[caption id="attachment_1054" align="alignright" width="135" caption="Former president of Wilmington Charter School Ron Russo"]
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Ron Russo helped found the Charter School of Wilmington, Delaware’s first charter school, in 1995 and served as its president from its founding until February 2009.DFM News' Larry Nagengast recently talked to Russo about charter schools in Delaware - where they've been and where they're going. Excerpts from that conversation are below:
What do you remember about the creation of charter schools in Delaware?
Mike Ferguson and Leo Strine wrote the law. [Ferguson was state school superintendent and Strine, now Delaware’s chancellor, was Gov. Tom Carper’s legal counsel.] Mike Ferguson told me, that except for [following] the laws and rules regarding health and safety, charter schools need to do whatever they think is necessary. The counterbalancing piece to this is if you don’t get the job done, you close. That’s the idea of the accountability. You can do whatever you want – hiring, salaries, teachers, curriculum. You can do all of that but if you don’t produce, you’re going to close. That’s what the original intent was.
What then, should be the relationship between charter schools and traditional public schools?
Charter schools are a different breed. It requires a different perspective. People don’t seem to realize that the purpose of charter schools is to improve all public schools. It’s not an us versus them situation. The idea is for the traditional system to learn from the charter schools…. Charters are not meant to duplicate public schools. They’re levers for change. We exist to improve all public schools…. There has not been a good enough job of educating, of sharing with traditional [educators], to let them know that we are not in competition with them.
Talk about the charter school authorization process, what the Department of Education is doing.
First, let me quote [education consultant] Chester Finn. He said, “the important thing to understand is that charter authorizers are like 8-year-olds charged with looking after a new puppy that in many cases they never even asked for. The overwhelming majority of authorizers did not seek the job. They’re inventing an entire approach to American public education, and inventing it on the fly.” These are well meaning, well intentioned people who have spent 20, 25 years in public education in the traditional bureaucratic system. [They] view things through the traditional lens in their glasses. Anytime there was an interpretation of the charter law, the interpretation that came out was the traditional school interpretation. How many people at DOE … have an actual working knowledge of charter schools? Not many. What has happened is, rather than permitting charter schools to move ahead on their own, holding them strictly accountable, they tried to pull them back, pull them back, pull them back. You pull them back too much, you’ve destroyed the reason for charter schools.
The Department of Education does have a Technical Assistance Manual for charter schools. It’s about 150 pages.
If you need a 150-page document to assist you, get the hell out of the business, because you don’t know what you’re doing. The people who should be getting involved with charters are people who should have a good working knowledge, who know that if you have a 150-page document, that not all things are equally important and some don’t apply at all to what you want to do. The idea is for charter schools to examine new things. If they’re new, they’re not going to be in that manual. In a traditional setting, they give you an operating manual, they give you a policy book…. Charter schools are the ones that are supposed to be writing those books, not reading them and applying what’s in the book. Charter schools are not supposed to be cookie-cutter approaches. So you might have a 150-page book, and someone else might have a different 150-page book. It has to be individualized based on the talent you’re working with, the resources you have, the community you’re going to serve, the focus you’re going to have.
What can be done to improve understanding between the authorizers and charter school leaders?
What DOE should be doing is developing this rapport.… You don’t have many people there who have expertise with charter schools. But I was part of the problem too. I probably took too much of an isolationist position with DOE and the public schools…. I should have accepted the mission … to involve [traditional] public education. There has to be a greater conversation taking place between the charter schools and the traditionalists. If DOE could engage in these conversations and get a deeper understanding of how charter schools are supposed to operate, I don’t think you’d see all these rules and regulations coming out of DOE.
What’s your assessment of the situation with the Reach Academy for Girls?
I’ve seen a couple of schools, and Reach was one, where the people in charge don’t have any educational background. That should be a red flag. Then, these people don’t select the person who will be running the school until 30 days before it opens. Probably the most important person in the operation of charter school is the principal, the executive director, whatever the title. Several charters, again Reach was one, did not have their top person in place until 30 days before opening day. Yet this person is supposed to create the culture, the attitude that permeates the entire environment of the school. How can you expect that person to do that? With limited knowledge of the school’s mission, how do you convey it to people who you weren’t involved with hiring? If you’re not on board at least a year in advance, I think it’s a recipe for disaster, or at least an insurmountable obstacle for the school to be successful.
What do you think of H.B. 205?
I think it looks good, a step in the right direction. There should be closer scrutiny [of charter schools] at the beginning of the process … in the initial application and renewal. Then free them up, if they’ve proven they can do the job, and get out of their way. The external audit requirement, that’s just good business. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. You should have one every year.
Do you have any ideas for improving the charter authorization process?
An independent commission would be a step in right direction. Some states have them, and legislation has been introduced in Pennsylvania. If you have an independent commission, its members would have the knowledge, the interest in charter schools, and no conflicts of interest. Or you could have a college or university as an authorizer. I’ve talked to some Delaware higher education leaders about that.