Learning from charter schools: Lessons for educators
HGSE Senior Lecturer Katherine Merseth
Charter schools educate less than 2% of the U.S. student population, but they consistently generate disproportionate levels of controversy and debate. What are the advantages and limitations of charter schools, and what lessons do they offer all educators? HGSE Senior Lecturer on Education Katherine Merseth tackles these critical questions in her new book, Inside Urban Charter Schools: Promising Practices and Strategies in Five High-Performing Schools, a study of five high-performing charter schools.1 In this Usable Knowledge video interview, Merseth distills some of the critical insights from the intensive interviews and focus group research she conducted with the assistance of five HGSE doctoral students.
Controversy surrounding charter schools
There are several prominent themes underlying the heated debate on charter schools. HGSE Senior Lecturer Katherine (Kay) Merseth summarizes them this way:
- Charter schools “emanate from political processes that touch on long-standing ideological debates about vouchers, markets, and choice.” Some view charters as a cousin to vouchers which conceive education as a private good best regulated by the markets and individual choice. Others, including the current administration, “have come to envision charters a bit differently, as an instrument for greater equity—affording alternatives to those who otherwise would be stuck in failing schools.”
- Charter school advocates claim that reform from within existing school systems can be a slow and cumbersome process. Supporters of the traditional system argue that charter schools are still too new to be considered a proven path to successful school reform.
- Students who attend charters take with them per-pupil funding. Since a district's cost of education remains fixed, districts may be forced to make program and staff cuts as a result.
- Charter school advocates sometimes put forth a “we can do it better” attitude that can heighten tensions with traditional public schools.
Merseth tackles the charter school debate in her new book, Inside Urban Charter Schools, by offering an in-depth analysis of high-performing charter schools in Massachusetts that serve predominantly low-income and minority students.
Advantages of charter schools and challenges faced
One important difference between charter schools and traditional schools is the size of the student body: Charters tend to be much smaller, with enrollment sizes in the low hundreds. This is a key advantage, because it is easier to form a community and to facilitate more student-teacher interaction. However, Merseth and the researchers did not find that a smaller student body automatically translates into higher per-pupil expenditure. Though per student spending is lower than in traditional public schools, these five schools did have other advantages over traditional public schools. In this clip, Merseth explains the characteristics of these charters that allow them to be nimble—but that also burden them with challenges traditional schools do not face.
Free from inefficient bureaucracies and with a non-unionized staff, charter schools are able to mobilize quickly, and to institute changes faster than traditional schools. As “schools of choice,” charters may be more likely to appeal to well-informed parents and students. However, as start-ups, charters have both a clean slate for innovation and additional challenges, such as finding a school building, managing finances, and legal issues.
The key to high performance charter schools
In the following video clip, Merseth outlines key factors contributing to the outstanding performance of the five charter schools that she studied: Community Day Charter Public School, Roxbury Preparatory Charter School, Boston Collegiate Charter School, The Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter School, and MATCH Charter School.
These five schools demonstrate that coherence that starts from strong leadership is critical for their high-performance.
External structure or instructional strategy?
These five charter schools are consistently high performers on the Massachusetts high-stakes standardized test, the MCAS. How have they been able to achieve this? In the last video clip, Kay Merseth speculates that the structure surrounding instruction may be more important than the actual instruction/pedagogy itself. Merseth concludes by examining the consequences of teaching styles that are geared for test performance rather than deep understanding.
Despite relatively low-cognitive demand instruction, students in these charter schools are successful on the high-stakes testing due to the structure of instruction. This includes coherence on the part of teachers and a culture that enforces doing whatever it takes to help students succeed. On the other hand, charter schools' sense of urgency serves as an important lesson, not only to other schools, but to society as a whole. Student learning and achievement must be a matter of priority.
Transferrable lessons
Merseth believes that insights move between charters and traditional schools—in both directions. For instance, charters, which currently focus on teaching fundamental skills, can learn from traditional schools how to use more “cognitively engaging” instructional strategies, such as arguing, defending, and evaluating. Traditional schools can also model working effectively with second language learners and special education populations. On the other side are lessons from successful charters that are transferable to regular public school settings:
- Create a strong culture where “norms, attitudes, and beliefs… must be a positive and respectful—one that is supportive and encouraging of learning for all adults and children.”
- Ensure that all aspects of a school are working in concert with each other. Merseth states that “good schools, such as those described in Inside Urban Charter Schools, exhibit a stunning clarity of mission. Teachers, administrators, families, and students in these schools all articulate the mission of their school with clarity of common language and shared beliefs. Nothing is ambiguous about the work of these schools; no one works at cross purposes.”
- Hold high expectations for both students and families. In some instances charters require contracts to be signed by both parents and students, holding them equally responsible for such success factors as arriving on time, receiving tutoring, and completing homework.
- Improve continuously by changing practices that do not serve students well and adding those that contribute.
A key element in the success of the schools studied in this book is a “‘can-do’ attitude”. Having a positive, enthusiastic and determined core of educators who will seek out any means to help students learn and achieve is fundamental—not only to the success of charters, but to all schools.
By Martha Ferede, HGSE doctoral student in Higher Education
1 Inside Urban Charter Schools: Promising Practices and Strategies in Five High-Performing Schools is published by the Harvard Education Press.
Professional Development:
For more than 25 years, the Harvard Graduate School of Education has offered professional education programs for educational leaders. We are committed to offering programs that make a difference—in the lives of students, in the work of institutions, and in the practice of educators.
Recent professional development offerings with Kay Merseth:
Published: March 2009
