I'm pretty sure this is one of those stories we're not supposed to talk about because it rips to shreds a lot of the usual excuses we all like to make about how some schools and students can't and shouldn't be expected to achieve at high levels.
It has the kind of storyline that we're usually supposed to ignore: Long-struggling and violence filled city school in West Philly continues to fail its students, year after year, until someone with guts decides that public education would be better represented (perhaps even SAVED!) if somebody else was actually educating the public.
So Shoemaker Middle School finally gets turned over to the folks at Mastery Charter School, and one year later it is an entirely different place. Classroom violence has all but disappeared. Test scores improved dramatically.
Oh yeah, and it was the same kids who came to school from the same families with the same problems.
"I think what we've demonstrated is that with a radical change, you can break that pattern and create a very successful school . . . where kids will achieve . . . and will graduate with the skills they need to do whatever they want to do in life," said Mastery founder Scott Gordon. "There are a lot of schools that could use that intervention."
(This isn't Mastery's first successful conversion of a failing school. They seem to be on somewhat of a roll, which begs the question: Why don't we get more top-notched operators involved with taking over our worst schools? It's clearly a tough job, but people are getting it done. How much longer do we allow people to keep their keys to school buildings if the kids enrolled there aren't getting anything close to the kind of education we all want for our kids?)
This Scott Gordon man must be stopped before he and others like him manage to restore this nation's faith in public education once and for all. But until he is, his name and quote will appear in our DFER Quote of the Day.