Just how different ARE charter schools? Everyone knows that their governance is freer, their budgets leaner and their longevity less certain than regular public schools, but how different is what actually goes on inside them? Is it anything that students, parents and teachers would notice? Anything that might make them produce better results? Anything that the rest of American education might learn from? If not, the whole charter enterprise may amount to little, a comet flashing across the sky, perhaps, but not the new education solar system that its boosters and backers claim.
With the charter phenomenon barely a decade old, it's too soon for definitive judgments. But evidence is trickling in. A new study conducted for the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation adds to that stream. Named "Autonomy and Innovation: How Do Massachusetts Charter School Principals Use Their Freedom?" and available ONLY on the web (at http://www.edexcellence.net/detail/news.cfm?news_id=18), it was conducted by Bill Triant, a former Boston public-school teacher now studying education and business at Stanford, who interviewed eight Bay State charter principals on five dimensions of school operations.
He found exciting seedbeds of new approaches in which "charter principals are using the freedom granted to them to create schools that would not be possible if the charter law did not exist." With respect to personnel, for example, Triant reports that, while seven of the eight principals "believed that the system of teacher hiring in their charter school is better than the system in comparable district schools," their reasons ranged all over the map. Two focused on their ability to hire non-certified teachers. "What I need," said one, is "people who are highly intelligent, prestigious college background, articulate, they like kids. They know what it means to work on a team. They are visionaries of a sort....Certification is a guarantee of nothing to me."
Other principals in Triant's sample were glad to have the option but preferred to hire state-licensed instructors. Several commented that because they, rather than a downtown office, made hiring decisions, they had better odds of finding "teachers who would suit their school missions." Five remarked on their ability to off-load unsatisfactory teachers with "reasonable ease" and several prized their operational flexibility to do things like hold after-school meetings without fear of violating the union contract. The union, one noted, "encourages teachers to punch in in the morning and leave at the gong." He also deplored conventional school systems' propensity to "slow down the go-getters." Another said she sought people "who want to come in at six and leave after six, who are willing to come to extra school events, who want to be on the ground floor creating processes and procedures for a school that will be around for a long time."
Even in Triant's small sample, much variation surfaced. Just one principal found building-level hiring a costly bother. Most relished their freedom and authority on the personnel front, while exercising it in notably different ways. For example, of the two principals who remarked that they were getting better quality teachers than comparable district schools, one noted that he was paying higher salaries while the other "expected more of her teachers and paid them less," at least in part to assure that "those who took the job really were imbued with the mission of the school." Another perceptive principal with long experience in the district system commented that "There are better teachers in the public school system percentage-wise than there are teachers in the charter school system. The problem is that those teachers in the public school system are being held under a thumb....no you can't do that, no, no, no, no, we can't work with that curriculum....Does that leave the teacher with any autonomy? No."
Triant's anecdotes show more than the fascinating variability that other charter-school analysts have noted. They also show that, with rare exceptions, these principals are bent on finding very special people for their teaching posts - but have sharply differing notions about how to locate and attract them.
His study also examines other aspects of charter-school diversity and the benefits of freedom. Though the sample is small and the methodology informal, it opens a new and welcome window onto the charter phenomenon. From it, we also learn something timely and important about school principals, who recently were shown (by Public Agenda, in Trying to Stay Ahead of the Game) to be especially frustrated and exasperated by the bureaucracy, red tape and politics that ensnarls them in regular school systems. We learn from Triant that they are prepared to do more than gripe! At least for those school leaders who gravitate to charter schools, freedom does make a difference. When the opportunity presents itself to innovate, they do so. When the shackles are lifted, they do things differently.
What a splendid end-of-year holiday gift we would make to America's hundred thousand principals, and the millions of children attending their schools, if we were to confer upon them all the blessing of freedom and the invitation to innovate. Meanwhile, my thanks to Bill Triant for the timely gift he has made to our understanding of charter schools and those who lead them.
"Autonomy and Innovation: How Do Massachusetts Charter School Principals Use Their Freedom?" by Bill Triant, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, December 2001
Trying to Stay Ahead of the Game: Superintendents and Principals Talk About School Leadership, Public Agenda, October 2001
