Cultures of Commitment

This article correctly highlights the critical importance of finding enough high-quality teachers, esp. in schools serving the most disadvantaged students (it's KIPP's biggest barrier to growth, not money, buildings or school leaders), and the issue of teacher burnout at high-performing schools serving these students.  For more on this, see:

http://edreform.blogspot.com/2007/03/discussion-of-teacher-burnout-at-high.html

Whatever promise the small-schools approach holds, though, there’s widespread agreement it won’t be realized without a sufficient supply of teachers who are up to a triple threat of challenges: urban teaching in the context of a start-up operation, often with a heavy dose of surrogate parenting thrown in.

And as Ms. Madell and many other small-schools educators can attest, ensuring that supply will be no simple task.

“Human capital is going to make or break this enterprise,” said Timothy S. Knowles, who directs the University of Chicago’s Center for Urban School Improvement, which opened its first small high school last September and plans several more. “Our view is human capital is gold.”

Many of the new small schools, especially the ones in cities, virtually guarantee teachers long hours as they struggle against the inadequate preparation of their students. Teachers pour their time, too, into shaping the new institutions, where they are obliged to wear a number of hats.

--------------------

Cultures of Commitment

Teachers in the small public high schools cropping up in many U.S. cities find the human dimension of their jobs bringing both strains and rewards.

By Bess Keller

Ed Week, 4/17/07

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/04/18/33strain.h26.html

"About how many hours did you put in a week?”

The question prompted an eruption of laughter. But there was nothing funny about the answer teacher Jody Madell finally delivered.

Starting at 8 in the morning, the faculty members at Ms. Madell’s new, small secondary school in New York City routinely worked till 6:30 or 7 at night. And then, after the teaching, planning, meeting, and tutoring, she and others went home many evenings to solitary thought and a heap of student work.

Now as a co-founder of a school not unlike her old one, where she plans to keep a hand in teaching while coaching her colleagues, the 39-year-old mother of two is about to ask a fresh band of teachers to shoulder similar burdens. The audacity of it makes her laugh.

“There’s no way I can do [that job] and be a parent,” she admitted.