Let teachers take the reins on charter schools

With its 618 charter schools, Arizona is the prime testing ground for the charter idea. While most agree that charters empower parents and provide a second chance for many students, what do charters mean for teachers?

Opponents fear that these public schools of choice exploit teachers because few charters have teacher unions and tenure protections. Backers argue that charters let teachers act outside the box. The very freedom of chartering, escaping from school boards and superintendents, empowers teachers.

Which view is nearer the truth?

For one answer, go to Sedona. Last month the Journal of School Leadership published my multi-year study of the Sedona Charter School, a small school where since 1995 the lower elementary, upper elementary and middle-school lead teachers have hired their assistant teachers (called facilitating teachers), budgeted for materials, and determined everyone's salaries, including their own.

The Sedona model started in part because local parents wanted a Montessori option, but also because its board wanted to create a school with teachers in charge.

Asked whether this could work in a traditional public school, Sedona Charter's finance and administration director, Alice Madar, said no way: "The district model seems to be a design where people outside the classroom make decisions for people inside the classrooms. But here, the lead teachers are the decision-makers. They sit on our board and hire their own staff. As an administrator, I just facilitate the work in the classrooms."

Madar works with lead teachers the way an office manager does with top doctors in a medical practice.

The three lead teachers at Sedona Charter are held accountable by the school's governing board, which annually audits finances, test scores and parent satisfaction surveys to "make continuous improvement without being threatening," as one board member put it.

No one at Sedona Charter has tenure, yet no one appears threatened. Teachers trust that so long as their school serves kids, parents will choose Sedona Charter and teachers will keep their jobs. Ultimately, parents hold everyone accountable.

Asked if he missed anything about traditional public schools, one lead teacher mused that in the traditional system "you always have someone to blame, whereas (at Sedona Charter) if you make a poor decision how to spend your money, then you can't say that principal blah blah blah, because you did it. ... At other schools, if a kid acts up, you send them to the principal, but here it's your problem. You are the principal."

And without a principal to serve as buffer, teachers meet with parents a lot.

Not everyone is cut out for this. Some lead teachers left after a few years or took facilitator teacher status to avoid the burden of administration.

The most successful Sedona Charter lead teachers are independent sorts who want ownership of their classrooms. Most worked in other occupations before going into public education. The longtime lower elementary lead teacher used to run a private school, so for him "this was a piece of cake."

Some say that those who cannot do, teach. Yet for 20 years the Sedona Charter School has been run by its lead teachers, all the while enjoying sound finances, good test scores and excellent parent satisfaction.

Traditionally, talented teachers who wanted advancement had to leave education or go into administration. Sedona Charter suggests a third way for the profession: top teachers can take charge of schooling without leaving the classroom.

As Edward Dirkswager writes in Teachers As Owners, lawyers run law firms and doctors run clinics, so why can't teachers run schools? Isn't that what teacher professionalism should be all about?

Robert Maranto teaches in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, and is now writing a book about Arizona charter schools.