Education Reformers Lost in the Woods Should Pause, Listen and Learn
By John Thompson.
When lost in the woods, the first rule is “hug a tree.” In other words, slow down, confront your fears, regain your calm and think prudently about getting back on track.
When trapped in the urban crises of today, we should first hug each other, converse with each other, and then hug the tree of knowledge. In the case of the Baltimore tragedy and the challenge of improving urban schools, we should tap the wisdom the Johns Hopkins Everyone Graduates Center which, I believe, is one of the two greatest education policy research centers in the world.
Johns Hopkins’ Robert Balfanz testified before the U.S. Senate this winter that outcomes in high-challenge schools best improve when the judgments of educators and support staff are respected. Balfanz also said that those efforts require a push from external accountability pressures. Balfanz called for the proper “interplay between accountability, innovation and support.” He cited the 10% increase in the nation’s graduation rate as an example of a success.
I wonder whether Balfanz was being politely understated and whether he would privately agree that NCLB-type targets for increasing student performance represent the other side of the coin; they inevitably result in policies that educators dismiss as doomed and divert energy and resources away from the evidence-based policies that the Everyone Graduates Center promotes.
Balfanz then described the types of challenges faced by Baltimore and other inner city systems. In schools where 1/4th to ½ of students are chronically absent, where there are more suspended students than there are graduates, and where the typical student has a “D” average, teachers alone can’t solve the problems of poverty from within the four walls of their classrooms. Those schools need aligned and coordinated student support services. For example, they may need 10 to 15 AmeriCorps mentors, each working with fifteen at-risk students.
Balfanz described Diplomas Now, and its collaborative public/private team efforts. Federal School Improvement Grants (SIG) have financially assisted those efforts in 40 secondary schools. But, most SIG schools adopted the opposite approach, based on the mass dismissal of teachers and principals and being forced to produce “dramatic” test score gains in just three years. I wonder if Balfanz is quietly frustrated that such a small number of SIG schools felt free to adopt those humane, science-based methods.
Similarly, Mass Insight’s The Turnaround Challenge also called for comprehensive investments in capacity-building in high-challenge schools and warned against the mass dismissal of teachers. Recent research by Mass Insight and the Ounce of Prevention Fund explains how the normative SIG approach undermines capacity-building because “current metrics effectively eliminate the viability of early learning as a potential long-term improvement strategy.”
Balfanz was equally diplomatic when praising states for one of the Everyone Graduates Center’s best programs – Early Warning Systems that identify absenteeism before it metastasizes into chronic truancy. He cited the other great education center, the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR), which shows that it is possible to predict the 30 to 50% of 6th graders who will drop out unless adults intervene.
As Balfanz explained, these warning systems must be a part of a “powerful continuous improvement ecosystem.” Improvement must be catalyzed by innovation, accountability, and support, in order to create learning Education Reformers Lost in the Woods Should Pause, Listen and Learn - Living in Dialogue: