Nelson Smith on Charter Schools, Part 3

The District Administration article interviewing Nelson Smith goes on to talk about U.S. Secretary of Education's Arne Duncan's address at the June 2009 National Charter Schools Conference in Washington, DC. At the conference, Arne Duncan encouraged charter school leaders to help in turning around the bottom 5,000 public schools in the nation.

Duncan said that charter schools can help by:

1) taking away the ability of noncharter public school leaders to make excuses that "their" kids can't learn the same as "other" kids.
2) competing for students through offering high quality public charter schools in urban areas where the district-operated schools are not performing.


Across American school leaders are gearing up to Duncan's challenge to "turnaround" underperforming schools. At this time, the role of the charter school community in this endeavor isn't clear at the national or state level.


According to Nelson Smith:

The question is whether you can take a successful charter model and open it in an existing school with the conditions that will foster success. Simply taking the educational program of a successful charter and plopping it down in a school where the rules stay the same, and nothing changes in terms of the dynamics of the school is not going to work. We have to make sure that the charter folks who take on this challenge can start their programs at the new site with integrity, that they will have control over staffing, that they will have control over how money is spent and how long the day is and what the calendar looks like and all these other factors that have led to the success of their own models.

So I think the bottom line is a lot depends on what local administrators and district administrators do and whether they’re willing to provide the space and the conditions for this terrific charter schools to succeed in these school buildings that have not seen success before.

Smith goes on to talk about the problem in finding enough qualified leaders for these new schools and the professional development and support to sustain new leaders. Smith projects an additional 14,000 to 16,000 new teachers will be needed in the next decade.


With Race to the Top funds tied to states with a robust charter school system, many states are wondering how the charter school model can apply to noncharter, district-operated school systems. In other words, how to look like a charter without actually being a charter. Therein lies Nelson Smith's fundamental point about whether school districts will be willing to provide the essentials for school success.

Many charter schools have defined their mission-critical, key essentials as: 1) control over staff; 2) control over the budget; and 3) unique features such as uniforms, instructional hours and curriculum. Compromising on even one of the key essentials will adversely affect a school's performance.