But what about their individuality!

Charter schools are allowed to do things differently. If granted a charter by the state, you (and you are probably a smart, 30-something idealist who wants to run a school) get a pretty huge amount of independence over things like hiring, curriculum, scheduling, enrollment and even dollar dollar bills. You’re handed a charter, a little corner of a building*, a handful of plucky chilluns and you get to go to town. It’s a little like Sim City: the ed. reform expansion CD-rom.

The idea behind it all: public schools are failing our kids, so why not let some hard-working people try it their way—whatever that way may be. In a public education system in which no one knows the answers—Barack’s busy riding the Osama wave and Ms. Rhee’s too sassy for Washington— there’s validity in simply trying new things. My personal life philosophy, apparently, applies to education policy. Charter schools serve as laboratories for education reform. Extend the metaphor, and teachers are scientists; kids are red-eyed lab rats. Okay, maybe don’t extend the metaphor. In the past decade, some of these little labs have turned out some startlingly strong results, churning out some college-bound rats. I’m fortunate enough to work in a damn good charter school. Kids are learning, kids are happy, teachers like teaching and we eat a lot of pizza. In terms of job placement, I landed in the Sim City utopia of charter schools.

The sticking point to the whole “try new things” philosophy is that charters still have to answer to the big bad state. Accountability is on the tip of Arne's tongue. One of the primary and valid criticisms is that for every good charter, there’s another bad charter that’s not much better (God forbid, worse) than PS-whatever. So charters have to prove they’re solid by outshining their public school counterparts. And what better proof than numbers.

Cold, hard Data.

I’m talking test scores. Does that make you shudder?

The hope is that the quantitative data collected every year by state tests will correspond nicely to the quality of the schools. Good charters can keep doing what they're doing, and bad ones can peace out. The Portland, Oregon bleeding heart in me objects to teaching to the test and boxing kids’ diverse minds and talents into A,B, C or D. Blah, blah, blah. And yet, here I am: drilling reading strategies to seventh grade students so they can destroy that test and prove that charter schools work in the inner city. Go ahead and call me a Republican, but I dig it. Big time. If it’s teaching to the test, it’s done so by reading, analyzing and interpreting great books written by big timers like Cisneros and Shakespeare. Who’s not down with that?

So, it’s May (seriously?), the end of what we lovingly deem test prep season, and I’m sitting at the front of my classroom watching 22 of my seventh graders fill in their answer sheets with sharp number two pencils. No stray marks. I’ve taught them everything I know and prepared them as well as I can. There have been days I’ve had violent thoughts, and I can only assume the feeling is mutual. Now I have to sit back and let these kids do their thing. Who ever heard of jitters for a test you don’t even have to take?

They’re wearing bright orange sweatbands (call it swag, call it bribery - see pic) emblazoned with “Brain Power,” and they look pretty damn serious about the whole thing. They’re eliminating bad answers with aplomb, underlining key details and labeling question type. These same kids who think fart jokes are endlessly entertaining, spend the day doing incomprehensibly weird things, and are in some ways only half-formed humans are buckling down because—for a couple hours on a Tuesday morning—they grasp the big picture.

Which is…what, exactly?

No one loves tests—preparing for them, teaching to them or taking them. That would be sadistic. What I do love is my charter school (did you know they sell shirts that say that?). It’s warm and positive, rigorous and intellectual and full of smart, smart teachers who inspire me every day. The halls are populated with kids who are stoked on college when three years ago they’d barely considered the concept. Cool, huh? In this Williamsburg laboratory, we’ve had a great deal of success with our experiments. Testing simply lets us show off our guns to charter naysayers and to the state of New York.

I’ll teach to the test, I’ll wear an orange sweatband until I get a migraine and I’ll defend state testing to my chaco-wearing Portland homies. My mind’s no good with numbers, but this data makes sense: My school rocks, every day, and so do our test scores. ‘Nuff said.

Happy Testing!

* Some charters may not be so lucky in the space department: http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-04-18/local/29467712_1_charter-school-brooklyn-east-collegiate-sandra-d-avilar