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In
the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Virginians can
be proud of their educational institutions. Local
school superintendents and college presidents
opened their doors to evacuees without regard to
cost or overcrowding, and without recourse to
legal opinions or first asking “Who pays?”
Theirs
was a prompt response to a catastrophe for
thousands of students. Isn’t it time we
responded as decisively when an educational
catastrophe strikes here?
Two
weeks before Katrina struck, Virginia released its
School Report Card showing the movement of
individual schools in making “Adequate Yearly
Progress” under the federal No Child Left Behind
(NCLB) program (as well as our own Standards of
Learning).
The
good news is that 80 percent of Virginia’s
schools met federal requirements for increased
student achievement vs. 74 percent last year –
even though the standard for achievement was
higher and will continue to increase each year.
The
bad news is that nagging pockets of failure
remain. Forty-one schools have missed their
benchmarks for three years or more. The students
in four of those schools – located in
Petersburg, Richmond and Portsmouth – have
suffered under a failing educational program for
five long years.
While
there’s plenty to dispute about the feds'
definition of progress, these schools aren’t
making the grade under Virginia’s own standards,
either.
Many
educators decry use of the term “failure.” But
when a school doesn’t make progress for five
straight years, when most of the children in that
school are demonstrably not learning, when the
school as a whole does not meet any standard of
excellence, what, exactly, would they have us call
it?
Worst
of all, the schools failing to improve are
precisely those that most need to succeed. Their
students are largely poor and black – like the
faces we saw abandoned in the New Orleans
Superdome. Without a real education, their future
is bleak. The 41 failing schools are responsible
for the education of 19,763. Throw in their
families, and you're talking about more people
than we saw at the Superdome and the New Orleans
Convention Center combined.
Yet
our response to this disaster merely plays at the
edges, tinkering with what obviously isn’t
working in the absurd hope that if we do more of
the same we’ll suddenly see a different result.
School
systems may call in a “turnaround specialist,”
but unlike the private sector where a
“turnaround specialist” actually makes
wholesale changes – from personnel to budgeting
to production systems – in the education world
they rarely do more than bring in a new
curriculum. Individual schools stay locked into
the division-wide system; teachers and principals
are unable to break free of the “one size fits
all” public school mentality.
But
time is running out on excuses. Say what one will
about NCLB, it at least requires Petersburg,
Portsmouth and Richmond to plan now for
restructuring those schools if a sixth year of
failure takes place. That may include reopening
the school as a charter, replacing the staff
relevant to the school’s failure, or turning the
school over to a private educational management
company.
Clearly,
its time for fundamental change from the outside.
Take
Chandler Middle School in Richmond City, which has
completed its fifth year of failing to make
reading benchmarks and its second year of failing
to make Mathematics benchmarks. Students there
deserve better than an improvement process taking
longer than the number of years they’ll be in
that school.
Converting
the school to a charter or contracting it out to
an education management company would enable the
school division to make rapid change.
Bringing in an organization like the KIPP
(Knowledge is Power Program) Foundation would
instantly provide the flexibility that school
systems can’t achieve on their own.
A
recent report from the Educational Policy
Institute in Virginia Beach found that “KIPP
schools post substantially greater gains than what
is considered normal,” starting from well below
the norm in both math and reading.
The
report echoes those completed by dozens of other
scholars.
KIPP,
which operates 45 charter schools and two contract
schools serving low-income students, opens its
schools from 7:15 am until 5:00 pm each day, and
every other Saturday for four hours. Teachers are
supplied cell phones and are on call each night to
answer homework questions. Students wear uniforms
every day. Classrooms aren’t numbered –
instead, each classroom is named for the college
its teacher attended, reinforcing the expectations
for every student. Finally, all parties –
teachers, parents, and students – sign a
“Commitment to Excellence” outlining those
actions each will take to make certain the school
year is a success.
Could
this happen in a traditional public school? Not
likely.
Would
all 533 students at Chandler make that sort of
commitment? Probably not. And it might be
difficult for KIPP, which prides itself on
operating small middle schools of about 300
students, to take on that many students capably.
But Chandler borders on two schools that are
passing muster, where students could always
exercise the right to transfer.
Chandler’s
students, and other like them, deserve no more
delays. Just as natural disasters require decisive
steps, so too do educational disasters. And the
time to act on them is now.
--
September 19, 2005
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