“Fort Wayne – Walking through the halls of Imagine MASTer Academy, Principal Jim Huth can recall many of the decisions his staff has made in the last few years.
He proudly recalls the decision to paint the walls bright colors, start a parent engagement task force and turn a former weight room into three classrooms.
With a chuckle and a shake of the head, he recalls one teacher’s decision to order diner-style furniture for a cafeteria – a move that was $5,000 over budget.
When people ask Huth what makes his charter school different from traditional schools, he says it’s his ability to empower teachers to try new ideas, even if they sometimes fail.
‘Giving teachers that kind of power creates an incredible learning environment,’ Huth said. ‘When people can make decisions, they become engaged.’
Advocates have long argued that charter schools foster innovation that is difficult, if not impossible, to replicate in traditional public school environments. Free from the restraints of union contracts and district bureaucracies, advocates say, charter school leaders are free to dismiss ineffective teachers, empower those who create results and quickly change their programming and approach to adapt to student needs.
Public school professionals, including several in the area, however, argue that there is plenty of innovation in traditional public schools. Working through the traditional system, which includes collective bargaining, local school districts have found effective ways to address student needs, local officials said.
Charter schools are tuition-free public schools managed by private or non-profit companies. They have open enrollment policies and are free from some regulations governing traditional public schools.
Allen County has three charter schools: The Timothy L. Johnson Academy, Imagine Schools on Broadway, and Imagine MASTer Academy, where Huth has been principal for 2 1/2 years.
Currently, only the mayor of Indianapolis, school boards and six public universities are able to sponsor charter schools in Indiana. When a new law takes effect July 1, however, a statewide charter school board and 30 private, non-profit four-year colleges will also be able to authorize charters.
Russ Simnick, president of the Indiana Public Charter Schools Association, said there is plenty of innovation going on in Indiana’s charter schools. Throughout the state, he said, charter schools cater to students with special needs and desires – in drug recovery programs, military-focused programs or in college-prep programs.
‘There’s a nimbleness and flexibly (in charters) that isn’t existent in any large organization,’ he said. ‘Charter schools have a great deal of say over their staffing. If staffing isn’t working out, you can get the right teachers in front of the right students fast.’
But Western Michigan University professor Gary Miron, who has studied charter schools in the Midwest, said it’s relatively rare for charter schools to implement truly innovative practices.
Although charter schools were referred to as ‘incubators of innovation’ in the 1990s, he said, academic research eventually disproved the assumption that charter schools were more innovative.
‘The things that they report as innovative are really very common practices in public schools,’ he said. ‘Usually they mean they have more innovations in governance, more autonomy.’
Although Gov. Mitch Daniels, state Superintendent of Instruction Tony Bennett and some lawmakers pushed successfully to expand the charter school system, there is no academic consensus that charter schools outperform traditional public schools.
A study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes this spring reported that Indiana charter schools had greater improvement in their standardized test scores than their traditional public school counterparts.
The study was championed by Bennett, who has emphasized the need for schools to look at whether students are improving their scores from year to year, rather than focusing solely on what percentage are passing.
Judging by trends he’s witnessed in other states, however, Miron suggests the growth in test scores at Indiana’s charters could plateau once charter school students reach the same academic achievement levels as their public school peers.
He also says that the same center at Stanford conducted a 16-state survey of charter schools in 2009 that found only 17 percent of charters outperform traditional public schools, and 37 percent performed worse.
It’s hard to compare local public schools with charter schools, because each school’s makeup is different.
With the exception of Timothy L. Johnson, Fort Wayne’s charter schools are not showing the kind of significant growth in test scores that state education leaders hope to see.
Imagine MASTer Academy had about 51 percent of students pass the math and English/language arts portion of the ISTEP+ proficiency test in both 2008-09 and 2009-10, according to the Indiana Department of Education. At Imagine on Broadway, about 28 percent of students passed both sections in 2008-09, and about 29 percent passed the next year.
At Timothy L. Johnson, in its eighth year, 37 percent of students passed both sections in 2009-10, up from 25 percent in 2008-09.
Passing rates are intended to indicate the percentage of students deemed proficient for the respective grade level.
As a point of comparison, about 56.8 percent of Fort Wayne Community Schools students passed both sections in 2009-10 – up from 49 percent the year before.
Fort Wayne’s local charter school leaders said they are seeing some evidence of success, particularly in their internal tests.
Imagine leaders stress the schools are new, each less than 5 years old, and say they are using the kind of approaches that will eventually increase student achievement. Huth, for example, says students he’s had for three consecutive years have an ISTEP+ passing rate of 70 percent on both the math and English sections.
Huth, who for several years was a principal in traditional public schools, said the biggest difference between Imagine and a traditional public school is Imagine’s emphasis on empowering and respecting teachers.
Teachers at Imagine work long hours with little pay, he said. To keep them engaged and invested, he gives them input on matters as varied as how to adjust the curriculum and how to furnish three classrooms with $10,000.
‘One of the biggest differences is the freedom and responsibility we have here as teachers,’ said Imagine MASTer Academy teacher Bridget O’Maley, who previously taught in a traditional public school. ‘I don’t have to go to the principal every time I have to change things. If something’s not going well, we have the responsibility to change it. … In a public school environment, I felt like a lot of those decisions were made by those above me.’
Huth and Ra’Chelle Spearman, principal of Imagine Schools on Broadway, said another aspect of Imagine charter schools is the emphasis on shared values: justice, integrity and fun.
‘We try to treat every child with justice and treat them as an individual,’ Spearman said.
Like teachers, students are encouraged to take roles in the decision-making process. Recently, Spearman tapped a fourth-grader to come up with a plan for spirit week – the week before ISTEP+ – to boost student morale. After seeking advice from other students, a process Imagine requires, the student decided on several dress-up days.
Spearman and Timothy L. Johnson leader Steve Bollier said one of the biggest differences between charter schools and public schools is that students and parents enroll by choice. But Fort Wayne Community and East Allen County Schools, as well as a few other area districts, offer school choice.
It creates a different atmosphere, charter leaders claim, one easier to feel than describe.
‘We have a lot of students in and out for lots of different reasons,’ said Spearman, who graduated from Snider and said she had a great experience at FWCS. ‘When they come here, their attitude changes. We’re not for everyone, but there’s a place for us.’
Local public school advocates counter that there are plenty of innovative practices going on within their walls.
Fort Wayne Community Schools spokeswoman Krista Stockman points out that students can choose to go to several magnet schools in the district, each with its own focus. She says the district emphasizes character building.
Through the collective-bargaining process, she says, the district was able to staff 11 of its struggling schools without regard to teacher seniority and require teachers hired at those schools to put in about a week of professional-development time over the summer.
Although teachers are given different responsibilities than those at local charters, Stockman said, they are still expected to be creative in the classroom.
‘Of course we expect teachers to be innovative,’ she said. ‘If something is not working, we expect them to find another method to help that student be successful. That doesn’t mean they get to pick an entire curriculum. We have set methods that are that way because they’re based on research.’
Northwest Allen County Schools Superintendent Chris Himsel said he’s confident there is plenty of innovation going on in his district.
In particular, he mentioned a new inquiry-based science curriculum initiated by teachers, one-to-one computing in high school English labs and a culinary arts program.
He doesn’t think much is happening in charter schools that can’t happen in his district. And now that new legislation has passed limiting collective bargaining to salaries and benefits, he said the differences between how traditional public schools and charter schools operate is likely to narrow.
‘I think we have the freedom to be very innovative,’ he said. ‘We promote creativity and the arts. We’re not just focused on regurgitating information for test scores.'”
Article published on May 22, 2011 in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette