Two years ago Shantelle Wright started the Achievement Preparatory Academy public charter school in Congress Heights, certainly one of the roughest neighborhoods in the nation’s capital. When the charter board published its list of top tier schools last week, Achievement Prep was number one.
When I asked Wright why she left lawyering to run a school, she said: “It was time to quit complaining about schools and start doing something about it. Too many children are stifled because of their zip code.”
Not if their zip code is 20032 and they are one of Shantelle Wright’s 138 “scholars,” in grades four through eight.
Achievement Prep is not the only charter school that’s proving that zip codes do not consign a poor student to a poor education. There’s Center City Public Charter in Trinidad, that has classes from Kindergarten to Eighth; Elsie Whitlow Stokes elementary in Ward 5; and two high schools — KIPP DC and Thurgood Marshal, both in Ward 8. They are among 22 charter schools that the school board lists in its top tier.
In checking out the rankings, I couldn’t help but notice that not one charter school has set up shop in Ward 3, which represents the city’s whitest and most wealthy neighborhoods. Four of the best performing charters are in Ward 8, two in Ward 7. In all, the board ranks 71 charter schools; 23 are located in Ward 7 and 8, east of the Anacostia River.
Why are there no charters in Ward 3?
“We get to know all the people who try to set up charters,” says Robert Cane, executive director of Friends of Charter Schools, an advocacy group. “They want to serve people who have fewer education options. Most want to serve poor kids.
“Starting a charter school is brutally difficult,” he adds. “People are not going to give up careers in law other professions unless they are motivated to teach kids who need it.”
What the charters are proving is that children who come to school in dire straits — hungry or unprepared or neglected — can succeed, if they have good teachers and a school that can make up its own rules.
Achievement Prep, for example, requires its “scholars” to show up at 7:30 a.m and stay until 5 p.m.
“The biggest lever for us is how we develop and support our teachers,” Wright tells me. The school measures each student’s achievement and applies it every day. “We have our hands on the pulse of every single child.”
The take away for me is that charter schools are succeeding at the toughest place in public education: raising scores for poor children. According to the latest National Assessment of Education Progress, D.C.’s charter schools scored significant gains in both reading and math for fourth and eighth graders.
Those same scores showed white students in D.C.’s public schools outperforming minorities by wide margins. Charters are proving to be the best way to level the playing field.
Says Shantelle Wright: “All children will rise, if they have the chance.”
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
