by James C. Sherlock

I recently spent considerable time reporting on competing methods of grading in Virginia public schools. 

The choice of grading system appeared to make no measurable difference in learning.  

Sometimes you just have to admit that someone else has built a better mousetrap. 

That is very hard to do concerning something you care very much about and have spent a career trying to perfect. But if you are serious about your lifetime’s work, it can become absolutely necessary.

In educating kids in public schools, there is a far better way. Success Academy (S/A) in New York City has built it since 2006. It has educated primarily poor and minority children to the very highest standards.

I will demonstrate that better mousetrap by comparing Virginia Standards of Learning (SOLs) to the parallel Success Academy Curriculum teaching guide in a single, concrete example: third grade literacy.

Then I will recommend that Virginia try a controlled experiment with the S/A system of teaching and learning to see if we can replicate it in our public schools. They need not, indeed should not, be charters.

Nothing else has worked to raise the education levels of Virginia’s poor and minority children. Let’s go out on a limb and try something that has succeeded.

New York City’s 47 S/A schools have solved the major issue in American public education. They have not only improved educational outcomes for poor and minority children, but have raised their success rates to the top of the mountain.

If those S/A schools formed their own school district, it would be the highest- performing district in the state, as measured by New York Regents Exams. By a lot.

Success Academies are public charter schools. Ninety-six percent of their “scholars” – S/A’s name for their students – are black and brown. About 80% of them live below the poverty line. Sixteen percent have special needs. About 9% are homeless. They are in some of the toughest neighborhoods in New York City.  

Success Academy doesn’t enroll. Their students are chosen by lotteries. Success Academy requires only a contract with parents that they will help their children succeed. There is a waiting list recently numbering 17,000 families.

Among students in grades three through eight in 2019, 99% of S/A scholars passed the state math exam, 90% passed the state English exam. In that same year, the statewide passing rate didn’t surpass 50%. 

S/A trains its own teachers, principals and other academic leaders. It has to. No one comes out of education schools ready to teach the way S/A has found they must if the children are to become not just students but scholars.

So, it has created its own teaching think tank and teacher development institutions: Robertson Center and S/A Education Institute .  

The S/A Education Institute’s What and How We Teach offers detailed descriptions of the S/A curriculum at a level of detail that exceeds Virginia’s Standards of Learning (SOL).

Take a minute to look at that page and the curricula. Also see the online courses they offer for free. Tour the virtual schools. Visit Robertson Center.

A Grade 3 Literacy Instruction Comparison

Success Academy. Go back and select Elementary School Curriculum and then select Literacy. 

Do not skip “What you must know before you press go.” That is where you find out about parental investment, classroom management, goal setting, and preparing for teaching and learning.  

Without those components, the curricula is not going to succeed nearly as well. With them, teachers and learners have a real chance.

Let’s now return to the Grade 3 Literacy Curriculum Unit Guide. See The Key to Establishing a Strong Reading Culture.

Then view the seven Units. Each has a number of Components. 

Now select Grade 3 – ES Literacy/Unit 1. It has four Components: Falling in Love with Reading, Read Aloud, Shared Text and Classroom Library Set Up.

Each component has its own defined Purpose, Keys, and Lessons.

The Lessons offer detailed “how to” guides:

• first What does Success Look Like; and then
• each individual lesson has timed elements, each with a number of steps.  

Take a look.

Virginia Standards of Learning.  

For direct comparison, I have reproduced Virginia SOL Grade 3 literacy. Please open and read it.

Immediately you will find that SOL is not nearly as prescriptive as the S/A curricula.  Clearly, the level of training, mentoring and oversight of the classroom necessary for execution of the S/A curricula is much higher than for SOL.

But we already know that the S/A methodology works far better. Comparing results on state standardized tests between S/A and Virginia Public Schools, we have seen that SOL does not educate children nearly as well as S/A’s Curriculum. Again, not even close.

Can we replicate S/A methods in Virginia? I can find nothing in the S/A curricula that requires Virginia to call schools that implement the S/A program charters.  

But Virginia schools will have to implement the entire program if we wish S/A’s results.  And that means autonomy for the school principals from SOL curricula, school board regulations, from negotiated contracts, and for hiring and training.  They will need oversight from a group of leaders that fully understand and support their pathway.  So, yeah, charters under the NYC model, not the current Virginia one.  

The primary question is whether Virginia schools are prepared to implement the S/A standards for parental investment, classroom management, goal setting, and preparing for teaching and learning that form the infrastructure for its success. I say we can.

Remembering that S/A successfully educates homeless kids and kids with disabilities, if we find we have some kids who for whatever reason will not accept the responsibility for their own part of the deal, personal discipline, then we will have to make different arrangements for them.

If some call that conclusion heartless, inequitable, or racist — and they will — they should look at S/A’s student racial mix and think again.  

Remember, 8% of S/A kids are homeless. So, they figure it out even for kids with no home environment.

Summary. Success Academy offers standards for the field of play, a sequenced playbook and timed elements within each play.

SOLs offers lists of goals and methods unconnected to either sequence or time and with no acknowledgment of the state of the field of play.

We already know which one produces the best results for the kids most in need.  This is the civil rights education issue of our time.  I refer doubters to the Virginia Constitution Article VIII Section 1 – Public Schools of High Quality to be Maintained.

What to do? That suggests to me that Virginia try S/A curricula and methodology as a pilot in a sufficient number of schools to assess not the S/A training, curricula and standards, which we know work, but Virginia’s ability to replicate them.  

Success Academy Education Institute and The Robertson Center are there to help. See the link information “For Makers of Magical Schools”.

Virginia needs some.

Updated Mar 15 at 7:02 AM