Fact and spirit

Response from friend, colleague, and former boss Scott Hartl, CEO of Expeditionary Learning: Italics his words, everything else mine.

In large measure I agree with your writing in both large point and specific, and I appreciate that you have obviously been on our new website (I have, and it is remarkably good...http://elschools.org/). In one paragraph, however, I do feel that you are incorrect in both fact and spirit, pasted in below for reference. "Expeditionary Learning Schools is a replication model that can start effective schools of 240 students or more, like Casco Bay HS...but they can't, if they're honest, produce the same rates of sustainable success when they try to do what Mike McCarthy did at King - take an existing, demoralized staff and a broad array of learning challenges and transform that into opportunity and, as we saw yesterday, results." EL's best data is often from schools like King that were in existence long before their engagement with EL. We are about to release a study of our Rochester schools that will be the best data and most rigorous study done on EL to date that supports this point.

I take up this point with you vigorously because a central tenet of our value proposition is that we are not a CMO (Charter Management Organization), but rather an organization that can work with schools across a wide range of settings including new to existing. I would also want to always hit the note about EL that we are focused on the 2.5 million current teachers and represent an organization committed to high quality PD that helps current teachers grow and improve rather than a solution that focuses only on new recruitment and exiting strategies. I also think that if you look at the collection of our best schools the data would not support your reference to "240 students or more", but would rather suggest a sweet spot range of something like 150 to 600. Lastly, as a person who still thinks primarily like a principal, I would say that it is not what Mike or EL can each do vs. the other, which is how your paragraph reads to me, but what a strong principal and a strong well-matched outside partner organization like EL can do together.

My response to Scott, with much thanks for jumping in so thoughtfully: "I don't dispute the factual points you make...in fact, will append the post to reflect them. Your last point, about principal and partner working together, is one I've made many times elsewhere, (see the earlier blog entry, "Don't go it alone") so if there was a "vs." implication, I'll find it and weed it out.

The continued sticking point - one that we would need at least 30 years of data that cuts across not just EL's data, but that of many other initiatives to change schools from the inside out - has to do with the kind of change we want and the kind we can sustain (and by implication school size.) While I'm sure your Rochester data will show substantial success compared to what was, to me most change strategies are still focused on relatively few (and to me, relatively partial) successes. I look at the schools I've personally been part of the change process in - some that had World of Inquiry-like successes, like Noble, Poland and to some extent Bath Middle - and look at them 5, 10, 15 years down the road as Supt's and school boards change. Writ larger, how much better are our schools doing, as a whole, than they were 30 years ago?

While I've consistently (and, I hope the blog post reflects this) written about EL as among the most successful of the replication strategies, my position is that the part of EL's work (or any other PD/school reform strategy) that focuses on making better schools at anything but the lower end of the sweet spot size you cite is going to end up replicating more of what we need to dismantle...even if, as EL is in plenty of places, able to bring about significant changes in practice and improve data in increments over time.

As the the leader of EL, I not only see why you make the arguments you make, I would make the same ones were I in your shoes. But please remember that I'm working in a state where, as of now, the structures that EL uses to not only to refine and hone the model - those that are given fullest expression in public charter schools or "Delta" schools - are not available to Maine school leaders, parents, or students. With Casco Bay as the only exception, ALL of our eggs, and all of ELS' eggs in Maine, are required to be in the "let's do what EL did in at King or in Rochester" basket. That's not only not possible, but, as someone who leads an organization in the early stages of developing a new way of thinking about the intersection of public schools, community, and workforce development, I feel that even if successful by Rochester standards, would not go far enough."

Without going into some of the inside baseball references in that exchange, the short point is this: Scott leads an organization that helps both existing and new public schools become much better in many ways - and in some places, like King Middle and at several schools in Rochester, can sustain that change over time. ELSchools is committed to working with the schools and teachers we have and is able to help gifted and committed school leaders like Mike McCarthy and Derek Pierce make often remarkable successes against some long odds.

Maine Enterprise Schools seeks to accomplish the same goals - but we seek to do so by changing those long odds. Rather than mapping onto the complexities for the current system and maximizing incremental improvement over time, we feel there is great promise in simplifying the path to sustaining great principals, teachers, and most importantly students and citizens. Both approaches are absolutely necessary, both equally principled and backed by compelling data and both more part of the solution than part of the problem.