This month, the State University of New York, one of the nation's strongest charter school authorizers, gave my organization, Democracy Prep Public Schools, final approval to restructure an existing charter school that was going to be closed for poor performance. It's a groundbreaking new approach to holding charter schools rigorously accountable for their students' academic performance and growth. The trade of autonomy for accountability, which is the hallmark of public charter schools, only works if low-performing schools are held responsible. What makes this decision so innovative is that it will allow this school to become a proof-point for what is possible in education reform without the usual disruption of a traditional school closure, in which parents are often forced to enroll their children in other under-performing schools in their neighborhoods. What's more, the initiative has the potential to turn on their ear the commonly held beliefs about what makes schools great.
On paper, Harlem Day Charter School should be a resounding success. With a mix of public dollars and private philanthropy, it spends more per pupil -- about $20,000 -- than most suburban schools. Class size is small -- with fewer than 20 students in a typical class. Teachers and families are generally happy, according to recent surveys, and the school facility is safe, clean and bright.
Yet student achievement is unacceptably low.
On the latest state standardized tests, just 20 percent of Harlem Day students were proficient in English Language Arts and 25 percent met standards in math. They're entering middle school without the basic reading and math skills they need for higher level work. I know this first hand. Democracy Prep, which currently operates two high-performing middle schools in Harlem, enrolls a lot of Harlem Day graduates and, like 90% of our entering students, most of them enroll in sixth grade requiring extensive academic remediation.
To their immense credit, Harlem Day's Board of Directors recognized the school's academic shortcomings and accepted that it would almost certainly be closed when its charter came up for renewal this year. But simply closing schools does not allow us to learn from their mistakes and create new and better opportunities for students. Realizing this otherwise missed opportunity, we answered the call from SUNY to propose an ambitious,high-stakes plan that will not only give the Harlem Day students a second chance at academic success, but also provide invaluable information on what really matters in improving student performance.
In the 1,700 page comprehensive restructuring plan we submitted, and which SUNY approved, we call for an entirely different educational approach. In fact, the only two things that will remain the same when Harlem Day re-opens as Harlem Prep in August are the students and the building.
Harlem Prep will be modeled after high-performing, no-excuses elementary charter schools, and will include a longer school day and year, a structured school culture, a focus on real-time data, rigorous academics, and exemplary educators. Teachers will undergo a full month of professional development in August and regular weekly trainings throughout the school year.
At full growth, we expect to operate this school -- as we do our others -- on public dollars, and class size will be much higher, around 27 students per class. After all, we strongly adhere to the belief that teacher quality and a clear and consistent mission -- not class size or seniority -- drive excellence in the classroom.
With these unconventional inputs -- fewer dollars, a lean staff and higher class size -- we hope to to raise achievement dramatically. We have set the ambitious goal of achieving 75% proficiency in all core academic subjects for students who attend Harlem Prep for two years or more.
We hear a lot of excuses from leading education scholars for why public schools are failing -- they often blame the families or the students. They argue that the burdens of poverty and the lack of parental involvement prevent children from learning. We're not arguing that these factors aren't important. However, we are 100% confident that with great teachers and great schools, educational barriers can and will be overcome.
That's what makes our new approach so exciting. We're going to control for all of these alleged barriers to success by taking the same group of children who are struggling to achieve in their current school, change all of the other inputs, and we hope to get an entirely different result. To paraphrase former NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, poverty is no excuse for educational failure, and Harlem Prep has the potential to prove it.
This is a risky proposition, to be sure. Most charter schools, including ours, start from scratch, with one grade of students, and build up from there. Harlem Prep is starting at full kindergarten to fifth grade scale. There's a reason Democracy Prep was the only charter organization to even submit a proposal to do this work: it's going to be incredibly hard. But charter schools exist to push the envelope, take big risks, and try out new ideas in ways that traditional public schools can't, or won't.
There are no easy fixes to the public education crisis in this country, and the lessons we learn at Harlem Prep won't necessarily work for all schools. But before we accept blanket statements about the value of teacher seniority, class size, or accountability, it's time to identify some actual on-the-ground evidence. If we're successful, this model could provide an alternative to traditional closures that will hold more low-performing schools accountable, be less disruptive to families, and, most importantly, put more citizen-scholars on the path to success in the college of their choice.
Seth Andrew is founder and superintendent of Democracy Prep Public Schools. In the Fall DPPS will serve more than 1,000 students on five public charter school campuses in Harlem.
John Thompson: Extending the School Day
Charterization is a scam, often founded by poverty pimps and con artists gaming the school system, opening enrollment to anyone who can come through the door but counseling out underperformers prior to performance testing at the end of the year -- all in an effort to falsify reportable scores...
When charters fail, as even Arne Duncan's have in Chicago, the schools should revert back to the public system instead of remaining in private hands which are pretty much completely autonomous and unaccountable to the students and parents they serve...
For years, people like this author have been claiming that all the urban districts need are "great schools". And yet, those districts are still places that no self-respecting parent would send their children (unless, of course, that parent lacks the means to send them elsewhere).
I'd like to see an experiment where the teachers of a suburban school swap places with the teachers in a low-performing urban one. Maybe then our education "experts" would stop blaming the schools themselves and realize that not all children are just sitting there willing and ready to learn.
And now, nearly twenty years later, we're talking about accountability for charters as if it's a new thing. An innovation. And really, it is. Charters usually do a worse job than the public schools they're trying to replace, and they're almost never closed down for it.
The rest of the article makes about as much sense. You're going to raise class sizes and you expect to see an improvement in outcomes? Yeah, good luck with that.
Regarding your last comment: clearly, raising class sizes isn't the only change this group is making. They're taking the increased $ per classroom that would go along with such an adjustment and betting that this additional spending can more than offset the impact of raising class size. In other words, they are re-allocating spending to areas in which they think resources will be more cost effective. This is something that all schools should be doing, whether that means lowering class size, increasing class size, or whatever combination of interventions works best for that particular school.
I too wish them good luck.
My Mother didn't work and was always home when I arrived for lunch or after school.
Both of my parents took an interest in my school work.
If the school called for any reason they supported the school and I never heard the end of whatever it was. Discipline was all on their end so that it never became a problem on the teacher's end.
Education and my teachers, were respected. The teacher was never questioned. My homework was checked. It was done on the kitchen table following dinner in full view and I was not excused until it was all completed and checked.
My brother and sister and I were expected to go to summer school every summer. In those days it was enrichment or elective courses. Vacation followed in the few weeks before the next school year started. A new dress and a new pair of shoes for the first day every year.
Teachers were treated as competent qualified professionals.
Apparently I learned just fine. Enough to graduate in the top 2% of my class. Bachelor's degree. Two master's degrees. I seem to have done just fine.
Without excessive testing or NCLB or RttT or anything. Imagine that.
While it's true that DP teachers cannot be unionized and that they work longer hours on site as compared to district teachers, they're also paid more. They know the rules when they sign up. I'm not sure I would agree with you that this is a sweat shop environment.
It's also not clear what you think DP is taking from the poor community of Harlem. Harlem doesn't have a lot of high quality schools. The DP schools have done pretty well. How is it then that the community is being robbed?
standardized achievement tests are not valid measures of short-term progress, but the lack of regulation in charter schools makes those tests very easy to cheat. based on the information you've provided, you will definitely have an uphill struggle. good luck, and for the sake of your future students, i hope to heaven that your school turns out to be an exception.
P.S: Thank God I live in a state (FL) where support for charter schools is overwhelming and politicians follow suit.
Charter schools are for parents who want a private education for their kids but dont want to pay for it.
Then again, its your CHOICE.
By the way, hows that Governor of yours working out? I hear he loves charters.