Teacher World

I promised you part two of this wonderful story about Taft Information Technology High School, and here it is. (If you didn’t read yesterday’s blog, please read that first, or this won’t make a lot of sense.)

As I explained yesterday, Taft’s principal, Anthony Smith is all about relationships and partnering with his teachers to positively push their children to succeed in the classroom, and, as I told you yesterday, the relationships they have built with their students is making a huge difference.

But, the teachers at Taft are not Smith’s only partners in his determination to improve this once-failing school. Smith teamed up with the CEO of Cincinnati Bell, the city’s local phone company. Jack Cassidy was so impressed with Smith’s dedication and drive that he brought his whole company into the project by promising free cell phones and laptops for every student who was able to consistently maintain a 3.3 GPA! But, here’s the catch: If their GPA dipped below a 3.3, they had to give them back.

“You know how many cell phones and laptops we’ve taken back in nine years? Zero,” Cassidy told reporters.

Additionally, Cassidy encourages his employees to tutor at the school an average of two to three hours a week during their work day. Even though they are still expected to get all of their work done, in spite of the tutoring, he claims that the tutoring energizes his employees because they are doing things they wouldn’t normally do during their workday. Cassidy claims they do an even better job when they return to work.

And how does Smith feel about this voluntary tutoring by Bell employees? He believes that it was the tutors, and not the technology, which had the greatest impact on the students at Taft. “Here is one more person willing to take some time out of their schedule to give us one more dose of love,” Smith said.

When Cassidy was asked what made him get involved in this project with a school that was clearly failing, he remarked that his motto is “Go big or stay home.” He went on to explain, “Why connect with the best? They’re already the best. But, if you can move the needle at all, at the worst place, imagine what you can do at the best place.”

So, has the needle moved? Oh yes! It definitely has. Here are some staggering statistics from a once-failing school: As I told you yesterday, ten years ago the graduation rate at Taft was at an all-time low of 18%. Today, 95% of the students graduate. They have been rated a school of excellence as a result of their state achievement test scores. And, here is the most staggering fact of all: Over the past nine years, Smith boasts that all of their students passed all five parts of the OGT! Wow!

Amazingly, the school which used to be the eye-sore of Cincinnati is now attracting transfer students. Kenny Fowler is one of those students. He transferred to Taft from one of the city’s top schools. Why did he do it? “It wasn’t until I peeked into a class where one of the students was reading his essay, and he said he enjoyed a ‘plethora’ of things,” said Fowler. “And I was like, what does that mean? They were high-fiving each other and everything,”

Kenny is a straight A student at Taft now, and his mother, who didn’t want him attending this school at first, is now a believer.  “The school made just a phenomenal, a drastic change in his life and I’m just grateful,” she said.

How fitting that the once dilapidated, old building has been replaced with a new $18.8 million high school, which will open in the spring. And the teachers and students joke that in their new schools, the clocks will work.

A school turned around by the commitment of a principal who believes, “You have to look at these children like they’re the most important part of your life. I can teach you how to be a good teacher. I can’t teach you how to care.”

And yet, you did just that. Your teachers caught your fever, your love for the students you serve, and you have changed them as much as you have changed the students at Taft.

And, you changed me, too. I was so inspired by this story because it reminded me of why I got into teaching in the first place. It is so easy to get inundated by the negatives in education: parental complaints, administrative demands, all of the paperwork, and the dreaded test prep, to name a few. Today, I entered my classroom with a new attitude and a new purpose; to personally and purposefully touch the lives of each of my students, to encourage them and let them know I believe in their ability to succeed, and to use that belief as a catalyst to motivate them to higher levels.

And, just like Anthony Smith, I am excited by the prospect of making advances in our classroom, “one child at a time.”

Changes in Teaching, low-performing schools, state achievement tests, Teacher-World's Blog Cincinnati Bell, Jack Cassidy, Principal Anthony Smith, Taft Information Technology High School, turnaround schools

The latest release on the U.S. Department of Education’s website from October 5, states that the Department of Education has awarded $38.8 million in grants to eleven states “to measure school safety at the building level and to help intervene in those schools with the greatest safety needs. The goal of the grants is to create and support safe and drug-free learning environments and to increase academic success for students in these high-risk schools.” The Safe and Supportive School grant is managed by the Department’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools:
 
*         which supports efforts to create safe schools
*         ensures the health and well being of students
*         teaches students good citizenship and character
*         responds to crisis
*         prevents drug and alcohol abuse
 
Now, I have always said that in order to turn around low-performing schools you need to first turn around the neighborhoods which is the cause of poor academic performance. I am not sure how such a feat would be accomplished, and I am aware it would be an expensive venture. But this freaks me out! We are all limping around in this severely crippled economy, tightening our belts, shopping for bargains, putting off what we’d like to have for what we need to have. We are all making sacrifices and impatiently waiting for this economy to improve. Yet, almost every time I log onto the U.S. Department of Education website, I read about more money being awarded to this state or that state for this or that. Isn’t anyone worried? Isn’t anyone else asking who is footing the bill for all of this?
 
Is it any wonder that our economy is such a mess? Who is going to pay for all of this spending? You and I? Our children? Our grandchildren? Enough, please! It’s a great cause, but enough!

Funding Education, Teacher-World's Blog grants, low-performing schools, Safe and Supportive School grant, safe schools, turnaround schools, U.S. Department of Education

On June 30th, and again on July 7th, press releases from the Department of Education itemized states which would be receiving funds through grants, the 2009 budget, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. I confess to being awestruck at the amount of money being earmarked to states to protect teachers’ jobs, to turnaround low-performing schools, and to comply with the guidelines of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The further I got into the two press releases, the more questions I had. My hope is that someone from the Department of Education might read this blog and be able to answer these questions which I am respectfully putting out there:

* When our economy is so crippled and money is so tight, where is all of this money coming from, or are we all just going to be paying it back in taxes for years to come?
* Is this money earmarked for specific purposes, and are those purposes public knowledge?
* How can citizens attain this information as it pertains to their state?
* In what ways are states being made accountable for how the money they receive is being utilized?
* Is money being allocated equally to all school districts within each state or are funds mainly being funneled to low-achieving schools?
* Many of the states listed already received money from ARRA. Why are they receiving more money, and how can interested citizens be informed as to what was achieved from the first round of funds their states received?

Again, I am asking these questions as a concerned citizen as well as an involved educator. When we are talking about this much money, I think we would all agree that a high level of accountability and transparency are critical to ensure a successful result.

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Educational Reform, Funding Education, Teacher-World's Blog American Recovery and Reinvestmenat Act, Department of Education, teachers' jobs, turnaround schools

Have you heard that Pennsylvania is receiving $141 million to turn around its persistently lowest achieving schools? The announcement was made on June 9, by Arnie Duncan. According to the Department of Education, this money is part of the $3.5 billion made available to schools this spring as part of the 2009 budget and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. According to Duncan, “When a school continues to perform in the bottom five percent of the state and isn’t showing signs of growth or has graduation rates below 60 percent, something dramatic needs to be done. Turning around our worst performing schools is difficult for everyone but it is critical that we show the courage to do the right thing by kids.”

So, what does this mean for states like Pennsylvania who qualify for this money? Well, they have to follow one of these models in order to radically improve the educational systems in their states:

* TURNAROUND MODEL: Replace the principal, screen existing school staff, and rehire no more than half the teachers; adopt a new governance structure; and improve the school through curriculum reform, professional development, extending learning time, and other strategies.
* RESTART MODEL: Convert a school or close it and re-open it as a charter school or under an education management organization.
* SCHOOL CLOSURE: Close the school and send the students to higher-achieving schools in the district.
* TRANSFORMATION MODEL: Replace the principal and improve the school through comprehensive curriculum reform, professional development, extending learning time, and other strategies.

All of these, to varying degrees, are extremely radical steps which will ultimately be considered as threatening to the individuals involved in the affected schools. There are drawbacks to each, but let’s try to break it down. My first concern with the broad assumption that a school has to be turned around is precisely this: Is the school the problem, or is it the environment or the social decay in which the school is located that is the real culprit here? I continue to state, without equivocation, that until the environment these children live in changes, and it is not only acceptable but safe to go to school and get an education, no amount of intervention within the schools will be completely successful in turning these schools around. Having stated this obvious fact, for the rest of this blog, my purpose is to look a little deeper into these four methods to discern the pros and cons of each.

Clearly, the assumption of all of these approaches is that the principal has contributed through negligence or mismanagement to help create an environment which is not conducive to learning. In my opinion, principals should only be removed if careful examination of their record were to reveal inadequacies and failures. Otherwise, keep the administrator and work from there. And I have a real problem with the implied assumption with the Turnaround Method that the problem is the majority of the teaching staff. Why else is there a restriction that, at the most, only 50% of the teachers should stay on staff?

The School Closure method seems very unfair for so many reasons that it is hard to zero in on just one. First, it implies that everyone in that school was ineffective in the performance of their job. I find that impossible to fathom, let alone believe. And I can’t even imagine the navigational nightmare involved in redistributing all of these poor school-less children to other schools, not to mention what such an increase in student numbers would do to the schools which would have to accommodate the new arrivals. It just sounds like a total nightmare to me.

I refuse to address the Restart Model, so that leaves the Transformation Model. Of all of the above, I feel that this is the method that seems to be the fairest, although I wouldn’t feel that way if I was the principal. Let’s face it, is there any school anywhere that wouldn’t benefit from some transformation? What school would not turnaround with “comprehensive curriculum reform, professional development, and other strategies”?  (Notice that I took out the “extended learning time” because I have said in past blogs, and continue to maintain, that I think a longer school day is counterproductive. If any additional time is going to be tacked onto learning time, let it be adding on days to the school calendar not hours to each day.)

True turnaround of a school, in my humble opinion, can and should be accomplished with the original staff working together to bring about necessary change. Give teachers who have not been effective the opportunity to improve and grow. Then if they continue to be ineffective, let them go. Imagine the pride and solidarity that a successful transformation would create! These schools would serve as models to other schools that change is possible when there is money to support it and people working together to make it happen.

So, let the transformations begin! And good luck to all of you in Pennsylvania.

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Changes in Teaching, Educational Reform, Funding Education, Teacher-World's Blog American Recovery and Reinvestmenat Act, Arnie Duncan, Department of Education, Educational Reform, turnaround schools

Ohio’s application for the phase 1 portion of Race to the Top was soundly rejected and may be again in phase 2 unless the writers are able to make some major changes to the application. Ohio teachers are probably wondering why it was rejected, and what kind of changes need to be made. Well, let me tell you what I have been able to learn.

First of all, each portion of the application received points, which when totaled, determined which states would be the recipients of RttT resources. According to my research, the area in which Ohio scored lowest (second to the lowest of the 16 finalist states) was in the area called “Great Teachers and Leaders”. Apparently, Ohio’s application was too wimpy due to “the state’s inability to ensure equitable distribution of teachers in hard-to-staff subjects, specialty areas, or in high-poverty or high-minority schools”, according to The Ohio Education Gadfly. Reviewers felt that the process it would take to remove ineffective educators was not clearly provided. There was also criticism due to the fact that only half of the local schools who participated in the phase 1 application process agreed to link teacher evaluations to their compensation and promotion. Some of the other areas of concern were its failure to adequately detail how it would close achievement gaps between poor students and wealthier students, and how it would turnaround the lowest-performing schools.

Now what does this mean for Phase 2? Well, first of all, if Ohio has any hope of being considered, it will need to develop stronger guidelines regarding merit pay, tenure, and dismissal of teachers. And you can rest assured that all of these will be linked to a large degree on achievement test scores. One source I read stated that RttT approved heartily of states like Florida, where the legislature approved teacher salaries being tied directly to test scores, and teachers would be offered one year salaries only. (Although, as I have previously blogged, this was later overturned by Florida’s governor.) Clearly, this is indicative of what the judges are looking for.

Secondly, Ohio will have to state more clearly how teachers would be evenly redistributed so as to level the playing field between low income and higher income school districts in order to turnaround lowest-performing schools. In other words, they are looking for stronger language regarding how highly effective teachers could be moved.

Additionally, Ohio’s application lacked teeth when it came to teachers unions. From what I have been able to glean, RttT reviewers are looking for a firm commitment by unions to be willing to make pretty radical changes to teacher salary, licensure, evaluation, tenure, and termination.

These are some of the salient reasons why Ohio’s application was rejected. I will continue to keep you informed and, of course, give my opinions about upcoming information as it becomes available. In the meantime, I hope you take the time to comment about what you have heard or read, and how you feel about Race to the Top, no matter which state you are from.

Changes in Teaching, Educational Reform, Merit Pay for Teachers, state achievement tests, Teacher's Unions, Teacher-World's Blog low income schools, merit pay, Phase One, Race to the Top, teacher licensure, teacher tenure, Teacher's Unions, turnaround schools

Okay, by now we’ve all read about it and seen news reports about it, but it continues to shock me as I consider all of the ramifications of the recent firings of all teachers in a poorly performing school in Rhode Island. As educators, we need to watch what is happening very carefully because clearly, this is coming down the pike for other schools as well. Here are some of my thoughts about what happened.

First, I find it ludicrous to buy into the philosophy that the answer to turning around ineffective schools is to fire all of the teachers in a building. Are we serious? Do we really not get the fact that the main reasons these schools are ineffective is because of their environment; the poverty, the crime, the drug and alcohol abuse, the gang violence, and myriad other factors that make more than just the schools ineffective. How do teachers get students to care about test results when they are wondering where their next meal is coming from, whether they will get beat up on their way home from school, if they will be the victim of robbery, assault, rape, or a drive-by shooting? We all watch the news. We know the prevalence of crime in these high poverty areas. Isn’t that what needs to be resolved? How will shutting down a school help solve crime and poverty; clearly roadblocks to achievement in school? And how much parental support do many of the students in these schools get? Is education a priority in these homes? How do teachers educate children who place no value on education because their parents don’t? Don’t get me wrong, I know there are many hard-working, good parents in these areas who are pushing their children to succeed, but it doesn’t change the simple truth that environment is a critical issue.

Second, is the school board in Central Falls really trying to tell us that all of the teachers on that staff were ineffective? There were no teachers on their staff worthy of retaining their jobs? While I am sure that there were teachers who were burned out and just going through the motions (which is somewhat understandable given the atmosphere in which they teach), it is beyond my ability to grasp the idiocy of lumping all teachers in that school together as incompetent. Mark my words, there were teachers on that staff who were battling against factors we cannot begin to imagine trying to elevate their students out of the environment they live in by providing them with the tools a good education would give them. How dare this board of education tell them that because the test scores have been very low, they are under qualified and do not deserve jobs! Again, when does environment take the blame? And shame on the superintendent of this school for not taking stopgap measures along the way to avoid this bloodbath. She bears equal responsibility since it is her school, and she ultimately determines who gets hired and what their credentials are. Why isn’t she being fired as well for not doing her job more effectively?

Finally, in the New York Times article reporting on the firings in Rhode Island, it was reported that Frances Gallo, the school’s superintendent, originally planned to extend the instructional hours and make additional changes to turn this school around but decided to fire all of the teachers when the union fought for extra pay for the additional 25 minutes to the teacher work day. Okay, I understand being annoyed, but is this taking it a little too far? Surely, some intermediary steps could have been agreed upon. The article goes on to say that Dr. Gallo later agreed to the possibility of hiring back some of these teachers, but she and the union could not reach an agreement. It makes me want to scream! Careers are at stake here, and an agreement cannot be reached? Preposterous! 

Needless to say, I am befuddled and angry over this decision. But the final straw for me is that President Obama supports it and applauds it. This was just the start, ladies and gentlemen. So, what that tells me is that we all need to fasten our seatbelts because it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

Changes in Teaching, High Caliber Schools, state achievement tests, Teacher's Unions, Teacher-World's Blog President Obama, Rhode Island schools, Teacher's Unions, turnaround schools