District Administration - December 2012 - (Page 16)

NewsUpdate School Turnaround Policies Ineffective, Report States School turnaround policies that include firing and replacing teachers and administrators in hopes of raising test scores are actually detrimental to schools, according to a report from the National Education Policy Center. The report, “Democratic School Turnarounds: Pursuing Equity and Learning from Evidence,” by Tina Trujillo of the University of California, Berkeley and Michelle Renée of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, was released in October, and demonstrates through research that topdown, punitive turnaround efforts that treat schools like corporations are ineffective and counterproductive. In 2009, the Obama Administration created a plan to “turn around” 5,000 of the nation’s lowest-performing schools over five years through the federal School Improvement Grant program (SIG). In exchange for up to $2 million per year for up to three years, SIG-funded schools implemented one of four reforms: turnaround, transformation, restart, or closure. The report acknowledges that while this plan was well-intentioned, it is fundamentally at odds with a democratic approach to public education. “The turnaround policies are based on the claim that dramatic reconstitution of staff actually helps schools, and that’s not supported by the research,” says Trujillo. “When these types of mass layoffs have occurred, they have actually reduced institutional knowledge and led to increased racial and economic segregation in terms of who’s left over. We have a documented range of Michelle Renée, left, and Tina Trujillo, right, wrote the report on school turnaround policies. Br iefings detrimental effects,” including deteriorating teacher morale and declining test scores over time. While there are many books and articles on how to design an effective school turnaround and boost test scores, many are not based in research, and often rely on single cases, such as a school whose test scores improved slightly after one year, rather than systematic studies of schools that improved over time, Trujillo says. The report notes that the turnaround plan also focuses almost exclusively on within-school factors like curricular changes that shape student outcomes, without adequately addressing contextual influences like poverty, race, and systemic funding disparities. “These are schools that are in the lowest income communities that have been historically underserved, where racism, classism, and sexism play out,” says Renée. “Each time you remove people and put new people in, you erode community trust and engagement. The ‘blow it up to fix it’ model doesn’t make sense when you’re talking about the hearts and minds of young people.” To read the report: go to www.nepc.colorado.edu/publication/ democratic-school-turnarounds. A Debate Over Union Rights in a Post-Chicago Nation Though the Chicago Teachers Union approved a new contract in September, the aftermath of their eight-day strike has led to debate over the role of teacher unions in education reform; specifically, whether unions should be allowed expansive collective bargaining and striking rights under state law, or if these rights impede reform. “This is an issue where reform is split,” says Michael J. Petrilli, executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a nonprofit education policy think tank in Washington, D.C. that released the report “How Strong Are U.S. Teacher Unions: A State-by-State Comparison” in October. “Now that Chicago allowed unions to strike, do they have an inordinate amount of power that will be able to block reform?” The Chicago strike was ignited in part over test scores in teacher evaluations and hiring laid-off union members to fill positions. In October, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute brought together two perspectives on teacher labor issues in a debate called “After Chicago: The Future of Teacher Unions.” Terry Moe, a political science professor at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative policy analysis group, argued against teacher unions. He stated that, for the past 30 years, unions overall have allowed incompetent teachers to remain in classrooms, ineffective teacher evaluation systems, salaries that are unrelated to performance, and seniority to prevail over effectiveness during layoffs. “No one in their right mind would organize the schools in this way if all they were thinking about was what’s best for children,” Moe says. “Unions shape the school from the bottom up with collective bargaining, and load contracts up with countless rules about seniority and teacher evaluations and other things. None of them are adopted to make the schools more organized. They have to do with job protection.” Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, a political action committee, argued that unions can positively influence reform, so long as they act within their rights. While Chicago was “a strike that didn’t need to happen,” he says, collective bargaining is not necessarily detrimental. “I think there is a way you can challenge unions and respect the collective bargaining process,” Williams explains. “Even a union would tell you, collective bargaining works best when there is a spirited debate on both sides.” Both men agree that education is quickly changing, especially considering the rise of technology, and reform is needed to improve the system. Administrators should consider that many reformers want them to have more authority over teacher hiring and firing than they do, says Petrilli. “We need to shift the balance of power to what’s best for kids, rather than what’s best for employees of the system,” he adds. Watch the debate at www.edexcellence.net/events. 16 December 2012 District Administration http://www.nepc.colorado.edu/publication/democratic-school-turnarounds http://www.nepc.colorado.edu/publication/democratic-school-turnarounds http://www.edexcellence.net/events

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - December 2012

District Administration - December 2012
Contents
From the Editor
News Update
Special Education
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Fab Lab: Using Technology to Make (Almost) Anything!
Neuroscience in Schools
Three Squares at School
Top 100 DA Readers Choose Innovative Products of the Year
CIO News
Problem Solution
Crisis Response
Online Edge
Going Mobile

District Administration - December 2012