- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Why I Love Penn GSE
This time a year ago, the weather in Philly was miserable. The traffic was terrible, and the stench was unmistakably east coast industrial. My boyfriend dragged me around Philadelphia on what was clearly a noble effort to help me fall in love with the city I would soon call home. Having just been rejected from another top-tier ed school, my ego was bruised and the cloudy skies weren’t helping matters.
Now, I’m nearing the end of my program and I am often tasked with helping newly-admitted students understand what makes Penn GSE stand out. In the process, I found myself reflecting on my own journey to the little four-story building at 3700 Walnut Street.
There used to be a place on the Penn GSE website with a little cartoon man in a scrappy Popeye-esque fightin’ stance. The text underneath said something to the effect of, “we’re a small ed school, but we’re passionate.” With that, I was sold. Penn’s enthusiasm beat out the sunshine of the south, and the chance to live near the heart of DC. It even rebuilt my bruised ego. So, on that Saturday in March, I explored Penn and Philly with a disgruntled excitement — if that’s a thing. I even bought a sweatshirt that I then refused to remove (a tradition that I associate with my not-so-gently loved Reed sweatshirt).
I am eternally grateful that I ended up at Penn GSE, and not anywhere else.
It didn’t take long to feel justified in my choice. Within a week, I had my first revelatory moment — I knew next to nothing about education policy. Two weeks later, I sat outside a favorite Philly pizza joint espousing the gospel of Ravitch to my patient boyfriend. In another week, I would experience my next revelation: Ravitch was wrong. Whereas reading Ravitch made me indignant, everything I read thereafter made me confused. How could I know so little? As a well-trained Reedie, I felt my excitement build as I became more confused. I thrived on the need to ask more questions, which quickly led to spending time in my professors’ offices and joining an independent study class that focused on schools and community development.
The Scene of the First Revelation
(As a side note, I should mention that the size of my cohort was immediately shocking to me. I know that most ed schools have huge master’s programs where it’s easy to feel lost; where professors sometimes hold office hours but more often rely on their TAs to field the questions of pesky master’s students. Penn GSE is neither of those things. My Ed Policy cohort is 15. Fifteen students. My largest class at Penn is 25; my smallest is 6. My professors all hold office hours, and most are eager to have us stop by after class. One professor frequently interrupts his other meetings if he sees a student’s head pop around the corner.)
Within a week most of my preconceived notions were shattered, and my desire to read any and everything was uncontrollable. My professors quickly caught onto this passion and happily shared reading materials with me. What I respect most is that no professor ever says no to talking through an idea. These are professors who’ve been around for decades — and have probably heard it all — but they always want to engage anyway. They don’t treat me like a student. Well, they do, but they also treat me like someone who is capable of coming up with new and brilliant ideas.
Then, there are my peers. Like I mentioned, there are fifteen master’s students in Ed Policy this year. Within that group, I have friends who are passionate about teacher’s unions, merit-based pay, international comparative education, state-based policy initiatives that harness old resources in new ways, and the benefits of Waldorf schools. I learn something new from my peers daily. And we make connections between each other’s work. I can’t tell you how many times we realize mid-conversation that our seemingly-distinct thesis topics overlap in huge ways. We build on each other’s excitement, and we’re proud of each other. Rarely as an undergraduate student did I feel that my peers and I were encouraged to be proud of each other — excited, yes, but not proud. Here, I fill to the brim with pride when I hear about the work my peers are doing.
We’re intellectuals, and we’re a community. Those are two nebulous ideas, but I feel them distinctly when I spend hours in the lounge engaged in conversation.
Lunch Hour Debate about Ed Reform
Lastly, I have my personal intellectual journey. When I entered Penn, I had pretty basic ideas about what I wanted to do. “I am fascinated by the bridge between high school and college.” I can’t tell you how many times I uttered that statement. But, as I near the end of my program, I am astonished by the naiveté of my past self. Not that the bridge doesn’t matter — it does. But I can’t focus on the bridge without devoting my life to K12. Things in our education system aren’t working, and few people agree on why. My time in admission often made me irate — why can’t schools teach reading, writing, and arithmetic? Why does financial aid have to hinder a student’s chances of admission so dramatically? I’m still angry, but now I feel empowered because I have a better understanding of the landscape.
In a class on the economics of education, I wrote a literature review on the barriers to entry and exit in the charter school market. When I began the paper, I knew next to nothing about charter schools — except the vitriolic rhetoric that both sides used to defend their positions. By the end of that paper, I was wrapped up in autonomy, states’ rights, accountability, and a dozen other issues that plague the school system and handicap the ability for charter schools to function. I entered the paper convinced that charter schools had an unfair advantage; by the end of it, I was sympathetic to a completely different position. My professor, the Vice Dean, calls this the power of viewing problems as an agnostic. He emphasizes the impact of focusing on whether something works and how it works, instead of whether I agree with it. Honestly, that’s the best piece of advice a professor has ever given me.
Now I am expanding that paper into my thesis. My first section examines the structure of the charter school market from a business and innovation perspective. My second section isolates the most important barriers to entry and exit and how these elements influence the growth of charter management organizations (networks of charter schools — think KIPP). My last section will synthesize data analysis with close readings of state charter school laws to better understand the impact of CMOs’ behavior on the development of innovation in the charter school market.
Nine months ago, I would have had absolutely no idea what any of that meant.
Not only do my professors love the angle I am taking in my thesis, but they are actively encouraging me to write my thesis with an eye toward publication. They have an incredible faith in my ability to produce consistently strong work. They see my potential, and want to light a fire under it. I never thought graduate school professors would devote so much time to their students.
I am a changed person. My undergraduate career gave me a taste of what an intellectual transformation can feel like, but it was my professors and peers at Penn GSE who have helped me realize, clarify, and act on my potential to be a game-changer in the world of education reform.
Even if I had the chance to re-enroll at any ed school, anywhere in the country, knowing what I know now, I would choose Penn without a second of hesitation. As for Philly, the traffic is irrelevant when you bike and walk everywhere, the smell is better than NYC, there are plenty of delicious restaurants with local food, and the hipsters remind me of Portland. Looking down Locust walk when everyone is using an umbrella is absolutely gorgeous. And, when the sun shines, campus looks damn beautiful.
