Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said in her introduction to the guide that, “the seven schools profiled in the guide are dispelling the myth that some students cannot achieve to high standards.” The schools are “acting as laboratories for innovative education practices.”
… The schools profiled in K-8 Charter Schools are both rural and urban, but whatever the community they serve, they share a commitment to teaching for mastery. For example, two of the schools — the Carl C. Icahn Charter School in the Bronx, NY, and the Cesar Chavez Academy (CCA) in Pueblo, Colo. — have found engaging ways to teach rigorous content, based on state standards, through the use of Core Knowledge, a curriculum focusing on the key concepts of western civilizations in mathematics, language, science, the arts, and the humanities.
The challenging curriculum — developed by E.D. Hirsch — was chosen by Icahn’s founding principal, Jeffrey Litt, despite his colleagues’ admonitions that it would not work in the Bronx where “the kids were too poor.” Rather than lower the school’s expectations, Litt adapted Core Knowledge to make it more accessible to his inner-city students. In doing so, his students realized success in spite of the perceived odds. Such rich content is often combined with atypical school schedules to ensure that students can master important concepts that stay with them for a lifetime, not just until the end of a semester.
At CCA, Core Knowledge is combined with the principles of hard work, responsibility, resourcefulness, and loyalty to the golden rule. In addition, the curriculum emphasizes Hispanic history, culture and the native languages of Latinos. The bottom line, according to CCA principal Lawrence Hernandez, is “all students succeed because we don’t allow them to fail.” At CCA, student success is not left to chance. As a result, the school has a 3,000-student waiting list and students consistently outperform not only the neighborhood schools serving similar populations, but also those schools with students from higher-income families.
Rick Kahlenberg has written a masterful biography of Al Shanker — deeply researched, thoughtful, eloquent — and crystal clear without in any way oversimplifying the complex period that Al and the rest of us have lived through. After reading Rick’s book, I understand better many aspects of the things that I’ve witnessed in education reform.
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