Other key ingredients

Re “Charters’ competitive edge,” Opinion, Feb. 5

More than 30 years ago, I ran the alternative school system in Boston’s inner city that served a predominantly African American K-8 student population.

The five key factors Eli Broad identifies as being central to charter schools having a competitive edge were alive and well in our schools. We had a sixth ingredient: parental involvement.

Our schools were parent-controlled, so I had to answer to parents who were keenly interested in achievement. These parents did not swear by standardized testing, but we had to administer these tests so that our financial partners could gauge the “return on their investment.” The Ford Foundation’s 1974 report, “Matters of Choice,” describes these schools and the fact that our children achieved at a high level on standardized tests.

These 30-year-old lessons, along with the lessons of today’s charter schools, will have enduring value when high student achievement and parental involvement are routine in public schools.

Philip S. Hart

Los Feliz

In celebrating the success of charter schools, Broad attributes much of that success to market forces and competition. I suspect that those things have far less to do with the schools’ success than he suggests. KIPP schools, he points out, require students to attend school from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. -- and also during the summer -- and make a commitment to learn.

One disadvantage of other public schools is that they cannot be selective in terms of who may attend. Unmotivated and disruptive students undoubtedly destroy for other students an appropriate environment in which learning is possible. I can’t help but wonder if all public schools wouldn’t be equally successful if the students who have no commitment to learning were asked to leave and find some place else to spend their time. This sounds harsh and unfeeling, I admit, but it seems that public schools need to decide who should be there, so that motivated students have a real opportunity to learn. Public schools should not be a place to keep kids off the street and out of trouble.

Jay Stevens

Long Beach

Broad details the five key ingredients that enable charter schools to improve achievement. Having worked at three charter schools, I was surprised that excellent teaching staff was not one of the ingredients.

I watch charter school teachers go above and beyond the call of duty every day. Charter school teachers wear every hat that a school has to offer, and many hats that traditional schools don’t offer. We are routinely thanked by parents for helping their students in ways that our counterparts at big public schools don’t.

Broad should not overlook the fact that charter schools attract an exceptionally hard-working and devoted teaching staff that contributes to school achievement in ways that may be hard to quantify with data but that are impossible to ignore.

Julia Fisher

Los Angeles

The writer is on the faculty at Green Dot’s Amino Inglewood Charter High School.