Truman Scholars Charting a New Course in Education

Part 2: The Transition: John King Reflects on Journey from Charter to Public Schools

This piece is the second in a series. See also “Part 1: The Founders: Building Schools with No Excuses.”

By Christopher Sopher (VA ‘10)

Dr. John King has moved from successful charter school founder to national charter network director to Senior Deputy Commissioner of New York’s State Department of Education. We interviewed him about his experiences, lessons learned, and advice for Trumans interested in education.

John King (NJ '95) is the Senior Deputy Commissioner for P-12 education at the New York State Department of Education. Prior to joining the state in September, 2009, he was Managing Director at Uncommon Schools, a non-profit charter school network. In 1999, he co-founded Roxbury Prep, a middle school charter serving low-income students in urban Boston. Roxbury has been frequently recognized as one of the top-performing urban middle schools in Massachusetts.

What's your story from the Truman to where you are now?

I taught in New York City schools at Teacher's College, and then taught in Puerto Rico and at a private school, and then went back to Boston to teach at City on a Hill Charter School, which was one of the first generation of charters in the country. I taught high school history. One of the things that struck me was how many of our students were coming to us in 9th grade with 6th grade math and reading skills. One of our challenges was that we tried to get students prepared for college by 12th grade, but they were coming from so far behind, they were spending a ton of time and energy on remediation.

I met Evan Rudall, who cofounded Roxbury Prep with me, through college friends … Those conversations evolved into the decision to start the school together. One of the things that drew me to it was the opportunity to start younger, get students in middle school so we could get them the skills they needed to be on track, so that by the time the students at Roxbury Prep would get to 9th grade, they would be ready to do college prep work. 

What interested you in teaching in the first place?

I think it was a combination of factors. Both my parents were teachers. They both passed away when I was a kid, and for me teachers made all the difference in my own experience. My mom passed when I was eight, and my father was quite ill and passed away when I was 12.

During that period, I had extraordinary teachers. I had a teacher named Mr. Osterweil, who was my fourth, fifth and sixth grade teacher. He was a phenomenal teacher, and really became a father figure to me. His class was rigorous, engaging, incredibly supportive environment. He created an environment that was both challenging and supportive.

I went to Mark Twain Junior High School in Coney Island, and had an amazing seventh grade social studies teacher, who was so talented at creating a classroom environment that was both academically challenging and also an incredibly safe and supportive learning environment. Between them, I really saw the difference teachers could make, because they made the difference for me during what was really a difficult period of my life.

So when I was in college and got involved in different public service activities, and involved working with young people, I fell in love with the work, because I could see how being a teacher could help me try to create for other kids what they created for me.

Was that kind of classroom environment a part of the plan at Roxbury Prep? 

Exactly. That's what I tried to build as a teacher myself, and it's what we tried to build into the culture of Roxbury Prep. An academically rigorous school that would prepare students for college, challenge them to do a lot of writing and a lot of thinking, but also in environments that were joyful and engaging, and allow students to be creative and really to see the joy in learning.

What were the steps you had to take to create that environment?

I think rigor is an important starting place. First, making sure teachers have a very clear understanding of what students know and are able to do, and are constantly pushing students to do more and to tackle more challenging work.

Second, having teachers plan with students at the center and trying to figure out: what will the students write; what will I ask them to read; how am I going to ensure when we're discussing that every student is thinking? It's small things, like, when you ask a question to the class, asking everyone to write down their answer before calling on a student, so you make sure every student in the room has taken time to think about the answer. Small things to big things like figuring out, at the end of every unit, how do you know that students have really mastered the content?

When you were starting Roxbury in 1999, it was still quite early in the charter movement nationally. What was it like to be on the front of that movement as it was beginning to take shape?

We had a couple really strong models. Evan Rudall, who cofounded Roxbury Prep with me, and is now the CEO of Uncommon Schools, had done a principal internship at the Timilty School, which was at the time the strongest of the Boston middle schools. So a number of practices—around teacher planning and collaboration, school culture, integrating a structured learning environment—were lessons that we took from them.

We also worked with Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem, which is a high-performing school that sends students on to college at a very high rate, with students who are mostly low-income students of color. She was a mentor to us as we were doing the planning for Roxbury Prep. We were also fortunate to recruit a really great list of founding teachers, some of whom are still at Roxbury Prep. They helped us figure out how to shape a rigorous and engaging school culture. 

What was the community's —parents’, teachers’, others’—reaction to the school?

Early on there was some apprehension about our ability to build a college prep school that was open to all students. There were certainly schools in Boston that achieved at high levels, but they were often schools that had screening of students and that you had to test into. So there was skepticism in some corners that you could build a school that could be academically rigorous to prepare students for college, but that took any student who applied. 

That first set of parents was really taking a big risk. I remember doing some of the meetings with parents in a local library, because we didn't have a building yet, or teachers yet, and we were just laying out a vision of what we hoped the school would look like. I think they saw the opportunities that could be possible for their children if they got a college prep middle school education that put them on the right trajectory. 

Where do you see the charter movement going now?

I think there are three categories of charter schools now. There's a set of very high performing schools, many of which are serving very high-need student populations, that are proving pretty decisively that the achievement gap can be closed, and that low-income students can achieve at very high levels in strong environments. You've got Uncommon Schools and KIPP and Achievement First producing consistently outstanding student outcomes.

On the other side of the spectrum, you've got charters across the country that are struggling. They have serious governance issues and have serious educational weaknesses. State charter authorizers need to do a better job closing those schools. 

Charters ought to be consistently high-performing. To get there, authorizers need to close the low performers, and the schools in the middle have to see that states and charter authorizers are serious about performance. It's a crossroads moment for the charter sector. 

Some scholars have suggested that one of the dangers in charters growing so quickly is that they become a large bureaucracy that's functionally similar to the existing public school system. Do you share that concern?

Well, you have charter management organizations like KIPP and Achievement First and Uncommon and Aspire, thinking about how best to create a network of high-performing schools. In many ways, they could be a model for how you build high-performing urban districts

On the other hand, I think charters have not done as good a job as they could have across the country meeting unmet needs. For example, we have a huge population of English Language Learners, in New York and around the country, and there have not been as many charters started for ELLs as one would hope. There haven't been many charters for over-age, under-credit students as one would hope. There's opportunity in the coming years for the sector to try and tackle some of the biggest challenges that our urban school systems face.

Tell me a little bit about the work you're doing now for the New York State Department of Education.

One of the biggest projects we've had over the last 14 months is Race to the Top applications. We were unsuccessful in Round 1, but we were the second highest scoring state in Round 2 and are very excited to win. So now we get to the work of implementation of things we committed to in Race to the Top. That includes adopting the Common Core Standards, working to build a new assessment system, dramatically improving our state data system … trying to get teacher evaluations that are much more differentiated.

We've got a full plate of different initiatives.

Several Trumans involved in charter schools have said they've found that the changes they believe in are only fully possible at the charter level. As you've transitioned into public education from running charters, how do you think about the challenge of creating change in the public system?

In many ways, Race to the Top illustrates that it is possible to achieve broad-scale change in a large system.

I do think it's possible to have change in the public system, but it's slower. I'm happy to have had the experience of being involved at the school and network level in the charter sector, where I could move quickly on the changes I wanted to see. Today I move more moderately, but I do think the scale of impact is pretty extraordinary. We're got roughly 3.1 million school kids in New York State. If we can change how teachers and principals think about their work, and how they're evaluated and supported, and impact more than 3 million kids, that's a huge contribution.

So there's a tradeoff to the speed and scale. But that's changing … there's a tremendous sense of urgency in the sector that's making it possible to achieve change more quickly.

What do you see as the "inflection points" where Trumans can enter who want to contribute to and learn about improving education?

It's a great moment to be a person interested in education. There are interesting things going on at every level. It's the kind of time where I'm talking to people early in their career, and I tell them that it's really a question of what you'll be happy doing.  Would you be happy in the classroom? Would you be happy at the Department of Ed? Would you be happy building a longitudinal data system for New York? It's about the intersection of where you can be most useful and what you enjoy the most.

Chris Sopher (VA ’10) is a senior in his last semester at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studies public policy.