Charter Leadership Discussion Board

With a varied career in K-12 education,as a teacher and as a parent of a child in the school district, I have seen many of the activities Jorge Lopez (at Oakland Charter Academy) describes in Chapter 9.  I have seen administrators care only about education during testing week (sports are the main concern the other weeks of the year).  I have seen students manipulated in test taking to achieve artificial results for the public’s delight.  I have read polls in which public education (in general and outside their local domain) is considered to be a waste of taxpayer’s money but local education is above average in the minds of local patrons.  Numbers are massaged until the desired outcomes are achieved.

Jorge Lopez describes a charter school with the same problems that are in existence in many schools and describes a new order in the school to get back to the basic educational objectives of any school; teachers teaching and students learning.  Pride in the educational results (not being 10-0 in football this year), pride in the culture of learning (teachers teaching and student’s are proud of their academic success).  Lopez set the climate and hired a staff that would support that culture.  The kids bought into it, the parents saw the real results (not the coasting results of the feeder schools).  Students chastised poor performers and encouraged them to do their homework, pay attention and achieve academically.