My Spotlight report “Buildings Don’t Teach Students” drew criticism from the folks over at NC Policy Watch. You can read the comments of two of my critics here and here. I respond to their criticism on their blog here and below.
The purpose of my report is to show that the size and cost of school buildings has little relevance to learning. Of course, all schools need to have adequate heating, cooling, lighting, and cleanliness.
To demonstrate this concept, I selected BASIS High School?where I taught for four years before moving to North Carolina–as a case study because it earned Newsweek magazine?s third in the nation academic ranking in a building that provides only 60 square feet per student and cost only $9,242 per student. I provided data for the school year 2004/2005 because that is the year that BASIS earned the ranking from Newsweek. Expansion of BASIS into two buildings in later years is irrelevant to that purpose. But the expansion shows another important fact: more and more parents were demanding the quality education delivered by BASIS despite of the fact that the school was in a building with only 60 square feet per student.
The confusion surrounding my figures for the size of the building and number of students confirms a narrow mindset that can only conceive of high school and middle school students separated into distinct spaces. BASIS, in 04/05, had 15 classrooms shared by both high school and middle school students. When I taught at BASIS in that building, I taught college level micro- and macro-economics for 8th graders, AP European history for 9th and 10th graders (mixed in the same classes), and AP US History for 11th graders in my classroom throughout the same day.
Thus the building space was used efficiently for the academic benefit of the students. At BASIS, academics are always the first priority and size and cost of the building is secondary. During 2004/05, school?s 298 students (62 high school students and 236 middle school students) shared all of the space in the building, thus achieving a high degree of academic efficiency. Thus the 60 square foot per high school student was calculated by dividing the 18,000 square foot building by 298 students.
We know who decides the size and cost of most school buildings in North Carolina, school boards. But who decided that the BASIS building would provide only 60 square feet per student and cost $9,242 per student? Since BASIS is a charter school, the market decides. BASIS administrators offer an educational curriculum in a building that they think will attract parents and students. If the combination of space and curriculum is not what parents want for their children, they simply do not register at BASIS and BASIS goes out of business. For example, if a charter school decides to offer 30 square feet per student, it is unlikely that, no matter how attractive the curriculum, parents will not register their children at the that school. Now that model could be model for North Carolina, if the legal limit of 100 charter schools was removed.
Criticism of Basis?s lack of diversity again shows a narrow mindset and inability to comprehend diversity outside government-required categories. Critics did not notice that BASIS had students who were born in (or their parents were born in) Russia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Iran, Sudan, Jordan, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Mexico, Greece and Algeria. In fact, many BASIS students are practicing Muslims and two of these students are best of friends, one is a Sunni and the other is a Shiite.
The insult hurled at Olga Block regarding the fact that she was raised in Communist Czechoslovakia was outside the bounds of legitimate left/right debate. To imply that Mrs. Block favors an ?education factory model? is to show ignorance of the daily oppression experienced by the average person in Soviet bloc countries. Anyone with even a minimal understanding of life in a totalitarian regime would never stoop so low as to accuse a former victim of wanting to replicate that experience.
The charge that Mrs. Block has implemented an ?education factory model? is absurd on the fact of it. The existing government school system is the factory model using Soviet-like central planning to plan and build schools. Bureaucrats and politicians determine the size and cost of schools. Mrs. Block and the leaders of 469 other charter schools serving more than 80,000 students in Arizona have no guaranteed student enrollments. They must compete in the market to attract students. Thus the market determines the size and cost of their buildings.
