Charter School Hiring Practices: A Limit to Growth?

Jay Mathews, the Washington Post education columnist and charter school supporter, writes in today's column about an American Enterprise Institute paper by Stephen F. Wilson that examined the hiring practices at No Excuses charter schools in Boston. The paper specifically looks that the selectivity of the colleges that charter school staffers attended. It argues that since there is a limit to the number of Ivy League and comparable school alumni who will work in urban schools, the growth of No Excuses charter schools will be limited. Mathews thinks that Wilson is onto something when he suggests that these schools turn to "innovative curriculum models of years ago" like SRA, Direct Instruction and Core Knowlege. I think Mathews didn't quite think through his logic here, and I was going to write a whole response about it, but the first comment on the WaPo website (by researcher2) summed it up the point perfectly for me:

"A couple of comments.I see a major contradiction. Wilson says one reason they do so well is "They want staffers to produce their own lesson plans and, through trial and error and consultation with other teachers, figure out what works best in raising the achievement of students who are often two or three years below grade level when they enroll."
And then says public schools need not fear because they could/should do this "If teachers were provided a powerful instructional system -- placement tests and guides for class formation; a sequential, content-rich curriculum tightly linked to state standards and taught to mastery; frequent electronic assessments; detailed pacing charts, and so on -- then skilled career educators of varying backgrounds might be able to achieve results similar to those posted by the No Excuses schools,”

The reason public school teachers get dismayed and burned out is because they are doing exactly what he suggests just above, and are not often given permission to do what the charter schools want their teachers to do: create their own lesson plans and see what is working/not working with THEIR students.

I think the key is the independence the charter schools have, and the collaboration that exists within the school (between principals and teachers) and the collaboration between the school and the community. In public schools teachers find out what the new fad is when they are told to go to a training i.e. their input is not asked for, collaboration is a foreign concept. And in the community, how many stories do you have to come across to realize that often in public schools the parents are the last to know of a major change, again no collaboration.

While the Ivy League teachers aspect is certainly interesting, I firmly believe the majority of public school teachers, whether from a level 5 school or a level 1, if they felt connected to the school in the fashion I gather the charter school teachers feel connected, if they felt valued as a professional, like the charter school teachers feel, you would see the same results in students' achievement."

Thanks researcher2.

BTW, the study looked at the following schools: Academy of the Pacific Rim, Edward Brooke, Boston Collegiate, Excel Academy, Boston Prep, MATCH, Roxbury Prep and the KIPP Academy Lynn.