Jennifer Medina’s piece in this morning’s New York Times is a step up from the usual happy-talk cheerleading for small schools. Yes, small schools are better than faceless, anonymous megaschools, but Medina’s take on NYC’s Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice in Fort Greene, Brooklyn makes it clear that success, when it comes, is less a function of structure, but staff effort.
To hear the tales of the new graduates is to understand the enormous effort and amount of resources it takes to make a school succeed. Teachers and other staff members routinely work 60 hours a week. Millions of extra dollars have been collected in grants and private donations. Parents and students regularly attend workshops until 10 p.m.
Principal Elana Karopkin, 32, launched the school four years ago, and is leaving to work for Achievement First. She tells the Times she is nothing less than “exhausted,” both physically and emotionally.
“You are taking a bunch of hyper, type A perfectionist people and giving them a herculean task,” she said. “People have to work much too hard to do what we are doing. People cannot work at this level all their lives and nobody is prepared to do something at a level of mediocrity.”
Update: Over at Eduwonkette, Skoolboy weighs in smartly: “We need to disrupt this ridiculous myth that expects superhuman effort from educators in order to achieve success for kids….We don’t need cartoon-like superhero educators; we need a system that supports teachers to work hard and honestly at their craft, without the risk of burnout after a couple of years.”
Just so.
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