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Today, the New York Times published Jennifer Medina's story about the success of the Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice, a small school that sends almost all of its students--the large majority of them poor--to college. The school's inspiring success is a testament to the passion and unrelenting hard work of its staff and students.

Still, an aspect of the Times story left me distinctly uneasy. "To hear the tales of the new graduates is to understand the enormous effort and amount of resources it takes to make a school succeed," Medina writes. "Teachers and other staff members routinely work 60 hours a week....  [School Principal Elana] Karopkin said it would be unfair to say she was burned out, but admitted she was nothing less than 'exhausted,' both physically and emotionally."  Asked about her staff's workload, she replied that "nobody should be forced to choose between educating other people's children and having their own."

Chancellor Klein's response to this problem is far from satisfying: "When people are part of the world of changing things for children," he told The Times, "they don't view it is as work." Tell that to the teachers who have reportedly left the school for "graduate school or...more lucrative and less grueling jobs." While many educators view their profession as a calling and make large personal sacrifices to meet the needs of their students, the teacher-as-martyr rhetoric can have a corrosive effect on discussions of school policy.

After all, experiments like the Urban Academy school are supposed to inform much larger school reform efforts.  If the major reform message here is "fill your school with staff willing to forego family life and work grueling hours for low pay," then I worry about any school system's ability to sustain this model at scale.

It would be gratifying to see schools like the Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice receive the resources it needs to develop a staffing model that is more stable and easier to replicate in other schools.  Principal Karopkin has some ideas: "Surely, she said, if there were more teachers assigned to fewer students, the work would be more manageable, and good teachers might be compelled to stay. Either that, or the salary must be significantly higher." 

Education reformers should take note if they want to give the school's very promising core strategy--personal attention to students' diverse needs--a fighting chance in many more schools.

Update:  Eduwonkette offers a similar--though much sharper-edged--comment on Chancellor Klein's remark.