It’s odd, but the remarkable resurgence of D.C. public schools over the last two decades could have been predicted from the 1992 Teach for America classes in Baltimore and Washington.
Those classes included three players who would shape the future of District of Columbia schools: Michelle Rhee (future D.C. chancellor), Kaya Henderson (Rhee’s successor) and, perhaps most importantly, Susan Schaeffler, 55, who is retiring after 25 years as the founder of the KIPP DC Public Schools charter network.
It was Schaeffler (pronounced SHEFF-ler) who proved with her 2001 launch of KIPP KEY Academy that hiring highly motivated and skilled teachers could make academic success stories out of high-poverty children with multiple at-risk flags. Six years later, standardized math and reading tests in grades 5-8 would show KIPP students outscoring their D.C. Public School peers, particularly in eighth grade and most strongly in math.
Standardized reading and math tests results show KIPP DC charter school students outscoring all D.C. public school students in 2007, with the biggest gap being with students in D.C.’s high-poverty 7th and 8th wards. (KIPP DC Public Schools)
In a few years, Rhee would choose the same strategy, pushing hard on teacher quality. And Henderson would do the same.
It was Schaeffler who showed that her one school was not a fluke. By 2006, she ran three successful middle schools with long waiting lists: Today, there are 20 KIPP schools in D.C. that educate roughly 7,300 students, of whom nearly 70% meet the at-risk definition (students with families on income or food support and those who are wards of the state, homeless or overage in high school).
Founder Susan Schaeffler looks over at KIPP DC KEY Academy students in 2004. KEY Academy was the first school in KIPP’s D.C. charter network. (KIPP DC Public Schools)
In the early KIPP years, veteran education reform expert Andrew Rotherham recalls leading a tour of mostly charter skeptics when they visited one of her schools. “Susan was giving a talk on how they do things and one guy thought he was really going to dunk on her, so he said: ‘I heard you talking about performance, fundraising and management, but I haven’t heard you talking about loving children.’”
That was a mistake.
Schaeffler paused, looked at the guy, and as Rotherham recalls, firmly responded: “Let me tell you something. The way you show you love children isn’t talking about it. It’s building effective places for them to be and that means knowing how to raise money, deploy money, manage people, all of it. Doing things really well for them is how you show children you love them.”
Don’t be thrown off by Schaeffler’s blonde suburban look: She’s got a very sharp edge, world-beating relentlessness and a mind that doesn’t shy away from the unconventional.
Shannon Hodge, who is taking over at KIPP DC’s helm, said before she met Schaeffler she asked around about her and was told: “You’ll be in a meeting discussing something and Susan will have five ideas. Two of them will be illegal, two of them will be impossible — but the last one will be the visionary thing no one ever thought of.”
Finally, it was Schaeffler and other charter operators. working with first Rhee and then Henderson, who forged the crucial compete-but-play-nice stance in D.C. that’s missing between charter and district schools in most cities.
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All the experts agree: That competitive cooperation and the unwavering focus on teacher quality on both sides are the biggest reasons why D.C., across multiple school-quality measures, from the percentage of 3- and 4-years-olds enrolled in pre-K to fourth- and eighth-grade scores on the highly watched National Assessment of Educational Progress, shot from worst to first in improvement over the last two decades
Urban District comparison (DC: A National Model for Urban Education)
“Part of D.C.’s story is that it is one of the few places where the charter sector and the district came together and created a culture of putting kids first,” KIPP national co-founder Dave Levin told me last week. “Susan modeled that from the start, pushing for things that were good for D.C. as a whole.”
This strategy could have happened in other cities. But for the most part, it hasn’t.
Teachers with ‘the whatever-it-takes mindset’
That Baltimore TFA experience was wild: Rhee and Schaeffler slamming into the brutal realities of urban teaching in Baltimore. It was from that time that I got the title for my book about Rhee, The Bee Eater, after she swatted and swallowed a bee her kids were crazily chasing around the classroom.
After Baltimore, Schaeffler gave teaching in a traditional D.C. elementary school a try, but her desire to give her students the option of staying longer than the dismissal bell to allow them to catch up ran into a stone wall. It worked for a bit, but not for long. We just don’t do that here, she was told.
“I got to the point where the system was preventing me from doing what I knew needed to happen to make sure our kids are ready for college, or ready for the next grade,” Schaeffler told me in a recent interview.
The KIPP founders in Texas heard about her, sent plane tickets to come to Houston and convinced her to start a KIPP school. Their preference, Atlanta, got rejected by Schaeffler. D.C. is home, she said, and being able to tap into the talent network she knew there was crucial.
The founders relented, and soon Schaeffler was recruiting the handful of teachers who would launch KEY Academy. “I definitely wanted to recruit teachers who had the whatever-it-takes mindset. We were going to be creating and implementing and revising all at the same time.”
Schaeffler looked to the Teach for America network and then expanded by interviewing friends of friends. ”You would say, ‘I need a teacher who can work long hours, has great classroom management and gets results.” Before hiring anyone, she observed them in the classroom.
It would appear Schaeffer recruited well. Among that first small group of hires for KIPP KEY were several who in the future would launch their own new KIPP schools.
‘The school down the street is outperforming us’
Now entering the D.C. picture in 2007 was newly appointed Chancellor Rhee, who took note of the rising quality challenge presented by Schaeffler’s KIPP network and other charter operators and stomped the accelerator on school improvement. And by school improvement I mean teacher/principal quality.
Rhee took over a bona fide mess of a school district, one that regularly was described – — unchallenged — as the worst (and most expensive) in the nation. In my book, the chapter where I recite the dismal outcome data for D.C. students is titled, “Welcome to the Nation’s Education Superfund Site.”
The city’s corrupt mayor, Marion Barry, used the district to stash political buddies. The former teachers union president got sent to jail for embezzlement. Even simple tasks such as delivering textbooks didn’t happen. There was no curriculum. In comparison to other urban districts, D.C. lagged far behind.
Former Chancellor Michelle Rhee listens during a news conference October 13, 2010 at Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Rhee moved into her role as chancellor with a bullrush, much to the distaste of many in Washington, especially teachers who preferred the status quo. Rhee told everyone that she wanted teachers with “snap.” Teachers soon learned what that meant: a mashup of energy and effectiveness that creates classroom magic.
That didn’t always go over well.
I accompanied Rhee on many school visits, and while sitting in the back of the room watched teachers dramatically roll their eyes in protest. Many teachers appeared to see their role as more social workers than academic instructors, which probably explained the abysmal test scores.
One elementary school had this sign posted: “We’re doing the best we can with the children sent our way.”
But Rhee’s vision was made easier to explain to others by the example Schaeffler set. “In community meetings,” Schaeffler told me, “I heard Rhee say that the school down the street is outperforming us.” And “that school” was KEY Academy.
In 2007, when Rhee arrived, 100% of KEY eighth graders scored proficient on D.C.’s standardized math test, compared to 34% of district students.
There’s another aspect to KEY’s success: When researching my book Why Boys Fail, I searched nationally for schools where boys were succeeding at the same rate as girls, and KEY turned up as one of the few where that happened. I approached Schaeffler in 2006 for permission to observe, and she gave me full access to KEY. In short, teacher quality (and a relentless push on literacy skills) explains the gender equality.
Thus began Rhee’s own full-on press for principal and teacher quality, a process that would lead to several hundred teachers getting fired along with lots of principals. Those firings, however, were accompanied by the newly designed IMPACT teacher evaluation system, a first-in-the-nation attempt to define, measure and boost teacher quality — a plan that handed out bonuses to the highest-performing teachers.
The reforms began to take hold, but Rhee’s fierceness was a big reason why Adrian Fenty, the mayor who appointed her, lost reelection in 2010. The new mayor, Vincent Gray, quickly fired Rhee.
But then something interesting happened: Not only did Gray promote Kaya Henderson, Rhee’s deputy, as the new chancellor, but IMPACT survived, despite intense teacher opposition (The American Federation of Teachers spent $1 million to ensure Rhee and IMPACT would disappear.)
Why did the new mayor allow Rhee’s reforms to survive? When the chancellor got fired, IMPACT was only about a year old, and thus too young to measure its effectiveness. But its potential was clear to everyone.
“My last major public event before I left DCPS was “Standing Ovation” which we held at the Kennedy Center to honor the highly effective teachers in the district,” Rhee told me in a recent interview, referring to the first group of top teachers identified by the evaluations. “Watching a bevy of teachers dressed to the nines, giddy at the recognition they were receiving, made me know what we put in place with IMPACT was working and made everything worthwhile.”
That meant that the twinned philosophies of pushing teacher quality and collaborating with the charters, pioneered by Schaeffler, became permanent fixtures in D.C. One prominent example: My School D.C., launched in 2017, an application/lottery system shared by parents seeking seats in either system.
There was also the leadership training program for both charter and district teachers at Georgetown University. Schaeffler’s top example: During the pandemic, everyone on both sides held hands to figure out how to teach remotely and when to return to school.
Finally, the D.C. mayors have a great incentive to make sure the two sides work together. “We can’t have half the kids not be successful,” says Schaeffler.
Two leaders who quickly bonded
Fervent D.C. school advocates at the polar opposites hate the suggestion that D.C. charters and district schools get along. They see great injustices aimed at their side. What they miss, however, is that their quibbles pale compared to the destructive hatred between the two sectors in other cities.
Boston has some of the highest-performing charters in the country (see Edward Brooke Charter Schools), and yet the state’s powerful teachers unions ensure that those charters can’t expand to take in more students. In Los Angeles, charter leaders and district leaders talk to one another mostly through lawyers in courtrooms.
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New York City and Newark are home to what may be the nation’s most successful charter network, Uncommon Schools, that pulls disadvantaged minority students into its classrooms, who then experience college acceptance and college graduation rates close to well-off white students.
How could any district not want to tap into that expertise?
Years ago, I sat through some small-scale Uncommon collaborations in New York and Newark, which seemed promising. But those have disappeared — no teaching collaborations in New York since 2020.
There is no way Rhee and Schaeffler would have let that opportunity slide by.
When Rhee arrived in D.C., the two leaders bonded quickly. Rhee told me she had been on the job only a couple of days when she took an urgent call from Schaeffler: “We’re starting a summer school (in a district building) and it’s 90 degrees and we have no air conditioning!”
Rhee immediately called maintenance, sent them hustling over to the summer school site and got the AC working. The next day Schaeffler called back incredulously. “Holy crap, they came out and fixed it.”
Rhee knew KIPP ran quality schools, so she never fought against them.
“I was open to giving charters our buildings,” Rhee said. “Why would we deny families of Wards 7 and 8 (D.C. ‘s highest-poverty neighborhoods) schools like [the ones] KIPP runs? Everyone would want to send their kids there.”
Rhee’s memories of Schaeffler? “Throughout the time she was so helpful, so supportive.”
School choice now part of D.C.’s DNA
Today, D.C., parents embrace school choice as an unquestioned right, whether it’s choosing a charter or a non-neighborhood district school. Only about a third of D.C. parents select their neighborhood school. What that means is that choice is embedded, with schools vying to outperform and, therefore, attract students.
In the mostly white, highly affluent 3rd Ward, there are no charters and parents send their kids either to local elementary schools, where they are surrounded by other children from well-off families, or private schools. In the 7th and 8th Wards, charters are the go-to places. Where it gets interesting are the rapidly gentrifying in-between wards, where charters often get selected by well-off “progressive” families, many of whom may frown upon charters as a concept, but love having a close-by high-quality school.
Overall, 47,525 students, or about 48% of all D.C. students, attend its 133 public charter schools. D.C’s gentrification may explain why district students now outperform charter students in both math and reading (45% of district students are at-risk, compared to 69% of charter students).
Former First Lady Michelle Obama visits KIPP DC’s Douglass Campus in the spring of 2012. She is surrounded by KIPP DC administrators, including founder Susan Schaeffer. (KIPP DC Public Schools)
“Competition between sectors is healthy,” said Schaeffer. “It pushes both sectors to get better for students. Over the last two and a half decades, that dynamic has raised the bar across the city. As the city has changed, so have the needs of our students.”
KIPP and other charters are still struggling to raise scores, she said. “At the same time, the long-term outcomes tell an important story and remain strong. Year after year, our graduates enroll in and complete college at higher rates than the city … The forward momentum between the traditional and charter schools is promising and should be celebrated. Both sides are seeking the best ways to educate and prepare our students for success.”
Where next for Schaeffler?
“I haven’t looked around in 25 years to see what’s out there for me. I am energized to find my next thing but my priority is a successful transition. I will be transitioning from CEO in February to a special advisor role. I will always be a cheerleader for the amazing staff and students at KIPP DC.”
The bottom line remains: worst to most improved. Twenty years ago, no one could have foreseen this outcome. This could have happened in cities such as L.A., but it hasn’t — and doesn’t appear to be in their future.
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‘Imonmyway’
When Scott Pearson took over the D.C. charter board in 2011, and became KIPP’s overseer, he recalls visiting Schaeffler at her office and finding her and KIPP DC President Allison Fansler sharing an office.
“Many great charters are like great British rock and roll bands. They always had two key people, and it was the genius between the two that made the band great,” he said. “Here you had the CEO of a multimillion-dollar organization and she shared an office. It wasn’t five minutes that went by that they didn’t talk to one another. Constant interaction.”
Fansler shared an office with Schaeffler for 16 years. Whenever a call came in about a problem at a school site, Fansler said Schaeffler would immediately grab her coat and head out. The two of them, no matter which bolted for the door, shared a text code for that: Imonmyway.
Deputy Mayor Paul Kihn said when he sees his cell phone light up with Schaeffler’s name, “I know I am going to get an earful on behalf of her students. She is going to tell me the real story about how something is working and what I need to do to fix it. I am incredibly sorry to see her go.”
Of all the reformers who helped with D.C.’s recovery, Rhee and Schaeffler probably qualify as the fiercest. As Kihn puts it, “Susan is a force of nature.”
All you need is the patience to wait for that fifth idea to pop up.
Disclosure: Andrew Rotherham sits on The 74’s board of directors. He played no role in the reporting or editing of this article.
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