The Standard Times - February 22, 2013
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130222/OPINION/302220304/
By Warren Berube
Warren Berube is a former founder and executive director at the Global Learning Charter Public School. He lives in New Bedford.
Relevant Quotes: (Please follow the link above to read the complete article.)
Innovations schools, by definition, are designed to construct a new way of doing educational business by creating a culture that welcomes teachers, children, parents, administrators and community to work together. Large, staid, complex organizations, such as the school department, move toward fundamental organizational change very slowly. In fact, they tend to find ways to subvert rather than support. They tend to ignore and starve innovation out of existence. It is the classic nodding of the head of consent while failing to follow up with positive support and resources.
I suspect that the innovation schools will experience some of the same hardship that Global Learning faced as a "start-up" in a large, complex and sometimes hostile school system. If, or when, innovation schools are opened, success for students and families will be closer to reality when all of the parties rally around this new educational effort.
Innovations sometimes work and sometimes fail, but the only true way to know if they are effective is to support them, not subvert them.
Charter schools are held to a high standard. If they ultimately fail, their charter can be revoked. So it is, I assume, with innovation schools.
[Note from Esperanza School Blog Writers - Read more about the evaluation process for innovation schools.]
