Hard recovery for failed US schools

[Peter Farruggio <pfarr@cal.berkeley.edu>]

A report on the standardistas' high flying, no 
excuses school du jour.  The principal is known 
as a child friendly educator, and no doubt his 
teachers are dedicated and hard working.  But the 
years of scripted teaching and test prep have 
likely hit their apex with this year's 
"accomplishment"  Watch those scores plummet now, 
because that's the plan for poor kids under high 
stakes.  By the way, a note on the dumping of 
bilingual education.  Oakland hasn't had a decent 
bilingual ed program for many many years, and 
Sobrante Park's program was far from decent, so 
no big deal to abandon it.  It's not about 
bilingual education, which does well in many 
other locations across the US, it's about a 
dysfunctional, bureaucratic, standardista school district.

Pete Farruggio

from the March 01, 2007 edition - 
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0301/p01s03-ussc.html


Hard recovery for failed US schools


The last phase of the reform timeline outlined by 
No Child Left Behind poses challenges for underperformers.

By Stacy A. Teicher and Ben Arnoldy | Staff 
writers of The Christian Science Monitor

BOSTON AND OAKLAND, CALIF.

Something had to change at Sobrante Park. Year 
after year, the elementary school in the poor 
flatlands of Oakland failed to meet test-score 
targets that, under state and federal laws, have consequences attached.

Sobrante Park overhauled the curriculum, turned 
over staff, moved the school schedule later, and 
rolled back bilingual education. After a 
difficult five years, the school now tests above 
Oakland's average and has freed itself from government intervention.

Yet Sobrante Park is a rare bright spot in a new 
and cautionary assessment of how challenging it 
is to reform public schools under the most 
sweeping national school reform in decades. A new 
study of California's public schools found that 
the number identified as chronically struggling 
has risen 75 percent in one year. Those schools 
now account for nearly 8 percent of the state's 
public schools. Just as noteworthy, most schools 
who fall into that category have not yet found a way to get out again.

California is a harbinger of the magnified 
problems that public schools around the country 
will face as the last phase of the reform 
timeline outlined by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) kicks in this year.

That is why experts are studying schools like 
Sobrante Park to understand which reforms work.

Under the mandates of the five-year-old NCLB, 
low-performing schools undergo a series of 
interventions. The last phase is "restructuring." 
After five years of not meeting targets for 
adequate yearly progress (AYP) on test scores, 
schools must plan for significant reform and implement it the following year.

But a few states, such as California, put 
accountability measures into place prior to NCLB. 
Out of 245 California schools that restructured 
in 2005-06, just 11 percent met AYP targets, said 
the new report, released Wednesday by the Center 
on Education Policy (CEP) in Washington. The 
center has also studied Michigan, another early 
adopter of accountability reforms.

"What we're finding is that school districts that 
implement a variety of changes are more likely to 
improve their test scores than those that 
implement only one change, such as changing [a 
school's] staff," says CEP's president and CEO 
Jack Jennings. It's good that NCLB is no longer 
allowing officials to turn a blind eye to 
low-performing schools, he says, but improving 
schools "is a very challenging task ... and we 
should have a little bit of humility when it 
comes to telling schools how to bring about changes."

NCLB allows several restructuring options: 
turning the school over to the state or a 
management company, reopening as a charter, 
replacing much of the staff, or any other major 
action that will significantly change school governance.

In California, that last option ? "any other" 
major action ? is what 89 percent of schools in 
restructuring have opted for. The first options 
are a way for Congress to "sound tough" about 
reform, Mr. Jennings says, "but when you're 
running a school, they don't make a lot of sense."

But some others say the "any other" option is too 
often used as a loophole to avoid significant 
reforms. As NCLB reauthorization is debated this 
year, various proposals are on the table for how 
to make restructuring requirements more effective.

The Department of Education (DOE) proposes taking 
the "any other" option off the table. They would 
also give superintendents the opportunity to 
suspend collective-bargaining agreements in order 
to bring highly qualified staff to troubled schools to target students' needs.

At Sobrante Park, Principal Marco Franco opted 
for the "any other" option and changed four out 
of 14 staff members ? a smaller percentage than 
the district wanted. "I knew the staff and I knew 
I wanted to keep them," Mr. Franco says. "If I 
lost the proportion the district wanted me to 
lose, I don't know if we would be in the same place."

Staff changes in Oakland's restructuring efforts 
are mostly a matter of moving teachers between 
schools in the district, with principals' hiring 
options limited by teacher contracts.

CEP found that 30 percent of schools in 
restructuring in California opted to change their 
staff, but only 5 percent of these schools went on to meet AYP.

Jennings acknowledges that the research is still 
too new to draw broad conclusions about what works.

Giving superintendents flexibility to bring 
better teachers into schools with the highest 
needs is a good proposal on the part of the DOE, 
says Amy Wilkins of The Education Trust, a group 
in Washington, D.C., which advocates for closing 
achievement gaps. But such moves need to go hand 
in hand with measuring teachers' effectiveness, 
she says. "Just getting different faces in the classroom is not the point."

After a year of hearings in communities around 
the United States, the nonpartisan Commission on 
No Child Left Behind came out last month with a 
set of recommendations. On the subject of 
restructuring, there was agreement that "when a 
school is struggling consistently, they need to 
take more aggressive action," says Gary Huggins, the commission's director.

The commission suggests, as does the CEP report, 
that schools be required to choose a 
comprehensive set of actions rather than a single 
intervention. But it also says they should have 
more time to show results once changes are made.

But it's unfair to mandate restructuring options 
when "none has any track record of success," says 
Bob Schaeffer of the National Center for Fair & 
Open Testing in Cambridge, Mass., which opposes NCLB.

The Oakland Unified School District, run by a 
state-appointed administrator since 2003 due to 
financial difficulties, decides case by case how 
much latitude to give schools in choosing 
restructuring plans. This year it says it might 
intervene in 14 schools, possibly closing four.

The plan drawn up by Franco and his staff had 
many components, but he sums up the philosophy 
this way: "If something is not working, toss it, man."

That got Franco, a Latino, into hot water with 
parents when he ended the bilingual program in 
the upper grades. The complaints tapered off 
after parents saw test scores improve, he says.

The teachers adopted a more scripted and uniform 
curriculum, making it easier for them to 
collaborate and for the principal to evaluate 
them. The school day was changed to allow 
teachers time to work with individual students. 
Franco hired a writing coach and used some money 
to reopen the school library, which had been converted to storage.

California school update

Here are statistics on California schools forced 
to restructure under No Child Left Behind (NCLB):

401 ? The number of schools required to plan or 
implement NCLB restructuring in 2005-06.

701 ? The number of such schools in 2006-07.

207 ? The number of schools in restructuring that 
have failed to make adequate yearly progress on 
tests for seven consecutive years.

10 ? The number in restructuring that improved 
enough between 2005-06 and 2006-07 to have that label removed.

Source: Beyond the Mountains: An Early Look at 
Restructuring Results in California, by the Center on Education Policy.