Education Week - January 6, 2016 - 27

Follow the Numbers: Magnet
Schools Outperform Charters

Online Choices Have Offline
Consequences-For Everyone
To the Editor:
In November, it was revealed that at least
100 students at a Colorado high school traded
naked pictures of themselves as part of a large
"sexting" ring.
These students are not alone; a recent study
of Texas high school students conducted by
researchers at the University of Texas Medical
Branch at Galveston found that more than 25
percent of students surveyed said they had sent
a naked photo of themselves to someone.
Clearly, more research is needed to better
understand the prevalence of sexting. But
we don't need to wait for more research to do
something about it, and this latest incident
is a wake-up call that we need to take action
now. A first step is understanding that while
the mechanism is new, the behavior is not.
Technology is merely facilitating the ease
with which teens communicate and receive
validation-a developmentally and socially
normative behavior.
Recently, Common Sense Media-the
nonprofit organization I founded to teach kids
and teens how to safely navigate media and
technology-released a media-use report that
found America's teens are spending, on average,
up to nine hours a day with media ("Media
Usage Highest Among Poor, Minority Youth,
Report Finds," Digital Education blog, www.
edweek.org, Nov. 16, 2015).
The growing popularity of electronics in our
lives underscores the pressing need for digital
citizenship. We must work to make sure the
next generation knows how to think critically,
behave safely, and participate responsibly both
online and off.
Unfortunately, incidents like the case in
Colorado could lead to lifetime damage for the
young people involved. Just as new drivers
need to go through an education course before
they are allowed to get behind the wheel of a
car, today's young people need guidance from
both school and parents to learn digitalcitizenship skills.
James P. Steyer
Chief Executive Officer and Founder
Common Sense Media
San Francisco, Calif.

To the Editor:
Based on the spring results of the
California Smarter Balanced assessments,
the Los Angeles Unified School District
recently announced that 55 percent of the
district's magnet students met or exceeded
state standards in English/language arts,
compared with 39 percent in charters,
33 percent in the LAUSD overall, and 44
percent in traditional schools statewide.
The breakdown of math results followed a
similar pattern.
The results represent the online scores
of the state's 3rd through 8th graders, as
well as 11th graders, from 48,000 charters
and 37,000 magnet schools. The numbers
paint a clear picture: Students from LAUSD
magnet schools are not only being prepared
effectively for college and future careers,
they are also outperforming their peers
in other schools by significant margins
throughout the state, at every grade level.
The scores were released just as
the influential Eli and Edythe Broad
Foundation floated the idea to provide the
LAUSD with a $490 million incentive to
double the number of charter schools in
the district. The timing was ironic ("Broad
Foundation Plan Ignites Charter School War
in L.A.," On California blog, www.edweek.
org, Sept. 28, 2015).

Magnet schools explicitly promote school
integration and diversity as a core mission.
Unlike charters, magnet schools do not
operate autonomously, outside the public
school system, and are never run by forprofit organizations. This provides a level of
direct accountability to decisionmakers and
taxpayers. Most magnet schools also adhere
to collective bargaining agreements made
with educators.

Decisionmakers should question the Broad
Foundation's proposal and take a close
look at the test-result evidence that clearly
shows that magnet programs are thriving
and outperforming charter schools.
In fact, in almost every student
classification, including female, male,
African-American, Asian, and Latino, magnet
school students outshine their peers in math
and English/language arts. The same is true
for economically disadvantaged students
and those with learning disabilities. What
is also striking is that the LAUSD's magnet
schools had far fewer students falling into
low-performance categories.

As Feds Step Back,
The First State Steps Up
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 32

CEOs and union presidents, have enabled us to continue moving
forward. It's hard to demonize someone you actually know.
As we approached the shifting tides in 2014, the coalition began
engaging the local community in an effort to think through their
priorities for the next decade. The result is "Student Success
2025"-an education plan for the state. (The full report and student videos are available at www.visioncoalitionde.org.)
The coalition released the report this past fall, and here are five
lessons that may be helpful to other states entering this new world
of federal devolution:
1. Map backward. We learned from our colleagues in Canada
and Singapore that if we asked people to imagine a long-term
goal-in our case: what a well-educated Delaware graduate would
need to know in 2025-that we could establish an ambitious common vision and not get mired in the current debates. Once we
defined that North Star, which included much more than the mastery of academic content, it drove the design of the policy changes

All this information should lead to one
obvious conclusion: We need to pay closer
attention to magnet schools and focus more
energy and resources toward replicating
these models of educational excellence. The
numbers tell a powerful story that should
not be ignored.
Todd Mann
Executive Director
Magnet Schools of America
Washington, D.C.

Personal Electronics Should Be
Banned From Schools
To the Editor:
With the recent arrest of a student
because she did not put her cellphone
away fast enough in South Carolina, the
conversation about electronics in the
classroom is growing ("Arrest Fuels Debate
on School Police," Nov. 4, 2015).
There really is a very simple, commonsense solution to the use of electronic
communication by school students during
school: Ban it.
I was a teacher years ago, before such
phones existed, and frankly I could not
imagine them in the hands of students while
I was teaching.
But what I really am confused about
is why parents even allow their children
to take phones with them to school, and
why teachers permit students to have
phones in their classrooms. Despite all my
son's whining, I made sure he never had
a cellphone of his own until he left high
school, which did not hurt him at all. If I
were still teaching, all my students would
have to leave their phones in a separate
location upon entering the classroom, or be
absolutely required to have them turned off.
There is one simple certainty. No phones
equals no problems of this type.
Problem solved.

preparing students for the colleges and
careers of the 20th century, or those of the
21st century and beyond?
Because the future of work is unknown,
educators are thinking hard about what
exactly they should be teaching students
that won't be mechanized within their
lifetimes.
There are experts who suggest general,
flexible, insight-bearing human learning.
Others propose teaching teamwork and
complex communication skills so that
students will be able to solve problems
we can't currently anticipate. Cognitive
scientists stress concepts like "grit" and
"mindset."
Indeed, a comparison of those adults
holding General Educational Development
diplomas with regular high school graduates
has demonstrated that "noncognitive skills"
have a large impact on earnings.
Fortunately, noncognitive skills and IQ
have been shown to be malleable. Learning
how to learn-and wanting to do so-is a
gift that teachers can give to their students;
like educating students about the power of
teamwork, the skill can be taught.
This is what is needed for the 21st century,
and it can take time to teach it.
Preparing students for an unknown
future requires curricula, pedagogy, and
assessment-in high schools and colleges-
that prepare students to solve adult
problems, reflect the changing needs of
society and the workplace, and recognize that
many of those who started school in 2015 will
still be active in another 50 years.
Arnold Packer
La Jolla, Calif.

The author was an assistant U.S. secretary of labor
in the Carter administration, the chief economist for
the Budget Committee of the U.S. Senate, and the
executive director of the U.S. Secretary of Labor's
Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills under
President George H. W. Bush. He is retired from
Johns Hopkins University.

James Steamer
State College, Pa.

Teaching Students 21st-Century
Skills Takes Time. It's Worth It
To the Editor:
There is a disconnect between how
high schools are preparing students for
their future lives and what those lives
will ultimately look like. Are high schools

needed to get us there.
2. Design from the bottom up, rather than the top down.
On the heels of Race to the Top, there was a real desire for bottomup solutions. The coalition had 4,000 "cups of coffee" with local citizens, including more than 1,000 students and recent high school
grads, to hear their thoughts and to help us build the plan. Some
were online, but most were in local fire halls and libraries. They
were real conversations.
3. Seek common ground, and lead. Like every other state,
Delaware has debated issues like school choice and testing. Our
coalition didn't avoid those issues, but we didn't let them derail us
either. We had an 85 percent rule, which meant any leadershipteam member could walk from the table if he or she disagreed
with more than 15 percent of the plan. No one's walked yet. As
one of our early facilitators, Marty Linsky, of Harvard's Kennedy
School of Government, said: "Leadership is about being willing to
disappoint your own constituency at a rate that they can stand."
4. Build in time and transparency. We deliberately took time
to do this right so that everyone had a chance to weigh in. Rather
than look for tepid endorsements at the 11th hour, the coalition
produced a draft plan in six months and solicited feedback for five
months. We didn't publish the final report until almost a year later.
5. Incorporate independent voices to avoid mush. Commission reports often sink to the lowest common denominator because the authors don't want to offend anyone on the commission.

COMMENTARY POLICY
Education Week takes no editorial positions,
but publishes opinion essays and letters from
outside contributors in its Commentary section.
For information about submitting an essay or
letter for review, visit
www.edweek.org/go/guidelines.

The result is often meaningless mush. To mitigate that danger, we
looked to a third-party consulting group, as well as national and
international experts, who informed and challenged our recommendations.
Vigorous debate won't (and shouldn't) ever go away. But in this
new era of federal devolution, state and local leaders will need to
find new ways to infuse more respect and humility into their work
together. Agreeing on a plan is hard. Implementing it is harder.
As the country recalculates its course on how to prepare our next
generations of leaders, parents, and citizens, Delaware hopes to
learn with and from other states moving down the messy, yet essential, path toward higher ground and higher achievement for
our students. n

Chris Whetzel for Education Week

LETTERS to
the EDITOR

EDUCATION WEEK | January 6, 2016 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary | 27

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Education Week - January 6, 2016

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