“What a High Quality Charter Sector Means to Me”
Remarks by James D. Merriman
Delivered at the National Association of Charter School Authorizers
Annual Leadership Conference
La Jolla, CA, October 20, 20131
People ask me all the time: “When you got into charter schools some 14 years ago, what attracted you
to working with them.” This is what I tell them.
What I thought was right about charter schools is that we could create public schools for kids who
needed them most, public schools where high expectations were the norm, a culture where academics
could flourish, a place where students would graduate ready to be better citizens, productive employees
and people who could fully understand what it is to be human. And for me, charters were the best
chance for that to happen. And in saying that, I knew even then in 1999 that this would necessarily
mean that not every school would serve every student.
And at the same time in embracing charter schools, I consciously rejected and still reject one of the most
damaging tenets that unfortunately pervades equity politics, which inadvertently but nonetheless
results in saying: if you can’t do everything for everyone, don’t do anything for anyone.
Now, I thought this way, not because I didn’t want to help ALL kids (or think that it was ok not to) but
precisely because as a society it was so crystal clear that we, in fact, were already helping some kids and
not helping others—and we were going to extraordinary lengths to do it. And guess who those “some
kids” were. They were the well-off kids, the ones who use enrollment zones, property taxes, high
housing prices (and a federal mortgage deduction to pay for it) as well as hardball politics to wall
themselves off from poor kids. And make no mistake, those geographic boundaries have been more
ruthlessly effective at walling off poor kids than barbed wire ever could be. Those were the kids we
helped, the ones we gave choice to, the ones we said it would be not just ok but expected that high
expectations would flourish and discipline and order would be a given.
But try helping poor kids by giving them a choice of a charter school that created that atmosphere, try
giving it to kids for whom the zoned (and too often broken) school had been a take it or leave it
proposition (except without the leave it option) and all political hell would break loose.
And all of that, that enormous hypocrisy, just made me angry and still does.
But since 1999 when I came into this sector (then just a movement), something funny happened along
the way. In short, we won—not completely, not absolutely but at a level we could not have conceived.
Yep, that’s right. We won. Suddenly, not just charters but ed reformers came to power. Obama, Arne
Duncan, John White in Louisiana, Hannah Skandera in New Mexico, John King in New York, Chris Cerf in
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This is a written version of remarks made at NACSA’s Leadership Conference; it is has been edited and expanded
where appropriate.
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New Jersey, John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet in Colorado and Deborah Gist in Rhode Island to
name just a few.
And we won at the grass roots level too because parents were choosing to choose charters schools over
district schools again and again.
And as they did so, our market share increased. 43% in DC, 40% in Central Harlem and in New Orleans,
after Hurricane Katrina, we actually became the district.
And by those wins, scale happened. And with scale things changed in ways we hadn’t really thought to
notice—or didn’t choose to notice.
So what was there to notice? Well, as we moved from labs of innovation to a partial or whole
replacement strategy for the district itself, it became more obvious that as a sector there were groups of
students we didn’t enroll—or didn’t enroll many of them; and equally there were some students we
enrolled but who tended to leave our schools and in disproportionate numbers. I don’t even need to
tell you who those children are. We know.
But others did notice: unions, advocates paid by unions, politicians controlled by them and then
journalists and of course bloggers of every stripe and variety.
Now, let’s be clear—these aren’t our friends; they are opposed to us on ideological and self-interest
grounds that have very little to do with education and children and everything to do with adult politics.
And because of that I can sympathize with those who say that no matter what we did or will do, they’d
hate us and that, therefore, all of this is something we should simply ignore as organized propaganda.
Except that lately, some other folks have begun to notice. And they are far from charter opponents.
Whether it is Tom Boasberg, the superintendent of Denver who has begun to trade public space for
enrollment reform that ensures greater access of his neediest kids to charter schools; or John White
who imposed enrollment reforms in New Orleans for the same reasons or a host of other reform
minded folks, they have begun to ask more of charters. And if you are not convinced that something is
changing rapidly around us, then listen to the words of Arne Duncan, who on June 17 had the following
to say as the keynote speaker at the conference of the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools.
So to fully deliver on the dream, charters schools must do more to
take innovation to scale and continue to tackle the very toughest
educational challenges.
I want to see charters pioneering solutions that do a better job of
educating students with disabilities, overage students, students in the
correctional system, and English language learners.
And I want to see charters leading the way in reducing their own rates
of out-of-school suspensions, expulsions, and controllable attrition.
In many cities, including right here in Washington, charters are
substantially more likely to suspend and expel students than other
public schools.
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In the 2011-12 school year, a total of 230 students were expelled from
school in the District. Charters expelled 227 of those 230 students, or
99 percent.
Just 11 charter schools—and that list included some high-performing
charters—accounted for 75 percent of those expulsions citywide. That's
not acceptable.
In so many respects, DC charters are doing outstanding work. I've
been in many of those schools, and seen the difference that they are
making. And the D.C. Public Charter School Board should be
applauded for the transparency in reporting that enabled these
statistics to come to light. But at the end of the day, high rates of
exclusionary discipline cannot be good for children.
I want charters to show the way in implementing alternative discipline
methods that keep students in school and engaged in learning to the
maximum extent possible—while still holding students accountable for
their actions and protecting the integrity of the learning environment. I
know that is easier said than done, but these tough challenges are
what real leadership is all about. [emphasis supplied]
Now when Arne Duncan says something like that, you have two choices: take notice and accept that the
world is changing around you; or, as one person said to me, tell him to shut up and start a whisper
campaign that clearly the Secretary’s gone soft and is no longer really a supporter. In other words, you
are either with us all the way or against us. But I don’t think the second option is an option at all. In
fact, if we choose the latter course, and treat the Secretary as an enemy, I think we are perilously close
to playing the politics of Ted Cruz.
So what does any of this have to do with my vision of a high-quality sector? I think you can guess. We
are at a time when high-quality will have to be defined by more than just the final test scores our
students achieve or graduation rates. In addition, we are going to have to accept that we are going to
have to serve a broader array of students and a larger, fair share of them—at least where we as a sector
have achieved serious scale. And we will also have to not just accept but embrace that definitions of
quality are going to change to take account of this.
And here is the hardest part of that conversation—the one part on which I am nearly schizophrenic. The
simple fact is that those conversations will inevitably intrude to some degree on the value of choice.
Because the more you govern for equity, the more you erode the value of choice—choice in which
parents band together to help create a positive school culture, one in which academic achievement is
not just valued but daily celebrated. Indeed this is the very challenge that Secretary Duncan highlighted.
So here are three modest suggestions on how we move forward and make this change productive
because make no mistake change is coming:
First, and easiest, we need to be more transparent. There is no reason on God’s green earth that every
school, charter and district, shouldn’t have data on who they enroll, who is held back, who departs and
why, as well as differences that may exist in their enrollment structure, such as what grades students
are admitted and at what points during the school year. That way, even if everyone is not on an even
playing field, we at least will know that fact. And equally someone with a less challenging demographic
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will no longer be able to crow about success at the expense of those who are willing to take all children,
no matter how disruptive they may be and find ways to work with them so that the school’s culture is
not detrimentally affected. The hard work that Secretary Duncan referenced.
Second, we must move the conversation away from a tendency to try to get every charter to look like a
perfect microcosm of a much larger school district. That’s reductive and stupid. Having different
settings is a good thing and larger districts have embraced that truth long before charters were a gleam
in any one’s eye. After all, that’s how Central Park East among other small schools was birthed decades
ago. But that means in turn that the solutions we come up with need to be sector wide—and that in
turn we likely will need someone to govern for those solutions because it is unrealistic that the sector
will be able to regulate itself.
Third, we must look at this as an opportunity rather than as some looming menace. I would like to think
that in five years, I will be reading articles about charter sectors in our great and needy cities that have
built the best schools for illiterate high schoolers who immigrate to our shores and can neither read in
their language or in English. Schools that put the most districts’ dismal efforts to shame. I would like to
visit charter schools that deal with those students afflicted with emotional and physical disabilities and
know that, even if they do not get all or even most of them to college, these deserving children will be
provided with a caring environment in which they can flourish to the best of the abilities.
Only if we collectively take on this hard work will we flourish. If we hide from this I fear that our future
is one in which we are increasingly marginalized and we will be a sector whose great and wonderful
promise was not fully realized. And that to me would be the biggest tragedy of all.
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