Andy: Hi, everyone.
This is part two of our discussion with David Osborne.
It picks up right where we left off in part one.
Welcome back.
So, let's talk about a couple of these other cities because although you focus on these
three in particular and you mentioned Indianapolis, it's not like this is a localized situation.
David: It's spreading.
Andy: Camden, New Jersey is a very interesting example.
Newark, other places.
Any other cities worth mentioning?
David: Memphis.
Andy: So talk about Memphis.
So, they had an intervention called "The Achievement School District" in Tennessee.
The state decided that they wanted to take over some persistently failing schools and
they decided, "Well, let's use a charter-like model," right?
David: Yeah.
So, Memphis has four sectors of public education.
Andy: And this is worth pausing on because a lot of us, we usually think of public education
as a sector, it's the government, it's a school board, it runs all schools.
What else is there?
But now because of this, we see there are school run by non-profits, overseen by the
state, overseen by the district, run by the district but with more autonomy.
It's diversification within the species of public education.
David: It is.
Absolutely.
So, they have the traditional schools.
And then for years, they've been authorizing charters.
So, there are about 45 charter schools, authorized by the school district, Shelby County School
District.
And they are pretty... they perform pretty well, better than the district schools.
Then the state passed... created the Achievement School District, modeled on Louisiana's recovery
school district, which made this happen in New Orleans, to take over the worst schools
in the state, hand them mostly to charter operators, and they would try to turn them
around.
They would stay neighborhood schools, which is different for most charters.
So, there are, in Memphis, around, I think, about 29 of those schools and, I think, they're
now all charters.
And then in that same bill, the legislature gave the district the power to create its
own innovation zone for its worse schools.
This is a way to kinda play defense, rather than having your schools taken away, you can
create an innovation zone.
You can give those schools a lot of autonomy and some extra money and see how that goes.
And so they have 21 of those, which are doing pretty well.
So, it's a really interesting mixture.
And the folks there are, yesterday, were in Indianapolis where I was yesterday.
The superintendent and some of the school board were there learning about the innovation
network schools in Indianapolis because with this innovation zone, they've got this question,
"What do we do when they graduate?"
You know, "when they're no longer poorly performing.
They get above average.
What do we do?
We don't want to take autonomy away from them."
And so they're quite interested in what's going on in Indianapolis.
Andy: Okay.
So, let's talk about what I think is one of the most interesting and, maybe, fairest critiques
of this new model, chartering or what you call the 21st-century approach to school delivery
and governance, which is...
Some people will say, it's taking the public out of public education, namely the democratic
control.
One of the virtues, people would say, of the traditional way of doing it is every community,
every city has a locally elective school board so the voters get to decide who's gonna be
on the board.
And then that board, using the public will, democratic legitimacy behind it, decides the
contours of the system.
This new model, it's a little less clear how democracy plays a role or can be because if
there is a state-wide entity that authorizes charter schools, you have a far away state
body and then these local non-profits that running a whole bunch of schools.
So people say, "Where's the democratic control?
Where's the right of the voter?"
So, how do you respond to them?
David: Well, I think we need to maintain democratic control.
And there are states that have given non-profits the right, for example, to authorize charters.
I think that's a mistake.
Andy: Like, for example, in Ohio, there were some non-profits that could authorize schools.
And it's a mistake because some of them didn't do such a hot job, right?
David: Absolutely.
Minnesota, also.
Louisiana has done it.
I don't know if any have authorized yet but the law passed.
I think it was a big mistake.
We do need democratic accountability.
So, in the cities I'm writing about, you actually have strong steering, which is... and the
steerers are democratically accountable.
In New Orleans, you've got the traditional school district with an elected board.
And then you had the recovery school district, which reported to an elected and appointed
state board.
But the reformers always intended those school, once they'd been turned around, to go back
to the district.
And next July 1st, unless there's a fly in the ointment, in which case, it'll be a year
later, all those schools will go back to the locally elected school board.
So, you will have, just like before this happened, a locally elected school board that's in charge
of all the public schools in New Orleans.
Only, they'll all be operated by non-profits.
Andy: So this is such an important point that I think we need to put a fine point on, which
is in New Orleans, as of next year if everything goes according to hoyle, 100% of schools will
be run by non-profits.
But 100% of these public schools will be overseen by a locally elected local school board.
David: And that board, I would argue, will have more control than under the old model.
Andy: In the old model, they were running all the schools.
Now, they're overseeing them.
David: They were but they were so politically constrained and they had teacher tenure for
everybody.
And there were so many things they couldn't do, either because of the rules, which were
a lot of rules or because of politics, because they couldn't afford to alienate too many
of the people who worked for them.
In this new model, they don't have all those rules and they don't have all those constraints.
If they want to close a school, it's easy.
I mean, I wouldn't say easy.
It's far easier.
Andy: Easier.
David: And it's been happening, you know, they do and they replace them with better
schools.
And they figured out how to go to the parents and show them, "Look, this school is failing.
But here are three options of models we could put in there.
What would you like best?"
Anyway, I think they have more control, real control, particularly over the outcomes for
the kids.
Now, I just wanted to point out, in these other cities, in Washington D.C, there is
no school board anymore, elected school board anymore.
It was so bad that the mayor convinced the city council to do away with it.
So the traditional district has a chancellor appointed by the mayor.
The charter board, which oversees 120 charters, is appointed by the mayor.
Same democratic accountability.
Andy: Yep.
David: In Denver, the elected school board is the authorizer, democratically accountable.
Indianapolis, the elected school board, and the mayor are both authorizers now, both elected.
So, I think this argument is right.
We do want some democratic accountability in the system.
Andy: I don't want to put words in your mouth, the democratic accountability doesn't necessarily
mean that the democratic board and a government bureaucracy has to run all the schools.
They can oversee them.
They can do the steering.
David: In fact, I think we have more accountability if they don't run them.
Andy: That's right.
David: It's far easier to close an institution when it's not your employees.
Andy: Let's just spend one more minute, if you don't mind, on the results because critics
of this will say, "Well, what this is is this is a privatization scheme.
This is just a way to take schools away from the government, empower non-profits or private
organizations."
Your book is very clear that it's not just that is a system change, this is an improvement
for lots... tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of low-income kids that, in these
cases, whether it's test scores or graduation rates, things are better off than they were
a decade ago.
So, if you don't mind, what are the things popped as you were doing your research, the
most impressive results that should convince people that this isn't just a good idea, it's
good in practice?
David: So, New Orleans is the fastest improving city in the country.
Andy: Post Katrina we're talking about?
David: Yes.
And it could be the fastest improving in American history.
I mean, no way to tell but some people think that.
This is a city with...
85% of the kids qualify for subsidized meals, meaning they're low-income.
Very poor city.
82% are African-American.
And this city outperforms its state on the two most important things that the state measures,
high school graduation, and college-going rates.
There is no other city in America where that's the case with those demographics and it outperforms
the state.
Now, it used to be one of the worst in the country.
So, we have seen just a radical change.
It is far more effective.
Andy: Washington D.C, people say that 50% of kids are in the district, 50% are in the
charter sector.
How do we know the charter sector is better?
David: Well, if you compare the same kids demographically, on test scores, the charter
sector is better.
If you compare attendance rates, the charter sector is better.
If you compare college-going rates, graduation rates, the charter sector is better.
And I want to give credit to the district.
They've improved enormously.
They are the fastest improving district of 21 large districts that take the national
assessment of educational progress, the one national test.
So, hats off to them.
But as you know, and you've written about, if you look at the low-income kids in D.C
and the African-American kids, it's a totally different picture.
If you go to the poorest wards, seven and eight in D.C, and just look at test scores,
charters, compared to DCPS, District Operated Schools, dramatic difference.
The charter's just vastly outperform them.
Denver, when they started this, 39% of the kids graduated in four years.
Now, it's about 70%.
They went from the slowest improving district of Colorado's 20 largest to the fastest.
Before they shifted to a Common Core-aligned test in 2015, the PARCC test, they were typically...
their schools were around the 15th to the 20th percentile state-wide, meaning their
average...
80% of the schools in the state outperformed their average.
When they went to the PARCC test, which is more demanding and on which low-income kids
usually do worse, they went into the 40s for elementary and the 50s for middle school.
Phenomenal.
Andy: It is.
David: You can't argue with these results.
This is what we want for all children, isn't it?
Andy: I would hope so.
Certainly.
Well, let's end on another positive note here, because I think a lot of people who write
about education, it seems like they're always bad news stories.
Let me ask it this way.
30 years ago, it was the case in virtually every big city in America, that 100% of kids
in public schools were educated by the traditional district.
That is changing.
And we're seeing, as you said, some really good results in this new model.
Fast forward us 30 years from now.
What do you think public education delivery is going to look like, and operations, in
the average big, American city?
David: I think it's gonna look like New Orleans.
I think it's going to be...
Almost all the schools in most cities, big cities, are going to be operated by independent
organizations.
Most of those will be non-profits.
And they won't all be called charters.
You know, they'll be called innovation schools, and renaissance schools, and partnership schools,
and other things.
But this new model will have taken hold.
And I expect it to be taking hold in the larger suburbs as well.
Andy: Interesting.
David: Not sure if it'll ever get to rural America because there are elements of it that
probably won't fly there.
Hard to have a lot of choice in rural America, right?
Geographically, it's just hard.
And, you know, I spent 25 years in this town of 3000 people in Massachusetts.
And in a town like that, everything is personal relationships.
So, I just have a hard time imagining that, in that town, somebody's gonna tell all the
teachers that, "I'm sorry.
You're not doing a good enough job.
We're gonna contract with this other operator to run the school by."
I'm not gonna make any predictions about rural America.
I think it'll be the norm in urban America and becoming the norm in suburban America.
Andy: That's pretty profound.
We ran public education and governed it in America's cities, just about the exact same
way in just about every city for more than a century.
And what you're telling us that is that over the course of, maybe, two generations, it's
gonna flip.
The government will be in a completely different role.
Non-profit civil society will have a bigger role.
And hopefully, we're gonna see these results continue to spread across America, better
results for America's low-income kids.
Pretty exciting, right?
David: Yeah.
And one reason I believe it is because it's happened before.
In the agricultural era, in the 1800s, we were mostly a nation of one room school houses.
And then the industrial era was born.
In the 1890s a lot of cities tripled in population.
It was an explosion, right?
And what we had wasn't good enough.
So business leaders and progressive political leaders, and civic leaders spent a long time
reinventing public education.
They created the districts that are now out of date because we're no longer in the industrial
era.
And they embraced the cutting-edge corporate model of the day, which was called bureaucracy.
It was a good term at the time.
Andy: It was.
David: There's a famous quote from Max Weber, the German Sociologist, something to
the effect that bureaucracy is the most perfect form of organization available to mankind.
Andy: It seemed neat, and tidy, and efficient.
It was completely sensible.
100 years later, we realized that maybe families deserve more choice, more options that actually
make sense.
David: Well, also, conditions changed so much.
You know, back then, they had to get people educated to a point where they'd be good factory
workers, a lot of people, right?
A high school degree was a ticket to the middle class when I went to high school.
That's all changed.
Plus, we have technology, you know.
We have the most wonderful teaching tools ever, computers, the internet.
So the opportunities are vast.
But if you have a system that's built to be stable and rigid, it's really hard to take
advantage of those opportunities.
And we've had a huge wave of immigration over the last 25 years.
And now the majority of kids in our public schools in this country are children of color.
That's a big change.
And, you know, when I was growing up, we had a growing middle class and now we have growing
inequality.
So, poverty is much more concentrated and a bigger problem than it was.
And our schools need to deal with it.
So, it's not that...
You know, I always say that we have great people in the public education system working
really hard, but they're trapped in an obsolete system and we need to liberate them to give
them a system that will deal with today's realities, rather than the realities of 100
years ago.
Andy: And what we have now, thanks to your book, it's not just ideas.
It's happening in city after city and getting great results.
A great note to end on.
David Osborne, author of "Reinventing America's Schools."
Thank you.
David: Oh, thank you.
It's been a pleasure.
Andy: Hi, everyone.
That's the end of our discussion with David Osborne.
Thanks so much for watching.
As always, let us know what other topics you'd like AEI Scholars to cover on Viewpoint.
And to learn more about school choice, charter schools and other topics the AEI team is working
on, check out the links in the description below, including my review of David's excellent
book.