Dear Five Sisters and South
End neighbors, and colleagues,
I am writing to you from Chicago, where Fred and I and Keith Pillsbury from Ward
1 have been attending the National School Boards Association Conference since
arriving Thursday night. I am energized, overwhelmed and amazed. My apologies
for a rather large “update.” A few observations–we are SMALL; with an enrollment
of 3600 more or less, we are listed in the “small” category with other districts
of “less than 30,000 students.” New York City has 1.1 million students in its
school district. I also met commissioners from rural districts with less than
100 students (and heard about a district with no students but a paid
superintendent in case someone has a baby). Although we have a small number of
students, our board is considered huge; most districts have between 3 and 7 paid
commissioners, while we have 14 unpaid volunteers (that’s not a hint). I want to
share notes from just some of the sessions I have attended so far.
Friday workshop: “The Power of Effective Governance in Raising Student
Achievement and Closing the Achievement Gap.” Everyone’s ‘gap’ is different.
For some districts, the gap is race or ethnicity along with poverty, for us it
is clearly poverty, with race and ethnicity a smaller subset of that. The big
objective is to improve achievement for everyone, but to move up those on the
bottom end of the gap faster than those at the top. On the governance front, it
is imperative for the Board and the community to be focused and unified if the
goal is to close the achievement gap because this goal involves reform on a lot
of levels. My favorite take-home point from this workshop is the following
definition:
Success: You cannot predict student performance levels by their demographics.
A big drawback in this workshop and half the others I went to is the limited
definition of “achievement” as meaning good test scores. This is something of an
obsession nationally because of the consequences under No Child Left Behind if
students don’t score well. Other sessions I went to on arts education were about
achievement in arts literacy and how NCLB is killing the arts (as well as
history and other subjects that aren’t tested).
Friday evening: Keith, Fred and I had dinner with Eric Mar, a school
commissioner from San Francisco. Fun facts-they have five commissioners on their
board and run for ‘at large’ seats across the entire city. In a recent election,
one candidate spent $250,000. in his campaign. Teachers’ unions are a popular
source of funding for candidate coffers (wow). On to real stuff - San Fran is
losing about 1,000 students annually. They closed 4 schools last year and are
closing 4 more this year. Eric mentioned districts like Detroit in which more
than 20 schools were closed in the last year. He attributes the drop in his city
to problems that sound a lot like ours - lower birth rates, lack of affordable
housing, lots of childless residents in town, etc. San Francisco has theme
schools and a student assignment policy that includes choice but also enforces
integration through the use of a “diversity index,” which consists of six yes or
no questions when a child registers, i.e., did the child’s mother graduate high
school? Does the child speak English at home? Does the child qualify for free or
reduced lunch? The only question the District cannot require the parent or
guardian to answer is about race or ethnicity-the California courts have been
heavily involved in the District over the past ten years in interesting ways we
need to be mindful of. Since the last court order ended, they are putting race
back into the index because after they took it out in 1999, the schools “resegregated.”
Magnet schools for the arts and gifted education are their most popular schools,
and they do have a “zone of attendance” to give preference to walkers up to 25%
of an individual school’s population.
Saturday morning session: “The Role of the School Board in Ensuring Community
Involvement, Decision Buy-In, and Bond Issue Passage.” This was run by a
consultant who works for districts floating huge bonds for construction
projects, and board members from Montgomery, Alabama and Boise, Idaho. There was
lots of good advice about how to get the community involved in any kind of
planning process. Great ideas included discussion nights instead of hearings,
web logs, questionnaires, advertising supplements in the newspapers before
community nights, etc. In Montgomery, the magnet schools are considered the
“premier schools” and their three hundred million dollar bond issue (that
passed) will largely be devoted to building more of those. These themes can be
quite specific. Hyundai just moved in to town and so they are building an entire
theme high school devoted to automotive mechanics – funded in part with money
from Hyundai (hmmm, they also have a military theme in coordination with the
nearby base-I don’t think that would be too popular here). As far as chronically
failing schools go, the consultant’s advice was: “The horse is dead, dismount.”
In the broad picture, he recommended that districts develop a long-range plan
with community involvement and then stick to it. The big obstacles are ‘the 5
T’s:’ trust, turf, tradition, timing, and taxes.
Saturday afternoon session: “Improving Achievement and Closing Gaps Between
Groups” This one made me mad, both because the “gaps” in test scores between
black, hispanic, and white, rich and poor are horribly huge – 20 to 30 points on
average across the country and growing. The speaker’s conclusion that this is
largely about having the worst teachers and not enough money in poor schools was
disappointing. In our case, the opposite is true (although teacher retention is
definitely an issue), and the gap is still there. The speaker’s idea was that we
make teachers in poverty-saturated schools (which she assumes will stay that
way) teach to the tests from day one, and assess them every three-four weeks,
all year long, based on the tests given in the Spring. This is the standard
drill now in poor schools trying to “achieve,” and is exactly the kind of thing
I find discouraging as someone devoted to the principle of creativity as a
bedrock of human development. Other attendees did not seem as discouraged as I
was.
This is long enough for now. I will send my update on Sunday and Monday next
week. Until then, enjoy the mud,
Amy Werbel
Ward 5 Commissioner
awerbel@bsdvt.org
12 Catherine Street