Achievement First
Doug McCurry: Plans for final year, after founding the charter network two decades ago.
A co-founder of the Achievement First charter school network will move on to another job — at a time when its controversial model of “no excuses” schooling is being reconsidered.
Doug McCurry, the co-CEO and superintendent of the charter management organization, announced his plans to the entire staff in a Friday email. He said he plans to leave at the end of this school year.
“After 20 years at Achievement First, I am energized as ever about our mission and I’m also feeling like this is the right time to pass the baton and seek out new challenges,” he wrote in an statement emailed by a spokesperson. “I am proud of these 20 years, and of the thousands of students who have received a great education within our now 37 schools. [And] I am already proud of what Achievement First will do in the next 20 years.”
McCurry hasn’t decided exactly what he’ll do come next summer, but he said he has a few interests in mind that he’d like to pursue.
“I am giving myself from now until my departure in June to explore opportunities before diving into a new project — one that will likely involve supporting excellence at schools across the country, improving higher education, or helping change the special education sector, especially through better supporting children and adults with autism,” which he experienced firsthand in trying to find services for his sons, who have been diagnosed on the autism spectrum.
Over the last two decades, McCurry (along with co-CEO Dacia Toll) grew a single middle school in New Haven into a network of 37 schools across three states that currently enroll nearly 14,000 students, who are almost entirely black and brown and often growing up in poverty.
Despite accepting those kids through a blind lottery, test scores soared over other city schools.
In New Haven, school leaders began following Achievement First’s reforms and sending their principal candidates to the network for training.
Charter schools, like Achievement First’s, are largely operated privately (with periodic reviews by state authorizers) and largely funded publicly (with supplemental money from donors).
The schools were rooted in the “no excuses” model, which holds that rigorous academics and exacting discipline can overcome the structural barriers of race and class.
Teachers are expected to be both “warm” and “demanding.” McCurry embodied that, when Amistad first started, by “jumping Double Dutch at recess with our fifth graders and then returning to class to ensure every student mastered every math standard,” Toll, who will become the sole CEO, wrote to staff.
While administrators still hand out suspensions far more often than those at other schools, even after a new approach to discipline, the network points to its results.
“When we first started Achievement First, I remember folks from Yale or other high-name colleges would say, ‘You know what, we can’t blame the schools, because there’s a straight-line correlation between academic achievement and socioeconomic status,’” McCurry said in 2010. “But they also found something else that no one ever talks about, which was that the teacher really matters. There are great teachers in low-income areas that are making it for kids.
“If that’s the case, then it proves that it’s not the kids,” he continued. “If we can set up schools where there are great teachers in every classroom, the whole Coleman myth of this [direct correlation with family background], that the Yale folks were trotting out in Connecticut 10 years ago before we started, would be shattered.”
While they have never quite matched the wealthy suburbs in Connecticut as they had in New York, Achievement First schools have generally scored higher marks on standardized tests than their urban counterparts.
To prepare for college, students are now taking more Advanced Placement classes, almost tripling the number of seniors passing at least one exam during high school, McCurry said in his email. And if they make it to graduation, students regularly claim spots at top colleges.
That’s led to national recognition for its student success: Achievement First was a four-time finalist for the Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools that recognizes the top non-profit charter management organizations.
Christopher Peak Photo
Zack Murphy, an Amistad High School senior, joins dozens demanding change this January.
In recent years, the longevity of that strict “no excuses” model has come under more scrutiny.
“You’ve got to get them all right like it’s a symphony,” McCurry told Chalkbeat in 2016, about Achievement First’s principles. “I think, over the last few years, we’ve been playing the focus and rigor notes maybe more loudly than the investment and thinking notes.”
In 2016, students walked out of AF Amistad High School in protest, pointing to the lack of teachers of color and excessive punishment.
In 2017, Achievement First’s schools in Bridgeport and New Haven were put under state scrutiny, with only a three-year charter renewal, for the continued disproportionately high rate of suspensions.
And this year, Amistad’s high school’s principal resigned after the Independent published a video of him shoving a student into a corner, along with reports that he’d gotten away with aggressive behavior towards students for years before.
For charter schools as a whole, the landscape has shifted, especially after Donald Trump’s election.
Democratic supporters grew wary of being tied to U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Teachers felt uncomfortable punishing students for minor rule-breaking. And parents felt less of a need to escape from district-run schools that had implemented their own reforms, even though black and brown parents still largely support charters.
Tom Kaiser, AF’s chief talent officer, presents new values to Connecticut board members.
This summer, Achievement First administrators unveiled a set of new values that marked a shift away from “no excuses,” at least in branding. But some board members worried the network was losing something fundamental.
What would AF be without demanding it will do “whatever it takes” to reach “results without excuses”? Would it be still be able to send so many students off to top colleges by shifting its priorities to “racial equity,” “the whole person,” and “joy”?
McCurry, in his email to staff on Friday, said he’s “proud” of how the network has changed over his two decades at the helm, as it “embraced challenge,” trying to make improvements that would benefit students.
“While we still care deeply about achievement, I’m proud that we have set our sights on a definition of student success and student experience that goes well beyond any of these assessments,” like the Smarter Balanced Assessment and Advanced Placement exam, he wrote to the staff.
Why resign this year? McCurry, feeling “pulled toward new challenges, said he feels confident in the structure that’s been built over the last two decades.
“The thought of leaving the organization I love deeply is, of course, difficult, but it feels like the right time for me. It’s also the right time for AF,” he wrote to staff. “I’ve worked hard over the past few years to ensure we have strong leadership at every level, and we now have the strongest and most diverse group of teachers and leaders we’ve ever had. I deeply believe in our vision for the next five years — great teaching fueling an exceptional student experience — and we have incredibly strong leadership to guide these priorities.
“I know what is strong and special about AF will be preserved, and that the organization will continue to evolve in powerful ways to remain a sector-leading exemplar of excellence and equity,” he added.
Dacia Toll: Soon to be sole CEO.
Starting in July 2020, Toll will become Achievement First’s sole CEO.
In the meantime, the network plans to conduct a search for a chief of schools, who will be in charge of the regional superintendents, and a president, who will be in charge of network support, she said.
Toll said that McCurry had played an essential role in defining Achievement First.
“Doug has been a truly transformative leader for AF. He is both a visionary, big picture thinker and a detail-oriented, excellence-obsessed executor. In so many ways big and small, Doug has developed the strategic direction for AF and then set to work ensuring we have the plans and talented people we need to achieve that vision,” she wrote to staff. “While Doug sees the best in AF, he is also willing to name when something is not good enough. And then, over and over, he has worked tirelessly to make it better.”
I remember how dismayed so many of us were when McCurry, in a 2013 New York Times article, said he would be happy if "the majority of teachers that walked in the door gave us five or seven really good teaching years and then went on to do something else."
It confirmed for us what many already suspected about the degree to which this co-founder valued experience and retention.
So long, Doug! Not everyone can be a 'lifer.'