17 years in, staying true to the mission of ANCS

Right before the start of each new school year, all of our ANCS teachers and staff gather at a site away from school for a retreat to begin building community and thinking about our work ahead with students and families.  At the opening of this year’s retreat at Sweetwater Creek State Park, I shared some of my reflections on the state of our school as we set to open for our 17th school year. A primary focus of my remarks was about holding on to the initial vision and mission that has guided ANCS through many changes since the school first opened its doors in August 2002.  For my first blog post of the new school year, I’ll hit on some of the same ideas.

Last spring a few weeks after our enrollment lottery, I bumped into a small group of prospective parents who had just finished taking a tour of our elementary campus.  I introduced myself to them, and, in conversation, one of the parents commented on how it was “great to be able to send [her] son to a school that’s now a ‘finished product’” because of all the work that previous waves of parents, board members, and, of course, teachers and staff, had put in.  Another parent nodded in agreement and said that he was thrilled that his child had “gotten into such a good school” as compared to the school for which he was zoned. I’ve thought back more than once to that seemingly innocuous conversation, and I think the reason I keep coming back to it is because it surfaces for me some tensions that exist as our school gets older and evolves.

Having been named Georgia “Charter School of the Year”, with long wait lists, a strong budget, and a solid track record of success, I can understand why some might consider ANCS to be a “finished product” as compared to our early days when practices and procedures were being figured out, the budget fluctuated, and charter renewal was on the horizon for the first time.  Similarly, I can appreciate (and am happy!) for a parent to see us as a “good school”, and obviously I understand that by applying to ANCS, parents are taking an active step of choosing our school over another school for any number of reasons. But I worry that those who might believe ANCS is a finished product–especially if a parent or caregiver–may not engage with our school in the way we still need to them to. And I wonder if the markers for why some parents today might deem ANCS a “good” school are the same as indicators earlier families would have looked to.  Let me explain.

You can see our school’s mission and vision right here on our website.  The principles that animate that mission and vision are those of the Coalition of Essential Schools, an organization that no longer exists but of which ANCS was long a member and whose ideas still live on.  At the core of the CES common principles is collaboration and partnership–between and among students, teachers, and families. Through these relationships that develop, ANCS is able to carry out its mission.  From the very start of our school, families have been “key collaborators” and “democratic practices” have been used to shape the school. This is as true today as it was when ANCS first opened. In that sense, then, we are not necessarily a “finished product”, but one that is evolving–a school that might be surer on its feet than we were a decade ago, but still one that needs and wants the engagement of its families and collaboration between school and home, teachers and parents, maybe in a different way than in 2002, but still to create a learning space for students that is true to our mission.

Speaking of being true to our mission, ANCS was founded in large part to help foster learning that was hands-on, rooted in interesting, relevant projects for students, and centered as much on the process of learning as the outcomes.  Phrases like “helping students learn to use their minds well”, “depth over breadth”, “student as worker, teacher as coach” and “learning…assessed with tools based on student performance of real tasks” populate the CES principles that have long guided our school.  For many families (and teachers), this approach to teaching and learning is what has drawn them to ANCS, a desire to help students develop skills as critical thinkers, communicators, problem solvers, and artists. There seems to be a growing tendency, though, to view ANCS as a “good” school based mostly on measures that don’t wholly capture many of those skills.  Scores on standardized tests of reading and math–like Georgia Milestones or MAP–are useful and important, but certainly far from the only way of determining whether we are living out our mission. In fact, the air space given to analyzing scores on these tests or how ANCS compares to other schools on them is much louder now than it was when I started at ANCS in 2007, and our scores on those tests are, in many instances, better now than they were then.  This trend towards basing an opinion about whether ANCS (or any school) is “good” by focusing mostly on these scores misses the much larger picture of what our school is helping students to know and to do, and, in fact, preparing students for these tests can sometimes run counter to other deeper, more meaningful learning in which students could be engaging. The scores matter, but they are not the only thing that matters–far from it.

In a similar vein, when I hear parents remark that ANCS is “good” as compared to one local school or another, when the comparison school is one that has more students of color or more students who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, I have sometimes heard in a parent’s words–whether explicitly or implied–the demographics of schools playing into that comparison.  The founders of our school were dedicated to creating a racially and economically diverse school, and it is a central part of our mission and the CES principles. As the demographics of the neighborhoods we serve and our school have changed over time, we’ve been working hard over the past several years especially to lift up that part of our mission, so if you have chosen ANCS based on our demographics (and I have had some parents tell me exactly that), please know that we are unapologetically committed to, in the words of the CES principles, “honoring diversity” and “deliberately and explicitly challenging all forms of inequity”.  

So why are you here at ANCS?  I hope it is because you believe in the mission of our school and the principles that guide them, and I hope to work together with you to do important work in carrying out that mission on behalf of our students.