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Too often when discussing the challenges public K-12 education faces, sweeping generalizations are made that in addition to being inaccurate, unfairly categorize professional educators and public schools as uniformly unsuccessful or at best inadequate.  For instance, there is no proof that charter schools are guaranteed to produce better results than traditional public schools. In fact, the best research to date suggests that just 17% of charter schools outperform traditional public schools – and that 37% of them actually perform worse, though that is a statistic that is rarely acknowledged in some camps. There are great public schools and great charter schools, and then there are struggling schools in both categories. There are great teachers and there are bad teachers. Would we all like great teachers, great schools, and well-educated students? Well yes, but there are fundamental disagreements on how to get there, so for now, a look at the research justifies what most public education advocates have been saying for years: charter schools do not guarantee strong results.

Yet there are high performers, and perhaps we can learn from them. One example of a high-performing charter school network is KIPP. During a recent trip to a KIPP school in Southeast Washington, DC, I witnessed an extraordinary level of teacher energy and enthusiasm. These individuals described their ownership in results, independence in the classroom and a support structure at the school geared towards their success. These dedicated educators are in most ways no different than traditional public school teachers, and many of them taught in those schools prior to KIPP. However, they raved about the KIPP environment, and compared it to their previous experiences. One teacher pointed out that she doesn’t work any harder at KIPP than she did before, but the results she gets with her students are so much better. She credits the supports that she – and the kids – have at KIPP.  KIPP is an interesting model that produces results, but my takeaway lesson is as follows: the teachers were empowered by the results they produced, so maybe we should consider how to scale that dynamic, and others in the model, to serve all our children.

Too many public school teachers are faced with challenging environments and a lack of system support.  Before criticizing teachers for failing our children while simultaneously praising charter schools for succeeding (and at times attributing their successes to the freedom to hire and fire at will), perhaps providing them with similar work environments is the best strategy.  If charter school teachers rave about ownership in the classroom, access to resources, freedom to design their own lessons, administrative support and guidance from more experienced teachers, then provide public school teachers the same before accusing them of failing to do their job. This approach is the same as the idea behind public education; every student deserves an equal start in life to achieve what they put an effort into. Our nation’s teachers deserve the same opportunity.