Indiana appears on its way to entrusting two for-profit companies and a nonprofit agency with the educational future of possibly thousands of Indianapolis children.
Donnan Middle School and Arlington, Broad Ripple, Howe, Manual and Washington high schools — now face intervention, including the possibility of being turned over to a private company.
Bennett also announced the three organizations chosen to fill that role — if it comes to that.
EdPower
When Russ Simnick wants to show visitors what a charter school that works looks like, he often sends them to the Charles A. Tindley Accelerated School.
“When you go into Tindley, you feel the culture of that school immediately,” said Simnick, president of the Indiana Public Charter Schools Association.
Students greet adults with extra politeness, college acceptance letters paper the walls and a large sign spells out the overriding message to students: “College or die.”
EdPower, Tindley’s nonprofit parent organization, has ambitious goals for expansion. It plans to open a second Tindley charter school in Indianapolis in 2012. It hopes to have five schools operating by 2015 and 10 by 2020.
In addition, it launched its own center for turnaround schools. Now the Indiana Department of Education may offer it the chance to run an Indianapolis Public School.
Tindley has earned accolades for succeeding where other schools like it routinely fail. With 65 percent of its 450 students in Grades 6-12 poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-price lunches and 96 percent of them minority, its enrollment isn’t much different from those of the lowest-performing schools in Indiana that are facing the possibility of state takeover.
But its results are different.
In 2010, 66 percent of its students passed both English and math on state exams. The highest-scoring school facing a sixth year in probation, Broad Ripple High School, had 52.9 percent pass English and math in 2010.
“I think it’s an insult, personally,” he said.
“When they take over our schools, they won’t be able to do that,” White said. “It’s a different ballgame. They have a selective, discriminating environment. We have an open environment.”
public, charter or private — to improve within their own models.
“Our model may not work for everyone,” he said. “But we can help schools become better at what they do. Our goal is to get kids into selective four-year colleges. Another school’s goal may be to get kids into Juilliard. That’s not a bad goal. But if you can’t get them to proficiency, Juilliard is off the table.”
Robinson acknowledges that EdPower does not have experience in operating other schools in the way the Indiana Department of Education has asked it to for takeover schools. But, he said, EdPower is taking steps to ramp up its operation.
Simnick thinks it will work.
“Tindley School is certainly onto something,” he said. “If they can replicate it, whether turnaround or charter, they have a high possibility of being successful.”
Scott Elliott
EdisonLearning
Ten-year-old Drew Newlin, an incoming fifth-grader at Rosa Parks Elementary School, earned a Pass+ in all three categories of ISTEP. Her mom, Manda Newlin, said they owe most of it to EdisonLearning Inc.
“One of the keys of the Edison structure is segmenting kids by what they need, so kids who need extra help get extra help,” said Newlin, who has two kids at Rosa Parks in Perry Township.
EdisonLearning prides itself on being the oldest organization in the country that focuses on education reform initiatives, spokesman Michael Serpe said.
“The most important thing is we look at ways to make a much better learning environment,” Serpe said, “where kids basically want to come and learn and they look forward to going to.”
Founder Chris Whittle started the for-profit company as Edison Schools Inc. in the early 1990s, with the goal of managing public charter schools. Tom Toch, an education policy expert who looked at Edison’s evolution until 2005, said the company had a reputation of setting high standards for students, teachers and the curricula.
“They sought and received, in most instances especially early on, the authority to hire their own staff. They worked hard to recruit top people to teach in their schools,” Toch said. “They went out and found some of the best curricula and instructional strategies in the country.”
The company has been in partnership with Perry Township in running two elementary schools, Rosa Parks and Jeremiah Gray, for the past eight years.
Under the contract, Assistant Superintendent for Foundational Learning Vickie Carpenter said the district is in charge of hiring school personnel and receives the per-pupil funding from the state. EdisonLearning, in turn, is involved in the day-to-day operation of the schools. The company selects the curricula, provides professional development for teachers, and looks at specific needs and areas of improvement at each school.
Not everyone’s been happy with EdisonLearning, however.
In 2002, Pennsylvania took over Philadelphia’s 200,000-pupil system because of years of low achievement. The state handed over 20 of the city’s worst-performing schools to then-Edison Schools.
One vocal critic at that time was the Philadelphia Federation of School Teachers.
“After they were given the 20 schools, they immediately requested additional money because they couldn’t operate the school based on the per-pupil allocation,” said Jerry Jordan, president of the organization. “Nothing changed or improved despite the additional money. Student performance, student achievement didn’t increase or improve.”
or 450,000 students — in the U.S., the United Kingdom and the Middle East.
Much closer to home, Carpenter said Perry Township is looking at renegotiating and renewing its contract with EdisonLearning, which ends next year.
Kristine Guerra
Charter Schools USA
Charter Schools USA has never attempted to turn around a traditional public school.
all but three of its 31 schools are in Florida.
“We feel like our educational model can be applied to the turnaround scenario,” Page said.
Individual student progress is monitored and instruction can be tailored depending on individual students’ needs and learning styles, he said. It’s a model, Page added, that can be replicated in any school, regardless of demographics.
takes over one of the five IPS high schools facing state intervention, that theory will be tested.
Arlington Community High School, for instance, has a student enrollment that is 97 percent minority, with 85 percent of them coming from families whose incomes are low enough that they qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. Both are factors that go hand-in-hand with struggling students.
The two four-year high schools that Charter Schools USA currently runs, in Coral Springs and Fort Myers, Fla., have minority populations of 40 percent and 53 percent, respectively, and only about a third of the students in each school qualify for the free or discounted lunches.
The state, though, pointed out that Charter Schools USA also operates a grade school in downtown Miami, where 95 percent of the students are black or Hispanic and 87 percent qualify for the lunch program.
black students, Hispanic students, economically disadvantaged students.”
including that Miami grade school — received C’s.
those with the lowest grades — 100 percent in each of the company’s schools improved enough to achieve AYP.
Charter Schools USA’s President Jonathan Hage got his start not in education but in politics. He was a speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush and formed the company in 1997 on the suggestion of Bush’s son Jeb, who later would become governor of Florida.
“We have a large team of educators who are completely focused on building systems and supporting the schools,” he said.
If it is assigned an Indianapolis school, he added, the company “plans to build a whole support infrastructure in Indiana and here ” dedicated to this project.
Mary Beth Schneider
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