A love/hate relationship sums up what's happening across the country when it comes to district-charter collaboration. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is trying to spread the love by providing support and encouraging cooperation among district and charter leaders in places like New York City, New Orleans, Denver, Minneapolis and Los Angeles. Specifically, Gates is pushing the development of district-charter ???collaboration compacts??? in various cities, which would theoretically lead to real commitments to work together.
These efforts, based on the work done so far in these communities, seek far more than just platitudes and goodwill across school sectors. We're talking about serious partnerships where money, responsibility for the children and shared hopes for their futures are truly embraced jointly. Further, there is real commitment to distributing power and money equitably across sectors.
For example, New Orleans (where more than 60 percent of children already attend a charter) is perhaps furthest along ??? their goal is to create a system of district governance that provides all public schools with the operational freedoms of charters. Each and every school will be responsible for hiring and firing their teachers, for setting hours of operation, for creating its academic model, and for utilizing its public resources as leaders think works best for their students. Collaboration across schools will take place through shared services like online enrollment, assessments, accountability, special education and seeking shared legislative action. New Orleans is rapidly becoming what Paul Hill described in It Takes a City a decade ago ??? a school system defined by a portfolio of school options.
In New York City the school district is providing school facilities for high-performing charters. The New York City Department of Education is also providing support for the replication and expansion of high-quality charter schools, and where possible is seeking to offer the benefits of school district economies of scale to charters. Further, the district is working with charters to create a an equitable per-student funding model that would base funding on the needs of students as opposed to funding district schools at a greater level than charters.
Other efforts at district-charter collaboration ??? that go well beyond good intention or amicable feelings ??? can be found in Denver, Chicago, Minneapolis, Memphis, and elsewhere. Even in Cleveland there is a genuine effort on all sides to improve relations between traditional district and charter schools and to work together.
Yet, such cooperation isn't happening everywhere. In Columbus, as Jamie pointed out last week, the school district decided to lease one of its nicest vacant buildings to ???a start-up music-industry program instead of one of the three well-regarded charters??? that applied. Over the weekend the Columbus Dispatch ran another story on this scandal. Note, Fordham authorizes one of the jilted schools ??? the Columbus Collegiate Academy, and we take pride in the fact it is one of the highest-performing middle schools in Columbus.??According to Columbus district officials it was bypassed for Groove U, a new trade school because tenants ???have to support our mission, fill an unmet need and provide a benefit for our students???Clearly, another school that is providing a competing service to ours is not.???
The district's decision has caused an uproar, as it should. Those working in public education will always posit that they're working on behalf of the best interests of kids, but when a move as obvious as this one strips opportunities from kids trapped in low-performing schools (who would be served well by a high-performing charter), it's time to push for the kind of district-charter collaboration that is creating positive outcomes for kids in other cities. It's happening elsewhere. Ohio has no excuse.
- Terry Ryan
