First Look Media’s Press Freedom Litigation Fund Provides Grant to Sacramento News & Review - First Look Media - First Look Media

First Look Media’s Press Freedom Litigation Fund Provides Grant to Sacramento News & Review - First Look Media - First Look Media:

First Look Media’s Press Freedom Litigation Fund Provides Grant to Sacramento News & Review

Today, First Look Media is announcing a Press Freedom Litigation Fund grant to the Sacramento News & Review (SN&R). The $15,000 grant will be used to offset the legal costs the publication is rapidly accruing from a lawsuit filed by the Sacramento Mayor, and former NBA star, Kevin Johnson.

A little background on this somewhat complicated case. Mayor Johnson became president of the National Conference of Black Mayors (NCBM) in 2013, and spent the next year battling another faction for control of the group.  Ultimately, Mayor Johnson led NCBM into bankruptcy and then resigned to form a competing organization.  Public employees working for the City of Sacramento and political volunteers assisted Mayor Johnson throughout his campaign at NCBM, largely communicating via a private Gmail account maintained by the Mayor’s office. The SN&R served a public records request to the city for these emails, but the mayor and the NCBM bankruptcy trustee claimed that many of these communications were protected by attorney-client privilege.

In a highly unusual move, Mayor Johnson (in his capacity as former President of NCBM), the NCBM, and the bankruptcy trustee, sued the Sacramento News & Review and the Sacramento City Attorney to stop the public release of the emails. The publication argues that the records the mayor is trying to keep secret should be made public under the California Public Records Act, regardless of whether the mayor was using private email servers or accounts.

Although the media and political reach of this case may be regionally focused, it bears a significant public interest.  If the mayor succeeds in blocking public review of emails sent in his capacity as mayor that relate to the use of public resources, it could set a precedent that undermines the public’s right of access to governmental information. By suing the SN&R, Mayor Johnson has dramatically raised the costs for the paper to assert its rights, threatening press freedom and the ability of the citizens to be informed about the actions of its elected officials. First Look Media believes that transparency, a free press, and an informed citizenry are vital to democracy, and that public records requests such as the one made by the SN&R is an important tool in this effort.

We’ll keep you updated on the progress of this case.

About First Look Media Press Freedom Litigation Fund

Launched in July 2014, First Look Media’s Press Freedom Litigation Fund was designed to strengthen the ability of journalists and others to pursue legal fights where a substantial public First Look Media’s Press Freedom Litigation Fund Provides Grant to Sacramento News & Review - First Look Media - First Look Media:

Student Discipline, Race And Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charter Schools | Shanker Institute

Student Discipline, Race And Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charter Schools | Shanker Institute:

Student Discipline, Race And Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charter Schools

by Leo Casey -- October 19, 2015

At a recent press conference, Success Academy Charter Schools CEO Eva Moskowitz addressed the issue of student discipline. “It is horrifying,” she told reporters, that critics of her charter schools’ high suspension rates don’t realize “that five-year-olds do some pretty violent things.” Moskowitz then pivoted to her displeasure with student discipline in New York City (NYC) public schools, asserting that disorder and disrespect have become rampant.

This is not the first time Moskowitz has taken aim at the city’s student discipline policies. Last spring, she used the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal to criticize the efforts of Mayor Bill De Blasio and the NYC Department of Education to reform the student code of conduct and schools’ disciplinary procedures. Indeed, caustic commentary on student behavior and public school policy has become something of a trademark for Moskowitz.

The National Move to Reform Student Discipline Practices

To understand why, it is important to provide some context. The New York City public school policies that Moskowitz derides are part of a national reform effort, inspired by a body of research showing that overly punitive disciplinary policies are ineffective and discriminatory. Based on this research evidence, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association and School Discipline Consensus Project of the Council of State Governments have all gone on record on the harmful effects of employing such policies. The U.S. Education Department, the U.S. Justice Department, civil rights and civil liberties organizations, consortia of researchers, national foundations, and the Dignity in Schools advocacy coalition have all examined the state of student discipline in America’s schools in light of this research.1

Their findings? Suspensions and expulsions, the most severe forms of school discipline, are being used excessively in American schools, often for such minor infractions such as “talking back” or being out of uniform. Further, these severe punishments are being applied disproportionality to students of color, especially African-American and Latino boys, students with disabilities and LGBT youth.

As a result of these data, the U.S. Education Department and U.S. Justice Department issued guidance to schools, based on their finding that discriminatory uses of suspensions and expulsions were in violation Student Discipline, Race And Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charter Schools | Shanker Institute:

DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME ENDS Sunday, November 1 Check Your Charter School For Fraud - FCMAT

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Eva Moskowitz Demands Apology by PBS and John Merrow | Diane Ravitch's blog

Eva Moskowitz Demands Apology by PBS and John Merrow | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Eva Moskowitz Demands Apology by PBS and John Merrow

I just saw this press release:

**FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, OCTOBER 19, 2015**
Contact:
Ann Powell, 646-894-6407
Ann.Powell@successacademies.org

EVA MOSKOWITZ DEMANDS APOLOGY FROM PBS NEWSHOUR FOR INACCURATE REPORTING
Veteran Reporter John Merrow Violates Journalism Ethics with Biased Report,
Denies Success Academy Fair Response to Allegations

New York, NY — Today, Eva Moskowitz, Success Academy CEO, released a copy of a letter sent via email to Judy Woodruff of PBS NewsHour, demanding a correction and apology for inaccurate and biased reporting by John Merrow in his segment, “Is Kindergarten Too Young to Suspend a Student.” The letter, sent on Friday, October 16, details Merrow’s willful disregard for journalistic ethics and refusal to allow Success Academy to respond to false allegations of a former parent and student, who represent that the student was suspended for not tucking in his shirt and wearing red shoes and “losing his temper.” Later in the report, Merrow alleges that Success Academy students were suspended for getting up to “go look at the bulletin board.”
The letter to Woodruff includes email exchanges between Moskowitz and Merrow, wherein she asserts her right to hear and rebut the parent’s allegations against Success Academy. Merrow refuses, responding that he “would not air unsubstantiated allegations” and “her role is limited and should not be cause for concern on your part,” an overt lie in view of the finished segment.
Merrow further misrepresents Success Academy as having high attrition rates when in fact the popular charter school network does a far better job of retaining students than the city’s district schools.
Full letter is posted here: http://bit.ly/1ODDmJ4

Eva Moskowitz Demands Apology by PBS and John Merrow | Diane Ravitch's blog:

In Philly, Ta-Nehisi Coates talks race and the 'responsibility to resist' | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

In Philly, Ta-Nehisi Coates talks race and the 'responsibility to resist' | Philadelphia Public School Notebook:

In Philly, Ta-Nehisi Coates talks race and the 'responsibility to resist'

For some students, school doesn’t come easy. They don’t revel in Shakespeare nor do they thrive in the confines of the classroom. Instead, their brains whir with the goings-on of the street, their main concern, protecting their vulnerable bodies.

High-school students across Philadelphia identified with this sentiment as they gathered at the Free Library last Friday to hear Ta-Nehisi Coates read from his latest book, Between the World and Me.

“This book was written for you. It is directed at my 15-year-old son, and he is in so many ways a stand-in for you,” said Coates, addressing the audience of 500 teens, students from 13 District and charter high schools. “My dad was born and raised in North Philadelphia, so my story in many ways begins here,” he added.

Coates’ book explores the reality of growing up Black in America, living in perpetual fear of violence against your body under the pressure of an unattainable dream. The act of going to school is a risk; the very act of living in your body while Black is a gamble. The deaths of Michael Brown Jr., 18, Tamir Rice, 12, and Sandra Bland, 28, he says, are verifications of this predicament.

“The events that are taking place right now, the racial injustice impacts me,” said Fatme Chaloub, a 16-year-old student from Girls’ High who attended the event. Chaloub aspires to be a cardiologist. “I feel like once they find out you’re Black, they make assumptions,” she said.

Students at the event all received a copy of the book through The Free Library’s Teen Author Series and have worked their way through the text in extracurricular book clubs and English classes.

“This one has truly impacted the kids,” said Kathleen DiTanna, who read the book this In Philly, Ta-Nehisi Coates talks race and the 'responsibility to resist' | Philadelphia Public School Notebook:

Let Love Lead the Way – An Important Message from Principal Jamaal Bowman | Poetic Justice

Let Love Lead the Way – An Important Message from Principal Jamaal Bowman | Poetic Justice:

Let Love Lead the Way – An Important Message from Principal Jamaal Bowman

From Principal Jamaal Bowman opening The Call to Educational Justice Conference in NYC, October 17th, 2015:

“Our Work is About Two Things – Children and Love –  and not just love of children, obviously, but the love of the world, a love of the work, a love of our future, and most importantly, a love for ourselves.”

Click here to comment on the video.

Film-maker Michael Elliot has once again captured a defining moment in the battle to save our children and restore humanity to our educational systems.

Please share this video and comment on the FaceBook page. If  you like the message and want to spread the word you have to SHARE IT! Tag it in your comments with names of friends you want to see it. That will get the message to reach MUCH FURTHER!

Poetic Justice would like to see this video touch 100,000 viewers.

Let love lead the way – it is and always was ALL ABOUT THE CHILDREN!

Share this:

Let Love Lead the Way – An Important Message from Principal Jamaal Bowman | Poetic Justice:

Noble maps out massive charter school expansion, feds support it

Noble maps out massive charter school expansion, feds support it:

Noble maps out massive charter school expansion, feds support it

Teachers union: School closures will be the "natural consequence" of more charter high schools.

Despite a financial crisis in Chicago Public Schools and increasingly organized opposition to the prospect of more charter schools, Chicago’s largest charter network has plans for a massive expansion in the city, according to a successful grant application it submitted to the federal government.

The Noble Network of Charter Schools, which already runs 16 schools and educates 10 percent of all city high school students, plans to open eight more high schools in Chicago in the next five years. Noble forecasts educating 6,000 more students for a total “market share” of 15 percent of Chicago Public Schools’ high school population.

By 2020, the charter network projects its total revenues from CPS and the state will climb above $200 million annually for the education of 17,675 high school students.

“We continue to experience demand for additional Noble seats from the families we already serve, and the families that want us to come into our communities,” says Sara Kandler, development director at Noble. “We hear from them about the impact that Noble has made on their children, their nieces and nephews, their neighbors—and we have new families coming to us regularly saying, ‘I want a Noble option, or I want a Noble option closer to home.’ And so that’s what drives our continued vision for expansion,” says Kandler.

The U.S. Department of Education is supporting the expansion through an $8.4 million “Replication and Expansion” grant awarded at the end of last month. Noble was one of just 12 charter networks in the country selected to receive the grant.

Noble’s application, submitted in mid-July,  calls for the network to grow at the rate of two campuses per year — and includes specific locations for the first three campuses as well as Noble maps out massive charter school expansion, feds support it:

Vanderbilt poll offers little clarity in charter debate

Vanderbilt poll offers little clarity in charter debate:

Vanderbilt poll offers little clarity in charter debate

Vanderbilt University's new Nashville poll probably won't bring any clarity to the city's polarizing charter debate.

Rather, the results can be spun by either side as to how the public views opening new charters in Nashville.

The poll, the first of its kind from Vanderbilt, was conducted Sept. 15-27 and surveyed 1,000 residents about various Nashville topics, including asking half of respondents mutually exclusive questions about opening more charters. The goal was to ask the question in different ways to reduce question bias. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 5.24 percentage points.

For researchers, the two questions also were an experiment within the survey that highlighted how wording matters.

"You might think people you are asking are being contradictory, but they are not," said John Geer, a Vanderbilt professor and lead on the survey.

One question asked 517 respondents whether they favor or oppose opening more charter schools. Sixty-three percent said they favored more charters. The other, similar question asked 483 respondents whether there are "already enough" charters or "should there be more." Forty-eight percent felt there are already enough.Vanderbilt poll offers little clarity in charter debate:

Luke Bronin the “outsider” is looking more and more like an “insider” – the Carlos Lopez Story - Wait What?

Luke Bronin the “outsider” is looking more and more like an “insider” – the Carlos Lopez Story - Wait What?:

Luke Bronin the “outsider” is looking more and more like an “insider” – the Carlos Lopez Story

Greenwich Native Luke Bronin and his campaign operatives bristle at the notion that, having never run for office or been involved in municipal government, Bronin’s brazen decision to grace Hartford with his presence by moving to the capital city and running for mayor is the work of an outsider.

They say Luke Bronin is no outsider.

And maybe they are right…

The truth is that Bronin is looking more and more like just another political insider every day.

Luke Bronin’s $1 million dollar campaign has already broken the record for the most expensive mayoral campaign in Connecticut history.

Bronin has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from state contractors, Hartford contractors, state lobbyists, out-of-state contributors and residents from his home town of Greenwich.

But the fact that one of his “most generous” campaign donors can be found on Park Street in Hartford speaks volumes about Luke Bronin’s approach to politics and governance.

Like so many others who contributed to Luke Bronin, Republican Farmington resident and Park Street businessman Carlos Lopez donated the maximum allowable $1,000 to Bronin’s campaign.

Lopez also dropped $2,000 on the Hartford Democratic Town Committee to help with Luke Bronin the “outsider” is looking more and more like an “insider” – the Carlos Lopez Story - Wait What?: 

Hey Bill & Melinda! Here’s What’s Hard for ELLs

Hey Bill & Melinda! Here’s What’s Hard for ELLs:

Hey Bill & Melinda! Here’s What’s Hard for ELLs

By Linda Chantal Sullivan

As I read Nancy Bailey’s blog post, “Challenge to the Common Core King and Queen: Get Involved Really!,” I found myself vigorously nodding my head in agreement. How ridiculous that Bill and Melinda Gates say reforming our education system is the hardest job they’ve ever tackled.

I was thinking, “Yeah, you want to see what’s hard? Come spend a week with me!”

You see, I am a high school ELL teacher–English Language Learners for those who use other acronyms. My students are immigrants whose English skills range from nonexistent to advanced, but still not advanced enough to be considered English proficient. They are all LEP, or Limited English Proficient.

Nancy laid out a great list of what’s hard. Many of them really resonated with me but, as I read down the list, I thought about how much I have learned about high school ELLs Hey Bill & Melinda! Here’s What’s Hard for ELLs:

What resurgent molestation allegations mean for Kevin Johnson’s political future - Sacramento News & Review

Sacramento News & Review - What resurgent molestation allegations mean for Kevin Johnson’s political future - News - Local Stories - October 15, 2015:

What resurgent molestation allegations mean for Kevin Johnson’s political future

Deadspin hounds K.J., sexual-assault allegations re-emerge, ESPN dumps Johnson's national-spotlight moment

If Kevin Johnson was bummed, he suredidn’t let on this past Monday night at the Crest Theatre. SN&R wasn’t invited to the premiere of his ESPN “30 for 30” documentary, Down in the Valley, but by all accounts the mayor was in full-on fête mode: high-fiving fans, posing for pictures, smiling. Which was odd, because just hours earlier, K.J. received some of the worst news of his political career: ESPN was canceling his big movie because of resurgent sexual-molestation allegations.

ESPN didn’t soften the blow: “I think the most important thing here is to make sure it’s clear that we are not tone deaf and we’re aware of a renewed focus on certain issues,” is how ESPN vice president John Dahl explained to Sports Illustrated the reasoning for shelving the film.

By “certain issues,” the ESPN boss means sex crimes allegedly committed by the mayor while an NBA player in Phoenix during the ’90s. Dave McKenna, a former weekly-paper scribe in Washington, D.C., and now staff reporter for Deadspin, has hounded Johnson for years, covering everything from the mayor’s repeated sexual-misconduct accusations to his forays into education reform to his lawsuit with this paper.

But last month, McKenna published an interview with K.J. accuser Amanda “Mandi” Koba. Now 35 and living in Virginia, this was the first time Koba had ever spoken to media about Johnson, who she claims molested her during the ages of 15 and 16, when she was just a 95-pound high-school girl in Phoenix.

Both Deadspin and The Sacramento Bee have reported in the past that Johnson paid Koba $230,000 to keep quiet. But 19 years later, Koba told McKenna that, after years of subsequent allegations against K.J., she couldn’t stay silent. “I just felt like I wasn’t doing anything but protecting him,” Koba told Deadspin.

Accusations against Johnson grabbed even more media attention last Thursday, when Deadspin published police video of a teenaged Koba describing K.J.’s sexual abuse. A transcript of this interview with police already existed, but seeing the actual video proved unsettling: At its conclusion, the detective interviewing Koba tells her that he thinks Johnson “is probably taking advantage of other young people.”

At Monday’s movie premiere, which could be the final time the ESPN film screens for the public, the mayor dismissed Koba’s claims. “There’s no there, there,” he told media outside the theater before the screening.

After decades of accusations, however, there is at least something.

‘I’ve been afraid to speak’

Mandi Koba was 15 years old in 1995 when she met Kevin Johnson, who was then 29 and one of the biggest stars in the NBA. A year later, in a Phoenix police report, she’d describe their relationship as Sacramento News & Review - What resurgent molestation allegations mean for Kevin Johnson’s political future - News - Local Stories - October 15, 2015:

Special Issue of “Educational Researcher” (Paper #3 of 9): Exploring VAMs’ Potentials | VAMboozled!

Special Issue of “Educational Researcher” (Paper #3 of 9): Exploring VAMs’ Potentials | VAMboozled!:

Special Issue of “Educational Researcher” (Paper #3 of 9): Exploring VAMs’ Potentials

Recall that the peer-reviewed journal Educational Researcher (ER) – recently published a “Special Issue” including nine articles examining value-added measures (VAMs). I have reviewed the next of nine articles (#3 of 9) here, titled “Exploring the Potential of Value-Added Performance Measures to Affect the Quality of the Teacher Workforce” as authored by Dan Goldhaber – Professor at the University of Washington Bothell, Director of the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER), and a Vice-President at the American Institutes of Research (AIR). AIR is one of our largest VAM consulting/contract firms, and Goldabher is, accordingly, perhaps one of the field’s most vocal proponents of VAMs, also self-described as an “advocate of using value-added measurements carefully to inform some high-stakes decisions” (see original reference here). Hence, it makes sense he writes about VAMs’ potentials herein.

Here’s what he has to add to the conversation, specifically about “the various mechanisms through which the use of value added might affect teacher quality and…what we know empirically about the potential of each mechanism” (p. 87).

Most importantly in this piece, and in my opinion, Goldhaber discusses the “[s]everal [which turns out to be two] studies that simulate the effects of using value-added estimates for high-stakes purposes [and] suggest there may be significant student Special Issue of “Educational Researcher” (Paper #3 of 9): Exploring VAMs’ Potentials | VAMboozled!:

Snyder says Detroit school plan will cost $715M

Snyder says Detroit school plan will cost $715M:

Snyder says Detroit school plan will cost $715M

Detroit — Gov. Rick Snyder said Monday his plan to create a new debt-free Detroit school district will cost the state $715 million over 10 years, amounting to $50 for every child in Michigan.

Snyder renewed his efforts to overhaul Detroit’s fractured education system Monday ahead of the long-expected introduction of legislation to create new layers of oversight in exchange for the state assuming operating debt piled up by emergency managers in recent years.

The accumulated operating debt of Detroit Public Schools is expected to top $515 million by June 2016, Snyder said.

Snyder’s proposed Detroit Community School District would need $200 million to cover $100 million in start-up costs for capital improvements of facilities and $100 million to account for continued declining enrollment in the city.

The new Detroit school district would still be liable for paying down $1.5 billion in unfunded pension liabilities. The governor has resisted a Detroit school reform coalition’s call for DPS to be exempted from continuing to pay its share of pension costs for current and former employees.

The Republican governor’s proposal would cost the state’s School Aid Fund about $70 million annually for the next decade.

Snyder said the sales tax-dependent School Aid Fund is healthy enough to afford continued annual increases in funding for all schools.

“This does not have to come at the expense of any cut,” Snyder said.

The governor said he plans to offer legislation this month to overhaul Detroit’s troubled education system, which includes DPS, the state-run Education Achievement Authority and charter schools.

This is the second time in six months that the governor has detailed plans to overhaul education in Detroit.

Snyder’s revised plan contains a few tweaks from the proposal he detailed in April.

Originally, the governor had proposed the creation of a new financial review commission to have oversight and veto power over spending decisions of the new school district in Detroit.

In the revised plan, Snyder calls for using the existing Financial Review Commission Snyder says Detroit school plan will cost $715M:

Pearson and Partners Pay in L.A. | Alan Singer

Pearson and Partners Pay in L.A. | Alan Singer:

Pearson and Partners Pay in L.A.

In April 2015, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) announced that it was canceling its agreement to install Pearson software on the 40,000 Apple iPads it distributed to students at a cost of $768 each. LAUSD also demanded a multimillion-dollar refund because Pearson could not deliver the math and English curriculum it promised. Although three-quarters of the school year was over, the vast majority ofLAUSD students still could not access Pearson curriculum on the iPads and in classrooms that had access teachers were not using what they considered to be an inferior product.

The entire LAUSD project has been a fiasco from the start. Shortly after the computers were distributed, students hacked into the supposedly unhackable system so they could run their own programs on the machines. In December 2014 an FBIinvestigation of the iPad contract was launched after emails surfaced showing communication between LAUSD and Pearson officials before the contract was awarded. The total computer and program package cost LAUSD a reported $1.3 billion.

In September, Apple Inc. and Lenovo, the leads on the project, Pearson is technically a sub-contractor, agreed to reimburse the LAUSD $6.4 million for the botched project after the district threatened to sue the companies. It is still not clear which of the companies will eventually pay the bill although LAUSD holds Pearson responsible for the problems.

On the other side of the country, in December 2013 the Pearson Charitable Foundation, the company's not-for-profit, supposedly independent, agreed to pay the State of New York a $ 7.7 million penalty. The foundation, which Pearson has since closed, was illegally using donations to school districts and personnel to channel Pearson and Partners Pay in L.A. | Alan Singer:

Teach For America’s Embedded In Black Lives Matter | PopularResistance.Org

Teach For America’s Embedded In Black Lives Matter | PopularResistance.Org:

Teach For America’s Embedded In Black Lives Matter

The Movement Lives in Ferguson: Teach For America, Black Leadership, and Disaster Capitalism

The 501(c)(3) non-profit has indeed come a long way since Wendy Kopp founded it in 1990. In its first year, Teach For America had 500 recruits; by 2013, the organization controlled nearly half-a-billion dollars in assets and employed 11,000 teacher “corps members” in schools across the United States.

Despite mounting evidence that school privatization does more harm than good, in less than three decades TFA has spread their reach to thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia, playing an indispensable role in enabling the proliferation of charter schools — schools run by private businesses with public funding — throughout the country. But it doesn’t stop there. Tracing the genealogy of tax-exempt education reform foundations puts Teach For America at the center of a massive scheme, backed by powerful donors, for corporate takeovers of public schools everywhere — not just in the US, but around the world.

“Join us,” reads the header on TFA’s 25th Anniversary Summit web page, “to reflect on the progress we’ve made over the past 25 years as we step forward together to reach One Day.” (The capitalized “One Day” appears to be a reference to the title of Wendy Kopp’s 2001 memoir about TFA’s origins,One Day, All Children...) Below it, the event description says: “Our 25th Anniversary Summit will bring together thousands from the Teach For America community, all united behind a single goal: in our lifetime, every child will have access to a truly excellent education.”

In the past, TFA relied on political alliances with policy makers, like former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and DC’s ousted mayor Adrian Fenty, to seize control of school districts and impose the charter school model. But the long game — what it calls “the second half of the movement” — is to develop its corps members into a leadership class of its own. Kopp explains:

I think the way to understand Teach for America is as a leadership development program. We need political leaders, policy makers, doctors, lawyers, and probably more business leaders than we are producing right now . . . In the long run, we need to build a leadership force of people. We have a whole strategy around not only providing folks with the foundational experience during their two years with us, but also then accelerating their leadership in ways that is strategic for the broader education reform movement.

By developing corps members into leaders committed to its ideology, TFA has disguised its Teach For America’s Embedded In Black Lives Matter | PopularResistance.Org:

Are turnaround districts the answer for America’s worst schools? - The Hechinger Report

Are turnaround districts the answer for America’s worst schools? - The Hechinger Report:

Are turnaround districts the answer for America’s worst schools?

State-run school districts have a shaky track record, but more are on the way

by EMMANUEL FELTON October 19, 2015

This is some of the hardest work in education.

That was the gist of education reform wunderkind Chris Barbic’s July open letter announcing that he was stepping down as superintendent of Tennessee’s Achievement School District, the state-run district charged with turning around the state’s worst schools. In that letter, Barbic said that he had discovered it was “much harder” to fix existing schools than to start up new ones, as he did running YES Prep, a highly successful charter school network.

Barbic’s resignation comes as legislators in states across the country — including Pennsylvania and Georgia — consider creating similar special districts for their worst schools. So-called turnaround districts are already up and running in three states: Louisiana, Michigan and Tennessee. They share many strategies: converting some schools into charters; replacing teachers and administrators; giving staff more freedom when it comes to things like curriculum, hiring and budgeting; and, in some cases, pumping in more money.

But, more than a decade after the first such district was founded in Louisiana, the results have been mixed. Turning around high schools — where the stakes are arguably highest as students prepare to head out into the real world — has proven to be particularly frustrating for reformers.

Julie Corbett, a consultant who specializes in turnaround strategies, said that for high school turnarounds especially, it takes more than a new curriculum and higher expectations.

“It’s all about wraparound services,” said Corbett. “And I’m not just talking about a counselor. Educators need to be thinking about dental care, healthcare, weekend jobs, child care for young moms and the list goes on. It is key to figure out early on all the wraparound supports the school needs.”

The proposed Pennsylvania district, like the Tennessee one, will be taking on the hardest cases — focusing on schools that rank in the state’s bottom 5 percent. Kelly Phenicie, executive director of the Pennsylvania education committee, said she imagines the district will actually work almost exclusively with the bottom 1 percent. According to senate staffers, there are 28 such schools, including six high schools. The majority are in Philadelphia.

Five of those six high schools are in Philadelphia, and if you exclude Are turnaround districts the answer for America’s worst schools? - The Hechinger Report: