Looking back to 2001: Death of the Small Schools Movement

"There were two strategies going on at the same time which were diametrically opposed to each other." -- Bill Gerstein

A 2004 article by Beandrea Davis, in the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, tracked the beginning of the end of the small schools movement to the Paul Vallas era in Chicago, circa 1995-2001. By 2004, this promising reform movement, led by teachers with support among parents and community activists, had met its match -- the so-called accountability wave of top-down, test-and-punish, mayor-controlled corporate "reform."

Before he was fired by Mayor Daley, Vallas had succeeded in replacing teacher-led, highly-autonomous small schools with privately managed charter schools and school re-design with school closings. It was a trend he would take to scale as CEO of Philadelphia Public Schools and later as school boss in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Vallas

Davis quotes Vallas during a 2004 press briefing: "I really see charters as the way to create more small schools."  Vallas pointed out that he has more leeway to expand charter school options in Philadelphia than he did in Chicago.

Vallas's June 1995 appointment as CEO happened as the Chicago small autonomous schools movement, which emerged in the early 1990s, was starting to take off. Wanting to transform the city's large, impersonal, and often low-performing high schools by restructuring them into small, autonomous, community-centered schools, an alliance of educators, organizers, parents, and community members joined together... CPS insiders as well as outside partners with the district agree that conflict did arise between the Vallas administration's strong emphasis on improving student test scores in the short run and some advocates' efforts to promote small schools as a long-term school improvement strategy.

The Notebook article makes it clear that the early small schools and smaller learning communities were never envisioned as a panacea for "failing schools" the way that charter schools were later hyped. But rather as a teacher-led reform that could improve school climate, support teacher collaboration and professional development, and create better conditions for personalization and a sense of school community.

The story of the rise and fall of the modern small schools movement was developed more fully in  "Small Schools: Public School Reform Meets the Ownership Society" by Michael and Susan Klonsky (Taylor & Francis, 2008).

Release to press of teacher data has become a rallying cry

Public debasing of teachers in N.Y.

N.Y. Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Cuomo may have won the legal battle to base teacher evaluations on student test scores and publish them in the press. But they may have also unwittingly awakened a sleeping giant of a resistance movement. Shades of what happened in Wisconsin in response to Gov. Walker's union busting legislation.

The Times reports that this latest assault on teachers has lit a spark.

In the days leading up to the release of ratings for thousands of New York City public-school teachers on Friday, hundreds of e-mails poured into the in-box of Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers. “Enough of cooperation,” one member of the union wrote to his leader. Others prodded Mr. Mulgrew to stand up against Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, describing him as “untrustworthy,” in what he said was a call to arms of unparalleled intensity.

According to the Times, whatever last bit of hope City Hall had of striking a deal on a new teachers’ contract before the end of Bloomberg’s term "has all but evaporated", with Mulgrew focused instead on who might replace the mayor after the 2013 election.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

“This is an amazing panel, so I’m thrilled to be part of it,” Mr. Duncan said in his opening comment.

Investigator Richard Hyde

“I’m shocked that the secretary of education would be fraternizing with someone who could potentially be the target of the investigation. The appearance of a conflict of interest is troubling because it can cause the public to lose faith in the investigation.” -- Amid a Federal Education Inquiry, an Unsettling Sight, Michael Winerip, NYT

J.C. Brizard

"Not once at the board meeting did I hear anyone talk about children,” Brizard said. “I kept hearing about adults. I kept hearing, ‘Don’t close my school. Don’t do anything.” Actually, some of the speakers said, video shows the speakers mentioned children over and over again and some students themselves spoke, arguing the closings would not help them. -- Sun-Times

Rick Santorum

"I understand why Obama wants every kid to go to college, because they are indoctrination mills.” Santorum had said earlier in the campaign that when he read John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech in which Mr. Kennedy said the separation of church and state should be absolute, “I almost threw up.”-- New York Times

P.S. 234 -- It's no Lake Wobegon

Garrison Keillor

I rarely take statistics seriously when it comes to teacher evaluation. Especially when they're based on student test scores and published in the New York Times. But this one is too good to pass up.

At Public School 234 in TriBeCa, where children routinely alight for school from luxury cars, roughly one-third of the teachers’ ratings were above average, one-third average and one-third below average.

I mean, except in Lake Wobegon, isn't this what average means (no pun intended)? It's the perfect distribution. If you fired the bottom third, wouldn't one-third still be below average?

The Times story continues:

At Public School 87 on the Upper West Side, where waiting lists for kindergarten spots stretch to stomach-turning lengths, just over half the ratings were above average. The other half were average or below average on measure, based on student test scores.

Amazing! Half above and half below average. How do they do it?

If this trend continues, we can only assume that in New York City (and in the universe as a whole), half the teachers will be above average and half below. And if these ratings are based on test scores, that must hold true for students as well. 

Looking back to '09. Boy was I wrong!

 Three years ago today, opponents of Renaissance 2010 protest Chicago school board decision to close or "turnaround" 16 schools.

It was three years ago yesterday, still joyful from the great election victory three months earlier,  that I took a swipe at Diane Ravitch for her comment:  

"It looks like Obama's education policy will be a third term for President George W. Bush. This is not change I can believe in." (Politico)

My response back then: "What a joke! Obama has done more to save public education in one month than the entire Bush regime did in 12 years."

Well it turned out, the joke was on me us. Obama's early positives -- including his rejection of school vouchers (pushed on him by DFER hedge-fund reformers), his 2009 stimulus package which looked then like a new deal for public education, including millions for new school construction, early childhood support, increases in Headstart, and investments in heath care for children. But the stimulus money dried up and all that soon gave way to even more testing madness, mass teacher firings and school closings forced on school districts in exchange for badly needed federal funds. Obama's right-center strategy led to concession after concession to the conservatives. The president soon joined the teacher-bashing chorus and he openly cheered for the mass teacher firings in Central Falls, RI., setting the tone for the next three years. Race To The Top has become No Child Left Behind on Crack.

Ravitch's forecast was right on the mark. I apologized to her in these pages a few months later. Her attacks on Obama's ed policies were hard for me to accept with her still embedded at the conservative Fordham and Hoover Institutes. But her break with the right-wing think tanks has been genuine and her book and speaking tour became the catalyst for the current resistance movement.

I also owe readers Roger and Margo a dinner the next time I am in San Francisco (see comments section).

"Survival of the Fittest" in Rahm's Chicago

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The noise of change

Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Thursday he’s sensitive to the “noise associated with change.” -- Sun-Times

Somehow the words, "sensitive" and "Rahm" just don't sound right in the same sentence. Chicago's mayor claims he's in a big hurry to make "radical" change and that his so-called reforms can't wait.

“I cannot wait another year and allow a child to be caught in a school system that, for five years running, has been on the watch list or the troubled list with no prospect of getting off of it. … Nothing to me is worse in the sense of discrimination than leaving kids in a system that, year-in-and-year-out, has been scored as failing.”

But wait a minute, Rahm. The last 5 years, like the 15 before them, had the schools strictly under the control of the mayor. You are not doing anything that hasn't been done before under Mayor Daley, ie. school closings in black neighborhoods, privately-run charters, mass teacher firings, and turnarounds (Remember Renaissance 2010, anyone?). Only you are doing more of it and doing it longer and longer.The results are the same or worse.

Listen to the noise. It's growing louder.

Cracks in the pavement

"This is Little Rock, 1957," Jackson told the board. "This is apartheid."

The mayor had no trouble getting his hand-picked gaggle of billionaires and their toadies on the school board to unanimously vote for more school closings and turnarounds. But it's become clear that mounting protests have begun to create some space for dissent among the minions. Media coverage of the protests seems to have moved somewhat out of the hands of Rahm's army of highly-paid spinners at CPS.

Latest to join the struggle to stop the closings were two important black, religious community leaders, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Paul Jakes. Both showed up at yesterday's packed school board meeting and each had a lot to say. Jaclson  blasted inequities in the school system and a lack of resources. After a string of speakers predicted spikes in violence as students make their way to new schools across gang lines, Jakes said:  "The Board of Education needs to work and help pay for some of these funerals that the families will have to go through.

Even the slick-talking J.C. Brizard couldn't escape the ire of the crowd.

Edweek reports:  

Schools chief Jean-Claude Brizard told the crowd that school closings were challenging but necessary, but his remarks that CPS' process was "the most respectful of the community that I've ever seen" brought jeers from the audience.

Chicago school board tells parents: We don't need no stinkin' research

A day after they were handed the latest study showing the poor results of their turnaround reforms, the mayor's hand-picked school board voted to turn 10 more neighborhood public schools over to a private turnaround company. This despite day-long protests outside their offices by hundreds of angry parents, students and community supporters (none of the mayor's paid counter-protesters even bothered to show up).

The board decided to ignore the research and a week of protests (including a march on Monday to the mayor's house) and voted to close five elementary schools, phase out one high school and "turn around" 10 schools by firing all the teachers and making them reapply for jobs.

Debunking turnaround claims of "unimaginable success"

As hundred of protesters gather outside of CPS headquarters this morning to try and prevent the handing over of 10 more schools to AUSL, a private turnaround company, a new study is released which debunks claims made by the mayor and his CPS spin squad about the supposed overwhelming success of turnarounds.

Turnaround schools have become a central piece of Arne Duncan's Race To The Top strategy imposed on states and local school districts in exchange for federal funds. While billions are currently being invested by the federal government in turnaround schools nationally, little research has been carried out about their effectiveness. CPS officials, led by former AUSL execs like School Board Pres. David Vitale and CPS CAO Tim Cawley, claim that the company provides "an opportunity for academic achievement that would otherwise be unimaginable for students.”

At a press conference yesterday, Dr. Donald Moore of Designs for Change, released his major new research study comparing the impact of: elementary-level "Turnaround Schools," run by private contractors like AUSL, to those in which parents, teachers, the principal, the community and students work together to strengthen to quality of education and achievement.

A key purpose of the study is to gauge the potential of School-Based Democracy and School Turnarounds to be carried out in a way that will have wider impact on hundreds of extremely low-income low-achieving elementary schools (primarily serving African American and Latino students) — both in Chicago and in the 50 largest U.S. cities, based on this evidence.

The study found that Chicago's turnarounds have failed to meet even their own criteria of success and that their pale in comparison to a large group of neighborhood schools being run more democratically with popularly-elected Local School Councils. More than 60 elementary-level high-poverty schools that have made school-based democracy a reality, out-achieved the top Turnaround School.

Research you can use

Experience matters 

Before districts go replacing veteran teachers with 5-week wonders from TFA, they should consider this.

Research has been consistent in finding positive correlations between years of teaching experience and higher student achievement. Teachers with more than five years in the classroom seem to be the most effective. Conversely, inexperience is shown to have a strong negative effect on student performance.

• Experienced teachers produce higher student test scores. A comprehensive analysis by Greenwald, Hedges, and Laine (1996) examined data from 60 studies and found a positive relationship between years of teacher experience and student test scores. Similarly, the UTD Texas Schools Project data showed that students of experienced teachers attained significantly higher levels of achievement than did students of new teachers (those with one to three years of experience) (Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain 2005).

• Schools with more inexperienced teachers have higher drop-out rates. In a related finding, an analysis of math achievement and dropout rates in a sample of California high schools (Fetler 2001) found that schools whose dropout rates were in the highest 10 percent had 50 percent more new teachers than did schools in the lowest 10 percent. -- The Center For Public Education
  

Chicago parents pushing back on Rahm's longer school day

At yesterday's march to the mayor's house. (M. Klonsky pic)

At Drummond Montessori school, parents conducted a survey that showed that only 8.5 percent supported the seven-and-a-half hour day that Emanuel favors. Nearly three-quarters preferred a six-and-a-half or seven-hour day. Parents and students at two of the city’s selective public high schools — Northside College Prep and Walter Payton College Prep — have circulated petitions raising concerns about the longer school day.

Jonathan Goldman, a parent and Local School Council member at Drummond helped organize the survey. He told the Chicago News Cooperative that the district seemed more intent on selling the seven-and-a-half hour day than on listening to parent concerns. He said district officials have tried to marginalize opponents of the C.P.S. plan as a small group of parents.

“If you’re really interested in fostering an environment of input and discussion, you welcome all the input,” he said.

I'm interviewed at the protest

I was at the rally against school closings at Lakeview High School yesterday. Before the march to the mayor's house, I was interviewed by Chicago Tonight's Elizabeth Brackett.
 

Bringing it all back home to Rahm

Community activists, parents and teachers plan to pray and sing outside Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s home this evening, ahead of a board of education vote later this week that would turn more than a dozen Chicago public schools over to private operators. Over the weekend, several parents and dozens of Occupy Chicago activists staged a sit-in at Piccolo Elementary in West Humboldt Park. Some spent the night inside on the first floor and many more pitched tents outside. -- WBEZ

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Republican frontrunner Santorum said the idea of public school was “anachronistic.”

Rick Santorum

“It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology,” he said. “But no less a theology.” -- N.Y. Times

Valerie Strauss

Jon Stewart tried to engage Education Secretary Arne Duncan on “The Daily Show” Thursday night, but the effort was an exercise in the futility of conversing with someone who won’t deviate from his talking points. -- The Answer Sheet

Atlanta Supt. Davis 

“Education is the only industry in this country where failure is blamed on the workers, not the leadership.” -- N.Y. Times

Stephen Krashen

“Our average scores are less than spectacular because the U.S. has the highest percentage of children in poverty of all industrialized countries.” -- Dallas Morning News

Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang

An internally motivated approach to building self-control plays to traditional American strengths. Being self-motivated may lead to other positive long-term consequences as well, like independence of thought and willingness to speak out.  -- N.Y. Times

"It takes a process to fail a child" -- Piccolo 7th grader

Riza Falk photo

"We need our school. If they've got the funding, give us the money and we'll do what we've got to do for Brian Piccolo." -- Parent Nedra Martin.

Piccolo is just one of ten CPS schools slated for turnaround, six of which would be run by AUSL. Parents question CPS's claims that the organization improves schools quicker, and they said test scores are up under Piccolo's new principal who was hired last summer.

"She's doing a turnaround. We don't need their turnaround. She's doing the turnaround," said Walls.

"The teachers know us. If they come in here, they don't know our personalities. And they just don't know us," said Yshanda Hudson, Piccolo 8th grader.

When asked if he agreed with CPS, which says teachers are failing children at the school, Piccolo 7th grader Larry Davis said, "I disagree what CPS says. They're not failing us. It takes a process to fail a child."

Parents, teachers and students occupying Piccolo

Saying no to privatization

Photos by A. Klonsky

The halls and classrooms of Brian Piccolo Elementary School on North Keeler are now home to dozens of parents, students and activists armed with a message.

"We want to hear from the mayor," said Latoya Walls, Piccolo parent. "Hear us. We are taxpayers. We have a right. We have a say so. These are our kids." -- ABC Channel 7

Protesters are occupying the school in protest of the Board of Education’s plans to fire all the teachers and turn the school over to a private company. The Board plans to vote on Wednesday to turnaround Piccolo and hand over management of the school to AUSL, Academy for Urban School Leadership, a privately connected firm with ties to City Hall.

To support the parents of Piccolo, go to Piccolo School, 1040 N. Keeler. Bring friends, food, blankets, and water. Support Our Schools, Don’t Close Them!

NDSG

Driving up to University of St. Mary on the Lake for the annual North Dakota Study Group. My favorite group of progressive educators.

SB1467, American Taliban's latest assault on teachers

If SB1467 becomes law in Arizona, the state's public school teachers could be fired for engaging in “speech or conduct that would violate the standards adopted by the federal communications commission concerning obscenity, indecency and profanity if that speech or conduct were broadcast on television or radio.”

Because the language in the bill doesn’t distinguish between public speech or conduct and just plain old speech or conduct, the law could even require schools to fire teachers who use profanity and have sex in their private lives away from school.

Chicago area "most corrupt." So let's put mayor in charge of schools

A study being released today says the number of public corruption convictions in the Chicago area was higher than in any other federal court district in the entire country from 1976 through 2010.

I've got an idea. Let's put the mayor in charge of the schools and make CPS a wing of City Hall. We can call it, "reform"