Jay and Jenni Groft — parents of 10 children — had been homeschooling their children until Jenni realized it was too difficult to teach Latin while learning it at the same time.
That’s when the couple discovered Veritas Preparatory Academy, a Great Hearts charter school near 56th Street and Thomas Road in Phoenix, was using the same model they was using.
“I figured these guys would know what they were doing and could teach classical education much better than I could,” she said.
The Grofts are among the many converts to charter schools, which are disrupting the education space in Arizona.
While not all charter schools are churning out National Merit Scholars, Scottsdale-based Basis Educational Group and Phoenix-based Great Hearts Academies are growing nationally and have lengthy waiting lists.
The two lead a growing movement in the state, which has seen charter schools — which are private businesses running public schools — claim 15 percent of the total public school population in
Arizona. That equates to 170,555 students at 556 charter schools during the 2015-16 school year. Charter enrollment has more than doubled in Arizona during the past decade.
Basis and Great Hearts are the best of those schools, turning out graduates who consistently score the highest among all students on the SAT test during the past three years.
The secret, Basis and Great Hearts officials say, is as much about what they are teaching as who is teaching.
“The secret sauce of Great Hearts is the type of teacher that we’re able to recruit, hire and train,” said Dan Scoggin, co-founder of Great Hearts and currently serving as president and superintendent of Great Hearts Texas. “We have 1,600 teachers across our network and we recruit nationally. We have a team on the road all the time looking for these brilliant young men and women and sometimes more experienced teachers to come and work at Great Hearts.”
Those advocates of the charter school model say traditional public schools and districts could learn a thing or two from how charters handle their teachers. But there are differences in how each are allowed to approach the subject.
It starts with teachers
One of the biggest differences between charters and district-run schools is the former is not required to hire state- certified teachers. Instead, Great Hearts and Basis look for experts in their fields who have a passion to serve students.
Basis CEO Peter Bezanson said its schools’ teachers have doctorates, master’s or bachelor’s degrees in their subject areas. Those type of people know how to make content exciting for students, he said.
Overall, charter schools pay their educators less than district schools.
“They are super smart, engaging, charismatic, theatrical and they have to know what they’re trying to teach,” he said. “We find those people, then we give them a lot of freedom in the classroom.”
Basis also allows its teachers to choose whatever books they want students to read. That freedom is crucial, Bezanson said.
“To attract really smart people we have to make a job really exciting and fun,” he said. “That’s a big problem for us in Arizona. The funding for education is so low in this state and the cuts have been so extreme over the years, it’s been difficult for us to attract great teachers to teach in Arizona when there are other states they can teach in.”
If a teacher isn’t working out, charters are free to fire them without working through a union as most district schools do.
“We have the freedom to hire whoever we want to hire,” Bezanson said.
Teachers unions are designed to protect teachers and not the student, said Jaime Molera, co-founder of Molera Alvarez and a former Republican superintendent of public instruction for Arizona.
Molera’s government relations firm has represented Imagine Schools, which has charter schools in Arizona, as well as Mesa Unified School District.
“They are protecting those individuals that shouldn’t be in the classroom,” hesaid. “I’m sorry, but if you want to have high-quality performing schools, we should be looking at how do we rid ourselves of some of our folks that shouldn’tbe in the classroom. It’s more than frustrating. It’s maddening.”
Debbi Burdick, superintendent of Cave Creek Unified School District, said the Arizona Education Association isn’t a union.
“We’re a right-to-work state in Arizona,” she said. “We don’t have unions. The teacher’s association sits at the table with the school district administration, and they work things out in interest- based negotiations.”
She said AEA works in the best interest of the school districts and students.
While there is movement in other states to unionize charter schools, that’s not happening in Arizona, said Eileen Sigmund, president and CEO of the Arizona Charter Schools Association. She said there hasn’t been any interest locally to unionize.
Public school districts complain about charter schools, but they don’t change their structure to give them flexibility, Molera said.
“Unions don’t want flexibility,” he said. “They want protection for their members.”
Student achievements
The teachers at Basis and Great Hearts are doing something right. This year, 11 of the 63 National Merit Scholarship Corp. finalists that attend Basis schools were named among the winners in Arizona, with seven coming from Basis Scottsdale, two from Basis Phoenix, and one each from Basis Oro Valley and Basis Tucson North.
National Merit winners are finalists in each state who have the strongest combination of accomplishments, skills and potential for success in rigorous college studies.
Of Great Hearts’ 22 National Merit Scholarship finalists, 20 were winners. Great Hearts also had two Flinn Scholarships, two Questbridge Scholars and one Presidential Scholar.
Charter schools provide options for parents, Molera said.
“It’s done a lot to create a healthy competition amongst all schools because they’re fighting for the honor of teaching these kids,” Molera said. “To be able to get the resources that come with these kids, they’re going to have to improve.”
Maintaining high standards and expectations also is crucial for academic achievement, Bezanson said. Basis provides academic support for the students.
“They have to work really hard,” Bezanson said. “They choose to be there. We honor and reward students who achieve at very high levels so other students can see how hard these kids are working.”
Basis students tend to stick with the program if they can make it through to high school. Basis students in ninth through 12th grade have a 93 percent retention rate. Where Basis tends to lose students is in the middle-school level. The retention rate for eighth- and ninth-graders is between 65 and 85 percent, Bezanson said.
Students — not parents — need to be the ones who make the decision to stay with Basis through their high school years. If students aren’t making the cut, they can repeat the grade or leave, he said.
“The biggest reason students leave is the academic difficulty,” he said. “It’s a challenging school. There is significant homework, and not everyone wants to do that.”
With the Grofts, they opted to move their children from Catholic schools to Veritas after their daughter gave it a glowing recommendation as a junior in high school.
“That was a really strong endorsement to get from a high school kid,” Jenni said.
At the time, they lived 18 miles away from the school. Once they were committed to Veritas, the family moved closer.
“We decided it was worth it to invest in our location,” Jenni Groft said.
Wait lists
Despite the academic rigor, Basis and Great Hearts report wait lists to gain enrollment. Great Hearts reports it has 20,000 students on its wait lists.
Basis has a wait list of 7,520 students in Arizona and 7,551 nationally.
“We have more students on our wait list than we do in our schools,” Scoggin said. “We could open another Great Hearts right away if we had the funding.”
The funding is a challenge. As a private business, charters cannot bond for schools as districts do and must rely on outside funding for capital expenses such as classrooms and transportation. Charters do share per-pupil education funds from the state’s general fund destined for the classroom, but Arizona
ranks near the bottom in per-pupil spending, Scoggin said.
“It’s difficult to offer world-class prep schools for all kids under these conditions,” he said.
Charter operators also say they do not cherry pick the best and brightest students. At Great Hearts and Basis, for example, parents enroll online to be included in an enrollment lottery.
“If you want to audit our enrollment computer program, we could set that up,” Scoggin said. “It’s a complete lottery. I’ve had many friends on the wait list for many years who couldn’t get into the school. I’ve had senators’ and mayors’ kids on wait lists. There’s no exceptions.”
Angela Gonzales covers health, biotech and education.
