Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Saturday, June 17, 2006
Charters: Only on the chain gang?
When I first met him back in 1999, Dick Penry was a recently retired and widely beloved 30-year principal in the Dayton school system. And Penry was thrilled with his new retirement project — starting a charter school from scratch.
It was interesting to talk to Penry then and he’s interesting to talk to now. Back then, he was just what the charter school movement said it was about — he was an educator who cared deeply for kids and had new ideas for helping them learn but had spent most of his career doing all he could to protect his small enclaves of quality.
With a charter school, Penry in theory could be freed from the constraints of the school district and could push the envelope, limited only of his ability to think innovatively.
But this week, Penry’s school decided to go back under the district’s umbrella and cease to be a charter school altogether.
And in a recent conversation, Penry was adamant that individual operators like he was — the so called “mom and pop” charter school operator — is ultimately doomed. Penry believes to make a charter school work, every school will have to be affiliated with a strong supervisory partner — either a charter school management company chain like Edison Schools or Heritage Academies or a school district.
Dayton was unique early on in that it’s charter school movement was mostly mom and pop. Of the first six schools that opened here in 1998-99, only one — the Edison Schools-affiliated Dayton Academy — was part of a national chain. The others were Penry’s WOW school; the Richard Allen Academy run by Jeanette Harris; Monica Rhea’s Rhea Academy; ISUS Trade and Tech Prep begun by Ann Higdon; and the City-Day Community School, begun by four teachers.
Amazingly, all these schools are all still operating. Rhea and City-Day have barely hung on through financial difficulties and trouble with the state. But ISUS is a charter school star, training dropouts for industrial and technology jobs, and Richard Allen has grown into a mini-chain of its own with four campuses.
Penry was an early pioneer when it came to partnering, even as some old friends considered him a public school traitor. WOW was the state’s first “conversion” charter. Penry forged a contract that allowed him to use a district school building and hire union teachers.
But even with those advantages, the school was bogged down with costs and operational red tape, whether it be buying curriculum, computers or school lunches, or complying with financial reporting rules.
The advantage of direct affiliation with a larger entity, be it a school district or a management company, is two-fold — expertise and purchasing power. Having a big brother to handle those administrative tasks may be necessary to clear the cobwebs so the school can focus on teaching and learning.
Perhaps this explains the WOW school’s struggles. I visited the school many times over the years and it deserved its reputation as a great school. It was a disciplined, interactive environment with an energized, collaborative staff.
Penry was the dynamic leader he’s always been. Once, he invited me to a routine parent meeting at which the school was to plan an annual spaghetti dinner event. I got there a couple minutes late and they had to bring me a chair because the room already was full of parents. The more the meeting went on, the more chairs they had to find. By the end, I’d bet there were 35 or 40 parents at the meeting.
Contrast that to any PTA meeting you’ve ever been to. Usually, it’s a handful of core volunteers and that’s about it. When I left WOW that night, the highest compliment a school could earn crossed my mind as I pulled out of the lot: “I’d send my kids to this school.”
Even so, WOW underperformed academically. With an enrollment that mirrored the district in terms of poverty and other obstacles, Penry was sure WOW could do better and he was perplexed by test scores that usually didn’t beat the district averages by much.
Finally, in 2004, he decided maybe he was the problem. After more disappointing scores Penry told me he thought it was time for someone else to give it a try and announced his retirement — again — from education.
On Tuesday, new principal Cleaster Jackson told the school board the WOW’s new status as a “contract” school with the district was a good deal for both sides.
For the district, WOW’s rapidly improving test scores will count in the district averages and the school’s enrollment counts for the district too.
For WOW, “we’re going to get the best of both worlds,” Jackson said. “We’ll keep some of our autonomy as a governing board but we won’t have to take some of the steps we used to take as part of a large district. And we’ll get all the benefits of a large district and the excellent services here.”
Still, doesn’t it seem odd to think that the charter school movement some day may not have a place for the little guy?
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