Ideas: Differences Among Diverse Charter Schools

It was probably a mistake for Todd Sutler and his band of young teachers to let themselves become part of this week's SchoolBook story about diverse charter schools in mixed-income neighborhoods. Though there are obvious similarities, the school they teach at -- Community Roots -- is far more progressive than the mixed-income Upper West Success Academy that Grannis' wife, Eva Moskowitz, runs. They would have done better getting their own story rather than getting lumped in with Grannis.  Or maybe I'm just mad that Sutler let SchoolBook break the news of his next adventure (and that Grannis invited Anna Phillips to one of his parent meet and greets when I'd been asking him about doing just that over the last several months). My pitiable whining aside, the SchoolBook story seems to do little to advance anyone's understanding of how these schools -- diverse charters with varying degrees of progressive elements -- actually operate.  Gentrification and controversy are only interesting to a point -- a point we're well past at this point, in my view.  I have yet to find a home for my feature story about these schools -- I've spent a fair amount of time in several of them at this point -- but at some point I hope to be able to share the complicated, fascinating world of diverse charter schools.  They're a small but noteworthy response to practical and political problems in urban school reform.  

Comments

[Bruce]

These diverse charter schools are a very promising development. Having just finished Steven Brill's "Class Warfare", a major problem I detected among the mainstream reform movement (and one I've written about before) is that these schools have nothing to offer the 80% of Americans who don't live in neighborhoods like the ones the mainstream reformers target. There is considerable sociological evidence that intense concentrations of poverty are harmful to the well-being of young people; this fact is generally ignored by the Teach For America savior crowd, who are often really as motivated about doing something for themselves as they are about doing something that would change social systems and improve the lives of the poor. The latter would, in general, be better off in schools with students from a diversity of backgrounds, something we've known since the Coleman Report of 1966 and something that magnet schools often address successfully, which charter schools in general do not.

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[Sarah]

I grew up in a state that doesn't have any charter schools, so they were never an option, though I knew many peers who would have benefited from a non-traditional classroom. Magnet schools are the bigger draw here and I chose my high school (I lived in a town that offered us the choice) because of it's math and science program. For most teens in this state, however, the high school in your town is where you're stuck going and that's not always the best fit academically or socially.

[Bruce]

It sounds like your state could use some more choice, Sarah. I recognize that rural communities will only be able to afford one comprehensive high school (if that, in extremely remote regions), but for suburban communities like the one I'm living in to have only one, comprehensive model of a high school available is a shame. The California Charter Schools Association backed a bill last year that would have mandated comprehensive high schools as the only model available! It's hard to think of a policy prescription they could have backed that could have more effectively set back America's educational competitiveness. Why stop at that? Why not mandate that tertiary education also be comprehensive, with no 22-year-olds left behind?

[JT]

Try Summit Prep in Redwood City, CA

[CarolineSF]

Summit Prep which supposedly requires every student to take 6 AP classes? (I challenge that claim as fishy anyway, but that's what they say.) More rigidity rather than less is not generally what people are looking for when they say they want flexibility and alternatives, anyway.

[Sarah]

Bruce - That’s honestly an excellent point. If states were to do away with the utter nonsense that is monopolistic (for lack of a better term) schooling, and break schools up into smaller groups, with specific focuses on a school-to-school level, we could, as a nation, reach many more students with the same amount of funding. Unfortunately... and perhaps this is just me being a cynical, debt-ridden college student... schools too often become a business first, and an institution second.