Consultations with the community strongly suggest that communities do not aim to replicate school latrines at home, mainly because of cost.
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".
"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.
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.
EGA's headteacher, Jo Dibb, said the partnership with the Guardian brings great benefits to the school: "Students gain a wealth of expertise and experience from working with their staff, something that just cannot be replicated in school.
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.
It has also been replicated in schools in California, Connecticut, Florida and New Jersey.
It is an experiment in environmental education its founders hope will be replicated in schools citywide.
