Charting a Bold New Course to Improve Public Education in Boston

Like many other teachers in America’s urban high schools, Sarah Kass rapidly became disenchanted with the quality of public education.

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Her direct experience — first as a student in Chicago in the 1980s and later as a teacher in Chicago, New Haven, Conn., and Chelsea, Mass. — convinced her that too many public high schools were plagued by bureaucratic rigidity, pedagogical apathy, and wildly varying expectations for academic achievement.

Unlike most other teachers, however, Ms. Kass developed a particularly bold solution: In 1995, at age 28, she and fellow teacher Ann Connolly Tolkoff jointly established one of the first charter schools in Massachusetts — and the only one founded and run entirely by teachers. The public school has also created an affiliated charity to make it easier to secure private support.

That school — the City on a Hill Charter School, in Boston — has won acclaim during the past three years for its innovative mix of academic rigor, community outreach, and public accountability.

“We can’t imagine the Boston scene without City on a Hill,” says Charleen L. Johnson, executive director of the Millipore Foundation, in Bedford, Mass., which has supported the school from the beginning. “They are definitely a success story and are at the forefront of education reform in Boston.”

As a charter school, City on a Hill receives state funds based on the number of pupils enrolled: 185 this year, in grades 9 through 12. The students, who are selected through a lottery, pay no tuition. But the school’s charter also allows it to operate free of oversight from public-school administrators and exempt from union contract provisions. And through its non-profit affiliate, it raises money and other support for capital projects, before- and after-school programs, college scholarships, and teacher-enrichment activities.

“We’ve built a hybrid that is unique,” says Ms. Kass, who is now 32. Conventional labels have little relevance for new entities like the charter school, she avers. City on a Hill, she says, combines elements “of all three sectors: we’re public, but we also have 501(c)(3) status, and we’re trying to reach the same set of outcomes that the business sector does.”

The school remains very traditional in its curriculum and its focus on achievement, Ms. Kass points out. “We teach math, English, and science and have very strict discipline,” she says. “But imposed on that rigor is a very community-focused belief that we’re preparing not just minds, but citizens.”

To fully experience the lessons of democracy, students participate in weekly town meetings in which they discuss various timely topics: Should President Clinton resign? Should the United States send troops to Bosnia? Each student also spends several weeks as an intern with a local business, government agency, or non-profit group.

“They have a chance to see what it means to contribute to how a city works,” says Ms. Kass. “It also builds collaborations into the foundation of our school.”

In effect, the school uses the city’s museums, universities, and other non-profit organizations as extensions of its classrooms — which themselves are housed in the headquarters of another non-profit group, the YMCA of Greater Boston. All students receive YMCA memberships and participate in its programs of physical education, swimming instruction, and after-school activities.

Another hallmark of the school is its emphasis on measurable student achievement. “It’s not simply about time spent in school, but actual outcomes,” Ms. Kass observes. Students must demonstrate competence in basic subjects — English, math, history, public speaking, a foreign language — before advancing to the next grade.

What’s more, the students must do so in a very public way: defending their work each spring before juries made up of fellow students, teachers, and Boston-area residents. “It’s a wonderful way to educate the public and to get community feedback about what we’re doing,” says Ms. Kass.

Such achievement is often hard-won. More than half of the incoming freshmen score below grade level in reading and math, and many students have known only frustration and defeat at their previous schools.

While parents do play an important supporting role in City on a Hill, “the teachers drive the decision making at our school,” Ms. Kass says. As a result, teacher applications have poured in from across the country — more than 300 for each available teaching position.

Starting with the current academic year, Ms. Kass has stepped down as principal to focus on raising money through the non-profit foundation that supports the school. About $2.5-million has been donated so far by a handful of foundations and other donors.

Ms. Kass is now trying to secure money to put the school on more stable footing — and to “scale up” the school’s mission by creating a program, based at City on a Hill, that will train new teachers, reinvigorate current teachers, and support people interested in establishing other schools.

“The best way we can export the magic of this place is by investing deeply in our people, so they have time to do more research, create computer programs, and incubate people who themselves want to start schools,” observes Ms. Kass.

For example, the school’s Spanish teacher, Andres Cruz, has received support to develop his idea for using interactive computer video technology for teaching foreign languages. He will refine the technology with future teachers at Northeastern University.

Such programs may help stem teacher burnout by offering faculty members the chance to grow in many areas. “One of the troubling things, if you look at education, is that teachers’ career paths are essentially flat,” says Ms. Kass. “Day 1 is like Day 10,000.”

Non-profit groups that hope to magnify their influence have much to learn from the business world, says Ms. Kass. Good companies invest in research and development to insure new products in the pipeline. The school of education she envisions would play a similar role.

“For non-profits and the public sector, to think of investing in ideas and research is a new thing,” says Ms. Kass. “But that way, we build the best of both worlds.”

Ms. Kass herself, who once toyed with the idea of becoming a lawyer, is now happily embarked on insuring that City on a Hill flourishes — and on spreading the word about her experience to people in other parts of the country.

Whether as a writer, an advocate, a school administrator, or a city council member, Ms. Kass says, she would like to continue to promote changes in the entire system of public education. “I have found my life’s work,” she says. “I know what it is that I care about and want to focus on.”