Privately Run Charter School Turns Out To Be A Bad Choice

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As a professional educator, I have lived and practiced my profession in four states for 30 years.

Having landed in Wisconsin a little over three years ago, I was working in one of those education-related fields when I again got the "itch" to return to the classroom. Since I have always prided myself in taking a slightly different route than others to achieve an end, I pursued classroom opportunities outside of the public school systems. I interviewed with an organization in Milwaukee called "Edison Schools Inc.," and was immediately overwhelmed with their video presentation in the waiting room while waiting for the interviewer. Their ideas toward education seemed to all result in positive results from the students interviewed on the video. I was ready to jump on the bandwagon! Being unfamiliar with charter and voucher schools in Milwaukee, I didn't realize right away that these schools are not accountable to the Milwaukee Public Schools system, the state or anyone else for that matter, and that some are run by for-profit organizations.

I went to work at the Milwaukee Urban League Academy of Business and Economics, a school operated under charter from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I was accepted as a "Lead Teacher," a mentor for rookie and newer teachers, at their second school opening in Milwaukee, for the 2001-2002 school year. I even flew to Virginia for Lead Teacher training and to Philadelphia for curriculum training. After meeting with other teachers from their 135 schools across the country and the executives from their New York office, I was hooked! This was the correct direction for education, finally.

What I seemed to forget was that education is the direct result of facing students in a classroom and conducting a lesson, one on 25.

The first thing that happened was that the school wasn't finished for the first week of school. OK, dealing with a little dust and a lot of noise can be overcome, I thought. Then, not all the textbooks were there, either. OK, they can share and I can copy. Hey, teachers are used to this, right? We're flexible!

Then the negatives just started piling up:

1. I had four different classes over eight months. I don't mean classrooms, although I had three different ones of those, having to lug all my own stuff each time because there was no one else to do it. I first had a 4th-grade class, then a 3rd- and 4th- grade split, then a 3rd-grade class, all before Christmas. In March, I acquired another 3rd- and 4th-grade split, entirely different from the one before.
2. The principal didn't assign anyone in the office to open the school before the students came in, so no one was there to answer the phone for parents or teachers who called in sick. He didn't come in, either, until usually an hour or an hour and a half after classes started. Teachers were required to work eight-hour, 40-minute days, but were only allowed to put eight hours on timesheets.
3. The principal was not a certified administrator, nor a certified teacher. I'm not even sure he had a college degree. The assistant principal had a degree, but was not certified.
4. The principal was to only hire certified teachers or teachers who were working on certification. When I started, slightly more than half of the original teachers were certified. Of the non-certified ones, I found no one was working on certification, although they had degrees in varying fields. At least one teacher didn't even have a degree.
5. Of the original certified teachers, only about 10 remained by the end of that school year. Every time a certified teacher left, a non-certified teacher was hired to take his or her place, some not even having degrees.
6. I was never reimbursed for anything I bought for my classroom, even though I had been promised that would happen. After awhile, I gave up since no one else was reimbursed either. Not only did teachers buy the "extra" materials, by the end of the school year we were buying everything for students, from pencils and folders to copy paper. The school bought one roll of laminating material for the whole school year. It lasted about two weeks.
7. As a member of the Lead Team, I was asked by the principal to resign at the end of October. I did because it was not a "team" that I wanted to be associated with. Edison had touted its vision as "management by team," and it was clear from the start that it was micromanagement by the principal, with only his edicts emanating from the Lead Team. Another veteran certified teacher was also asked to leave the Lead Team the same time I was. Non-certified teachers replaced us both, with one of them being the one without a degree.
8. One by one, the veteran certified teachers were forced to resign or were fired by the principal. He had never conducted a formal evaluation of any of them. The things they all had in common were that they were all certified, all older, all female, and all married. In other words, they all cost him too much money and had nothing else to offer.
9. A group of us sought the advice of a lawyer. But we did not have the protections of a union contract, and the lawyer said the school was free to fire us without just cause, even if the boss just didn't like the way we dressed. I also contacted the Equal Employment Opportunity Commision, but officials there said our case wouldn't fall into their parameters.
10. The principal received a bonus from Edison if he was able to "educate" as many students as possible with as little money as possible spent. As a charter school, the school received more money per student than a choice school, but the lack of accountability was the same.
11. The principal would not let us give Ds or Fs. Some of us gave out one or two Ds each marking period for special circumstances (truancy, no work done in class, constant class disruptions, etc.), but I knew of no one who EVER gave an F. The principal told us he didn't want to "break their spirit" and we gullible teachers believed him. In actuality, it was just to make him and the school look better than it was. About 90% of the children were so low that the majority of the students would have received Ds and Fs from any "normal" classroom. They did not improve as the year went on. In fact, I would almost say they kept falling further behind. I had a 2nd-grade level reading class, and I only had one 2nd-grader in the class. I had one or two 3rd-graders, and the rest were 4th- and 5th-graders.
12. On September and January "Count Days," the principal pushed to get every student there. But when I asked him later how many students were there that day, he replied that it didn't matter because they were counted as long as they were enrolled and filled out a registration form. There were many students who stayed on our rosters when they had been absent for weeks and had obviously gone to another school.

I repeatedly said to anyone who would listen: "This wouldn't be happening if we had a union." But everyone was scared to even approach the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Associaton (MTEA), and I'm sorry to admit so was I. I just didn't have any fight left in me, especially when I knew the fight would be worthless. So, I, along with a total of 15 others, ended up leaving before the end of the school year. This whole process caused another disruption for all those students one more time in their short lives.

The following school year, I was lucky enough to get a position with Kenosha Unified School District (the first paper I signed was the Kenosha Education Association enrollment form) and I have never been happier. It's not perfect, but it is far above what else is out there. Trust me. I've seen the worst and survived.

The moral to this story is this:

As a parent, beware of the "choice" you make in Milwaukee schools because you may get far less than you would have had you stayed with MPS. MPS may not be perfect, but at least it has a track record and its goals are clear, with no ulterior motives: Educate the children. Period.

As a teacher, beware of people promising to have the final answer to educating students. Stick with the guys who have been doing it all along, and go on with your mission.

And make sure you will always have a union on your side to protect both your interests and your students' interests.

From Our Readers main page

Posted April 14, 2004