Charter Schools Must Rise to the Test (TN)
November 29, 2010
Six years ago, the woman who pioneered charter schools in Nashville had to sell her house to keep the one she founded open.
State laws regarding charter schools made it tough to succeed, and the school board didn’t help — one decision forced her to drop 50 students at once. Their per-student funding left with them.
"Truthfully, I’m not attached to property, or anything, really. The main thing I wanted to do was give children a chance," said Sister Sandra Smithson, a former missionary who opened Smithson Craighead Academy in 2003.
Today, state legislators, the city and a number of young education entrepreneurs share her vision. Grants from government agencies and private foundations to charter schools are flowing freely. A 2009 state law raised the cap from 50 to 90 charters statewide and broadened student eligibility.
So a city and state that used to draw criticism for hostility toward charter schools are creating a national buzz for their new, welcoming environment. With new advantages, the pressure is on for innovators to prove their schools can be better than regular public schools.
"If we don’t perform and achieve what we set up to achieve, we ruin this movement," said Jeremy Kane, founder of LEAD Academy in Nashville. He also won a contract to convert a low-performing Metro public school, Cameron Middle, into a charter school beginning next year.
By August 2011, 11 charter schools will operate in Davidson County. In the next five years, the number of Metro students attending charter schools is projected to double to 2,400 — about 4 percent of district enrollment.
While not all charter schools are successful — Nashville Global Academy went bankrupt and closed this year — conditions are ripe for risk and classroom innovation, and some outperform their regular public school peers.
Their founders can do that because they have the base of public funding, just like traditional schools, but with private boards and little bureaucracy. They can pick their hours, curriculum, teaching style and location — in short, try almost anything they think will work with the population they attract.
"I think charters have been able to strip education down to its basics," Kane said. "We have the smaller space, and teachers get to know the kids really well."
Students at LEAD know their teachers’ cell phone numbers. Teachers and administrators consider home visits part of the job.
Tajuana Echols moved her son, Kyre, into LEAD Academy from a Metro magnet school after seeing its effect on a nephew, who enrolled a year earlier. LEAD students on the whole outperform their regular Metro peers.
While Kyre could do well anywhere, Echols said, she liked the way LEAD took the seventh-grader outside the classroom, volunteering at nursing homes and in community cleanups. He has been on field trips to the University of Alabama, Western Kentucky University, Vanderbilt, Belmont and Tuskegee University, routine events at LEAD to interest students in college.
"He’s become more of a leader," Echols said. "He takes an active role in the classroom and school in general."
At-risk kids excel
At KIPP Academy in East Nashville, students walk by a quote from Ella Fitzgerald every day. It’s painted in big blue letters on a hallway wall: "It isn’t where you come from, it’s where you’re going that counts."
It’s particularly significant, considering 92 percent come from poverty and about the same number are minorities. But despite an achievement gap affecting those groups in the rest of the district, 92 percent of KIPP students tested proficiently in reading and math, better than at 16 regular Metro middle schools.
Charter school founders and educators feel motivated by working with Tennessee’s charter school population: students who are failing, who are in failing schools or, beginning last year, who qualify for free or reduced-priced lunches.
Linda Mendez, founder of the new Liberty Collegiate Prep opening next fall in East Nashville, said she was moved to open a charter after working in a Boys and Girls Club.
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"My passion and commitment comes from a belief that all kids can achieve success when they are supported and challenged," she said. "They are some of our most at-risk youth. … That drives me to what I do."
Rachel Gaither, who teaches fourth-grade reading at Smithson Craighead, transferred there after teaching in a regular Metro school, where she saw too many students left behind.
"It’s not about being better than a public school," she said. "We are a better choice for some kids."
She teaches only language arts and reading, which she majored in, instead of teaching all subjects to her elementary students as in a traditional school. And with only 250 students, it’s easy for the school to keep data on each child’s academic progress by subject.
"We’re declaring war on children not progressing academically," said Smithson Craighead Principal Janelle Glover, stepping into the charter’s "War Room." The white board is covered with student-by-student achievement levels in reading, math and other core subjects.
New Vision Academy uses its more than 210-day school year — more than a month longer than that of regular Metro schools — to move students ahead.
"For me, wanting to work in a charter school was about wanting to work with a different population of kids," said Daniel Sussman, who moved to Nashville from Boston this year. He’s a co-teacher — New Vision puts two teachers in a classroom for more personal attention.
Case manager Lance Blocker works to improve students’ social skills and conflict resolution. He also reaches out to New Vision par ents, most of whom are single, to get them involved.
"When you have a kid failing and a teacher trying to get in contact, that single parent plays a huge role," he said.
Challenges lie ahead
With charter school growth comes the need for more buildings and teachers trained to educate eligible students, plus more attention to how the schools are evaluated.
Nashville Mayor Karl Dean said his biggest worry is finding new charter school space because the school district doesn’t have enough surplus schools to accommodate them. He said the city must be creative, and that has meant his office pumping $10 million into buying and improving the building where KIPP currently operates, readying it for expansion and a community center. He’s helping Liberty Collegiate Prep secure a former city building in East Nashville.
Nashville’s charter schools are concentrated in its north and east sides. Some school board members want them to expand to other neighborhoods, including Antioch. They’d like to expand the diversity in classrooms, too. More than 90 percent of children in Metro charter schools are African-American.
"We have very, very few other groups," board Chairwoman Gracie Porter complained at a recent workshop on charter schools.
Seven charters are now targeting middle school grades, creating more competition for teachers. So far, none has reported problems hiring. But other cities with large numbers of charter schools partner with community colleges and universities to attract teachers trained to work in them.
Other charter schools are facing issues with how the state and the school district measure their success. If students fail state exams two years in a row in the same subject, the district can close their school. A traditional public school can fail six years before it faces the most serious sanctions from the state.
Smithson Craighead Academy awaits news on whether its students made adequate progress in math on spring tests. Otherwise, academy leaders must go before the school board and perhaps close the school.
"We have to take a look at how we are defining success," Academy Board Vice Chairman Charles Grant said.
Students made huge gains in reading and in some cases outperformed those in other Metro schools. Grant points out that the school has no entrance criteria, unlike some charters that require parental involvement, and doesn’t suspend kids who chronically misbehave.
Financial help is on way
Despite the challenges, Tennessee’s charter schools have bright spots to look forward to. KIPP Academy will receive $2 million in federal Race to the Top grant money to launch its first cluster of charter schools, meaning a KIPP elementary would feed into KIPP middle and then into a KIPP high school.
Next month, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will announce whether Nashville is among the first tiers of cities doing collaborative work with charters. The city drew the foundation’s attention by launching a partnership among charter schools, the Chamber of Commerce and the mayor’s office, and the designation probably will come with financial support.
LEAD Academy founder Kane said his board is readying to announce an e xpansion, too, but declined to give details.
Whereas regular public schools used to view charters as competition for students, Metro Nashville Public Schools is touting them as one more option for parents.
"Charter schools are a reality in our country, and it would be a real mistake not to take advantage of the fact that we will have a bigger presence if we work together," Metro Director of Schools Jesse Register said. He recently took a nearly daylong tour of all the district’s charters.
Smithson, 84, can look back at the many changes, although she’s vocal about work still left undone.
"The right to educate belongs to a parent," she said.
The state should do something like what the government did for the soldiers coming home after World War II, paying for whatever college they chose, Smithson said.
"That’s what we need in public education across the board — parents picking their schools for their children and not the state picking it for them," she said.