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4,100 students prove 'Small is better' rule wrong
By SAM DILLON BROCKTON, Mass. — A decade ago, Brockton High School was a case study in failure. Teachers and administrators often voiced the unofficial school motto in hallway chitchat: students have a right to fail if they want. And many of them did — only a quarter of the students passed statewide exams. One in three dropped out. Then Susan Szachowicz and a handful of fellow teachers decided to take action. They persuaded administrators to let them organize a schoolwide campaign that involved reading and writing lessons into every class in all subjects, including gym. Their efforts paid off quickly. In 2001 testing, more students passed the state tests after failing the year before than at any other school in Massachusetts. The gains continued. This year and last, Brockton outperformed 90 percent of Massachusetts high schools. And its turnaround is getting new attention in a report, "How High Schools Become Exemplary," published last month by Ronald F. Ferguson, an economist at Harvard who researches the minority achievement gap. What makes Brockton High's story surprising is that, with 4,100 students, it is an exception to what has become received wisdom in many educational circles — that small is almost always better. That is why the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the last decade breaking down big schools into small academies (it has since switched strategies, focusing more on instruction). Brockton, by contrast, is the largest public school in Massachusetts, and one of the largest in the nation. "I tell them we're a big school that works," said Dr. Szachowicz, whose booming voice makes her seem taller than 5-foot-6 as she walks the hallways, greeting students, walkie-talkie in hand. She and other teachers took action in part because academic catastrophe seemed to be looming, Dr. Szachowicz and several of her colleagues said in interviews here. Massachusetts had instituted a new high school exit exam in 1993, and passing it would be required to graduate a decade later. Unless the school's culture improved, some 750 seniors would be denied a diploma each year, starting in 2003. Dr. Szachowicz and Paul Laurino, then the head of the English department — he has since retired — began meeting on Saturdays with any colleagues they could pull together to brainstorm strategies for improving the school. "They were horrible," Dr. Szachowicz recalled. She painted them in bold letters on poster paper in the group's Saturday meeting room. "Is this the best we can be?" she wrote underneath. The committee's first big step was to go back to basics, and deem that reading, writing, speaking and reasoning were the most important skills to teach. They set out to recruit every educator in the building — not just English, but math, science, even guidance counselors — to teach those skills to students. The committee put together a rubric to help teachers understand what good writing looks like, and began devoting faculty meetings to teaching department heads how to use it. The school's 300 teachers were then trained in small groups. Writing exercises took many forms, but encouraged students to think methodically. A science teacher, for example, had her students write out, step by step, how to make a sandwich, starting with opening the cupboard to fetch the peanut butter, through washing the knife once the sandwich was made. Other writing exercises, of course, were much more sophisticated. Some teachers dragged their feet. Michael Thomas, now the district's operations director but who led the school's physical education department at the time, recalled that several of his teachers told him, "This is gym; we shouldn't have to teach writing." Mr. Thomas said he replied, "If you want to work at Brockton High, it's your job." Fear held some teachers back — fear of wasting time on what could be just another faddish reform, fear of a heavier workload — and committee members tried to help them surmount it. "Let me help you," was a response committee members said they often offered to reluctant colleagues who argued that some requests were too difficult. The first big boost came with the results of the spring 2001 tests. Although Brockton's scores were still unacceptably low, they had risen sharply. The state education commissioner, David P. Driscoll, traveled to Brockton to congratulate the school's cheering students and faculty. "It had become dogma that smaller was better, but there was no evidence," said Mr. Driscoll, who since 2007 has headed the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees federal testing. "In schools, no matter the size — and Brockton is one of the biggest — what matters is uniting people behind a common purpose, setting high expectations, and sticking with it." After that early triumph, remaining resistance among the faculty gave way, Dr. Szachowicz said. Overnight, the restructuring committee gained enormous credibility, and scores of once-reluctant teachers wanted to start attending its Saturday meetings, which continue today. But Dr. Szachowicz and her colleagues did make some teachers uncomfortable, and at least one teacher who refused to participate in the turnaround was eventually dismissed after due process hearings. Teachers unions have resisted turnaround efforts at many schools. But at Brockton, the union never became a serious adversary, in part because most committee members were unionized teachers, and the committee scrupulously honored the union contract. An example: the contract set aside two hours per month for teacher meetings, previously used to discuss mundane school business. The committee began dedicating those to teacher training, and made sure they never lasted a minute beyond the time allotted. "Dr. Szachowicz takes the contract seriously, and we've worked together within its parameters," said Tim Sullivan, who was president of the local teachers union through much of the last decade. The committee changed many rules and policies. The committee worked to boost the aspirations of students, 69 percent of whom qualify for free lunches because of their families' low incomes. Teachers were urged to make sure students heard the phrase, "When you go to college ..." in every class, every day. But the school retained all varsity sports, as well as its several bands and choruses, extensive drama program and scores of student clubs. Many students consider the school's size — as big as many small colleges — and its diverse student body (mostly minority), to be points in its favor, rather than problems. "You meet a new person every day," said Johanne Alexandre, a senior whose mother is Haitian. "Somebody with a new story, a new culture. I have Pakistani friends, Brazilians, Haitians, Asians, Cape Verdeans. There are Africans, Guatemalans." "There's a couple of Americans, too!" Tercia Mota, a senior born in Brazil, offered. "But there aren't cliques. Take a look at the lunch table." "You can't say, those are the jocks, those are the preppy cheerleaders, those are the geeks," Ms. Mota said. "Everything is blended, everybody's friends with everyone." Over the years, Brockton has refined its literacy curriculum. Bob Perkins, the math department chairman, used a writing lesson last week in his Introduction to Algebra II class. He wrote "3 + 72 - 6 x 3 - 11" on the board, then asked students to solve the problem in their workbooks and to explain their reasoning, step by step, in simple sentences. "I did the exponents first and squared the 7," wrote Sharon Peterson, a junior. "I multiplied 6 x 3. I added 3 + 49, and combined 18 and 11, because they were both negatives. I ended up with 52-29. The final answer was 23." Some students had more trouble, and the lesson seemed to drag a bit. "This is taking longer than I expected, but it's not wasted time," Mr. Perkins said. "They're learning math, but they're also learning to write." Brockton's performance is not as stellar in math as in English language arts, and the committee has hired an outside consultant to help develop strategies for improving math instruction, Mr. Perkins said. Dr. Ferguson said Brockton High first "jumped out of the data" for him early last year. He was examining Massachusetts' 2008 test scores in his office in Cambridge, and noticed that Brockton had done a better job than 90 percent of the state's 350 high schools helping its students to improve their language arts scores. Since then, he has visited Brockton intermittently and invited some of its faculty to the Harvard campus for interviews. The report he wrote with four other Harvard researchers includes an analysis of exemplary performance not only at Brockton, but also at 14 other schools in five states. The report noted one characteristic shared by all: "Achievement rose when leadership teams focused thoughtfully and relentlessly on improving the quality of instruction." Brockton was by far the largest, but only five of the exemplary schools had fewer than 1,000 students, while six had more than 1,700 and two in Illinois had more than 3,000. "I never bought into the dogma that a huge school can't be great," Dr. Ferguson said.
City leaders collaborate on how to bring back the lost students
By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff | September 23, 2010 Barbara Ferrer, executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission, met with Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis and school Superintendent Carol Johnson yesterday at the mayor's request to discuss ways to collaborate on helping students, the officials said. Ferrer said they discussed many goals, including an effort to reduce truancy by sharing information about children who miss school regularly and connecting them with services. Ferrer, a former principal at the Parkway Academy of Technology and Health in West Roxbury, said that between 2 percent and 5 percent of her students were chronically absent, a result of factors including physical and mental health issues. She also said some of those students need assistance with caring for their own children. The health commission director said members of her staff will be working at health centers at three city high schools to help chronically absent students address health problems or child-care issues. Also, Ferrer said, workers will visit the students at home to help identify the causes of absenteeism. "If you don't get in there quickly, you can lose those kids,'' she said. Ferrer said the officials are also crafting a plan to help former students, ages 15-20 who have dropped out, including those who have fallen into criminal activity, to return to the school system. She said youth workers from her office will help them find the best placement options to re-enroll. They will also be supplied with backpacks, school supplies, and bus passes. "We want to make sure that we help them get to school,'' she said. Johnson said returning students can also visit the Re-Engagement Center on Malcolm X Boulevard in Roxbury, where staffers help struggling pupils and former dropouts get back on track. "We can work with them and with their families to make sure they're engaged,'' she said. Davis said police are working to help educators and public health professionals by identifying at-risk students in high-crime areas. "It's certainly not a conversation of making police officers into truancy officers,'' he said. "But having officers aware of the issues and knowing when to call and who to call is certainly a helpful tactic.''
US test goals called elusive
By Calvin Hennick, Globe Correspondent | September 23, 2010 A Globe review of this year's MCAS results, released this month, shows that just under half of area schools — approximately 133 out of 269 — met the "adequate yearly progress'' standard set under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Nearly every school district in the area had at least one school that did not meet the standard — including such high-performing districts as Arlington, Belmont, Brookline, Newton, Wayland, and Wellesley — and some school officials said the numbers paint an unfair portrait. "You're left with the impression that you've got a failing school,'' said Lexington Superintendent Paul Ash. "When you're already at the ninety-eighth, ninety-ninth percentile, you have to make a certain amount of growth above that level, and it's just not possible.'' Under federal law, all children are supposed to be proficient in English and math by 2014, and schools are measured against benchmarks each year to determine the progress of all students, as well as subsets such as special education or low-income students. But as time goes by, those benchmarks creep closer to 100 percent, making it harder for schools to come in over the bar. "There's more difficulty reaching that target, even though we're seeing progress and students improving performance over the years,'' said Christine Brumbach, director of student development in Needham. Four of Needham's eight schools met the target this year. Statewide, 57 percent of public schools fell short of the yearly progress standard. Four of nine schools in Lexington — a district in which more than 98 percent of tenth-graders scored advanced or proficient on their math and English MCAS exams — did not meet the standard. Ash said that, while Lexington schools aren't perfect, the real problem lies in the benchmark that penalizes anything short of steady progress toward perfection. "The formula is insane,'' Ash said. "I just shake my head. When we get to 2014, we're going to have nearly 100 percent of the schools in Massachusetts not making adequate yearly progress. How can that make sense?'' Consequences for failing to meet the benchmarks range from schools having to notify parents of the school's status, to allowing families to choose other schools, to, in extreme cases, abolishing or restructuring a school district. Ash said Lexington will have to send letters home this year notifying some parents of the schools' status, although he doesn't foresee more serious consequences later on. "The state, with limited money, hardly has any interest in coming in to restructure us,'' Ash said. In Medfield, two of the town's five schools didn't meet the federal progress benchmark. At the Blake Middle School, 96 percent of students scored advanced or proficient on the English MCAS. But the 76 percent of special education students scoring at least proficient on the test wasn't deemed high enough for the school to meet the progress benchmark for that subgroup. "The notion that this whole school is failing because of that, it's just a disconnect,'' said Medfield Superintendent Robert Maguire. "People in this town know that school's not failing.'' Maguire and other area school officials said the progress evaluations seem weighted against middle schools. He noted that Medfield's high school meets the federal benchmarks with students who previously went to a middle school that is not meeting them. "My high school does an outstanding job, but they don't fix the kids in a year and three quarters,'' he said. While Maguire bristled at the notion of any of his schools being assigned a negative label, he said he doesn't discount the importance of the test data or of boosting achievement levels for students with special needs. "It's good information for us,'' he said. "We look at the scores. We're trying to focus on that group of special needs students. There's always room for improvement.'' Natick Superintendent Peter Sanchioni said progress benchmarks that approach perfection may be unrealistic for some students and that parents should evaluate schools based on their own child's academic growth. Five of Natick's eight schools met the federal benchmark. "We should be held accountable for students to show gains and growth,'' Sanchioni said. "That's our mission. We all welcome that kind of challenge. A number of our kids actually increased their score, but they didn't increase it at the rate that's required by the federal government.'' The goal of all students achieving proficiency in English and math by 2014 is "aspirational,'' said JC Considine, spokesman for the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Considine said it makes sense that more schools are failing to meet standards as the window between progress benchmarks and perfection narrows. "I think it's the nature of the designation and how far along we are now,'' Considine said. "We're getting pretty close to 2014.''
Charter school plans to open today, defying state officials
By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff | September 23, 2010 Tony Blackman, executive director of the Gloucester Community Arts Charter School, said 85 to 90 students are enrolled in grades 4 through 7 and that the school will hold its first classes today. "We have an obligation to families that are deeply committed to school choice guaranteed to them under state and federal law,'' Blackman said. "I think it's time for everyone not to be putting political expediency ahead of the education of children.'' But Mitchell D. Chester, commissioner of the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, wrote yesterday in a letter to school officials that issues surrounding enrollment, contracting compliance, and staffing changes will compel him to convene a special meeting to possibly revoke the school's charter. That would force students to relocate in the middle of the academic year. "To be clear: I no longer believe that this school is viable,'' Chester wrote. Among the issues cited in the letter, Chester mentioned that state Attorney General Martha Coakley's office recently issued a finding that the school violated state laws in the building of its facilities and in the competitive bidding for those services. Coakley's office ruled last week that the school did not "properly procure'' some construction services and asked yesterday that the school submit a compliance plan for future building contracts, including a plan to seek bids on any remaining construction work and to abide by prevailing wage laws. That new plan has been submitted, Blackman said. He said the school has always complied with building regulations and will continue to do so. The school has been steeped in controversy since reports surfaced of an e-mail that state Education Secretary Paul Reville sent to Chester in February 2009, urging him to recommend approval of one of three pending charter school applications as a way to build political support among moderate charter school supporters for the governor's education agenda. About a week later, Chester publicly announced support for the Gloucester proposal, even though his own in-house charter school panelists did not believe any of the pending proposals were viable. Soon afterward, the state education board approved the recommendation. The school had originally set Aug. 31 as its opening date. But shortly before the opening, Blackman said, the city building inspector presented officials with a list of additional regulations for the four temporary trailers that will house the classrooms. Blackman said city and state inspectors had told the school on Aug. 23 that the buildings were up to code. Also, Blackman said, a bid to open at a separate facility in Rockport failed when Chester's office denied that request last week. Colin Zick, a lawyer for the charter school, wrote yesterday in a letter to Chester's office that the commissioner must give 48 hours' notice before convening an emergency meeting to decide whether to revoke the charter. It "is unclear what, if any, 'emergency' [at the school] presently exists,'' Zick wrote. City officials have opposed the charter school since it was proposed about two years ago because it would cause the city to lose state aid. Each student who attends a charter school takes thousands of dollars in state aid from the school district, and Gloucester officials say such losses could reach $2.4 million annually, roughly a third of the city's current state aid. Yesterday, the chairwoman of the Gloucester School Committee, Valerie Gilman, and Mayor Carolyn Kirk both said they support Chester's position on the school's charter. Corina Johnsen, whose daughter is enrolled as a seventh-grader in the charter school, insisted the decision to open the school is the right thing to do. "I think these kids deserve to go to the school they want to be in.''
Editorial: One strike and they're out
Schools are right to expel students who carry weapons or who otherwise pose a safety threat. But they have taken "zero tolerance" to extremes, suspending ever larger numbers of children for merely disruptive or nonthreatening behavior. Suspension rates for black male children are disproportionately, devastatingly high. A new report published by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that in 2006, more than 30 percent of black male middle school students in 15 urban districts were suspended from school. In Milwaukee and Florida's Palm Beach County, suspension rates for black males were said to exceed 50 percent. Based on federal school data, the research found that the percentage of students suspended at least once in grades K through 12 has nearly doubled over the last four decades — to 6.9 percent in 2006 from 3.7 percent in 1973. The suspension rate for black children in that time jumped to 15 percent from 6 percent. The racial disparities in middle schools were especially alarming. In 2006, 28 percent of black boys and 18 percent of black girls were suspended, compared with 10 percent of white boys and 4 percent of white girls. The data does not include why children were suspended. But previous studies suggest that an overwhelming majority of all races are suspended for behavior like truancy, disrupting class, abusive language or getting into shoving matches. The federal suspension data is not comprehensive — which means that the real situation is likely worse. School reports to the federal government do not reflect multiple suspensions, so that students who may have been thrown out 10 times were counted as having been suspended only once. The federal government clearly needs to do a better job of collecting information on this issue and pushing the states and localities to fix the problem. The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights should also look at the districts with the worst racial disparities.
Washington Mayor's loss may imperil school reform
By IAN URBINA WASHINGTON — Adrian M. Fenty, the mayor of Washington, helped make his schools chief, Michelle A. Rhee, a star. Ms. Rhee enjoyed unwavering support from Mayor Fenty for her aggressive moves to overhaul the city's decrepit schools, and as a result she became the national face of school reform efforts. She has been on the cover of Time. She is featured in the coming "Waiting for 'Superman' " documentary film. Her efforts have been lauded by President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. But Ms. Rhee could not help make Mr. Fenty a star. Tuesday night, the once-wildly popular mayor lost his grip on the city to Vincent C. Gray, the chairman of the City Council. And while much of the focus in the aftermath of the vote is on why Mayor Fenty lost, his defeat also raises questions and suggests lessons about school reform efforts on a national level. It highlighted, for example, the risks of using private money to promote local educational changes, and how quickly winds can shift in a city if the mayor who controls the schools is voted out. It also showed that becoming a national symbol for school reform cuts both ways. "The lesson here is that the reform agenda cannot get ahead of the politics," said Joseph P. Viteritti, a public policy professor at Hunter College in New York. "We saw this before in similar cases in Baltimore and Detroit where many people identified with the people who worked in the school system and they thought they were unfairly bearing the brunt of the reform." "It is great to become a national symbol," Professor Viteritti added. "But it's the voters in your city that you need to keep on board if you want your agenda to go forward." In Washington, Ms. Rhee's efforts will most likely stall if she leaves. Her plans remain unclear. Mr. Gray has said he will talk to her and see if their visions overlap. Reconciliation seems unlikely since the two have clashed in the past. Mr. Gray's victory was also partly a result of the work of one of Ms. Rhee's foremost critics, the city's teachers' union. The national spotlight alienated some local teachers who were left with the impression that their leaders were grandstanding at their expense. The attention also attracted powerful enemies who viewed the city's efforts as a watershed. Consequently, Mr. Fenty was not just battling the local teachers' union during his re-election campaign. He was also up against the A.F.L.-C.I.O., which got involved with a get-out-the-vote effort. And when it came time for Mr. Fenty to call in political chits, Mr. Obama kept his distance and declined a request from Mr. Fenty to help his re-election campaign. Most residents here agree that Ms. Rhee and Mr. Fenty pioneered a major overhaul of the city's decrepit and failing school system, according to polls. They closed underperforming schools and fired hundreds of subpar teachers. They revitalized special education and helped secure money to build new schools and athletic fields. They revamped teacher evaluations, pushed for performance pay, and supported the expansion of charter schools. They also won large sums of private donor money and saw student test scores improve. Mr. Fenty assumed the results would eventually speak for themselves. But he and Ms. Rhee underestimated the consequences of stepping on certain toes, and they started doing something about it far too late. On the eve of the election this week, polls showed that many voters thought the city was headed in the right direction, especially when it came to education reform. That sense did not, however, translate into support for the two people who led this effort. The election upset also underscored the role that money plays in school reform, especially when private dollars are involved. In Washington, Ms. Rhee and Mr. Fenty courted private capital to help drive their mission. In the short run, this strategy seemed shrewd, especially as the city's budget constricted. It was a risky gambit, however, because it is now unclear whether the money will stay in place if Ms. Rhee leaves her post. One of the most important carrots that the city's education reform used to foster change — performance pay for teachers — may now be at stake because it is largely based on private money. In the spring, several corporate donors, including the charitable arm of Wal-Mart, indicated that they would withdraw millions of dollars they had donated if Ms. Rhee was not retained. After hinting that she would not work for Mr. Gray if he was elected, Ms. Rhee hit the campaign trail for Mr. Fenty. The move sent a clear message that if residents did not re-elect Mr. Fenty, her reforms and financing would probably not stay. Ms. Rhee positioned herself on the cutting edge of the national reform movement after negotiating one of the most radical teachers' contracts in the country. The contract weakened tenure protections in exchange for giving teachers the option to make more money and earn performance bonuses. The Obama administration recently awarded the city schools a $75 million Race to the Top grant. The president repeatedly praised Ms. Rhee for her take-no-prisoners approach and pioneering vision. The administration has also committed more than $1 billion to a "performance-based" rewards system for teachers similar to the one being tested in Washington. During a presidential trip to Philadelphia on Election Day, Secretary Duncan told reporters that Washington's schools had been "historically the disgrace of the country." The system has since made "real and substantial progress," he said.
Why Michelle Rhee and Adrian Fenty lost
By Diane Ravitch Dear Deborah, When the results came in, Fenty was trounced in largely black districts. In Wards 7 and 8, his opponent, Vincent Gray, won 82 percent of the vote. In Northwest Washington, where white voters predominate, Fenty won 76 percent of the vote. Fenty decisively lost the black vote and decisively won the white vote. D.C. public schools are about 5 percent white, so it is a reasonable supposition that the anti-Fenty vote was fueled to a large degree by parents of children in the public schools. Gray won handily, 53 percent to 46 percent. Journalists attributed Fenty's loss to the power of the teachers' union, but such an explanation implies that black voters, even in the privacy of the voting booth, lack the capacity to make an informed choice. When the Tea Party wins a race, journalists don't write about who controlled their vote, but about a voter revolt; they acknowledge that those who turned out to vote had made a conscious decision. Yet when black voters, by large margins, chose Vincent Gray over Adrian Fenty, journalists found it difficult to accept that the voters were acting on their own, not as puppets of the teachers' union. In the post-election analyses, the most common complaint about Fenty was that he was arrogant and out-of-touch with black voters. Rhee spoke about her failure to communicate, though it is hard to think of any figure in the world of American education who had as much media attention as she has had over the past three years. Certainly, she did not lack for opportunities to communicate. Her critics say that her fundamental flaw was arrogance and an indifference to the views of parents and teachers. Rhee believed that mayoral control gave her the power to work her will and to ignore dissenters or brush them off as defenders of the status quo. Mayoral control bred arrogance and indifference to dialogue. She didn't need to listen to anyone because she had the mayor's unquestioning support. Mayoral control made democratic engagement with parents and teachers unnecessary. It became easy for her to disparage them and for the media to treat them as self-interested troublemakers. Mayoral control of schools short-circuits democratic processes by concentrating all decision-making in the hands of one elected official, who need not consult with anyone else. If D.C. had had an independent school board, Rhee would have had to explain her ideas, defend them, and practice the democratic arts of persuasion, conciliation, and consensus-building. We now have an "education reform" movement which believes that democracy is too slow and too often wrong, and their reforms are so important, so self-evident that they cannot be delayed by discussion and debate. So self-assured are the so-called reformers that they can't be bothered to review the research and evidence on merit pay or evaluating teachers by test scores or the effects of high-stakes testing. If they can find one study or even a report by a friendly think tank, that's evidence enough for them. Mayoral control gives them the mechanism they need to push ahead, without regard to other views or collateral damage. The trouble with this anti-democratic approach to school reform is that it alienates the very people whose votes are needed by the mayor to continue what he started. Although one can find exceptions, it is usually the case that voters don't like autocracy. They expect to be treated with respect, not condescension. They expect democratic institutions to operate with democratic processes. They expect their leaders to explain and discuss their decisions before they are final and to change course when they are wrong. The very behaviors that schools are supposed to teach—how to think, how to participate, how to reason with others, how to find common ground—are the same behaviors that we expect to encounter in public life. In other contests, the pro-charter lobby took a beating in Democratic primaries in New York City. There, the pro-charter group Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) targeted three African-American state legislators for defeat because they questioned the expansion of charters in their communities. DFER raised huge sums for the challengers (Google "DFER Watch"). The highest-profile race was in Harlem, which has more charters than any other neighborhood in the city. Hedge-fund managers and other friends of DFER poured more than $100,000 into the campaign to defeat Bill Perkins, who gained their enmity by seeking public audits of charters. The New York Times, the New York Post, and the New York Daily News ran numerous articles and editorials vilifying Perkins and endorsing his opponent, Basil Smikle. Smikle was supported by New York Gov. David Paterson and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. On Sept. 14, the three state senators opposed by DFER were re-elected by large margins. DFER's main enemy, Bill Perkins, collected 76 percent of the vote. The media referred to the re-election of these state senators as victories for the teachers' union, denying the possibility that black voters exercise personal agency when they cast their ballots. These electoral losses and the recent Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll suggest that the "reform" movement led by the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, DFER, hedge-fund managers, and the Obama administration lacks a base of popular support. But now begins the next phase of the movement, as its public relations campaign goes into high gear with the release this week of "Waiting for Superman." Now, the public will be immersed in the "reform" narrative: Our public schools are rotten; low test scores are caused by bad teachers; high-stakes testing works; merit pay works; charters work; the unions that represent teachers are the main obstacle to "reform."
White knights and false villains in education
By Deborah Meier Dear Diane, Like you, my interest in public education was in its capacity to nourish the health of a fuller democracy—to give all kids what I thought was being offered to the richest and most favored. I even thought we had succeeded and that the only question was how to move from a few hundred examples to a few thousand. I never assumed our approach had to persuade everyone and welcomed other ways of answering the common question: What does a modern democracy require of all 18-year-olds to survive-plus? I assumed there was room for more than one answer. At Central Park East, we had our movies—a few documentary films describing some of our examples—including Fred Wiseman's three-hour opus on Central Park East Secondary School and our own homemade film on "Graduation by Portfolio," and a small, award-winning film about a combined 2nd and 3rd grade classroom at CPE: "We Know Why We're Here." There was one little film about our violin program ("Small Wonders") that even attracted some interest in Hollywood. Other schools followed suit. (Urban Academy produced dozens.) But they hardly compared with "Waiting for Superman"! This is hardly surprising because, in fact, when Hollywood got hold of "Small Wonders," they turned it into something rather different: a story about bad teachers, bad unions, and heroic white saviors. They publicized it as the "true" history of the music program at Central Park East school in East Harlem. They even had shots of the exterior of the actual CPE and roughly followed the history of the violin teacher. Except... They made the school's longtime, full-time music teacher—a remarkable guy named Barry Solowey—into a lazy, incompetent teacher who depended on the union to keep his job while the hero—Roberta—was threatened by a citywide lay-off. Barry had served 250 kids a year for more than a decade; Roberta served 100 eager volunteers—in three CPE-like East Harlem Schools (about 30-40 in each) for three or four years (at that time). Barry saw every class weekly, produced an annual opera and a Broadway musical, and ran three choral groups,—who also sang in Carnegie Hall— and he taught recorder to every interested child. Both teachers did superb work. But imagine our shame when we saw what Hollywood had done to the character clearly meant to describe Barry and a school called Central Park East. They needed a "knight on a white horse" to make the story a popular hit. "Music of the Heart" (with Meryl Streep) was merely following the long-before, laid-out script about public schools and teachers and the organizations they fight to create. We're now entering the age when "tough love" is the plot when it comes to teachers and parents. Only it's they who we need to be tough on. It's all those smart young people who went into teaching in the late 1960s and '70s (some to avoid the draft) with their permissive spoiled-brat histories who become the villains of the new wave of school-based romances. Neither tough-love imposed by elite Ivy League grads nor the generous-love imposed by elite draft-dodgers—forgive the unfair labels—will do. We need schools in which adults are treated like adults by those "above" them in the hierarchy—which has hardly ever been the condition of public schools, especially those serving poor communities. We need adults who demand ever more democracy in their schools, where adults join together to present their approach to being well-educated by modeling it in the presence of children. The school is where we can teach both children and adults the habits of mind on which democracy thrives. We need interesting and powerful adults who can help raise another generation—of interesting and powerful adults. We need adults who are treated with the kind of respect that suggests to the young that it's good to grow up and join adulthood. We need schools that treat the adults at home likewise—families that need to raise their children's aspirations even as their own have been crushed. How those of us who have spent our lives fighting for such reforms have been cast as the "status quo" is remarkable. Those who preceded me and no longer are alive—the Lillian Webers and Ted Sizers—would be startled by the labels the new "reformers" have given them. I believe people can call themselves what they like. But I wish I had enough money and power to prevent them from successfully re-labeling others as lazy, self-interested, money-grubbing purveyors of low expectations. Yes, Diane, I suppose I'll have to go see the "Superman" film someday—as I finally did make myself see "Music of the Heart." But I also suggest folks watch a wonderful recent French movie on a similar subject, treated honestly: "The Class."
Teacher bonuses not linked to better student performance, study finds
By Nick Anderson Offering teachers incentives of up to $15,000 to improve student test scores produced no discernible difference in academic performance, according to a study released Tuesday, a result likely to reshape the debate about merit pay programs sprouting in D.C. schools and many others nationwide. The study, which the authors and other experts described as the first scientifically rigorous review of merit pay in the United States, measured the effect of financial incentives on teachers in Nashville public schools and found that better pay alone was not enough to inspire gains. Advocates of performance pay did not immediately challenge the methodology of the study. But they said its conclusions were narrow and failed to evaluate the full package of professional development and other measures that President Obama and philanthropists such as Bill Gates say are crucial to improving America's public schools. "Pay reform is often thought to be a magic bullet," said Matthew Springer, a Vanderbilt University education professor who led the study. "That doesn't appear to be the case here. We need to develop more thoughtful and comprehensive ways of thinking about compensation. But at the same time, we're not even sure whether incentive pay is an effective strategy for improving the system itself." With backing from federal and state governments and private foundations, a growing number of public schools in recent years have embraced the idea of paying teachers, at least in part, on how much they improve student achievement. Obama has encouraged the movement, through $4.35 billion in federal Race to the Top grants and other federal programs, despite the skepticism of some teachers unions and lawmakers within his party. D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee became a hero in reform circles in part because of her insistence on a teachers' contract that allows performance bonuses. Some Prince George's County teachers also are earning bonuses. Central to such changes is the idea that teachers should be rewarded when their students achieve outsize gains on standardized tests. That is a major shift from the tradition of determining pay by seniority and credentials such as master's or doctoral degrees. The study was conducted by the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt. The center, which takes no advocacy position on the issue, was created at the university's highly regarded Peabody College of Education and Human Development in 2006 with a $10 million federal research grant. In a three-year experiment funded by the federal grant and aided by the Rand Corp., researchers tracked what happened in Nashville schools when math teachers in grades 5 through 8 were offered bonuses of $5,000, $10,000 and $15,000 for hitting annual test-score targets. About 300 teachers volunteered. Researchers randomly assigned half of the participants to a control group ineligible for the bonuses and the other half to an experimental group that could receive bonuses if their students reached certain benchmarks. Researchers designed the bonuses to be large enough to function as a legitimate incentive for teachers whose average salary, according to a union official, is between $40,000 and $50,000. There were no additional variables in the experiment: no professional development, mentoring or other elements meant to affect test scores. The bonuses, totaling nearly $1.3 million, were funded by businessman Orrin Ingram, according to news reports. A university spokeswoman said Tuesday evening that she could not confirm those reports, and Ingram could not be reached for comment. On the whole, researchers found no significant difference between the test results from classes led by teachers eligible for bonuses and those led by teachers who were ineligible. Bonuses appeared to have some positive effect in the fifth grade, researchers said, but they discounted that finding in part because the difference faded out when students moved to the sixth grade. Obama administration officials and a wide range of experts were quick to note that the study did not examine the effect of performance pay in combination with other measures intended to improve teaching. "While this is a good study, it only looked at the narrow question of whether more pay motivates teachers to try harder," said Peter Cunningham, assistant U.S. education secretary for communications and outreach. "What we are trying to do is change the culture of teaching by giving all educators the feedback they need to get better while rewarding and incentivizing the best to teach in high-need schools, hard to staff subjects. This study doesn't address that objective." Administration officials say a federal program that backs performance pay in dozens of school systems has grown to $400 million a year, from about $100 million when Obama took office in 2009. Federal officials say a number of such efforts have shown promising initial results; they also are planning a comprehensive review of the program. Eric A. Hanushek, an expert on the economics of education at Stanford University's conservative-leaning Hoover Institution, said the Vanderbilt study did not address a key question. "The biggest role of incentives has to do with selection of who enters and who stays in teaching - i.e., how incentives change the teaching corps through entrance and exits," Hanushek said. "I have always thought that the effort effects were small relative to the potential for getting different teachers. Their study has nothing to say about this more important issue." Erick Huth, president of the Metropolitan Nashville Education Association, a teachers union, said the study raised significant questions about "the extent to which we spend a lot of time trying to develop complex schemes to measure teacher performance and then reward [teachers] based on that performance." He said the study indicates that such efforts "may be a waste of time." In the D.C. school system, teachers deemed "highly effective" based on test scores and other measures began receiving bonuses this year of up to $10,000, as well as other potential compensation benefits. The performance pay plan, a cornerstone of Rhee's effort to overhaul the city schools, is backed by a new contract with the Washington Teachers' Union and funding from private foundations. Prince George's is entering the third year of a performance pay program that offers some teachers up to $10,000 based on good evaluations, improved student test scores and other factors. Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. said that there is some evidence that teacher retention has improved but that it is too early to say anything about student academic performance.
Stop trashing teachers!
For the past week, the national media has launched an attack on American public education that is unprecedented in our history. NBC devoted countless hours to panels stacked with "experts" who believe that public education is horrible because it has so many "bad" teachers and "bad" principals. The same "experts" appeared again and again to call for privatization, breaking teachers' unions, and mass firings of "bad" educators. Oprah devoted two shows to the same voices. The movie Waiting for "Superman", possibly the most ballyhooed documentary of all time, explains patiently that poor test scores are caused by bad teachers, that bad teachers are protected for life by their unions, and that the answer to our terrible test scores is privatization. If only we fire enough teachers every year, goes the oft-repeated claim, our _CadillacAd_national test scores will soar to meet those of Finland, the highest scoring nation. This narrative began with George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind legislation in 2002, which mandated that 100 percent of all children would be proficient by 2014. Leaving aside the fact that no nation or state has ever achieved 100 percent proficiency, this law unleashed a frenzy of testing in American public schools. The results are meager, as judged by the highly respected federal tests. Instead of changing direction, Barack Obama has tightened the screws on Bush's policies. Now, testing is more important than ever. Obama and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are pressing states to adopt merit pay, so that teachers will get bonuses if student scores go up, and pressing them to evaluate teachers by student test scores. Testing is the key element in this approach. Woe to the teacher who cannot raise test scores on standardized tests that demand only the skill of selecting the right bubble of four possible bubbles. Arne Duncan's Race to the Top program handed out almost $5 billion to promote these ideas. States leapt to be eligible for the money, promising to open more privately managed charter schools, to fire the principal of every low-performing school, to fire most or all of the teachers in schools with low scores, and to close public schools if their scores are low. None of these approaches works. Privately managed charter schools do not get better results on average than regular public schools. Some are excellent, some are awful, but most are no better than their public counterparts. Even the Superman movie admitted that only one in five (actually, only 17 percent) of charters get great test scores. Twice as many charters (37 percent) are even worse than the neighborhood public school. The claim that "tenure" is a guarantee of lifetime employment is a canard. Professors in higher education get lifetime tenure, but teachers in K-12 schools do not have lifetime employment: they have the right to due process if the principal wants to fire them. Teachers get due process rights only after a principal agrees that they have earned it. The reason for due-process rights is that teachers have been fired because of their race, their religion, their sexual orientation, or because a supervisor didn't like them. Teachers with due process can be fired, but only after a hearing by an impartial hearing officer. The claim that merit pay will improve student performance has been disproven again and again. Whenever businessmen decide to "reform" education, they insist on merit pay. But it doesn't work. The latest study, released only a week ago by the National Center on Performance Incentives, was the most rigorous evaluation of merit pay ever conducted. One group of teachers in Nashville was offered bonuses up to $15,000 if they raised students' math scores; another, the control group, was offered nothing. The average teacher pay is about $50,000, so this was a significant incentive to get higher scores. Over the three years of the study, both groups produced the same results. The economists, who were scrupulously nonpartisan, concluded that performance pay had no effect on student performance. It turns out that teachers were working as hard as they knew how, with or without the bonus. The claim that teachers can be accurately evaluated by student test scores has been refuted again and again by scholars. The Economic Policy Institute released a statement by many of the nation's leading testing experts warning that this method was riddled with error and instability. A study released days ago by Sean Corcoran of New York University showed that a teacher who was ranked at the 43rd percentile, using student test scores, might actually be at the 15th percentile or the 71st percentile because the margin of error in this methodology is so large. Tests that assess what students have learned are not intended to be, nor are they, measures of teacher quality. It is easier for teachers to get higher test scores if they teach advantaged students. If they teach children who are poor or children who are English language learners, or homeless children, or children with disabilities, they will not get big score gains. So, the result of this approach—judging teachers by the score gains of their students—will incentivize teachers to avoid students with the greatest needs. This is just plain stupid as a matter of policy. This past summer, the Los Angeles Times published a database in which they rated 6,000 elementary teachers as effective or ineffective, using what is called "value-added methodology," that is, whether their students' scores went up. Their decision to do this was denounced by testing experts and applauded by Secretary Duncan. Testing experts tried to explain why this _CadillacAd_method is likely to mislabel teachers and why it is so error-prone that it must be used—if at all—with extreme caution. One teacher who was rated "less effective" than his peers was Rigoberto Ruelas. A few days ago, Mr. Ruelas committed suicide. Many educators blamed the Los Angeles Times for his death, but it is impossible to know what his state of mind was. The Times reported his death and noted that he taught in a neighborhood that was one of the city's most impoverished and gang-ridden, and that he had a nearly perfect attendance record. Former students of Mr. Ruelas' wrote on websites to express their admiration for him, to explain how he reached out to the most difficult students, how he was so kind and gentle in a tough, tough neighborhood, how he was the best teacher they ever had. None of the current remedies now embraced by the Obama administration, the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the GOP, Davis Guggenheim, or other so-called reformers will improve education. Making war on teachers and principals is ridiculous, outrageous. None of the people at the foundations or in the policymaking circles work as hard as the average teacher, face as many challenges every day, for as little pay. None of the pundits who blithely denounce teachers would work 20 years with the hope of getting a salary (today) of $52,000. No nation in the world—certainly not Finland—has improved its education system by belittling and firing teachers and principals. People who know nothing about education and whose ideas have no basis in research or practice are calling the shots. Left to their own devices, they will destroy public education. They have already demoralized our nation's teachers. Eventually, their bad ideas will fail, because they are wrong. Diane Ravitch is a historian of education and author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Basic Books, 2010).
GRANTEE HIGHLIGHT Students win on constructive feedback to teachers After years of hard work, the Boston Student Advisory Council (BSAC) is celebrating a huge win! In early May, BSAC's Constructive Feedback Policy was passed by unanimous vote by the Boston School Committee. This allows students to provide their teachers with constructive feedback to hopefully inform and strengthen instructional practice and curriculum. Meanwhile, BSAC continues to work on a number of other policies with the Boston Public Schools. The Homework Policy aims to provide students with quality, meaningful homework assignments that students would be more willing to complete. The Teacher Hiring Policy seeks to include students' voices in the hiring process, mainly by allowing a student to sit in on the Personnel Subcommittee meetings and deliberations. Check out this newsletter highlighting BSAC's progress and accomplishments for the 2009-2010 school year.
SCHOTT FOUNDATION HIGHLIGHT Report used to slam schools on 'Oprah' actually praises Newark, N.J. education efforts
NEWARK — Probably just an oversight. Such things happen in the lives of busy celebrities. But, the other day, when Oprah Winfrey was interviewing Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem's Children Zone and touting him as a "superman" of reform, she forgot to mention his efforts were recently cited by the Schott Foundation for Public Education as one example of urban school success. Of course, if she noted Schott's praise for Canada, Winfrey probably would have had to mention the other example of success described by the foundation: New Jersey. Not just New Jersey — but Newark. Yes, Oprah viewers, although she used the show to slam Newark's educational record — with the help of Gov. Chris Christie, Mayor Cory Booker, and billionaire Californian Mark Zuckerberg — she could have just as easily used it to praise both Canada and this state and its largest city. This is what the Schott Foundation reported days before Canada — the hero of the anti-public school movie "Waiting for Superman" — had to say about both his efforts and those of our state: "Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone proves that we can create community systems where all students have the supports needed to have a substantive opportunity to learn. New Jersey's commitment to implement its Abbott plan and ensure equitable resources to all students proves that it can be done at the state level—as New Jersey is the only state with a significant black male population with a greater than 65 percent high school graduation rate." The foundation report, entitled "Yes We Can," then goes on to report that Newark — yes, Newark — had the highest graduation rate for black males of any major city in the country. Far better than that of Washington, D.C., a system headed by Michelle Rhee, whom Winfrey not so subtly suggested should become the next superintendent of Newark's schools. While all this Newark and New Jersey bashing went on, Canada remained silent. That was odd, too, considering he wrote the forward to "Yes We Can," a report that, using federal school data, declared: To give some numbers, nationally, white males had a 78 percent graduation rate in 2007-2008, compared with a 75 percent graduation rate for black males in Newark. While Winfrey's show was chock-filled with reasons to believe Newark and New Jersey are school wastelands, the Schott Foundation report — hardly mentioned anywhere — says things like, "New Jersey's Abbott districts invest in their children by providing them with increased hours of education each day, on weekends, and in the summer. They also invest in continuous professional development for teachers and other staff and, crucially, in 0-4 preschool preparation for learning to learn." Christie, of course, refers to urban education in New Jersey as "obscene." So, it's little surprise he didn't cite the Schott report, or other indicia of success. That wouldn't fit the narrative he is trying to make us all believe, a narrative that somehow justifies cutting back on the very programs that were succeeding and replacing them with the sort of things in Washington, DC, that were not succeeding but do meet an ideological test. The governor's office declined to respond to the conclusions of the Schott Foundation report. "No one is saying we have been completely successful in urban schools," says David Sciarra, the director of the Education Law Center. Christie accused Sciarra of suing the state's schools "into failure" and said he was "coming after him." "But all of this takes time and we have been making progress. A lot of the things that Canada is doing in Harlem are what we're doing in New Jersey's urban districts." That's what the Schott Foundation reported, just before Oprah's big splash. But no one noticed. Certainly not Oprah. Or the governor. Or even Newark's mayor. |
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The Snap Schott is distributed by the Schott Foundation for Public Education. For more information, please visit www.schottfoundation.org. |
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