Stuck in TWWADI
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Categories: Education, Volunteerism, Advocacy, Giving, How I Live United, Other, The LiveUnitedSEM Network
Categories: Education, Volunteerism, Advocacy, Giving, How I Live United, Other, The LiveUnitedSEM Network
(Testimony to the Michigan House Education Committee on November 13, 2008)
What we face in Michigan is a dilemma faced by all 49 other states. Schools that have increasing numbers of kids in poverty have decreasing numbers in student achievement. But some schools are beating those odds, and the question is, how can we bring schools like them to scale?
The issue is not one of governance. There is no consistent data supporting mayoral-controlled schools, charter schools, or traditional public schools as the solution to this issue. If you allow this to become a question of governance, you are missing the boat.
The issue is how to build and sustain high-performing schools in high-poverty communities across the state.
The question is whether we'll be stuck in TWWADI--The Way We've Always Done It.
The Gates Foundation has invested $1 billion in transforming urban high schools in the last eight years. And Mass Insight, a research firm in Boston, has studied which strategies have been successful in creating high-performing, high-poverty schools. They conclude that the following three elements are consistent:
· Readiness to Learn: It is obvious when you visit a high-performing school that there is a Code of Conduct that is consistently enforced. A culture exists that makes it clear that this is not just another school. Students are engaged and confident that they are going to college.
· Readiness to Teach: Teaching in a high-performing school is a collaborative, transparent process, and professional development is embedded in the life of the school. Classrooms are open to peer teachers, mentor teachers, and principals to make teaching a reflective and continuously improving process.
· Readiness to Lead: This means both that principals have control over the people, programs, and budgets in their building and also that that they are relentless in doing whatever it takes to ensure every student's success.
Ninety percent of school reform efforts fail because they only address one element: Readiness to Teach. But the best curriculum and instruction in the world will not hold up if a school does not have the leadership and culture in place to support it.
If legislative efforts continue to focus only on curriculum and instruction, you will be wasting your time and taxpayer dollars.
Some cities and school districts have taken bold steps. I'd like to highlight two.
Boston Public Schools is a district that's about half the size of Detroit. In 1998, their achievement scores were close to what Detroit's are now. Roughly 15 to 20 percent of their students of color were proficient in math and reading at the 10th grade level. But now, more than 60 percent are proficient. In Boston, they are no longer asking how they can get most kids to "basic." They are looking at how they can get most kids to "advanced."
Getting there wasn't easy. They converted every one of their 13 general admissions high schools into smaller schools and learning communities. They created a system of "pilot" schools within the district that gave school leaders autonomy over their programs and budget, and these schools led the way in improving student achievement. They also partnered district-wide with educational intermediaries like the Boston Plan for Excellence and Jobs for the Future, which provided much-needed resources and focus consistently and exclusively on improving student achievement.
New York Public Schools is a district that's ten times the size of Detroit, and they had a graduation rate that languished at 50 percent for decades. Since 2002, however, they have taken bold steps to rectify that, and the graduation rate has risen steadily to almost 60 percent since then. That translates into thousands of lives that are much less likely to end up in prison because of what they have done.
To get there, they took dramatic steps. The district and its union agreed to give lead teachers a $10,000 salary differential, and to give $15,000 housing incentives for math and science teachers to live in the neighborhoods of their schools. They eliminated "bumping" so that every principal had ultimate authority over which staff worked in their buildings. And they partnered with 14 intermediaries, one of which has built 100 new small schools and achieved graduation rates of 78 percent for their first senior class where rates of 25 to 40 percent were the norm.
The strategies that have proven successful in Boston, New York and other cities are captured by Mass Insight's Turnaround Framework.
The state and local school districts must create "Turnaround Zones" that free schools dedicated to transformative turnaround efforts to operate without all of the bureaucratic red tape and inertia that stalls real change.
There must be a change in conditions. School leaders must have control over the people, programs and budgets in their buildings. No organization, no leader, could be successful without this autonomy.
There must be an increase in capacity. No school district has shown the ability to turn itself around on its own. High-performing schools partner with an educational intermediary with a proven model for increasing student achievement, much like University Prep and Lawrence Tech in Ferndale, Henry Ford Academy and the Henry Ford Leadership Institute in Dearborn or University Prep Academy in Detroit and the Big Picture Company.
Increasing capacity also means an infusion of the best and brightest teachers and school leaders into high poverty schools, whether those people are fresh out of college or in the middle of their career. Organizations like New Leaders for New Schools, Teach for America, and the New Teachers Project can bring talent like this to our state, and we must look at legislation and other ways to create an environment that welcomes them.
We must do this work in clusters. This work cannot be done one school at a time, or all schools at once. We must be strategic about turning around schools in competitive and collaborative clusters, or networks, until all schools are either being turned around, or shuttered, in a thoughtful and sustainable way.
The opportunity to close the achievement gap, to right the primary civil rights issue of our time, lies ahead of us. Will we remain stuck in TWWADI--dying on hills while fighting battles that have nothing to do with improving student achievement?
Marginal change will always yield marginal results. Students, teachers and principals do not want to be in failing schools. You have the opportunity--we all have a moral obligation--to get this right.
What we face in Michigan is a dilemma faced by all 49 other states. Schools that have increasing numbers of kids in poverty have decreasing numbers in student achievement. But some schools are beating those odds, and the question is, how can we bring schools like them to scale?
The issue is not one of governance. There is no consistent data supporting mayoral-controlled schools, charter schools, or traditional public schools as the solution to this issue. If you allow this to become a question of governance, you are missing the boat.
The issue is how to build and sustain high-performing schools in high-poverty communities across the state.
The question is whether we'll be stuck in TWWADI--The Way We've Always Done It.
The Gates Foundation has invested $1 billion in transforming urban high schools in the last eight years. And Mass Insight, a research firm in Boston, has studied which strategies have been successful in creating high-performing, high-poverty schools. They conclude that the following three elements are consistent:
· Readiness to Learn: It is obvious when you visit a high-performing school that there is a Code of Conduct that is consistently enforced. A culture exists that makes it clear that this is not just another school. Students are engaged and confident that they are going to college.
· Readiness to Teach: Teaching in a high-performing school is a collaborative, transparent process, and professional development is embedded in the life of the school. Classrooms are open to peer teachers, mentor teachers, and principals to make teaching a reflective and continuously improving process.
· Readiness to Lead: This means both that principals have control over the people, programs, and budgets in their building and also that that they are relentless in doing whatever it takes to ensure every student's success.
Ninety percent of school reform efforts fail because they only address one element: Readiness to Teach. But the best curriculum and instruction in the world will not hold up if a school does not have the leadership and culture in place to support it.
If legislative efforts continue to focus only on curriculum and instruction, you will be wasting your time and taxpayer dollars.
Some cities and school districts have taken bold steps. I'd like to highlight two.
Boston Public Schools is a district that's about half the size of Detroit. In 1998, their achievement scores were close to what Detroit's are now. Roughly 15 to 20 percent of their students of color were proficient in math and reading at the 10th grade level. But now, more than 60 percent are proficient. In Boston, they are no longer asking how they can get most kids to "basic." They are looking at how they can get most kids to "advanced."
Getting there wasn't easy. They converted every one of their 13 general admissions high schools into smaller schools and learning communities. They created a system of "pilot" schools within the district that gave school leaders autonomy over their programs and budget, and these schools led the way in improving student achievement. They also partnered district-wide with educational intermediaries like the Boston Plan for Excellence and Jobs for the Future, which provided much-needed resources and focus consistently and exclusively on improving student achievement.
New York Public Schools is a district that's ten times the size of Detroit, and they had a graduation rate that languished at 50 percent for decades. Since 2002, however, they have taken bold steps to rectify that, and the graduation rate has risen steadily to almost 60 percent since then. That translates into thousands of lives that are much less likely to end up in prison because of what they have done.
To get there, they took dramatic steps. The district and its union agreed to give lead teachers a $10,000 salary differential, and to give $15,000 housing incentives for math and science teachers to live in the neighborhoods of their schools. They eliminated "bumping" so that every principal had ultimate authority over which staff worked in their buildings. And they partnered with 14 intermediaries, one of which has built 100 new small schools and achieved graduation rates of 78 percent for their first senior class where rates of 25 to 40 percent were the norm.
The strategies that have proven successful in Boston, New York and other cities are captured by Mass Insight's Turnaround Framework.
The state and local school districts must create "Turnaround Zones" that free schools dedicated to transformative turnaround efforts to operate without all of the bureaucratic red tape and inertia that stalls real change.
There must be a change in conditions. School leaders must have control over the people, programs and budgets in their buildings. No organization, no leader, could be successful without this autonomy.
There must be an increase in capacity. No school district has shown the ability to turn itself around on its own. High-performing schools partner with an educational intermediary with a proven model for increasing student achievement, much like University Prep and Lawrence Tech in Ferndale, Henry Ford Academy and the Henry Ford Leadership Institute in Dearborn or University Prep Academy in Detroit and the Big Picture Company.
Increasing capacity also means an infusion of the best and brightest teachers and school leaders into high poverty schools, whether those people are fresh out of college or in the middle of their career. Organizations like New Leaders for New Schools, Teach for America, and the New Teachers Project can bring talent like this to our state, and we must look at legislation and other ways to create an environment that welcomes them.
We must do this work in clusters. This work cannot be done one school at a time, or all schools at once. We must be strategic about turning around schools in competitive and collaborative clusters, or networks, until all schools are either being turned around, or shuttered, in a thoughtful and sustainable way.
The opportunity to close the achievement gap, to right the primary civil rights issue of our time, lies ahead of us. Will we remain stuck in TWWADI--dying on hills while fighting battles that have nothing to do with improving student achievement?
Marginal change will always yield marginal results. Students, teachers and principals do not want to be in failing schools. You have the opportunity--we all have a moral obligation--to get this right.
