Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher set tongues in motion last week with his piece about Broad Acres Elementary School in Silver Spring, Maryland, a high-poverty school, which has reversed its performance in the last few years by raising expectations and cooperating with its teachers union. In a promised follow up column, Fisher looks in on Truesdell Educational Center, a Washington, DC school demographically similar to Broad Acres. “Could a similar turnaround happen in a D.C. school,” Fisher asks, “and does Rhee’s more confrontational approach make that kind of change more or less likely?”
As at Broad Acres, Truesdell principal Brearn Wright believes half the battle is persuading teachers that kids from dysfunctional backgrounds must be held to high standards, Fisher notes. “He screened inspirational scenes from the movie ‘Miracle,’ about the 1980 U.S. Olympic ice hockey team. But when Wright asked teachers to mark down what percentage of Truesdell kids should be making the proficient grade in reading, only a few dared to write 100. Most wrote numbers such as 55, 65, 68 or 69,” Fisher reports.
In the classrooms, in stark contrast to many D.C. schools, students seem engaged and eager to progress. The atmosphere is still colder and more militaristic than in more successful schools; a teacher wins quiet by announcing, “Work harder,” to which the children respond, in Pavlovian fashion, “Get smarter.” But there are creative projects in nearly every room. In the third-floor hallway, two fifth-grade boys take notes on a clipboard; they are finding fractions — a door half-open, a coffee cup four-fifths empty, and so on.
“Test scores aren’t in yet, and no one expects miracles,” Fisher concludes. ”‘We’re not there,’ Wright says, ‘but we’re getting there. Kids are learning.’ At Truesdell, in part because of the chancellor’s confrontational ways and in part in spite of them, it feels like a revolution is brewing.”
Fisher’s original column drew both praise and scorn around the blogs, and started an interesting thread of discussion on the optimal unit of currency — the school or the district — in reversing low achievement. “Single schools like Broad Acres really can be saved,” commented 30-year veteran teacher-blogger Nancy Flanagan, “because tools like professional development, better curriculum, more time and community-building commitment actually can work at that level, where people area not anonymous cogs and individual kids’ progress can be carefully tracked.”
My own sense is that enthusiasm for change (which equals fidelity of implementation) is enormously important. Lack of staff buy-in for any program, curriculum or flavor of reform is almost certainly its death knell, which is why leadership is so important. I hope Fisher revisits these schools and reports back from time to time.
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