A Small School in Florida

“A” School
The Untold
Story of
Downtown
Academy
How to
Create an
Award-
Winning
Small Charter School
Steve McCrea FindaSmallSchool.com
“A” School • 2 • How to build a charter school
This is not the first time that this story
has been told. Principal Jim DiSebastian
recounted the steps taken to turn around
an “F” school into an “A” school at
presentations to other principals.
Several newspaper articles have

chronicled the school’s progress, and
local TV gave ample coverage to the
school’s new “A” status in May 2006.
This book is the first attempt to present

the story of the school’s turnaround in
the form of a book.
The school’s prime mover, Ron Renna, provided the

material that is found in Appendix 1 (the data behind
DATA’s success).
Jim DiSebastian sat with me for an extended interview (A

Principal’s Viewpoint) in May 2006. His comments were
transcribed and appear in Appendix 4.

Here’s a summary of what happened at Downtown
Academy between August 2004 and May 2006:
In the first year, roughly two-fifths of the students could read at their
grade level and only a quarter had adequate math skills. Twelve
months later, nearly two-thirds of the students could read well and
more than half were proficient in math. Those jumps in the reading
and math test scores won the attention of state auditors, moving the
school’s grade from “F” to “A.”
This book attempts to tell the story behind these numbers:
Category First Year Second Year

2004-05 2005-06
Grade on FCAT (points) F (271) A (430)
Homework assignments sent home Sometimes Yes
with the weekly letter from the
principal
Extra Math Help A little A lot (IMAC)
Reading Coaching (extra help) No Yes
Tutoring of kids with special needs No More
Writing practice Some A lot
Mini-FCAT exercises (frequent prep) No Yes
Students with discipline incidents 85% 35%
Percent of students reading at grade 41% 64%
level
Percent of students at grade level in 26% 56%
math
Percent of Students who gained a 44% 75%
year of progress in reading and math Reading 71%
31% Math
Percent of students who met “Annual 80% 100%
Yearly Progress”

Features of the school
60% Title 1 students
Key Achievement
The school went from an “F” rating to an “A” rating in one year.
•School rated #2 in the state for student achievement improvement
out of 2,854 public and charter schools (2006)
•Governor's Award
Scores
•Reading in First Year (2005)
–41% of students reading at or above grade level
•Math
–26% of students at or above grade level
The Plan
•Hired a part time reading coach
•Hired a full time and part time math coach
•Staff meeting EVERY Friday
•D.E.A.R. time- 30 minutes EVERYDAY
•Weekly mini-lesson developed for all staff to
use in EVERY classroom EVERYDAY
•Introduced IMAC curriculum to students
•Frequent testing
•Two English classes a day (Language Arts and Reading)
•Evaluating results of testing and adjusting mini-lessons and
curriculum as needed
•Developed discipline plan
2005-2006: The second year
–“A” grade
–100% of students met Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) criteria
–35% of students had discipline problems

–Total Points Earned*= 430
•*A= 410 points, B=380-409, C= 320 to 379, D= 280 to 319, F= less
than 280
Scores in the second year

•Reading
64% of students reading at or
above grade level
•Math
56% of students at or above grade
level
How to create an award-winning

charter school
1. Hire Jim DiSebastian or his clone
2. Hire Ron Renna (the chief executive)
3. Get out of the way.
===========
What to do (the short list)

1) Score low in the first year
2) Prep the students for taking a test
3) Score well in the second year
This list is made in jest. The score that a school gets is

partly based on improvement in test scores on the Florida
Comprehensive Achievement Test (FCAT). A school can
get a higher grade based on year-to-year improvements

and that rule had something to do with the school’s high
rating in its second year. No school wants to be labeled
“F” but the positive aspect of the first year’s failing grade
was that there was a lot of potential for improvement in
the score.
This book describes how to grow a successful small school

despite receiving a low grade in the first year of operation.

Table of Contents
Introduction
Part One: What Happened
1 The Big Moment
2 It Took Five Years to Make an Overnight Success
3 How To Create An Award-Winning School (The List)
4 Can This Success Happen at Any School?

(Quotes about Small Schools)
5 Littky: The Big Picture

The theory behind an international focus on strong small schools
Part Two: What’s Next

6 R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Let’s look again at the “How To Do It” list. What single element
made DATA a success? What turned the school around?
Appendices
7 The Fourth Year and Beyond
Mentors are everywhere: The Harvey Nevins Trio at the Hillcrest County
Club in Hollywood appear as mentors on video (search Youtube).

Part One
International visitors Karim (Germany) and Sezer (Turkey) tutored a

student (Nick) in the after-school program at Downtown Academy.
“That’s not the answer!” appears to be when the “little teacher” is
saying.

1
The Big Moment
The school opened in August 2004.
News of the “F” rating came in May
2005. News of the “A” rating came a
year later, in May 2006.
The route taken by most visitors to the school is

through an elevator to the third floor of the church
where Downtown Academy is located. I recall
walking into the elevator and seeing that “A” on
several sheets of paper in the school’s elevator in
May 2006.
A television news crew showed up for a tour and

interview. It was
such a surprise that
the principal, Jim
DiSebastian, wasn’t
in town. The
Assistant Principal,
David Jett, did the
interviews and I, a
part-time school

tutor, stood in as a teacher for the cameras. Nearly
a dozen students were called in to walk the halls
and sit in a classroom, all to capture the moment
for television. That news clip latter showed on the
school’s web site for months.
From that
moment the
questions came:
“How did the
school turn
around so
quickly?”
The short answer

was “we spent a
year studying hard” and “since we’re a small
school, we could make changes quickly and the
students could deliver the results.”
This book is designed to give you more of that

story. If you work in a large school, the theory is
“subdivide your school into smaller academic
communities.” If you work in a small school that is
struggling, the descriptions given in the chapters
related to Dennis Littky’s work might prove
particularly valuable to your school’s turnaround.
In short, there will be more “big moments” in the

life of Downtown Academy, but none will match

the surprise and relief of that first big “A” moment
in May 2005.

2
It Took Five Years to Make
an Overnight Success
The story behind Downtown Academy’s success should start with a
review of the charter school movement in Florida. One of the first
schools to open in Southeast Florida was the Charter School of
Excellence, located south of the New River in Fort Lauderdale. That
school’s highest grade is Grade 5, so the question about “where do
we find a
charter school
for grades 6
to 8?” was the
key reason
for opening
Downtown
Academy.
Any school
needs a
stream of
applicants
and the
marketplace
was ready with at least 40 students a year graduating from the
Charter School of Excellence. Those students needed a middle
school in the downtown area and the main public school that served
the downtown, Sunrise Middle School, was large. With over 700
students, Sunrise has many of the symptoms of a large school: large
bathrooms with spaces to hide from school administrators; a large
cafeteria that also served as an auditorium (so lunch hour is a

shouting match for most teachers and a headache for many
students).
At the time when charter schools started to be opened, charter

schools were seen as an alternative for publicly funded education. A
typical charter school is small: In 2006, there were 17,122 students in
55 charter schools, or roughly 311 students per school. Compare
that to the 262,616 students in 228 schools in Broward County (an
average of 1,150 students per school).
A “charter school” has a charter or agreement to operate. In order to

receive public funding, schools need to keep track of the attendance
of students. When a student moves from a public school to a charter
school, the funds that would have been spent in the public school on
that child follow the child to the charter school. The amount is
roughly $5,000 per academic year.
The Beginning
Imagine what was going through the minds of some
parents who met to discuss options in 2001. At the time,
did they know it would take three years to open
Downtown Academy? Some of the parents who
supported the creation of DATA had children in the third
and fourth grades at the Charter School of Excellence. The
hope was to have a school up and working within 18
months.
It took time to find the

consultant (Ron Renna) and
the principal (Jim
DiSebastian), so the school
didn’t open until August
2004. And even then, the
school almost didn’t open.

Preparing to Open the School
(Hanging The Fire Doors)
Just a week before the school was scheduled to open in August 2004,
the local fire department announced a second inspection – and
decided that every internal door needed to be replaced. Imagine the
pressure on the operators of the charter school. Something like 47
fire-resistant doors had to be purchased, delivered, installed and
inspected before the “OK” could be given to allow students to
occupy the building.
Opening Day
After weeks of preparation, the school opened to three classes of
sixth graders, two sections
of seventh grade and one
eighth grade class. I was
the 8th grader’s homeroom
teacher. We started the
day with the Pledge and at
least once a week with a
recited Star Spangled
Banner (I asked, “What’s a
rampart? What’s
gleaming?”). I lasted
eighteen weeks in the
classroom and shifted to
tutoring in the afternoon.
The next chapter is an attempt to document what took place between

August 2004 and May 2006, when Downtown Academy went from
“F” school to “A” school.

3 How To Create
An Award-Winning School
(The List)
What would you do to start a school?
Here’s the “to-do” list that I collected by
thinking back: What did we do at
Downtown Academy?
Set up a tradition called “D.E.A.R.”

(drop everything and read), a 30-
minute segment for reading every
weekday.
Build classroom libraries.

Downtown Academy doesn’t have a
central library. Every classroom has
books.
Build a focus on the Arts. Bring in a

working artist. Allow the artist, Marc
Greenblum, to create a project in
front of the students. Marc’s project
grew from a papier mache lamb that spawned other activities,
including a documentary about good and evil (well, he can explain
better what the movie is about  mdgreenblum@yahoo.com).
Build field-trip traditions that integrate the school into the

surrounding community
a) Park day
b) Museum of Discovery and Science (a children’s museum)

c) Periodic visits to the Main Library (two blocks away)
d) Stranahan House (a local historic home)
e) The historic district with the one-room school house
f) Local art galleries
g) Museum of Art (the King Tut exhibit)
h) Culture displays at the Performing Arts Center
In the city of Fort Lauderdale, museums and other cultural

institutions were built within walking distance of each other. Part of
the funding for the construction included special appropriations
provided by the State of Florida. The aim was to create an Arts and
Culture District. It certainly made sense to place the school near that
district (within walking distance), since the typical start-up charter
school doesn’t have funding for renting school buses.
The students can walk to the Performing Arts Center.
Create social traditions. Mr. Did has a very stable personality. He

doesn’t appear to get angry or overly excited (well, his face turns red
and he takes a deep breath, but I’ve never heard him raises his voice
in anger). So when we hear Mr. Di shouting, something good must
have happened. When he arrived at a classroom doorway with a

bag, we knew that something fun was going to be distributed
(usually some fun toys).
Another tradition is the Talent Show. Here’s an example of the type

of clever lyrics that some students created to the tune of Jingle Bells:
Dashing through the year

In one room every day
Oh, the pain we have
When science comes to play.
When reading time is here
We all jump up to cheer
Because we're acting lots of plays
in books and magazines.
Oh, Art is fun,

math is cool,
Science is a drag.
Whenever language comes around,
The writing makes us mad.
Oh, DATA rules
'cuz it's cool
That's just what they say .
I know most people love it here
But some don't want to stay
Lyrics by Lanita, Akiah, Alisa and others
This song was first performed at the DATA December 2004 Talent show
Build a strong parent group. The name of the organization, Parent

Teacher Resource Group (PTRG) gives the focus: the adults in the
room know that they are resources for the school.
Build surprise into the school week. We never knew when Mr. Di
would walk into the room (management by walking around) and
when he might announce a new surprise or set of awards for work
well done.

Get rid of desk-chairs. The school started with donated “desk-
chairs” from the public school’s inventory of furniture. Special
thanks is due to the parent who donated enough tables and chairs to
allow most students to sit at a “real table” and arrange books on a
flat surface. Most desk-chairs have a slanted surface that is designed
for comfortable writing, but the chair is designed for 80 percent of
the population. If you are smaller or larger than average, you don’t
fit well in a desk-chair and pens tend to roll off the table.
Invite the community to come in and speak to the students (and

answer the student’s questions). Every school does this step, right?
How is the “visitor” to DATA treated differently?
We videotape the presentations by visitors so that students can

review the words and so that students who missed the talk can get
the essence.
Here is a list of some of the people

who have spoken at Downtown
Academy (we recognize them as
mentors and thank them for their
time):
An enforcement officer
(environmental policing)
A judge (who brought handcuffs)
A police officer (who let us hold his unloaded pistol)
A soldier on his way to Iraq
A landlord (who explained renting and the headaches with tenants)
An attorney
An A/C repairman
+++++++++
Each step in this list appears to be a little step or a big step. The steps are
mixed together because “even the little things count.” The key is to get
these points on paper and include them in the evaluation.
++++++++++

A principal who looks at you when he’s listening to you. It seems
a simple criterion. As a substitute teacher, I’ve met with dozens of
principals. Most will invite you into their offices and talk with
you…while glancing at email, shuffling papers, multitasking.
Jim used to take me outside into the “talking place” in the hallway,
whether it was for good news
or to discuss “what we need to
work on.”
The parents can walk in

anytime to sit in classrooms, in
the hall, and interact with
students. Ms. Watson and Ms.
Simpson, in particular, had
tremendous impact during the
first three years because they
spent so much time before and
after school sitting in the
hallway.
+++++++++
Is that it? Well, you’ll notice that most of the items

on this list are “soft” and non-academic. I’m
convinced that many good schools are built on
social skills. To further support this idea, let’s look
in the next chapter at the work of Bill Gates and
others who promote smaller schools.

4 Can This Success Happen
at Any School?
No. (…and “Yes”).
Most large public schools have teachers
and administrators who want to create
more effective schools, but they end up
creating more efficient schools. They
focus on “how can we handle more
students per
$100,000 spent on
each classroom?”
However, the
typical public
school system won’t
allow the changes that Littky and others
advocate. Why?
a) Ego -- It just feels more important to have a budget of $5
million (for a school of 1,500 students) than a budget of
$750,000 (typical for a small charter school of around 130
students).

b) “Efficiency” – Why have ten principals, each watching
over 200 students, when you can “save money” by having
one principal watch over 2,000 students?
Littky gives a list of the following types of people who resist change
(pages 36-37) including “Power mongers” (the department heads
who don’t want to share decision-making) and “Myopic Managers”
(who won’t hire people with nontraditional educational background,
“thus depriving schools of new talent and new perspectives”).
Yes, a school can achieve success using the Littky method by

subdividing. No, a school won’t achieve the measure of success if
one principal remains in charge of 1,500 students.
Here are some quotes about small schools that Downtown Academy
distributes to visitors:
+++++++
Most people tell kids to stay in school.
Littky and Bill Gates say,
Find your passions in

a small
school.
+++++++
You have the power
of one -- one child
moved into a small
charter school could increase revenue for that
school by $5,000, which is 5% of the money
needed to erase the school's current
shortfall. PLUS you get your child in a small
school.
+++++++
Students in smaller
schools
are more motivated,
have higher attendance rates,
feel safer,
and graduate and attend
college in higher numbers.
+++++++
From RethinkingSchools.org (a website
for small school activity):
“New York City is

phasing out large high
schools and planning
for 200 new small schools over the
next five years. Chicago is planning
100. Los Angeles is converting 130
middle and high school campuses to
smaller units. New Jersey is
encouraging all middle and high
schools in the state's 30 poorest
districts to reorganize into "small
learning communities" by 2008.
Similar initiatives are underway in
nearly every large urban district.”
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/
19_04/expr194.shtml
So public schools in 2040 will look like charter schools: small

and responsive with more parental involvement.
+++++++
Consider the cost per
student who finally
graduates: While data is not
conclusive, it generally costs more per
student to run a small school than a large
one, although the cost per graduate is
slightly less. A study by the NYU Institute for Education and
Social Policy based on 1995-96 data in New York City found

that schools with fewer than 600 students spent approximately 23
percent more per student than schools with more than 2,000
students. But because the small schools had a higher graduation
the cost per graduate over four
rate,
years of high school was slightly less:
$49,553 compared to $49,578 at large
schools. (This is because the dropout
rate at the small schools was lower.)
SOURCE: rethinkingschools.org/archive/19_04/gate194.shtml
+++++++
The following article appeared at this web location:
vivirlatino.com/2006/04/26/nearly-half-of-latino-students
-dont-finish-high-school.php
On average, 70 percent of U.S.

students receive their high school
diploma. Yet for Latinos this number
is only at 53 percent according to a study
released last week by the conservative think
tank, the Manhattan Institute. The report
cites that whites have the highest graduation
rates at 78 percent, followed by Asians at 72
percent. African-Americans are cited as
having a 55 percent graduation rate. What is
really alarming is the gender gap pointed to
in the study, which shows that girls have a higher graduation rate
across all races/ethnicities compared to boys. Even more

alarming are the numbers coming out of urban Latino New
only 29 percent of boys
York City showing that
and 37 percent of girls are graduating
high school. What's going on in our
schools and with our youth?
++++++++++++++
What can we do with this information?
Let's start by changing the frequently given advice: "Stay in

school."
Let's say, "Find a small school and follow your interests."

"Follow your passion in a small
school."
+++++++++++++
Dennis Littky said in an interview with National Public Radio,

Once they find
their passion
and interest and
start to work in
the internship,
the rest takes

over. They change. It's not school
any more. "I love this doctor's office.
I'm going to read about this. I love
this architect's office, I'm going to
design this." So until you get the
passion, it's too much like school.
+++++++
The new three R’s, the basic

building blocks of better
schools: The first R is
Rigor – making sure all
students are given a
challenging curriculum that
prepares them for college or
work;
The second R is Relevance
– making sure kids have courses and projects that clearly relate
to their lives and their goals;
The third R is Relationships – making sure kids have a number
of adults who know them, look out for them, and push them to
achieve.
The three R’s are

almost always easier to
promote in smaller ...
schools. The smaller size gives teachers
and staff the chance to create an environment
where students achieve at a higher level and rarely
fall through the cracks. Students in smaller schools
are more motivated, have higher attendance rates,
feel safer, and graduate and attend college in
higher numbers.
-- from a speech by Bill Gates, Feb. 2005
+++++++
QUOTES FOR PARENTS
This suggestion comes from a teacher:
You have the power to put into
action what Bill Gates and others
are shouting
about. Gates and others
are pleading with the people of
the USA to improve education
by making schools smaller,
building relationships, asking
students to study in a way that is
RELEVANT to their lives.

Parents: The quickest way to grab
the attention of your local school
district is to pull your child out of the
public school and put your child in a
charter school. Make it clear that
you are pursuing the advice of Bill
Gates. When the school district
subdivides the large school, you can
consider re-enrolling your child in a
school that
has no more
than 300
students.
+++++++
Perhaps this data will help persuade readers

to put more attention on small schools and
commit to reshaping public education along
the lines advocated by Gates:
smaller schools.

You have the power of one -- one child moved
into a small charter school could increase revenue
for that school by $5,000, which is 5% of the
money needed to erase the school's current
shortfall.
+++++++
To help parents learn more about the

power of small schools, I composed the
following booklet, which has been read
by many Downtown Academy parents.

In Praise of
Small Schools
An open letter to parents and
other potential mentors
The New Three
“R”s
By Steve McCrea, Tutor and Mentor
I’m a tutor for middle school
students, so I often get asked: “What should my child be
studying?” “Can you recommend a good web site to
help him get ahead?” “My child has difficulty
reading—can you tutor him?” Parents could present
other questions to a teacher: “What should parents be
learning?” I would answer, “Did you catch that
important speech given by Bill Gates?”
In February 2005, Bill Gates gave a landmark

speech at a conference of governors praising
small schools. I missed it, and chances are that
you did, too, because the speech was
overwhelmed by the media’s focus on the
Michael Jackson trial and Terri Schiavo. Here’s
the essence of what Gates said:

“Successful schools are built on principles
that can be applied anywhere. These are the
new three Rs, the basic building blocks of
better high schools: The first R is Rigor –
making sure all students are given a
challenging curriculum that prepares them
for college or work. The second R is
Relevance – making sure kids have courses
and projects that clearly relate to their lives
and their goals. The third R is
Relationships – making sure kids have a
number of adults who know them, look out
for them, and push them to achieve.”

The three Rs are almost
always easier to promote in
smaller schools. The smaller size
gives teachers and staff the chance to create
an environment where students achieve at a
higher level and rarely fall through the
cracks. Students in smaller schools are more
motivated, have higher attendance rates, feel
safer, and graduate and attend college in
higher numbers.”
Bill Gates
February 26, 2005National Education Summit on High Schools

The Size of the School
Dear Parent:
Let’s think of an example of a small school that
receives public money. The most visible schools
in our neighborhoods are often large. That
middle school down the street has 800 or 1,000
students. Most students in the US (over 60
percent) attend
high schools that
hold more than
1,000 students.
The five largest
high schools in
my city each
have over 1,400
students.
What about charter schools? -- those hybrid

entities that have an agreement with the state (a
“charter”) to operate with fewer of the
constraints of a typical public school (for
example, it’s easier to hire and fire teachers and
other staff).

There are scores of complaints about charters:
- "They don't have a football team"
- "They don't have enough students"
- "They have to eat lunch in the classroom."
- "They don't have a media center."
- "The principal of that charter school is from
another country and he doesn't understand kids in
the USA."
- "They have to take a bus to get to a
playground or recess area."
- “They are underfunded because they don’t have
enough students, so they don’t have enough
money.”
- “They don’t
have enough
students so
my child
doesn’t have
enough
friends.”
- “They score
lower than the
public schools in the standardized tests. I want
my kid to be in the big school where the test
scores are higher.”
- "They ..." (go ahead -- add to the list!)

Parents, you can find many reasons to stick with
the large school that your child currently
attends. People will give you many reasons to
avoid underfunded and mismanaged small
schools. However, if you agree with Gates, then
join the charter school movement and “vote” for
a smaller school -- where everyone knows your
child's name.
I know of a charter school that needs 130

students to have enough funds to hire two extra
assistants and afford buses for field trips. The
school has just over 90 students. Each student is
“worth” about $500 a month or $5,000 a year in
public money (that would otherwise go to a large
public school). With 30 more students, that's
over $150,000 that the charter school could use
for "additional resources."
Would you like

your child to
attend a school
that has
expensive
buildings and a
cafeteria with
four seatings
(to feed 400 students at a time)? Or do you want
your child in a school that has fewer than 400
students (and the principal knows every
student)?
Most parents with students in a large school

didn't hear Mr. Gates and his speech. They
currently send their
kids to one of the
large schools in the
area with over 1000
students. I wonder if
those parents would
change their minds if
they knew what Bill
Gates said....
If you’re looking for a way to have an impact,

there’s nothing more remarkable or effective
than the choice of school. Voting has a chance
for changing the outcome of an election (if you
join with 10,000 or so other voters). Writing a
letter to the mayor or attending a city
commission meeting might make a difference, if
you and another five hundred people show up.
Volunteering for a beach clean up might make
you feel good about doing something for your

local environment.
However, your child could be one percent of a

school. Your child, your “vote,” could shift
funding to a small school and send a message to
the local school district: Gates is right. We
need small schools.
What should happen to larger schools?

The Gates foundation has funded the division of
large schools in New York, L.A. and Chicago
into several smaller schools. Why not apply that
same effort in large schools everywhere? For
parents wanting to heed Mr. Gates’ advice,
however, switching to a small school is
immediate. While we petition our school boards
to partition large schools, at least some students
can be placed immediately in smaller learning
environments.
In short, a charter school is an affordable way for

your child to get rigor, relevance and
relationships in a small school. To find a
charter school in your area, go to your school
district’s web site and look for “Charter.”

In Broward County: BrowardSchools.com and
click on “School Info.” Then select Charters.
In Dade County, www.dadeschools.net, click on
“Schools,” then “School Information” and select
Charters.
In Palm Beach County, palmbeach.k12.fl.us,
then click on the “School Info” button on the
horizontal bar, then click on “Charter Schools.”
Good searching.

The Role of Adults
Mentors
If I were a parent, I would look around for adults
to volunteer to come into my child’s school.
What is Gates really saying? “Education is
everyone’s business” (even his business).
If you want to help reshape education while

getting more attention for your child, make an
effort to become a mentor. You don’t have to
be a parent to provide this valuable service (to
yourself as well as to students and to the
community).
Guidelines
1. Stay focused. Yes, school administrators
need volunteers to help with
photocopying, newspaper recycling,
reorganizing closets. Ask to work as a
teacher’s assistant. Get in contact with
students.
2. Listen. The usual use of a visitor in a

school is to stand the adult at the front of
the classroom and ask for a speech.
Instead, the teacher could give you a small
group of students and you could spend
time in a corner of the room finding out if
there’s any “click” or connection. Ask the
students, “What is your passion? What do
you like to read about?” Many kids just
need a chance to talk in order to discover
their interests.
3. Return. Often. Frequent contact makes a

difference. It takes seven exposures for
most people to learn a new concept and
many kids need to see an adult several
times before your “message” gets through.
Promise to return, then follow through. Be
anticipated.
4. You don’t need a speech or special

talent. Your presence is a present to
students who see the same adults in the
same profession (teachers). If you aren’t a
teacher, that’s good. Remember what
Gates said: “Make sure kids have a
number of adults who know them, look out
for them, and push them to achieve.”
If you’re curious about how a school engages

mentors, visit BigPicture.org and watch the
videos online. The Met, a Big Picture school in
Providence, Rhode Island, is where the new three
“R”s were developed. The formula mentioned
by Gates appeared in Dennis Littky’s book, The
Big Picture: Education Is Everyone’s Business.

Well, I could write more, but I’ve got to go. You
see, I’m a mentor, too, and a student is waiting
for me.

What is the Secret
Behind the Met Center
in Rhode Island?
The Met Center’s web site, Metcenter.org, lists the
following features of the school:
A student-teacher ratio of 15:1
High standards
Strong family engagement
Internships,
Individual learning plans
Advisory (small groups that meet for four years with
the same teacher) and
A breakthrough college transition program
Hmm. It sounds like any other school. “High

Standards” for most of us means, “We use
expensive textbooks and expect our students to
do onerous homework.” At the Met, the
standards mean “rigorous work in the student’s
area of passion.”
“Advisory” for most schools might mean “we

have a guidance department” and “we help
students find possible careers.” In the Met, the
advisory is the class and the classroom. The
advisory appears to be the heart of the program.
The advisory system links one adult to 15
students and that adult (the “advisor,” but most
of us would call that adult the “teacher”) builds a
three- or four-year relationship with the student.
There are other teachers, but one advisor guides
the student through a mix of subjects. The
students look at issues in the advisory, focusing
on quantitative reasoning (math), empirical
evidence (the scientific process) and
communication (language arts).
Confused? I was when I first heard of this

“How can one
system. I thought,
teacher teach all
subjects?” That’s the wrong question.
We should be asking, “In my school, how can a
student get a sense of direction when he or she
has to deal with at least 5 different teachers each
year, 20 teachers through high school? Where is
the common thread binding all of these subjects
in the student?”
One
That’s the secret behind the Met.
adult cares about (focuses
on) one student at a time. I
know at least one school district that claims to
teach “one student at a time.” The Met Center
actually practices this.
Drop Everything and Read

I have identified five “pillars” of the Met Center:
Five pillars of Big Picture Schools

(as interpreted by a math teacher who visited The Met in Providence,
RI, part of the Big Picture schools association)
1 Multi-year relationships -- The teacher stays
with the same students for three or four years.
The teacher teaches more than one subject. In
the case of the Met, a high school in Providence,
RI, the teacher stays with the students for all four
years of high school.
2 The teacher is a facilitator. Teacher =
Advisor = “how can I help you?” The teacher
coaches the student to choose activities to cover
skill areas (language skills, quantitative
reasoning, etc.) rather than special subjects, like
trigonometry, algebra or chemistry. One of the
teacher’s prime activities is finding suitable
mentors for the students.
3 Tests are by exhibition. A “stand up”
demonstration of understanding is valued above a
written test. The students take the state’s
standardized tests and other written tests, but the
school focuses on the exhibition, which is the
product of at least nine weeks of work.
4 Learning through interests – the internships
(set up with the teacher) are selected by the
student. Academic learning is filtered through
the student’s interests.
5 “I’m more than a letter in the alphabet.”
Evaluations are made by narratives, not by a

letter grade. The teacher can afford time to write
two pages of narrative about each student during
the grading period because the teacher has only
15 to 20 students to meet with over a nine-week
period. I observed an advisor who met with
students throughout the class day, asking for
updates on on-going projects. This sort of focus
can come from a narrow focus of one adult on a
small group of students.

The Met Center's web site lists these features:
A student-teacher ratio of 15 to 1
high standards
strong family engagement
internships
individual learning plans
advisory (one on one with a teacher)
a breakthrough college transition program

Questions
Here’s a COMMON OBJECTION to
SMALL SCHOOLS: “Our schools are
focusing on reducing class size, not school
size. We seek to provide a student-
centered environment.”
RESPONSE: Let us emphasize the

difference between being a student in a
small school and being a student in a small
class in a large school.
Bill Gates hammers the point of small schools, where
kids feel safer and everyone knows your name. It
doesn’t matter what size the “student-centered
environment” is – when I walk out that classroom door,
if I can dissolve into 800 or 1000 other bodies, then I’m
not in a small school. I don’t get the small-school
benefit that Dennis Littky writes about and that Bill
Gates is pursuing with his foundation.
In short
1) Howard Gardner says that assessing actual
understanding will cost a lot more that we
currently spend on written tests.
2) Littky says that mentors, exhibitions and
learning through interests are needed to
supplement the typical school textbook and
testing
3) Robert Reich does not have much
complimentary
to say about
standardized
tests.
How can this

“Met Center”
model be
applied to
middle
schools? Or to
traditional high schools?
 more hands-on learning
 more interaction with outside mentors
 introduce grading by narrative
 “one classroom schools” – one teacher for
several subjects. (See WARNING below.)
 less emphasis on performance on a written test
 expand the standardized test to allow alternative
ways of “performing understanding.”
Howard Gardner, developer of the Multiple
Intelligences theory, makes it clear that there are
many ways of learning, so there should be more
than one way to assess a person’s mastery of a
subject. Some people are inspired speakers and
actors, but have a difficult time writing. Some
people are good at building teams but do poorly

when acting alone.
In the real world, these people are called “managers”
(because they know how to delegate). They don’t
have to know how to do everything well.
However, schools test students in a way that

guarantees that most people who are good in one
area are going to feel terrible about themselves
because they can’t perform up to a standard in
another area. In the work place, employees don’t
have to perform in a well-rounded way. That’s why
there is division of labor in an organization.
As a math teacher, I’m impressed with the Big

Picture’s philosophy and how the philosophy is put
into action through the five pillars. The interview
with Littky that aired on National Public Radio in
2005 is particularly compelling. You can find this

interview on the NPR web site, npr.org, and enter
“Dennis Littky” in the search box. The links will
take you to the April 25, 2005 interview. I used to
“believe in” schools as large boxes that efficiently
take in 1000 students and churn out young adults.
Now I see that I learned because I attended a small
school. I was with an adult who spoke to me and a
few other people who were also interested in what I
was hooked on. As a tutor, I see students “get it”
after three or four sessions because I take the time to
find out what the student is interested in and we shift
the tutoring sessions toward those interests.
What if schools were “places to explore my

interests”? Dennis Littky describes one path to
making a classroom that facilitates discovery. The
Big Picture: Education is Everyone’s Business. I
hope you will take time to connect with this
remarkable organization.
 The email address is
TheBigPicture@bigpicture.org.
Here’s a quote from Littky’s book:

There is no “one set of
knowledge.”
In 2000, former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert
Reich wrote an article for the New York Times
called “One Education Does Not Fit All.” In it,
he railed against the use of standardized tests
and courses as inconsistent with the new
economy. I literally jumped out of my seat
with joy when I read this part:
Yes, people need to be able to read, write and
speak clearly. And they have to know how to
add, subtract, multiply and divide. But given
the widening array of possibilities, there’s no
reason that every child must master the
sciences, algebra, geometry, biology or any of
the rest of the standard high school
curriculum that has barely changed in half a
century.
There’s no
reason to put
education in
standardized
packages when
our kids don’t
come in those
packages. Who
wants a
standardized
kid, anyway?

As a society, we embrace individualism and yet
we seem to be OK with our schools becoming
more and more standardized. (Littky, pages
34-35, emphasis added)
WARNING: I have mentioned one of the

key aspects of the Big Picture school to several teachers:
“The advisor teaches all of the subjects.” I rejected
this idea at first, but over time I have grown to accept it.
The reactions of other teachers are consistent:
“How can one person teach math, history, a foreign
language, chemistry, biology, physics, and English
Literature? Where is the rigor?”
“How can one teacher be good at all of those
subjects?”
“I was terrible at (math, history, whatever). I would
make a terrible advisor in that system.”
Two suggestions:
a) Is it so terrible for the student to sit with an adult who
has a fear of math or a history of negative results with
science? If the student lacks a knack for algebra, who
better to teach flexibility and optimism than an adult
who failed algebra in 9th grade?
b) Let this idea sit with you for a while. It might appear
impossible to convince a teacher’s union to encourage
members to teach a spectrum of subjects instead of
“their favorite subject” or “their special gift.” For
some students, an English teacher who hates math might
be the perfect adult to guide the student toward
understanding quantitative reasoning. A science teacher

who can barely write an essay might be the best writing
coach for some students. Students needing additional
rigor can be assigned to other teachers/advisors for
specific needs. In short, The Big Picture method has
pushed me to look at alternatives to “how I was
taught.”
What would Ben Franklin say about the

opportunity that Littky offers each of us?
On the final day, as the last delegates were signing
the document, Franklin pointed toward the sun on
the back of the Convention president's chair.
Observing that painters had found it difficult to
distinguish in their art a rising sun from a setting
sun, he went on to say: "I have often ... in the
course of the session ... looked at that sun behind
the President without being able to tell whether it
was rising or setting. But now at length I have the
happiness to know it is a rising and not a setting
sun."
odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/GOV/frankln.htm

What is Next?
What can each of us do to turn big
schools into small schools?
What can each of us do to help
small schools become stronger?
Just keep asking those two questions. The answer will
come. Then act on what you believe is correct.
We might each start by visiting these web sites:

www.BigPicture.org
www.MetCenter.org
Become a mentor: www.MentorsOnVideos.com
www.BuildingInternationalBridges.com
The key to their success is

you.
Become a mentor. Small schools need adults
to come into the school and to listen to
questions from students. As a mentor, your
role is easy: Make sure the students you talk
with are given something unconventional.
Give them a role model.

What Can We Do?
(Wouldn’t it be nice if change happened instantly after
everyone read these quotes? Wouldn’t it be an efficient
world if we could implement change just by asking
every teacher, parent and student to read the facts?)
1. Visit a middle school. There is one task that a

teacher can’t do or pay for: getting an adult to speak
SINCERELY to a class and to answer their questions.
Your time will spark something in the brains of the kids.

A teacher can’t always make that happen. You can.
You are a mentor.
2. Record yourself and send the video to Box 30555,
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33303, MentorsOnVideo.com. Or
post the video on YouTube.com or other video-sharing
web sites and send the web link to
mistermath@comcast.net. Let students hear your
answers to: What do you remember from school?
What did you do to learn to read?
What did you like to read?
What books or articles or magazines do you recommend
others to read?
What did you learn in school that you really value
today?
What did you learn outside school that you use in your
life today?
Do you remember a teacher’s name? Tell the camera
the name of that teacher and why that teacher sticks out

in your memory.
3. Become a phone mentor. One phone call per day.

Just five or six calls each week. You can make a
difference in a child’s relationship with school work
without having to go to a school. Contact a guidance
counselor at a small school and suggest this tutoring
technique.
4. Ask to become a mentor to a class. The best teacher

is a facilitator who allows mentors (adults who are not
teachers) to talk with students.

Students from Downtown Academy could eventually attend a school like
CHAD school in Philadelphia. A small charter high school with a focus on
arts and technology could be created in Fort Lauderdale.
5. Read some of these books:

A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink
Free Agent Nation by Dan Pink
The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
You can be a mentor.
Just visit a school and ask to sit with a class.
Tell students how schoolwork is related to your career.

Like the Charter High School for Art and Design (CHAD) in Philadelphia,
Downtown Academy is located in the heart of a vibrant city.
Other web sites: LookForPatterns.com MathForArtists.com

Pat-Harris.com ResolveToHeal.com
Snopes.com Check out a rumor before passing on
something you received by email or a rumor that you
heard. “Let’s all boycott one gasoline company and
that will force the company to reduce prices.” (Oh,
yeah?)
In short, Littky’s work is not a “revolutionary” method.

Littky copies what tutors have been doing for millennia -
-- know the student, shape the curriculum to match
the student’s strengths, find experts to train the student,

push the child with rigorous material that makes sense
to the student.
Why not contact Dennis Littky’s office? His email

address is TheBigPicture@bigpicture.org. Ask why a
“student centered environment” must be in a small
school to achieve the results that we are all seeking.
These young men might attend one of Littky’s schools someday.
“Education is everybody’s business.”

Dennis Littky
-------------
That was the 24-page booklet that is available to visitors

to Downtown Academy.

If you have reached this portion of this book, you
are a marathon reader and you are probably a
supporter of small schools. At the risk of
“preaching to the choir,” I want to arm you with
additional material from Littky’s book. I have
selected segments of his book (that appear in the
next chapter) that relate particular with the theme
of respect.

5 Littky’s The Big Picture:
Education is Everybody’s
Business
Imagination is more important than
knowledge, according to Einstein.
When I imagine what school systems
would look like if more parents knew
the essence of Dennis Littky’s book,
then I have fantasies of schools that are
smaller and more responsive to
students and parents. I imagine
schools that respect students in the
way that Littky defines respect.
What can I write in the next sentence to

impel you, dear reader, to find a copy
of Littky’s book and become a devotee
of narratives, portfolios, passion,
internships, mentors and the
vocabulary that Littky uses? What

words can move you to become
immersed in concepts that will leave
you sleepless and impatient for
change? What can I write to move you
to learn about Littky’s proposals about
how to organize a small school, which
appear straightforward and clear?
I can think of one sure way to get my

brain firing on all cylinders and I hope
my enthusiasm transfers to you so that
you become as inspired as I am: Start
quoting Littky. Here we go:
Quotes from the Big Picture
Page 5
If you can get up and be passionate about something and tell others
about what you know, then you are showing that you are educated
about that topic. This is what an exhibition is: it is kids getting up
and talking passionately about a book they’re read, a paper they’re
written, drawings they’ve made, or even what they know about auto
mechanics. It is a way for students to have conversations about the
things they have learned. Exhibitions are the best way to measure
learning because they put the kids right in the midst of their learning,
which makes a lot more sense than asking them to sit quietly for an hour
and fill in test bubbles with a pencil. And because exhibitions are
interactive, they propel the kids to want to learn more. That is what
matters.

Now that you have been given words from Littky’s book, why
not find a pre-owned copy on the used book section of Barnes
and Noble (bn.com)? For $15 including shipping, you can hold
the 200 pages that have been monopolizing my psyche since I
opened the book in July 2005. I admit that as I write this
sentence, I feel like a madman, re-reading the words
“monopolizing my psyche” and wondering, “What words can I
use to describe the pleasurable occupation of my consciousness?”
It’s as if fifteen U.S. Army soldiers marched into my head and

took over until I agree to devote my life, my entire mental
capacity, to telling others about Littky and small schools and
repeating those stories until all schools become smaller. That
“occupation” may be the ultimate force needed to engage the
spirits of millions of parents.
Only when adults are attending school board meetings to

demand more effective schools will the dropout rates begin to
dramatically fall. Only when the phrase “pursue their passions”
becomes part of “Our children are in school to…”will we be able
to rest, knowing that our schools have been transformed.
More quotes appear in Appendix 3. The true purpose of this

book is now unmasked: Yes, I have been searching for some way
to tell many stories about smaller schools and the opportunity
arose to start a book about “How to Create an Award-Winning
Charter School.” In fact, any school can become award-winning,
but the true prize is be coming small and effective. That’s the
message behind The Big Picture by Dennis Littky.
How could we transform education in

the USA? How about opening
thousands of small charter schools to
attract students away from the big

public schools, causing the large
schools to close and reopen, we hope,
under the transformed status of many
small schools occupying the current
big school building.
The subdividing of large schools is

taking place in New York, Chicago,
Los Angeles. News reports of the
transformation of education appear at
least every month and the challenge is
to speed up the rate of conversion.
What have you done, dear reader,

recently to put yourself in a small
school? How have you helped to make
a small school more effective? In
particular, how have you made a small
charter school more able to deliver
positive results?
Look for an effective small school in

your community. I visited the Vail

charter high school in Tucson, Arizona,
which has 146 students, and met with
the assistant principal John Roberts.
“Our strength is in our relationships,”
he told me. “We welcome the
community to be mentors, we have
strong academic standards, but how
we relate to each other is what builds
social skills in our students.”
If you are not part of the action, you are an observer.

Why not close this book, right now, and call a small
school to volunteer your time?

Part Two: What’s Next

6 R–E–S–P–E–C–T
Let’s look again at the “How To Do It”
list. What single element made DATA a
success? What turned the school
around?
Thanks to Dennis Littky, we have the

vocabulary, the lexicon, and the concepts
to describe the success of DATA. The
seventh chapter will cover the next steps
in the evolution of the school and the
next steps in the evolution of our school
system.
It’s all about respect –

especially respect for the
students.
Let’s look at Littky’s book:
The Big Picture

Education is Everybody’s Business

RESPECT. The word appears at least 45
times in Littky’s book. This appendix
captures most of these occurrences of the
word. Since Littky’s book costs more
than $20, it is not likely that it will be
read widely by parents. My aim in
reproducing sentences from Littky’s
book is to expand awareness of the
concepts in Littky’s book, particularly his
themes of “respecting students.”
Page 2
I want my students to get along with and respect others. …The real goals of
education are not possible if the
kids in the school do not care about
and cannot get along with each
other or with the people they meet
outside of school. I believe that
this is the heart of what we mean
when we talk about celebration
and respecting diversity, and it is
at the heart of what makes a school
and a society work.

Littky says that respect is about treating kids the way we treat other
adults. Respect is about not having school bells, since we adults
don’t do our best thinking by turning on and off according to a bell.
Respect follows finding passions

Page 14
Respect is about inspiring students to find their own passions and their
own ways of learning… Not by giving kids the answers, but by
brainstorming with them about how to solve the problems. Not by telling
student what they have to read, but by letting them choose their own books,
based on what they are interested in.
The Best Teaching

Page 15
I once had a teacher who taught a class on the Bible, not as a religious work
but as a piece of literature, and she had never really studied it before. She
told me later that, during that class, she was the best teacher she had ever
been, because she was on the same level with her students – she was
experiencing it all for the first time right along with them. This meant that
she wasn’t saying things like, “Look at the metaphors in here and compare
them,” but was actually asking questions that she herself didn’t know the
answers to, like ”What do we think about this passage compare to this other
one?” It was very exciting for her and very invigorating for her students.
Respect in Teaching
Page 15-16
I had a home economics teacher who had to teach math to a small group of
students who were struggling. She herself was not very good at math.
Some might say, “Oh, no, that will never work.” But it was some of her
most brilliant teaching. I would watch her sitting with those girls, and
they’d be figuring out those problems together. She was comfortable with
the students knowing that she didn’t know everything. She was
comfortable with the idea that she was not just there as question answerer.
She wasn’t yelling at them about why didn’t they understand it; she didn’t
get impatient with their lack of knowledge. She really went through the
learning experience with them. … Knowledge can get in the way
sometimes. It’s terrific for teachers to have depth in a certain area, as long
as they don’t just hand it over. They have to use that deep understanding

to help their students discover the learning on their own. Teaching and
learning are about problem solving. The best environment for learning
is one where people feel safe, supported and respected and where kids
and adults are excited and passionate about learning.
[See my comments about the importance of kids seeing adults work

through confusion (Alison Gopnik’s essay in Appendix 5).]
Give students more responsibility

Page 58
The amount of respect and trust that exists in a school’s culture is directly
related to the amount of responsibility students are given over their
environment, the equipment they use, and their learning. … You show kids
that you respect them and trust them by allowing them to be responsible
for themselves and their surroundings. Kids recognize this – and much
more often than not, they will rise to the occasion.
Trust begins with a personal commitment to respect others, to take

everyone seriously. Respect demands that we first recognize each
other’s gifts and strengths and interests. Only then can we reach our
common and individual potentials. – Max De Pree, quoted on page 59
The Principal’s Role

Page 59
As a principal, I look at every time I deal with a kid as a moment
when the culture of my school is being set. I now that when I am really
listening to a kid, I am reinforcing that’ kid’s sense that our school is a place
where he can feel, “Hey, I don’t have to fight them; they really listen to us.”
I am also aware that the same message is getting across to the people who
walk by and see us talking and listening to each other.
[Note: At Downtown Academy, I see this moment daily, whether

it’s a teacher or the principal who is meeting with a parent or a
student.]
------------------

One out of every three U.S. students
who enrolls in high school drops out
before graduation.
Page 19
After more than 35 years in education, I continue to be angry and amazed
at what does on in our public school system. I am angry that we mistreat
and disrespect our youth. I am angry and amazed that more people don’t
see what I see. I really believe that kids’ lives depend upon more adults
understanding, and changing, what is really going on in our schools.
Relationships build respect

Page 21
We understand that in order for a school to help a kid learn and succeed, the
kid must be known. And you cannot know a kid whose voice you don’t
listen to, whose interests are a mystery, whose family is excluded, and
whose feelings are viewed as irrelevant to the educational process. When
even one teacher builds a strong relationship with a kid and his or her
family, the school can become the place the kid runs to when things fall
apart.
Safety means respect

Page 22
Kids need variety, they need to be heard, they need to feel good about
themselves. School structure must be sensitive to the tremendous physical,
emotional and intellectual upheaval brought on by adolescence alone.
Students need to feel that school is a safe place – a place where they
won’t be punished indiscriminately….They need to feel that school is a
place where their strengths and energies are nurtured and applauded, where
they and their loved ones matter as human beings, and where they have
control of themselves and their successes. Finally, they need their school
– and their society – to see them as a resource, and not as a resource
drain.
[Note: International visitors who are studying English come to the

school to practice speaking with students at Downtown Academy.
Why? “We want to learn English from the little teachers.”]

Respect breeds respect
Page 22
While I think kids are very fragile, I also think they are very resilient and
can handle a lot more responsibility, challenge and respect than adults give
them credit for. … I think I get along so well with kids because I have
incredible respect for them. I believe that every kid has got a certain
beauty.
Respect comes with individual attention

Page 73
One Kid at a Time is the crux of the Met philosophy. It is treating everyone
alike differently. This is the only way schools will really work and the only
way every kid will be offered the education he or she deserves. … Our kids
are being mistreated and abandoned by their schools, and too many are
literally dying as a result. We have to save them, one kid at a time.
One-Size-Fits-All doesn’t show respect

Page 74
What we need is not just smaller schools and realistic education goals, but
authentic relationships between educators and kids. What we need are
truly personalized schools… The teacher’s primary concern is educating
students, not getting through a certain body of subject matter.
A one-size-fits-all approach to education will always be hit or miss. Can

you imagine walking into a medical office and being shuffled off to a room
with 20 or 30 other people who have the same complaint or disease, and then
watching as the doctor discusses the treatment that all of you will receive
before sending everyone out the door with carbon copy prescriptions? Of
course not! Doctors see one patient at a time.
Responsibility = respect
Page 24
Most of our students at the Met, like most students everywhere, are ready
to take responsibility for their own learning, are eager to be treated with
respect, and have a lot to say about what they think should be the real goals
of education.

“Force-feeding” doesn’t foster respect
Page 75
Truly personalized learning requires reorganizing schools to start with the
student, not the subjects or classes. …where every student has a completely
different curriculum based on who he or she is right now and who he or she
wants to become.
There cannot be a uniform curriculum for every student in the country or

for every student in a single classroom. Force-feeding kids a rigidly defined
body of knowledge is in total opposition to what we know about learning.
Everything I know about kids tells me that there is no content that’s
right for every kid. Photosynthesis or iambic pentameter may be very
important to you, but they aren’t to me, at least not right now.
Respect toward the community

Page 76
The school must work hard at creating an environment that respects the
individual but at the same time expects him or her to be a part of the
community and respectful of it, too. The United States struggle with
this as a nation and we struggle with it every day at the Met. We recognize
that it’s a much more important goal than practicing for standardized tests.
Respect Teachers, too.

Page 77
Sending teachers to teaming workshops or bringing in experts to lecture on
adolescent development is good. But in practice, it is … another example of
an inadequate, one-size-fits-all approach. We must begin to think of
teachers as learners, too, and approach their learning needs one at a time.
School must be a growing place for everyone.
Respect Parents
Page 78-79
All students’ educational programs should be designed by the people who
know them best: their parents, teachers, and themselves. … Listen to the
parents when they say “this is what gets my kid excited about learning”;
“my kid’s had only one good year at school and this is why.” It’s about
respecting the parent in the same way you have to respect the kid,

who even those he’s only 15, really does have an idea about who he is and
what he needs.
Why not focus on skills more than on information?

Page 80
In this age of computers and technology, the amount of information out
there increases every second and teaching a limited body of knowledge is no
longer as practical as it once was. Motivating students to want knowledge
and teaching the skills they need to get knowledge have become so much
more important. Why can’t we understand that it is better to teach
students the skills they will need to find information themselves than it is to
just hand them a list of facts (or presidents or elements) to memorize?
Democracy means respect

Page 87
The kids rewrote all the school’s rules. Every kid was involved. Kids want
pretty much the same things we adults want: no fighting, no drugs, respect
each other, respect the school, and so on. I guarantee if you let the kids
write the rules (and ask them to keep them clear and simple), the kids will be
umpteen times more likely to follow them because they are their rules. This,
of course, also relates to treating kids with respect and dignity.
“How do you get them to study?”

Page 98
When we are interested in what we are learning, no one has to force us to
keep learning. We just do. When a kid has her own learning goals in mind,
nothing can really stop her from pursuing them, not even peer pressure. I
remember coming to school one day and finding out it was “National Bunk
Day.” One of our students told me some friends from another school tried
to get her to “bunk” (skip school) with them. I asked her why she hadn’t.
She replied, “Why would I bunk? I have work to do.” It was her work, and
she wasn’t going to miss a minute of it.
Before looking at the last chapter, please page through the

Appendices. I’ve placed photos on pages that are particularly worth
two moments of your attention.

Appendices
To keep the story flowing, I left out significant chunks of the DATA
success story.
1. The data behind the swift change in results from Year 1 to

Year 2 (the material in the first chapter came from this list)
2. The computer program used in the curriculum called
Odyssey
3. The extended quotes from the book by Dennis Littky. While
the influence of Littky was minor in year two (I had
introduced the “small school drum beat” only after the major
improvements were made), Littky’s work gave me the
vocabulary to describe what had taken place. The appendix
contains additional “readings” that could be introduced to
parents, staff and students in the weekly newsletters and in
posters that could be posted through the school.
4. Jim DiSebastian gave an extended presentation that was
included in “A Principal’s Perspective,” a short DVD about
small schools.
5. “The Shoe” – an example of an integrated lesson, transcribed
from a video recorded in November 2005 at the Met Center.
6. A description of learning by Alison Gopnik.
7. A handout about charter schools.
Appendix 1
The Data behind DATA’s success
A presentation by Jim DiSebastian

Supplied to me by Ron Renna
Downtown Academy of Technology and Arts

Going from an “F” to an “A”
#2 in the state for largest gains in a middle school!!

Principal, James E. DiSebastian
Assistant Principal, David Jett
School of Art
•Full time Art classes for all students
•Dedicated Art room
•Students’ Art work featured in prominent local Art Gallery, FAU
and the KC Wright Building
•DATA took home all the top awards given at the 2006 Scholastic
Art & Writing Awards
•Annual school trip to Italy
School of Technology
•Assigned student computer usage daily
•Computer curriculum in 85% of subject areas
•Dedicated Computer Lab
•Computers in every classroom
•Filtered/monitored high speed internet access
•Informative up-to-date school web site
http://www.downtownacademy.org
School of Downtown
•One aspect of our mission (included in our charter): To serve the
Downtown area of Fort Lauderdale
•DATA takes advantage of what Downtown has to offer.
Frequent walks to:
- Museums
- The Main Library
- The Performing Arts Center, for shows
- Huizinga Park or The Esplanade for PE
•Community involvement and participation
School of Choice
•Extra math help
•Reading coach
•Tutoring
•FCAT Prep
•Programs personalized
to students’ needs
After School
•Science Help
•Math Help
•Homework Help
•Writing
•Student Council
•After School Enrichment
Program
•Drama
•Yearbook
DATA Students
School of the Future
•Overcame our “F” rating
and went up to an “A” for
2005-2006 *in one year*
•DATA to maintain the “A” rating for 2006 and beyond
•60% Title 1 students
•School rated #2 in the state for student achievement improvement
out of 2,854 public and charter schools
•Governor's Award
School of the Future (cont)
•Attained Federal Annual Yearly Progress (AYP)
•Continuing with our programs and success. Students, Parents,
Faculty, and Board would like to see our small school expand to a
more accommodating site.
Accountability report first year

•2004-2005 School year
–Our first year in operation

–“F” grade
–80% of students met AYP criteria
–Title I school
than 280
Scores
•Reading
–44% of students making a year’s worth of progress in reading
–43% of struggling students making a year’s worth of progress in
reading
AYP: BLACK, ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED

students in this school need improvement in Reading
Scores
•Math
–31% of students making a year’s worth of progress in math
•AYP: BLACK, ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED
students in this school need improvement in Reading
The Plan
•Hired a part time reading coach
•Hired a full time and part time math coach
•Staff meeting EVERY Friday
•D.E.A.R. time- 30 minutes EVERYDAY
•Weekly mini-lesson developed for all staff to use in EVERY
classroom EVERYDAY
•Introduced IMAC curriculum to students
•Frequent testing
•Two English classes a day (Language Arts and Reading)
•Evaluating results of testing and adjusting mini-lessons and
curriculum as needed
•Developed discipline plan
Accountability report second year
•2005-2006 School year
–Our second year in operation
–“A” grade
–100% of students met AYP criteria
–Title I school
than 280
Scores
•Reading
–75% of students making a year’s worth of progress in reading
–75% of struggling students making a year’s worth of progress in
reading
AYP: All subgroups met this criteria
Scores
•Math
–71% of students making a year’s worth of progress in math
•AYP: All subgroups met this criteria
Comparison
•Year one
Reading

•41% at or above level
•44% learning gains
Math
•31% learning gains
Writing
•Year two
•Reading
•75%
learning
gains
Math
•56% at or
above level
•71%
learning
gains
Writing
•90% at or
above level

Appendix 2
Odyssey
The school selected a computer program to present information to

students on monitors. The positives included connections to the
Internet (to amplify explanations for some segments of the lessons),
short videos to explain sections, the option to print each lesson and
give the segments to students to study at home.
The negatives: the vocabulary sometimes included words most high

school kids don’t use (example: biomes). Some questions had two
answers that were both correct. Some questions depended on the
ability to quickly scroll up and look for the answer. The skill was
not testing the student’s attention span and patience. The method
for many students was simply “find the information, drop it in the
blank, move on” without connecting the information to their
learning.

Another negative: Some students asked for a chance to redo a
section; it was cumbersome to reset the program and allow students
to review and redo their answers.
Much of the material in the Odyssey program was presented in a

small type font that stretched across the screen. Two columns would
have been easier to read or one narrow column. More photos,
please.
We spent so much
time directing kids to
use the program,
many of us forgot to
take a moment and
describe where the
name of the program
came from. Nearly
three thousand years
ago, Odysseus made
a long voyage with
many obstacles. In the rush to “get the students on Oddysee,” (we
counted at least five ways that students have misspelled the name),
we missed an opportunity to spark the imaginations and make
connections.
We put too much emphasis in the grading system on Odyssey,

giving it 50% of the grade point average in the first grading period.
We had some kids who did C classwork, but they were getting Fs in
Odyssey, so they were failing several classes.
The emphasis shifted from 50/50 classwork to Odyssey to giving a

majority of the focus on classwork, tests and homework.
ADVICE: put up more signs showing how to spell the word.

Oddysee, Odisee, Addisy, Oddissy were some of the ways that
students spelled the word. So call it Roadways or Pathways or
Harambee (let’s all pull together).
20/20 Hindsight:

1) Use a computer for some of the classwork
2) Make sure the program can be printed out and studied at
home
3) Better: put the pages on CD, since it’s easier to print the
pages at home or read the pages on a computer. Rather than
rely on teachers to provide the review pages, the students
could be given the material on CD and encouraged to
review at home.

Appendix 3
Littky’s book, The Big Picture:
Education is Everybody’s Business
Here are some more quotes from Littky’s book.
How important is “desire” in learning?

Page 5
The current push for one test that every kid has to pass in order to move to
the next grade or graduate makes the whole situation even sadder. With
their focus on end results, too many schools and education policymakers
forget how much the process influences how a kid takes in knowledge and
then uses it. Too many forget how intrinsic motivation and desire
are to learning. So much of our entire approach to education in the USA
cheats kids out of the chance to become lifelong learners.
(In other words, we don’t

respect students enough to
give them the chance to
become lifelong learners.
Because Littky used the
word “intrinsic,” that entire
sentence was skipped over
by some readers and
ignored by most.)
Focus on applying information

page 5
I care more that a student is excited to go deeper in her exploration of the
history of women in her native country than I do about the student’s ability
to answer every question on a standardized U.S. history test. I care way
more about helping kids learn to apply knowledge that I do about presenting

them with knowledge and finding out if they have memorized enough of the
facts to spit them back at me.
=============================
To close this appendix, let’s look at other segments of Littky’s book

that can provide a vocabulary to inspire parents to ask for smaller
schools, mentors, narratives, testing by exhibitions and individual
learning plans for each student.
Page 3
The only really substantial thing education can do is help us to become
continuous, lifelong learners. Learners who learn without textbooks
and tests, without certified teachers and standardized curricula.
Learners who love to learn. W.B. Yeats said it this way: “Education is not
the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.”
Page 3
A school board in Howard County, Maryland removed two criteria from its
official policy on determining high school students’ grades: “originality”
and “initiative.” This school board decided this because, they said, it is
“impossible” to measure how hard a student tries or if a student’s work is
original. What they were really saying is this: If it can’t be measured
easily, then we can’t care about it, we can’t teach it, and we
certainly can’t determine if a kid has learned it. The solution? Take
originality and initiative completely out of your educational goals.
Page 11
The act of being a teacher is understanding how learning works and
figuring out how to apply all this to each student, one at a time. I know
that it would be pretty easy for someone to take the goals I believe in and
contort them so they fit nicely in to a lecture-based curriculum designed to
be assessed with a standardized multiple-choice test. But being a teacher is
about taking these goals and creating the best possible environment for
supporting kids and learning. It is not about finding a way to fit these
goals into the traditional methods of schooling.

Teaching is Listening. Learning is Talking.
(a motto painted on a Met Advisor’s truck by his students)
page 13
Every kid approaches learning in an individual way. … The teacher’s role is
to find what that way is for each kid. Teaching becomes figuring out how to
see and listen to each kid, one kid at a time, so that the kid can reach the
goals for himself or herself. Teaching cannot happen in a vacuum. The
community and the child’s family must be included in every way possible.
Parents are the student’s first and most important teachers and they
cannot, must not, be left out of the education equation – not even when
there are “professionals” around.
Learning How To Teach

What is one of the main obstacles to implementing procedures to
make a Littky-style school? Many teachers don’t know learning
when they see it taking place in front of them.
Page 13
In the early 1970s I was placing student teachers in schools with “open
classrooms”. These schools had kids doing projects in small groups instead
of the traditional lecture format. One of my student teachers said, “This is
great, Dennis, but when am I going to really learn how to teach?” She was
standing there in an exciting, rich learning environment, but she couldn’t
see it because it didn’t match her idea of what teaching was, which was
standing up in front of the room, looking out at quiet rows of faces, and
pouring knowledge into them.
Many people believe that the teacher is the sage on the stage, rather
than the guide on the side. Ron Renna used the sage-guide couplet
when he described to me the philosophy of Downtown Academy. I
hope that teachers at DATA are still getting that message: real
teaching is about facilitating, making the learning “facile” (easy).

These quotes have a common theme: if we respect students, then we
will take positive actions. When we choose not to measure initiative
and originality, we fail to respect the students.
So, have you read enough of

these quotes to want to buy
a copy of Littky’s book for
your library? And to get a copy for your
local school board? Go to BigPicture.org.
++++++++++
This issue of “what should we evaluate” and “how should we

evaluate” are discussed by Howard Gardner in Intelligence
Reframed, starting on page 160:
What would an expanded

FCAT look like?
Howard Gardner calls for performance tests, not quick responses
or multiple choice or short-answer tests. He calls it “a
performance of understanding.”
From Intelligence Reframed…
When it comes to probing a student’s understanding of evolution,

the shrewd pedagogue looks beyond the mastery of dictionary
definitions or the recitation of textbook examples. A student
demonstrates or “performs” his understanding when he can
examine a range of species found in different ecological niches
and speculate about the reasons for their particular ensemble of
traits. A student performs her understanding of the Holocaust
when she can compare events in a Nazi concentration camp to
such contemporary genocidal events as those in Bosnia, Kosovo
or Rwanda in the 1990s.
Here is a performance of understanding by students in a Spanish class at

CHAD in Philadelphia. The portfolio project aimed to employ language
skills by assembling a graphic novel. Clever, isn’t it?

“Measures of understanding” may seem demanding, particularly
in contract to current, often superficial, efforts to measure what
students know and are able to do. And, indeed, recourse to
performing one’s understanding is likely to stress students,
teachers, and parents, who have grown accustomed to
traditional ways of doing(or NOT doing) things. Nonetheless, a
performance approach to understanding is justified. Instead of
mastering content, one thinks about the reason why a particular
content is being taught and how best to display one’s
comprehension of this content in a publicly accessible way.
When students realize they will have to apply knowledge and
demonstrate insights in a public form, they assume a more active
stance to the material, seeking to exercise their “performance
muscles” whenever possible.
Pages 162..
If one assumes that understanding is equivalent to mastery of
factual materials, or if one assumes that understanding follows
naturally from exposure to materials, then there is no reason to
require explicit performances of understanding. But it is more
likely that we have avoided assessing understanding because
doing so takes time and because we have lacked confidence that
we will actually find clear evidence of understanding. Thanks to
hundreds of studies during the past few decades by psychologists
and educators, we now know one truth about understanding:
Most students in most schools, cannot exhibit appreciable
understandings of important ideas.
Gardner proposes three approaches

Observational Approaches
The first approach involves observing. The traditional
institution of the apprenticeship is one example. Young
apprentices spend much time with a master practitioner, observe
him up close and gradually engage in the daily practices of a
problem solving and product making. A children’s museum is a

contemporary example to mold understanding. Students have
the opportunity to approach intriguing phenomena in ways that
make sense to them, they can take their time and they face no test
pressures. They may bring issues with them fro home to school,
to the museum and back again, gradually constructing sturdier
understandings by using multiple inputs in diverse settings.
These institutions can give us clues about how best to teach for
understanding.
Confrontational Approaches
Frontal tackling of the obstacles to understanding: One comes
to grips directly with one’s own misconceptions. For example, if
someone habitually engages in stereotypical thinking, he can be
encouraged to consider each historical event or work of art from
multiple perspectives. None of these is foolproof. Teachers need
to encourage understandings by pointing out inadequate
conceptualizations and asking students to reflect on the
consequences. Students gradually learn to monitor their own
intuitive theories and thus cultivate habits of understanding.
A Systematic Approach – Teaching for Understanding.

Teachers are asked to state explicit understanding goals,
stipulate the correlated performances of understanding, and
share these perspectives with the students. Other features of this
“understanding framework” include a stressing of central
topics. For example: Why are there fourteen varieties of finches
in the Galapagos Islands? When and how was the Final
Solution arrived at?

Tables in this art class in Philadelphia (the Charter High School for Art and
Design, CHAD) are wide and sturdy. Students at Downtown Academy
gain skills that can be enhanced at charter schools that include a focus on
design.
Teachers need to assess students' understanding not simply at

the end of the course but through regular interim practice
performances.
Multiple Intelligences is most usefully invoked in the service of

two educational goals. The first is to help students achieve
certain valued adult roles or end-states. If one wants everyone
to be able to engage in artistic activities, it makes sense to
develop linguistic intelligence for the poet, spatial intelligence
for the graphic artist and sculptor, movement intelligence for the
dancer and musical intelligence for the composer. If we want
everyone to be civil, then it is important to develop the personal
intelligences.
The second goal is to help students master certain curricular

materials. Students might be encouraged to take a course in
biology so as to better understand the development of the living
world. If individuals indeed have different kinds of minds, with

varied strengths, interests and strategies, then it is worth
considering whether pivotal curricular materials like biology
could be taught AND ASSESSED in a variety of ways.
p. 167 (emphasis added)
+++++++++++++++++++++
In short, as a taxpayer, I became more impatient when I learned that

school board members KNOW about the power of small schools but
choose to stick with large schools for a number of reasons. As a
taxpayer, I’m less concerned about the reasons for maintaining the
status quo. I’m more worried about “How can we put more kids
into small schools?” Since reading Littky’s book, now I add, “How
can we start using narratives, exhibitions for testing, and portfolios?”
Whatever it’s going to cost, it’s going to be more effective to treat
students with more respect now than the “efficient” housing of kids
that leads to 30% of the students to fail to complete high school, and
more to fail to discover and follow their passions.

Appendix 4
A Principal’s Perspective
In May 2006, shortly after Jim DiSebastian learned that the school had
received an “A” rating, he gave the following interview. The transcript
that appears below fits the focus of this book (what does it take to create an
award-winning charter school?). Jim talks about the role of parents and
adults, further emphasizing the importance of not leaving a school’s success
in the hands of teachers and administrators. Anyone seeking to create a
fabulous school need the support of parents and other adults in the
community.
Like a child, it takes a village to “raise” a school.

============
Jim: Most of the schools that I’ve worked in have 500 or 600
students. That’s a bit smaller than these mega schools [2,000-plus
students]. I once worked in a school with 1200 students. Based on
my experience, I am very much for smaller schools.
There are two very good reasons for a smaller school. First,
everybody knows everybody. We get to know each child and they
get to know each employee, you’re not just a number. We get to
know the students’ needs. It’s more like a family.
Second, when I was in

administrator’s classes to
become a better principal, one
of the key lessons was that
discipline issues increase
disproportionately according to
the number of disciplinary
problems there are in a
location. [This means that a small
school with 200 students might

have 10 kids with discipline problems, but a school that is 10 times bigger
will have more than ten times the number of discipline problems.]
If you have one or two kids in a class who are disciplinary problems,
it’s not as bad a situation as when you have three or four kids who
act out. The disproportionate result increases in larger schools.
There are some drawbacks with small schools. A small school often
doesn’t have some of the facilities that many parents are looking for.
But on the whole, kids get a more personalized education in a small

school.
Just being small isn’t enough. There are bad small schools. What can
parents do to improve a small school?
Jim: Parents are a key factor. They have to be interested and
involved. We have an active parents association at Downtown
Academy. Parents have a lot of input, I want to hear what they have
to say, then they feel comfortable to tell us when they have a family
issue [that can impact the student’s performance]. They know we care,
we know each other, one on one.

When you have a small school and you know that a child needs help
in an area of mathematics, it’s easier to do something about it. You
can take that child out of class and help him catch up and raise that
child’s ability.
This document is intended to inspire parents to get involved to improve

small schools. What advice can you give parents who might want to act as
mentors to other kids in the school?
What I always remind people is, if you are going to talk with a child,
imagine how you want your child to be spoken to and treated.
Your school has been recently rated very well in the FCAT scores. How
could this assessment test be expanded and improved to better measure
learning? Howard Gardner has said that there needs to be a variety of tests
to assess individuals. Kids can demonstrate understanding in other ways
than pen and paper. Have you heard of other testing methods that the
FCAT might grow to include?
Jim: I have. When you are looking at the International
Baccalaureate, they have other pieces so that the child is graded on,
more than just the written part or filling in circles. It’s a good idea to
sit down and interview a child to talk things out, to have a child
demonstrate their ability. I’ve seen it with lots of students who don’t
do well in written and bubbling tests.
I’ve seen some kids who don’t know how to spell well and their essays reflect
it. They know a more complicated word, but they won’t use it in a written
test because they don’t know how to spell it.
Jim: Yes, I’ve seen that, too.
Thank you for your time.

Jim: I hope this is helpful.

Appendix 5
The Shoe
The following commentary goes with the DVD that accompanies the
printed version of this book. Short segments of “The Shoe” appear
on youtube.com and short commentary is given in the videos. It is
recommended that you watch the video after reading these
comments so you have an idea what to look for in the video. To
avoid distracting viewers from the presentation, “The Shoe” does
not have captions. You see what I saw on November 30, 2005.
Time / Teacher’s actions
0:00 Teacher tells the students to “write about the shoe.

What do you see?”
2:15 Teacher says, “Read what you wrote.”
5:30 Teacher says, “I have a poem. Let’s read it.”
10:06 Teacher says, “I’m going to read the poem again. The title is
important: A Worker Reads History. Can you guess what that
means?...Do kings work?”
12:18 “Do you have problems with any of these words?”
14:49 “What point is the author trying to make?”
16:26 Teacher asks, “Based on what we saw in the poem, what did
we miss about the shoe the first time we wrote about it? Go ahead
and write something more about the shoe.”
Track 2
2:00 T: “I’m going to ask you to share.” A student asks,
“Can I go first this time?”
Teacher: Does anyone have any objections to her going first?”
(NOTE: Democracy at work in the class.)
2:57 Teacher: “Read what you wrote.”

7:00 Okay, now pair up with somebody. Check the tags on your
clothes. Create a list o all of the countries that your clothes come
from.
17:01 Let’s count them up and them on the board.

25:03 We have 31 pieces of clothing from China and the total
number of pieces is 49. What percent is from China?....
Student: “62 percent”
T: Why? How did you come up with that percentage?
Student: “It is 31 divided by 49.”
27:00 Teacher: “How do you figure out percentages? Let’s figure
this out together.”
30:00 Let’s say that it costs 25 cents per hour for the labor. Let’s
figure it takes someone an hour to work on this shoe. How much
does it sell for in a store?”
Student: “Seventy-nine dollars… I hate that.” Teacher: “What
price does another store sell these shoes at?”
33:00 Teacher: “Why does it cost so much in one store and not in
another store? How can one store sell so much cheaper than
another store?”
36:00 T: “How can they make a profit when they sell the same shoe
for just $30?”
37:00 T: “Why is Nike paying the Indonesians or the Chinese so
little money? Is it right that Nike pays so little? Is it fair?”
*The DVD’s recording ends at 40 minutes.
+++++++++++++
This transcription of the teacher’s lesson shows that an integrated

lesson flows naturally from subject to subject. How difficult is it to
bring math, language arts, history, economics and science together?
Isn’t the result worth the effort?

Appendix 6
The Teacher as a Coach:
Teaching Through Confusion
Alison Gopnik in the New York Times covered these two topics in
an essay titled, “How Children Learn.” Two themes permeate this
essay. First, we tend to learn by watching a series of steps and then
doing those steps while a mentor watches us. Any other procedure
(such as learning by
lecture) will tend to miss
something in the transfer
of information and skill.
Second, there are two

types of learning: the
first is the observation of
a new routine. The
second is through rote
repetition of the routine
until it is learned (or
becomes “automatic”). Gopnik concludes that tutoring and
mentoring are preferred ways of learning since both types of
learning can take place with feedback.
Here is the key part about “confusion” that I like to quote often:
Children seem to learn best when they can explore the world and interact
with expert adults. …They learn by watching adults, trying themselves and
receiving detailed corrective feedback about their efforts. … How many
children ever get to watch teachers work through writing an essay or
designing a scientific experiment or solving an unfamiliar math problem?
You can find a copy of this essay at

geocities.com/talkinternational1/nytimes.

Appendix 7
A Handout about Small Schools
Small Schools use our taxes efficiently

…and many charter schools are small and effective.
It’s not the number of students in a classroom. It’s the number of

students in the school.
Just being small doesn’t make a school good, but it helps when the
principal and the teachers can remember every student’s name,
strengths and weaknesses, and make a link between a parent’s face
and the child. Relationships tend to be stronger in a small school.
What is a charter school?

A charter is an agreement between the operator and the State of
Florida (and the local school board) to operate a school for the
benefit of the public.
What is the difference between a public school and a charter

school?
A public school is operated by public employees (the school board).
A charter school is operated by an independent (private)board,
usually as a non-profit organization, and public money I used to
educate the children. A charter school can often act more quickly
than a public school to implement innovative educational methods.
About Charter Schools in Florida

Number of charter schools in Florida: 356 schools
Number of students in charter schools: 98,000 students
Average size of charter schools: 275 students
Average size of public schools: more than 500 students
Average size of public schools in Broward County: 1,100 students

An effective small school offers a community of caring, competence,
and high expectations. A more-human scale is a potent antidote to
student alienation.
While impersonal “bigness” may actually provoke disruptive or

violent behavior, small schools conducive to trust and respect tend
to defuse it. Source: Steifel, L.
A much-cited study of small high schools in New York City

concluded that the cost per graduate is less, due to lower dropout
and high graduation rates. The study concludes that “quite small
additional budgets” are “well worth the improved outputs.” Steifel,
L. et al (1998). The effects of size of student body on school costs and
performance in New York City high schools, New York: New York
University, Institute for Education and Social Policy.
Wested.org/online_pubs/po-0103.pdf
In other words…
Small schools often build trust and encourage students to tell the
truth. We use active listening in our small school to show that we
really hear the other person (“I hear you saying that…” before we
respond). Small schools encourage our personal best effort and
small schools say, “No put downs” (we say “no” to bullies).
Does your child walk into a see of one thousand other students after
class? Why not learn about the Small School Advantage? Many
public schools have too many students for a principal to know well.
A possible solution is to break large schools into smaller schools.
Compiled for distribution at Downtown Academy

“We’re part of your community, so drop in and become a mentor.”
(954) 767-0403 DowntownAcademy.org
Trust. Truth. No Put-downs.

Active Listening. Personal Best.
Seen at New City School in St. Louis, Mo.

7 The Fourth Year and
Beyond
My goals for the school include the following:
1. Bringing in more mentors to the school

(respecting students by giving them interesting adults to stimulate
their minds)
The plan is to continue to videotape those mentors so that students

can review the messages that the mentors give them. (I respect the
mentors by capturing their presentations; I respect audio learners
who pick up some messages better after a second or third viewing).
Past videos can be seen on youtube.com by searching for the
accounts named “mistermath” and “mentorsonvideo.”
Mentors can teach probabilities with backgammon.

The plan includes teaching students to edit and convert the videos to
post on Youtube. (I respect the students’ ability to learn marketable
skills that relate to their passion for TV and DVDs.)
2. Upgrading the computer room by seeking donations of

computers. (I want to respect the students and not ask them to wait
by giving them faster, more reliable computers.)
3. In addition to “mentors on video,” let’s record as many

pieces of advice on video or audio devices. Why? I respect
the teachers for their efforts in putting their lesson plans on
paper. Now let’s preserve some of those lessons in person,
too.
Here’s an example of a mentor on video and how I approach a

potential mentor. The question from the potential mentor (Laura)
was:
To: steveenglishteacher@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: thanks
Steve - Hi, got your
letter. Regarding the 8th
graders, what type of
topics are you looking
for? Laura
My reply:
The topics are specific to
you. How do you use
math in your daily work?
Can you demonstrate
how their parents can get
out of a rental situation and into a house? When can owning a
house cost about the same as renting? 8th grade is the highest
level at our school. Marketing is a cool topic for many students.
Let me know when you are ready to come to the school to give a
talk and to answer their questions.
Steve, English Tutor

4. Reaching out to fifth-grade students and their families by
inviting them to “visit Downtown” for a full school day.
Why not invite students to see what their next three years
could look like? What is happening inside a charter school?
“Learn about a Charter School Day” could become an on-
going event that would force students who are unhappy
with being placed in Downtown Academy to either turn
lemons into lemonade (and become ambassadors for the
school).
Can you imagine the negative impact of hearing from a student that
“this place is not for you or for anybody. It really sucks.” That’s
what several students told me after I pointed out some of the
advantages of a small school. “I like big schools. I wish I was back
at Arthur Ashe,” (a large middle school) a girl told me. “I could hide
back there. Nobody was on my back the way they are here.” The
same girl made it clear to our in-school family therapist Pat Harris
that she hated the school. “That person really enjoys making herself
miserable,” Pat told me. I predict that bringing students to “visit
Downtown for a day” will help this student grow emotionally or the
school will need to ask the student to leave. That sort of negativity
brings to mind the poem often quoted by Jeraldine Saunders, the
creator of the Love Boat TV series:
We tend to move toward that which we dwell upon.

So let’s dwell well.
In plain English, “We usually move toward whatever we think about. So

let’s think about good things.” If that student’s attitude is allowed to
fester, no amount of positive
experiences will turn a visit next to
her into an overall “plus.”
5. More attempts should be

made to reach out to the
local community. The
principal or volunteers
should be making

presentations to business groups, small and large businesses,
and taxpayers in general. Tell the “Small School” story and
explain why a small school makes sense. (I respect the
intelligence of the taxpayer: most people will be willing to
hear about a more effective use of tax revenues – and
starting more charter schools is part of that “more effective
use.”)
6. I maintain the hope that local unions will relax the hold that
they have on teachers and management. Some union-held
positions will be lost or changed if large schools are divided
into smaller academic communities. I hope that unions will
keep their eye on the main goal: protecting their jobs. …
uh, I mean, educating the next generation.
7. Greater understanding by the school board of charter

schools. Despite millions of dollars being spent on students
in charter schools, I get the sense that charter schools are
lumped in with the “private voucher” debate. Should
students have the right to go anywhere outside of the public
school system? If we look at the effect of vouchers on
children, we could say, “Sure.” But then there are fewer
students and fewer dollars to maintain the large facilities
operated by the school board. I hope that this story of an
ever-more-successful charter school will inspire more people
to study Littky’s words and break large schools into smaller
identities. Yes, when a school principal can send out a letter
without the “School Board of Broward County” embossed
on the letter, we will know that the message of “smaller
schools” is getting through.
The return address on an envelope from a large high school in

Broward County had large letters “SCHOOL BOARD OF
BROWARD COUNTY” and the name of the school in smaller letters
on the next line.
The letter was in response to my offer to create a workshop for

parents about “Beyond the SAT: How to use portfolios to improve
your chances in university.” The workshop never took place, but I

had sent some videos to the assistant principal of the school. The
letter was a generic letter to thank me for supporting the school. I
know that the administrators of a school with more than 2000
students are busy…but if you’re going to send a letter, make an
effort to thank the mentor with a letter, not a form letter.
8. Obtaining video cameras to allow students to record and

review important events from the school year (I want to
respect the students by expecting them to make the
recordings)
Use those cameras for exhibitions (stand-up oral tests). I want to

respect the advice of Howard Gardner, Dennis Littky, Lois Hetland
and others who advocate exhibitions and portfolios. By bringing
portfolios into the school grading process and by encouraging
students to speak as well as write about what they understand, we
will respect the students by asking them to develop speaking skills.
9. Encourage a culture of cutting and pasting newspaper articles (I

want to respect newspaper companies and their editors who provide
papers at no charge, especially the Miami Herald in the 2007-2008
school year).
What is next? Here’s more for my wish list:

10. Create Individual Learning Plans for each student.
11. Test students with exhibitions.
12. Evaluate students with narratives
13. Integrate the curriculum so no teacher teaches more than 50
students in a year (two
classes of 25 students).
14. More Critical Thinking:

In the school’s first year,
students heard James
Randi, a.k.a. the Amazing
Randi, a magician and
critical thinker who is

under appreciated by the community of Fort Lauderdale.
Principal David Jett asks students, “How do you cross a
river with a wolf, a sheep and a large pile of lettuce?” and
the question has galvanized the school into a spurt of Lateral
Thinking – so why not put more of these challenges on the
walls and offer prizes for creative lateral thinking?
15. Add more health in the school’s curriculum: why not flood
the students with interesting web sites like
WhenWillIDie.com and fightMeningitis.com, webmd.com,…
How about going for a long walk between classes?
Nutritionist Marc Joiner advocates dividing the day into “A”
and “B” hours: Every “A” hour, do a jumping exercise and
drink a glass of water; in the “B” hour, drink water and eat
something.
16. More languages: put

labels on items
throughout the school,
display phrases on
walls and install audio
screens (touch a button
and hear a phrase: “A
mi no me gusta
espinaca”).
17. Curriculum: Integrate the subjects

The typical middle school curriculum is
divided into subjects:
Math
Science
Social Studies
Language Arts
Reading
Art
A Possible Future:
Features of the integrated program for a school of 132 students (6
classes of 22 students)

a) Why not integrate Math, Science and Art?
The Math teacher could also teach Science and Art, covering two
groups of 22 students (44 students)
The Art teacher could also teach math and Science (44 students)
Science Teacher could also teach math and Art (44 students)
b) Combine Language Arts, Social Studies and Reading

Language Arts will also teach Social Studies and Reading Two
groups of 22 students (44 students)
Social Studies teacher could also teach Reading and Language Arts
(44 students)
Reading Teacher could also teach Social Studies and Language Arts
(44 students)
c) All teachers could include Spanish or another language in the

curriculum.
d) Teachers could go deeper into their relationships with 44

students, rather than trying to get to know 132 students.
e) Each student would see only two teachers each week.
f) The Language Arts and

Reading teachers wouldn’t have
to teach Math and Science (those
are the two complaints I heard
most often from teachers when
the idea of one teacher covering
all subjects is raised).
g) It would be helpful if the

Science teacher (who has been a
male teacher at DATA for four
years) could also show how he writes essays. To aid students in
seeing how an adult struggles with writing, I created a 30-minute
DVD called “Writing is a Struggle” that documents my attempt to
write a letter to a reporter about the school…in under 30 minutes.

It’s painful to watch but helps some students see that even adults
need to rewrite in order to write.
h) If one teacher really wants to teach a particular lesson to every

student in the school, that lesson could be put on video, or the
teacher could be a “guest lecturer” in the other classes. The art
teacher could float in to highlight a science lesson or bring the
students to the art class for part of the integrated lesson (perhaps for
videotaping a segment like “The Shoe,” a lesson recorded at The Met
in November 2005 that integrated history, economics, math,
literature and science).
i) The split could be Science/Social Studies/Math, thus allowing Art

to be taught by the Reading and Language Arts teachers. teachers at
Downtown Academy (Science, Math and Spanish).
j) What is it like to write a two-page report every 9 weeks about 44

students or 22 students? Surely there will be teachers who will
rather teach the entire curriculum so that they can stay with the same
22 students for the entire week. Why? They will need to write half
the number of narrative reports. Likely objections to this proposal
will be “Can the science teacher teach writing?” and “Can the
Language and reading
teachers teach math and
Science?” See the comments
by Dennis Littky from The
Big Picture where he
describes the teacher who
admits that she doesn’t “get”
everything in the math
textbook and syllabus, but
she turns out to be just the
sort of teacher and coach that
many students need. What
does an adult who is
confused do to get through the confusion? See also Alison Gopnik’s
essay in the New York Times (summarized in Appendix 6) about the

value of the baseball coach who doesn’t lecture but watches and
gives tips while you make mistakes.
k) Parents can see just two teachers, not the current six.
l) Teachers don’t have to contact 132 parents – they write a syllabus

for only 44 students to send home. Currently there are 6 x 132 = 2
curriculum sheets sent home at the beginning of the year. That’s six
sheets that each parent has to sign agreeing to the teacher’s rules.
Why not make it simpler for parents and students? Have two
teachers lead a class for the entire year (or perhaps just one teacher,
as many elementary teachers do).

To the reader:
Apologies for the disjointed style of writing. “This book could use
an editor” is the principal comment that I’ve received in the minutes
leading up to sending it to the printer. The aim was to condense two
years of thoughts about small schools that I’ve had since visiting the
remarkable Met Center in Providence, R.I. This book is dedicated
especially to the following people:
Dennis Littky for giving us the vocabulary to describe why small

schools make sense (and why some small schools are worse than a
well-run big school). R-E-S-P-E-C-T…
My wife JK who ignores the intense shouting matches I have with

television broadcasts about the “true” root causes of failing schools.
She endured my lectures about how local schools could prevent
drop-outs by implementing Littky’s policies. She heard most of this
book when I read sections aloud (while she prepared meals and did
the housework that I overlooked). I owe her.
Ron Renna, the entrepreneur behind Downtown Academy who also

brought me into the DATA family. My interview with Ron won me
the position of Reading Teacher, giving me a front-row seat to a
remarkable transformation and an exciting roller-coaster ride.
Jim DiSebastian, who got me out of the classroom. Had I been

teaching full-time, I probably would not have heard the Littky
Interview on National Public Radio on April 25, 2005.
John Kranstover, who showed me how to interact with a teacher

who was floundering. Instead of ignoring the teacher, John said,
“Have you thought about giving the students five questions to
answer after each reading? These questions really helped me guide
them in their reading.” The questions are: (1) What is the main
idea? (2) What will happen next? (3) What is your reaction?
(4) What is the author’s opinion or point of view? (5) What did you
learn from the reading?

Tom Timmon, the math teacher in DATA’s first year who, like me,
switched to teaching as a tutor. He and I agreed that we’re less
adept at “crowd control,” he observed. “I really like teaching
students one at a time.” I wish Tom a fulfilling read of Littky’s book,
which is dedicated to teaching “one student at a time” and “treating
students the same differently.”
To other teachers who have mentored me in the past, many thanks.

In particular, I thank Mrs. Simmons (who said that she aimed at
working with one student each year while she processed hundreds
through her classes in a
public school),
Tony Lloyd (who, like

John Kranstover, has a
knack for not showing that
he’s annoyed or
frustrated),
Pat Harris for her

persistent “And what do
you feel about that?” and
“What are your options?” and “Can you reframe that?”
David Jett, the current principal at DATA, for keeping an open mind
to the flood of emails that he receives from me. The ADHD mind
prefers to process information and then, once the email is sent, it’s
time to move on to the next project. David understands this process
and doesn’t feel he has to respond to everything I send him. It’s
once of the nicest therapies that an ADD person can receive: an
email address to send suggestions to.
John Vornle, whose “Vornle Method” for getting into college can be
found on TeachersToTeachers.com.
Dr. Lois Hetland, who suggested that I visit several small schools
that use portfolios as part of their evaluation of student work. Her
Project Zero workshops (offered online and during the summer in
Cambridge, Mass., usually the last weekend in July) provide more

tools for parents and educators to transform schools. Visit
pz.harvard.edu. For more information info@pz.harvard.edu or write to
Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 124 Mount Auburn
Street, Fifth Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138.
Much gratitude to Santiago Masdeu at Factory Printing for meeting a

tight deadline. It’s tough to print quickly when the Miami Book Fair
is just two weeks away.
To end this book, let’s look at the final paragraph of Littky’s book:

To become a mentor at
Downtown Academy, you don’t
need to be rich, strong, or eloquent. Just answer
these questions:
1. What did you learn in school that you still use today?
(This answer shows relevance.)
2. What do you wish you had learned in school?

Additional relevance plus a suggestion to a teacher to include
something extra in a future lesson.)
3. Name one of your teachers. If you can name the

teacher, then something was given by that teacher to
you. What was it? Please honor that teacher by telling us why
you remember that teacher. (This shows an important relationship)
4. Tell us about a book or a magazine or a newspaper

article. What have you read in the past year that you use
today? (This answer shows continued learning -- and we
are asking you for a performance about what you took from the book, a
performance of understanding.)
From MentorsOnVideo.org
Students tend to watch a CD if they are told that it is not required.

Any particular mentor isn't to expected to appeal to EVERY student,
but rather to hijack at least one student from the reverie induced by
surfing on the Internet or playing with an Xbox game.
Make your own video and post it on youtube.com or call me and I'll
put the mentor on the “to-video” list.

MentorsonVideo.org
What happens when a mentor visits
a classroom? The mentor talks, the
students ask some questions, and
two weeks later…who remembers
what happened in that room?
That’s the reason for recording the

presentation. During the first half
of the 2004-2005 year at Downtown
Academy, a dozen adults took time
to share advice and tell stories.
Some of the videos are on Youtube
(search “Mistermath” and scroll to
“mentors”) and others are on
DVDs.
If you would like to hear some of the mentors on video, write to me

(SteveEnglishTeacher@hotmail.com) or call me at (954) 646-8246.
Please write to me if you need suggestions on how to put a mentor
on video.
Put a family therapist on your school’s team
A special volunteer offered to speak to our 8th grade. Pat Harris,

Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist heard that tensions were
rising in our class, so she chose to talk about “Does anger manage
you or do you manage your anger?” The topic was just what my
students and I needed to hear. We all listened to her presentation
again on CD and reviewed her presentation. Since then, Pat has
placed some of her “audio letters” and “messages from the heart” on
the Internet. Find the links at ResolveToHeal.com.

The Next Step
Page 200
What’s it going to be? If you’re an educator, does the
enormity of the task make retreating to your classroom
or office …a much safer idea? Or does it make your
blood boil that our professional lives and the futures of
our students are held hostage to school structures
and curriculum that fall far short of what they might
be? …[H]uge changes are possible and necessary and
it’s the responsibility of educators and everyday people to
accept the challenge of seeing them through. Education
is everyone’s business.

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“A” School

Several newspaper articles have

This book is the first attempt to present

The school’s prime mover, Ron Renna, provided the

Jim DiSebastian sat with me for an extended interview (A

“A” School • 3 • How to build a charter school

This book attempts to tell the story behind these numbers:

Category First Year Second Year

“A” School • 4 • How to build a charter school

“A” School • 5 • How to build a charter school

Scores in the second year

How to create an award-winning

What to do (the short list)

This list is made in jest. The score that a school gets is

“A” School • 6 • How to build a charter school

This book describes how to grow a successful small school

“A” School • 7 • How to build a charter school

2 It Took Five Years to Make an Overnight Success

3 How To Create An Award-Winning School (The List)

4 Can This Success Happen at Any School?

5 Littky: The Big Picture

Part Two: What’s Next

7 The Fourth Year and Beyond

“A” School • 8 • How to build a charter school

International visitors Karim (Germany) and Sezer (Turkey) tutored a

“A” School • 9 • How to build a charter school

The route taken by most visitors to the school is

A television news crew showed up for a tour and

“A” School • 10 • How to build a charter school

The short answer

This book is designed to give you more of that

In short, there will be more “big moments” in the

“A” School • 11 • How to build a charter school

“A” School • 12 • How to build a charter school

“A” School • 13 • How to build a charter school

At the time when charter schools started to be opened, charter

A “charter school” has a charter or agreement to operate. In order to

It took time to find the

“A” School • 14 • How to build a charter school

The next chapter is an attempt to document what took place between

“A” School • 15 • How to build a charter school

Set up a tradition called “D.E.A.R.”

Build classroom libraries.

Build a focus on the Arts. Bring in a

Build field-trip traditions that integrate the school into the

“A” School • 16 • How to build a charter school

In the city of Fort Lauderdale, museums and other cultural

The students can walk to the Performing Arts Center.

Create social traditions. Mr. Did has a very stable personality. He

“A” School • 17 • How to build a charter school

Another tradition is the Talent Show. Here’s an example of the type

Dashing through the year

Oh, Art is fun,

Lyrics by Lanita, Akiah, Alisa and others

Build a strong parent group. The name of the organization, Parent

“A” School • 18 • How to build a charter school

Invite the community to come in and speak to the students (and

We videotape the presentations by visitors so that students can

Here is a list of some of the people

“A” School • 19 • How to build a charter school

The parents can walk in

Is that it? Well, you’ll notice that most of the items

“A” School • 20 • How to build a charter school