By Tom

Emerging from the subway tunnel in Harlem, I had two questions in my mind:

1. Were charter schools really as good as the hype, and if so, why?

2. Could they work in Washington?

I’ll address the first question in this post. I’ll discuss the next a little later this week.

Some background: I was invited earlier this month by the League of Education Voters to join a fact-finding tour of several charter schools in Harlem and The Bronx. Our goal was to learn about successful charter schools in order to inform the conversation about whether or not to allow them in Washington State.

After our breakfast at the New York City Charter School Center, a resource that helps start and sustain charter schools in New York City, we were toured Harlem Success Academy and Kappa International High School (not actually a charter school; more of a high-expectation “choice school”) On the following day we saw KIPP Charter School and Green Dot charter school.

Although I’ve never been a big fan of charter schools, I was determined to keep an open mind and see for myself what these places were all about. I had even done my homework: I read Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System as well as Steven Brill’s Class Warfare. (He loves charter schools; she doesn’t.)

The first thing I noticed was the uniformity between different classrooms. It was clear that the faculties had come to some sort of consensus around pretty much everything; teaching style, classroom management, even furniture arrangement. It was as if someone had figured out what works best and everyone else agreed to do it. James Merriman, CEO of the Charter School Center, characterized this uniformity as akin to a department store vs. a shopping mall. A department store has different, distinct places, but the overall concept of the greater store supersedes any differences between those departments. Most public schools – including mine – operate much more like a shopping mall, in which each teacher essentially creates their own, separate workplace, with its own, distinct culture and mores’.

The teaching style they agreed on was decidedly understated, with the focus on the learning, not the teacher. What I saw was solid, non-glamorous teaching. The teachers went calmly and carefully about their work. A woman led her third graders through a discussion of JFK’s life; her class had obviously been trained to argue politely, using evidence from the text they had read. A man led his sixth graders through an activity concerning synonyms. The kids were as engaged as anyone could expect them to be. A class of fifth graders were taking notes and challenging each other, as their teacher led them through a math lesson on dividing fractions. I also saw a teacher scolding one of his students. I’m not sure exactly what the kid had done wrong – it seemed to involve a book he wouldn’t put away – but the teacher calmly, yet forcefully handled the situation in less than a minute. I was impressed.

In short, there was nothing innovative, creative or magical going on; these were the types of lessons that strong teachers chunk out day after day, all year long. Although they each used a Smart Board, they weren’t really doing anything with them that I wasn’t doing 20 years ago with a chalkboard and overhead projector.

Make no mistake, though, these teachers were working hard. I was amazed at how diligent they were about the little things; the minutia of good teaching. Things like narrated wait time, astute follow-up questions directed towards the kids on the edge of losing interest, actively making sure no one had anything extraneous on their desk, and smooth, silent transitions. It was as if every teacher had studied Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov. (Which I’m sure they did, since he wrote that book based on good teaching he saw in NYC charter schools.) There was a clear belief in the reality that good teachers aren’t born that way; they’re simply hard-working people who pay attention to all the details.

Not only do they work hard, they work a lot, starting at 7ish and going until 5:30, at which point they get to go home to write lesson plans. Teachers also have to be available to students and parents by cell phone throughout the evening. Then there’s the four-hour session every other Saturday, along with the two-week, mandatory summer school. In other words, teaching at a charter school is a tough, grueling job. It seems to me that it would be difficult to work at one of these schools and also have time for a family. Or a pet. (On the other hand, they do make 20% more than they would at a union teaching job.)

Another thing I learned about charter schools was the standard of accountability to which they hold all stakeholders. Tri-level accountability, if you will. Students have to sign an agreement, pledging to show up every day, on time, work hard at everything assigned by their teacher, behave themselves, and wear their uniforms. Parents sign their own contract, basically pledging to make their kids do all that stuff. The contract threatens expulsion if students and parents don’t follow through. I’m told that expulsions are rare, but the threat of expulsion – and return to the chronically low-performing neighborhood school – is always there.

Teachers sign a contract, as well. They pledge to work those long hours, teach as well as they know how and do whatever it takes to get their students to learn. I asked a lot of questions about teacher accountability. I got the sense that teachers are well-supported by the administrators and each other; everyone does everything they can to help each other be successful. Teachers are used to classroom observations by fellow teachers and administrators and collaborative work is a huge part of the school culture. At the end of the day, though, if it looks like a teacher “isn’t working out,” that teacher is quickly replaced. There is no such thing as “due process;” the school – and the students – get the benefit of the doubt, not the teacher.

You won’t be surprised by something else I noticed: youth. And I’m talking about the faculty, not the students. There were very few teachers over thirty, and most of them looked like they were fresh out of college. Although part of that could be explained by the fact that charter schools in New York have only been around for about a decade, a larger part of the explanation is most likely due to the fact that the work is so hard. You might even say it’s “unsustainably demanding,” which is essentially how Steven Brill characterizes the job of teaching in a charter school. In fact, the KIPP School we observed lost 13 of their 30-or-so teachers over the summer, a higher attrition rate than most Major League baseball teams. Part of that is due to the fact that a lot of these teachers are “go-getters” who wouldn’t stay in the same position for long, no matter which career they choose, but a lot of it is due to burn-out.

All in all, it’s fair to say that charter schools are great places for the students who attend them. The students were clearly learning and they clearly wanted to be there. Not only that, but these schools were serving students who traditionally score near the bottom; students with every “disadvantage” you can think of. Yet here they were, well on their way to college. My observations validated the impressive data I’ve seen on these schools. There’s no question about it: these are good schools. Nor is there any secret to their success; it comes as a result of hard work, attention to details, and a consistent, whole school approach.