Chapter 2

DAVID AND GOLIATH

IMA­GINE YOU ARE a powerful leader. Your enemy has set up camp near you. To your dis­tress, his army is bigger and stronger than yours, full of fear­less fighters—and they are ready to battle against you.

Your adversary gives you two options: (1) sur­render without res­isting, and you and your sol­diers will become his sub­jects, or (2) send your strongest sol­dier to fight to the death in a duel. If your man wins, your enemy will con­cede defeat, and his army will become your sub­jects. If his man wins, your army will serve a new master.

“Because I’m feeling extra gen­erous, I’ll give you forty days to decide if you want option one or two,” your rival tells you.

You are sent into full panic mode as you scramble to figure out what to do.

Your enemy’s fiercest sol­dier pays you a visit twice every day: once in the morning and once in the evening. “Have you made your decision yet?” he asks each time.

His booming threat matches his over-nine-foot-tall frame and easily crosses the no man’s land between you and your enemy’s sol­diers. They call him Goliath. The war­rior is a bona fide giant pro­tected by nearly two hun­dred pounds of battle-tested, head-to-toe armor.

The pres­sure builds inside you. Your decision will affect the lives of thou­sands of people. But no one in your army, not even your most dec­or­ated sol­dier, comes close to rivaling Goliath’s might. This means the second choice will nearly guar­antee the death of your best war­rior. But if you give up and opt for the first choice, you will live a life of regret for not at least trying.

As each day passes, your sol­diers become increas­ingly rest­less. Word spreads quickly about the options you have been given. Your sol­diers are filled with fear of a life­time of enslave­ment and begin ques­tioning your ability to lead. As their leader, you are charged with acting decis­ively and in their best interest. So what’s taking you so long to make your decision?

One day, out of nowhere, a young man approaches you and offers to fight Goliath. You size him up and imme­di­ately recog­nize his soci­etal status by his humble clothing. He’s a lowly shep­herd with no mil­itary back­ground. You tell him to go away.

“I’ve been tending to my father’s sheep,” David says. “Whenever a fero­cious lion or bear takes live­stock from our flock, I fear­lessly go after the beast and rescue my animal from within its clenched jaws. When it turns on me, I grab it by its hair, strike it, and kill it. Just as I’ve done to lions and bears, I’ll do to Goliath.”

Des­perate for solu­tions to the biggest dilemma of your life, you find relief in his con­fid­ence. With defeat all but inev­it­able, you decide to accept his offer and tell your adversary to pre­pare for the duel.

You dress David in the best armor in your arsenal. The bulky gear is both too heavy and too cum­ber­some for the young man’s slender frame. He refuses to wear it.

“I’ll fight him with what I know best: my staff, my sling, and five stones,” David says.

The day of the duel, David walks to a brook and col­lects five of the smoothest stones he can find and slides them in his modest shep­herd’s bag. He faces Goliath, who is incred­u­lous that he’s going to battle with the un­­armored young man.

“Do you think I’m just a dog, that you come at me with sticks?” he asks David. “Come here, and I’ll give your flesh to birds and wild animals.”

“You come against me with sword, spear, and javelin. But this day, I’ll strike you down and cut off your head,” David says.

Enraged by David’s hubris, Goliath rushes to attack him. David reaches into his bag, places one stone in his sling, and mas­ter­fully launches the rock dir­ectly into Goliath’s fore­head. It instantly pierces his skull. The giant falls face down on the ground.

The ancient story of David and Goliath teaches us how to deal with obstacles and use what seem to be weak­nesses to our advantage. As Mal­colm Glad­well describes in his block­buster book, David and Goliath: Under­dogs, Mis­fits, and the Art of Bat­tling Giants, the young man abruptly changes the rules of engage­ment and through his bold­ness, saves his people, the Israel­ites, from Phil­istine con­quest. The bib­lical account is par­tic­u­larly rel­evant to the cur­rent struggle between the edu­ca­tion reform move­ment and the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment. In this chapter, we will explore aspects chartered schools have in common with David as they boldly chal­lenge the edu­ca­tional model of tra­di­tional public schools.

Who Are David and Goliath?

The edu­ca­tional reform move­ment’s ver­sion of David com­prises a bold, resourceful group of early chartered school pion­eers who sought to create a new model of public edu­ca­tion. They defied the con­ven­tional wisdom of the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment armed with dec­ades of policy, prac­tice, and resources. They fear­lessly chal­lenged the tra­di­tional public school mono­poly over edu­cating our nation’s K–12 stu­dents.

Today, David the Israelite rep­res­ents the people, along with their advocacy and pas­sion, within the edu­ca­tional reform move­ment. These include teachers, par­ents, and com­munity mem­bers. They are bolstered by the prin­ciples of change, which include a firm belief in break­through ped­agogy and a market-driven approach to public edu­ca­tion. Their only desire is to operate their edu­ca­tional pro­grams suc­cess­fully and within defined cap­ab­il­ities, hoping for mod­erate growth over time.

Tra­di­tional school dis­tricts and author­izers often rep­resent the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment’s ver­sion of Goliath the Phil­istine. Public edu­ca­tion’s Goliath is often char­ac­ter­ized by a refusal to com­promise. This inflex­ib­ility is largely a result of dec­ades of main­taining a public edu­ca­tion mono­poly unchal­lenged. Under this entitled status, change is viewed as both unne­ces­sary and a threat to busi­ness as usual. With the growth of chartered schools, the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment real­ized its mono­poly and moral authority could be chal­lenged and even dis­mantled. Push­back became the weapon to slow and even elim­inate the edu­ca­tional reform move­ment’s object­ives. Sadly, the resources, energy, and time com­mitted to push­back often come at the expense of deliv­ering high-quality edu­ca­tion to K–12 stu­dents.

On the one hand, Goliath is armed with a large staff and budget. He often serves as author­izer, sig­naling a massive con­flict of interest when it comes to his desire to main­tain his dom­in­ance and his power over David. Goliath also often limits David’s poten­tial when it goes against his interests. Goliath has been the dom­inant force for dec­ades and views him­self as bene­volent and entitled to main­tain his top-dog status.

On the other hand, David has lim­ited per­sonnel and resources when com­pared to Goliath. David is at the mercy of his author­izer, who has the power to revoke his charter and shut down his oper­a­tions. When Goliath fal­ters, his schools rarely, if ever, will be forced to close their doors. In other words, one of the darker bene­fits of main­taining a mono­poly is a self-poli­cing account­ab­ility system that often falls short of objectivity and, in the case of schools, par­ents’ expect­a­tions.

When Goliath sees David earning the loy­alty of par­ents and the com­munity, this chips away at his mono­poly. In order to remain fin­an­cially solvent and edu­ca­tion­ally rel­evant, Goliath needs to retain his stu­dents and gain those he has lost to chartered schools. While an indi­vidual chartered school may not have dir­ectly harmed Goliath, Goliath sees all chartered schools as harmful and there­fore deserving of push­back. Because of this adversarial rela­tion­ship, rather than work with David to edu­cate K–12 stu­dents, Goliath views him as his adversary.

While chartered schools were ini­tially designed as public labor­at­ories that would help tra­di­tional public schools innovate, the rela­tion­ship has devolved from this lofty starting point. Unless tra­di­tional public schools are forced to work under an author­izer–chartered school rela­tion­ship, they have oper­ated inde­pend­ently, always looking out of the corner of their eyes to their opponent with sus­pi­cion and dis­trust. Although they are both public schools, they have developed their own local, state, and national organ­iz­a­tions that have served to pro­tect their respective interests. And while both seek market share, broadly speaking, their approaches are dif­ferent.

Goliath is stead­fastly holding on to the mono­poly he believes is his right. Within his arsenal, he has mul­tiple push­back weapons, which will slow and stop chartered school growth. David real­izes the fastest path to growth is through earning par­ents’ trust. Gaining market share will come through providing stu­dents a superior ped­ago­gical product. A cul­ture of inde­pend­ence, innov­a­tion, and cre­ativity enables chartered schools to deliver out­standing out­comes. Chartered schools have demon­strated that adversity can be a strength—more is less in this case. Being far smaller and having fewer resources com­pared to the tra­di­tional public school jug­ger­naut has com­pelled chartered schools to become more cre­ative in their drive to thrive in a chal­len­ging envir­on­ment, call into ques­tion the status quo, and earn market share. While push­back has res­ulted in an adversarial rela­tion­ship between David and Goliath, Goliath has main­tained the upper hand through his seem­ingly end­less funding sources. Time will tell how this rela­tion­ship will evolve.

The edu­ca­tional reform move­ment seeks to trans­form public edu­ca­tion to an extent never before seen in his­tory. Chartered schools in the aggregate seem to fall short in size and resources com­pared to the tra­di­tional public school behemoth. But as you will read in the next sec­tion, looks can be deceiving. As with David, their small­ness may not be the weak­ness it seems to be.

The battle between the edu­ca­tional reform move­ment and the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment has been com­pared to Armageddon, where the two will fight to the finish. While a war of exist­en­tial pro­por­tions may be an over­state­ment, the battle between the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment and the edu­ca­tional reform move­ment is no doubt one of the most sig­ni­ficant paradigm shifts within pub­licly funded insti­tu­tions today.

The Strong and Powerful Are Not Always Strong or Powerful

Chartered schools sought to improve public edu­ca­tion through devel­oping an agile, client-centered, focused system. David’s strength was, in part, his nimble­ness. Goliath’s size and arm­a­ment were what both the Israel­ites and Phil­istines viewed as his greatest strengths. In fact, Goliath was con­vinced that David’s small stature and lack of resources would guar­antee his defeat.

Many of those at the fore­front of the edu­ca­tional reform move­ment ini­tially believed the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment would wel­come innov­a­tions developed within chartered schools in order to improve tra­di­tional public edu­ca­tion.

On the one hand, tra­di­tional public schools viewed chartered school innov­a­tions with sus­pi­cion, skep­ti­cism, and hos­tility. On the other hand, they freely and unapo­lo­get­ic­ally adopted prac­tices pion­eered by chartered schools (such as online and blended learning) while rarely, if ever, acknow­ledging the source of these innov­a­tions.

In addi­tion, tra­di­tional public schools inter­preted the inherent small­ness of chartered schools as a sign of weak­ness. In fact, small­ness can be a strength. While tra­di­tional public schools have massive resources, their size and com­plexity pre­vent them from quickly responding to the needs of stu­dents, par­ents, staff, and the com­munity at large. In mari­time terms, steering a super­tanker in a new dir­ec­tion is much more dif­fi­cult than chan­ging course in a nimble speed­boat.

Tra­di­tional public schools ini­tially viewed chartered schools in some­what fad­dish terms: They were an edu­ca­tional trend that would fade away into obscurity or create a minor dis­trac­tion at worst. Mean­while, the pion­eers of the edu­ca­tional reform move­ment saw chartered schools as a revolu­tionary force that would bring about much-needed change within public edu­ca­tion. From the start, edu­ca­tional reformers were pas­sionate and con­fident and had a clear vision they sought to execute.

The edu­ca­tional reform mind-set is dra­mat­ic­ally dif­ferent from that of the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment. Edu­ca­tional reformers have an entre­pren­eurial out­look. Cre­ating some­thing out of nothing has been the hall­mark of self-starters throughout our nation’s his­tory. Estab­lishing a no­n­tra­di­tional public school requires courage, open-minded­ness, a will­ing­ness to eschew safety and embrace risk, and a stead­fast faith in the promise of edu­ca­tional reform.

In order to fully execute their vision and reach their highest pro­fes­sional poten­tial, edu­ca­tional reformers must be provided a public school land­scape that encour­ages them to thrive, grow, and innovate. They must be unfettered by unne­ces­sary bur­eau­cratic hurdles that are often the weapon of push­back rather than legit­imate reg­u­la­tion intended to improve stu­dent out­comes.

The majority of those within the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment have an insti­tu­tional out­look. They are faithful to the indi­viduals and entities that rep­resent tra­di­tional public edu­ca­tion. The edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment embraces safety and tra­di­tion. When new tra­di­tional public schools are estab­lished, they rely on the same tem­plate that has guided public schools for gen­er­a­tions. Chal­len­ging the status quo is ana­thema, and change is viewed with skep­ti­cism and often out­right hos­tility. Those within the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment are reliant on an entire bur­eau­cratic infra­struc­ture to guide and sup­port them. The mere thought of unplug­ging from the insti­tu­tion is, for the most part, incon­ceiv­able.

As was the case between the mighty Phil­istines and the inferior Israel­ites, the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment did not ever anti­cipate that tiny and insig­ni­ficant chartered schools could threaten and even over­take tra­di­tional public schools.

Sim­il­arly, the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment has scale and nearly lim­it­less resources at its dis­posal. While edu­ca­tional reformers have fewer resources, they are not as entrenched in estab­lish­ment dogma and are able to quickly adjust to change. As the bur­geoning chartered school move­ment has demon­strated, the public edu­ca­tion status quo is both vul­ner­able and far from invin­cible.

How Did the Rules of Engage­ment Change?

David lever­aged his strengths, which most per­ceived as weak­nesses. In Goliath’s case, he became com­pla­cent by blindly pledging alle­gi­ance to the status quo. In the end, his under­es­tim­a­tion of a small opponent, hubris, and mis­cal­cu­la­tion cost him his life. Sim­il­arly, edu­ca­tional reformers are dra­mat­ic­ally chan­ging the rules of engage­ment. Tra­di­tional public schools have a paro­chial mind-set that values estab­lish­ment insiders and views out­siders cau­tiously if not deris­ively. To create lasting change within public edu­ca­tion, chartered schools manage and operate their cam­puses dif­fer­ently than tra­di­tional public schools. Through their innov­ative pro­grams, they have had remark­able stu­dent out­comes and have gained wide­spread public sup­port. The break­through ped­agogy that has improved the lives of K–12 stu­dents is in high demand from par­ents. Losing stu­dent market share is ter­ri­fying to tra­di­tional schools that took their mono­poly as a given and, through choice and bur­eau­cratic shackles, are not able to adapt quickly to a chan­ging edu­ca­tional land­scape.

From the begin­ning of chartered school his­tory, no one within the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment ever per­ceived one person or a col­lec­tion of like-minded indi­viduals would launch a new type of public school. This pro­to­type of the larger chartered schools has a cor­porate organ­iz­a­tional struc­ture, whereas the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment is entrenched in hier­archy, pro­tocol, and the employees pro­gressing from one career stage to the next.

According to the estab­lish­ment per­spective, con­structing a public school requires an insti­tu­tion with mul­tiple bur­eau­cratic layers. You need building, cur­riculum, and over­sight depart­ments. But chartered schools and their adven­turous leaders eschewed the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment paradigm and proved it was not an infal­lible and indis­put­able dogma. Edu­ca­tional reformers had a vision and the courage to execute it. This new model empowered a gen­er­a­tion of for­ward-thinking indi­viduals ready to take on the chal­lenges of public edu­ca­tion. By embra­cing private-industry approaches that were once the baili­wick of entre­pren­eurs, not public schools, edu­ca­tional reform leaders have brought about unpre­ced­ented change and innov­a­tion to public edu­ca­tion. For example, it inspired an exper­i­enced teacher of one school serving a small stu­dent pop­u­la­tion to rise to become a CEO of a mul­tiple school-site system, one that has served thou­sands of stu­dents and posed a threat to tra­di­tional public edu­ca­tion through deliv­ering out­standing and widely recog­nized aca­demic out­comes.

The fol­lowing chart depicts many of the key dif­fer­ences between tra­di­tional public schools and public chartered schools. These dif­fer­ences are a result of policies, prac­tices, and pro­ced­ures sup­ported by state codes or laws. Public chartered schools are granted oper­a­tional freedoms intended to create an edu­ca­tional envir­on­ment con­du­cive to cre­ativity and innov­a­tion. Our goal for the reader is to examine both columns recog­nizing the oppor­tun­ities each struc­ture presents.

CHAR­AC­TER­ISTICS	TRA­DI­TIONAL PUBLIC SCHOOLS	PUBLIC CHARTERED SCHOOLS
Organ­iz­a­tion	Mostly inde­pendent, char­ac­ter­ized by a bonded interest between county office and neigh­boring dis­tricts.	Inde­pendent, char­ac­ter­ized by a loose col­lab­or­a­tion among chartered schools.
Com­pli­ance Frame­work	Follow all tra­di­tional edu­ca­tion codes.	Follow cor­porate law and some por­tions of tra­di­tional edu­ca­tional codes.
Source for Facil­ities	Have tra­di­tional facil­ities provided.	Lim­ited facil­ities, many of which are self-funded. Lim­ited over­head costs: operate in store­fronts, office build­ings, and small cam­puses in facil­ities that may be leased, rented, or pur­chased through self-funding.
Teachers’ Organ­iz­a­tion	All union.	Union or nonunion.
Ped­ago­gical Model	Follow tra­di­tional model with some vari­ations.	Innov­ative and cre­ative with no central instruc­tional model.
Schedule	Tra­di­tional school schedule.	Flex­ible schedule.
Tech­no­logy	Slow to adopt tech­no­logy due to bur­eau­cratic hurdles.	Easily able to adopt latest tech­no­logy.
Lead­er­ship	Tra­di­tional edu­cators have sim­ilar back­grounds and exper­i­ences. For the most part, leaders pledge alle­gi­ance to the insti­tu­tion.	Charter lead­er­ship comes from diverse back­grounds that bring fresh per­spect­ives not entrenched in insti­tu­tional alle­gi­ance.
Boards	Elected school boards.	Varied board struc­tures.
Over­sight	Mul­tiple levels of over­sight through county, state, and fed­eral laws.	Chartered schools are empowered to make decisions based on research and data. They are account­able to author­izers, state law, and fed­eral reg­u­la­tion as called out for chartered schools.
Cur­riculum Organ­iz­a­tion	Massive instruc­tional pro­grams and cur­riculum sup­ple­mented by their extra­cur­ricular pro­grams.	Lim­ited cur­ricular and instruc­tional pro­grams based on each one’s spe­cific edu­ca­tional pro­gram.
Impetus for Change	Lim­ited to respond only to pro­grams funded by the state and county.	Chartered schools are empowered to make decisions based on research and data. They are account­able to author­izers, state law, and fed­eral reg­u­la­tion as called out for chartered schools.
Bound­aries	Teach stu­dents within set geo­graph­ical bound­aries.	No school bound­aries.
Push­back Level	Sub­ject to little to no push­back.	Sub­ject to tre­mendous push­back.
Laws	New laws mainly cla­rify existing laws.	New laws reduce inde­pend­ence and create bar­riers to entry often driven by push­back.
Sup­port Net­work	Has a pro­active sup­port struc­ture for school boards, super­in­tend­ents, prin­cipals, teachers, and clas­si­fied staff.	Sup­port by state and national organ­iz­a­tions for chartered schools may be clas­si­fied as mod­erate to weak.
Stu­dent Pop­u­la­tion	Fixed stu­dent pop­u­la­tion.	Recruited stu­dent pop­u­la­tion.
Iden­tity	Long-standing iden­tity and repu­ta­tion.	Uncer­tain as sus­tain­ab­ility and longevity remain a work in pro­gress.
Opposing View­point	Dis­tricts see chartered schools as sub­ser­vient to their authority.	Chartered schools see tra­di­tional public schools as their equal.
Mar­keting	Mar­keting almost nonex­istent.	Mar­keting is a major effort.

Throughout most of tra­di­tional public edu­ca­tion’s his­tory, the major issues the insti­tu­tion faced were based on policy, prac­tice and pro­cedure, and funding. The onset of chartered schools brought about new chal­lenges that changed the rules of engage­ment for public schools. Tra­di­tional public schools were now con­fronted with a new type of public school that siphoned their primary rev­enue source—the stu­dents within their bound­aries. The edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment has responded with aggressive push­back, con­fident its author­iz­a­tion will quickly force chartered schools to back down. But chartered schools have not acqui­esced. In fact, they have defended their stead­fast stu­dents-first values. While dis­trict author­izers have viewed chartered schools as essen­tially serfs oblig­ated to serve their feudal lords, chartered schools con­sider them­selves public edu­ca­tion equals. This is based on legal grounds. Under fed­eral and state stat­utes, tra­di­tional public schools and chartered schools are Local Edu­ca­tion Agen­cies, which means both have equal legal standing.

We estimate the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment will require a decade to cla­rify its rules of engage­ment with chartered schools. In ten years, we will have a gen­er­a­tion of school admin­is­trators who know of a public edu­ca­tion envir­on­ment as only where tra­di­tional public and chartered schools coexist. They will under­stand the important role and func­tion chartered schools play and be far more inclined to under­stand their bene­fits.

Cur­rently, school dis­tricts across the nation are losing market share to chartered schools and are scram­bling to figure out how to stop the bleeding. The edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment has two choices: attempt to squash chartered schools like a bug under a shoe or take a more mod­erate and con­cili­atory approach and direct their efforts toward having chartered schools operate more like their tra­di­tional coun­ter­parts. We believe the latter approach will pre­vail. With that stated, we strongly believe that any over­sight and oper­a­tional method must allow chartered schools to main­tain their inde­pend­ence, which is one of the greatest strengths of the chartered school model.

In addi­tion, as chartered schools have grown and earned the legit­imacy that is their right, phil­an­throp­ists have taken notice. Powerful bene­factors have expressed strong interest and sup­port in the promise of edu­ca­tional reform. Many have shared their lar­gesse with chartered schools, making the move­ment stronger than ever.

More Is Not Neces­sarily Better

The chartered school leaders are com­par­at­ively small organ­iz­a­tions that often have on-site CEOs, who are dir­ectly involved in decision-making for an indi­vidual campus. While chartered schools are smaller, they have repeatedly demon­strated they can deliver quality edu­ca­tional pro­grams that meet or exceed what giant tra­di­tional public schools offer. The greater number of pro­grams tra­di­tional public schools have may allow for more flex­ib­ility in scheduling classes for stu­dents and more options. But many of these classes may be scripted instruc­tion developed by a cur­riculum coordin­ator rather than an innov­ative pro­gram tailored to meet the par­tic­ular needs of a school’s stu­dents. Whereas the organ­iz­a­tional struc­tures neces­sary for sig­ni­ficant innov­a­tion and change are often nonex­istent in tra­di­tional public schools, ground­breaking innov­a­tion and change are the goal and hall­mark of chartered schools.

During our research in Mas­sachu­setts, we wit­nessed a scen­ario that per­fectly demon­strated the power of inde­pend­ence. Cape Cod Light­house Charter School is a thriving school that lacked a proper out­door play area for its stu­dents. One day, the prin­cipal’s sec­retary looked out her office window and saw a con­tractor using his massive machinery to repair a city street in front of the school. She walked up to the con­tractor and asked if, once he wrapped up the street repair, he could level a rocky field in the back of the school so the stu­dents would have a place to play. As the saying goes, “Ignor­ance is bliss.” The school sec­retary made the simple appeal not knowing the immense amount of work required to ful­fill her request or how even doing so broke the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment’s com­pli­ance and bur­eau­cracy-driven pro­tocol dic­tating the decision-making pro­cesses for its cam­puses.

To the sec­retary’s delight, the con­tractor gen­er­ously obliged. Appar­ently, the con­tractor did not know how tra­di­tional public schools approved or rejected pro­jects such as these either. Over the course of a few weeks, he and his team moved tons of dirt and rock, and they went on to build the chartered school a play­ground that included a soccer field. The con­tractor per­formed this work for free as a ser­vice to the school.

The major pro­ject that started with a school sec­retary’s simple request cre­ated a play­ground within a time frame unheard of under the rules dic­tating con­struc­tion within the tra­di­tional public edu­ca­tion system. In Cape Cod Light­house Charter School’s case, the sec­retary took it on her­self to explore con­struc­tion options to meet the school’s needs. From there, the school’s CEO, who worked on-site every day and knew, on an intimate level, the school’s needs and goals, gave the green light to move for­ward with the play­ground con­struc­tion. As a CEO, he had the authority to approve, coordinate, and assign tasks.

Cape Cod Light­house Charter School’s play­ground pro­ject demon­strates the agility that does not exist in tra­di­tional public schools. Sim­ilar to Cape Cod Light­house Charter School’s play­ground pro­ject, chartered schools across the country can quickly imple­ment new pro­grams, pro­ced­ures, and policies. They can adopt new cur­riculum and instruc­tional meth­od­o­logy guided by staff and teacher recom­mend­a­tions.

Ima­gine a sim­ilar scen­ario playing out in a tra­di­tional public school. Even if the con­tractor volun­teered to donate his time and resources to the school, the site admin­is­trator would not have the authority to approve the decision. Rather, it would have to be made at the dis­trict level, where admin­is­trators would be required to follow a long list of policies, prac­tices, and pro­ced­ures. This red tape includes school-site coun­cils, coordin­ators, dir­ectors, dis­trict admin­is­trators, and the plan­ning and building, main­ten­ance and oper­a­tions, fin­ance and accounting, legal, edu­ca­tion, advisory, and ath­letic depart­ments. With so many layers of bur­eau­cracy, it is no sur­prise why change occurs at a snail’s pace within tra­di­tional public schools. This is why even the mere thought of building a new play­ground within weeks on a tra­di­tional public school campus (from approving the plans to having kids play on it) is unheard of.

Instead of mul­tiple layers of pro­tocol requiring meet­ings, agendas, and end­less col­lab­or­a­tion, chartered schools are designed to effi­ciently make decisions and adapt to change. At the same time, when it comes to decisions that require working with school dis­tricts, chartered schools encounter the same bur­eau­cratic head­aches that tra­di­tional schools must deal with. As anyone who heads a small chartered school can attest, some­times dealing with the layers of decision-making required between the chartered school and the tra­di­tional dis­trict can seem like trying to scale an insur­mount­able wall.

The inherent organ­iz­a­tional dif­fer­ences between chartered schools and tra­di­tional public schools result in both models addressing the same problem and solving it in com­pletely dif­ferent ways. In many cases, tra­di­tional public schools find them­selves frozen in a dizzying maze of bur­eau­cracy. In con­trast, chartered schools often have effi­ciently solved the problem and are moving on to address the next chal­lenge.

Those within the edu­ca­tional reform move­ment are risk takers and are stead­fast in the belief that public edu­ca­tion as the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment has defined it needs to improve and be com­pletely over­hauled—espe­cially in areas where K–12 stu­dents are appallingly under­served. The chartered school reformers are chal­len­ging the status quo by estab­lishing public schools that break from the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment’s expan­sion model. In fact, pro­fes­sionals within the estab­lish­ment are typ­ic­ally indoc­trin­ated into its eco­system. Many teachers and admin­is­trators have attended K–12 public schools and have received teaching and admin­is­trative cre­den­tials from public uni­ver­sities. Most pro­fes­sionals that have become admin­is­trators in the system taught in public schools before moving out­side the classroom and into the dis­trict office. In this closed system, tra­di­tional public school teachers and admin­is­trators con­form to an organ­iz­a­tional system that is entrenched in tra­di­tion and bur­eau­cracy.

Count­less frus­trated tra­di­tional public school teachers and admin­is­trators have fan­tas­ized about estab­lishing or working at their dream school, a magical place that addresses all the public edu­ca­tion weak­nesses they have iden­ti­fied. But moving beyond day­dreaming and toward starting up a school is out of the ques­tion. Doing so would break with everything they have learned that public edu­ca­tion is. This explains why few in the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment can per­ceive devi­ating from standard prac­tice in a sig­ni­ficant way.

Enter the pion­eers of edu­ca­tional reform. Seem­ingly out of nowhere, a group of highly motiv­ated and tal­ented indi­viduals decided to launch schools that broke from the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment model. The majority of those within the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment had no idea that change of this mag­nitude was on the horizon.

The pion­eers of edu­ca­tional reform developed chartered schools slowly and meth­od­ic­ally to bring their plans to fruition. They did not have unreal­istic expect­a­tions thinking they could offer a one-size-fits-all solu­tion to address the greatest chal­lenges facing public edu­ca­tion. Their major objective was to intro­duce choice through market-driven public edu­ca­tion.

Sur­vival of the Fit­test

This term implies that those who are best pre­pared will over­come and exper­i­ence long-term suc­cess. Within the con­text of the edu­ca­tional reform move­ment, sur­vival of the fit­test is not a fad, nor is it tem­porary. For chartered schools to thrive in the future, they must focus on building strong fiscal resources and reli­able instruc­tion, under­stand the ori­gins of the edu­ca­tional reform move­ment, develop a spe­cific mis­sion, and determine how they can com­ple­ment and col­lab­orate with the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment.

In fact, unless a new and unpre­ced­ented col­lab­or­a­tion arises between chartered schools and tra­di­tional public schools, both may be dam­aged in the long term. Only the strong will sur­vive, which are public schools that have a solid fiscal and instruc­tional found­a­tion. In this sec­tion, we will address the three battles playing out between the edu­ca­tional reform move­ment and the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment: (1) fiscal viab­ility, (2) public sup­port and trust, and (3) new human cap­ital.

Fiscal Viab­ility

Edu­ca­tional reformers realize the chal­lenges of a market-driven approach. By being its biggest pro­ponents, edu­ca­tional reformers realize they must con­sist­ently deliver exactly what par­ents need. Oth­er­wise, they will lose market share to their com­pet­itors. Edu­ca­tional reformers under­stand they must con­stantly earn public trust in order to sur­vive in a free mar­ket­place, and they embrace the chal­lenge.

In regions across the country with a large chartered school pres­ence, including cities with the nation’s biggest public school dis­tricts, tra­di­tional public schools are strug­gling to adapt to a com­pet­itive public edu­ca­tion mar­ket­place. They are used to oper­ating under a mono­poly that allows them to con­tinue being the sole public edu­ca­tion pro­vider, regard­less of how poorly they per­form. Year after year, build­ings open their doors in the fall, stu­dents attend classes, and teachers show up every day. No matter how much they under­per­form, schools and their dis­tricts always want more funding. Budgets never decrease, and the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment presents the same argu­ment every year: “Our expenses are higher; we need more to sur­vive.”

Across the nation, state depart­ments of edu­ca­tion, based on find­ings from the county edu­ca­tion depart­ments, have iden­ti­fied dis­tricts likely to become insolvent in the near future. The most egre­gious examples are New York City Public Schools (NYCPS) and Chicago Public Schools (CPS), both of which are more than one bil­lion dol­lars in debt. These schools tee­tering on col­lapse demon­strate the weak­nesses of the public edu­ca­tion mono­lith.

Unless chartered schools monu­ment­ally shift their strategy by becoming stronger and more organ­ized, they will suc­cumb to edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment push­back.

Public Sup­port and Trust

Market-driven public edu­ca­tion is a stu­dents-first approach. When par­ents and their chil­dren have a choice, they will con­tinu­ally seek out the best public schools pos­sible. Chartered schools providing quality edu­ca­tion will be in high demand. Those schools that have planned wisely and fol­lowed stra­tegic plans focusing on quality and long-term growth will most likely flourish. Charter man­age­ment organ­iz­a­tions (CMOs) that follow sound busi­ness man­age­ment prin­ciples and deliver strong instruc­tional pro­grams could become the most prom­inent voice of the move­ment. As a result, they could emerge as leaders whose public school model becomes the vision for all chartered schools. CMOs com­prise polit­ic­ally savvy leaders whose influ­ence could drive edu­ca­tional reform.

The chartered school move­ment is about twenty-five years old. Ini­tially, chartered schools invested in devel­oping a mode of oper­a­tion that effect­ively con­nected par­ents, stu­dents, and school staff. Within a short period, chartered schools have exper­i­enced extraordinary growth. From a small cot­tage industry, they have expanded into multi-mil­lion-dollar organ­iz­a­tions. Many chartered school back offices rival those of soph­ist­ic­ated private-sector cor­por­a­tions. While book dealers, cur­riculum designers, turnkey tech­no­logy com­panies, pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment trainers, real estate developers, law­yers, con­sult­ants, and advisors of every type once focused their mar­keting efforts on tra­di­tional public schools, they are now seeking busi­ness oppor­tun­ities with chartered schools. Chartered schools are mature organ­iz­a­tions trusted by the com­munities they serve and sought after by the private sector.

New Human Cap­ital

Chartered schools have exceeded all expect­a­tions, even those of their founders. They began as a small col­lec­tion of cam­puses mostly com­prising fewer than two hun­dred stu­dents. Today, hun­dreds of chartered schools exist. Large ones enroll two thou­sand, ten thou­sand, and more stu­dents. Many are fully mature organ­iz­a­tions that bear little resemb­lance to the scrappy start-ups that landed on public edu­ca­tion shores.

The golden age of edu­ca­tional reform has just started as the pion­eers and the founders of the move­ment are reaching retire­ment age. The future car­ries with it many vari­ables, including what lies ahead for the growing and vibrant move­ment, how chartered schools will main­tain innov­a­tion and inde­pend­ence while shed­ding their fledgling status and building a well-estab­lished infra­struc­ture, what will become of this infra­struc­ture that has sup­ported a growing and vibrant move­ment, and, most import­antly, who will influ­ence and lead the move­ment—in other words, who will be crowned the Davids of the future.

Throughout the first decade of the chartered school move­ment, the founders of the move­ment helped design, develop, and pass charter school law and estab­lished the first chartered schools. We refer to these founding leaders as the “ori­ginals.” The ori­ginals had remark­able qual­ities and skills, including pas­sion, dogged ded­ic­a­tion, bold­ness, and an under­standing of stu­dent-centered public edu­ca­tion instruc­tion. Coupled with exper­i­ence, a com­mit­ment to team­work, and high levels of expertise, they poured the found­a­tion on which all chartered schools are built. Tomorrow’s chartered school leaders must uphold these same values for chartered schools to con­tinue to thrive and defend them­selves against push­back. They must be given the freedom to remain centered on instruc­tion and the needs of pupils and fam­ilies.

At their outset, chartered school leaders needed the skills to launch start-up schools. Staffs at this stage were small and rel­at­ively easy to manage. But as chartered schools have grown, they have become com­plex organ­iz­a­tions that require advanced lead­er­ship expertise. While, on the one hand, this growth demon­strates the suc­cess of chartered schools, on the other hand, chartered schools must always hold to their mis­sion of innov­a­tion and inde­pend­ence, regard­less of how suc­cessful they become. Thus, with growth comes the chal­lenge of main­taining the vision of the edu­ca­tional reform move­ment.

New leaders must have the man­age­ment skills that exceed those neces­sary at the start-up phase. They must have expertise in organ­iz­a­tional man­age­ment, com­pli­ance, legal issues and con­cerns, gov­ernance, public rela­tions and mar­keting, human resources, main­ten­ance and oper­a­tions, facil­ities acquis­i­tion, legis­lative ana­lysis, and a strong under­standing of the greatest chal­lenges the edu­ca­tional reform move­ment faces. Today’s chartered school leaders must be well trained in edu­ca­tional lead­er­ship. Their skill set must strike the bal­ance between a high-level chartered school’s admin­is­trator and a cor­porate leader. Leaders’ cap­ab­il­ities must move beyond busi­ness acumen. They must be able to meet stu­dents’ needs, which is part of any suc­cessful instruc­tional pro­gram. For this reason, those who manage and operate chartered schools must be com­fort­able with their learning com­munities. They must be skilled in com­munity out­reach.

As the story of David and Goliath has taught us, sur­vival of the fit­test does not mean the strongest and most powerful will win the battle. Nor does it mean those who uphold tra­di­tion and the status quo are the best equipped to thrive in the long term.

Within public edu­ca­tion, the par­tic­ular rules of engage­ment between chartered schools and tra­di­tional schools vary from state to state and city to city. In Denver, there is a gen­eral open­ness and col­lab­or­a­tion between the two. In states where the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment aggress­ively uses push­back, each chartered school must be pre­pared to con­front that and defend itself by investing in strong instruc­tional pro­grams, fin­an­cial resources, and out­reach, which will earn trust and gain much-needed sup­port from com­munity mem­bers.

In addi­tion, chartered schools must hire and retain tal­ented and resourceful staff mem­bers. Chartered schools’ high-quality staff wind up with high-quality out­comes. Chartered schools must also focus on the sim­il­ar­ities they share with suc­cessful private-sector cor­por­a­tions. In order for these sim­il­ar­ities to con­tinue to benefit chartered schools, their leaders must main­tain a hands-on approach to man­aging their cam­puses, an open­ness to change, an insa­ti­able appetite to learn and grow, and con­stant col­lab­or­a­tion with the greater edu­ca­tional reform move­ment.

Leaders that com­bine sound busi­ness prin­ciples with the par­tic­ular needs of public schools are best equipped to take on the greatest chal­lenges their schools face. An ability to leverage the strengths of the private sector is one example among many that demon­strate why chartered schools must fight for their inde­pend­ence and freedom.