Twelve studies find that overall gains in charter schools are larger than other public schools; four find charter schools’ gains higher in certain significant categories of schools; six find comparable gains; and, four find that charter schools’ overall gains lagged behind traditional schools.
Source: Charter School Achievement: What We Know, July 2005 Update
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This second installment of the on-line case study of Leadership High School focuses on the origins of the school's mission and instructional philosophy, the process used in designing the school during its early development, and the success of the school's founder in negotiating the approval of the charter.
Summary
As a start-from-scratch secondary charter school in a highly political, ethnically diverse, and urban environment, LHS faced a number of external challenges in designing their school and winning approval of their charter. Foremost among these were:
- A cautious local school board. The local school board had rejected three out of the four previous charter proposals and had never passed a start-up high school proposal.
- A contentious education community with multiple stakeholders. San Francisco contains numerous ethnic communities, each with their own education needs and goals for their children. For example, a long-standing legal dispute between competing ethnic communities over equal access to the district's only admissions-based academic high school remains unresolved.
- No existing facility for the school. LHS was not a conversion school, and the local school board had a policy of not providing buildings to start-up charters.
When LHS began the school design and charter application process, it also had a number of internal challenges which it had to overcome. Foremost among these were:
- Limited resources to plan and develop the school. For most of the three years of development before the school opened, LHS's development team formally consisted of only one paid person, the school's founder. The school was unable to hire the teachers until approximately one month before the first day of classes.
- An instructional program which was unique but not fully tested. For the purposes of the application process, LHS had to create the instructional program for the school before they had hired their teachers. Additionally, the instructional program they were proposing was unique and had been tested with only limited groups of students.
Given the challenges the school faced, the school's founder chose to pursue several key strategies in order to design the school and successfully negotiate the charter approval process. These strategies included:
- Fully explored the charter concept before committing to starting a school. The school's founder spent a year in graduate school exploring the concept of charter schools and meeting with other school operators before committing to the project.
- Debated the school's mission and purpose with a research group interested in school reform. As part of the initial exploration process, the school's founder maintained an on-going "charter school research group" of graduate students and other interested participants to help develop the founding principles of the school. He then tested these principles by writing position papers which were reviewed and debated by professors, the research group, and then hundreds of families in focus groups first in Boston and then in San Francisco.
- Completed internship at prospective charter school. The school's founder gained further insight on school operations by interning at an alternative high school that was preparing to submit a charter application.
- Identified the education needs of the community and solicited feedback on the design of the school from key stakeholders. Upon returning to San Francisco, the school's founder interviewed hundreds of education stakeholders in the community, including parents, education professors, and community leaders. He also reviewed district studies and other reports by outside evaluators.
- Piloted the school's instructional ideas through a summer program. One year before the school opened, and several months before the charter application was submitted, LHS partnered with a local community service organization to run a pilot test of the school's instructional program with a limited number of potential students. As discussed below, this was critical to their success.
- Approached the application process as a "political campaign." LHS used both their board of trustees and a special advisory board to help amass diverse political support in order to assist in their approval process.
- Established personal relationships and initiated dialogue with school board members individually. Before formally submitting the application, the school's founder discussed the proposal with each board member individually and then made changes to the application based upon their concerns.
Some of these strategies may be of value to other charter school developers elsewhere. They are described in greater detail below, along with a fuller account of the school's development history. These strategies, however, are specific to LHS's mission and development context, and may not be applicable in all cases. Additional strategies will be examined more closely in future installments.
Development Timeline and Staffing
The following is an approximate timeline of the school's development prior to opening the doors:
- Year 1. School's founder attends Harvard University's Graduate School of Education and John F. Kennedy School of Government where he explores the concept of charter schools and initiates a "charter school research group."
- Year 2. School's founder returns to San Francisco and begins to test the evolving ideas for a charter school with key education stakeholders, experts, and members of the community. During the summer of 1996, LHS pilots the school's instructional philosophy through an eight-week summer program. The founder also builds a Board of Trustees and Advisory Board.
- Year 3. LHS development group begins application process and facilities search during the fall and wins approval for the charter in December. Initial school planning and student recruitment take place in the spring, teachers are hired over the summer, and school doors open in September.
For the purposes of analysis, the different components of the above timeline can be grouped into the following stages. Please note that Year 3 is divided into two stages, Charter Negotiation and School Development. This installment focuses on the first three stages: Inquiry, Design, and Charter Negotiation. The different components of the School Development stage will be the focus of the next installment.
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Inquiry Stage
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- Examines charters during graduate school classes in education
- Maintains "Charter School Research Group"
- Completes internship at alternative high school
- Attends CANEC conference
- Receives small planning grant
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Year 1
Sept. 94 - July 95
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Design Stage |
- Local needs assessment through meetings with SF education experts
- Local needs assessment through meetings with SF parents and community leaders
- Summer demonstration program
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Year 2
July 95 - Sept. 96
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Charter Negotiation Stage
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- Final drafting of charter
- Collection of teacher signatures
- Formation of Advisory Group
- Interview sessions with individual school board members
- Submission of charter application
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Year 3
Sept. 96 - Sept. 97
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School Development Stage
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- Facilities search
- Fundraising
- Formation of Board
- Recruitment and admissions of students
- Hiring of teachers
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Year 3
Sept. 96 - Sept. 97
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Staffing of the school's development team for the first two years formally consisted of only one paid person, the school's founder. In January of 1997, after the charter was approved, the second full-time person was hired, a Director of Fundraising and Student Recruitment. Thereafter, until the teachers were hired late in the summer, this two-person development team worked with a board of trustees and a revolving group of volunteers.
Committing to Starting a School
Much of the thinking and planning behind LHS began while Mark Kushner, the school's current principal, was in graduate school at Harvard in Boston, MA. In 1994, Kushner left his job as an attorney at a San Francisco law firm to attend Harvard's Graduate School of Education and John F. Kennedy School of Government. One of his goals in attending the school was to explore the idea of starting a charter school. Kushner had previously taught high school English, and when California's charter school law was passed in 1992, the burgeoning movement coincided with his own growing desire to return to education.
Students from summer demonstration
program with local politician.
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During his first semester at Harvard, Kushner started a "charter school research group" which drew from the different professional schools in the university, such as the business, education and public health schools, as well as aspiring charter school representatives and community members. The group, sometimes as large as 20, met each week to debate different issues related to starting a charter school. The diverse group produced a broad spectrum of ideas on alternative schooling and helped establish early on a "break the mold" mission to the school. As Kushner explains: "We talked about different themes, we talked to Howard Gardner and his colleagues about multiple intelligencies, we talked about diversity, we talked about big city college prep schools, we talked about really everything. In [the] Kennedy [School of Government] we talked about the politics of how to get the charter approved, as well as the pros and cons of using leadership as an organizing theme for the school."
Another key step in the early evolution of the school occurred when Kushner, based on the encouraging results of the research group, undertook an internship at an aspiring charter high school during the spring of 1995 (at that time, Massachusetts had only recently passed its charter school law and no charter schools had officially opened). The school, housed in a local community college, provided Kushner with firsthand experience in working in an alternative public school. According to Kushner, it also showed him the kind of extra dedication and resolve required to start an alternative school, not only to develop an alternative instructional program, but also to handle the school's management requirements.
But Kushner did not commit to starting a charter school until two more factors came into play: meeting other charter school operators and receiving a planning grant. Kushner returned to California on break to attend the annual conference of the state's network of charter schools, the California Network of Educational Charters (CANEC). Meeting with and hearing the experiences of other charter school operators within California helped confirm many of his expectations about the possibilities of achieving his education goals through a charter school. The next important step came when he received a $10,000 planning grant. Though not large, the grant provided seed money and a certain amount of legitimacy to pursue the project beyond graduate school.
Origins of the School's Mission and Instructional Philosophy
Early on, the school's instructional philosophy was shaped by an on-going process of dialogue and debate. During the remainder of his academic year at Harvard, Kushner used his classes to sharpen his ideas about his proposed charter school. Class papers evolved into position papers on the specifics of the school's instructional approach, which professors were invited to challenge openly as a process of initiating debate within the research group. This approach functioned as an initial litmus test of the soundness of the school's overarching goals, and helped refine its instructional design.
For example, early on, the research group agreed that one of the goals of the school should be to provide broadened career and college opportunities for children who might not otherwise have them. Moreover, providing such opportunities would be one of the benchmarks of success for the school. But as one professor challenged the group, "If you just educate these kids and have them succeed financially, they are going to move to the suburbs and leave the city. You won't really succeed as a school unless you help the students stay connected to their communities in the city."
This line of questioning prompted the group to examine more closely the balance within its instructional program between community involvement and personal achievement. As Kushner explains, "So we started looking at other schools, such as City on a Hill charter school in Boston [which was preparing to open that September], but we didn't feel that their theme of 'citizenship' had enough resonance in California and San Francisco."
Then the research group began to explore the ideas of 'leadership' as developed by Ron Heifetz, a Kennedy School of Government professor, in his book Leadership without Easy Answers and in his popular classes 'Exercising Leadership: Mobilizing Group Resources' and 'Teaching Leadership.' According to Kushner, "Leadership, as Heifetz envisioned it, had the public service angle -- as well as the activism and advocacy angle -- that we were looking for. The students could apply the personal skills they learned to business, unions, Sierra Club type activism ... all sorts of personal directions. That's an example of the way the ideas behind the school were constantly refined and shaped by the many people we talked to."
The mission of the school evolved throughout both the Inquiry and Design stages. The process involved reducing the multiple school reform objectives as identified by the research group, as well as the input garnered from the local community meetings, down to a working set of goals which could function as the school's mission. Then, when the drafting of the actual charter proposal began, the development team met with a former private school principal who helped them pick two primary goals from their 14 working concepts. The final wording, as submitted in the school's charter proposal, reads: "The mission of Leadership High School is to serve San Francisco and its diverse students by: providing a world class education; and developing effective community leaders. We aim to achieve this mission and serve economically and ethnically diverse students by offering significant personal attention and support, a rigorous curriculum, ample educational technology, and the first comprehensive high school leadership program in California."
Soliciting Community Input into the Design
In June of 1995, Kushner graduated from Harvard's program and brought his evolving charter back to San Francisco. At this point, the school's founder moved out of the stage of early conceptualization and initiated the process of developing a formal charter proposal. One of the key strategies during this latter phase involved the solicitation of community input into the design. The process involved testing some of the formative ideas not just with experts familiar with school reform issues, but with actual education stakeholders in the city.
Summer demonstration program students.
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One of the first groups Kushner consulted were professors in the local schools of education. "We asked the university professors, 'What isn't the city doing well yet, or where can we help?' Their priorities were under-achieving students in the African American, Latino, and Cambodian populations."
Second, Kushner talked to the parents and other representatives of these communities. "We spent months and months meeting with church and community groups. They told us they didn't want any kind of alternative vocational program, they wanted college prep and they wanted a small school, the same as what the rich kids have in the private schools. When we talked to foundations, they liked the primary aspects of leadership. The kids themselves, they liked a small school, technology, and the ability to be pioneers."
Kushner points out that the solicitation of broad community input was probably the most critical stage in the school's development. "We talked to so many hundreds of families, it's not surprising that our message of academics and personal attention and technology ultimately resonated because the message came from those families themselves. It had been refined and refined. Parents got excited. When I finally brought the show on the road, it had already been tested on the road."
Summer Demonstration Program
Another successful key strategy at this stage in the school's development was piloting the instructional approach. During the summer of 1996, LHS partnered with a local San Francisco youth organization, Youth in Action, San Francisco Conservation Corps, to help run a summer program called the Urban Leadership Project. Youth in Action, whose co-director was a classmate of Kushner's from Harvard, already had a summer program on environmental issues planned for a group of San Francisco 7th and 8th graders. The two organizations decided to partner in order to build the leadership components which LHS had been developing into the summer program's curriculum.
Students from Urban Leadership Program (ULP).
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Youth in Action selected the kids, and Kushner located the site. In the mornings, the program provided rigorous academics mixed with themes of leadership. In the afternoons, the students worked on projects which they were paid for (if successful with their academics) and which they were expected to treat as formal jobs. The program included 24 students from five public middle schools. Numerous parents and school board members also came to visit the program during the summer.
The partnership not only benefited Youth in Action, it also benefited LHS. First, it tested LHS's curriculum ideas with prospective students. Second, it increased the exposure of the planned school within the city's various communities, which helped make the proposed school more of a known entity in San Francisco. Later, when it came time to collect teacher signatures as part of the charter application process, many of the teachers who eventually signed had originally heard about the school through the summer program. Third, it helped ensure that LHS would ultimately draw from a diverse range of students.
As Kushner notes, this strategy of starting with a summer program is something that other schools have used. "Rather than rush your school and fail," he explains, "even if you have no public money, you learn things, you establish credibility, and you can show people your success."
Relations with the Local School Board
When Kushner first arrived back in San Francisco, he expected to be able to submit his application for a charter that winter. However, at that time, the San Francisco School Board was known to be skeptical of charter schools, having rejected the last three charter school proposals, and it was also known to be against providing buildings for start-up charter schools.
ULP student hard at work.
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With this context in mind, Kushner approached the charter application process strategically. Again, a number of key strategies proved instrumental during this stage of development. First, Kushner carefully researched where the district needed assistance, both through interviews with key education stakeholders in the community and through a careful review of available district documents. For example, SF Unified operates under a consent decree to implement a desegregation program, and Kushner used the available Consent Decree Experts Reports to identify niches where LHS could provide needed services to the district's students.
Second, he waited until after the summer demonstration program before initiating anything formally with the board. Only after the school proposal had achieved broad community recognition was Kushner in a position to point to a track record of successfully providing services.
Third, he approached each board member individually about the proposed charter before submitting it to the entire body for a vote. He asked board members directly to read the proposal in draft form and then return to him any concerns they might have. Kushner would then incorporate their feedback into the charter proposal by making any necessary changes. He would then return a month later to see if they had any remaining concerns. This process of soliciting feedback from the board prior to public hearings helped avoid any unexpected contention once the proposal was on track for final voting.
ULP student doing course work.
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Kushner's advice for other charter school developers is to run their proposal process like a campaign. "Analyze each board member and find out who their constituents are. Then make sure those constituents know about your school and will say good things about it if asked. And do the homework of talking to each board member individually. Some might call it playing the politics, but they are publicly elected officials. In our case, we listened to their concerns carefully. Most of all, it forced us to make sure we had real grass roots support."
Kushner notes that the credibility of a school's Board of Trustees can also have a direct impact on the proposal's success. Consequently, Kushner actively solicited a wide range of expertise for LHS's board, including experience in education, business, technology, law, and non-profit corporations. Another tactic Kushner recommends is to set up an Advisory Board of local "movers and shakers" in addition to your regular Board of Trustees. These are people who may be unwilling to serve on your board on a full-time basis or become involved in the details of planning the school, but they might be willing to use their influence from time to time to overcome a particular obstacle. Such people might include local campaign managers, influential corporate representatives, or even members of city government. "You have to look at the politics, and you have to look at what needs to get done. And don't be afraid to be up front with the [local school] board members and ask them directly if they will vote 'yes' on your charter, not just if they will 'give you their support.'"
Comparison to National Context
As noted above, LHS's development team was successful in developing and passing their charter proposal despite many external and internal challenges. For the purposes of helping other charter school developers, we identified above many of the specific strategies used by the development team. Additional strategies will be examined in future installments.
However, because this is a case study of only one school, we feel it would also be helpful to compare LHS's early development history and circumstances to other charter schools nationally. Of course, charter schools vary tremendously from state-to-state and even district-to-district. Nonetheless, comparative figures from the available data can be informative. When we compare LHS to figures available in A National Study of Charter Schools - First Year Report (223 charter schools examined as of January 1996), we find that LHS is:
- Typical in being a start-from-scratch charter school. Most charter schools, approximately 60%, are newly created.
- Typical in being founded primarily by one or two people. In 3/4 of the surveyed schools, one or two leading individuals provided the impetus and drive to write the charter proposal and reach out to and persuade teachers, parents, and community groups to support the charter school. Not until LHS's charter was almost through the Charter Negotiation stage was another full-time person added to the development team.
- Typical in being founded to achieve a particular educational vision. Over two-thirds of newly created schools had "realizing an educational vision" as a primary motivation for starting the school. In LHS's case, the primary motivation was to provide a world class education for diverse students and develop effective community leaders.
- Typical in the barriers the school encountered. Resource limitations and political resistance are the first and second areas most cited by charter schools as barriers. Lack of facilities, lack of start-up funding, and district skepticism were all encountered by LHS.
However, in other areas, the school is more unique:
- Unique in the grade levels it intends to serve. Only 14.3% of surveyed charter schools are high schools, and even fewer are start-from-scratch (newly created) charter high schools.
- Unique in the school size it hopes to achieve. With a projected enrollment of approximately 400 students, LHS intends to be larger than most charter schools, and larger than most charter high schools. Only 25.6% of charter schools enroll 200-600 students, and only a quarter of these are high schools. (Comparatively, 61.8% of charter schools enroll fewer than 200 students and 12.6% enroll over 600.)
Given these latter two characteristics, as well as the circumstances surrounding much of its early development, we believe that LHS is not only unique within the movement, but also very ambitious:
- Ambitious in the goals it hopes to achieve. Few charter school developers have founded a start-from-scratch high school of this size with a self-developed instructional program and no pre-arranged facility, in a downtown, highly charged urban environment.
In future installments we will look more closely at LHS's ability to reach their own expectations.
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