Tag Archive for 'school turnaround'

Turnaround Without Turmoil, Part II

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 12, 2009 in Education Leadership and Educational Policy. 1 Comment

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.

Turnaround Without Turmoil

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 9, 2009 in Education Leadership, Educational Policy and accountability. 8 Comments

Are conflict and confrontation necessary ingredients in a school turnaround?  Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher files a provocative column about a Maryland school that is succeeding without the kind of bare knuckle brawls that are drawing national media attention to Michelle Rhee and the nearby Washington, DC school system.

Fisher goes to Broad Acres Elementary School in Silver Spring where scores were so low eight years ago that a state takeover loomed. Montgomery County Superintendent Jerry Weast and Principal Jody Leleck negotiated with the teachers union to add extra hours to the work week for extra pay. “Teachers would offer no more excuses about poor kids from dysfunctional families; expectations would soar. About a third of the faculty left; Leleck hired 27 veteran teachers that first summer” he reports. 

Rhee’s faceoff with the Washington Teachers’ Union creates a dynamic different from the cooperation between Weast and Montgomery County Education Association President Bonnie Cullison. She said she hears Rhee telling teachers, ” ‘You’re not doing the job,’ as opposed to ‘Let’s work together.’ You cannot make it happen in a district where you set up conflict”…Weast won’t criticize his D.C. counterpart, but he will say that narrowing the achievement gap is about expecting all children to work hard and love learning. “You can do it anyplace if you treat people like you want to be treated,” he says.

Today, 81 percent meet reading proficiency standards this year, up from 47 percent in 2003. “Broad Acres did this without Rhee’s reform tactics,” Fisher points out. ”No young recruits from Teach for America, no cash for students who come to class, no linkage of teacher pay to test scores.”  And what’s happening inside the classrooms?

Too often, schools desperate to boost test scores become grim factories in which children are force-fed rote skills. But at Broad Acres, teachers coach each other to keep kids engaged in rich material for its own sake. In Andrea Sutton’s fifth-grade class, 16 kids sit on the floor, jumping up to explain to one another the roots of the American colonists’ grievances with the British. The teacher’s voice never rises above a stage whisper as she plies the class with questions that would fit nicely in a high school course.  With all the pressure from No Child Left Behind, it’s so easy to cut out history and science,” Bayewitz says. “But these kids are going to need those complex skills in high school and college. And these kids are going to college.”

Claus von Zastrow at Public School Insights observes that Fisher’s piece reminds us “that school improvement does not necessarily require a death-match between high-profile ‘reformers’ and the education ‘establishment.’” Fisher is promising a follow-up column Sunday on ”a D.C. school that matches Broad Acre’s population, put presumably not its methods.  Stay tuned.