Superintendents: Turn your districts into charter school districts, like the one in New Orleans

Neerav Kingsland, chief strategy officer for New Schools for New Orleans, has written a great open letter to urban superintendents across the nation.   The five parts of this letter have been published this week in Rick Hess’ Education Week blog, starting with Part I on Monday, January 23 and ending tomorrow, Friday, January 27th.

Mr. Kingsland says this to the urban superintendents:  Stop trying to be Reformers of your centralized bureaucracies.  Start being Relinquishers of power.  Give that power to independently run charter public schools. 

Mr. Kingsland speaks from experience.  After Katrina swept away the existing failing school system in August of 2005, reformers in New Orleans created the nation’s first charter school district, with 80% of schools run as independent charter public schools.  Instead of trying to run the schools, the district holds them accountable for performance. 

Part I of Mr. Kingsland's letter to superintendents says this: 

“….In other words: rid yourself of the notion that your current opinions on curriculum, teacher evaluation, technology, or anything else will be the foundation for dramatic gains in student achievement. If history tells us anything, they will not be:

"Dismissing this letter--and the idea of charter districts--would have been easier five years ago. But over the past five years, educators and policymakers in New Orleans created the nation's first charter school district….

As the below chart details, since 2006 New Orleans students have halved the achievement gap with their state counterparts. In the next five years, New Orleans will likely be the first urban city in the country (that I know of) to surpass its state average.” [The chart Mr. Kingsland refers to appears below.]

Part II of the letter reviews the evidence showing that charter public schools in New York, Boston, San Diego, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Denver, Memphis and Nashville outperform traditional public schools, and in the cities of Washington D.C., Philadelphia, and Chicago are performing no worse.

Part III of the letter discusses why charter districts can work:       

“Monopolistic employers lead to dysfunctional labor relations: When there is only one employer in town, and it happens to be poorly run, labor relations will get ugly quick. Thick contracts are the norm (have a cocktail, sit back, and read this). I don't blame the unions for their contracts--it is a response to a poorly set-up system. 

Attracting the Top Third: The highest performing countries draw teachers from the top third of college graduates. All Hail Finland. Research shows charter schools attract teachers from more selective colleges. More here. Fighting over state mandated teacher evaluations is, in the long run, a waste of time. Just open more charter schools. 

Innovation requires experimentation: Traditional school districts retain a monopoly of method which is equally as harmful as their monopoly of operation. A diverse charter school sector will experiment more frequently than a monolithic bureaucracy. The work coming out of Uncommon Schools (here, here, here) is mind-blowing. Want more: here, here, here, here, here. Charter schools innovate better than districts.”

Read the whole letter for potential pitfalls in setting up charter districts. 

Part IV of the letter suggests how to transition to a charter school district:  “early stage charter sectors should charter roughly 5 percent of their systems a year--ideally phasing out the bottom 5 percent of schools in the system at the same time.” 

Part V of the letter comes tomorrow!  I can’t wait.