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I have been hanging around charter school operators for the past few days, and the experience has left me with some complicated — and perhaps contradictory — thoughts about a movement that I have been following since 1988.

I love the energy, intelligence and dedication of the people I spent time with, but I left the annual meeting of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools in Minneapolis with some concerns. I think they need to do a better job of choosing their friends and of refining their message, among other issues.

For what it’s worth, here’s my thinking.

Remember: the “charter movement’ is a still blip on the screen. It consists of 5,000 charter schools and 2.4 million students. But America has more than 100,000 schools and more than 55 million students, making it not all that much bigger than the homeschooling movement, which encompasses close to 1.5 million students. This is not Hertz and Avis, more like Hertz and Acme Rent-a-Car of Poughkeepsie. (I made that company up, so don’t bother taking me to task about it.)

I left Minneapolis with the sense that the leadership believes that Charter Management Organizations and Charter Networks are the future. Stand-alone charter schools are put down as ‘Mom and Pop’ schools, and only the biggies are eligible for the newly established Broad Prize for Charter Schools of $250,000 (which went to Houston’s YES Prep Network).

Much of the talk was about “going to scale,” the notion of mass replication of apparently successful strategies. Just what would ‘going to scale’ mean, anyway, in the charter school world? Tripling or quadrupling in size? Big deal! (Go back to the numbers in the fourth paragraph above, and do the math.)

And what is it that they want to take to scale? Seems like it’s all about test scores, and that sounds like school district talk, like Washington’s “Race to the Top” talk.

Another problem with embracing “replication” is the stifling effect on innovation. If I were going to apply for a charter school, I wouldn’t stand a chance, because the school I would want to create would not have ‘senior year’ as you recognize it. I might even eliminate ‘junior year.’ Instead, I would spend those dollars on the early years, enrolling three- and four-year-olds. My ‘juniors’ and ‘seniors’ would be taking college courses and would finish school with high school diplomas and Associates Degrees or Career Certification.

I will wager that there are lots more wild ideas like that out there, but, with the dollars flowing to networks and schools that can supposedly ‘go to scale,’ what chance do they have? Perhaps the guiding spirit of the charter movement ought to be “Let one hundred flowers bloom.”

The Broad Foundation could help here, by establishing a “Rookie of the Year” award, a la Major League Baseball. It wouldn’t have to be $250,000, but it should be substantial. Eli Broad got where he is by taking chances, as his recent autobiography makes clear. The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation ought not to be creating disincentives to future risk-takers.

Another problem for me: From day one, charter schools have had problems getting their message across, and even now I will wager that most Americans have no real clue as to what charter schools actually are. I think that charter schools ought to be saying — often and loudly — “We are public education!” Let that sink in, and then go into the weeds with an explanation. Because, after all, charter schools are public schools.

And that’s why I think the charter movement has to do a better job of choosing its friends. I believe that its natural allies are the other men and women who work elsewhere in public education, the 3.2 million public school teachers. I know all about the narrow-mindedness and selfishness of many leaders of school boards and unions, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s within the army of teachers that charter school people are most likely to find understanding and support.

In the keynote panel I moderated, Howard Fuller, the legendary firebrand and former superintendent of schools in Milwaukee, pointed out that charter schools were supported across the spectrum by folks who don’t agree on much else: pro- and anti-vouchers, for profit and not for profit, liberals and conservatives, and so on. Well and good, but those who believe (as I do) that charter schools represent an opportunity to provide unprecedented educational opportunity for millions of children ought to be examining the motives of those who embrace charter schools.

Some offer their support — and their money — because they see charter schools as a necessary step toward their ultimate goal of dismantling (destruction) of the public school system. Privatizing is their end game. They don’t want any public schools! So wake up and recognize that a permanent network/system/movement of public charter schools does not figure into the plans of those particular ‘friends’ of yours.

To me, that means charter folks, and their associations, ought to be denying entrance to the tent to those whose end game is inimical to their own health. Reject their support and their money, difficult as that may be to do. Like Othello, you think you know who your friends and enemies are. Like Othello, you are wrong. Unlike Othello, you can do something about it before it’s too late.

Another concern: I believe in going to scale, but what has to get to scale is not one brand of charter school, or even charter schools more broadly. What needs to go to scale are effective ways of educating children. Let’s recognize that this can be done in charter-like public schools. It can be done in any public district that renounces “command and control” as its MO.

That’s why I think the charter movement must be reaching out to create alliances with superintendents who have embraced charter schools and with school boards that support authorization of, or provide facilities for, charter schools. How about a third Broad Prize here?

And finally, if you’ve heard me speak about charter schools, you know I compare them to restaurants. To wit, the name ‘restaurant’ tells you nothing about the quality or even the kind of food being served, just as ‘charter school’ tells you nothing about the education being offered inside. You have to have a meal to even begin to know anything. It’s not enough to read the menu (or the course syllabus and mission statement).

The analogy is apt in another way. We inspect our restaurants because it’s in the public interest to make sure they are following appropriate health procedures. And we close down ones that fail to comply, to keep ourselves from being poisoned.

One thing we have learned from New Orleans and its largely successful system of charter schools is that some form of central authority is essential. Someone must police even the finest ‘system of schools,’ whether charter schools or not. Someone must assure that every school’s behavior code is made public, that protections are in place against arbitrary action against students and teachers, that children with special needs are not discouraged from enrolling, and that the application process is fair for all.

“Trust but verify” is a useful mantra going forward, on many levels.

The charter school movement is the most promising development of my reporting career (which began in 1974). It’s painfully ironic that the dream of innovation is being challenged by the impulse to centralize, replicate and ‘go to scale.’ Maybe someday we will have a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to schooling, but right now we are not even close. Charter schools are a vital work in progress, nothing more. There’s a lot of work ahead.

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Listen to John and Daniel King’s interview:
[audio:http://learningmatters.tv/podcasts/media/MerrowKing2.mp3%5D

“I have seen the future, and it works.” I write those words with some trepidation, because another journalist used those exact words in 1919 and lived to regret it, big time.

If you remember your history, Lincoln Steffens said that after returning from newly Communist Russia. Only later did he see with clarity the harsh cruelty of the Soviet dictatorship.

I’m playing on a much smaller stage, of course, and I am talking about high school, not one of the largest countries in the world.

In two weeks or so, you will be able to see for yourselves what I am so enthusiastic about, because Learning Matters producer Cat McGrath is now editing our two-part report for PBS NewsHour.

Update: it has now aired, and here it is:

But here’s the gist: in 2007, half of the high school students in the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo school district in southeast Texas, on the border with Mexico, dropped out without graduating, just as their parents had done. The district has 31,600 students — it’s 99% Hispanic and 89% economically disadvantaged. It was ‘dropout city,’ with a failure rate that was nearly twice the state average.

Then Daniel King came to town, with Texas-size ambition and three bold plans. First, the new School Superintendent went after the 237 kids who had left school that spring without graduating, to try to persuade them to come back to school. He organized volunteers to go door-to-door to talk with them, with a simple — and counter-intuitive — message: “High school didn’t work, so come on back and let’s try college.”

In an abandoned WalMart store, he created a dropout recovery academy, but he didn’t call it that. It was instead the “College, Career and Technology Academy,” where students would complete their high school requirements, take some actual college courses and develop a connection to a local college or career training facility.

King is a persuasive man. Of the 237 students, he and his team convinced 223 to give education a second chance. That was in the fall of 2007. Very soon his College, Career and Technology Academy will graduate its one thousandth student.

“High school didn’t work, so let’s try college.” What a concept! We know in our gut that high school is a painful rite of passage for most young people, four years held together by friendships (if you’re lucky) but marked by boredom and, often, humiliation.

Why not attack boredom? Make the experience more challenging and interesting?

At the same time, he created a special school where everyone would go to college and high school at the same time. Admission to this small school would be by lottery. Students would spend half their time on the campus of a local college, half at their new school, which he named T-STEM, with the last four letters standing for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (the initial T is, of course, for Texas).

At graduation this spring, 55 of the 80 T-STEM seniors earned their two-year Associates degrees, which they received one week before getting their high school diplomas.

Who are these young people?

Meet 18-year-old Viviana Hernandez, whose parents work in the fields picking crops, as did she during the summers. Here’s part of what she told us.

Since I am a girl, I am required to get up earlier than everybody else. We usually get up at 5:30, get to the field at 6:00, and we don’t come back until like 5:00 or 5:30. Every day. There’s no Saturday, no Sundays. It’s every day, with no summer break at all. I stress out with my college work a lot, but I would rather sit in college classes and take a billion finals than work another day in the fields.

Viviana graduated from high school and community college this spring.

With the success of his dropout recovery school and T-STEM, King made the boldest move of all: import this approach into a huge, comprehensive high school, where being indifferent about education is the standard M.O., where it’s just not cool to be interested in learning.

This idea, ‘early college,’ began appearing in the 1950’s, and, while firm numbers are just about impossible to come by, it’s widely believed that at least 10% of high school juniors and seniors are in some sort of ‘dual enrollment’ program. By and large, these programs attract gifted and/or highly motivated students. What King is doing is pushing the inside of the envelope, in a big way.

He had made this work in a Texas district one-tenth the size, so he was optimistic going in. He’s also a veteran (14 years as a Superintendent) who was named Texas Superintendent of the Year in 2006, the year before he came to Pharr-San Juan-Alamo.

Based on what I saw in PSJA school district, King’s approach has been successfully transplanted to a larger stage. Kids are kids, he might say, and they want to be challenged.

I hung out with some students who had just finished taking their final exam in Economics 101, taught by Laura Leal, an instructor from a local college who travels to Memorial High School to teach her classes.

Leal told me that high school students were in some ways ideal. “It’s kind of like the experience that Adam and Eve had, before the apple. High school students see every challenge as possible; they have their whole future ahead of them.”

And, she added, they haven’t been jaded or corrupted by the anti-intellectualism of the college campus. That culture shock awaits. “Students in high school aren’t really experimenting with life yet. They don’t have the culture shock of being in a dorm because they’re still at home.”

She believes they will enter college more self-assured, not to mention that they will also be quite a few steps down the road to a degree.

The thread that ran through my conversation with the students was ‘respect.’ And students welcomed the higher expectations, even when it meant they missed hours of just hanging out.

“We use a college textbook, it’s a college teacher, it’s college work,” one said proudly.

“The (college) teacher treats us differently. High school teachers are always like ‘do your work , do your work, do your work,’ but this teacher isn’t that way. With her, It’s like ‘there’s the work, there’s the syllabus, and it’s your decision whether you do it or not.’”

“High school teachers kind of baby you,” another said, adding that, if you are failing a high school class, “you’ll get a bunch of extra credit just so you can pass,” but “if you slack off at college, that’s on you” because “you are not considered a kid anymore.”

At Memorial High School, 40% of the graduates have earned at least three college credit hours. And 60 graduating seniors from the district’s comprehensive high schools earned Associates Degrees from a local college.

The State of Texas encourages dual enrollment with financial incentives for colleges and participating high schools, because it wants and needs more graduates and a larger skilled labor force. King saw that opportunity, and his success should encourage others.

Could this be a new paradigm for the American high school? Remember, King is making this work in a district whose dropout rate was almost double the Texas average, with families with no tradition or expectation of higher education.

One final thought: I spent a fair amount of time with Danny King, and never once did I hear him use the word ‘rigorous.’ He’s about challenges, expectations and respect.

I have seen the future. Whether it spreads is not up to me, but I sure hope it catches on.

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I went to graduate school in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and taught at a college in the Commonwealth of Virginia. That makes me two-for-four when it comes to connecting with states that are officially designated as a Commonwealth (the other two being Kentucky and Pennsylvania).

The other 46 states are just that — states.

What brings this to mind is graduation season, a time of closure that ought to be a joyous celebration of life’s next adventure for the millions of young people who have earned diplomas from high school or college.

“Roots and anchors” was my theme when I was the commencement speaker at Richard Stockton State College (NJ) in 1991, where nearly all graduates were the first in their families to earn degrees. I encouraged them to take chances because, I said, they knew who they were (“Roots”) but weren’t constrained by debt (“Anchors”).

Couldn’t say that today, not when more than half of all college graduates leave with significant debt and, often, dim job prospects.

A trend that began during the “me, me, me” years of the Reagan Administration continues to accelerate: states are withdrawing their support for higher education; tuition and fees are going up; and student aid has gone from grants to loans.

Today only 7% of the funding for Ohio State University, the state’s flagship public institution, comes from the State of Ohio. Once “state-supported,” it is now “state-situated,” as the cynics say.

The cost of a year at an elite institution is approaching $60,000. A year of Community College — if you can find room — is now in five figures, and no one gets through Community College in just two years anymore, because so many classes have been eliminated. (My colleague John Tulenko has a piece about community colleges coming up on PBS NewsHour later this month.)

More students are borrowing, and they are borrowing more. The average borrower owes $23,000, and 10% of borrowers owe more than $54,000.

After World War II, America invested in higher education because we saw an educated populace as a common good. The GI Bill declared, in so many words, “If you have the determination and the brains, the country will pay for your college education.” It wasn’t entirely charitable: we didn’t want millions of veterans on the streets, preferring instead to have millions of working, tax-paying citizens. (Higher education largely opposed this, by the way.)

From that policy decision came our great middle class. Pell Grants to low income students opened the door even wider, but that door is also closing. A Pell Grant once paid almost half the cost of attending a state institution; today, less than 25%.

All of this makes me nostalgic for a Commonwealth and all the term implies: a public purpose, a sense of polity, an understanding of the importance of community, a shared belief in institutions, and the conviction that government is essential.

A significant portion of the voting population seems to see ‘government’ as the enemy, and those on the right talk about ‘government schools’ as a root cause of our national problems. The implication is clear: our ‘government’ is not theirs and does not represent them.

The trend toward the privatization of just about everything that moves is deeply disturbing to me. Because of my work, I see it most clearly in public education: profit-seeking charter schools, virtual schools, and voucher campaigns that undercut public education.

We once believed in national service and national sacrifice, but then George W. Bush took us into two wars without asking us to give up any comforts or pay higher taxes. In fact, he urged us to keep shopping. We no longer have a draft or a citizen military — the latter has also been privatized. We were told that we could have it all, without much regard for the other guy or the larger community. Now we know that we cannot.

It’s also true that public education has often been its own worst enemy, with adults protecting other adults while putting children, youth and learning on the back burners.

How do we refocus on the common good? Is that even possible in a time of scarcity, or does a sour economy make ‘every man for himself’ inevitable?

There’s evidence that our young people are ready to unite around a call for a Commonwealth, whether it’s the enthusiasm for Teach for America and other helping programs or the growth of community gardens, community schools, and project-based learning. We yearn to be part of community, to feel the satisfaction of being involved in meaningful actions that help others.

Unfortunately, many of our leaders tap into and inflame our lesser angels of selfishness, reckless individuality and ‘us versus them.’

Who will ask more of us — and trust that we will respond?

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What would the election of Mitt Romney mean for education? Observers are parsing his recent speech and examining his record as Governor of Massachusetts, as they should. Politics isn’t my beat, but I hope some reporters will ask the candidate about Wilfredo Laboy.

Laboy is the former superintendent of schools in Lawrence, Massachusetts, who is probably doing time as you read this. In March he was sentenced to 90 days in a House of Correction, followed by a year of house arrest, 600 hours of community service, and an unspecified amount of restitution, after being found guilty of embezzlement (five counts) and one charge of possession of alcohol on school property. At the sentencing the presiding judge, Essex Superior Court Judge Richard E. Welch, described Laboy’s actions “plainly criminal conduct” and said he “abused his position of trust” as superintendent. Laboy was fired in 2010.

What does this have to do with Mr. Romney? Here’s an excerpt from a column I wrote nine or so years ago, on the subject of hypocrisy in education.

What happens when the school superintendent, 21 certified teachers and more than 40 percent of the town’s high school seniors fail tests they’re required to pass? (In the superintendent’s case, it’s the third time he had failed the basic literacy test.)

(A) No one is punished, and all receive extra support so they have a better chance of passing the retest.
(B) Everyone suffers the consequences. The seniors don’t graduate on time, and the adults are suspended without pay until they pass their tests.
(C) The students don’t graduate, but the educators keep their jobs.
(D) The students and teachers are punished, but the superintendent is praised by his state’s governor and receives a 3 percent raise to $156,560.

“A” is an unlikely choice in the current “get tough” educational environment, which calls for real consequences.

If you chose “B,” you deserve praise for consistency, but you’re also naïve. Maybe hopelessly so.

If you selected “C,” you have a better grasp of how the system works. You know that the world often operates on a double standard, with one set of rules for kids and another for adults. It’s perfectly logical to assume the system would blame kids for failing to learn but not find fault with adults who failed to teach them, or the adult who failed to lead his teachers. But “C” is also a wrong answer because Lawrence, Mass., was operating on a different kind of double standard.

That’s right. Believe it or not, “D” is the correct answer. At a news conference in August 2003, then-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney praised Lawrence superintendent Wilfredo Laboy and indicated that, as long as teachers were literate, the superintendent apparently didn’t need to be. “I’m not sure the superintendent of schools is in the same level of importance to me in terms of English skills as are the teachers in the classroom teaching our kids,” said Romney.

Laboy liked the governor’s reasoning. He told The Eagle-Tribune, which first reported the story, that the test had little relevance. “It bothers me because I’m trying to understand the congruence of what I do here every day and this stupid test,” said Laboy. “I didn’t meet the bar. But I think truly and honestly it has no relevancy to what I do every day. The fruits of my labor speak greater than not passing a test.” Laboy did not comment about the apparent inconsistency of suspending employees without pay for failing to meet state requirements while he continued on salary. And if he had doubts about the relevance of the graduation test to the real world that students live in, he kept them quiet.”

What were “the fruits” of Mr. Laboy’s labor? According to the Massachusetts Department of Education, only 254 out of 430 enrolled seniors in Lawrence passed the state exam, known as MCAS, in 2003. That’s a graduation rate of 59 percent or, put another way, a failure rate of 41 percent. Dig deeper and you find that in ninth grade, the Lawrence Class of 2003 had 917 students, meaning that 487 students disappeared along the way. 254 graduates out of 917 students is a pass rate of about 28 percent, giving Lawrence the lowest pass rate in Massachusetts.

Mr. Laboy finally managed to pass the test – on his fourth try.

At the time, I was taking a whack at the Animal Farm-like hypocrisy, a situation where the rules don’t apply to the bosses. But now, in light of Mr. Laboy’s criminal conviction and Mitt Romney’s nomination, I have two more questions:

1) What should we expect to happen when the people in charge lower the bar in order to hire someone who, by the state’s own standard, is not qualified?

2) What was Mitt Romney thinking when he said it was OK to hire someone who had failed the qualification test three times?

Apparently Superintendent Laboy concluded that, since the rules about hiring did not apply to him, neither did any of the other rules, regulations or laws. I say that because the record indicates that he proceeded to run the school system to suit himself, and to benefit himself. When he was fired, it was alleged that he had school employees doing electrical work at his home, picking up his grandchildren after school, and taking out his trash. “This was all about him,” Assistant Essex District Attorney Maureen Wilson Leal told the court. “He thought he was untouchable.”

Now about Governor Romney. Remember, he was Governor of the state where public education originated. And education is, of course, a state responsibility. So here comes a soft pitch down the middle of the plate, something like, “Governor, what do you think about Lawrence hiring a man who has failed the literacy exam three times to be school superintendent?”

It doesn’t get any easier than that, does it?

The Governor could have said, “It’s the wrong message to send to students and teachers.”

Or: “We need confidence in our leaders at all levels, and, if a man can’t pass a qualifying test, then he’s not qualified and shouldn’t be hired.”

Or: “Why do we give these tests if we aren’t going to pay any attention to the results?”

Or: “It’s hypocritical behavior by the Lawrence School Board, and I am ordering my State Department of Education to look into it, immediately.”

As we know, Governor Romney said none of these things. I suppose one could argue that this incident reveals more about Mitt Romney the politician than Mitt Romney the educator, but that’s cold comfort.

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Lately, I have been living a bipolar life. Here’s why: Our production company, Learning Matters, has two editing rooms, and the sounds emanating from them couldn’t be more different.

“You want to become a civil rights leader? Become a teacher. You want to get involved in the greatest chapter in the American civil rights movement, dedicate yourself to the education of our young people.”

I hear those rousing words almost every day as we work on our film about New Orleans. They were delivered, sermon-like, by Paul Vallas, then the Superintendent of the Recovery School District in Louisiana. That message, and similar ones from Barack Obama, Wendy Kopp of Teach for America and Richard Barth of KIPP, have resonated, and thousands and thousands of idealistic men and women have answered the call.

Meanwhile, in our other edit room I regularly see these video clips of school leaders in another city, from another film we are editing:

MERROW: If you had your druthers, what percentage of your staff would you replace?
PRINCIPAL: Probably somewhere in the range of about 25 to maybe 50 percent
and
MERROW: You said you have a number of teachers who really need to be fired.
ADMINISTRATOR: Yes.
MERROW: How big is that number? What’s the number?
ADMINISTRATOR: I’m not sure I should say that number. (pause) At least 50 percent. I think there are many of us who have said as high as 80 percent.

You see what I mean about my bipolar life?

However, I am fortunate, because I am only living it vicariously. Unfortunately, for our country’s 3.1 million teachers, this mixed message isreality: they’re called upon to sacrifice and serve — and they are vilified.

Is the tide changing? Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Washington DC School Chancellor Kaya Henderson have now come out against publishing student test scores grouped by teacher, joining Bill Gates and Wendy Kopp. But Henderson doesn’t need public demand to remove teachers. DC’s controversial teacher evaluation system, IMPACT, has allowed her to fire hundreds of teachers in the past two years. IMPACT relies heavily on how students do on a test known as the DC-CAS, a standardized test that has been plagued with a high rate of erasures (almost always from wrong to right) for a number of years.

Secretary Duncan’s change of heart (he supported releasing scores in 2010) is easily interpreted as evidence of the Administration’s awareness of its shaky standing with teachers. Expect more olive branches going forward, because President Obama probably cannot be re-elected if teachers sit on their hands.

But those are what might be called ‘headline changes’ that probably do not affect the bipolar conditions teachers face. However, on the ground, ordinary citizens are questioning the wisdom of putting so many eggs in the basket labeled ‘high stakes tests.’ The recent fiasco in Florida, where the state lowered the passing bar on the writing test because so many students failed, must be food for thought at school board meetings and around dinner tables across the country. And the continuing flood of cheating scandals –cheating by adults — is eroding support for high-stakes testing. In fact, hundreds of school districts in Texas and elsewhere are publicly objecting to the amount of time being devoted to testing and test-prep; here in New York City and elsewhere parents are organizing to keep their children home when standardized tests are being given.

Being against “too much testing” is not the same as being supportive of classroom teachers, however.

The war that I wrote about in The Influence of Teachers continues, between those who want to “fire and replace,” and those who want to change the working conditions of teachers to let them have more say over the curriculum and assessment.

“Fire and replace” is pure folly, because who is going to want to step into a profession that vilifies its practitioners?

If we believe that education is “the next great civil rights issue of our time,” then we ought to be enabling the ‘human capital’ now in the profession to succeed (while weeding out those who, after help, cannot cut the mustard). That approach will send the right message to the large pool of young Americans who want to contribute to our country.

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Remember pot-luck suppers, when everyone brought a dish or two? What follows is the the equivalent — although substituting ideas for food. Because the last few entries on this blog have been pretty grim, this week I want to share some good stuff that has come across my desk or into my professional life somehow. My pot-luck includes books, and school and service programs. I hope you will click on at least a couple of the links — and add your own to round out the meal.

A national program I’m keen on is the Arts Education Partnership, which describes itself as being “dedicated to securing a high-quality arts education for every young person in America.” Its 25 (and counting) partners include national groups like Americans for the Arts, state and local arts councils and two major foundations (Wallace and Ford), but the key player seems to be the Council of Chief State School Officers. I spent some time with AEP folks this spring (moderating a panel, giving a speech, and hanging out), and, if we could bottle the positive energy that arts advocates give off, we would be a long way to solving some of schooling’s problems.

I am intrigued by Global Citizen Year, which says it is “building the next generation of American leaders though a bridge year in the developing world.” I’ve met the founder, a whirlwind of energy named Abby Falik, a graduate of the Harvard Business School. GCY is narrowly focused (“It’s not freshman year. Not a study abroad program. It’s a year of deep experience in the real world before college,” the website boasts). In other words, this may not be for you but for your children or grandchildren, or your neighbor’s kids, but it’s worth a look.

Boston Globe columnist Gareth Cook wrote about Global Citizen Year on March 4: “Harvard freshman Gus Ruchman did Global Citizen Year after high school, and found himself living with a host family and doing deeply fulfilling public health work a few hours east of Dakar, Senegal. He was on his own, navigating an Islamic culture, learning that not everyone on the planet shares the American obsession with being right on time – all experiences that changed him for the better and helped prepare him for the overwhelming experience of starting college.

“I absolutely loved it,’’ says Ruchman.”

The Future Project is a service program with an audacious goal: “Our mission is to put the world’s dreams into action — starting in the most historically underserved schools and neighborhoods across the nation.” It does this by connecting service-minded adults with adolescents with big dreams.

Now underway in New York, Washington, D.C., and New Haven, it was started by two recent Yale graduates, Andrew Mangino and Kanya Balakrishna. Tim Shriver, the Chairman & CEO of the Special Olympics and a TFP Board member, had this to say about TFP:

“The Future Project is all about saving the country and saving the world. It’s big ideas and big vision. It’s about saying no to apathy, and indifference, and defeatism. It’s about marshalling the energies of a new generation to believe in themselves, to believe that we can create a better world than we’ve got today, to trust in young people as the engines of that change and the engines of that vision. I can’t imagine anything more important.”

I’m a new fan of the Alliance for Catholic Education, a group I learned about when I spoke at Notre Dame on April 30th. ACE ‘exists to sustain and strengthen Catholic schools,’ surely a noble goal at a time when parochial schools are struggling. The easiest way to understand ACE is to say, “think Teach for America.” TFA and ACE began about the same time, roughly 20 years ago, and both programs recruit and train teachers and send them into classrooms. But ACE — unlike TFA — brings the rookie teachers back to Notre Dame (home base) for the summer after their first year of teaching, for R&R&R&R, which I guess means “rest, recuperation, renewal and re-education.” TFA does not do that, and the ACE retention record suggests that the second summer of training makes all the difference. About 80 percent of ACE graduates stay in teaching for at least a third year, and 75 percent are still in education within five years of graduating. By contrast, according to an independent review of TFA, more than 50 percent of Teach for America teachers leave after two years and more than 80 percent leave after three years.

I have read two of the three books I am enthusiastic about and hope to read the third this weekend. One of them, Liberating Teachers, isn’t out yet — I read the manuscript — but its subtitle, “What happens when we trust teachers with school success,” should be enough to make some of you want to get it when it appears. The authors are Kim Farris-Berg and Edward J. Kirkswager.

Zero Chance of Passage: The Pioneering Charter School Story is an engaging history of the origins of the charter school movement, written by the courageous Minnesota State Senator who pushed and pulled the original legislation through her legislature back in 1990. Ember Reichcott-Junge’s book came out earlier this month, and I hope you will pick up a copy. (Full disclosure: I blurbed it.)

By my bedtable is Dan Willingham’s new book, When Can You Trust the Experts? — subtitled “how to tell good science from bad in education.” (Jossey-Bass) This is help we all can use, from one of the most sensible guys around.

ReadWorks serves a need. We have a reading crisis in this country, and some of that stems from the harsh truth that many elementary school teachers aren’t well equipped to teach reading. Rather than curse that darkness, ReadWorks offers help — tons of it. I urge you to share this website with every teacher you know. It’s free.

Harmony is a program I love. It provides musical instruments (free) and music lessons (also free) to underprivileged kids, and we had the privilege of spending some quality time with Harmony kids in two New York City public schools, then later with Placido Domingo. Watch our NewsHour piece here, and I wager you will be a fan too:

Core Knowledge is the living legacy of one of education’s greats, E.D. “Don” Hirsch, Jr. If you saw our piece about reading and the Common Core this week, then you saw the Core Knowledge reading program in action. But Core Knowledge is more than a reading program. It’s a comprehensive approach to elementary school, based on the firm belief held by Don Hirsch, a ‘small d’ democrat, our culture has a core of knowledge that should be available to all, regardless of family income, et cetera. I’ve been in a fair number of Core Knowledge schools over the years and have consistently been impressed by the intellectual electricity of the place.

The more I learn about Blended Learning and Deep Learning, the more impressed I am. Both of these approaches to schooling are swimming upstream against the tide of bubble testing and superficial learning, and that’s enough reason right there to encourage them. For “Blended Learning,” think Sal Khan and the Khan Academy and take off from there.

What about “Deep Learning”? The astrophysicist Neal DeGrasse Tyson spoke at Teachers College graduation this week and, without mentioning Deep Learning, used a wonderful example of what I think of as Deep Teaching. Imagine a spelling bee, he said, and the word is CAT. The kid who spells it C.A.T. gets an A. The two others spell it incorrectly, K.A.T. and Q.Z.P. Both get an F, which makes no sense at all because, Dr. Tyson said, one student came very close while the other kid had no clue. But in a system — ours — that rewards only the precisely correct answer, much is lost. It’s time, he said, for teachers to dig deep into how kids’ minds work — and, it follows from that, encourage them to dig deeply into subjects that interest them.

There’s a network of “Deeper Learning Schools” that includes EdVisions Schools, Big Picture Learning, ConnectEd, High Tech High, New Visions for Public Schools, Expeditionary Learning, New Tech Network and the Asia Society. I know some of those organizations and the people behind them, and, I promise you, that’s a lot of positive energy and brain power. We will be doing some reporting on this, with the help of the Hewlett Foundation.

If I had my way, every week a school devotes to test-prep and testing would have to be matched by a week of project-based work, allowing students to delve deeply into what matters to them.

Early College High School is an approach, when done well, that changes the game. I’ve just come from spending some time in an Early College program in Texas. Would you believe that the school district that adopted this approach has cut its dropout rate from about 40% to below 5%? Or that nearly 100 students are getting both their HS diploma AND the AA degree from the local community college this spring? We’re editing a piece for PBS NewsHour now, and it’s going to change the way you think about high school.

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Last week I wrote about a grim reality: the murder of young students in New Orleans. This week I turn to what is probably a fantasy: the idea that our most influential educators would speak out against this stain on our culture and threat to our future.

That raises two questions:
1) Who are America’s most prominent and influential educators?
2) What could they possibly agree to say publicly that would go beyond generalities and grab the nation’s attention?

Because any list of influential educators would draw from across the political and ideological spectrum, wouldn’t that necessarily mean that the statement would end up being namby-pamby pablum, something about “supporting the right of all students to education” or some other equally bland declaration? The country is increasingly polarized, with our nation’s capital leading the way, and it takes real courage for people in power to speak out on anything controversial.

Want to start with the list, or should we try drafting a statement?

How about we do both at once? You may not recognize all of the names, but you will most likely know enough of them to grasp their political differences.

“As patriotic Americans and dedicated educators, we are speaking out with one voice today. We (Arne Duncan, Wendy Kopp, Diane Ravitch, Harold McGraw III, Alfie Kohn and Shirley Tilghman) are appalled by the senseless violence that too many of our youth are enduring.”

“Furthermore, we (Randi Weingarten, Michelle Rhee, Monty Neill, David Levin, Mike Feinberg, Drew Faust, Joel Klein and Ted Kolderie) believe that sensible Americans — the vast majority — must now confront the special interest groups that have cowed the U. S. Congress into cowardice.”

“As a group, we (Dennis van Roekel, Howard Gardner, Lamar Alexander, Rod Paige, Jonathan Kozol, Father Theodore Hesburgh, Jeanne Allen, Richard Riley and Margaret Spellings) represent all points on the political spectrum. Although we disagree on some issues, to a person, we believe that….”

Go ahead, finish the sentence.

These men and women have fundamental differences. Some believe that government is an essential part of the solution, while others see government as a barrier. Some trust that the vast majority of teachers are committed to the education of all children; others question what they see as protectionism of ineffective teachers as a core problem.

What do you suppose that all of these good men and women agree upon? What sort of strong statement would they all sign their names to, in an effort to wake this nation up?

I’m certain they think it’s wrong that about 25 percent of our children may be growing up in poverty, living in substandard housing, receiving inadequate nutrition and health care and attending substandard schools.

But how many of them would support the “Buffett Rule” that would have fabulously wealthy citizens pay more in taxes? Or require hedge fund managers to pay 35 percent on their gains, not the current 15 percent because, after all, they are NOT risking their own money and are taking a guaranteed 20 percent off the top even if their investments of other people’s money go south?

I am sure that the decent men and women mentioned above are appalled by the violence that afflicts children today, but how many would speak in favor of closing the loopholes that allow people to buy guns, no questions asked, at gun fairs in some states? Or speak out against laws that allow people to carry weapons openly? Or against laws that allow people to buy assault weapons (whose only function is to kill)?

Of course, a ringing statement doesn’t have to be crafted out of whole cloth. The United Nations, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the International Red Cross, UNICEF and other related groups have spent years on this issue (see ‘Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child’ in 1924).

Or this, from 1959: “The child shall enjoy special protection, and shall be given opportunities and facilities, by law and by other means, to enable him to develop physically, mentally, morally, spiritually and socially in a healthy and normal manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity. In the enactment of laws for this purpose, the best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration.” (United Nations resolution)

In recent years, these international groups have paid special attention to children in war zones.

Hello! What are many of our inner cities, if not the equivalent of war zones?

Educators often present themselves as occupying the moral high ground, dedicating their lives to the nurturing of our children and youth. It’s easy to live up on the hill when things are chugging along, but that’s not the case now. So now, at least as I see it, it’s time for the university presidents, the school reformers and everyone else who claims to be devoted to children to put aside their political allegiances and make their voices heard.