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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2006 > July > 09 > Entry
Our School: Chasing dreams by rewriting the rules
Diminutive Selena gripped two sides of a basketball with uncertainty before finally giving in to the shouting principal/coach on the sideline, begging her to shoot.
She shot-putted the ball forward … and watched it sail wide of the backboard by two feet.
Selena was one of the key players on the most unlikely girls basketball team ever to win a high school game — a team that “Our School” author Joanne Jacobs hilariously describes as “the shortest basketball team in America.”
“Our School” is not about sports, but this team — eight girls hovering around five feet tall, among the few at their school who could muster the C average required to play — is the perfect metaphor for the academically undermanned students that San Jose’s Downtown College Prep charter school promises to someday send to college.
The Lady Lobos are mostly Mexican immigrants who know little about the game they’ve decided to play and are short of skills needed to succeed. But with enough “ganas” — Spanish for desire — perhaps they can somehow pull out a victory.
Likewise, “DCP students enter the school academic losers,” Jacobs writes. “They don’t know how to play the game. By the standards of middle-class high schools, DCP students aren’t really in the game. But they keep working, they get better. If they stick with it, they’ll win a college education.”
Jacobs is the education reporter and former columnist for the San Jose Mercury News now nationally known for her popular education blog, www.joannejacobs.com. “Our School” is her book chronicling the years she spent observing as two idealistic teachers attempted to write their own rules and build a high expectations high school for low performing kids in an impoverished, gang-ridden inner city.
The book is both a pleasingly written, novel-like tale of kids who struggle — and mostly win — against tough odds and something of a guide for would-be school charter school developers, complete with a “how to start a charter school” chapter as an appendix.
For the motivated teacher, or otherwise inspired individual, who has thought of breaking out on their own to start their own charter school, Jacobs’ book is really a must read. The “Lessons Learned” chapter alone is filled with telling stories and sage advice from DCP’s founders.
For instance, they sorely underestimated how much catching up their entering ninth graders would need on very basic skills after years of neglect in the school system. It wasn’t enough to set high expectations and seek to inspire them. The kids, plain and simple, needed to know how the speak English and multiply. As a result, DCP ended up much more structured and regimented than anyone ever expected because that’s what the kids needed.
The school leaders also had to come to terms with the necessity of tossing kids out, especially for misbehavior. DCP throws out a lot of kids, a detail likely to catch the eye of charter critics, who complain that other public schools would love to have that nuclear bomb in the war to maintain discipline and order. “Our School” makes the point many times that discipline is a key. The leaders believe rules must be enforced consistently and unwaveringly, and they don’t hesitate to expel even kids they like who fail to get with the program.
DCP’s success is undeniable by the book’s end. Just as the short kids on the girls basketball team work hard, get better, begin to compete and finally actually taste real victory, so their classmates, too, are reborn in academic success. All that stick with DCP to the end go to college and the school’s test scores ultimately rank among the best around.
Still, the future of the school is far from certain. Teacher turnover is heavy. By its very nature, Jacobs tells us, the school tends to attract young dreamers to its teaching staff — not the types to work at one school and retire 30 years later. By the book’s end, one of the founders is even working on getting out.
Sustainability is a big question for charter schools, even excellent ones like DCP.
I also wonder if “Our School” won’t someday be viewed as a period piece, unique to the early days of the charter movement when the romantic vision was that pioneering teachers would break free from bureaucracy and reinvent education.
In fact, the “mom-and-pop” charter schools — truly independent and run by local folks — may be a dying breed. An ever increasing share of charters are run by national management companies, such as Edison Schools and Heritage Academies, and more recently, non-profits and school districts themselves.
Even so, as the charter movement continues to grow, Jacobs has done a nice job encapsulating what these new public schools are supposed to be about and how they are different from traditional public schools. It’s a good primer for the average parent — those who’ve heard of charters but not really sure what they are exactly. And the story is an enjoyable ride right to the end.
“Pulled by my mother’s dreams, I walked barefoot across the border from Mexico,” Selena’s begins her college essay. “I was six years old.”
But with wild basketball misses behind her, on track for a diploma and a college scholarship awaiting, Selena will cross the commencement stage ready to chase her own dreams.
Note: I corrected Selena’s story at the end here. She has already earned a scholarship, but has not yet graduated.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice
Comments
By Oldprof
July 10, 2006 8:24 AM | Link to this
Jacobs, that depends on your definition of “failed”. Saying that most students show more growth is bogus when several charters closed in their first few years (taking their underachieving students out of the charter mix and foisting them on the publics) and when charters that do survive can practice selective admissions and arbitrary expulsion. Note that Harvard and Yale students wind up at the top of their profession much more often than those who start at Sinclair Community College (or, for you Californians, Golden West)—but Sinclair (and all CCs) admits everybody, whereas the Ivy Leagues skim the cream. Your points about discipline being essential for education are valid, but public schools are not permitted to impose it at the same degree as privates or charters. No competent researcher would make quick and absolute conclusions based on non-random populations and unequal treatments—you shouldn’t either.By Joanne Jacobs
July 10, 2006 1:42 AM | Link to this
Very few California charters have failed. According to Rand, students in California charter schools show more growth than similar students in non-charters. Only 10 percent of charters are run by for-profit chains and few are making a profit. BTW, Selena got a full scholarship to Santa Clara University. She’s going into her junior year.By Scott Elliott
July 10, 2006 12:51 AM | Link to this
Old Prof: Well, some certainly argue that those pushing charter schools as policy had corporate profits in mind from the start. But the fact remains that many early charter schools were begun by idealistic educators. In Dayton alone, five of the first six charter schools were true “mom-and-pop”operations — City-Day, WOW, Richard Allen, Rhea and ISUS — for the most part run by folks who were inspired by the promise of freedom charters offered. But new charters are much less frequently run by unaffiliated dreamers.By Oldprof
July 9, 2006 9:38 PM | Link to this
We rejoice in any successes. And we should note that most charters in California have already failed miserably, despite the isolated short-term success stories. But Scott, surely you’re not wide-eyed enough to think that the charter movement was EVER about “pioneering teachers who would break free from bureaucracy and re-invent education.” It was ALWAYS about Edison and National Heritage and the other corporations who looked upon public education and saw potential for profit. Our money-driven elected officials would never have supported charters if campaign donations hadn’t been attached. Why don’t we just acknowledge that fact up front, follow the money straight from White Hat through Fordham to John Husted, and at least acknowledge that a conservative Republican state government doesn’t like idealistic, innovative naifs as much as they love Ken Lay types?