Anna Eastman, Charter Schools, and Older Workers

When a candidate runnning for office receives financial and tactical support from an interest group, it is certainly fair to ask them how they feel about standard practices of that group.

The same corporate executives who fund expansion of the KIPP and YES PREP Charter schools are backing the school board candidacies of Anna Eastman, Linda Toyota and Mike Lunceford.

The evidence suggests charter schools favor hiring  young, inexperience teachers, and may discount career teachers.

The average Texas charter-school teacher has less than five years of experience. The average teacher in these schools remain there for less than three years.

KIPP schools reportedly prefer hiring Teach for America kids right out of college.

I tried an experiment two years ago. I applied for several KIPP jobs to see if I would get a call back. I was 46 years old, and had 13 years of experience.

Besides having earned a Master's degree in History, I had a track record of success in what most people consider to be the largest challenge teachers and students can face.  One year I had 28 students in a working-class, Hspanic neighborhood pass Advanced Placement exams. Another year, I had 24 students pass; and in another, 16.

I had first-rate credentials, and I should have fit what they wanted in a teacher. I was an experienced well-educated teacher with proven unprecendented success with Hispanic working-class youth.

I applied.

I did not get an interview.

Or a call back.

Or a thank you for applying.

This summer I observed TFA teachers, twenty-one year olds who had just received their B.A.s. Two of them already had charter-school positions.

Experienced teachers rightly fear that charter schools may prefer to hire younger teachers because they are malleable. Younger teachers are not necessarily better at ensuring student outcomes--though sometimes they are--but they follow orders because they do not have their own ideas about what stimulates better student outcomes.

I can see where a charter-school principal would like to be the big fish in a small pond. Nobody to challenge you.

I disagree with people who believe younger teachers are always more effective. More eager, yes. More free time, usually. But not necessarily better. Sometimes better, yes.

Charter schools prefer younger teachers for the same reason wealthy, older men pefer younger wives: they look good and they go along with whatever big daddy wants. They will challenge you only sporadically, no negotiations between equals required. Young teachers look up to their administrators, or at least pretend to, because they have no examples for comparison.

The young teachers I saw this summer from the TFA organization all had degrees from good colleges. They were interesting people with degrees in real subjects: Classics, Math, Political Science, Speech and Philosophy. Even they tended to go along with whatever lesson strategies their organization gave them because they had no other experience to draw from.

The charter schools backing Ms. Eastman, who is the youngest of the three women in this campaign, are seeking to nab 10,000 HISD students, and replace 1000 of our teachers.

Will the charter schools continue to use and throw away young teachers every three years, or as they mature, will they sustain a stable force of career teachers, who grow personally--marry and have children--and professionally--learn their craft, and develop their own ideas about what works and what doesn't?

Ms. Eastman has been silent about what her alliance with the charter schools will mean in terms of her school board activities.

If you are a younger white person with no teaching or administrative experience running against an older Hispanic woman with 36 years of experience in a district where fewer than ten percent of students are white, you had better have some real strong positions on issues, unless you are just hoping only white folks who identify with you culturally show up to vote.

I hope I am not being mean here. But the operation of these charters raises some questions--not only age discrimination, but also creaming off the best students. If you cream the best 10,000 from neighborhood schools, won't that damage the local schools?

The role of school board members is to help us create better schools, not shut them down.

Is it mean or unwise to ask whether Ms. Eastman's charter-school financial sponsorship means about her goals on the school board?