New Orleans, June 25, 2008: In all the obvious ways, this week's National Charter Schools Conference resembled other major conclaves in big-city convention centers: thousands of people being beckoned by hundreds of "exhibitors" with their stands, stalls, slick pitches, and free samples, as well as by dozens and dozens of "break out" sessions on every imaginable topic. A couple of major "keynote" talks, including one by the governor and one by the organizing organization's own head. Award ceremonies with much applause. And innumerable corridor conversations, side meetings, job explorations, reunions, and such.
It also resembled other conferences in reviving New Orleans: sweaty walks to fabulous restaurants and lookalike hotels; much drinking; a surfeit of dubious jazz and (LOUD) music; a handy casino; and more tacky shopping opportunities than anybody needs. (Attendees were also given opportunities to volunteer on a couple of reconstruction projects.)
This was, however, a conference about charter schools, organized by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, and it was dedicated to "achieving academic excellence at scale." That's an unimpeachably worthy goal and the conference did more than most to advance it. Here are a few glimpses:
- The Alliance issued its long-awaited, much-needed "framework for academic quality," the product of a major project to spell out academic benchmarks and metrics for successful charter schools, intended to be used by school operators and authorizers alike as a tool by which to monitor and--one hopes--evaluate school performance and enforce quality standards. It's a first rate piece of work (see it here), to be followed by further standard-setting work in areas such as charter-school finances. Meanwhile, this publication is a fit companion to NACSA's principles for quality charter-school authorizing (see here) and suggests that the charter movement is making the right moves both to orient itself to quality and to create the means for self-policing. (We all know what the alternatives to self-policing are--and they're not pretty.)
- Post-Katrina New Orleans being the country's foremost testing ground for "charter schools at scale," participants were invited to visit some of the city's strongest charters and heard from charter-friendly state education superintendent Paul G. Pastorek, who made clear that the principles of school choice, diversity, and autonomy-in-return-for accountability will guide him and his policies far beyond Orleans parish. Wunderkind governor Bobby Jindal turned up, too, lauding the city's (and state's) considerable progress on the charter front--and Louisiana's brand-new school-voucher program as well. Across multiple fronts, he's one impressive public official.
- The major national private funders of charter schools turned up as well, indeed they were all over the place--top staffers from Gates, Walton, Broad, Fisher, and more--meeting with grantees and strategizing how best private dollars can help turn this extraordinary New Orleans experiment into a success. (Much talk of Washington and Newark, too.)
- The National Alliance conferred several well-earned prizes, inducting three women into its "Hall of Fame" who have done as much as anyone in the land to advance and strengthen the charter movement: Ember Reichgott Junge of Minnesota, who authored the country's first charter law; Yvonne Chan of California, founder and dynamic take-no-prisoners principal of the country's first "conversion" charter, the acclaimed Vaughn Next Century Learning Center in Los Angeles; and the amazing Linda Brown of Massachusetts, coach, advisor, and trainer of successful charter leaders and now head of the outstanding program called "Building Excellent Schools."
- Finally, the Alliance did some important internal housekeeping, radically downsizing its own bloated board of directors into a fighting-weight team chaired by the very able (and laser-focused, and Fordham trustee) Bruno V. Manno.
Charter devotees still have plenty left to do to scale up and replicate good schools (not nearly enough of these), to tone up mediocre schools (far too many, alas), and to transform or shutter bad schools (again, too many for comfort.) External political threats also abound in many locales--Louisiana being more the exception than the rule--and some basic public policies bearing on charters (facilities funding, above all) continue to demand radical surgery. But this movement is on an upward trajectory. "Still we rise" was the conference theme in New Orleans, and it felt about right to me.
