Author: Sarah Lassonde
Director of External Affairs,
GreenLight Fund
Matt Spengler doesn't shy away from a challenge. As founder and executive director of the Blueprint Schools Network, he is helping to turn around some of our nation’s lowest
performing schools. By forging deep partnerships with school districts and
leveraging research-based practices from high-performing charter schools,
Blueprint helps plan, implement, and monitor school improvement
initiatives.
And he’s getting
results. In Denver, where Blueprint has been operating since 2011 in 10
schools, student growth has “outpaced the district” in just two years. All of
Blueprint’s schools were in the top 13 in the state for student growth in
mathematics, and at Montbello High School, every 2014 graduate was accepted to
a two- or four-year college for the first time in the school’s history.
With support from
GreenLight, Blueprint is working at two “Level 4” schools - a designation
reserved for the state’s most struggling schools - the Elihu Greenwood
Leadership Academy (K-5) and the English High School. Blueprint will work as a
turnaround partner to implement reforms in partnership with the district with
the hope of achieving similar results. We have no doubt he’s up to the
challenge.
As GreenLight Boston
celebrates the launch of Blueprint this week at our Tenth Annual
GreenLight Gala, we sat down with Matt to talk about why he founded Blueprint,
and why he’s particularly excited about the opportunity to work in Boston.
Sarah Lassonde: Why
did you decide to found Blueprint Schools Network?
Matt Spengler: I started my teaching career under emergency
credentials. I walked into a large dysfunctional high school in South Central
Los Angeles that was turning teachers over, year after year. I had no training
and no experience, but with 10 openings to fill mid-year, the principal looked
at my resume and said “when can you start?” Over six years at that school, I
saw the dedication and quality of people who were trying to make a difference
for kids, and it became clear that our efforts were like putting a fist into a
bucket of water. You’d make the effort and pull out and see that nothing had
changed.
Since then I've been a principal and part of many
educational organizations, and I've seen firsthand the power that a
high-quality teacher, a remarkable principal and a high-functioning school can
have on kids, both in terms of academic performance, but also on the
opportunities they have in the future.
Blueprint was really born out of a desire to create high-quality
schools that kids can actually walk to, so that regardless of zip code or where
they grow up, they’ll have a high quality system
of schools that are in their own neighborhood.
SL: Education – and
in particular, the achievement gap – has been at the top of the headlines both
in Boston and around the country. Can you talk about how Blueprint is working
to address educational equity?
Matt Spengler: I
believe schools are the one place where every kid has the opportunity to change
and to grow. When you look back across the decades, even though we have
individual pockets of success and some schools that are doing well, we’re not
seeing this uniformly across the country. We’re not seeing great change across
a network of schools. We know that within individual schools it’s possible to change outcomes, it’s
possible to achieve equity, but we haven’t seen this at scale.
At Blueprint, our job is to provide a catalyst, so that
low-performing schools over short periods of time can sustain promising
practices and improve results for kids.
SL: How do you know
you’re making a difference?
MS: In Denver,
when you walk into Blueprint schools, it’s incredibly powerful and energizing,
especially after seeing the schools two years ago (before the turnaround). You
see the community that gets formed, because there is a group of caring adults
that are invested in students and are using smart strategies to make change.
At Blueprint, we feel the same sense of ownership as the
principal, the teachers and the community members feel. So when we see positive
change in a school, it’s momentum-building, it’s energizing, and it’s what we
want to see in districts across the country.
SL: Why is Boston
such an exciting opportunity for Blueprint?
MS: Blueprint
Schools is headquartered in Newton, so we’re excited to work in our own
backyard. Boston is the birthplace of
public education, and we’re currently working with the oldest public high
school in the United States. There is a district full of dedicated adults who
are working very hard to make change. Boston also has a strong spirit of
community service and public service.
However, the needs in Boston are similar to those we see in
other parts of the country, of kids who are not developing the same skills and
the same enthusiasm for learning that we see in high-performing schools. What
we hope to do in Boston is to leverage these assets and bring together
effective strategies in concert to help make change in these schools.
