Turning Around Schools the Right Way?

In The Century Fund Report: “Turnaround Schools That Work: Moving Beyond Separate but Equal,” an interesting question is posed.

What is the best way to "turn around" a school?

Frankly, I oppose programs such as Ren 10 because reform is being "done" to parents, students, and teachers, and not "with" them. However, I am not so naive to think that no school needs to be turned-around. In some instances, the best hope a school has at success is to start over--but it is all about how the school starts over that makes all the difference.

In the TCF report, Richard Kahlenberg details why charter chains like KIPP can be successful with low-income students--but also explains why the KIPP model probably cannot be sustained or replicated successfully. Charter schools like KIPP rely on "self-selected motivated students & parents" who desire longer school days and weekend enrichment. As the TCF report points out, attrition rates among students & teachers are high at schools like KIPP.

High attrition = low sustainability.

Kahlenberg goes on to mention that creating magnet schools in which attendance is driven by a mix of SES, not race or ethnicity, may be more effective at raising student achievement. This makes sense to me. The highest predictor in student achievement is SES not --race or ethnicity--though it should be pointed out that SES & race are strongly correlated, especially in urban areas. So, in effect, using SES to determine magnet school enrollment would increase school diversity but not for diversity's sake.

Turning Ideas Into Action

As mentioned in my last entry, organizations that transform themselves from failing to successful share one thing in common: they all are meta-reflective in their approach to reform. These organizations think deeply about what has gone wrong, create a new, well-thought mission & vision, and then turn their thoughts into action. Improving a failing business takes time. Schools are no different. And, despite what NCLB, RTTP, and Ren 10 demand of us, a positive, sustainable change to our schools cannot & will not happen over night.

The top-down management system that large, urban school districts have adopted is the first thing that needs to go. This management style is a slap in the face to parents, students, teachers, and schools. The top-down system says to the public "We do not trust that you are capable or competent enough to create good schools so we will call the shots." In doing so, ownership of schools is taken away from all the people that matter and is given to a handful of detached business people who care only about the bottom line. In order to create lasting, sustainable change, decision making power has to be given back to parents, students, teachers, and schools. Change must be organic and not orchestrated by a central office.

Here's my plan for change:
I propose that local colleges & universities become more involved in public education reform efforts. For too long have departments of education been separated from the practice of teaching and school reform. As Dewey said in Schools & Society: "We want an even more intimate union here, so that the University shall put all its resources at the disposition of the elementary school, contributing to the evaluation of valuable subject matter-matter and the right method, while the school in turn will be a laboratory in which the student of education sees theories and ideas demonstrated, tested, criticized, enforced, and the evolution of new truths.” Theory & practice at the university level have been separated for too long.

Following me?

Further, instead of having "areas" of schools, which amount to pockets of schools geographically related, as in CPS, about 10 CPS schools would partner with a single university. This would then become its own mini-district, still a part of CPS. Decisions at these schools would be made directly by parents, students, and teachers and the process would be faciltated by the sponsoring university. Students of education at the sponsoring university would perform their clinical training at the partner CPS school.

This type of reform is not too far-fetched. It gets rid of the top-down management approach and gives power back to the real stakeholders. The reform also gets the university involved in reform efforts.

Maybe it is too good to be true.

Public Education as a Failing Business

In the age of accountability, our public school systems have turned into an industry. Our schools have become business. The title "superintedendent" has been replaced by "CEO" in many of America's large urban school districts. And if our schools have become companies, then it is our children who have become products. With all this said, I do believe that educational leaders are trying to improve education. However, we are failing miserably.

If America's public education system was really an industry, it would soon be going out of business. In the business world, struggling companies do one of two things: they either adapt to their surroundings and change the way they do business or they cease to exist. Businesses that adapt to their surroundings and become successful are meta-reflective; they come together & reflect, figure out what isn't working, and spend time and effort making it work. They redefine who they are and what they do. Conversely, a failing business refuses to accept its own current reality and is too stubborn to change.

Plain and simple, this is why public education is failing. Major stakeholders are refusing to accept the current reality. If we as stakeholders cannot be honest about where we are, there is no way we'll get to where we want to go.

Solving Word Poverty

Students from low-income families begin their school careers with a vocabulary that is half as extensive as their middle & upper class counterparts. Obviously, there are exceptions to this rule; there are plenty of students from lower SES households who have vast vocabularies and excel in reading and writing classes just as there are plenty of middle & upper class kids who struggle with the same material. The point is that, on average, SES is the best predictor of vocabulary. This is a fact. Look it up. And it isn't a specific problem to America

So why is this such an issue? An article in the London Telegraph sums it up nicely. In Orwell's 1984, the citizens were denied vocabulary. Why? Having a vast vocabulary allows one to put words with feelings. With strong feelings, come strong actions. By taking away vocabulary, the citizens in 1984 became powerless.

The term word poverty is not new. However, despite "reform" efforts, educational stakeholders cannot seem to solve this problem. Educational reform groups such as the EEP & BBA see the issue in extremes. The EEP is likely to think that word poverty is the school's fault; teachers need to be held accountable for better vocabulary intstruction. The BBA would blame social conditions; low-income kids have less access to books and vocabulary enrichment activities. Like most solutions, the answer usually lies somewhere in the middle. So in this case, what is the middle? And how do we as educators get to the bottom of it?

This Alphabet Soup Tastes the Same: RTTP, NCLB, Ren 10.

The general pattern of RTTP, NCLB, & Ren 10 is as follows:
School districts are rewarded for achievement. Achievement is determined by test scores. Schools that "fail" the standardized test are closed down and reopened as charters.

All three of these programs are based on the same faulty logic. All three assume that higher standerdized test scores reflect higher levels of learning. This logic reflects the notion that schools are to be run as factories where students are products.

Standardized tests are so prevalent because they are easy to quantify not because they paint a true picture of individual students. In fact, painting a true picture of each individual student would be costly and timely for large, urban school districts. What if the money spent on RTTP, Ren 10, and NCLB was instead allocated to gain a more holistic view of our students? Couldn’t that money be set aside to perform more authentic assessments? A true picture of a student cannot be achieved by observing the numbers of a standardized test score. Multiple intelligences, critical thinking skills, student effort, and other skills and characteristics need to be taken into account. In short, standardized test scores should only be a fraction of what school districts look at when determining student achievement levels.

By equating high standardized test scores with higher rates of learning and intelligence, RTTP, NCLB, and Ren 10 do not affirm the life experiences, multiple intelligences, and knowledge that public school children bring with them to school every day. Instead of seeing our youth as special individuals, they are defined by a number, a test score. The fact is, until a fundamental shift is made in how educational stakeholders define achievement, we will continue to “fail” our urban, low-income public school children.

Health Care Reform Through the Eyes of Urban Students

The last couple months of the health care debate has been nauseating. Unfortunately, the partisan media has painted the details of the reform in so many different shades that we as citizens don't know what to think. It is easy for anyone who has insurance to take that coverage for granted. For most of us who are covered, the easiest thing to do is stop listening to what the media is saying and distance ourselves from the issue.

At school, I see my homeroom students for 10 minutes everyday. Usually this is just enough time to greet them,take attendance, and make a few announcements. However, I'll never forget one particular day a few weeks ago when a handful of students came in all fired up about the health care issue (they were debating the issue in Civics). "Why wouldn't someone want health care that is available to everyone?" an impassioned student asked me. I looked at her and could not say much more than "I don't know."

How can one answer that question?

The school at which I teach is 95%+ low-income. Many of my students are not covered or not adequately covered with health insurance. In the age of accountability, when our public schools are judged by a single test score on a single day of school, how can we expect a student to perform if she is sick? How can we expect her to perform if her mother is sick? Dad? Sibling? How can we expect our students to perform if they cannot see well enough to read the small print on the standardized test?

So while Duncan is in DC pushing for "charter nation" and Huberman & Co. are analyzing the data to decide which school will be closed next, the CPS students who we are supposed to be serving, are hungry and sick.

So, I'll ask again: Why wouldn't someone want health care that is available to everyone?

Private Money: Thanks but No Thanks

Urban school systems operate with a top down management approach, one in which reform is performed by dumping money, ideas, and/or initiatives onto teachers. This approach is based on flawed mental models and is clearly missing the big picture. What classroom teachers need the most is another set of hands, eyes, and ears in the classroom—not a lump of money which will be the source of intradepartmental competition. Private organizations like the Gates Foundation notoriously donates big money to public education in the short term. In the past, the foundations like Gates have been quick to move on to other philanthropic causes when research does not confirm that their money helped make significant statistical improvements in high-stakes achievement tests. Case in point, the Small Schools Movement in Chicago; even though the Consortium on Chicago School Research has concluded that small high schools in Chicago have higher rates of attendance, lower dropout rates, and lower rates of violence than their larger school counterparts, private funding for the Small Schools Movement has evaporated. With this in mind, one must wonder whether educational benefactors have done more harm than good to public education. By giving school districts sizeable donations and then abruptly aborting the cause, urban school districts are left high and dry and looking for a new private donors to continue operations of specific programs. Seemingly, private money is an evil that public education must get out from under. This reliance causes public school districts to focus on symptoms of the problem rather than on long term cures. Further, this funding causes instability and low morale among teachers and principals, making it difficult to take new initiatives seriously knowing that they will probably be non-existent in a few years.