Читать книгу Changing to Charter - Rebecca A. Shore - Страница 8

Introduction

Changing to Charter is the third in a series of books that are the result of two decades of study of successful, sustained charter school leadership in schools across the United States. The first book, Adventures of Charter School Creators: Leading from the Ground Up (2004), examined leadership characteristics of those bold enough to imagine, create, and successfully lead schools within the new (and controversial) educational reform initiative.

Who were those leaders and why and how did they accomplish such success over a decade of school leadership? All chose to embark on their journeys to improve the lives of the underserved and generally poor, and all experienced unusual success over time and thus became our focus of study. Some were school leaders; others had never worked in a school before. We gleaned their lessons of charter school development through the interwoven fabric of (1) the lenses of the unique leaders themselves, (2) the resulting successful organizations which they created, and (3) the environments in which they were built.

In the second book, Journeys of Charter School Creators: Leadership for the Long Haul (2019), we followed up with these original leaders, now two decades into their work, and circled back to check in and see how their journeys had progressed since their initial adventures. What had changed? What hadn’t? Who were they now and what were they doing? Some of what we learned can be summarized in a paragraph of that book’s Preface by Guilbert Hentschke, dean emeritus of the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California:

Case after case, these charter school founders have stayed close to the schools they created and to the communities they served. What they tended not to do is transfer to another school or district and “move on” in a quest for professional advancement elsewhere. The opportunity structure provided by charter school legislation afforded them a precious (to them) chance to fulfill a dream of creating “their” school. It played into classic entrepreneurial traits. But, in creating their charter schools, they were also captured by them. (xv)

This third book, Changing to Charter, zeros in on a subcategory of the original group of leaders, those who started out many years ago as traditional public or private school principals, but then made a decision to change their schools to public charter school status. Why did they “convert” and what have they learned from their experiences that could be shared with others considering making such a change?

This group, by nature, represented a somewhat different breed of risk-taker who had to be prepared to “pick a fight” with their local districts in the case of traditional public school conversions, or their congregations or other sponsoring entities in the case of privates, in the name of improved learning environments on behalf of their constituencies, the students and families, and the schools they served.

As Journeys of Charter School Creators was based in part on prior stories shared in Adventures of Charter School Creators, so does Changing to Charter begin with the initial start-up stories of those leaders who were already in place as school leaders prior to conversion, followed by chapters updating the stories of three of those leaders from the original Adventures book.

For example, in the first book, and featured in this one, Yvonne Chan of Vaughn Next Century Learning Center shares her adventures converting her school to charter status. After experiencing the death of a student who was murdered in front of her poorly performing Los Angeles public school in the early 1990s, Chan’s frustration with the bureaucratic school system emboldened her. She, along with a group of likeminded individuals, converted her large, failing public elementary school within the Los Angeles Unified School District to charter status and both she, the school, and the charter reform movement have flourished since.

The next chapter (chapter 4) follows up on Chan and Vaughn Next Century Learning Center since 2004. She shares in her remarkable stories that it was her devotion and perseverance stemming from her own beginnings as an immigrant that fueled her desire to offer a better life for all of her students. This devotion, perseverance, and belief in the American public school system as a means for improvement in life drove her success for her school and within the new charter school landscape.

Chan spent endless hours learning to navigate the early years of the charter school movement despite an initially contentious relationship with the district. She built a strong, creative team to convert the struggling school. She even mortgaged her home to keep the school afloat while awaiting government funding to come through. Today she is a national voice for social reform in education, and the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center can be viewed as a model learning community.

Chan is not the only leader who was prepared to sacrifice personal funds and lifestyle for the cause of her community. She exemplifies the unwavering dedication we found in all of our leaders; two more from the original book and six others added that we discovered had converted to charter status when researching schools for Journeys.

Story after story tells of leaders who were and continue to be devoted to a vision. Each leader’s mission may be different, whether it is providing an arts-based curriculum or a classical education or project-based learning. However, each leader shares a common focus to provide a high-quality educational experience for their students, even, as so many of them found, if this involved much deeper involvement in their communities and even wider policy change. Whether each leader set his or her needs aside, or those needs became completely overshadowed or replaced by their mission to improve a school, they all dove into efforts building entire communities focused on a foundation of helping the children of their community.

Numerous interviews, dialogues, investigations, and observations have resulted in these three books about charter schools and their leaders. We have learned much, but much of it boils down a simple fact. These successful charter school leaders all possess an unwavering commitment to their school communities, and every one of them sees problems as opportunities.

They also all embody strong relationship-building skills and are able to construct teams that not only share the same passion but are skilled in the essential areas needed to run a publicly accountable yet independent educational entity, the charter school, and are ready and willing to wield leverage where needed and possible. Their journeys reflect challenges that may drive others to seek opportunities elsewhere, but to them, were well worth their passion and the dedication of their lives to their communities over time.

We believe that our adventures in meeting and learning about the journeys of so many successful charter school leaders across our country have made us better leaders; however, it is our mission to share that knowledge with others to more widely impact the improvement of education through educational leadership. These stories chronicle the improved educational opportunities that can become available to communities, particularly to the under-represented, when cumbersome regulations are loosened while accountability and high-quality standards are met under the guidance of committed leaders.

We are grateful that these individual leaders shared their heartfelt journeys with us, and we hope that their lessons in devotion, perseverance, humility, learning, and love are reflected in the pages of our books. While the visions were different for each leader, passion and dedication have been the same. Successfully changing to charter is more than just “buy-in.” It’s a way of life.