Creativity´s
Global Correspondents - 2001
Dedicated to the strengthening of bonds between creativity teachers, researchers and trainers around the world through the dissemination of information rapidly and inexpensively.
Edited by
Morris I. Stein, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, Psychology
New York University
winslow press
United States
Global Correspondent: Doris J. Shallcross, Ed.D.
Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Shallcross Creativity Institute
26 South Main Street
Hydenville, MA 01039
Tel: 413-268-3634 Fax: 413-268-0399
e-mail: DSHALLX@aol.com
Same as above
Awards
Disünguished Leader Award, Creative Educational Foundation;
Outstanding Teacher Award, National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship
Interests
Creativity, Institution, Music, the Arts in general, Education
The Creativity of Charter Schools
A variety of school choices have become options in the public school arena, and it is possible that we are moving toward a fundamentally different public education system. Traditional public schools may very well have a diminished role serving as one—but not the dominant—option as other types of public schools grow.
Except for an aberrant master's degree from a private university, I am a product of public schools from kindergarten up to the doctoral level, and I have been a public school educator all of my career, from 1955 to 1995, teaching at various educational levels and serving in a variety of administrative roles. Over those forty years, I have participated in many education reform movements. I believe that none has shown more promise of effective reform than the charter school movement.
Charter schools are independent, publicly funded schools that operate under the auspices of an educational contract called a charter. hi my home state of Massachusetts these charters are granted by the Board of Education, thus establishing a direct relationship between the school and the state—effectively bypassing the traditional district structure. In their charters, schools lay out plans for improving student performance and pledge specific educational outcomes. In exchange they receive exemptions from many of the requirements placed on other public schools. A major purpose for establishing charter schools is to stimulate the development of innovative pro-grams within public education.
My professional life has been devoted to allowing and encouraging creative expression, which, for me, is the distinction of being human. I first became attracted to charter schools because of the creativity they engendered. Late in 1995,1 became a member of the founding board of trustees of the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter High School in Hadley, Massachusetts. For two years I served as vice president of the board and I now serve as its president. Clearly, I continue to be impressed by charter schools.
Much of the educational work done in the field of creativity is intended to demonstrate to people that they have choices and alternatives. Charter schools were created to provide more choices in public education and also to enable creative responses to educational needs. Among the most measurable elements of creative thinking are originality, flexibility, fluency, and elaboration, all of which can be applied to the development and operation of charter schools.
Originality
Charter schools demonstrate originality in concept, design, governance and execution. Traditional public schools are established to serve a student body in a particular geographic location and they utilize a generalized educational approach to meet (most of) the needs of (most of) that population. Conversely, each charter schools stated mission reveals its unique concept and design. Charter schools draw students from broader geographic areas to focus on meeting specific educational needs. For example, the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter High Schools (PVPA) mission is to provide students with a high school for the performing arts offering a college preparatory academic program and access to diverse creative performing arts pro-grams and resources exceeding those available in other public school settings. The 280 students presently enrolled at PVPA come from 56 different school districts across three counties (the Pioneer Valley). Levels of skills and experience are just as diverse as this geographical spread, but all are drawn together by the schools focus on performing arts.
The missions of charter schools vary greatly. Two other Massachusetts schools are the Academy of the Pacific Rim in Boston and the New Leadership Charter School in Springfield. The Academy has as its mission to provide urban students the opportunity to achieve their full intellectual and social potential by combining the best of the East—high standards, discipline, and character education—with the best of the West—commitment to individualism, creativity, and diversity. New Leadership is partnered with the Urban League of Springfield, the Massachusetts National Guard, and the Springfield School Committee. This school's mission is to graduate students who are academically prepared to attend college and to embody three principles of leadership—vision, integrity, and compassion. Throughout the United States mere are charter schools that are rural, urban, and suburban. Several charter schools exist on reservations land and focus on studying Native American cultures and on increasing self-esteem. Many urban schools tackle issues of diversity and multiculturalism.
Charter schools demonstrate flexibility in content and structure. They exist to meet the needs of a diverse student population who choose to enroll because of the school's central focus. Furthermore, their flexible structure allows them to more easily serve a variety of educational needs. At PVPA, teachers receive training and are well versed in teaching to multiple intelligences and individual learning styles, and infusing critical and creative thinking processes into the content of their courses. There is a great deal of flexibility in designing the right program for each student while still meeting the demands of a strong college preparatory curriculum.
Flexibility is also evident in the teaching assignments. We ask teachers, "What is your teaching passion?" The response could be outside the teacher's area of specialty. We end up with some unusual and highly successful offerings, such as a course on the Holocaust, a chorus specializing in Eastern European music directed by a biology teacher, and a 1920's American history class that includes learning to dance the Lindy.
A dance teacher and a math teacher are designing a course to explore the relationship between dance and math. This carne about because the math teacher noticed that dancers are usually very good math students. Because the performing arts enrich the academic realm, we find that students' academic scores are soaring. Teachers are also encouraged to work together in a variety of ways. For instance, at present a team of teachers is working with the entire ninth grade to integrate language arts, social studies, science and math and to help ninth graders become oriented to high school. A theater teacher has his playwriting class doing primary research in a local town with undergraduate history students at the University of Massachusetts /Amherst. The high school students are writing plays based on the historical data being researched jointly.
Flexibility can exist in academic choices and in administrative decisions. At PVPA, three weeks into our first year of operation, we realized that the math program we had selected was not the right one for our particular group of students. We had the means to be flexible—and we threw out the program that wasn't working and instituted a new one that has been highly successful. I learned of another instance of flexibility at a National Charter Schools Conference. There I met the principal of a Los Angeles elementary charter school who used elements of originality and flexibility in solving a problem related to school lunch programs. She felt that the designations of "free lunch" and "reduced lunch" were stigmas that some minorities and children of poverty have to endure. When she looked at the accounting system required to run the lunch program, she found it was cheaper to provide free lunch for all students, and that is what her school now does.
Charter schools demonstrate fluency in many ways: they evoke and invite a constant flow of ideas in response to students' interest and needs. They use a multitude of human resources, for example, to help maintain successful operation. At PVPA, parents and other community members serve on academic committees, build theater staging, handle office duties, and so on. Not once in my term of office have I been turned down by anyone asked to volunteer time for a specific project—not by community members, parents, teachers, administrators, staff or board members, or students. This fluency is multiplied many fold in the richness of ideas from so many sources intermingling.
Elaboration
Finally, charter schools are elaborative, improving on a given situation by adding details.
One example of this can be seen in student assessments. Many charter schools enrich their evaluations of students by not relying on number or letter grades but on narrative assessments from their teachers. Students, in turn, elaborate on their accomplishments by creating portfolios. Parents agree to be involved in the students' progress in all aspects of their learning and growing. This elaborative view of student progress is both encouraging and motivating.
Charter schools reach out to their neighboring communities to elaborate on the educational settings to which the students are exposed. Internships are common, taking students into the community where they interface with a larger society and gain respect for community service. At PVPA, students take their performing arts talents into the community, to perform in a variety of settings, and also to teach their crafts to others.
Another important elaboration that exists in charter schools is their attention to creating atmospheres that are conducive to student achievement. Part of this has to do with the culture that is established and maintained in the school to promote community in every sense of the word: where each person—adult or student—is given respect and dignity, a positive sense of self, and feeling of truly belonging. At PVPA, the entire school population spends several days at the beginning of each academic year addressing these issues. All-school meetings continue to affirm this commitment to individuality and community throughout the school year.
Models for Reform
As of December 2000, mere are 2,073 charter schools in the United States serving a total of 518,609 students. The numbers are growing. Massachusetts, for example, presently has 43 charter schools but has just passed legislation to increase that number to 120. This certainly speaks to the success of, the support for, and the spread of the charter school movement.
As an advocate for and a defender of public education, I see charter schools as helping traditional public schools by providing models for reform. Too often, the obstacles in traditional public schools are crippling barriers to individual and collective creativity. Too many inflexible rule, standard procedures, and across-the-board policies prevent innovative approaches and solutions. In contrast, the charter schools offer models for reform and, indeed, dissemination is a part of their missions. Because they are small, charter schools can be more experimental and try things that can lead the way to improved public education. They provide opportunities for educators to experiment because they can bypass traditional obstacles to instituting new ideas and practices. The chance to try out something new is there without having to ask a big system to make major changes. Charter schools also allow the creative freedom to be innovative, to take risks, to make mistakes, and to change course in response to those mistakes. In my experience, charter schools present the most promising reform movement in public education in decades.
Doris J. Shalleross, Ed.D.
26 South Main Street
Haydenville, MA 01039
Phone 413 268 -3634
Fax 413 268-0399