Chicago Again Imposes ‘Reconstitution’ As Though It Will Cure School Ills
The school board in Chicago will turn three more schools over to the Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL), its contractor of choice, when the turnaround ax falls this spring. Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education, began his career in Chicago, where he launched the turnaround options that have now been prescribed for the public schools across the country that score in the bottom 5 percent: reconstitution, closure, charterization, and one gentler option, transformation. Last year Chicago used closure—of 50 schools.
This year it is reconstitution. The Chicago Sun Times reports, “Staff—down to janitors and lunchroom workers—must reapply for their positions…” The principal must leave, and in most instances the entire staff will be replaced. Three Chicago schools are being reconstituted because of low standardized test scores and low attendance rates.
But turnarounds by reconstitution haven’t always worked, according to a recent investigation by Catalyst-Chicago: “In CPS, however, more than half of turnaround schools are still among the lowest-performing schools. Some started badly and had to undergo another turnaround. Others have improved more than other schools, yet are still far from meeting district averages, much less the statewide averages. What’s more, large chunks of the new staff—teachers who were hand-picked and spent weeks over the summer getting to know each other, becoming a team and learning how to spark improvement when the school reopened—leave within a few years.”
AUSL is awarded extra money to turn around a school, reports the Sun Times. The district awards AUSL an additional $300,000 for start-up and an extra $420 per-student, per-year for Chicago Again Imposes ‘Reconstitution’ As Though It Will Cure School Ills | janresseger: