Week 1

Hello everyone!

I hope you all have had an amazing week! Today was a very exciting day, as I traveled from Phoenix to our country's great capital, Washington D.C. This isn't my first time here but, for those of you who have not yet had the chance to visit, it's definitely a place you want to put on your bucket list.

In my last post, I mentioned that I would begin reading one of my pieces of literature for this project titled, "The Evolution and Revolution of DC Charter Schools: A Transformation of Public Education in Washington D.C." During my flight today, I began reading this book and to say the least, I found out some very interesting things about not only the charter schools in Washington DC but, charter schools in general. Josephine C. Baker, the author of this book, was a teacher for 25 years who taught at the local public schools here in Washington DC. That is until, she was asked to be a member of the DC Public Charter School Board. She had taken on this role in hopes to be a pioneer in the reshaping of an education system. DC public schools, like many other public schools today, were struggling to provide a high-quality education to their communities. In the face of many skeptics and opponents, she and her colleagues were faced with the challenge of creating new, high quality educational opportunities for students who desperately needed and wanted them.  

So far in chapter 1, Baker begins by laying down the basics of what are public charter schools. For those of you who don't fully understand what a public charter school is, let me inform you as to what that means. A public charter school is an independent school that is funded by its local jurisdiction. This then means that the programs offered at this school, are to be offered to the local residents within that jurisdiction, free of charge. When a school is categorized as being "charter", it therefore allows that school to develop innovative programs and approaches. These are vastly different approaches than what you would typically find at a public school, therefore making these charter schools independent of the traditional school system. However, there's a catch to all of this that I want to focus more on throughout the course of my project. That is, public charter schools are more accountable for its results with students, and failure to reach positive results can lead to closure of the school.

This is important to my research because, I believe this is part of the reason why the culture of BASIS is the way it is. As someone who has attended BASIS for four years, I now understand why my school made such a great deal to ensuring that it's students met certain standards. It wasn't because we were trying to only maintain a good rating but, my school was making an effort to ensure that it could continue to offer a high quality service to its community. However, in order for this goal to be accomplished, there has to be a common mentality amongst the entire school community that there is no room to fall short of these standards. And while instilling this mentality into your school community, you are in essence developing a type of school culture. One in which factors in the importance of academic excellence. This was definitely something that I saw throughout my experience at BASIS, and played out in the form of academic competitiveness between students. Now that everyone has this common mentality that is factored into the school culture, it's now left up to the students and their families to see whether or not they can find adapt to this academically challenging and competitive climate.

I look forward to continuing this book and keeping you all up to date on the details that I find most interesting, as well as some of the ideas that will help me in defining school culture and its impact on students. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and remember to check back here next Friday for my latest update!

Best,

-Eli