What’s the deal with Camden Schools?
Since I started working in Camden on a campaign for education justice, I’ve been asked to explain what charter schools are, and why I fervently dislike (most) of them. Most recently, my sister’s friends joined us for chili after a day of sledding, and as I’m dousing my serving with Texas Pete’s, my mother invites me to explain to the youngsters (all juniors in college, on average) what I do. I give them the standard, “I’m a community organizer…” soliloquy, one I’ve rehearsed often, but my mother interrupts me to remind us that the mother of one of our visitor’s works in a charter school in Camden, Mastery. Pause. In Camden, Mastery operates Renaissance schools; I explain that they are a hybrid of charter and public schools, the best comparison I can conjure, and that they are taking over public schools in Camden.
There is some misunderstanding about nonprofits actually being allowed to make profits (uh, they are, that’s how they survive as businesses), and, further, about how a nonprofit could possibly be harmful. Frustrated, I flip to my favorite example of a charter school that I don’t dislike: in Amherst, MA, most children attend Amherst Regional Public Schools, but there is another option, a Chinese Language Immersion Charter School, situated amidst the traffic and fields and chain restaurants of scenic Route 9. The difference I describe is that the language immersion school in Amherst offers students and families the choice of an alternative education, but does not effectively harm the public school because it is not trying to masquerade as a traditional public school.
Flip back to Camden (by this point, I’ve given up on the conversation at my dinner table because it is of no use to argue with cocky college students), and the relationship is not so balanced. Camden only has six charter schools—not so bad, right? Perhaps, but what the New Jersey Department of Education will not tell you is that there are ten, soon to be fourteen, other schools in Camden that are managed by private, nonprofit charter corporations disguising themselves as traditional public schools. These institutions are Renaissance schools, aforementioned as the hybrid between charter and public schools. Don’t be fooled; the only “public” aspect of Renaissance schools are that they must accept all students within a catchment zone who apply; students from outside the catchment zone are subject to a lottery, like a traditional charter school. Outside of that requirement, they function like charter schools; they have independent boards, can hire teachers without state credentials, and often end up educating fewer special education students than neighboring public schools by way of “creaming.”
Renaissance schools, created by the Urban Hope Act of 2012, are New Jersey’s answer to the education crisis plaguing Camden; they function, purportedly, like public schools, but are managed by nonprofit charter management organizations (CMO). The Urban Hope Act limits the number of Renaissance school projects in any one district to four, but those four operators may manage more than one facility. In Camden, the three lucky winners thus far are KIPP, Mastery, and Uncommon Schools, so, hooray, there is room for one more. What could be so bad about these tried and true charter management corporations? Why shouldn’t we be happy that they’ve offered to relieve us the burden of being involved in our children’s educations?
Let’s start with KIPP. The Knowledge is Power Program was founded by two Teach for America alumni in 1994 in Houston, TX upon five principles: high expectations, choice and commitment, more time, power to lead and focus on results. We are off to a great start! Teach for America recruits recent college graduates to teach in poor, black and brown neighborhoods for two years minimum; TFA-ers are provided five weeks of training and thrust into communities they know nothing about, and then jet-off to higher-paying careers with a fancy, social justice-y line on their résumé. This post is about schools, not teachers though, so let me get back on track. Since its inception KIPP has expanded to 200 schools across the U.S., and receives funding from such notable foundations as the Walton Family Foundation, the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund, and, in Camden, the Norcross Family via their foundation and the Cooper Foundation. They began their stint in Camden first by taking over Lanning Square School, and have since absorbed J.G. Whittier Family School; their goal is to serve students K-12 in their downtown complex. But, KIPP is just one CMO with a foothold in Camden.
The other two are Mastery and Uncommon. I’ll work my way in, from Texas, to New York and finally to Philadelphia, so I’ll begin with Uncommon. The Uncommon Schools Network has a vague beginning; a nebulous group of pro-charter folks supported the creation of Newark’s North Star Academy in 1997, and eight years later, the Uncommon Schools Network was formalized and founded by James Verrilli and Norm Atkins, who currently chairs their Board. Verrilli now runs Newark’s Relay Graduate School of Education (GSE), a partnership program of Uncommon, KIPP and Achievement First that trains people to become instructors in charter schools. I purposely used words like “program,” “trains,” “people” and “instructors” because the GSE employs no professors of education and offers certification to the charter educators based on the charter curriculum and standards. Relay GSE is by no means a traditional graduate school of education, but already it has been embraced by nine states.
In addition to using “alternative” teacher certification methods, Uncommon also uses alternative names for its schools; most do not actually bear the organization’s designation, but rather an innocuous, prestigious title. In Newark, they are North Star Academy and there are currently ten North Star Academies; the same is true in Camden. Uncommon currently operates one school, Camden Prep, with plans to open another school on Haddon Avenue in September 2017 to serve 800 students K-8. My belief is that by giving their institutions neutral, relatable names Uncommon is hoping to establish itself as something as close to a traditional neighborhood public school as it can get.
The third CMO in Camden is Mastery, a Philadelphia-based charter founded in 2001 as High Tech High. A year later, it became Mastery Charter Schools and now operates 21 schools, including five in Camden. What makes Mastery unique is that it offers three types of school management: charter, turnaround and renaissance. There seems to be little difference between the turnaround and renaissance models; what I’ve discerned is that the turnaround initiative, which is a Philadelphia model, is focused on miserably failing schools, while the renaissance model, which we have here in Camden, simply takes over any school the district allows. Recently, Mastery has been struggling with its pedagogy; its test scores plummeted in 2014, though they have since made modest improvements. The drop was attributed to the organization’s softening of its strict “no excuses” model, which was done in response to alumni calls for better college preparation. Since 2014, they’ve reinstated some of the strict disciplinary model that defined them for fifteen years, and things are starting to improve.
But that’s just on paper. When I talk with parents and students of Mastery’s Camden schools, I hear about physical discipline of elementary school students, including arm-twisting, and about lack of support for special education students. It is no surprise that a CMO school would make every subtle attempt to push special education students out to maintain higher scores, but accounts of physical restraint and discipline are abhorrent. Mastery already has a foothold in one of Camden’s poorest neighborhoods, Pyne Poynt, as well as in neighboring Cooper’s Poynt and East Camden, and they are constructing a new K-8 facility to serve 750 students in Cramer Hill.
As I explained earlier, not all charter schools are nefarious, blood-sucking, profit-machines, but the renaissance operators in Camden are certainly causing a stir snatching up all the neighborhood schools. The point of this post was to unmask the CMOs in Camden, and of course weave my feelings throughout. I do not support charter expansion in Camden, or anywhere else for that matter. I do support traditional public education, neighborhood schools, strong communities, and people over profits; hopefully that’s what shines through here.
