Joe Williams

Don’t get me wrong. I like charter school people. Really, I do.

When I was an education reporter at the New York Daily News and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, some of my best sources were public charter school people. Today, as an advocate for meaningful education reform within the Democratic Party, the bulk of my work involves working with and fighting on behalf of charter school people.

Charter school people are fun. They have a (very healthy) chip on their shoulder. They are determined to eliminate our nation’s shameful academic achievement gap once and for all. They push the envelope, constantly.

But as long as we’re being honest, I have a confession to make: sometimes the fine men and women who run and support our nation’s public charter schools drive me a bit crazy. My gripe list isn’t long – two gripes in total, really – but I happen to think they are severe. They represent the kinds of bad habits that I think put the entire charter school movement at risk, and make it harder for everyone who works with charter schools to do their jobs.

Both gripes deal with public relations. And I’m not talking about putting out cutesy little press releases about their schools’ multicultural food night or the annual science fair. I’m talking about actually relating to the public and to the media. So in the friendly spirit of laying it all on the line, I’ll attempt here to shed some light on these bad habits, and offer some ideas about how we can all solve the problem so that public charter schools start getting the kind of credit they deserve for finding new ways to solve problems.

Gripe #1: Many people who work in charter schools do so under the mistaken assumption that the average human being in the country even knows what a “charter school” is. They allow parents to send their kids to schools they don’t even know are charter schools. They work in  schools that are surrounded geographically by neighbors and business owners who are not only clueless that there is a charter school in the neighborhood, but  are just as much in the dark about why being a charter school even matters. This is a big problem. Even the charter school leaders who are lucky enough to have their schools featured on Oprah are part of the problem. They tout their special learning institutions without explaining the fundamental fact that without their “charter school” status, they simply wouldn’t be able to provide their students with the kind of excellent education that got them on Oprah Winfrey’s radar screen in the first place.

Sure, charter schools have been around in this country for more than 15 years now, and in many of our cities have begun to achieve a “critical mass” of sorts. But national polls have repeatedly shown that even when people have heard of charter schools, they are more likely than not to believe that they are private schools and that they are able to cream the best students, charge tuition, and teach religion to students.

Whose fault is it if people live in communities with healthy, thriving charter schools and yet seem to know nothing about them? Isn’t it obvious?

Of course, a lot of the misinformation out there about charter schools is intentional. Opponents - namely teachers unions and school boards – repeat the time-tested talking points about how charters drain money away from public education, how they don’t serve special needs students, blah, blah, blah.  In fact, our opponents repeat these charges so often that even some people within our own movement begin to believe.

But how can we blame the teachers union leaders and the educrats for unfairly defining charter schools (and the people who work in them), when we have pretty much allowed them to do so?

Gripe #2:  Believe it or not, there are people out there who run charter schools and believe – seriously – that if they just run top-notch schools, everything else will fall into place.  These people believe that the sometimes vicious political battles of public education will escape them if only their students are kicking butt on their exams and if their families are happy. They ignore the reality that there are people on the other side of the issue who wake up every morning ready to find new ways to destroy their schools – especially the good ones. Remember, you are trying to destroy public education – not fix it, by their reasoning.

Public education is inherently political. It always has been, and as long as taxpayer dollars fund it, it always will be. Because charter schools are not only public schools, but public schools which threaten to undermine many of the existing power structures within both the education establishment and the modern political parties, they are extremely political.

Many people who work in charter schools are nice, warm, loving people. When I see you at your conferences and visit your classrooms, you are all so sweet. You seem to have trouble understanding and accepting that you have enemies, let alone realizing that those enemies are out for your scalp.

Luckily, both of my gripes here can be addressed with better public relations. As powerful as the forces of the status quo can be, they can be stopped in their tracks when the public understands what is really going on. School leaders who proactively seek to define their charter schools – rather than allowing others to define them – make for a stronger charter school movement and bring us closer to a day when authentic systemic reform can be possible.

Here are a few ideas on how charter school leaders can seize the issue:

2.  2. Don’t just tell the public that your school is great – tell them how being a charter school makes it great. Even better, regularly point out what parts of your greatness would be unattainable in the traditional, status quo schooling scenario. Even people who care and have been paying attention for the last few years and have heard us talk about how charter schools are free to operate outside of many of the bureaucratic regulations of the traditional system don’t know what this means. One reason this is so unclear is because the charter school world has done a poor job articulating what “free from regulation” means. The reality is that this not only fails to get your message across, it makes charter schools more vulnerable to new forms of “bureaucratic creep” and interference from educrats who dream at night about wrapping you up with red tape.

3.  3. Build relationships with reporters, editors and columnists. Don’t shoot for quick-hit stories that do little to advance your education reform cause. Get them to your school; prove to them that you are an expert and that you can help them with their stories. Reporters like to deal with people who know things. They traffic in information, so let them know you’ve got it. If lame press releases won’t get them in, how about a call and a plea to grab a coffee someday? Don’t seek a commitment to write a story, just offer a chance to develop a potential source. Since the public largely misunderstands charter schools, make it a goal over time to get your local education reporters to understand you and your schools. Remember that “why” is one of the W’s that reporters like to discover when they tell stories. Explain why having a charter matters in your attempts to provide a superior education to your kids. Take your time and let these relationships build.

4.  4. Getting politicians in to see your schools, including your parents, is crucial. Create and present awards to your elected officials so that they will come in and receive them. (This is especially important for politicians who don’t support charter schools! Give them a “Friend of the Environment” award or something.) Take some student artwork and put it in a frame with your school logo on it. Invite them to hang the award in their office, where they will see it every day. Remind them that your charter school law allows you to do the special things that you do. Thank them for coming and for supporting your families (even if they haven’t). Thank them again. Send them more student artwork. Make them proud to be caught in your school’s web.

5.  5. If reporters call and the questions aren’t good (i.e. the you-know-what is hitting the fan), remember that it is a chance for you to explain why your school does what it does. And if even that sounds too good to be true, remember that if you don’t define yourself when times are tough, someone else will. If you’ve done your job of “relating to the public” correctly, there will be no shortage of people lining up to speak lovingly on your school’s behalf.

Joe Williams is executive director of the New York-based group Democrats for Education Reform. A former newspaper journalist, he is the author of the book Cheating our Kids: How Politics and Greed Ruin Education. He also is a board member of the New York Charter Schools Association.