The Search for Equity in Our Schools

Vote for Equity

By Scott Jacobson
Why care about charter schools when they do
not exist in your town? There is a connection
between charter schools, the type of education
they tend to pursue, and much of the
current approach to education in Brookline. This approach, corporate education
reform, invests the resources of the school
district in standardizing the education our
schools provide. This approach tilts teachers
and students days toward impersonal
drudgery. If parents do not notice this
dynamic at work, it is due to the skill,
professionalism and resolve of teachers.
Why does corporate education reform seek to
implement this approach? The answer often
given is that standardization leads to
equity. This is the same goal charter school
advocates claim in their support for Question
2 on this years ballot in Massachusetts:
equity. Charter schools and corporate
education reform are part of the same
movement. In this movement teachers are
sidelined, their experience, knowledge, and
professionalism
degraded.
Corporate
education reform does not include teachers in
decision-making about how to cultivate better
learning environments. To the contrary, this
standardizing
approach
micro-manages
1

teachers days and places them at a distance

from their students. Brookline teachers have
been asking for the freedom to manage their
time so they can get to know their students,
understand how they learn and tailor their
approach to individuals.
While Brookline teachers have reached a
tentative contract agreement with the School
Committee, paraprofessionals, who provide
direct support to kids who need more one-onone attention, among other duties, have been
left out. Paraprofessionals carry a large load
and their role is central to equity in our
schools. Their pay in Brookline is low enough
to impede hiring. A para position in
Brookline is not appealing so it is difficult to
attract and retain educators in this important
role.
Corporate education reform and charter
schools judge education through, and claim
superiority
by,
standardized
test
scores. However, the achievement gap
between white and black, and between lowincome and well-off students in Brookline has
remained steady over the last ten
years. Something is not working. We need to
listen to teachers and students to learn what
works when it comes to equity in our
schools. We need to listen to people of color
when they reveal their experiences. We need
2

to believe them and take responsibility by

pushing for equitable policies.
When you vote this year you have an
opportunity to make history by voting for our
first woman president. You can also cast a
vote in support of an important source of
middle class, and largely womens, jobs. In
Massachusetts, 77.2% of teachers are
women. Over 68% of Massachusetts teachers
are between their early 20s and age 49, in other
words typical child-rearing age. When
women fought their way into the workforce in
the 60s and 70s, nursing and teaching were the
careers most available to them. Even as
women continue to shoulder the majority of
the homemaking and child-rearing burden, a
reliable profession friendly to women is under
attack. It is reasonable to think that a stable
home and decent income is a prerequisite for
elevating the prospects of children in our
society. Its not just about having a black
president or a woman president. We need to
support policies that systematically help
children grow up with options in life.
I urge you to get involved, look up the
Brookline Parents Organization, and keep
these ideas in mind when you go to the polls
for national, state and local elections.

Massachusetts Charter Expansion

Ballot Question Pits Dark Money
Against People Power
By Lisa Guisbond
When they head to the polls on November 8,
Massachusetts voters will decide whether to
embrace unfettered charter school expansion
or vote no on ballot question 2. Opponents
and supporters are embroiled in a high-stakes
battle that will demonstrate whether tens of
millions of dollars, much of it dark money
from outside Massachusetts, can vanquish a
grass roots army of students, parents, and
teachers knocking on doors, making phone
calls, planting lawn signs, and writing letters
to their community newspapers.
My organization, Citizens for Public Schools,
is part of a broad-based coalition, Save our
Public Schools Massachusetts (SOPS), fighting
Question 2. SOPS includes the two major
teachers unions and many other labor
groups, the Massachusetts Parent Teacher
Association, the New England Area
Conference of the NAACP, a number of
progressive political organizations, the
Massachusetts Municipal Association, among
many others. A spontaneous movement
among elected school committees has resulted
in more than 180 passing No on 2 resolutions
(meanwhile, there have been zero yes on 2
4

resolutions to date). On the other side are

Republican Governor Charlie Baker, the
Boston Globe and Boston Herald editorial
boards, Democrats for Education Reform, and
a number of Astro Turf groups that have
sprung up to push the question to victory,
awash in out-of-state and dark money.
At this point, the Yes on 2 folks are
outspending us two to one, with more than
$20 million to spend on TV advertising, an
unprecedented amount for a Massachusetts
ballot campaign. However, polling data and
our experiences talking to voters confirm that
when people hear both sides of the argument,
they move dramatically toward the no side.
This holds true for every demographic group
in the state.
What would Question 2 do? It would lift
current restrictions on charter school growth
statewide, allowing 12 new charter schools to
open or expand every year, ad infinitum,
thereby undermining the public schools that
educate the vast majority of our students.
(Traditional public schools still educate 96% of
Massachusetts students.)
If passed, we could see triple the number of
charters statewide within 10 years. This year,
traditional public schools are losing more than
$450 million to charter schools, meaning cuts
to arts, science, librarians, bus service and
5

early childhood education. In 10 years, that

total would rise to more than $1.5 billion lost
per year. That would come on top of the fact
that our public schools are already
underfunded to the tune of $1 billion per year,
according to a bipartisan state commission
report released this year.
Despite the evidence, Question 2 proponents
tout a study by the Massachusetts Taxpayer
Foundation (funded by the pro-charter Boston
Foundation), which found a way to crunch the
numbers to show that local districts are not
harmed by charter expansion. School
committee members, faced with lost resources
and difficult choices every day, are not buying
it, and the Massachusetts Department of
Elementary and Secondary Educations own
data contradicts the MTF report.
Besides the lost funding, another reason
school committees are clamoring to pass No
on 2 resolutions is that Massachusetts charter
schools are not accountable to local
communities. The state often approves them
over the opposition of local parents and
taxpayers, as happened recently in Brockton,
where the public high school has been
recognized for its improvement on the front
page of the New York Times and
internationally.

The NAACP and Black Lives Matter oppose

Question 2 because they see that charter
schools create a separate and unequal, twotrack system. Massachusetts charters typically
underserve English language learners and
special needs students, leaving public schools
with fewer resources to educate a higher-need
population.
Where you stand is not necessarily a matter of
whether you are for or against charter schools
in general. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, a
charter supporter, opposes Question 2, stating
that it would wreak havoc on the finances
of the Boston Public Schools. He recognizes
that it goes too far.
The Boston City Council overwhelmingly
passed a strongly worded resolution against
Question 2, noting that it would lead to a loss
of funding that undermines the ability of
districts to provide all students with the
education services to which they are
constitutionally entitled.
Our opponents have more than $20 million
and a shelf full of studies funded by procharter foundations with very deep pockets.

Whats working for us? We have a well-oiled

ground game, with many actual grass roots
volunteers. We have progressive standard7

bearer Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator

Ed Markey. We have most of our
Congressional delegation. We have Attorney
General Maura Healey, and the state
Democratic Committee, all of which is
tremendously irksome to Democrats for
Education Reform, who continue to push the
idea that charters should be a no-brainer for
progressive Democrats.
As I said, when people hear the messages of
both sides, they come over to the No on 2 side.
A recent example was a debate held at the
Harvard Graduate School of Education. It
featured the head of the state charter school
organization, Marc Kenen, Boston City
Councilor Tito Jackson representing the no
side, and a parent on each side. Harvard did
some instant polling of the overflow crowd at
the beginning and end of the debate. What
started as a tight race ended with dramatic
movement to the no side, with 66%
supporting No on Question 2. (Before hearing
the debate, it was 40% no.)
So stay tuned for what promises to be a
fascinating and hard-fought battle to see if
people power can overcome dark money and
false advertising. Im betting on the people.

Lisa Guisbond is the Executive Director of

Citizens for Public Schools.
8

Equality Becomes Equity in a

Democratic English Classroom
By Abby Erdmann
I began teaching English in School-Within-aSchool (SWS), Brookline Highs alternative
democratic school, in 1977, eight years after its
founding. It was alternative and democratic
kids called teachers by first names, the rooms
had couches, not hard desks, and weboth
students and staffexpected to use a different
pedagogy in our classroom. These were the
early days. The kids were freaks and free
spirits with a scattering of Ivy Leaguers, kids
who felt themselves to be very different and
wanted a change.
The first few years, I had to rethink all my
assumptions about traditional teaching
which was teacher-led and teacherdominatedand to evolve instead a
democratic model of teaching, where students
got a say in every aspect of the classits rules,
the books we read, even the pacing of reading.
I did not simply hand over my expertise or
minimize it, but I did ask for serious
involvement (Is it possible for everyone to
read 40 pages a night in Anna Karenina?).
And we devoted class time to discussing and
resolving these issues.
Some of these
discussions were heaviest when academically
talented kids pushed hard on those struggling
9

to readand often those AP students could

make the most compelling arguments. Yet in
most cases, and in most classes, agreement
was reached; students felt ownership of the
course and became a community. Some of the
most important learning came from the very
heterogeneous grouping of our classes, when
an AP student listened to and began to
understand a black student describe a
microagression like, Oh, you are so lucky
affirmative action will help get into that
college.
Our classes took place in the context of a
democratic school. In our Town Meeting,
which met once a week, students and staff
discussed issues and made decisions (one
person, one vote) about policies, affirmative
action, even trying out no homework for two
weeks. Randomly selected students ran Town
Meeting with the input of one staff member.
Equality as a value is central to democracy
one person, one vote. Equality means treating
everyone the same, but a few years into my
SWS career, I began to see the difference
between equality and equity. Equality is fine
if everyone starts at the same place. But
imagine students of different heights needing
to see a screen. If you give them all the same
chair, the shorter ones will not be able to see
it. They need taller ones; the taller ones need
shorter ones. You must see what each student
10

needs to be successful and work to give that.

Then you have moved from equality to equity.
Yet there were problems in SWS. For one, my
classes, unlike the rest of Brookline High, were
all white. When one day I approached the only
black student on my roster to ask why he
signed up for SWS, he told me the computer
had placed himhe had not chosen it.
Why, asked Ron Gibson, a black guidance
counselor who came to talk to my Individuals
and Institutions class about race, why are all
the students in the room white? The answer
was so obvious that I am deeply ashamed it
took so long for me to see it. I began to see that
structural racism operated in SWS policies
and practices. Our acceptance policy was
First come, first served, which sounds
democratic, but push a little harder. Those
who know about SWS know to run up to the
fourth floor. (Many students dont even know
where the fourth floor is, much less to run up
on the first day of school to grab a spot.) Social
groups formed in a school where tracking
separates kids are not likely to have
friendships across race. The biggest factor in
attracting students is their knowing someone
who is in SWS and likes it. Students of color
had no such invitation or welcome.
Compounding this hurdle, we gave
preference to siblings, feeling it wasnt fair
11

if one got in and the other did not. But what

else wasnt fair?
Paying close attention to how inequitable our
acceptance policies were despite the illusion
of democracy created by our lottery system,
we began to see and acknowledge and shift
our privilege and bias. We changed our first
come, first served, policy to a simple Sign up
before April 15. We reached out to students
of color through Metco and African American
Scholars. We went to freshmen assemblies
and even into the elementary schools to put
out the word about SWS, so that by the time
kids came to the school, they had a more
sophisticated notion of SWS than simply the
freak school. And we committed to
continuing our outreach until SWS class
demographics matched the demographics
downstairs.
But these polices were not enough. Retention
is different from recruitment. SWS still felt
white. The kids of color were the minority,
and the culture of our program often felt
foreign. We began a Students of Color group,
which for many years had only students of
color. Here was a safe space where kids could
come in and speak their experience without
having to justify, explain or guard themselves.
For years, I, a white teacher, was its only
advisor, but SWS has had teachers of color,
and they of course led the meetings. Lena
12

Hamilton, a former student who taught in

SWS for one year, met with five black senior
girls to shepherd them through the college
application process. We began to see that
equality and equity in education are very
different, and we began to develop
appropriate supports and processes to create
equity.
In our SWS English class, this has a special
meaning. Our English classes are untracked,
and studentssophomores, juniors, and
seniorsare all placed in our classes, and all
our classes are honors level. So in one class
you may have a freshman who has been in
lower-level classes sitting next to an AP
senior.
Judged by the same standard, the younger
child is doomed to do poorly, learning only
that theyre stupid.
As Einstein says,
Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish
by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its
whole life believing that it is stupid. So we
need to tease out each students capability to
see their needs and capacities and to support
and challenge them to do their best. Devyn
needed help starting his paper in class and
then he could finish it at home. Under his fear
of failure was fierce resilience. Tamara had a
major illness and a real gift with writing and
so we worked out a schedule to accommodate
13

her days in bed. A one size fits all attendance

policy would have doomed her to failure.
Equity is giving everyone what he or she
needs to be successful: equality is treating
everyone the same. Equality aims to promote
fairness, but it can work only if everyone starts
from the same place and needs the same help.
We know that is simply false. Equity appears
unfair, but it actively moves everyone closer
to success by leveling the playing field.
Students start at different places with different
needs. As teachers, we need to ask not only
what is equal but what is equitable, and
although equal is easiera simpler science
equity is more refinedoften a judgment call,
not simply an application of policy. Using
equity, we can create a truly democratic
classroom where everyone can succeed.

Abby Erdmann taught English at Brookline High

Schools School-Within-a-School for 37 years.

14

Horace Mann Charter Schools

Why Charter School Advocates Prefer a
Ballot Question to Using the Dozens of
Charters Still Available in Massachusetts
By Hillary Schwab
As I have heard time and again and has
continued to be confirmed by various sources
as the charter school movement has grown,
charter schools were started with the intention
of defanging unions. Charter schools are able
to avoid the requirement of hiring unionized
teachers and other professionals because they
are not public schools. So, instead of the
establishment of pilot schools or other
specialty schools that may accomplish the
15

same stated ends, charter schools are set up

and save a pile of money because they do not
have to pay their workforce a fair union wage.
To me, this is significant for two reasons. First,
charter schools are not union (with rare
exceptions) and replace institutions that
would have a union workforce. So, the
establishment and expansion of charter
schools results in a reduction in union jobs.
Fewer workers have job security, fewer
workers are guaranteed a fair wage, and fewer
workers are empowered to negotiate over job
conditions with their employers. Second, the
anti-union motivation for charter schools is
significant because it means that the stated
reasons for charter schools are not the whole
story. When charter school proponents talk
about why charter schools are good and why
they advocate for them, they do not say that it
is because it is a good way to avoid having a
union workforce. Instead, they say that
charter schools improve education, close the
achievement gap, spur innovation, etc. If they
are hiding the ball on one of the main reasons
for charter schools, then the charter school
proponents are being disingenuous, and that
must call into question the veracity of their
stated bases for supporting charter schools.
As I delved into the potential anti-union
agenda behind charter schools generally and
Question 2 specifically, I discovered
16

something interesting. Massachusetts has two

types of charter schoolscommonwealth
charter schools and Horace Mann charter
schools. The two different types of charter
schools were first established by statute
enacted in 2000. A commonwealth charter
school is what people traditionally think of
when they think of charter schoolsit
operates independently of a local school
committee and is managed by a board of
trustees. A Horace Mann charter school, by
contrast, operates under a charter approved
by the school committee and the local
collective bargaining unit, i.e., the teachers
union. Mass. Gen. L. c. 71, sec. 89(c). (There is
also another type of Horace Mann charter
school which requires approval from the local
school committee but not the union, called a
Horace Mann III charter school.)
Significantly, Horace Mann charter schools
may not suffer from two of the grave failings
of traditional charter schoolsnot being
beholden to local communities school
committees, the officials who have been
elected by the citizens to manage the public
schools, and operating completely outside of
union protections. To be sure, Horace Mann
charter schools are not likely to have the same
union protections as public schools, but
unions at least have a seat at the table.

17

No one talks about this when advocating for

Question 2, but there are still plenty of Horace
Mann charters available. According to the
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and
Secondary Education, here are the statistics:
Type

Charters Charters Charters %

of
Allowed Used
Unused Unused
Charters

Commonwealth 72

56

16

22%

Horace Mann

10

38

79%

48

Also not spoken of is the fact that Question 2

seeks to expand only charters for
commonwealth charter schools. You would
not know this by looking at the ballot question
itself, which says that the proposed law would
allow the state to approve up to 12 new
charter schools or enrollment expansions in
existing charter schools each year.
Massachusetts
Secretary
of
the
Commonwealth website.
In fact, the
summary of the ballot question includes
blatant misinformation, stating that [n]ew
charter schools and enrollment expansions
approved under this proposed law would be
subject to the same approval standards as
other charter schools. . . Id. But that is not
true or at least does not tell the whole story.
The new charter schools under Question 2
would be subject to the same standards as
18

commonwealth charter schools but would not

be subject to the standards for Horace Mann
charter schools (school committee and union
approval).
The only way to determine that Question 2
provides for expansion only of the number of
commonwealth charter schools is by tracking
down the text of the bill that would be
adopted if Question 2 succeeds, which permits
approval of up to 12 additional
commonwealth charters. . . per year. See
http://www.mass.gov/ago/docs/governme
nt/2015-petitions/15-31.pdf
(emphasis
added).
The omission of any discussion whatsoever
about this distinction between commonwealth
and Horace Mann charter schools speaks
volumes. If proponents of Question 2 simply
believed that charter schools were a better
way to ensure quality education for the
children of Massachusetts, they could
effectuate that goal by working to establish
more Horace Mann charter schools. The fact
that charter school proponents would rather
leave 38 Horace Mann charters unfilled and
instead undertake the extreme measure of
pushing for a ballot question shows the true
motivation underlying these schools. And
that motivation has nothing at all to do with
19

ensuring the best education for children in

Massachusetts and has everything to do with
drawing money and resources away from the
public schools and their unionized educators.

20

THE EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT

GAP
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
By Bill Schechter
When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said, in
rather a scornful tone, it means just what I
choose it to meanneither more nor less. The
question is, said Alice, whether you can make
words mean so many different things. (Lewis
Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)
Its time to go down the rabbit hole of the
Educational Achievement Gap. We all
know the phrase, but do we all mean the same
thing by it? Charter advocate Michelle Rhees
claim on a recent radio show that Charters
have made progress in closing the gap went
unchallenged.
It is not surprising that the on-air discussion
quickly moved on to issues of class, race,
funding, choice, transparency, and access.
Mentioning the gap often serves as a
springboard to the major ed reform debates.
Indeed
the
phrase
EducationalAchievement-Gap almost fuses into a single
word as it speeds through our neurons. Its
time to pause, slow things down, and
deconstruct.
21

~
The noun root of the first word is Education.
its almost always accompanied by the
unsupported assumption that we all agree on
what education means. The etymology of
the word itself suggests something broad: to
bring up (children), rear, bring out, lead
forth.
However,
advocates
of
Charters,
standardized testing and data collection
prefer a narrower definition. The purpose of
education, they believe, is to master
information mandated by state frameworks. A
half-century ago, as a Bronx high school
student, I was exposed to just such an
approach in preparing for the dreaded state
Regents Exams. This annual ritual was
accompanied by the purchase of Barrons
cram books. A poor math student, I was
astounded to learn I had finished in the 98th
percentile for Geometry and Trig. I was
actually a math genius! Friends, I regret to say
I remember nothing. Even sadder, no lasting
interest in the subject was inspired.
In 1861, William Johnson Cory, a revered Eton
School Master proposed a very different
view of education:
You go to school and you are not
engaged so much in acquiring
knowledge as in making mental
22

efforts under criticism. A certain

amount of knowledge you can
indeed with average faculties
acquire so as to retain But you go
to a great school, not for knowledge
so much as for arts and habits; for
the habit of attention, for the art of
expression, for the art of assuming
at a moments notice a new
intellectual posture, for the art of
entering quickly into another
persons thoughts for mental
courage and mental soberness.
Above all, you go to a great school
for self-knowledge.
More than a hundred years later, a LincolnSudbury senior, Cecily Morgan, attempted
her own answer in a school essay contest
entitled, What does it mean to be educated?
In part, she wrote:

Education = a search for more

questions In 8th grade looking
through a microscope for the first
time, turning the knob until
suddenly into brilliant sharp focusa cell of plant stem- a moment of
sharp focused wonderThe feeling
when I finished writing the
unwritten Caddys Book from The
23

Sound and the Fury, and knowing it

was good and right, because I only
gradually returned to myself from
that second character of my
imagination. Transient moments
when I felt myself grow with a
spontaneous realization of truth.
~
Thats the reason theyre called lessons, the
Gryphon remarked: because they lessen
from day to day.
Achievement is the second word in the
triad. But how can we know when someone
actually does achieve? Advocates of the
Charter/standardized
test
approach
confidently respond: test scores (with
computerized tables that can compare one
students achievement to anothers carried
out to the hundredth place. Data, we are
reminded, doesnt lie).
But wait, this rabbit hole looks familiar to
anyone acquainted with the SATs. Those three
letters once stood for Scholastic Aptitude
Test, because the College Board claimed its
test could predict a students performance in
college. When it was shown that the test could
be prepped, the College Board was sued and
these three letters came to stand for nothing
more than a product fewer and fewer
applicants are now required to take. Today,
24

most colleges want a fuller assessment of a

students potential to achieve. They want
letters of recommendation, essays, transcripts,
a record of activities and experiences, as well
as creative projects. They understand that SAT
scores often reflect only a familys ability to
secure expensive test prep tutoring.
As a high school history teacher, I found
exams useful as partial measures of student
achievement. But I also needed to evaluate
regular homework, essays, term papers, and
discussion and debate participation. Even on
exams, I wanted to see students go beyond
factual regurgitation and demonstrate how
they assess conflicting interpretations;
conceptually link various events; advance or
weigh evidence; connect history to current
eventsin short, I wanted to see them think.
Most charters place test prep front and center.
~
Well, I never heard it before, but it sounds
like uncommon nonsense.
Our last word is Gap. Whether between
black/white,
urban/suburban,
or
poor/affluent students, an academic gap does
exist. However, it could be more accurately
named the test score gap given how
unthinkingly we use the term. Because
achievement has been reduced to scores on
one or two imperfect assessment instruments,
25

we keep trying to close the gap through more

test prep. If our understanding of
achievement went beyond multiple-choice
tests, we would use a more comprehensive
approach based on a deeper understanding of
what education involves. Is this all semantics?
Not really. Charter school studentseven
those with comparable MCAS scoreswill be
unable to compete with suburban peers who
have spent more time reading, writing, and
thinking critically.
And now we come to the meta-gap that
explains all others. Test scores in the U.S.
mainly reflect class and zip code, and,
tragically, we have the highest rate of
childhood poverty of any industrialized
country.
The unwavering mission of hedge fund
philanthropists who advocate and help
finance Charters is to demonstrate that its
possible to close the Educational Achievement
Gap without closing the Income Gap that
forms the bedrock foundation of their wealth.
They are intent on doing this through a threecard monte dealers sleight of hand:
diminishing what education could be in favor
of a test-based substitute emphasizing
relentless prepping.
Its hard to follow a good dealers hands, but
in the blink of an eye, Education has become a
26

test. Achievement has become a score. And

the Gap has become a distraction from the
even larger one hidden in the dealers palm
that he prefers we not notice.
Parents, what kind of education do you want
for your children?
Which way you ought to go depends on
where you want to get to...

~
Bill Schechter was a history teacher at LincolnSudbury Regional H.S, for 35 years, a volunteer
tutor at Boston Arts Academy, and a practicum
supervisor for Tufts and UMass.

27

Muddy River Issue #2

S-J Zine Distro 2016