Nonsense from our national school policy leadership is just so much noise – whether naive or disingenuous, I don’t know. It may be both. Tom Hoffman is right - Arne Duncan will learn some hard lessons of his own before this is all over. In the meantime, it hurts my brain to listen to him – almost as much as Sarah Palin – and I plan to stop thinking about him for a long while after I finish writing this.
Marion Brady offers Arne and Co. some insight in a comment on an article about Duncan’s political battles:
The Duncan-Obama education reform strategy will fail. It will fail not because of institutional inertia, not because of union resistance to change, not because of inadequately motivated teachers, not because of poorly trained administrators or for other reasons currently being advanced. It will fail primarily for the same reason No Child Left Behind failed — because it relies on tests keyed to standards keyed to a fundamentally flawed curriculum.
But Duncan is talking tough love about low performing schools, and he’s got a multiple choice plan for “school turnarounds”:
1. Award planning grants in the fall so new principals and lead teachers can develop curricula to meet students’ needs. During the spring, they begin recruiting teachers and in June they take over the school. Current teachers can reapply. Some get rehired, but most go elsewhere.
2. Turn the school over to a charter or for-profit management organization. This approach also replaces school staff and leadership.
3. Keep most existing staff but change the culture through:
* performance evaluation and support, training and mentoring.
* stronger curriculum and instruction.
* more learning time for kids (afternoons, weekends, summer) and more time for teachers to collaborate.
* more flexibility for principals in budgeting, staffing and calendar.4. Simply close under-performing schools and reenroll the students in better schools.
This, Duncan noted, is a state and local responsibility.“ But,” he said, “the people who run our schools—and the parents who depend on them—must demand change if they want it to happen.”
Fortunately for us, a group of parents in Chicago prepared a document [pdf] explaining how Arne Duncan’s school turnarounds have worked out for them. Note the easy to read column format comparing “What Secretary Duncan says” with “What the data show.”
He must not be too sure about that local responsibility part, though. Mike Klonsky noticed that Arne, who never met a cliche he didn’t like, promises to “come down like a ton of bricks and withhold the second round of funds from anyone who defies Obama’s wishes.” Mike is curious to know what we have to do to make the bricks fall on us. I don’t have the quote, but as I recall, Duncan was talking about withholding more money from states who chose to underfund schools and use the stimulus money to make up the difference.
But any time we talk about bricks and schools, we should remember that bricks are what they’re all about.
Bricks don’t bother me. Hand me another brick.
10 Comments
As a mother, I really like the idea of the “school turnaround” plan. My children are in elementary school, and personally I feel that the reason for any of the children no succeeding in their class, or even just “getting it’ is due to the lack of some teachers not using proper child appropriate tactics to make sure every child is “getting it”, involved, and progressing in the classroom.
I did my own research and found a book I gave to my children’s teachers as an end-of-the-year gift, “The Wolf Pack Classroom Management Plan,” by Janis Gioia. It’s a newer book with very appropriate teaching skills that I know will benefit the children.
http://www.wolfpackclassroom.com/
Here, the frustrated lawyer defends Arne. She told me she could, and here is her defense of the document you (and I) reference(d):
Point one of the “Fact Sheet”: If the “lowest-performing” schools that Arne refers to are now performing “on par” with the traditional schools, the implication is that the lowest have been raised at least to a more middling level, which would be an improvement. Point (more or less) to
Arne.
Point two: The data about who’s at the school in 2005 don’t respond, at least not directly, to Arne’s point about the highest gain. Point, again, at least sort of, to Arne.
Point three: I got nothing.
Point four: The data talks about only one school, and the differences in attendance, at least for 2008, are pretty minor. Statistically significant? I’d call it a draw, at least.
Point five: Again, the data looks at only one school, while Arne’s talking about the bigger picture. Show me the numbers for all the schools.
Now, if I weren’t a defense attorney and congenitally skeptical of everything (especially when someone tells me that someone else is lying), I would say that Arne is a big fat (okay, tall skinny) self-inflating, corporate-promoting, life-blood-of-the-public-schools-sucking liar.
Melissa, we’re agreed on the benefits of child-centered approaches to teaching. But where we appear to differ is on the means of attaining that. There is no research evidence that reliably points us toward ways of “turning around” low-performing schools so they’ll work better for everyone. I’m glad that Sec. Duncan sees the need for local control. The school where I work had a 100% positive response on our parent satisfaction survey, yet we do not always produce high test scores. Evidently, our parent community appreciates our efforts on behalf of their children despite the sometimes disappointing test results.
TFT, I think most of what Arne Duncan has to say about his Chicago turnaround experience depends on whether the turned-around schools really are serving the same students as they did previous to the intervention. From what I read on the Fact Sheet, and elsewhere, they don’t appear to be doing that.
We’ve had some experience here, locally, with an alternative school that was “turned around” and then subsequently closed to stop the bleeding. An intervention that calls for dismissing the whole staff and starting over assumes that there is a large talent pool just waiting to step in there and get the job done right. In a small community, like mine, this would be a big mistake. This also assumes that test scores are the only yardstick we’re going to use to evaluate our efforts. For kids who need alternatives, there may be other values that are equally important – but not considered – within the current accountability regime.
I agree with you, Doug. I just figured we ought to see what a defense of Duncan looks like.
Remember, she’s being a lawyer….
Yeah. The occasional devil’s advocate can be helpful. Thanks.
At the end of the year I gave my kid’s teachers gift cards to Starbucks , a long letter apologizing for NCLB and promising more action on my part, a fairly nice card and I’d have given the hummingbird feeders I always give but my teenagers refused to haul them over to school and give them out. Never in a thousand years would I give a tired, hard working teacher at the end of the year under Draconian nonsense like this… something like “advise” or books of advise. Except perhaps Herndon, I’d give that.
But you can edit this out Doug, just a hello. I’m still reading.
Just got my Promethean board installed, 4 new computers going in and, and I’m hoping for a set of laptops. Something wonderful has been going on…just a drop at a time.
Great music.
I enjoy reading your blog and the PF video rings my bell too.
You have given me some insight about teaching and I think other teachers will benefit from what you are writing.
I have added it to my education portal at http://www.educationreporting.com/#blogs
Let me know if you have any questions and thanks for your ideas and thoughts.
Steu Mann, M. Ed.
http://twitter.com/cathriving
Actually, what the “ton of bricks” threat was about–state support for charter schools and raising the caps.
Thanks for clearing that up, Mike. I suspect that Sec. Duncan has lots of loose bricks to throw around, and we’ll be hearing more about them from him as we get more acquainted.
Post a Comment