Schools That Think

"These kids may have to learn certain pieces of rote learning when they leave GCS and go on to high school, but they leave here knowing how to go about finding what they need," says Beth Gildin Watrous, 50, a GCS teacher whose two daughters attended the school and are now in high school and in college. "Kids here engage in a kind of creative thinking and problem solving everyday that I think links up with the incredible, creative entrepreneurship that's going on right now."

And that's real education, according to GCS standards. In a time of tremendous technological and economic change, learning, they say, must lay a foundation for grappling with life and for determining what matters. "Most education reform has missed the mark," says Baker. "Whenever there is a period of rapid change, you need to know what anchors you. You need to be firmly rooted in what you know is important and right. What we do here is focus on what's important."

The Service School

University Public Schools, San Joaquin Campus, Stockton, California
Principal: Mary Welch
Grades: K-5, expanding to K-6 in September 2000
Number of students: 350
Founded: 1999
Mission: To bring the customer focus and sense of responsibility of a top-notch service organization or consulting firm to public education.

Christina Cross, 43, finally has found the elementary school that she's been looking for, right here in what used to be a grocery store on a dusty road just off Highway 99 in Stockton, California. Cross thinks that it's the perfect place for her 8-year-old son, Will Thomson, who's a third grader there. Never mind the storefront setting. Never mind the there's not a blade of grass in sight, thanks to the huge parking lot. Here, at University Public Schools, Cross has found a place that offers a challenging curriculum, one based, she says, "on learning how to think."

What's more, Cross found it all without leaving the public-school system, thanks to a 1998 California law that increased the number of charter schools that could be created throughout the state's 8,000-school public-education system, from 100 to 250 and allowed for the creation of an additional 100 schools each year. Fortunately for Cross, her local district agreed to contract with University Public Schools, a nonprofit group of educators and businesspeople, to start the charter elementary school that her son and 349 other children now attend.

"Parents can have a say about what's important to them," says Cross about UPS, which leased the old grocery store and opened its freshly renovated doors last September. "If we think that it's important for our children to learn about different holidays because of the many different cultural backgrounds in our community, we can ask, 'Can this be included?' It's nice to be involved in the education that goes on here."

Count Cross as one more proponent of school choice. Since the first law authorizing charter schools was passed in Minnesota in 1991, 37 states have passed similar laws. And the resulting schools have become powerful change agents in the push for education reform. A charter school, as its name implies, operates under a charter -- a sort of mission statement that describes the school's objectives in terms of student achievement. Test scores are just one proof of that achievement; others are records of attendance and individual progress. And in exchange for that achievement, the school receives per-pupil public funding and the freedom to reach its educational goals using curricula and teaching methods of its own choosing. Charter schools have a high incentive to attract and to satisfy both the state and parents: Without students and without proof of their achievement, there is no money and no school.

"This isn't anti-public schools; it's pro-public schools," says Don Shalvey, 55, CEO of UPS. "I see charter schools as a way of demonstrating that public schools can be responsive, can grow, can change. Change creates a vibrancy. It forces you to consider what matters. Working at this school is like coming to work in a flotilla of kayaks, rather than sailing in on an ocean liner. You're right on the water, where the action happens."

Shalvey knows firsthand the difference between the small flexible charter school and the large, hard-to-maneuver public-school system. In addition to serving as CEO of UPS, he worked as a public-school superintendent in San Carlos until January 2000, an affluent community near Stanford University. His involvement with charter schools dates back to 1992, when his district became home to the first charter school in California. "We saw it as a necessary element in a high-performing organization," he says. "You want to be able to attempt thoughtful innovation. That's what charter schools do in the public-school system."