Sounds incredible, doesn’t it? But at the same time I took up the challenge from Jay Mathews to “name” the high flying charter groups popping up around the country the Mayor called a press conference to announce new charter schools opening in New York City, calling them “the right idea for the time.”
Well, with all due respect Mr. Mayor, I think you’ve got to do better than that to raise your education creds with the Senator and LKG. Frankly, I prefer some of the other options offered up (for now, I won’t ID the authors):
- Harder Charters (think Better Cheddar)
- UPPiesS (Urban Powerhouse Public Schools)
- NUPPiesS (New Urban Powerhouse Public Schools)
- PUPPiesS (Paternalistic Urban Powerhouse Public Schools)
- Gap Reversers
- Gap Busters
- Accelerator Schools
- Growth Schools
- And Jay’s contributions: tough-love schools, teacher-driven schools, challenge schools, strong-principal schools, achievement-focus schools.
- And my own lame offering: elite charters.
Please, send more ideas to me. (And Mayor, feel free to fine tune your first try.)
–Guest blogger Richard Whitmire
Fine, thoughtful entries all, but none of them (with the possible exception of JM’s “tough-love schools”) gets to the heart of the matter: the culture of the schools and the quasi-parental role the adults in the building take with their students. If you want to escape the “New Paternalism” moniker (and personally I don’t, since it’s accurate and focuses attention where it belongs) you need to come up with a phrase that descibes the defining characteristic that Whitman’s book so smartly isolates.
EduRick – -here’s my take: http://www.publiccharters.org/node/431