems, and might result in school management that has a grasp on reality to boot.
William Casey
November 2nd, 2012
3:56 pm
BTW: MOUNTAIN MAN is absolutely correct. Until discipline problems are removed from the classroom, little else will matter.
williebkind
November 2nd, 2012
4:01 pm
I am voting YES
williebkind
November 2nd, 2012
4:02 pm
“Free private schools do not exist.”
Free public schools do not exist.!!
jarvis
November 2nd, 2012
4:03 pm
Agreed willie, but I’m not trying to make one.
Mountain Man
November 2nd, 2012
4:05 pm
Amen, Warrior Woman @ 3:54!!!
DeKalb Inside Out
November 2nd, 2012
4:08 pm
Just A Teacher
loot money from public schools – How does this amendment loot money from public schools. All local money stays with the local school district. For every child that goes to a state chartered school, the local school district has more money per child to spend on education in their district.
Not a fan of parental school choice or market theory?
I see you’re not a huge fan of Nathan Deal or his esteemed right wing colleagues either. Consider the merits of the amendment and not necessarily where it comes from. I can appreciate a thoughtful vote either way.
Whirled Peas
November 2nd, 2012
4:18 pm
Nice to see Maureen give a voice to reason.
Momofone
November 2nd, 2012
4:31 pm
Mountain Man, why are you so against special ed students? Do you know that some special ed students have above average IQ? Should they not be educated just because they do not learn in the environment of the typical classroom?
I wish people would quit blaming parents as “not being involved”. I was involved in my son’s education. His IQ is about 130. He dropped out of high school. We all learn in different ways. He could not handle the reptition and slowness of most classes.
The lady in the article said only 2 of the students will have graduated college by the time they are 21. Since most students graduate high school at 18 and it takes 4 years go get a Bachelor’s degree, should she be looking at how many graduate college at age 22 or 23?
I have an advanced college degree but do not believe everyone should have a college degree.
I’d also like to know why everyone thinks social promotion is something that happens a lot. It does not happen!
Nope
November 2nd, 2012
4:43 pm
Yes Mountain Man. I worked on a project with Mosaica her in Atlanta and I was stunned at how they were incapable of organizing and producing any number of projects.
Nope
November 2nd, 2012
4:44 pm
“By the way, I work at a charter school and 100% of our students scored a perfect 2400 on the SAT, even though they were only in the eighth grade. And 50% have scolarships to Ivy League colleges already.”
Got any proof are we supposed to just take your word? 100% PLEASE.
Another comment
November 2nd, 2012
4:46 pm
My kids miss alot of school from public school, because they are bored to death. They constantly claim they have headaches, stomache aches, etc… I know the truth, they are bored to death. Yesterday, my daughter had to sit thru kids in PE class getting the 2 hr. part of Class Room Driver’s Ed. for Free. We paid for that over the Summer of 2000 at Westminster. She already Sat through it in Health class in the Fall of 2000, now this. What a waste of 2 days. She has had her drivers license for almost 2 years. Taking this is part of Caleb’s law. Parents should pay for this not the school, teaching it for free and wasting everyones time. Then today, they had a Sub in Physics, another waste of my daughter’s time even going to school. The subs do nothing in these class.
My other daughter told me her class went to a Muslim Temple today, but she didn’t bother to give me the permission slip, because she didn’t want to go. So she totally wasted her day going to school today. So are they going to take them to a Catholic Church, a Jewish Temple, a Budhist temple, a Hindu Temple and everything else. We have to sing at Christian Chruch, for our Spring Perfomance for Chorus.
My kids are both A students. But they are both so bored, I really can’t support them going to school and being bored. We need to stop mixing the kids. When I went to school there were no special Ed kids in our school. The one kid with Autism, was gone, after he Tommy ( durring the Who’s “Tommy can you hear me” era stabbed the teacher with a pencil). We very simply did not have the districtions that my kids have to put up with.
We didn’t have these awful disfunctional districts. We had one high school per district. Both sets of Grandparents moved to the area in the 1930’s to raise families, no one had to move around every couple of years when someone rezoned a school line trying to find a better school. My nephews went to middle school in the school that my parents went to high school in the 1940’s. They built a new High School in the 1970’s.
mountain man
November 2nd, 2012
4:59 pm
“Got any proof are we supposed to just take your word? 100% PLEASE”
Nah, I was lying through my teeth.
Private Citizen
November 2nd, 2012
5:12 pm
jarvis a lot of coutries have revenue sharing with lots of types of what we call K-12 schools. The USA is the odd one out with it’s weird tax the people and send the money exclusively to the government schools. We’re also the odd one out when it comes to distribution of health care. We’re also the odd one out when it comes to putting so many people in prisons – #1 in the world per capita. It’s all there in the OECD reports if you care to read them.
It is really a little confronting to these various comments from the great international city Atlanta that seem both completely uninformed about the rest of the civilized world, and even more so, arrogantly disinterested and buying into some kind of exclusive mentality. Democracy depends on an informed populace. Some of you might do some schoolin’ on the OECD reports. I’m not trying to be a know-it-all, but really people, get some basic information on how schools are funded across the world. Most of the them do some form of revenue sharing between the various types of schools, mixing government schools with religious, military, trade, prepatory, and whatever else you can think of. I don’t thing the vacuum cleaner was invented in Georgia but everybody seems to think the government schools have the right to vacuum up all the money and if you want anything different, pay again. I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “entitled” in my life, but maybe it is the case that the government schools feel entitled to your money, and the uninformed populace supports it all the way to the tax office. Just sayin’ – it’s a big world out there and the Georgia way is pretty exclusive to Georgia. You ought to have a look around and be informed. I’d start with Belgium, but the OECD reports will give you an overview. They spend $350 million a year making their reports and the U. S. is a member country, so since you are paying for it, you might want to have a look at the information.
AlreadySheared
November 2nd, 2012
5:20 pm
@mountain man
I got it, but sarcasm can be tough in an online forum.
Or with mouth breathers.
Private Citizen
November 2nd, 2012
5:20 pm
-Probably make more sense to do revenue sharing with private schools but the government school bunch would lose their minds and hit the ceiling. Somebody once said government schools are about controlling people.
Personally, I like to live where there is production. You know, source of wealth? Odd how that seems to be such an alien concept in much of Georgia, content to live off the backs of other people’s work and innovation. Strike a pose! Make a claim! Express an opinion! Produce? Distribute? What, are you crazy? That sounds like entitlement – a word pretty much unused outside of the FoxNews media zone in the United States.
AlreadySheared
November 2nd, 2012
5:25 pm
I gotta run. My girlfriend, Scarlett Johansen, just called up and wants me to come over.
Private Citizen
November 2nd, 2012
5:27 pm
Ooh wee, some parents can get real hot when you start doing that field-trip-to-visit-the-temples thing. Time to jump in the truck and go grab the kid for a showdown! -Any teacher that takes Georgia government school children on a field trip to visit the temples is a brave brave soul.
Pride and Joy
November 2nd, 2012
5:54 pm
Private Citizen — we do need to put humans in cages. Jerry Sandusky needs one and thousands like him.
to say that we don’t need prisons, well, would you want Jerry Sandusky coaching football to your sons?
…be realistic.
lahopital
November 2nd, 2012
6:38 pm
“My kids miss alot of school from public school, because they are bored to death. They constantly claim they have headaches, stomache aches, etc”
Sounds like you’re raising some real little angels there.
Sam
November 2nd, 2012
6:58 pm
Seriously, high school is not hard.