by David Safier
NOTE: Since Imagine School at Superstition made news by firing 11 of its 14 teachers, I've been writing about it, reading up on Imagine Schools and talking to people who know more than I do. This is the first of what will be a few posts trying to make sense of the nation's largest charter school corporation which has drawn more controversy for its practices and low student achievement scores than any other. What I write may be incomplete or incorrect in places. If you have information to add, please leave comments or email me at safier@schooltales.net. I keep all email correspondence confidential.
The corporate philosphy of Dennis Bakke, founder and CEO of Imagine Schools, can be summed up in three words: Deregulate. Decentralize. Expand. He uses fancier words, but that's what his model looks like on the ground, and it's a good way to understand the workings of Imagine Schools. Bakke saw a deregulated arena in public education, charter schools, bought an existing charter company, left the nuts and bolts of running the schools to others, and expanded like crazy. When Imagine Schools took over Chancellor Beacon Academy in 2004, it had 4 campuses in Arizona housing 7 schools. By 2008, it had 14 campuses with 22 schools. The collapse of the economy slowed Bakke down, or he would have continued his breakneck pace of school expansion. He has 71 schools nationwide and is still trying to expand, though his empire is in danger of shrinking or even going bust.
Dennis Bakke's philosophy — Deregulate. Decentralize. Expand — didn't appear out of nowhere when he founded Imagine in 2004. He had been developing it since he worked in President Carter's Federal Energy Administration, where he was instrumental in the deregulation of the U.S. energy markets. Soon after, he founded Applied Energy Services (AES), a company that took advantage of deregulation and built power plants around the world with a decentralized corporate structure, taking out loans to pay for its explosive growth. Managers of the individual plants were given an unusual amount of latitude in the way they ran their organizations with little guidance from the top.
AES wasn't alone in taking advantage of the economic possibilities of the recently deregulated energy environment, of course. ENRON used the anything-goes market to create a vast empire built out of paper and promises. When ENRON went down in flames, AES's stock tumbled with it, plunging from $70 to $1 a share. Bakke left with AES in a mess, but as so often happens in the corporate world, he took a large fortune with him.
Here's what the man who picked up the pieces after Bakke said about AES:
"We really did test the limits of how fast a company can grow before things start to fray around the edges."
Growing fast and fraying around the edges. There's no better way to describe Imagine Schools, which Bakke founded when he left AES using the same model of degegulation, decentralization and expansion.
Since 2004, Imagine has grown into the largest charter school company in the nation, and expansion trumps educational quality. Schools are often left with barely enough funds to operate, and the money skimmed off the top is used to build new schools which are similarly underfunded. Regional offices whose administrators oversee the schools are more interested in filling desks — bringing in customers/students — than in creating a rich and rewarding educational environment for children. They badger the often inexperienced school principals, whose schools are often staffed with inexperienced teachers, to recruit new students but give the school administrators little guidance about how to create a rich learning environment. The principals often do the same to their teachers, criticizing them and often letting them go without offering the kind of help they need to become more effective in the classroom. The result is an empire which could be described as "fraying around the edges" but may actually be on the verge of collapse, AES-style. The staff turnover can be phenomenally high at schools where they haven't attracted enough students, which means the schools have no stability or institutional memory — in a sense, every year is the school's first year — and the newly hired teachers are forever looking over their shoulders since they know they could be the next to go. In St. Louis, the state closed six Imagine schools this year because student achievement was even lower than in the traditional public schools which are famous for low achievement.
Is Bakke a bad guy in all this, a conniving capitalist trying to build a second fortune on the backs of poor, unfortunate children? I honestly don't think so. I have the impression he dove headlong into the world of charter schools with a combination of idealism and ignorance. He wanted to create lots of good schools around the country, and he wrongly assumed schools could be treated like businesses. Build the schools like so many big box stores, create glossy, full color advertising brochures promising a tuition-free college prep education, and watch the students roll in. Then build more schools, and more schools, and more schools. Quality? Leave that to the regional directors, the school administrators and the teachers. Bakke probably thought to himself, how could privately run schools possibly do worse than those bureaucratic, union-infested government schools?
Bakke is beginning to find out how wrong he was in his assumptions about what it takes to create a string of successful schools, even though the enormity of his miscalculation may not have sunk in yet. He's still trying to start new schools even as states are refusing to grant him charters and the boards of some of his schools have broken ties with Imagine and struck out on their own. And it looks like, with Imagine's ever-growing problems, Bakke's naive idealism is morphing into a more cold-blooded "Do whatever it takes to succeed" mindset.
In future posts, I'll try to capture what I understand about the way Imagine schools work, and don't work.
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Imagine has/had the opportunity to do great thing for children, but they became too big and Bakke doesn’t understand how complex education can be. Imagine doesn’t value education as a profession, but views it as more of a community service or something that can be “given” to people. After working for Imagine for 3 years, I can tell you that many of their policies and ideas just set up their schools for mediocrity at best. They continually hire inexperienced teachers and leaders that have very little or no teaching experience. I don’t believe that the teachers and parents of the school that I taught at have any idea about what is or is not happening in the school. They all need to take a step back and really look. For example, our school had approx. 87% of students on free/reduced lunches and the majority of students are academically behind grade level. The school is depriving students of a well-rounded education and the necessary services to adequately support students and families. There is no school library and children, esp. those living in poverty, need access to books. The current scripted reading curriculum is killing the love of reading in the school and the inexperienced principal can’t seem to understand why reading scores are stagnant. The students have no music class, art class once every other week for an hour, and P.E. once a week for 30 minutes in the gym that is also used for the cafeteria so some classes only get to use 1/2 the gym for P.E. There are no school counselors or social workers available on a regular basis and we serve a very needy population of students. Special education students are not helped adequately because there is only one SPED teacher and one assistant for the entire school. There are no teacher aides for any grade levels. The do not have mentor teachers for all the new teachers. I could go on and on. All these things have a negative impact on student achievement and success.
I’m not arguing the merits of the public school system. While there are certainly some great public schools out there, we all know that there’s lots of work to be done in bringing our nation’s public school system up to a level of satisfaction. I’m not anti-charter either. I’m an educator so I’m all for whatever works. I’m just not willing to embrace something different just because it’s different and I’m certainly not going to stand around and proclaim that the emperor has on beautiful clothes when he’s parading around naked! You can use all capital letters to declare that his clothes are beautiful……but he still looks buck naked to me.
Thats anecdotal- we could indict the entire public school system with that approach. their acDEMIC GAINS ARE HIGHER THAN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS, tHEIR PARENT SATISFACTION IS HIGHER AND THEIR TEACHER JOB SATISFACTION IS HIGHER
Many people say so – former students, teachers, parents and administrators are among them. And I’m not convinced about your claim of academic gain. As for costs below the national average, every charter school can claim that, but how can it be a bragging right unless the students are thriving and making gains? To say “I spend less per student than they do! ” and then show such poor outcome only strengthens the argument that maybe they’re not spending enough on their students’ education. Finally, I’m not real sure that I’d go around spouting off that I dropped 100 million of my own money into an education program and STILL couldn’t get it right.
Who says it is a faulty foundation? He has over 40,000 students, more students than in the District of Columbia. He serves student populations that are below average income. He has academic gains above the national average and costs that are below the national average to the taxpayer. He has put in over 100 million of his own money into public education. What are your standards?
Great journalism David! I agree with you. I pondered for a long while about Bakke’s intention and whether or not he was purely motivated by greed and I came to the same conclusion as you. He has more money than a person needs for a lifetime. He’s not in pursuit of more. He is instead an egomaniac that fancies himself brilliant in all endeavors – including education and book writing. I can still picture him standing in front of a roomful of young eager teachers announcing that he would now sign Joy At Work books (mandated reading) for anyone who wanted an autographed copy. He sadly miscalculated his prowess in the field of education and yet there must be something about his narcissism that keeps him from admitting defeat or tearing down and restructuring in a way that lends at least a small amount of credibility to his suggestion that he champions education and is sincere in his plight to “serve” the demographic that he targets. His money, his contacts, and his position have kept this house of cards up for too long, but with such a faulty foundation, down it must come eventually! Thanks for keeping the public informed!