AmeriCorps to assist with turnaround efforts

February 26, 2013 at 5:03 pm · Filed under Human Capital, Partners

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) and the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) announced $15 million of available funds to place AmeriCorps members in persistently low-achieving schools. The additional capacity from the corps members will assist school turnaround efforts and the grants are designed to:

  • target parent and family engagement and student learning time;
  • improve school safety, attendance, and discipline;
  • address students’ social, emotional, and health needs;
  • accelerate students’ acquisition of reading and mathematics knowledge and skills; and,
  • increase graduation and college enrollment rates.

ED and CNCS will award School Turnaround AmeriCorps grants to approximately 650 AmeriCorps members each year for three years, at an estimated 60 schools in urban and rural areas across the country. Local school districts, states, public or private non-profit organizations, IHEs, FBOs, and consortia of any of the above groups are invited to apply. Notice of intent to apply is due April 2. Applications are due April 23rd.

Turnaround schools need as much additional capacity as they can get – as long as the additional capacity is high-quality and aligned to the rest of the turnaround initiative. Bringing in AmeriCorps members to turnaround schools may also help alleviate some of the staff burnout often associated with turnarounds. A note of caution is that any school using the new School Turnaround AmeriCorps program must plan for the end of the grant and build up internal staff capacity when the additional support ends.

For more information:

 

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A reminder of the potential

January 25, 2013 at 9:52 am · Filed under Human Capital, students

Today’s Chicago Tribune includes a story of a student who in most cases would be overlooked. He had the tenacity to commit to school, despite being homeless, but he was also provided a variety of opportunities that put him where he is today – a highly qualified applicant for some of the most prestigious universities in the country. Kudos to Lane for being determined, kudos to his mother for providing whatever support was needed, and kudos to Lane’s teachers and mentors (past and present) who saw through the statistics and circumstances.

This story is a stark reminder of the potential so many students have, but whose skills and dreams are not nurtured, encouraged, or refined. The power teachers have to “discover” kids like this is truly amazing and can change the course of a child’s (and a family’s) life.

From homeless shelter to elite science fair

By Bridget Doyle, Chicago Tribune reporterJanuary 25, 2013

In March, Lane Gunderman, a senior at the University of Chicago Lab High School, will fly to Washington to compete for one of the nation’s most prestigious high school science awards. The 18-year-old is one of 40 finalists — out of more than 1,700 applicants — for the Intel Science Talent Search.

Such an achievement may not seem unusual for a student at an elite private school. But Gunderman’s journey to reach this point has been anything but typical.

Six years ago, he and his family were homeless and living in a crowded North Side shelter. Schoolwork, he says, is what helped him get by.

“There wasn’t much to do at the shelter, and there was very little privacy,” he said Thursday. “I focused my attention on schoolwork — especially since lights had to be out at 8 p.m.”

Through his tenacity in the classroom, Gunderman, who now lives in an Uptown apartment with his mother and younger sister, has found a niche in the intellectual hive of Hyde Park.

“Lane was brought into a completely different part of the city and culture; he started out a little introverted and shy,” Lab School Assistant Principal Asra Ahmed said. “He’s an incredibly amazing kid that’s never asked for any special treatment — even when he should have. He rose to the challenge of this school and has done exceptionally well.”

Gunderman said his family has been “poor or extremely poor” for his whole life. They always managed to scrape by, but in 2006, Gunderman, his parents and two siblings lost their apartment in Rogers Park.

Over the next several months, they stayed with a relative in a pop-up trailer and moved around the Chicago area.

When his parents divorced that same year, the bottom fell out. One night, his father dropped the rest of the family at a North Side police station and drove away. Gunderman and the others slept on a bench in the police station, later moving to a temporary overnight shelter.

The family spent the next year or so in various homeless shelters on the North Side. Previously home-schooled by their mother, Gunderman and his siblings enrolled in public school for the first time.

At Burley Elementary School in Lakeview, Gunderman gained the attention of teachers for his dedication to schoolwork. He received high grades and did well on tests, leading teachers to suggest he apply to the U. of C. Lab High School.

Gunderman’s application to Lab and back story stood out, Ahmed said. He was accepted and offered a full scholarship from the Malone Foundation, a group that provides educational options for gifted children.

After a year of living in homeless shelters, Gunderman and his family managed to stay in various apartments. And after 31/2 years at Lab School, Gunderman is thriving both academically and socially.

He was accepted last year into the school’s Summer Link Science Research Program, which helps place science-focused students in real lab settings. Gunderman was able to work with Greg Engel, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago, in a lab where his Intel Science Talent Search project was born.

Last summer, Gunderman joined a working team of scientists and graduate students on a project that “explains how photosynthesis uses quantum physics,” Engel said.

After just a few weeks of working together, Engel said he realized Gunderman’s immense potential in the field.

“Lane jumped into a difficult project in a complex system. It was great fun watching him tackle big questions in the field,” Engel said. “He’s so driven and talented. I think he’s someone with potential to be a truly spectacular scientist.”

Over the summer, Gunderman created a computer simulation of his project, along with an in-depth analysis of the work. That was submitted to Intel in November, and this week he found out he was one of 40 finalists and could win up to $100,000.

“It’s the dream of a science teacher to see someone achieve what Lane has,” said Lab School biology teacher Sharon Housinger, who had encouraged Gunderman to apply to the Summer Link Program.

Gunderman has big plans for his future. He has applied to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago and is also looking at schools like Harvard, Princeton and the California Institute of Technology.

The trip to Washington, though, will be his first time aboard an airplane. He admitted he’s a little nervous about that.

“It’ll be an adventure to my next adventure,” he said.

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Finally! Teacher prep programs in the spotlight

December 17, 2012 at 11:16 am · Filed under Human Capital

State Chiefs to Examine Teacher Prep, Licensing

By Stephen Sawchuk, EdWeek, Dec. 17, 2012

Twenty-five state schools chiefs are vowing to take action to update their systems of teacher preparation and licensing, with an eye to ensuring teachers are ready the minute they take charge of their own classrooms.

The announcement Friday morning from the Council of Chief State School Officers is probably state officials’ most explicit promise to engage in changes to teacher preparation, and it comes as the latest sign that the topic is likely be a major focus of K-12 policymakers in 2013.

“Attention to teacher preparation is definitely growing at the state level,” said Sandi Jacobs, the managing director of state policy for the Washington-based National Council on Teacher Quality, a group that tracks states’ teacher policies. “But it hasn’t yet reached the level of interest as other topics, like teacher evaluation.”

The participating state superintendents and commissioners of education are in: Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia. They will implement recommendations in a report, also released Dec. 17, by a task force of the Washington-based CCSSO.

Among other measures, the report says that states should align certification requirementsRequires Adobe Acrobat Reader with the demands of college- and career-ready standards; developperformance assessments aligned to those new requirements; improve the process for approving teacher-preparation programs by raising colleges’ and programs’ entry requirements and acting on regular reviews to aid or shutter weak-performing ones; and provide better pre-K-20 achievement data to the programs to inform such efforts.

The paper doesn’t spell out what those policies should look like. The CCSSO plans to provide technical assistance, support, and guidance to the state chiefs as they audit their policies and determine how to make changes.

Janice Poda, the director of the CCSSO’S Strategic Initiative for the Education Workforce, said the task force concluded that reforms to certification are necessary because licensing no longer signals quality.

“The public does not have a lot of faith in licensure meaning that a teacher is qualified or effective. It’s lost its ability to communicate that a person is ready for the classroom,” she said. “We will raise the import of what it means. … It should be more than a completion of a set of courses.”

Many Actors

How quickly, and how radically, states can make the changes outlined in the report remains in question. The regulatory structure in each state differs, and state chiefs exercise varying degrees of control over licensure, certification, and preparation rules.

For instance, at least 11 states—California, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Vermont, Washington, and Wyoming—have an independent standards board that has direct authority over certification and/or preparation programs, according to the NCTQ. Other states have advisory bodies, or share authority among several entities.

“The regulatory landscape is quite varied across the states,” said Ms. Jacobs, who served on a separate committee that advised the task force. “There’s no one model for how the authority structures play out.”

Some state officials say they want to move quickly. Tennessee Commissioner Kevin Huffman said he wants his state’s board of education to pass new rules on teacher licensure and program approval by next summer.

“We do not have a rigorous performance-based bar” for teacher licensure, he said. “We have had a convoluted, bureaucratic bar, but not a rigorous one. I think we have it exactly backwards right now.”

In Iowa, state Director of Education Jason Glass said he sees the work as complementing policymakers’ goals of improving teacher pay and tying it to a career ladder, a priority for the next legislative session.

“It represents one part of a more comprehensive picture of what we have to do to improve educator quality,” he said.

While teacher-preparation policy has taken a back seat to other issues, the past few years have seen increased movement in statehouses and education departments:

• Louisiana, Tennessee, and North Carolina now all produce data for education programs based on the performance of their graduates.

• New York state plans to implement a performance-based licensure and recertification system.

• Indiana recently completed an aggressive overhaul of its certification rules, making it easier for teachers to enter through alternative routes.

• Michigan officials acted on accountability data to bar enrollments in certain certification areas at two underperforming teacher colleges, until they successfully strengthen their programming.

• A Kentucky overhaul of state licensing rules increased the minimum grade point average for entering candidates and added new student-teaching requirements.

• Officials of the Illinois board of education, over protests from some education schools,raised the bar on the state’s basic-skills exam for teachers and required candidates to achieve a minimum score on all four sections.

• Several states have added stand-alone tests of teachers’ ability to teach reading.

Next year will also see the publication of the NCTQ’s review of every college of education; the release of new regulations governing teacher-preparation accountability by the U.S. Department of Education; and the unveiling of new standards by the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation.

The task force that produced the CCSSO report included nine current or former state schools chiefs: Virginia Barry of New Hampshire; Mitchell Chester of Massachusetts; Terry Holliday of Kentucky; Tom Luna of Idaho; Judy Jeffrey, formerly a chief in Iowa; Christopher Koch of Illinois; Rick Melmer of South Dakota; Jim Rex, formerly a chief in South Carolina; and Melody Schopp of South Dakota.

It also included two members the National Governors Association and three from the National Association of State Boards of Education.

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Too early to determine success or failure

November 26, 2012 at 3:02 pm · Filed under Federal Policy

USED recently released some data on year 1 SIG school performance. The release has re-initiated the turnaround firestorm. While some of the discussion is useful, many bloggers/ed leaders are jumping to conclusions far too quickly. To see some of the blogs/comments: see here, here or here.

Many of us who work in the school turnaround environment could have predicted the year 1 results USED released, some schools improved, some got worse. Unfortunately, that is to be expected in the first year of a turnaround effort. When modifying an existing system (with either tinkering or dramatic change), one still must fight against the status quo. There is no perfect model for a school turnaround and course corrections must be made along the way. As a result, the first programs and practices implemented might not have been the most effective and will be removed or adapted throughout the three-year implementation period.

Honestly, I’m surprised that so many schools were able to achieve double-digit gains in year 1. Year 1 schools often focus on culture and climate. While some academic improvements are likely, the real academic growth won’t come until instruction is the focus, in years 2 and 3. Just looking at year 1′s assessment data should not imply success or failure of a turnaround. We must also look at culture and climate indicators (i.e. student, teacher and parent satisfaction surveys, student AND teacher attendance, in/out of school suspensions, etc), in addition to student academic performance. If we’re evaluating turnaround efforts on assessment data for year 1, we are setting those schools up for continued failure. The schools (teachers and leaders) must know that they have the public’s support to implement a multi-year plan to make real and lasting changes. To say that a turnaround has failed so quickly implies that all of the improvements that were made were not effective, and in most cases this is simply not true, they just have a long way to go.

The other major piece that’s missing in much of this discussion (i.e. all the blogs and the early research) is what changes are actually taking place in these schools? How does the achievement (and behavioral) data compare when you look at turnarounds vs transformation vs restarts? How does the political will of leaders (school boards, superintendents, principals) impact the turnaround effort? If teachers were replaced, was there a sufficient (and highly effective) pool of teachers to rehire from? Were community partnerships formed to address all of the social needs turnaround schools often have? How hands-on or hands-off was the state education agency in helping schools and districts make real and lasting changes? What systems, conditions, and practices were embedded into the larger district to ensure sustainability and continued growth (post-SIG funds).

Until we look at 1) a more robust (and diverse) collection of data to get a real picture of what’s happening in a school over multiple years, and 2) the structures, supports, and implementation processes of turnarounds, it is far too early to draw definitive conclusions in support of or against the revised federal SIG program, and why it is or is not working. Until then, we must support the incredibly hard work that is being done in these schools, continue to work towards equitable educational opportunities for all students, and wait for additional research.

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The Challenges of Change

October 30, 2012 at 11:59 am · Filed under Districts, Schools

Even when change is absolutely necessary (i.e. the debt of Chicago Public Schools continues to grow and the current operating budget is not sustainable), education leaders must fight for every possible change. I completely agree that school closings are necessary, but they must be done strategically and we must analyze the unintended consequences of closing each school. The bottom line is that CPS cannot continue to run so many half-full (and often low-performing) schools. The below Editorial doesn’t acknowledge the other issues that must also be addressed in order to successfully and safely close schools (i.e. students crossing gang lines to get to new schools, long(er) commuting times, increased difficulty for parents to get to the schools, lack of a neighborhood/community hub, and the lack of higher-performing schools for students to attend), but it does address many of the reasons why the schools must be closed in the first place.

An editorial from today’s Chicago Tribune:

By Dec. 1, Chicago Public Schools officials must deliver to state lawmakers a list of schools slated to close at the end of this school year. The district will release its criteria for making those decisions this week.

As many as 120 Chicago schools are likely to be on the chopping block because the district faces a $1 billion budget gap next year. And the following year.

This is a critical moment for CPS and its new CEO, Barbara Byrd-Bennett. Make no mistake: This will be painful. But scores of schools must be closed.

There are more than 100,000 empty seats in schools because CPS badly mismanaged its real estate portfolio over the past decade. Overall district enrollment has declined by 34,000 students since 2003. CPS built new schools to relieve overcrowding in some communities but failed to close enough of the older, emptier ones, often caving to community pressure.

Reality check: Keeping half-used buildings open is a huge financial drain the system can’t afford.

CPS says it can save about $800,000 a year in operating costs by closing a school and reassigning kids to schools that have extra space. It also avoids the cost of capital improvements, and could generate some revenue through property sales.

Those closings alone won’t eliminate this huge budget gap. But CPS simply can’t operate more schools — heat more buildings, patch more roofs — than its students need.

One of the first major tests for Byrd-Bennett is how compellingly the district makes its case to Chicagoans — particularly parents of CPS students — that neighborhood schools must close. She needs to deliver a clear explanation of the district’s strategy. Byrd-Bennett and her boss, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, need to build community support for these closings. They should start making the case now by stressing two major points:

•Many of those half-empty schools not only drain resources, they rank among the district’s worst performers. CPS should first close schools that are underenrolled and poor performers. Scores of schools fit that profile.

•Displaced students can benefit academically if they transfer to a higher-quality school. That’s the conclusion of a 2009 University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research study of 18 elementary schools closed from 2001 to 2006. “Displaced students who enrolled in new schools with high average achievement had larger gains in both reading and math than students who enrolled in receiving schools with lower average achievement,” the study said.

That could be a huge selling point for CPS to parents. No, not every student will be able to move to a much better-performing school; sadly, there aren’t enough in the system. But closing half-empty underperformers and boosting investment in the remaining schools should massively increase the odds that a child will transfer to a better school.

We know this will be a painful and emotional time for parents, teachers and students. Many parents don’t want to send their kids to another school, no matter how abysmal the neighborhood school performs. There are legitimate safety issues in some neighborhoods.

The Chicago Teachers Union should help guide CPS closings, not stand in the doorway of every school, shouting “No!”

And then there are the politicians. We expect state legislators who unwisely tried to meddle in earlier closings and turnarounds to try again with this round. They may have company: Some 33 aldermen are calling for City Council hearings on the closings, demanding to know which schools are being targeted for closing and under what criteria.

That can be helpful if the goal is to inform parents, not to delay the inevitable. We understand the impulse to save neighborhood schools. But this isn’t a matter of CPS whim. This is about the creating a sustainable budget for the district and its 404,000 students.

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Turnarounds Can’t Happen by Themselves

October 26, 2012 at 12:41 pm · Filed under Districts, Human Capital

A recent EdWeek blog discusses school turnaround at a very high level, and while the author acknowledges the importance of a school principal (which I completely agree with), he misses the importance of strong and committed district leaders. Until we link school turnaround with district turnaround, we cannot expect schools to make sustainable gains.

High Performing High Poverty (HPHP) schools do exist across the country and most do share those 4 characteristics (amongst others). We’re starting to see the results of schools entering year 3 of the revised federal SIG program and we can only hope that those schools will continue to make gains as they exit SIG and/or Priority School status.

That said, the piece that’s missing here is need for political will at the district level. Schools will not maintain (and continue) their turnarounds without building school AND DISTRICT capacity. Districts must be part of the solution and must shelter turnaround schools until they are fully turned around and self-sufficient (this requires more than 3 years).

Time and time again, I have seen schools with strong principals and teachers succeed IN SPITE of the district. In order to make the systemic changes that are so needed, district administrators must lift constraints and empower the school staff to lead the turnaround process. Once a school turns around, the district must also build a succession plan for that school’s leadership: don’t simply pull a great turnaround principal out, without first transitioning a strong AP into the principalship; don’t pull all the newly trained teachers into other district schools; and don’t eliminate all supports at once.

There must be a strategic phase out process at both the school and district levels and this desire for sustainability must come from the district’s leadership (superintendent AND the school board).

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The teachers who fall through the cracks

August 30, 2012 at 5:42 pm · Filed under Human Capital, Politics

We often talk about trying to save the kids who fall through the cracks, but what about the teachers? There are good teachers out there, who truly love teaching and believe that all of their students can learn, but their voices are rarely heard. With the rise of teacher quality organizations (Teach Plus, National Center for Teacher Quality, The New Teacher Project, Educators for Excellence, etc) it’s getting better, but not fast enough.

A blog was recently posted on CNN from a teacher who is in SUPPORT of merit pay, career ladders, differentiated pay, and stronger evaluations. She accurately recognizes the problems within the current education system and embraces healthy competition and the continuous improvement of teachers.

But, she doesn’t discuss the reasons why these things aren’t being implemented any faster.

Policy reformers (BOTH democrats and republicans) are hampered by politics. The unions remain incredibly strong and it feels like one step forward two steps back during the implementation of every (and any) reform. The unions protect the status quo and this teacher (and most of the great teachers out there) challenge the status quo.

Unions are definitely a major issue to this type of reform, but the capacity of principals and teachers are barriers as well.

Principals and other school administrators need strong training to understand how to use data effectively and how to evaluate teachers for 1) evaluation purposes and 2) observations for the sake of creating a teacher’s professional development plan. These are two very different reasons for a principal or teacher leader to observe a classroom and they must be trained to do the actual observation properly, and to know what to do with that information once it’s gathered.

The capacity of teachers is also severely lacking across the country. Many schools of education are graduating teachers who have no real classroom experience, don’t know how to differentiate learning for students, and don’t understand how to manage a classroom. In effect, schools of ed are essentially setting up their own graduates for failure. As reformers, how come we’re not putting more pressure on the schools of ed to better teach their teachers? To track how their teachers do in the classroom, upon graduation? How long they stay in education? Teachers major in education believing that they’ll be taught how to teach, when that’s not the case.

On another teacher capacity note, if we have merit pay and better evaluation systems. Do we have enough good and great teachers to fill the positions of teachers who will be removed from the profession? We can’t effectively implement the solution without addressing the pipeline gap.

 

 

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