Thank you, Deborah, for your insight. Effective strategies are indeed more important than the delivery method. In public, non-charter schools, a great obstacle to implementing effective strategies is the maintenance of entrenched programs.
Here is a real-life example: in order to meet the requirements of a Reading First grant, a local school district requires its public (non-charter) teachers to include in their lesson plans evidence of each of the five components of a plan based on scientific research: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. In addition, they must show evidence of activities for small groups. That is a good plan. The problem arises when the school district is loyal to an old lesson plan form developed for a different type of reading program, and which has no space for the new information. Teachers must now use valuable planning time to develop creative ways of making the new plans fit the old forms, instead of using that same time to develop creative strategies to meet individual student needs. Offers by teacher groups to develop a better form are politely turned down.
Charter schools, because they are new, are unencumbered by old programs. Some day, the charter schools that are now new will be old, and may tend to develop their own bureaucracies. You experienced a degree of success in Detroit public schools. Would you be willing to share some of the ways you dealt with entrenched programs? You are presently with Edison schools. Is there some part of Edison's model that addresses the contingency of replacing old programs with new? Your experiences may provide valuable prevention advice for those already in charter schools, and some direction for those of us in states which have unfavorable charter school laws as we work within the traditional system.
Posted as a reply to:
Reframing the Question by Deborah McGriff 
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