Fixing Education: So You Want to Start a Charter School?
SySTEM Schools, the non-profit charter STEM school in downtown Phoenix whose board I joined, has been open for a little over a month, and it is behaving as all startups do; the co-founders are riding the roller coaster of ups and downs that always accompanies running a startup. My purpose on the board seems to be to remind everyone that startups are hard, but they can work if you keep going.
However, I’ve learned more about elementary education than I ever knew before, and it is much harder to start a school than a software company, believe me. A school has all the challenges of any new business, but layered on top are the problems with American education. And they are not minimal.
The landlord and contractor are still negotiating with each other about who pays whom when, so some tenant improvements in the building are not yet finished. For example, although the classrooms are functional, the sign on the building is not up, and the folding walls we specified so we could combine classes into one large collaborative space were late. We can’t install them until fall break or later. In the meantime, we have temporary immovable walls, which make it harder to work together.
These things would not be a problem if we weren’t trying to recruit students.
Over the summer, founders Angelica Cruz and Nicole Fernandez actually went door to door in the heat to talk to neighborhood families and recruit inner city 6th and 7th graders. The mission of the school is to offer a STEM education to disadvantaged kids.
We wanted to start with 100.
On Day One, 97 showed up, which seemed like a big success. However, after sorting out transportation problems, families who moved, kids who missed their old classmates, and ones who want to attend school with a sibling, the number has fallen. It’s a good thing we budgeted for 80. Because of the neighborhood we are in, we’re sure to see more churn.
We also learned that we need to hire teachers who really understand what they’re signing up for. Collaborative learning means a teacher needs better leadership skills, because he has to generate inquiries from students who are not trained to be inquisitive. Some teachers just don’t fit. We lost one already.
These problems I will dismiss as “first world problems,” or the problems of any startup: facilities, customers, hiring.
But then there are the issues unique to education. When the students took their benchmark reading tests, we discovered that reading levels of incoming students were anywhere from first to twelfth grades. While this surprised neither of the founders, it made me cry. A sixth grader still reading at first grade level is at a terrible disadvantage.
It’s difficult to know whether to “blame” parents, teachers, administrators, or the testing itself, but blame does not help the children. Instead, we’ve had to institute “emergency” reading therapy. That means taking resources off STEM and putting them into basic literacy.
I was so depressed by the reading levels that I didn’t ask for the math scores. Instead, I plan to do the only thing I am equipped to do: I got on Amazon and bought ten of the top 25 books for children in 6th and 7th grade, and I am going to let the kids pick which one they want to read with me. I will then get on Amazon again and buy 25 copies of the book they choose and go down to the school as a volunteer while they read the book. I practiced this over the summer with my grandson and I know it works.
At first I thought I would ask all the students to read aloud to me. After all, that’s how I learned to read. However, one founder told me there’s new research that says reading aloud makes students anxious.
I guess I must have spent a very anxious childhood, because I did it, along with everyone else in my class, all through elementary school. At the end, we could all read. Among other things, reading aloud helped the immigrant kids in my school learn English. Thus, I’m going to play this by ear. If I have to read aloud to THEM to get them interested in reading, then that’s what I will do.
I now know that to really help these students, and to become the A school we want to be, we will need a boatload of volunteers who can do everything from chaperone field trips to talk about career opportunities in STEM, to teach leadership, collaboration, and team play. Six previous years of sitting at a desk in rows has not taught our students how to be collaborative, how to problem-solve, and how to work as a team. The teachers at SySTEM are teaching those basic skills now, through activities such as recycling projects.
We’re trying to awaken a spirit of inquiry.
But we will also need plain old tutors, the kind that can see the glory in every child and bring it to the surface. I know this is possible, because I’ve been a foster parent and I know how far kids can come with the right attention. It will take more than the small cadre of teachers and administrators at SySTEM to help. We’ll have to “crowdsource” this.
Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the money. Like all schools, we’re woefully short. And when I say short, I mean we can’t afford cleaning supplies, waste baskets, whiteboard markers, files, and even books. Our state has cut spending on students to the bone, and now that I’m in a school as a business person, I see what this means. Without resources, no business can scale.
I’m amazed that some people still want to be teachers, and more incredible, school founders. It’s more than a calling; it’s a human sacrifice.
