Mr. Fliegel considers it a bit like cheating, although still worthwhile, to replicate schools like Mott Hall, which serve the city's brightest children.
"Once you realize that it's a people business and you can't replicate people, you realize that you can't replicate schools," said Seymour Fliegel, president of the Center for Educational Innovation-Public Educanion Association, an education policy group, and a former deputy superintendent in East Harlem, where he helped create many small schools.
"What seems to be new with the advent of charter management organizations," he added, "is the sort of systematic attempt to replicate schools in a network".
Public policy must relentlessly seek to replicate schools that demonstrate the ability to educate children from impoverished backgrounds instead of perpetuating (and rewarding) those that use the pupil's circumstances as a rationale for failure.
I replicated "school" at home.
"We are committed to replicating schools that are already working," said Myrna Castrejón, executive director of Great Public Schools Now, the recently formed nonprofit that has adopted this mantra.
The study employed a two-phase experimental design with an initial baseline phase followed by an alternating treatments phase, and was first conducted at a private school (School A) and subsequently replicated at a public school (School B).
Two weeks ago, the city's Department of Education announced its NYC21C initiative to replicate the school's success in "incorporating technology into everyday learning".
And if Nightstand was not the permanent job they had all hoped for, it was a work experience that could not have been replicated in school.
As Ren 10 moves towards its goal of 100 (and perhaps beyond), it will be a continuing challenge to replicate good schools and open new ones.
