Maverick Leads Charge for Charter Schools

What Steve Barr is doing is truly revolutionary and every school reformer should be cheering him on!

Steve Barr, a  major organizer of charter schools, has been waging what often seems like a  guerrilla war for control of this city’s chronically failing high  schools.
 
In just seven years, Mr. Barr’s Green Dot Public Schools  organization has founded 10 charter high schools and has won approval to open  10 more. Now, in his most aggressive challenge to the public school system, he  is fighting to seize control of Locke Senior High, a gang-ridden school in  Watts known as one of the city’s worst. A 15-year-old girl was killed by  gunfire there in 2005.
 
In the process, Mr. Barr has fomented a teachers revolt  against the Los Angeles Unified School District. He has driven a wedge through  the city’s teachers union by welcoming organized labor — in contrast to other  charter operators — and signing a contract with an upstart union. And he has  mobilized thousands of black and Hispanic parents to demand better  schools.
 
Educators and policy makers from Sacramento to Washington are  watching closely because many believe Green Dot’s audacious tactics have the  potential to strengthen and expand the charter school movement  nationwide.
 
“He’s got a take-no-prisoners style,” said Jaime Regalado, the  director of the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/california_state_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org> , Los  Angeles. “He’s channeled the outrage of African-American and Latino parents  into the public space in a way that’s new.”

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Maverick Leads Charge for Charter Schools
 

By SAM DILLON <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/sam_dillon/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
Published: July 24, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/education/24charter.html <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/education/24charter.html?_r=1&amp;hp=&amp;oref=slogin&amp;pagewanted=all>

LOS ANGELES — Steve Barr, a major organizer of charter schools, has been waging what often seems like a guerrilla war for control of this city’s chronically failing high schools.
In just seven years, Mr. Barr’s Green Dot Public Schools organization has founded 10 charter high schools and has won approval to open 10 more. Now, in his most aggressive challenge to the public school system, he is fighting to seize control of Locke Senior High, a gang-ridden school in Watts known as one of the city’s worst. A 15-year-old girl was killed by gunfire there in 2005.