Sarah Garland writes in the Hechinger Report about a change of direction for the Mastery Charter chain in Philadelphia. The CEO of Mastery, Scott Gordon, has decided to ease up on the strict rules of “no-excuses.” Garland believes that what Mastery does and how it works out might affect no-excuses charters across the nation.
I am not convinced that what happens in the Simon Gratz High School, a charter school in Philadelphia, will change the direction of no-excuses charters nationally, but it is an interesting story anyway.
Garland acknowledges that critics blame charters for the near-collapse of the Philadelphia public school system, but she leaves unresolved whether Mastery is the solution or the problem.
Garland writes:
More than 40 percent of the high school’s 280 freshmen show up reading below a fifth-grade level. Several city special-education programs are located at the school, so about a third of students also have special needs, ranging from cognitive disabilities to emotional disorders. In 2011, the year before Mastery took over, the graduation rate was 58 percent.
Administrators started out by instituting the no-excuses playbook, as Mastery had done at several of its other institutions. Under this approach, students are held to high expectations no matter what circumstances they come from – or what happens at home at the end of the school day. The strategies typically include strict discipline, extra time in school, drilling in math and English, and accountability for teachers and principals, usually based on testing. Administrators adopt a rigid set of rules and punishments. A top-down lecturing style is followed in the classroom.
At Simon Gratz, students began raising their hands in class, tucking in their shirts, and racking up demerits and detentions for the smallest infractions.
The new administrators also dismantled the metal detectors guarding the entrance of the building. The idea was to make it seem more like a scholarly institution and less like a prison. But in this case students and parents balked. They didn’t feel safe without the detectors, security guards, and bag checks. The school, nevertheless, came off the state’s “persistently dangerous” list as the hallways calmed down and fewer fights broke out.
Teachers drilled students in note-taking strategies and the standards they had to master. Test scores rose at first. But then they stalled. Gratz still wasn’t the friendly, dynamic place Mastery administrators had imagined.
The high expectations and rigid rules weren’t enough to erase the trauma that has scarred many kids. In the years after Mastery took over Gratz, one student witnessed her father shoot and kill her mother. Another saw his uncle shot in the head and had to drag his best friend’s body to a police car after he was gunned down in the street. An honors student was hit by a stray bullet and died. Another student accidentally shot himself.
Related: How to educate traumatized students
Gordon worried that Mastery was in danger of confirming what many critics often charge about charter schools: That while many of them may do a good job of preparing kids to do well on standardized tests and get into college, their students founder once they arrive on campus. That the mostly white leaders of urban charter networks are, at best, out of touch with the mostly black and Hispanic communities they serve, or, at worst, guilty of a paternalistic racism that undermines their mission of uplift.
“A mistake that we made was the assumption that schools were not successful because they weren’t well run, or they weren’t well organized, or that teachers weren’t trained and supported.”
Gordon was ready to make a change. “We were frustrated that we couldn’t break through,” he says. “We got feedback from our graduates that the … support structure that we had created for students – ‘kids will not fail’ – was not serving them once they got into the real world. The real world was not as supportive. They had to really develop the independence to manage themselves.”
Gordon tinkered with parts of the model, but after struggling to get it right, he decided to start over.
Mastery administrators introduced a new curriculum, new teaching methods, and a new disciplinary system. They hired more social workers and brought in more assistance from community organizations that help kids deal with trauma. They made training in racism and “cultural context” mandatory for all of Mastery’s teachers and administrators, across every school in the city.
“Often you see people who are really bold as those who might not listen,” says Kathy Hamel, a partner at the Charter School Growth Fund, a nonprofit that supports Mastery. “But [Gordon] is a very good listener, and he’s learned to listen and adapt.”
Mastery administrators decided that to serve their students best, they should make sure all had the option to go to college, but not insist on it. They began developing programs to support students headed into the military or to technical programs and immediate jobs. Even the charter network’s motto – “Excellence. No Excuses.” – is under review.
“We still believe there are no excuses for this country not to be able to provide a great education for every kid,” Gordon says. “There is no excuse; every child can learn and be successful. But I’m not sure it speaks to the soul of Mastery right now. That’s part of our job: to prepare our kids for the real world, and to recognize that there’s great promise in the world. It’s also a broken world.”
What do you think?
I agree that this one example is not signaling a course change for the autocratic, often fraudulent, corporate charter school empire for profit industry that worships at the alter of avarice. In fact, I think that this is just another attempt to fool the public that the big bad blood sucking vampire that is opening many eyes to what is really going on is going to change—similar to how NCLB gave way to ESSA, but we are now seeing that the autocratic, fraudulent, flawed testocracy is still there with another title.
Yup. The actors of edreform need to go away. There is no reason to let them stick around.
The only honest thing for them to say is “I have been acting badly because I never learnt the profession. I need to get off the stage and go back to my own job or go to acting school.”
Anything else is just an attempt to torture us with more bad performances where our children’s attendance is made mandatory.
I don’t think these monsters are capable of stepping off the stage voluntarily.
Reading this article excerpt I was struck by how much of the reformist/charter ‘innovation’ is deeply rooted in the conservative ‘dirty hippie’ narrative that began during Nixon’s campaign for president and that has fueled so much of the destruction of the once-noble Republican party and created hateful players like Limbaugh, Coulter, and O’Reilly, along with Fox ‘News’.
Many in the charter industry seem to truly believe that old conservative meme that what is ‘wrong’ with our country is the boys with long hair, the girls with slacks on and ideas of careers instead of being a mommy, and all the baggage that goes along with the changes wrought by the Civil Rights movement, the Women’s Liberation movement, the Gay Rights movement, the Anti-War Protesters, and the advent of birth control and rock and roll and the power of the common people to speak up and be heard.
So now we have such idiocy as ‘No Excuses’ discipline, tucking in shirts, raising hands, walking in silent prison-like lines, re-segregation, lecture-based teaching, demerits and punishments for common human foibles, and all the other horrible things that conservatives believe were lost when their never-happened Leave it to Beaver world was changed by the hippies. Archie Bunker has become the id for these people!
Oddly enough, bringing back the most punitive, inhuman, discriminatory, and hateful practices of prior times of white, Christian, heterosexual male supremacy has not wrought the miraculous changes that they believed they would in the inner city schools and so we see creaming of students, mass suspension, to-go lists, and other stopgap measures to maintain the ideologic illusion.
And we have a Donald Trump presidential candidacy based upon the same deluded ideology — making America ‘great’ again by returning to the abuses of previous generations, and Eva Moskowitz evoking Gradgrind and Choakumchild from Dickens in her ‘no excuses’ prison factories in support of that twisted vision of America’s future.
And we have state legislators captured and owned by ALEC and the Kochtopus, passing appallingly discriminatory laws to protect bigotry, racism, and hatred and attacking a well-respected, beloved public institution and its largely female, working class teachers.
All of a piece from the fabric woven from fear of change, hatred of the other, and a longing to return to never-actually-happened better times before ‘they’ came and ruined everything.
Do these people truly not understand that basing their schools solely upon ideology and thereby creating little protected sanctuaries of conservatism and Friedman philosophy does not, will not, and cannot prepare living human beings for a world that has rejected those ideologies, with the exception of a paltry third or less of the population, and does not run on those philosophies in any place except a few failed countries?
I now realize, more than I ever have before, that the charter/reform ‘revolution’ is doomed to eventual failure no matter how ascendent they may now seem because the world and its peoples have rejected everything they base their systems upon and though they may have lots of money, influence, and power at present, time will ultimately bring about their end because change cannot be prevented no matter how many billions of dollars you pile in front of the vehicle of time and change as it marches forward.
The question now is really “How will we pick up the pieces left in wake of their ruination to rebuild the institution of US Public Education and the profession of teaching?”
Bless their hearts, as we say here in the South.
Well said.
Yep, yep, and more yeps. Excellent post, Chris!
How true!
Points well made!
How bad does it need to get for this ocean liner to stop and reverse course?
I see giant icebergs ahead for many of our children and teachers.
All hands on deck!
Brilliant analysis.
Best. Comment. Ever.
Crist . Florida is one state , DOWN SOUGH ? I’m sorry , the Titany was huge as but never as the ice … ? 🙂
Captain mistake ? Or umpouse ? … Area(
(305) (786)
Side code … 33012 – 33014 is the Huge ice B.. But . I’m a boat Captain . Well boats need more , a lot MOREEEEE TIMES AND DISTANCE TO CHANGE RUT OR ENGINES IN REVERSE , SLOW DOWN AND THE COLITION DAMEGAS, the boat needs more time to slow down. Charters are the ice bergs and the titanic was sunk down on purpose. All decision are made at Tallahassee. I’m on your side, it’s the way I talk . DO YOU KNOW WHERE IS THE EXACTLY POSITION . Latitude , …. ? I know where as I know are the BIGEST master brains . I mean doomds idiots ?
I know who ? And where …
I don’t know, Chis. Though I certainly can relate to the ‘dirty hippie’ epithet (& everything that went with it– remember the movie ‘Joe’?), it seems a stretch to me to connect it directly with the ‘no-excuses’ school movement.
There is a rough common thread. I think that would be the reactionary reflex to impose law ‘n order when confronted with the floating fear that the social order is breaking down. But the driving force behind the ‘Love it or Leave it’ reaction was the social polarization between haves & have-nots created by draft exemptions for college students.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I sense the ‘no-excuses’ movement stems partly from founders’ attempts to provide a highly-structured daily experience for students with a chaotic home-life. (Obviously a simple, one-dimensional approach.) …And partly from the buy-in by civil-rights groups, who blamed lack of student success on low expectations by the institution (again, one-dimensional– where is Jesse Jackson when you need him?).
Diane posted this a few years ago:
I think it supports my thesis pretty well:
“As she mentions, the origin of “No Excuses” may be traced to a book of that name by Samuel Casey Carter, written in 2000 about 21 “high-performing, high-poverty schools” and released by the far-right Heritage Foundation. The idea behind the book was that we didn’t need to spend any more money to fix schools, we just had to make sure that the schools were tough in their discipline and indulged in no pedagogical nonsense. . . . Then came the Thernstroms’ book of the same title.
And then came David Whitman’s Sweating the Small Stuff, which lavished praise on “no excuses” schools that practice “the new paternalism.” It was published by the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Whitman is (or was) Arne Duncan’s speech writer.”
The Kochs origins lie in the John Birch Society, which was the origin of much of the dirty hippie meme. The traditionalist desire to return to the pedagogy and curriculum of the past is no secret: the reading and math wars are the bloody remnants of that conservative ideology which finds fertile ground in these ‘no excuses’ schools.
The far-right origins of these theories are a direct result of the white panic that followed the Nixon years and the Reagan Southern Strategy. Racism is rampant throughout the ‘no excuses’ movement: children of color, especially poor, urban children of color, need to be ‘controlled’ and taught how to be submissive and WASP-like.
I believe there’s much to be mined and explored in this thesis.
Very interesting, Chris, thanks for the cites. How very creepy (the origins of the no-excuses movement.)
One of your details illuminates my experience growing up in a liberal collegetown surrounded by what was back then a John Bircher stronghold. The university was tolerated with gritted teeth as it provided the backbone of the economy, but the students of the nearby small private college were stereotyped & openly mocked. There was a bar on the county line where any male w/Beatles-length hair risked a beating.
Did anyone else notice that this was the model public schools used prior to No Child Left Behind and Common Core?
Maybe the public schools had it right all along?
The audacity of governmental agencies to assume teachers didn’t know what they were doing and that anyone else could do it better (enter all those No Excuses Charter Schools).
Now it looks like they are discovering it’s just not that simple.
Hello! We are still waiting for an apology.
flos56: I was going to write something similiar…
And you beat me to it.
Thank you.
😎
Yes flos we are all joining charter schools, and those school reform leaders (some of whom actually have teaching experience) on their wonderful learning curve. They are on their way to discovering what many of us in education have known for years; The situation is complex, poverty does matter, equitable funding matters, and that there are no simple solutions.
I look forward to the time when charter schools arrive at the conclusion that high stakes standardized testing is actually bad for education, and abusive to kids.
Took the words right out of my tablet.
You saved me a post. Gordon must be reading your blog, Diane. There is nothing he is doing that hasn’t been discussed here.
“We still believe there are no excuses for this country not to be able to provide a great education for every kid,” Gordon says. “There is no excuse; every child can learn and be successful.”
That’s an interesting redefinition of the term “no excuses” ,which originally referred specifically to students: “No excuses for students”
Indeed!
Gratz High School always had a reputation, even fifty years ago, when I attended high school in Philadelphia. Gratz serves one of the most troubled areas of the city, north Philly. Now that Gratz is a charter, the problems of drugs and violence, have not disappeared. Whether students tuck in their shirts or not, the traumatic conditions of their lives have not changed, and students need counseling to help deal with their emotions. Some leaders in the city recognize this have have started trauma counseling in the schools, similar to what many returning combatants require from PTSD. Whether Gratz is a charter is irrelevant to the problem, other than the district has wasted millions of dollars on charters that would have been better spent supporting the professional public teaching staff addressing the issues of poverty and trauma.http://www.phillymag.com/news/2015/03/29/childhood-trauma-philadelphia-schools
Gordon is only willing to consider making changes after weeding out many of the “undesirables”. Gratz serves some of Philadelphia’s poorest neighborhoods. The school’s enrollment was 100% economically disadvantaged and 35% special ed when Mastery took over. Three years later it’s 83% and 25% respectively.
I used to live near another school Mastery took over. It was 100% FRL when Mastery took over and is now 75%. The few remaining public schools nearby are all 100% FRL. I’m skeptical that Mastery will make any changes in it’s rampant cream skimming regardless of any changes it may make otherwise. Cream skimming and spending much more per student than the district spent prior to takeover are the two pillars of Mastery’s strategy. Unsurprisingly neither of those facts are mentioned on the article.
I did appreciate that the writer mentioned that Gordon’s children don’t attend his schools. He’s a neighbor of one of my siblings and until recently both of his kids attended a Friends school which has a pedagogy that couldn’t possibly be more different than Mastery’s militaristic approach. One of his kids is now at the most sought after selective admission public school in the city. It too is completely unlike Mastery. Sadly, it’s facilities are not nearly as in good repair as any of Mastery’s buildings. I wonder what Gordon thinks about that.
Thanks for that information, PJL!
Duane,
Aside from pointing out that his kids have only attended selective admission schools, I’d love to see someone ask the question that no one dares ask Gordon. Why didn’t his kids attend his neighborhood K- 8 school? It’s not dangerous and it’s not failing. But is has been 85 – 90% Black since white families fled it in the late 1960s.
Maybe we could have a conversation about the hyper segregation in Philadelphia’s schools and the ways that charters exacerbate that problem. When my kids were little we lived in the neighborhood adjacent to the one in which Gordon lives. Unlike Gordon and nearly all of my uber liberal, diversity-loving white neighbors my kids attended our then 86% black neighborhood school.
Through tremendous effort by the white families attending the school and school staff we were starting to get some traction with getting people to attend the neighborhood school. Unfortunately a group of parents at an environmental center of which my family was a member,decided to start an environmentally themed charter school and our momentum died.
That charter school is 80% white and 16% economically disadvantaged. Our former neighborhood school is 11% white and 55% economically disadvantaged. Just for giggles the charter school states on their website that they will not enroll any child the staff don’t deem fit for full inclusion. That’s how they have just 8% special ed enrollment.
Ms. Garland’s piece is just more of the usual shallow nonsense that passes for education reporting.
Why wouldn’t white parents opt in – their kids get to go to a private school on the public dime.
Institutionalized segregation complements of our State And Federal Government.
I actually applied and considered working at Gratz last year. The only reason I chose not to do was the commute combined with the fact that we had just moved from California. I know many of the administrators there and I know they are doing amazing work with those kids. I think this process they are going through is what it really means to be an educator. They are working to meet their students where they are in the world. I heard someone say the other day that our brains are constantly asking: “Is it safe here?” And I think that when you are cracking the whip and drilling kids who have such trauma in their lives, you really can’t keep them from feeling defensive and blocking out what they are actually learning. I believe their willingness to reflect and change means they have real leadership that focus on learning and what’s best for their students.
That’s the most relevant ESEA/ESSA standardized testing question of all: Is it SAFE here?
This is what happens when non-experts try to take over education. They don’t do their homework about the history and psychology of teaching and learning, so they don’t know that finding the balance between discipline and learning is one of the basic part of the art.
They don’t know that even dogs don’t respond well to military style training.
Here is what Gordon should have said, if he wanted to be really honest, if he really wanted to show the world that he has started to comprehend reality.
I have been such an arrogant sob to think that my ideological convictions qualify me to conduct a large scale educational experiment on children. I don’t understand what came over me, but I now woke up from this dream of mine that’s been a nightmare to children, parents, teachers. I apologize to all the educators for belittling their extremely difficult profession. I promise, I’ll never put my nose into the business of education and I’ll spend the rest of my life cleaning up the mess I created.
Since he didn’t say this, since he still thinks he just has to modify the style of teaching in his schools a bit, but fundamentally, he is on the right path in the turnaround experiment, his “admission” is close to meaningless. Imo.
I really comprehend the difficulty in breaking new ground, looking for the ways in which a new magnet school could reach all the children who wanted to learn,, from all across NYC, and that meant across cultures.
We had on advantage… in 1990 all of us chosen to teach there that first year were master teachers, and the educators at the DOE who envisioned this school where anyone could apply, supported it as best as they could. I had no books or materials, but I was able to choose and create an interesting 7th grade for these city kids.
We had some support services, but also some great after -school activities.
The key was that it was small… and every teacher one EVERY KID, and when any of them appeared troubled, all of us pondered how to help the child.
Yeah… we were tough. We expected ‘wideawakeness,’ when we were teaching. We went out of our ways to prepare interesting lessons and activities, and we worked hard to make the school fun and interesting, but we asked respect from the children… and we got it.
Only a few very disturbed youngsters entered our doors, and we never ‘through them out.”
We did our best… but WE WERE ALL PROFESSIONAL EDUCATORS, and from the get-go were there for the children… we knew what Learning Looked Like, (WLLL) and were autonomous in our PRACTICES (i.e. classrooms!).
Yes, 50% of our children came from the neighborhood… which was the upper east side.
But the other 50% took the trains and buses from the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn!
We were NOT an elitist school, or a school for elite kids. We were, within 5 years, a school where real teachers taught in ways that real teachers have always taught… in a classroom that they created–to the best of their abilities– in order to facilitate learning for EVERY FACE THAT SAT BEFORE US!
LET THE TEACHERS TEACH.
HELP THEM TO DO THIS.
DO YOUR JOB, Mr PRINCIPAL… whether in a charter or public school…. and that is NOT to hound the teachers or bully them, but to support them.
Chris in Florida~
your entry reminded me when the Fordham Institute dedicating an entire publication, several months ago, focusing on eradicating single, unmarried women of color raising their children in poverty. The cover had a black-version of American Gothic (father figure in the shadow).
The cover alone raised my blood pressure!
Michael Petrilli was frequently writing article after article about his opinions of ending poverty and crime in the Black communities…if they only finished school, married first, stayed married and had just the right number of children – they can afford.
He had tons of off-the-top-of-his-bald-head rules to live by.
His errogance was blinding!
How WHITE of him!
I accused him of being an Archie Bunker…and it didn’t work for Archie either.
These Fordham type guys are out there and financed by billionaires, whose mission is to punish children in poverty for their parents’ shortcomings. Now, these children risk growing up even angrier and less prepared. Time wasted when supportive schools and teachers could have reached these children. Instead, they were bossed around by white 22year olds who are committed to ‘kick ass’ and breed rage of poor kids.
Who will be there to clean up their mess?
Thank you H. A. Hurley!
Now that Gordon has determined to steer this Mastery school-takeover in the direction of public-school-type goals for its enrollment, how long will it be before it becomes unprofitable?
Gordon will demand more money and if the state doesn’t give it to Mastery, he’ll take them to court. It already happened in another state or maybe more than one state. Once they get their foot in the door, they keep demanding more and more and more.
Lloyd
They forgot that charters were supposed to cost less and get better results, free of bureaucracy
Here is a good description of no-excuses schools from the inside
http://edcommentary.blogspot.com/p/no-excuses-charter-movement.html
It calls no-excuses a “new movement in educational philosophy”. In this 5 word designation, there are three questionable words to me: the expression “new movement” and the word “philosophy”. How is this movement new? Isn’t this just a reincarnation of the style used in old religious and military schools? What’s the difference?
Since when can we have “movements” in education? And since when do we allow public schools operate according to a “philosophy”?
This article, from the same blog, is a description of a no-excuses kindergarten
http://edcommentary.blogspot.com/2010/09/day-1-at-no-excuses-kindergarten.html
Here is a quote
When my hand drops,” says the teacher, holding one arm up above her head, “you will say ‘A.’ When my hand drops, you will say ‘A.'”
There is a steady rhythm to her voice and a pause around the name of the letter A which the children, apparently, feel compelled to fill. “A,” they chant.
The teacher shakes her head. “I didn’t drop it yet. I didn’t drop it yet. When my hand drops, you will say ‘A.’ She smacks the forearm of her raised right arm with her left hand. “When my hand drops, you will say, ‘A.'”
A few kids, still confused, chant “A.”
The teacher shakes her head again. “I didn’t drop it yet. I didn’t drop it yet. When my hand drops…”
There is a steady, ringing clarity to her voice. Its cadences are consistent with every repetition; it never quickens, it never drops. It is never satisfied with less than perfect compliance, it never grows impatient or falters. It is implacable, demanding—a voice that kindergarteners must fear to disobey, yet a voice, I suspect, that is rarely if ever raised. It is a remarkable performance.
Doesn’t this remind you of old style dog training? Old style because the more effective “new” style doesn’t want dogs to “fear the trainers voice to disobey” anymore.
Gordon If Mastery asked for more money what happens to the traditional public school (I currently teach in one in Philadelphia ) that already is under funded.
Direct Instruction at its finest, a darling of the far right ideologues and considered necessary for urban children of a certain hue because they lack the self-control expected by the no excuses brigade.
Contrast this with the theories, philosophy, and methods of Dr. Maria Montessori, and Italian physician who successfully educated the urban poor of Rome, considered to be ‘retarded’ at the time. There couldn’t be a more different approach from what you describe here yet all Montessori students excel at academics and most at life.
Men and women who have gone on to become world leaders, innovators and inventors, and whom have otherwise changed the world all began their educations at Montessori schools.
We’ve had this philosophy and movement for over a century yet instead of using it in urban situations, as it was created for, it has become a preferred schooling for the wealthiest among us and beyond the financial reach of the urban poor.
Montessori approached the problem of the urban poor and education as a public health issue. Her methods were successfully reproduced all around the world and continue to be used successfully in many diverse situations, including here in the USA.
As a physician she was concerned with hygiene, nutrition, and other life skills and her program begins with and continues training in those areas, giving the students independence and pride.
Not one scintilla of hostility, racism, punishment, fear, intimidation, or any of the other ‘no excuses’ abominations that are currently in vogue are used in Montessori classrooms.
Children thrive, are self-directed and eager to learn, and poverty and its effects begin to be alleviated slowly and steadily through family improvement and education.
Why have we not embraced Montessori methods widely and completely? Perhaps because there is no punishment, there is not call for submissiveness, there is no cultural eradication necessary.
It does not appeal to the reformists and their far right ideology.
You said: ?Since when can we have “movements” in education? And since when do we allow public schools operate according to a “philosophy”?
Years ago, I discovered that only in the field of education, can any cockamamie idea that poses a s a ‘theory’ finds traction. I knew this years before Willingham wrote about the total lack of evidence to back up the ‘magic elixirs’ that are put forth in education ( I wrote this on the subject)
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
Whereas in medicine, there has to be 3rd level research (it has to work everywhere in the study) in education, if open classrooms work in Oshkosh, then suddenly here in East Ramapo, a school in a trailer loses its walls. Do I have to describe the noise levels?
In NYC, teacher Pi Lian Tu, who for 15 years– using tried and true methods that bring her immigrant Chinese student to high levels English language use, is told to replace her materials, and to use ‘word walls,’ for children who cannot read a word of English. When she ignores the demands, she is deemed insubordinate, removed from her successful practice, and over the howls of the parents an despite the high scores of her students on city tests, ends up in a rubber room, and eventually fired.
Ideology has given us Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, and at this very dangerous moment in history, the major topic of the GOP is how to deprive planned parenthood of ways to hel young women to avoid pregnancy… and to punish women… after all, men can buy rubbers in boys locker rooms.
At a time when people in North Carolina need jobs and have lost homes, the legislature want genital monitors. in the larger culture these days, and the insanity just filters down into the bureaucracies that are the schools.
This story raises some very interesting and important questions. First, why were Mastery Charter schools held up as such models of success when, in the founder’s own admission, they were not preparing students for post secondary academic success? Second, the information about the poor post secondary school performance of Mastery students was known for quite some time. Why did it take so long to address this fundamental problem and, why did Mastery and its backers continue to tout their success knowing that they were not successful in this key mission? I imagine it has much to do with the size of their public relations budget, a luxury denied to public schools. Third, why does Mastery get a second chance while public schools are denied that opportunity? Fourth, why does Mastery have the resources to bring in social workers and other trauma informed practices (which are wonderful ideas) while public schools cannot afford nurses and guidance counselors? Perhaps the most important sentence in the article is: while many of them (Mastery Schools) do a good job of preparing kids to do well on standardized tests and get into college, their students founder once they arrive on campus. This is a wholesale indictment of high stakes testing. And, since it is coming from Mastery, perhaps key stakeholders will take notice. This might be the one positive contribution that Mastery can make to the field of public education.