Starting Up: Critical Lessons from 10 New Schools

Citation

Gallagher Browne, E. (2013), "Starting Up: Critical Lessons from 10 New Schools", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 51 No. 2, pp. 238-241. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578231311304742

Starting Up: Critical Lessons from 10 New Schools, edited by Lisa Arrastía and Marvin Hoffman, offers a glimpse into the history of the progressive small school movement and practical advice to would‐be new school entrepreneurs through the experiences of ten small school start‐ups. When new schools began to emerge in the mid‐1970s, the founders were driven by a vision and commitment to social justice. Entrepreneurial educators and practitioners “seized on opportunities to do things that hadn’t been done before for populations that had not been served well by existing schools” (p. 1). The new schools included in the book were created to counteract the extreme educational inequity that exists in urban schools and to demonstrate that “progressive education was not the exclusive domain of wealthy private and suburban schools” (p. 1). The start‐up stories derive from the founders of the small schools that laid the groundwork for the current charter school movement.

The first five chapters of Starting Up cover the years between 1974 and 1998, with each chapter identifying the challenges faced by the school founders of Central Park East School (Chapter 1), North Kenwood Oakland Charter School (Chapter 2), Urban Academy High School (Chapter 3), Maya Angelou Public Charter School (Chapter 4), and The Met (Chapter 5). The schools in the second half of the book, beginning with 1999, emerge from the politically charged and “data driven to distraction” (p. 2) era of No Child Left Behind, in which private charters and corporate takeovers promise to deliver educational achievement to failing urban schools. El Colegio Charter School (Chapter 6), City as Classrooms School (Chapter7), Khalil Gibran International Academy (Chapter 8), Social Justice High School (Chapter 9), and the High School for Recording Arts (Chapter 10) are new schools that emerged from the social, political, and economic challenges of the era of accountability, aspiring to “continue to move farther and faster toward their vision, rather than retreat from it” (p. 78).

The lessons shared in each chapter reflect the experiences and situations of the founding members. In Chapter 1, Deborah Meir writes about starting the first K‐6 progressive school in East Harlem, Central Park East (CPE), and the challenges of procuring space, supplies, staff, end even students. The story of how she and others started CPE concludes with a short, but powerful list of recommendations: “start with a core of like‐minded and self‐confident, experienced practitioners” (p. 10); “work out ways to have plenty of time for faculty to be together” (p. 10); spend time to work “out the relationships with the families of one's own students” (p. 10); keep it simple, “so that the people involved can spend their attention on getting right what cannot be simplified” (p. 10). Meir states, finally, that the key for any good public institution is to always be “prepared to be a learning institution not just for student, but for the entire school community” (p. 11).

In Chapter 2, Marvin Hoffman relates the start‐up of North Kenwood Oakland (NKO) Charter School in Chicago. Through a strong partnership with the University of Chicago, NKO “aspired to be a resource for strengthening existing public schools” (p. 14) amidst opposition from the unions against the newly passed charter law in 1997. The immediate, time consuming challenges of the NKO start‐up were the operational and safety issues, such as fire codes and sprinkler systems, however, the school's establishment turned to ethical and budgetary issues regarding hiring decisions. Ultimately, the staff was a mix of experienced teachers who “could ride through the rough spots that even the best‐planned start up was sure to encounter” (p. 17) and new teachers, who “command lower salaries and impose less strain on the meager budgets of charter schools” (p. 17). Hoffman covers a broad range of topics in an elegant chapter that tells the story of distributed leadership, curricular decisions, race, and social justice. Reflecting on his experiences at NKO, he ends with the advice that “without attention to community, little of value can be accomplished to advance children's learning” (p. 30).

Ann Cook and Phyllis Tashlik introduce their chapter (Chapter 3) about Urban Academy High School by setting the current context of the growing corporatization of education relying on business models and data from the “testing frenzy” that values teachers only for “their ability to raise test scores” (p. 34). Urban Academy emphasizes inquiry‐based education and set out to serve students “whose prior high school experience had been designed by failure” (p. 37). The school's vision, to create “an intellectually stimulating environment that nurtures and challenges students and staff” (p. 38), was forged on teachers knowing their students, and therefore, their voices being “critical to the school's direction and success” (p. 39). Schools such as Urban Academy, where professional practice and shared decision making are the hallmarks of success, Cook and Tashlik caution, must remain vigilant regarding DOE policies that chip away “at the school's culture […] requiring staff and principal to spend valuable time and energy sorting out what principles are critical to defend, which DOE directives can be ignored, and which can be ‘reframed’ so as to protect the school's mission” (p. 43).

Entrepreneurism, education, and social justice are portrayed in Chapter 4, written by James Forman, Jr and David Domenici, in the story of the Maya Angelou Public Charter School in Washington, DC. From Juvenile Court, to Pizza Shop and tutoring programme, to a Charter School that includes two high schools and a middle school, the mission of the founders remains the same: “to serve the city's most underserved students” (p. 60). The story of Maya Angelou Charter School relates how vision, energy, and commitment to purpose sustains the “valuable and meaningful work” (p. 60) that grew out of the desire to offer young people who hade been arrested a second chance.

Chapter 5 is a reminiscence by the founders of Big Picture Learning and the first Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center (MET) in Providence, Rhode Island in 1996. The transcribed conversation between Elliot Washor and Dennis Littky cover everything from the bold move to start the MET before receiving final approval from the Rhode Island DOE, stating that it is a big mistake to “do so much planning that nothing ever gets off the drawing board” (p. 62), to selection of principals, to sustainability and fidelity to the Big Learning model. Even with the success of 15 years of Big Learning, however, the authors finish the chapter with a reminder that there are always uncertainties when starting a school or engaging students. Dealing with uncertainties can be exciting, challenging, and stressful, but ultimately contributes to achieving a high‐quality school.

El Colegio Charter School in Minneapolis, approved by the Minnesota DOE in 1999, was established by four funding members with shared “beliefs in equitable education for Latino students” and a “commitment to using the arts to create social and academic relevancy in the lives of youth” (p. 82). In Chapter 6, David Greenberg, one of the founders, relates the start‐up of El Colegio, a bi‐lingual arts‐based high school from hiring staff to finding students and negotiating for space. Greenberg's account of signing over $2,000,000 in bonds to build, renovate, and equip the school, provides a reality check to the business of starting a school.

Written in a self‐talk, self‐reflective format, Chapter 7 takes a 180‐degree turn from the successful start‐up stories in the first six chapters, as Lisa Arrastía tells the dramatic story of the failed City as Classroom School. The Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS) promise of a new high school in response to a 19 day hunger strike by residents of the Little Village community, was thwarted at every stage of its development, substantiating Arrastía's claim that “public education's primary concern is that of financial transactions, the art and science of politics, political attitudes and positions, the aggregate and complex of relationships of power and authority” (p. 114).

Misunderstanding and mistrust, prejudice and racial tension pervade the start‐up stories in Chapters 8 and 9. Debbie Almontaser's dream of creating the first English‐Arabic bi‐lingual school in the country, Khalil Gibran International Academy in New York City, which “emphasized inquiry‐based, project‐based learning that exposed students to multiple perspectives” (p. 121) eventually opened, but without her as principal. Social Justice High School, the CPS promise to Little Village that finally opened in 2005, suffered from conflicts between black and Latino students, drawing negative attention to the school, and leading to the politically charged termination of start‐up principal, Rito Martinez. Despite the personal cost to founders, the critical lessons from the new school planners is that “the implementations of and fidelity to a school's core beliefs could give life to a school” (p. 148).

The final chapter brings the stories and passions of the founders with new educational visions to a positive and musical closure. The High School for Recording Arts charter school in St. Paul, MN was conceptualized in a van ride home from the Million Man March in Washington, DC. Ex‐rapper and recording artist, David “TC” Ellis recounts putting together an educational programme that validated competency, instead of awarding credit for seat time. Ellis solicited help from others in the music industry to piece together the music recording side, as he immediately saw “that the music had a powerful ability to attract students and engage them” (p. 152).

In Starting Up: Critical Lessons from 10 New Schools, editors Arrastía and Hoffman bring to light the passion and commitment of the people dedicated to improving educational opportunities for disadvantaged youth. For educators at all levels, the lessons are both poignant and heartbreaking, offering insight and points to consider when taking on the daunting task of creating a new school. The historical development and changing political and social context framing the current charter schools movements will be of interest to educators and researchers. There is plenty of food for thought, too, for the dreamers, the educators who see the only option to support disenfranchised and disadvantaged youth is through new, bold schools that challenge the status quo, and who “don’t have enough sense not to try it” (p. 159).

About the reviewer

Evelyn Gallagher Browne is an occasional adjunct at Rowan University and the full‐time Director of Curriculum and Instruction in the Folsom School District, a PreK‐8 district in rural southern New Jersey. Her adventures in education cover the continuum from early childhood, through elementary and middle school, alternative programs for early school leavers in Ireland, cooperative education, community development, and adult programs for women reintegrating into the workforce.