This past weekend was the 20th anniversary celebration of the Francis Parker Charter Essential School in Devens, Massachusetts, a school founded by Ted and Nancy Sizer of the Coalition of Essential Schools and a school at which I once taught. I was invited to speak at a “Ted S.” Talks event that was a part of the festivities. Modeled after the famous TED Talks, but named for this event for Ted Sizer, these talks were given to an audience of Parker faculty, alumni, and members of the wider educational community. I was invited to speak about work I am doing currently and how it connects to Parker and the CES principles. I chose to focus on the innovations we can use as charter schools that can have the biggest impact on students. Here is the text of my talk.
I am sincerely honored to have been invited by the 20th anniversary planning committee to speak today. It’s great to be back at Parker, a place that has meant so much to me professionally and personally. Back in 1999, having had only experience in large, traditional public schools, Horace’s Compromise was recommended to me by a friend. The experience of reading that book for me was–as I’m sure it was and continues to be for many others–one filled with lots of notes and exclamation points scrawled in the margins, excited that someone had opened my eyes and mind to the fact that teaching and learning could look, sound, and feel differently than what I had been used to. Reading Ted’s book introduced me to the Coalition of Essential Schools and its principles, and I wanted to–knew I had to–learn more.
So I was fortunate, then, a few years later to enroll in a class in graduate school with Ted and Nancy. Their class and the discussions they facilitated continued to push my thinking about what schools could be for students. And, of course, they didn’t just have us read and talk about schools, they got us out into them, from Boston to New York to Brookline and to here in Devens. I first stepped foot into Parker in the early winter of 2003 as a part of a visit by our grad school class, and after some introductory background given to us about the school, we were broken up into groups to observe in different classrooms. Two other classmates and I were deposited in the tiny little corridor from the hallway to the outback in between what was then the Div I and Div II hallways. There were just some students in there when we arrived, and they said their teacher would probably be stopping by soon.
As we watched, the students discussed different roles they were playing in what sounded like some sort of Ellis Island-type scene. Although it was pretty cold outside, the temperature in that corridor seemed like it was going up a degree per second with heat emanating from a radiator. Sweating and trying to keep focused, I was suddenly jarred to attention by a teacher busting through the door, the hat on his head skewed slightly to the side and a look of apparent anger on his face, yelling, “Let me see your papers!” Thankfully, it became clear after a minute or two that this was all a part of a simulation of the immigration experience around the turn of the century, and that the seemingly belligerent teacher had, in fact, a rather sunny disposition–he introduced himself to us as Clay.
Either in spite of or because of–still not sure which–that interesting introduction on my first visit, I decided to apply for and was lucky enough to get a teaching position at Parker, and I taught Div I and Div II Arts & Humanities from 2004 to 2007. I learned so much from so many people during my time here at Parker, but two in particular stand out. The first is Teri Schrader, who was principal during my time at Parker and to this day remains the best school leader I’ve ever seen. She was a careful listener, an inspiring speaker, and a thoughtful teacher of students and adults alike. And as I embarked down my own path towards school leadership, she served as a wonderful coach and mentor, teaching me more than she could possibly ever know.
I am also grateful to Parker for bringing me together with my wife, Tricia, someone from whom I have and still do learn so much about teaching. She was an A/H teacher at Parker for several years before me and also served as domain leader for a stretch (in fact, she probably should have been the one invited to speak today). In classic Parker fashion, we met in a microlab the first day of summer planning when I got to talk with her and David Lucil–two people I’d never before met–about my hopes and fears for the year. And then a year later I asked her out on our first date while we waited in line for grilled cheese and tomato soup in the gymnacafetorium. We’ve been married now for almost 9 years and she’s an incredible personal and professional partner–she’s one of the smartest educators I know.
Since 2007 I’ve been back in my hometown of Atlanta working at a K-8 charter school there called the Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School where I serve as the Executive Director. The relationships with Ted, Nancy, Teri, Tricia, and many others people were central to my time at Parker and continue to influence how I approach my current work. And I wanted to open my talk today by focusing on relationships because I believe that it’s the people in a school building–who they are and how they interact with one another–that hold the potential to have the greatest impact on learning more so than many other practices and structures we may use.
Charter schools have now been around for over two decades. Nationally, there are around 6,000 charter schools serving more than 2.5 million students. Parker, ANCS, and other charter schools are given freedom and flexibility from lots of regulations by our state or local authorizers and in exchange are charged with being innovative in our practices to maximize student learning and to show what’s possible when schools are given control over decisions that affect them. At this point, we know that there are a number of areas of innovation that are fairly widely used across charter schools, whether it’s related to performance-based assessment and promotion, the school day and scheduling, curricular approaches, or staffing models.
But I would argue that there are innovations that aren’t used as often despite their potential to dramatically impact student learning. And I think you don’t see them as often, in part because using them requires overcoming some deep cultural norms in schools and in American society as a whole. Each of the innovations I want to speak about today has to do with relationships between people in the school building. Not so much the student-teacher relationship, but more so the relationships between and among teachers and the relationships between and among students. Let’s start with the teachers.
While I was at Parker, there was regular and frequent interaction and collaboration between teachers. Some of it was borne out of necessity–with limited space, my desk was globbed up with several other Div III teachers’ desks in one classroom we all shared, and the by-products of this arrangement were that we talked often and watched one another teach daily and knew probably way more about one another’s personal lives than we needed or wanted.
Of course, most of the work I did in partnership with other teachers during my time at Parker was more intentionally structured. Teaching with a teaching partner. Planning curriculum collectively with a team where the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. Developing an academic program within a domain by drawing on the knowledge and skill of teachers across all divisions. Bringing vexing issues of teaching practice to a critical friends group. Tackling a schoolwide dilemma through a collaborative process with everyone on the faculty and staff.
Perhaps everyone here already knows this, but these types of relationships between teachers are not typical in most schools. The relationship between teachers at many schools could be characterized as distant and isolated. There may be widespread collegiality and even teachers working together but very little true and necessary collaboration and co-creation of strong curriculum, instruction, and assessment. And there are lots of well-meaning and smart school leaders out there who make decisions in top-down ways without involving the input of teachers because that’s just how it’s always been done.
So the way Parker (and, I hope, ANCS) works to support and cultivate an environment in which teachers partner to make one another better and are engaged in decisions which directly affect them is truly unique and innovative. It reflects the writing and research of Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan, who, in their book Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School, explain that the schools that make the biggest differences for their students’ learning have high levels of what they call “professional capital” which they describe as an investment in teachers’ “human capital” (their skills and knowledge), “social capital” (strong relationships between teachers), and “decisional capital” (being able to make discretionary judgements based on your professional experience). Schools that take a professional capital view believe that good teaching:
- is technically sophisticated
- is strengthened through continuous improvement
- involves wise judgment informed by evidence and experience
- is a collective accomplishment and responsibility
Just what kind of difference does an emphasis on professional capital make? A major research study out of the University of Pittsburgh a few years ago on this very subject found that the strength of the relationships and the amount of trust and collaboration between teachers in a school–their social capital–was a significant predictor of student achievement. Among the nearly 1,200 teachers and their students across 130 different New York City schools included in the study, students in the classroom of a teacher whose social capital was only 1 standard deviation above the average had an increase of almost 6 percent on math assessments. Even more striking, the effect of social capital was greater on student learning than measures of those teachers’ human capital.
Of course, developing a culture of professional capital in a school isn’t easy work that’s done with the snap of your fingers. At ANCS, we’ve recently begun working with other schools through our Center for Collaborative Learning, through which we are aiming to build the capacity for greater collaboration and reflection and developing stronger relationships among all teachers in a school building, and this isn’t the standard approach to teacher development traditionally used. In this work, Parker has served as an example for me about how placing emphasis on the relationships between teachers can yield some big returns for students, not to mention for teachers who feel more effective and satisfied with their work in such an environment.
Another area in which innovation can positively influence the relationships between people in the school building is related to students, in particular bringing together students of different backgrounds. At ANCS we are working at creating and maintaining a socioeconomically diverse school so that students may benefit from learning with and from students who have had different lived experiences. A report issued by the Civil Rights Project out of UCLA a few years ago revealed that our nation’s schools are nearly as racially and economically segregated as they were before the Brown v. Board of Education decisions. In a country as diverse as ours, nearly 75% of public school students attend a school in which a single socioeconomic group or single racial/ethnic group makes up more than 75% of the student body. That same report showed that in my hometown of Atlanta, the public schools there are among some of the most economically segregated of major U.S. cities. Under these circumstances, having a socioeconomically diverse school could be considered radically innovative.
As a charter school, we are much better positioned than a whole school district to combat the forces that have led to this segregation of schools based on class. Richard Kahlenberg and Halley Potter of the Century Foundation released a book just this past fall called A Smarter Charter: Finding What Works for Charter Schools and Public Education in which they highlight how charter schools–because of the freedoms and flexibility they possess–can take the lead on experimenting with ways to break the patterns that have limited socioeconomic diversity within most schools.
Our school has seen the percentage of students qualifying for free or reduced price meals drop–for a variety of reasons–from the 30-40% range into the teens. In response, we’ve taken a more aggressive approach to new student enrollment outreach to target parts of neighborhoods we’ve underserved through our lottery. And we worked with members of the Georgia state legislature and several other like-minded charter schools in the state to get the state charter school law amended this session in order to allow charter schools the option of using a weighted enrollment lottery to increase the odds of “educationally disadvantaged” students of being admitted to the school. This change was made possible following guidance from the U.S. DOE allowing states to make this a part of their charter school laws if approved by legislators.
All of these efforts are, of course, predicated on the belief that socioeconomic diversity in a school is beneficial to students. When ANCS had the diversity we are now seeking again, we saw many positive outcomes for our students because of it, outcomes mirrored by research. Numerous studies have found that students who attend socioeconomically integrated schools K-12–within a range of 30-70% FRL–have higher levels of student achievement and postsecondary education regardless of the students’ economic level. In other words, the benefits accrue to students of low and higher income. And the impact is not just on academics– students at schools in these studies also demonstrated more empathy and civic engagement in their teens and adult lives than peers who attended schools that were either high poverty or low poverty. And a study published just this week by Columbia University shows that the impact of socioeconomic diversity begins at a very early age. In the study of preschool programs, students who attended mixed income preschools gained more language and math skills than peers in less diverse programs, again, regardless of income level, race, or ethnicity and even when controlling for teacher quality.
Clearly, even achieving a socioeconomically integrated student body is hard work on its own. But, once you get it, tending to that diversity so that students benefit from it requires lots of careful, courageous work. For some in my community back in Atlanta, pursuing this goal seems big and overwhelming and maybe not even worth it–like it won’t make a difference for students once they leave us and go out into a world in which segregation and inequality are plenty. But, in my mind, that’s precisely the point. Aside from the benefits that I mentioned earlier, if we give students the opportunity to learn with and from those of different backgrounds in their youth, perhaps we take a step–however small–towards equipping them with the skills, knowledge, and compassion they’ll need to hopefully address the conditions that lead to segregation and inequality and the problems they cause in our society in the first place.
So, again, as charter schools, we’re granted freedom and flexibility so that we may be innovative in our practices to improve student learning. And in so doing, we can serve as models for what works. We’ve shown the impact that student portfolios and exhibitions can make. And advisory, and interdisciplinary teaching, and more. But the biggest contribution we as charter schools can make, I believe, is in showing what can happen when you think differently about the people in the school building. When we overcome the tendency to view teaching as a simple, solo act and instead foster interdependent relationships among teachers that are built on trust and collaboration. When we use our flexibility as charter schools to overcome the forces that separate students based on income and instead prove that students and society have more to gain from diversity in our classrooms. These are the innovations that can truly transform the outcomes of the educational experience for our students, and if we aren’t using them, then we must ask ourselves Parker’s essential question for this year: What’s stopping us?