Excel Academy Charter School’s Owen Stearns on Academic Quality & Bridging Gaps

The Learning Curve Owen Stearns
Albert Cheng: [00:00:00] Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Learning Curve podcast. I’m one of your co-hosts this week, Dr. Albert Cheng from the Ohio State University, and I’m joined this week by Alisha Searcy, my other co-host. Alisha, what’s up?
Alisha Searcy: Hello, Dr. Cheng. It’s good to have you back.
Albert Cheng: Good. Yeah. Nice to be back after a little bit of a hiatus.
Yeah, I’m looking forward to being back, especially this week. You know we like to mix it up a bit on this show-
Alisha Searcy: Yes …
Albert Cheng: and invite some school leaders to talk about the work that they do and, and really learn, hopefully learn from them and be inspired. So we’re gonna have Owen Stearns Who’s the chief executive officer at Excel Academy Charter Schools.[00:01:00]
I’m looking forward to that.
Alisha Searcy: I am, too. Always love learning from school leaders.
Albert Cheng: Well, before we get to that, Alisha, let’s do what we do every week on this show, and let’s talk about some news. What caught your eye this week in terms of education news?
Alisha Searcy: Yeah, so I came across an article from The Hill about chronic absenteeism and how it plagues our schools and society.
And I feel like COVID was the first time, post-COVID, we started hearing a lot more about chronic absenteeism, and we know it was certainly an issue then. It’s defined, according to this article, as missing 10% or more of the days when your school is open. And as I said, it was a problem before COVID. It was 16%, and then post-pandemic, it doubled to nearly 30%, which I didn’t realize it was that high, and now it’s still elevated to 28%, again, according to this article.
Obviously, this is important because we know that if kids are not in school, they’re not learning, right? We already know [00:02:00] that the more that they’re in school, the more they are learning, and we know that even as we talk to this charter school leader in just a moment, a lot of schools that are being more effective with teaching and learning, one of their secrets to their success is, you know, longer school day or more school, more days in school.
And so you know that that is an effective tool for teaching and learning. So you have to also know that if they are in school less because of being absent, that that creates a significant problem. And so, of course, we’ve got to address this in schools. The article also talks about young people who are dropping out, and sometimes it doesn’t look like dropping out immediately.
It looks like being chronically absent. So first they are, you know, missing a little bit of school, then they start flunking classes, then they’re not earning credits, and then they’re like, “Forget it. Why would I even go back?” So we know that chronic absenteeism can sort of lead to that. And of course, as kids drop out, you know, it could lead to committing crimes, being [00:03:00] incarcerated.
Certainly it perpetuates poverty, all of the things that we know are significant issues. And so the article argues that absenteeism is like a plague that infects first a school, then a community, and those students who are chronically absent need some extra attention. And so I’ll just say that I do know that there are school systems, and I can think of some in Georgia, but I know all over the country, that are doing creative, innovative things to address chronic absenteeism.
I know, for example, in a school in my district, we have a principal who literally drives around the neighborhood in a golf cart So if kids are not at school, she will drive to their house, you know, find out what’s going on, or if she sees kids walking in the wrong direction. And so whatever you gotta do, we’ve gotta get kids in school to make sure that they’re learning.
So I appreciate this article and just keeping this issue at the top of mind for people because, again, we know when kids are in school, they’re more likely to [00:04:00] learn. And we also know, to educators, just a reminder, that we also have to make school meaningful and interesting so that they want to come to school
Albert Cheng: Yeah.
Well, thanks for bringing this to our attention again. You know, we need that, maybe that steady drumbeat of- Yeah … what’s going on. I mean, it … You can feel it, you know, just there’s been some kind of a paradigm shift it seems with school and showing up. And, you know, I, I’ll say one more thing. You know, what, what you were just saying reminded me, I think a few weeks ago, or maybe it’s months ago now, we talked about an article about Mississippi.
You know, we’re talking about the Mississippi Miracle a lot on this show. But- Mm-hmm … I think that article, if I recollect correctly, mentioned about how, as you say, you had teachers and school leaders going out of their way to find kids that- Yes … weren’t showing up. And so here’s to hoping that, you know, our students can be known in their schools.
And so-
Alisha Searcy: Right …
Albert Cheng: we can, can really, you know, nip this in the bud really.
Alisha Searcy: Absolutely.
Albert Cheng: Well, I have a article. It’s not on absenteeism, but you might say it’s missing students. The headline [00:05:00] actually is America’s Colleges Are Hurdling Towards an Enrollment Cliff. So- Hmm … not about college students not showing up to class, about declining enrollment levels in colleges generally.
Um, people aren’t showing up to college in the first place. Right. I think this is … This might be old news. You know, people have been talking about this for quite a bit, but, you know, I, I wanna bring this article up because despite it being kind of old news to me, one bit wasn’t. What the authors of this article point out is that the enrollment cliff is not the same across all colleges.
So they pointed out that Ivy Leagues and kind of really your top-tier colleges, they’re not quite experiencing this yet, but getting in, getting admitted to these top colleges is still pretty difficult. It’s these less selective schools- Mm-hmm … where the acceptance rates are shooting up because students just aren’t applying to them anymore.
And so I wanna maybe share this article because, you know, it’s one thing to talk about the enrollment cliff in college. It’s another thing [00:06:00] to understand it, and I think I, I felt like maybe a light bulb went off here when I read this, thinking that, “Oh, you know what? Maybe this isn’t uniform across all colleges, that- Right
particular kinds of colleges are experiencing this differently.”
Alisha Searcy: Yeah, I would definitely agree. I think about Ivy Leagues, I think about HBCUs, their enrollment, their applications, particularly in HBCUs, are out of the roof these days. And you’re seeing across the country these housing issues because they don’t have enough housing to take all the students that they’ve accepted.
But to your point, I think there are some other colleges that are not in those two categories that probably aren’t as sought after anymore, and you have to ask the question, how much of this is about affordability, right? Are students not applying because they cannot afford it, and you’ve got all of these issues happening at the federal level with student loans and repayment and on again, off again.
I think that’s a real issue. So that would be the question that I would have, if that’s one of the contributing factors, [00:07:00] uh, to why there may be an enrollment challenge.
Albert Cheng: Yeah, yeah. Well, good points, and yeah, lots to talk about here. But alas, we always run out of time to talk about news.
Alisha Searcy: Yes.
Albert Cheng: You know? But we got another great topic to talk about on the flip side of the break here.
Owen Stearns, Chief Executive Officer at Excel Academy Charter Schools. So stick around for that. But as always, Alisha, fun talking news with you.
Alisha Searcy: Always.
Albert Cheng: Owen Stearns is the Chief Executive Officer of Excel Academy Charter Schools, a role he has been in since 2013, where he served as founding board chair from 2003 until 2008. Excel Academy serves nearly 2,000 students across six schools in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and has consistently been one of the top public schools in both states, with a particular focus [00:08:00] on college and career persistence and completion.
Prior to joining Excel as CEO, Owen was a strategy consultant working with nonprofit leaders to achieve large-scale social change through innovative strategies, strong organizational design, and nimble leadership teams. He comes to Excel directly from the Monitor Institute, where he was an associate partner focused largely on educational issues.
Prior to Monitor, he was a senior consultant with the Foundation Strategy Group, now FSG. He currently serves as the vice president of the board of the Schechter Boston and is senior warden at Grace Episcopal Church in Newton, Massachusetts. Owen is a graduate of Amherst College. Owen, welcome to “The Learning Curve.”
It’s a pleasure to have you here.
Owen Stearns: I’m honored to be here. Thanks for having me.
Albert Cheng: We love having school leaders on and, and looking forward to learning more about Excel Academy, but let’s maybe start with a bit of your background. Could you maybe start by sharing with us a little bit about that, perhaps any formative educational experiences?
How did all that [00:09:00] inform your work at Excel?
Owen Stearns: I love this question. If we had more time, I’d love to hear all of you answer the question, too. Yeah. ‘Cause I think it’s just an important part of, you know, what drives you to do the work that sometimes is really hard, as you guys know. I grew up in New York City.
I went to private schools my whole life, both in New York. I went to a boarding school up in Massachusetts. And then I’d say a formative experience after that was I did a program called City Year, early AmeriCorps program, in City Year’s first year ever. It was, like, their first full year corps. So I then went to Amherst College, you know, back into the private school world.
There were two formative people I met at Amherst that… One was a guy I met, like, first week of freshman year, Hector Caraballo. He’d also grown up in New York. He’d grown up in the South Bronx. Had gone to, like, a very, I would say, low-quality urban district public school. Child of a single mom who had him when she was a teenager.
All of the demographics that made it somewhat surprising that he was at Amherst College. And I’d just come from City Year, where I’d spent a year [00:10:00] working in the inner city. You know, working with a lot of kids like Hector. And I sort of became a little obsessed with him as to, like, how, how did this story happen?
And the story happened because every year a handful of teachers at his school would just sort of pick out a handful of kids and be like, “We’re gonna shepherd you through this. You know, visit colleges with you, help you get scholarships.” And that’s how it happened. It planted the seed of, okay, there’s something here.
Like, can we ever do this at scale? Can we have, have this be at a school level, like the vast majority of kids have Hector’s story, and not just a handful of them? And, you know, I had a very high-quality education all the way to that point. Like, my story was much less unique. But I recognized the, you know, the value and advantages that had given me.
And the other person I met was the founder of Excel, Yutaka Kimura, who invited me to join him, now almost 25 years ago. And I was the founding board chair at Excel, but he was the real founder in those, in, in those first few years. And if I hadn’t met him, I wouldn’t have been part of the story. So [00:11:00] I’d say, like, that combination of having had access to very high-quality education myself, having seen sort of Hector’s story at a key moment in my life, and then Yutaka getting Excel off the ground.
And I think I, you know, I’d sort of coming out of City Year felt like obviously education’s a big lever if the goal is to help lift kids out of poverty and, and improve the trajectories of their lives. I didn’t really know how to execute that, how to make that actually come to life, but when Yutaka was getting Excel off the ground, I sort of felt like, okay, this is a shot to try to sort of prove that that could be possible.
Albert Cheng: So let’s get into talking about Excel and, and how you execute on that. So let’s first talk about the academic expectations. What’s the academic programming like at Excel? What are the expectations? You mentioned you, your own academic preparation. Yeah. Did that inform how you run this charter school network?
Owen Stearns: Yes, I think it did. Just briefly about Excelium, we’re– we have six schools now, about two thousand students across, you know, Boston, [00:12:00] Chelsea, and the, the Providence area in Rhode Island, middle and high school. So we start in fifth grade and we go through twelfth grade. Yeah, I think our goal from the beginning was ensure kids are ready to be successful in college or some other post-secondary credential.
And I, you know, I think it was clearly felt early on that just getting a high school diploma, even just matriculating to college is not enough In today’s world, you’ve gotta be ready to, to be able to complete. And also, it’s, I mean, it’s, I mean, a core part of our program, it’s not necessarily academically focused, but I think it’s important that we support our students for up to six years after they graduate- Mm
from high school through what we call our CAPS program, College Access and Post-Secondary Success. And we have 10 full-time people who are in that program, both traditional, like sort of college career counselors when they’re in high school, and then, you know, half that team is supporting kids for up to six years after.
And I think, you know, notably when we were, we restarted as just a middle school, fifth to eighth grade, and at that time we had five full-time people. We were a school of about 300 kids, and we support our kids for basically 10 years. Like, we help them [00:13:00] get into a college prep high school, support them through high school, help them get into a college, and then be successful all the way through college.
So I think that through line, that sort of, you know, north star of how do you get a kid ready to be successful in college or some post-secondary career has been an important bar to set, to set a very high ac- academic preparation rigor. Like, you can’t just be satisfied with a strong test score in eighth grade or, or even passing an AP.
Like, it’s gotta be a higher bar. I’ll share like a story of, Tim, I think I was, I shared this in our interview back in the spring, that like we started as a unabashed, like everyone should go to college program. And I think like many, you know, we sort of learned through that experience that not every kid is gonna go to college, at least not right away.
Like it’s just not, you know, you, you sort of can’t force that. And so our, our goal now is like every kid’s ready that, you know, they’re academically prepared, and we do focus a lot on the AP. We ensure basically every kid is taking and passing an AP, and a bunch of kids are taking, you know, three or more or five or more [00:14:00] because we feel like particularly for kids who are first gen college kids by the, for the most part, proving that they can take a college level class is an important confidence builder and lowers the dropout rate.
I would say from a just the simplest version of the academic preparation is, you know, that’s the sort of- Mm … college success overall, and then the AP is a important way station for that. And then our middle school, our kids come to us behind grade level for the most part, and the goal is middle school’s essentially, I was gonna say re- I’m gonna call it a remedial program.
That’s not quite accurate. But the goal is like get kids to be ready for a rigorous high school experience, be ready by the time they get to ninth grade to be able to take APs and be successful. You know, to the extent my academic preparation connects to that, I think I know what a strong academic experience looks like.
Like I’ve, I went through it myself- Mm … and this may be a sort of different, answering a somewhat different question, but I’ll go there. Like it’s not, the aspiration is not rocket science. I think what I’ve learned, and I’m guessing this [00:15:00] resonates with either people listening or you guys, is like actually implementing that consistently- Yeah You know, it’s the execution is by far the most important part.
And one of the things we say every year, every month is like, it’s just about stacking good days on top of good days. Mm. Just focus on the next day and try to stack one more day. It’s, there’s not some silver bullet, there’s not some like groundbreaking moment you might, you, you may have that with a student, but like that’s not what to focus on.
What to focus on is just keep getting incrementally better and stay with it, and that’s sort of at least, I mean, that’s, that’s a very simplistic view of it, but I think it’s an important frame- Yeah … of how we sort of think about it.
Albert Cheng: Well, I wanna hear more about that. I like the way you, you put it there, stacking good days on top of each other.
And so, so maybe let me use that to segue into this next question I’ll ask- Yeah … which is, tell us about your school’s unique culture. I mean, that phrase, stacking good days on good days seems, I feel like there’s something deeper there, right? So could you tell us maybe about the school’s unique culture and, and perhaps the teachers that are a part of [00:16:00] that, and how does that all then play to help you guys realize the educational goals that you’ve articulated?
Owen Stearns: I feel like there, there are a few ways to go about this, but since you asked about teachers, I think that’s, I think that’s a very important place to start. Obviously, like, the core experience of a school is the interaction between the teacher and the student, and everything else is sort of noise around that, and, and hopefully additive noise
The teacher feels prepared going into the classroom. They know what excellent teaching looks like. The thing I was really most gonna focus on, like, they feel supported in that work. I mean, it– to be a great teacher takes, you know, a lifetime to like, to master and, and in particular, I guess no one’s good at it, like, in their first year pretty much
And it’s very easy to beat yourself up, feel beaten down, feel like you’re not being successful. And so I think something Excel has done particularly well is just help people really feel like we’re all in this together and that they are supported. It’s a highly, you know, it’s a highly collaborative environment.
There’s a lot of meetings. It’s sort of professional development. It’s really, like, meetings with other teachers who are in your, either in your grade level or your subject or both, just [00:17:00] doing the work, like looking at data, figuring out another intervention for this kid, like just being in it together, and then a ton of celebration around that.
Like, there’s, in every school and every subject, like, the number of shout-outs that are given across a given week is just extraordinary. And I think– And I feel genuine. I mean, easy for me to say in my position .
Albert Cheng: Yeah.
Owen Stearns: But I feel like people really value that. That feels distinct in some ways. And, and I don’t– I would hope a lot of schools do this.
I don’t know if it’s unique from other schools or not, but it’s something we really focus on. And I think another piece that connects to that is, you know, is in the interview process that I think we’re– this is maybe a different, you know, segue to a different conversation, but I feel like when we slipped a bit in like, you know, the late teens and then through COVID, part of it was we didn’t feel like we could bring in as high-quality teachers, and so we had to sort of lower the bar.
And I feel like we pivoted at a key point coming out of COVID to be like, “No,” like, “the bar is the bar,” and we could be really honest about [00:18:00] that in the interview process, and if people opt out, that’s fine. We’re not gonna hire people who shouldn’t be in front of kids. And so we’ve become much more honest, I think, in the interview process of like, “This is what it’s like to work here.
You’re gonna be observed a lot, like particularly in your first year. You’re gonna have someone in your classroom like multiple days a week. They’re gonna give you real feedback. They might interrupt you in the middle of the class and like- … teach, you know, teach over you to, like, show you how it’s done.
Like, that’s gonna feel h-hard, like talking about that.” Yeah. Like, and, and if, if that’s not for you, great. Like that’s, that’s totally fine, but we just want you to know what you’re coming into. I think that speaks to like the, the kind of culture we’re trying-
Albert Cheng: Yeah, yeah, yeah …
Owen Stearns: teachers to
Albert Cheng: have. No, well, thanks for sharing that.
I mean, that is something deeply unique. You know, I used to teach and I can’t imagine having the principal come multiple times, and they, they take over, and they teach, and they show you how it’s done. But sounds like you’ve assembled a team where there’s that humility to pursue excellence, so appreciate that.
Owen Stearns: Yeah, that, and it’s important that the principal also knows how to do that in a way that isn’t humiliating to the teacher. Right.
Albert Cheng: Yeah.
Owen Stearns: Like, right, you know, that’s a high stake, as you are pointing out. Like, that’s not [00:19:00] a comfortable position. Like, you’ve gotta do it well. We don’t use that as a more extreme example.
That’s not happening, like, every day, but it does happen, and it, and it’s important that people know the feedback’s coming from a place of, like, our, our main goal here is get you to be a better teacher ’cause that’s what you want, and that’s what kids need. And like-
Albert Cheng: Yeah …
Owen Stearns: everyone can orient on that.
Albert Cheng: Well, speaking of the kids, I wanna ask one more question before I turn it over to Alisha.
Maybe we should’ve asked this question earlier, but I wanted to hear about your model first. So let me ask you about the students and families that actually attend Excel. Tell us about them.
Owen Stearns: We serve, as I said earlier, the communities of Chelsea, Massachusetts, and East Boston, Massachusetts. Those are, if you, anyone knows Boston, those are sort of near the airport.
They’re largely, has historically been immigrant communities from, you know, over 100 years ago. So today they’re largely Latino, Latinx communities. You know, that’s 80-plus percent of our students. Providence, it’s similar. It’s, you know, more like, I would say 65 to 70% Latino, and the rest African American. So largely students of color.
Most are first-gen college. About [00:20:00] 20%, in Massachusetts at least, have special needs of some sort, an IEP or a 504. And, you know, like all these public charter schools, you know, they’re admitted through a blind lottery, and we have, you know, significant waiting lists in both communities of, you know, families who are trying to get their kids into the school.
I’d say one thing while we’re talking about our students, something, probably the thing I’m most proud of about Excel right now is that well over 10% of our staff are now Excel alums. I think it’s 13% now of last time I checked the data, including people in, you know, significant leadership positions. Our director of talent, Alejandra Gil, is one of our early graduates.
Our head of community engagement, Estevan Puerta. I think it was four or five years ago this happened. Another alum, Kiara Martinez, who works in our high school as a dean of curriculum instruction there. We were sort of coming out of COVID, you know, you know, stumbling like high schools out of COVID, and we had a, you know, all staff PD day.
So she’s, she’s speaking in front of all staff, and she’s talking about when she was a student at Excel, I think it was 12, thir- 15 years ago, [00:21:00] and the journey of, like, that Excel really helped her find her academic identity. That before that she wasn’t really seen as a student, as a scholar, and that’s something she’s deeply grateful about Excel, finding that.
And then she paused and she said, “I don’t think our kids are getting that today.” And it sort of, you know, air gets sucked out of the room. I think it was a really important moment that was– it was so powerful that she said that and not me. I think it just landed, particularly with our more veteran staff who are, you know, important culture leaders in the school.
I think they felt it was true. I think it resonated, and it was a sort of kick in the butt. We gotta get back to focus on our job here. So I just think, like, the Excel today, when I think about our students and our families, it really, it has come so full circle, and those, our alums are really driving a lot of, particularly these last five, six years, like, a real coming back to what we were when we got founded, when we, I think, really had, had stronger high academic expectations that we had slipped away from.
I think alums played a key role in getting that [00:22:00] back. They’re the ones who go home and talk to their parents who are so grateful for having that really high bar that, you know, they knew their kids needed and deserved.
Alisha Searcy: I love that so much. It’s very powerful when alum come back. Speaks volumes about what they got and what they wanna give back.
Owen Stearns: Totally.
Alisha Searcy: So I wanna talk about expansion. I’m a former charter network leader, and I would say- Yes, I,
Owen Stearns: I read that
Alisha Searcy: So I know your pain and you know mine. But it sounds like you have figured out some things. And so I wanna talk about expansion because I know that, you know, we have great schools, we wanna replicate them, we wanna expand, and sometimes we don’t always do that well.
During your time at Excel, can you talk about how you’ve been able to successfully lead expansion efforts, how you’ve overseen these expansions, how you’ve avoided some of the pitfalls that other charters have experienced when growing their student enrollment?
Owen Stearns: I wish I had, like, the playbook for how just everyone should just go do this, and that we executed it totally perfectly and, you know.
And I ha- You know, I have a [00:23:00] lot of, like, I do have pride that we’ve, we’ve ended up in a good place . And, you know, there was… We stumbled through it in many ways, and I’ll share both the stumbles and also why I think we ended up being successful in the end. And there are sort of two phases of expansion, I think, for Excel.
One was replicating within, you know, East Boston, Chelsea area from one middle school to three middle schools and then a high school. And so that, you know, sort of mini district of about 1,400 students in, in Massachusetts. And then we started a new school in Providence about five years ago. We just last week opened a high school there.
So we started a middle school four years ago. We got through fifth to eighth grade, and then those eighth graders helped us found the high school, uh, I guess two weeks ago now. We’ve got about 600 students there now. So the first phase of growth was a more straightforward plan. Like, we had one middle school, we just sort of replicated it.
And I would say that, and this may be a longer podcast than we have time for today, but it was sort of a, a fascinating sort of counterintuitive story. I was the board chair at the [00:24:00] time, and while we were growing, our students were, were literally number one in the state, not in growth, but in overall performance, like 100%- Hmm
passing or, you know, meeting or exceeding expectations on the MCAS, the Massachusetts state test. And over those early years of expansion, we essentially went through a CEO a year for, like, five years.
Albert Cheng: Wow.
Owen Stearns: Yutaka, our founder, left. We brought someone in. They lasted about a year. We had an interim person for a year.
We hired someone else. They lasted about a year and a half. Yutaka came back for a year. And at the end of that I took over, and that was now, I’m starting my 14th year now. So, you know, we sort of stabilized just in time. But we had a lot of leadership turnover while we were growing. And so anyone who’s been through any of this will know that that, if you were on the ground during those years, it felt very messy.
And I think what made it work, by sort of my reflection on it, is there was a core group of teachers and administrators, and we were still relatively small then. I can name sort of probably a [00:25:00] dozen people- Who kept the thing together. And as I was saying earlier, like at the, at the end of the day, the core thing is teachers and students like that experience.
And so there’s all this mess in the like leadership office that is not helpful. You know, it’s really, you know, distracting, but it was– They didn’t let it distract them from doing the key work that needed to be done, and they knew how to do that work, and, and they stayed. They stayed through those critical years when a lot of people would’ve left because leadership, and I include myself in this, couldn’t figure out what they were doing.
And so I, I do think there’s something there about, you know, the core group of implementers or the people who are actually on the ground and them feeling, feeling empowered, like I think they did have a lot of power in those years. They were really running the show. I think that was important. And I think another thing was we were We weren’t growing very quickly.
We all know a lot of charters out there that for very, I think, noble and honorable reasons, like decided to grow very quickly, and we didn’t. That was not our choice, and so it, it still, that lowered the degree of difficulty considerably [00:26:00] that we were just sort of stamping on another school like the one we’d already done.
We’d spent a lot of time trying to figure out what’s core to our model, and how do we try to bring that to this next school. That basically worked across, like, the first middle schools we replicated. And then the second piece was that we talked about having Nina Keough, who’s our chief schools officer, join me on this.
Nina helped found our first replication middle school, then founded by herself as the head of school, our second replication middle school, and then was the founding principal of our high school. And she’s an extraordinary academic leader and adult leader. Grew a ton over those years. You know, I, I think I would say particularly I give her a lot of praise and gratitude for the high school, which is, you know, that was a brand-new thing.
I didn’t walk through my whole background, but, like, I’ve never been a teacher or principal myself, so I offered minimal support to her as she was starting the high school. Yutaka did, and Yutaka continues to be involved as the founder of Excel, as a coach to me and Nina. I feel like we’ve managed that founder transition pretty [00:27:00] well.
He adds tremendous value to the school still today, even though he’s, you know, in a wholly different career, but just as an advisor. A long way of saying, like, leadership really matters, and Nina was just an extraordinary leader through those years. You know, was one of these people I was talking about earlier in that first phase of growth of holding the thing together, but then really grew into that role and started a high school with, you know, that’s one of the, I think it’s top 3% of high schools in the country on US News World Report, like has really had extraordinary results.
And now is the chief schools officer, so is, you know, helped lead the expansion to Rhode Island as well. The Rhode Island expansion came as a little out of the blue. You know, we, we had scaled, and we were, you know, sort of at scale in Massachusetts, and I was, I was feeling actually some of the pressure of us not growing, that we…
You know, when you’re growing, there are some key advantages around being able to find new roles for people and, you know, that are growth-oriented and can, you know, keep talent essentially. And we were starting to lose people because, you know, the principal wasn’t leaving, and they wanted to be a principal, and we didn’t have another school, [00:28:00] and so they went somewhere else.
You know, not that the tail should wag the dog, but I was starting to feel like, okay, there’s some, like pressures of not growing also. And we have a really successful model, like there are a lot of kids out there who I’d love to share this model with, families, et cetera. So we’ve been sort of looking, but more opportunistically than like it’s our strategic plan that we’re gonna be in, you know, 10 schools in 10 years kind of thing.
And we got approached by people in Providence. I think the context there is like the traditional public school system in Providence, Providence Public Schools has been very low performing for decades. You know, single digit proficiency rates for many years. And the then governor at the time, Gina Raimondo, who left to become the Secretary of Commerce under Biden, but she was the governor then, didn’t want this on her record.
She wanted to do something about it. And so she both took over the schools, had her commissioner, I guess, take over the schools, and she tried to reach out to high-performing charters around the area to come into Rhode Island. And we were the only ones, this right, this happened right over COVID. We were the only ones foolish enough, [00:29:00] foolhardy enough to, like take her up on it.
And so we started the school right as COVID was sort of, was ending, and it was not a smooth start. You know, I hired a, sort of new school leader who was a wonderful person, who was not the right school leader for us, and we parted ways relatively quickly in the first year. And Nina, again, to give credit to her, essentially ran the school for the first year, like was- Wow
driving down to Boston every day, you know, getting up at 5:00 in the morning to run the school. And then we were able, you know, I think, again, the sort of honesty and transparency I think served us very well there. Like we’ve hired a new school leader, and in the interview process, we basically said, “Listen, this is not a strong school.
This is a turnaround. Like you have to wanna walk into a turnaround. Like that’s what we need here.” And we found someone who had moved up from Tennessee and was living n- near Providence with her family, who was the perfect person to take over the school in year two. I was on a panel with some other charter leaders actually in Nashville that I think Bellwether had done this study about what not to do when you’re replicating [00:30:00] charters, and their big lesson was don’t do it out of state.
That like th- I mean, they’ve done this macro study, and you may have seen it, like the most successful replications were within the city that you’re in, next was within the state, and the, by far the least successful when you were replicating out of state. And
Alisha Searcy: I was- And you said, “I’ll go do that.”
Owen Stearns: Yeah, and I was on the panel, and we were year three, and we’re sort of Generally successful, but like, you know, and that was sort of as the cautionary tale.
And I remember saying, I was like, “Listen, we were a strong charter.” Rhode Island is, you know, an hour, it’s an hour drive from Boston. It’s, like, basically the same state. They have the same test score regimen. The, the RICAS is the same as the MCAS. There were a lot of, like, advantages we had, even though we’re going out of state, and still it was really hard and we almost screwed it up.
And so I think that was an important cautionary tale that I, I feel. Like, I feel like if we’d been trying to do it in South Carolina or Arizona or whatever, we would’ve probably been much less successful.
Alisha Searcy: Yeah. Well, it sounds to me like you could sum it all up by saying, “Where’s Nina, and how can we [00:31:00] clone her?”
Yes. That’s what
Owen Stearns: it sounds
Alisha Searcy: like we need to
Owen Stearns: do. That is… I’ve been looking into that. The science doesn’t appear to be quite there yet. No, I mean, I feel incredibly lucky to have had her as a partner in this and, yeah, on many levels.
Alisha Searcy: Absolutely. The whole thing is incredible, though. Obviously there was a lot of work, a lot of commitment that had to go into that, and you’re doing well.
So I wanna talk about some of the data about Massachusetts as a whole. So for nearly 20 years, independent data from researchers at Stanford, MIT, Duke, and elsewhere have made clear that the Boston charter schools are the best in the country at closing gaps. And you already talked about that as you talked about your students being at the top, not just in growth, but in proficiency, which is outstanding.
Can you talk to us more about what has made the Massachusetts charter school landscape so academically rigorous and dynamic?
Owen Stearns: I would focus on two things. One is that the talent market in the Boston area in particular is just incredibly [00:32:00] strong. Probably obvious reasons, but just to state them, like there are a lot of young, smart people who wanna move to Boston after they graduate college.
They either went to college here, or they have family here, or they wanna go to grad school here at some point, like, and there are a handful of cities across the country that I think can say that. And I, I didn’t fully realize how powerful that was, and I don’t think we did until we started opening a school in Providence, which is a wonderful city that, like, has a great quality of life.
Also has, you know, has an Ivy League s- college there, has great restaurants, has a lot of great things, but it’s not Boston. There are very few people who are graduating from college who are like, “Oh, I really wanna move to Providence.” Finding great teachers there has been much, much more challenging than in Boston.
Alisha Searcy: And,
Owen Stearns: you know, there’s a lot of competition for those teachers, but I think when you have a strong school and a clear message of what you’re looking for, you get at least your share of of that talent pool. I think that’s been really important to the story, and I, I think to the story of like… Well, it’s, it’s why Massachusetts is still like number one state in the country, public [00:33:00] schools anyway, you know, pub- public and, you know, district and charter together.
The other thing I would name is, and that comes from very early on when the charter sector in Boston was founded, you know, twenty-five years ago, there was a quite strong culture of collaboration within the Boston Charters that I think, you know, started from the founders of those early charters. You know, Utaka being one of them, but also, you know, Brett Pisa now the head of Uncommon Schools, or John King became Secretary of Education, and a number of others, like very inspiring, effective leaders who developed both, like I think real friendships among that group.
I think there’s a lot of camaraderie, uh, you know, authentic in its friendship, but also like we are fighting a much bigger battle here collectively, and it’s important that we’re all successful. And so the, a level of coopetition, if you will. You know, some general rules around how we’re gonna operate together, particularly around talents and, you know, not poaching each other’s talent.
But more importantly, you know, when the test scores come out, like who really crushed like eighth grade math this year? We gotta go visit that school. What the heck are they doing? I mean, [00:34:00] find the great practices out there and try to like share what they’re doing. That happens a lot within, I’d say particularly the Boston Charters, but I think it’s now across the state, and we have a very strong charter school association that helps facilitate a lot of that these days.
But they’re building on the informal agreements and culture and relationships that existed prior to that. You know, brought formality to it, which I think is important, but I think that’s been an important part of the story.
Alisha Searcy: Makes sense. Thank you for that. I wanna talk about the ballot initiative. So as successful as the Boston charters have been since the 2016 charter school ballot initiative loss, the Massachusetts charter sector has been struggling, I think some could say.
Can you talk about the ballot loss, the various state charter caps and regulations, as well as why some charters’ student performance has been dropping over the last decade?
Owen Stearns: I think I want to separate this into two questions. One is sort of the politics of Massachusetts around [00:35:00] charters and education that I still have PTSD.
It’s, you know, ten years now since that ballot loss and it’s still too soon to talk about it, but not really. And then the second is the, like, charter school performance generally, which I think has certainly taken some hits since then. This will probably be a familiar take to you all. Like, you know, charter schools as a policy initiative feel like a very, you know, centrist, used to be bipartisan idea that Barack Obama supported, Mitt Romney supported, I think John McCain supported, like, Cory Booker, like right of center, left of center people were behind for many years.
And centrist ideas in today’s politics are not very popular. It’s like the discourse is dominated, I feel like, by the far left and the far right, and it’s… That hurts. It’s, we don’t have a lot of champions out there for the work in the way, you know, I feel like we did when we were getting founded. And so that, you know, in a very blue state and a very strong union state, that’s a challenging political environment that, you know, clearly led to that loss, and [00:36:00] the loss was…
This was, you know, a statewide referendum, which I think in retrospect was a mistake. Like, there are a lot of communities across Massachusetts that have no charter schools, and so the teachers union, which ran the opposition to that ballot initiative, talks about how it’s gonna destroy the public schools, traditional public schools in those towns, which of course it’s nonsense, it would have no impact.
But we didn’t have anyone there knocking on doors and making the case, and so we got trounced, you know, sort of two to one. So politically, it was probably not an advised, you know, well-advised idea, even though at the time it seemed great to me. And then I think since then, like, it’s been interesting. I feel like where we are now is that there’s been a sort of some, like, détente.
It’s not that our opponents don’t try to do things to damage the sector, but I feel like Elizabeth Warren may have… Who used to be a charter supporter and now is not, but I feel like she may have been, just because she’s such an important voice to the larger Massachusetts political sort of scene, of like, “There’s some good here.
Let’s not get rid of these guys. Let’s, like, they’re not gonna grow anymore. Let’s let it sort of, you know, [00:37:00] may- let’s see what happens.” And I think, you know, we- we’ve had enough champions in the legislature and in the governor’s office. You know, Charlie Baker, the former governor, was a huge charter supporter, and I think that mattered a lot during a time when we could have really, you know, our opponents really were coming after us.
And now, like, we’re, you know, the charter association’s doing a fundraiser for lieutenant governor in a couple weeks, who’s, you know, the most likely next governor once Maura Healey, our current governor, leaves. We have a great commissioner, Pedro Martinez, who’s, you know, he’s not a full-throated charter supporter, but he’s happened to be a good friend of mine from Pahara and is a- Ah
you know, he’s certainly a great schools, particularly for low-income kids guy, and recognizes the value that charters have had in that. The secretary of education, a guy named Steve Zrike, was on my board for many years and was the superintendent of, of Salem, where the witches are, for many years, and he just became the secretary of education.
And so the fact that The governor’s office, again, not a huge charter supporter office, selected Steve to be her secretary [00:38:00] is like a notable recognition of, like, that we’re here to stay and of our value. So that’s what– I mean, that’s why taking the politics relatively sort of similar, like it’s, you know, it’s a constant fight, and we have a few champions, and you just try to…
Right now we feel like we’re more fending off things that would hurt us than trying to get more seats. I don’t feel like we’re in a position to do that, but it’s generally been working, and, like there’s enough reasonable people there that has kept us safe. That’s a different… I mean, it’s, it’s somewhat related to the charter school performance, I think.
I do think there were some charter school leaders who, after the ballot thing failed, were like, “Well,” and funders who were like, “Well, Massachusetts is not a place of growth anymore, not a place I can grow personally, and so I’m gonna go take my skills or my funding elsewhere.” And I think that had some impact, and that’s a logical thing that, you know, a market’s gonna allow to happen.
I think my other, you know, th-th-lessons like… Well, l-like building that led to a bunch of turnover in leadership at a bunch of charters, including at Excel. Like, like I started around those, you know, I guess a little before that, but [00:39:00] like, you know, in the same era. But we had a bunch of school leaders leave during that time.
You know, we know leadership turnover is one of the biggest drivers of dips in performance, and so I think that is a, an important insight. COVID clearly had an impact as well. And then I think there was, there’s a lot been written about this, I think, recently. But like, you know, there was this sort of the reckoning that was somewhat driven by Black Lives Matter, but I think it was happening before then.
That I, I felt– The, the way I experienced it at Excel was when we were– we started, we were like, “Everyone should be going to college.” And our first wave of kids go through college, and we have a pretty high dropout rate, you know, much higher than we were expecting in college. This was our kids who were 100% of them were succeeding on the standardized tests.
We thought these kids were good, and they, I think they were academically ready. But, you know, this will be overly simplified, but I think it’s generally true, like many of those kids didn’t know why they were in college. They were in college because we told them they should go, but they had not internalized why college was important to them.
We had not had a program around, like, “Who are you? What do you want to do with your life?” Like-
Alisha Searcy: [00:40:00] Yeah … ”
Owen Stearns: And why is college a vehicle to get there?” Like, and I remember the conversation vividly. The head of our CAPS team came to me in those early– I was, I think I’d just started at that point. And she was like: “Listen, this is a thing.
Like, you know, we’re about to launch our high school. We need to, like, have our high school really lean in on not just the academic preparation, but also make sure kids, like, know why they’re-” Whatever they’re gonna do next, know why they’re doing it, and they’re affirmatively making this choice and not just going because we are telling them to go.
And that took a while to sort of figure out how to integrate that part of a curriculum, if you will, into the academic rigor. And there were certainly years where I feel like we slipped on the academic rigor ’cause we were trying to make room for this other piece of a program. And I think that led to this Kiera Martinez moment I was referencing earlier, where she’s like, “We’ve lost sight of the academic rigor bar.”
Like, we gotta get back to that too. It’s a both/and. It’s not either/or. Right. It’s gotta be both. I think every school had its own journey of that, and I think some are still more in the middle of that, trying to figure out what that means. You know, it’s not a [00:41:00] rejection, not a, a wholly rejection of what we were doing earlier.
It’s just bringing new materials or, you know, approach in a lens into that.
Alisha Searcy: Mm-hmm. I think that’s such an important reflection. Thank you for sharing that. It’s definitely a both/and and balancing that, especially for kids who they are the first in their family to go to college, right? And there are all of- Right
the things that go along with that, and coping and being able to thrive in that environment. So that’s a really good reflection. And so my final question, I wanna touch a little bit more on policy. If you could look into your crystal ball, you’ve looked back, now let’s look forward. The charter sector in Massachusetts has achieved great results for students while also having some significant political challenges, and you’ve touched on that just a little bit.
As a veteran charter leader now, what would you like to see in the policy-making community and the wider charter movement to really help your schools and other higher performing charter schools?
Owen Stearns: Yeah, I really appreciate [00:42:00] this question particularly because I’ve, from this conversation and other reflections, I do feel like I and others have– we’ve been playing a lot of defense in the policy world and less, less asking for things.
One thing that I felt I’ve seen more of in the last year or two, more in Massachusetts than Rhode Island, although I’m pushing for in Rhode Island, that I have really appreciated is bringing together charter and district leaders to just talk about what’s working. That for some reason that, like, just doesn’t happen as much as it should.
And one meeting last year that I, that I thought was particularly meaningful was the commissioner recognized the, I think there were 63 districts inc- including charters in Massachusetts that last year had met or exceeded their pre-COVID test score numbers. And so they reached out to all of those schools and districts and said, “Hey, we’re gonna have a meeting,” you know, “in the middle of the state.
If you have something you want to share with the other top schools in the state, please let us know.” And it was basically a series of TED Talks, like probably 15, 20 of them across charters [00:43:00] and districts. And what I really appreciated about it was no one said anything about the fact that there were charters and districts in the room.
It was just like, “You’re the top schools in the state. You each have things that you’d like to share with each other. Like, choose the room that’s gonna resonate with you most, or the rooms that resonate with you, and go learn from each other.” And it was wonderful. We talked about our teacher observational rubric and, like, shared it with, I don’t know, a dozen other schools and, you know, districts around the state, some charter, some district, and picked up some things from others.
It’s such a simple, like, not that complicated thing, but I feel like we just need to have more of that to just remind- Yeah … ourselves, like, what the focus is on, like, the actual work and not on the politics. And it starts building relationships that that was the first thing that came to mind. I mean, I, I, I would love if in every state they can figure out ways to allow high-performing charters to continue to grow.
Like, I would be fine if there are expectations put around that or– and as there have been in Massachusetts from the beginning. And this maybe should’ve been part of my answer to the earlier question about what’s made the [00:44:00] Massachusetts charter sector successful. It’s, like, Massachusetts DESE, the Department of Education, basically didn’t allow fast growth.
KIPP is here, but they were only allowed to grow, you know, a grade level a year, basically. They weren’t allowed to just plop five new schools down. And I do think that led to higher quality. It took longer, and we’re not as penetrated, you know, as some other states, but I think the quality is higher when you do that.
So I’d be fine with those rules as long as there’s some openness to that happening.
Alisha Searcy: Owen, thank you so much for being with us. This was a great conversation. Albert and I both learned quite a bit from you, and we just appreciate all that you and your team are doing to educate these amazing young people that we’ve been hearing about today.
Owen Stearns: Thanks for having me
Albert Cheng: Well, great interview, uh, wasn’t that, Alisha? It’s always great to hear from these school leaders, and I know we have them- Mm-hmm … from [00:45:00] time to time on the show. But I always walk out being inspired and encouraged that, you know, there are these pockets of excellence and folks trying to make their community better.
Alisha Searcy: Exactly. And it’s no surprise what I’m about to say. I’m always inspired when I’m hearing about schools that are getting it right for kids, that have high expectations, they’re closing gaps, kids are learning at high levels regardless of their ZIP code, their background. I love talking to school leaders like this because I learn so much.
And like you, I get inspired and just reminded of what is possible.
Albert Cheng: Well, well said, and as usual, Alisha, thanks for being with me on the show. I’m looking forward to our next show- Yes … which I’ll tease in a little bit, but before I tease that, let me leave everybody with the tweet of the week from Education Next.
Quote, “A people business: How excellent charter schools hire teachers.” And here we go again, Alisha, you know, looking to the charter sector for maybe some examples of excellence. [00:46:00] But take a look at this article. You know, charter schools like Excel Academy, they wouldn’t be excellent without great teachers, and so this is an article going inside with some charter schools about how they hire and retain and recruit excellent teachers.
So check it out. And going back to next week’s show, we’re gonna have Lincoln Tamayo, who is the chief operating officer of Academy Prep Foundation and the head of school of Academy Prep Center of Lakeland, Florida. So that’s gonna be a twofer, Alisha. We’re gonna have another educational leader on to talk about the work.
How about
Alisha Searcy: that?
Albert Cheng: Yeah. Well, so I’ll see you next week, Alisha, and everybody else, we hope to see you back on the show.
Alisha Searcy: See you soon.