Weingarten at West Philly High: A model community school?
by thenotebook on Apr 09 2010
by Bill Hangley, Jr.
The head of the national teachers union was at West Philadelphia High this week to ask, “How can I help you?” For many of the teachers at West, any help she provides may come too late.
Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, believes classroom instructors are unfairly scapegoated for the failures of school systems. She visited West to learn more about the “community school” modelthat offers the kind of diverse services and resources that the national No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law neither requires nor rewards.
Teachers and staff at West told Weingarten that despite significant improvements in school safety and a dramatic expansion of its community partnerships, West landed on the list of Renaissance Schools slated for “turnaround” because of poor scores on state reading and math tests, the PSSA.
The reliance on test scores as the primary measure of progress has left their staff’s future uncertain.
As a Renaissance School, West will lose at least half its teachers for next year. All of them will be transferred out and no more than half can be hired back.
To Weingarten, this kind of “turnaround,” embraced by the Obama administrationas its leading school reform strategy, amounts to little more than “teacher bashing” – holding teachers accountable for test-scores, but giving scant consideration to what else they might do to improve schools.
“I’m very uncomfortable with the fact that you see this public rhetoric, born out of political expediency, that essentially is targeted against the group of people in America that have opted to make a difference in the lives of other Americans,” she said.
Demanding such a drastic change in personnel at this stage of West’s reform efforts is not only premature, but indicates lack of appreciation for what has been achieved, staff members said.
“Any way you can define dysfunction, it was here,” said West’s principal Saliyah Cruz, who arrived three years ago. “It was pretty much a shell of a school. We had an environment where people could do some pretty horrible things to each other. The place is so big, nobody knew who anybody was.”
Now, staff members at West say the atmosphere has dramatically improved. With the help of a $6.3 million, three-year grant from the Department of Labor – awarded because West had landed on a list of “persistently dangerous” schools, West has after-school programs, tutoring, internships at outside organizations, and even spipends for students working on special projects.
The money also supports a staff of eight who run the school’s Student Success