Scaling Charter Schools Sustainably

July 25, 2013

  • REALITY

Eric Lavin, a REALITY participant, runs Whetstone Education, an education tech company based in the charter school hotbed of New Orleans. Whetstone builds software designed to drive more relevant organization-wide and individual professional development at schools. He used a Make It Happen micro grant to attend the National Charter Schools conference in Washington DC earlier this month and wrote this post reflecting on his experience.

Thanks to a Make It Happen micro grant, I was able to attend the National Charter Schools Conference in Washington, DC earlier this month. A diverse group of charter school leaders assembled at the conference to discuss and debate the present charter school movement and its future. My thoughts on charter schools have been informed by my experiences; I taught two years at Central High School, an extraordinarily poor traditional public school in Helena, AR. I also coached sports at KIPP and lived with their teachers who would always choose work over rest. The contrast between Central and KIPP could not have been more extreme.

Putting “Charter” into Context The most salient comment I heard at the conference was made by Andy Smarick, former COO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. He suggested that the word “charter” be thought of as an adjective as opposed to a verb. Putting the term charter in front of a school’s name doesn’t indicate anything about the type of learning going on in classrooms, the culture in the hallways or the professional development delivered to teachers. That said, the impact this “chartering mechanism” has had is hard to overstate. As Secretary Arne Duncan said at a conference keynote, “Charter schools have helped debunk the insidious myth that poverty is destiny, and schools don’t matter that much.” And the numbers back it up. The National Charter School Study 2013, released just a few weeks ago by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University, found that charter school students show greater learning gains in reading than their peers in traditional public schools in the 26-state sample. Furthermore, the CREDO report shows those students in poverty, black students, Hispanic students and English language learners (ELL) gain significantly more days of learning each year in both reading and math compared to their traditional public school peers. Duncan’s observation about what charters have shown to be possible does not, however, mean that all charter schools have good—or even close to adequate—performance. It is extremely unlikely that charter school mass proliferation is the silver bullet that will provide every student with a great education. It was reassuring to hear Secretary Duncan lend some much-needed perspective to the unabashed charter boosterism when he said, “Our goal is a high-performing school for every child, whether it be charter, traditional, magnet or other.” 

The Scale Question There is no debating that we are very, very far from the goal of good schools for all kids. Given this reality, there was some really interesting discussion of how to “scale what works.” The best natural experiment and case study for future charter districts is in my current hometown of New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans public education system underwent a dramatic transformation. As a result, next year 90 percent of children in New Orleans, many of them high performing, will attend a charter school (compared with 5 percent nationally). New Orleans’ success would not have occurred without the incredible efforts of organizations like Teach For America, TNTP, New Leaders for New Schools and others who channeled an unprecedented amount of motivated and talented educators into the city’s neediest areas. And yet, the panelists—and many others at the conference—stressed that a key element of this future charter district (and the charter movement generally) is that it must be a locally led movement.

The Fight for the Soul of the Movement A fact for your consideration: the vast majority of panelists at the conference were white. This fact was not lost on conference attendees (many of whom were not white). And, if your experience in education did not make it clear, the CREDO study puts clear numbers around the reality that the students who are primarily served by charter schools are black and Hispanic. The desire—or, perhaps, imperative—to make the charter school movement community-led needs to be reconciled with the fact that many of the people on the front lines are not representative of the communities they serve in. My favorite speaker at the conference, Howard Fuller, a keynoter and professor of education at Marquette University, acknowledged this situation head on. He made some shout outs to the TFA/KIPP people of the world and noted how he’s a big fan of both organizations and the people that comprise them. He then remarked, with a good deal of sarcasm, that we are known to frequently remind each other of our wonderful-ness. Joking aside, Fuller bluntly stated that the true fact of the matter is that not everyone in the world is so wonderful. Not everyone is willing to work 90 hours a week and be available by phone until 9pm each night so students or parents can call. Fuller’s point was this: the goal of creating great schools for all kids will only be realized when “regular people” can operate in a system where they generate “wonderful people” impact. That is the real answer to the scale question.

The Schusterman Philanthropic Network is proud to empower emerging leaders to explore their values, identity and new ways to strengthen their communities. We believe that as we work together to repair the world, it is important to share our diverse experiences and perspectives along the way. We encourage the expression of personal thoughts and reflections here on the Schusterman blog. Each post reflects solely the opinion of its author and does not necessarily represent the views of the Foundation, its partner organizations or all program participants.