District Administration - October 2006 - (Page 51)

family literacy programs for their t ion, he says. The desperate need ment and sound management by giving elders. Funds from corporate and phil- for quality public education is about principals more program flexibility and anthropic donors are helping finance so much more than just education. I fewer bureaucratic requirements. the expansions. We tell them, `We think it's more a movement for social We're absolutely trying to do want you to invest in what's important justice, and public education has to everything we can to empower to us,' Duncan says. be the great equalizer. Historically principals, says Duncan. We train the failure of public education has them as CEOs and want them to be AMPS Concepts perpetuated poverty and kept fami- respected as CEOs, and we want l ies poor. If a generation from now them to drive instruction at the Not all schools in Chicago are in need 85 percent of our students are still school level. We can't micromanage of improvement, but the district's poor, we will have failed. 600 schools. We want to get great changes in business as usual are principals in there, and we want to affecting the better performing ones At tracting Better Teachers get the bureaucracy off their backs, as well, most notably the almost 100 particularly when they are being schools in the district's AMPS program. Accord i ng to Duncan, the mes- very successful. AMPS which stands for Autono- sage resonates with the prospective That attitude has struck a positive mous Management and Performance teaching force. In the past four chord for James Gilliat, who for the Schools rewards high student achieve- years we've doubled the number of applicants coming into Chicago, he reports. There are 17,000 appli- URBAN PREP ALL-MALE ACADEMY ca nt s competing for about 1,700 jobs. And 42 percent of those coming Small classes, high standards and college destinations are built into Urban in have master's degrees. Prep, which just launched as the city's only all-male academy. Set in a The district has also attracted highly impoverished neighborhood in Chicago's South Side, it currently almost 400 new teachers via alterna- has a freshman class of about 150 and plans to add one more grade a year tive certification. You have chemical until it reaches a full enrollment of 600 in 2009. engineers, journalists, lawyers and Principal Timothy King insists that professional development for teach- people from the corporate sector often ers focus on understanding the needs of urban, African-American boys. taking 60, 70, 80 percent pay cuts to We're letting the research and information we know about how these come and teach in inner city schools, boys learn drive the curriculum, he explains. Because students learn Duncan points out. I'm just a big better under stress, he continues, teachers chal- believer that if you create the opportu- We managed lenge them directly with questions rather than nities, you're going to attract the kind of people who want to do the right thing. wait for them to raise hands, and classes are to get all our Du nca n says he also is looking heavily interactive rather than lecture based. And beyond traditional K-12 schooling. the faculty, consisting of 70 percent black males, graduates He plans to add 10,000 seats to and a mentoring program with successful black into college. the city's early education program, men provide role models. which currently serves 22,000 College especially in a city where fewer than youngsters. We have too many stu- Timothy King, half of all public school graduates go on to higher dent s coming to us too far behind, P r in c ip al education is also very much on the mind of too many students coming to us in King, who led a smaller all-male parochial high kindergarten who don't know the school nearby before taking the reins of Urban Prep. One thing that we front of the book from the back of did very successfully was that we managed to get all of our graduates into the book. They just haven't been college, he says. We created a culture of going to college, drilled into read to, Duncan explains. And the more we can get to those children them nonstop from the moment they walked in the door. when they are 3 and 4 years old, the King is bringing the same approach of early college counseling and better we're going to do. standardized test preparation to Urban Prep, where he also stresses com- More than 200 of Chicago's schools munit y service. You have to identify a problem, meet with folks about it, have been designated community and come up with an action plan, he notes. These are the things colleges schools, which stay open 13 hours a want to see in students. It's not just, `I play on the basketball team!' day and offer classes in art and music for children, as well as GED, ESL and October 2006 51 www.DistrictAdministration.com chicagoREV.indd 51 9/15/06 1:37:12 PM http://www.DistrictAdministration.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - October 2006

Table of Contents
Editor's Letter
Snapshots
Update
Inside the Law
Curriculum Update
Administration Profile
District Profile
Disaster Recovery
Tech Trends
COVER STORY: The Chicago Team
Out Is In
Algebra's At-Risk Solution
Rural Quality
Struggling Readers
The Online Edge
Speaking Out
Principal Opinion
Problem/Solution
Research Corner
Leadership Books
New Products
By the Numbers

District Administration - October 2006