Charter districts: when an entire district goes charter, do benefits follow? A study casts doubts

School Administrator, June, 2002 by Anne Turnbaugh Lockwood

Why not, they asked, free Cartersville's teachers and school leaders from these bounds by becoming a district with all charter schools? To support this initiative, the board of education and superintendent provided school improvement grants for schools to explore the charter option.

Energized Teams

Speaking to teams of teachers and administrators attending a system leadership retreat, Harold Barnett, who was the superintendent until June 1999, said: "I cannot ask of you anymore than you are doing now. Our system is performing at its peak. If it is possible to do better than we are doing, it must come from within the teaching ranks of the schools."

He challenged each school to think outside the "2 x 4 x 6 x 9 x 12 box;" referring to two covers of the book, four walls of the classroom, six class periods of a day and nine months in the school year for 12 grades. If that meant throwing out binding regulations, standards and laws that focused on needless procedures and perfunctory processes rather than student outcomes, then let it be so.

Energized yet somewhat skeptical, our school leadership teams, comprised of students, parents, teachers, administrators and community members, began navigating uncharted territory as we accepted the challenge to restructure and redesign how we would deliver educational services to all children, At first, our teams seemed to have more questions than answers about turning all four schools (a primary for pre-kindergarten through 2nd grade, an elementary, a middle school and a high school) into charters:

* Would the board of education and superintendent really loosen the reins?

* Are our teachers willing to put their reputations on the line?

* How do we differentiate between change for the sake of change and meaningful change?

* How do we move from "fixing the blame" to "fixing the system?"

* How should our autonomous group be governed at each site?

* What are our guiding principles and beliefs?

* What skills and knowledge do we want the students to acquire at various stages of their education?

* How do we define the expected levels of proficiency?

Apprehensive Board

After hours of self-reflecting, debate, research reviews, visits to other programs and strategic planning, a charter proposal supported by all stakeholders surfaced. A renewed sense of excitement, partnership and commitment emerged. Working as a team, stakeholders began to take responsibility. This would not be an initiative driven from the top.

Working smarter not harder, we proposed redesigning the way we packaged and delivered instruction, deployed staff, scheduled classes, grouped and assessed students, provided professional development opportunities, allocated resources and involved all stakeholders in the education of children.

Each schools' charter was designed to address the unique needs of that age population. The high school's primary focus was scheduling and attendance. The school day was restructured using the 4 x 4 block scheduling plan to provide uninterrupted in-depth instruction designed to address varied learning modalities. It also would expose students to more content--eight rather than the traditional six courses in a school year.