This year: mandates. Next year: autonomy
Renaissance Schools will experience a different approach than they did as Empowerment Schools.
by Brenden Beck
The District’s proposed Renaissance Schools initiative, scheduled to be operational by this fall, will give school managers autonomy from District control. But this wasn’t always the District strategy for dealing with low-performing schools.
The plan comes only 18 months after the launch of the Empowerment Schools initiative, which seeks to improve low-performing schools by increasing the District’s scrutiny, support, and control.
When Superintendent Arlene Ackerman reaffirmed her commitment to that approach at the start of the 2009-10 school year, she made it clear that there would be “a lot more monitoring” of the District’s 95 Empowerment Schools, which are schools that have failed repeatedly to meet their academic targets under the No Child Left Behind law.
Central office and regional superintendents implemented the Empowerment program by mandating a scripted curriculum, performing frequent spot checks, and providing additional staff positions, including counselors and instructional specialists.
Increased control over the Empowerment Schools is evident this year in the Corrective Reading and Math lessons. Each day, teachers and students devote two or more hours to a curriculum that provides a script from which teachers are to read.
As a result, principals and faculties have less control over the curriculum, a move that has led some to question the program’s name.
“Empowerment seems to be the wrong word,” says James H. Lytle, professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.
“Disempowerment would be a more accurate description.”
The Renaissance Schools plan draws its 14 eligible schools from the group of 95 Empowerment Schools. In stark contrast to the older program, however, the turnaround teams that will be put in charge of Renaissance Schools – whether District staff, charter management organizations, or EMOs – will be given autonomy to incorporate successful programs and ideas.