Charting better education: Independent schools topping their public counterparts
By Randy James, Republican-American, November 26, 2006

HARTFORD -- Its fourth-grade math scores beat Greenwich, Litchfield and West Hartford last year. Daily attendance is nearly 100 percent. And taxpayers pay less per student than in virtually any other school.

It might be easy to envision Jumoke Academy nestled in one of Connecticut's privileged suburbs, educating classrooms full of fortunate children. Not, in other words, as a place for 325 mostly poor, entirely minority students in one of Hartford's rough-edged neighborhoods.

"Poverty is absolutely no excuse for not learning," said Michael M. Sharpe, Jumoke's chief executive officer. "We've said to our teachers, 'every kid in your class is going to learn.'"

Jumoke Academy is one of Connecticut's 16 charter schools, small public schools that operate outside the traditional system of local funding and control.

Charter schools are essentially school districts unto themselves -- overseen and funded by the state, but managed independently by their own boards of trustees. And in Connecticut, at least, many appear to be succeeding.

Most of the 14 charter schools operating last year outperformed their surrounding school districts on standardized tests, state officials said, and some posted scores among the strongest in the state.

Supporters say that freedom allows charter schools to experiment and innovate more than traditional schools, which are generally subject to heavier local regulations and union requirements.

Jumoke Academy had Connecticut's best-performing African-American students and fourth-best low-income students among elementary schools reporting Connecticut Mastery Test results last year, according to an analysis by ConnCAN, an education research group. Amistad Academy, a New Haven charter school, showed the greatest student improvement among all the state's middle schools.

"I'm surprised that when you have schools that are getting these breakthrough results, there's not more attention paid to them," said Marc Porter Magee, ConnCAN's director of research.

Most charter schools are centered in the state's largest cities, although Winsted has hosted an 80-student high school charter, Explorations, since 1997.

Waterbury was home to a charter school for troubled teenagers, Ancestors Community Charter High School, for four years until it closed in 2001. The school, operated by New Opportunities for Waterbury, faced dwindling enrollment and financial trouble.

Charter schools were once capped at 300 students, though a law passed last spring allows up to 85 students per grade. Charters must be renewed every five years.

Two new charter schools opened this fall in Connecticut, and interest in the others seems to be rising. Jumoke (pronounced Jah-MOH-kee) received 300 applications for about 30 open seats this fall, double what it received five years ago. The school just started a seventh grade, and plans to expand to eighth grade next year.

Plans for a second Jumoke Academy in Connecticut could take shape before long, Sharpe said.

Intense debate

But as their popularity has grown, debate over charter schools has intensified. Some critics claim they weaken traditional school systems by pulling away active, engaged families. Others question whether the schools receive adequate government oversight, and believe their success has been overstated.

Skeptics also point out that many charter schools don't accommodate children with severe special-education needs, as traditional public schools do.

David L. Snead, Waterbury's superintendent, said the breadth of the traditional public school system makes charter schools in the city unnecessary.

"We're able to accommodate pretty much all the interests that citizens and students have," he said. "I'm not so sure a charter school would work any better in Waterbury than our regular schools."

The head of the Connecticut Education Association, a teachers union, suggested that enrollment growth in charter schools is draining much-needed dollars away from other public schools. The state recently raised payments to charter schools to $8,000 per student, up from $7,625 last year.

"The fact the state of Connecticut has increased funding for charter schools without increasing aid to traditional public schools is a great concern," said John Yrchik, executive director of the education association, which represents teachers at two charter schools.

Average per pupil spending in conventional schools in Connecticut is $10,677, comprised of state and local funds.

Supporters are just as adamant about promoting charter schools.

"Unfortunately, the existing traditional system does not embrace variety. It embraces inflexibility, and it embraces bureaucracy," said Jeanne Allen, president of the Washington-based Center for Education Reform, a pro-charter group.

Unions and school board associations resent charter schools "because they're cutting into their piece of the pie," she added. "Education, unfortunately, is very turfy."

Magee, of ConnCAN, said the charter arrangement itself does not necessarily lead to greater academic success, but in Connecticut "the sum of the research suggests that charter schools are improving faster than their counterparts."

Closing the gap

Whether charter schools are the cure to low student performance or a misguided experiment, few deny the remarkable progress being made by students at Jumoke, which opened in 1997 in a former Catholic school building in Hartford's North End.

Four years ago the school generally trailed Hartford averages on the Connecticut Mastery Test. Last year, Jumoke trounced the city in almost every subject, especially in the younger grades, and occasionally beat the average score for all of Connecticut.

In some cases, the school even managed to close the racial achievement gap, which is wider in Connecticut than any other state. While Connecticut's white students typically outperform minorities, Jumoke's black students beat Hartford's white students in most subjects in fourth and fifth grades.

The faculty at Jumoke, a Nigerian word meaning "where everyone loves a child," couldn't single out one explanation for their success, but a few recurring themes emerged: nurturing strong family involvement in education, creating a distinctive and dependable school environment, and feeding a passion for learning.

"It's about having incredibly high expectations for the children," said Tim Barber, the school's assistant principal. "If we're not hiring teachers who have high expectations, and we don't have high expectations of them, then we're not going to get anywhere."

Students wear maroon school uniforms, and are often addressed by adults by their last names -- Mr. Thompson, or Ms. Reid. Every teacher is equipped with a small set of metal chimes; when the chimes are struck with a mallet, students almost instantly fall silent and raise their hands.

Sharpe's goal is to create a "mini society," he said, a place that feels far from the instability and, at times, violence surrounding many students elsewhere in their lives.

"Schools are not just academic institutions. For urban kids in particular, you have to make school an integral part of their lives," said the tall, bald-headed Sharpe, 55, the school's CEO since 2003. "We literally try to capture the kids for as many hours out of the 24-hour day as we can."

Toward that end, students begin arriving at Jumoke as early as 7 a.m. for breakfast and supervised study time. After the class day, activities like debate club, drum corps and instrument lessons can last until 6 p.m., allowing students to spend up to 11 hours a day at school.

About a third of the school returns on Saturdays for a three-hour academic session, and Jumoke also hosts a 6-week summer camp for up to 140 students.

Staff members occasionally pick children up from their homes if they can't get to school, or drop them off in the afternoon. One staff member had 40 students to her home recently for sleepover parties.

Building parental involvement at Jumoke has been a challenge, Sharpe said, but it's increased with persistence and regular phone calls to students' homes. School potluck dinners that once attracted 50 family members can now draw up to 400.

"If we capture the kids, the parents keep getting drawn in, one way or the other," he said. "They start to have a some connection to the school."
Focus on testing

Sharpe himself is the son of the school's founder, longtime educator Thelma E. Dickerson. Barber, the vice principal, is married to a Jumoke teacher. The siblings of students get first priority in filling open seats.

Classes focus heavily on CMT preparation, and the school hires testing tutors to work with students in small groups for several months a year.

Though many educators object to the strong emphasis on standardized tests built into the No Child Left Behind Act, Sharpe said he values the exams.

"If each of our kids knew what the CMT required... that's a pretty bright kid," he said.

Misbehavior at the school has not been a major problem, Sharpe said -- only two students have been expelled for disciplinary reasons in its history.

Asked about Jumoke, a group of fourth-grade girls could hardly help interrupting each other to rattle off its strengths.

"I know I can be who I want to be -- that's why Jumoke's a good school," said Ashley Drayton, 9.

Kandice Reid, also 9, said she didn't mind all the attention on the CMT.

"It shows us what we know, and what we need to work on," she said.

The fact that Jumoke is a "school of choice" dependent on parental interest helps keep the staff focused on student achievement, Sharpe said.

"We're constantly looking at how we can improve, how we can make this a place where you want your kid to be," he said. "We are still so far from where we need to be. But the progress -- that's what keeps you going."