NYC success suggests better fix for urban high schools
A wise commenter on this blog who signs in as edlharris suggested recently that the best test of the charter school networks that are getting so much praise would be to take over a regular, inner city, low-performing school. "They would have to keep the current population, take any student who moves within its boundaries and not be able to expel a student unless they engaged in physical assault," he said.
I get his point. Charters take only those students that apply, and often start with just one grade, adding a grade each year so that they can convey their procedures and traditions -- such as required homework and quick response to classroom misbehavior -- to just one small group at a time. They don't have to turn around an entire student body already accustomed to lower standards. It is harder to raise student achievement that way than to create a new school, grade by grade.
I get his point. Charters take only those students that apply, and often start with just one grade, adding a grade each year so that they can convey their procedures and traditions -- such as required homework and quick response to classroom misbehavior -- to just one small group at a time. They don't have to turn around an entire student body already accustomed to lower standards. It is harder to raise student achievement that way than to create a new school, grade by grade.
But a just-released study of small public schools in New York City suggests to me that making talented educators take over existing schools is buying trouble for no sensible reason. Why not do what New York did? Start many new public high schools the way the charters start their schools -- just a ninth grade at the beginning. Require all incoming ninth-graders to pick one of those schools. Do whatever is possible for the existing high schools with 10th- through 12th-graders, but let them fade as their students graduate, or drop out. Focus on the new schools, which have a much better chance of creating a new culture because they are adding higher standards one grade at a time. The old schools, once they are gone, will leave behind buildings the new schools can
