Innovation Schools provide teachers with an unprecedented opportunity to seize control of their schools and to take charge of both academic programming and operations. What does that mean? It means teachers can operate schools under the terms and conditions that will best meet the needs of their students. They will have the authority and flexibility to adopt curricula, implement instructional and assessment practices that they think will ensure students learn, and be accountable themselves for the success of their students. In other words, Innovation Schools will dramatically increase opportunities for teacher leadership and deepen teacher professionalism.
The other exciting feature of these schools is that every aspect of the work is local. Proposals to establish either new schools or convert existing schools will be generated at the local level. These proposals will be reviewed and approved at the local level. The performance contract will be negotiated and managed at the local level. Finally, since the school is local – the money stays in the district.
In summary, Innovation Schools will:
– Feature high degrees of flexibility and autonomy in the areas of curriculum, budget, school schedule and calendar, staffing (including voluntary exemptions or waivers from teacher contract provisions), and school district policies;
– Foster innovation by allowing parents, teachers, universities, museums, non-profit organizations, and other groups to submit proposals to create new schools or convert existing schools;
– Increase opportunities for educators, particularly teachers, to establish and operate schools; and
– Allow educators to fundamentally transform classroom instruction.
I am encouraging both local officials and statewide officials to take a close look at the opportunity presented by Innovation Schools and to strongly consider this option.
Innovation Schools will not only spread innovation throughout the Commonwealth, but they will fundamentally alter the dynamics of the teaching profession while leveling the playing field by providing traditional public schools with access to the same toolbox that that are typically available at our high performing charters Innovation Schools are a major leap forward for students, families, and educators.
I think there’s a lot of good potential in innovation/readiness schools, depending on how the regulations are written…the devil is in the details. However, without a conscientious policy to ensure that such innovations are evaluated and spread beyond a single and brief DESE website, I would suggest the following:
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p>This ensures that innovations from these schools are known by DESE and thus all schools. A “lab” is no good if the results are hidden, so it is with laboratory schools. Furthermore, any group that is using this new rubric to simply dodge the requirements of education are called on it. Schools receive credit for widespread adoption of these innovations, and everyone benefits.
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p>Of course, we’d need enforcement. While I’m sure many good ideas will come out of this new type of school, I think that steps must be taken to ensure that all students receive a quality educational experience. Hence, I’d suggest the following mechanism:
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p>Is there anything like this planned?
First off, let me say that I’ve read many of the reports that came out the Rennie Center during your tenure. While I wasn’t thrilled with a new layer of bureaucracy being reinstated with your position, I had high hopes that you had the vision to see the changes needed and skills to get there.
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p>So, I’m baffled by the Innovation School model.
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p>”…local school committees in cooperation with superintendents, teacher unions and outside partners” is the definition of a public school district. I served one term on a school committee and was flummoxed and frustrated at the dysfunction in this governing structure.
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p>My committee was so inept it spent four months to set annual goals and two years to draft a 5-year plan. And we’re a “high performing” district. How do you expect this to pan out where the challenges are more serious and the “powers that be” are entrenched in their own inability to deliver a quality education?
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p>And to address the 700-hundred pound gorilla — how do you expect these same school committees who routinely pay out double-digit annual raises to be able to negotiate an innovative contract that doesn’t break the budget?
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p>I think you seriously overestimate the quality of governance in our local school districts, their financial and management and education acumen, their willingness to change, their ability to innovate.
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p>But good luck. I really mean that. If you want more candid feedback feel free to contact me at diane AT dianeweir DOT com.
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p>If it were me I would take a different approach. I’d require the use of Direct Instruction in all schools that aren’t meeting benchmarks. The curriculum has decades of success behind it, in all variety of districts. No sense innovating for innovation sake — that’s what got us the TERC and other awfulness. Let’s start using something that actually has decades of success and data backing it up.
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p>And I’d mandate that no worker can be forced into accepting a union contract. Everyone should have the right to negotiate as an individual if they so choose. I don’t see how you can incentivize innovation and improvement otherwise.
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p>Lastly… do reward success. Our system is upside down with failure getting the most dollars. If there is a successful school or district — public, charter, private, Innovation — let it expand to take over the schools and districts that are failing.
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In the Greater Springfield Area, the town of Longmeadow has the best school reputation. The cities of Springfield and Holyoke have the worst. I would really like to see the town of Longmeadow take on the task of educating the students in Springfield. Why? Because that will prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the primary reason for a school to be deemed “failing” is the students within that school, not the teachers in that school.
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p>Let them do it on their own small budgets — since people like you love to point out that “failure gets the most dollars”.
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p>Experiment with a single school and with students randomly assigned. Open a school in Longmeadow, under the Longmeadow school committee, Longmeadow-hired teachers, and even give Springfield’s Chapter 70 money to Longmeadow for the students who go there. 100% Springfield kids in that school. Let the MCAS of those kids count towards Longmeadow’s district totals too. Start with kindergarten if you think that older kids are “too damaged by the inferior system they started in”.
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p>Do you really think that will work out? Seriously? Do you think that the school of randomly selected Springfield students (90%+ come from low-income families, many of Springfield’s students are ESL students, and there is a lot of transiency with kids moving in and out of the district) will suddenly perform the way Longmeadow kids perform? Why? Because of the air? Because the school committee is “better”? Because the teachers are “better” (if that’s the case, then this can be solved by raising salaries in poorly performing districts so that those districts can get “better” teachers)?
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p>No way it’s going to work. The reason schools are deemed “failing” is that they have high concentrations of students who have enormous problems learning due to their family and social backgrounds. I believe that this can be addressed — but only by a few things: innovation (doing things differently for students who don’t succeed in traditional settings), intense personalization (a class size of 30 kids probably doesn’t work when all 30 kids need extra help), and via de-concentrating the number of students that are hard to educate via attracting more students that are easier to educate.
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p>If it did, then would people support regionalizing the best performing school districts in the wealthiest communities? Imagine the uproar when that happened?
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p>I think that a district-sponsored Innovation School could work wonders on that last front. For example, I think that a district could create a Performing Arts Innovation school that would be just as good, if not better, than the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts charter school. I think that a district could use this program to create schools that are true alternatives to the public school system, schools that parents might want to send their kids to even in a poor urban district. I think that such schools would allow parents to have a common bond that transcends both race and economic status — i.e. if everyone in a school was interested in performing arts, that would be how the school was defined, not as “that’s a poor school” or “that’s a Black school”.
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p>We have poorly performing schools because schools are intensely tied to small communities and property values. Most parents purchase their houses specifically for the school districts. There is an incredible self-selection and segregation going on which it tied to income levels. This has intensified since Proposition 2.5 went on the books because that law crippled some communities, and caused others to focus their housing policy on attracting certain types of people, and excluding others.
We already do that. It’s called Metco, the largest and oldest voluntary desegregation program in the country. Longmeadow participates by taking students from Springfield Public Schools and many other districts in the Boston suburbs participate by taking students from Roxbury, Mattapan, Dorchester, Roslindale and Hyde Park. In the district in which I work about 9% of our students come from these Boston neighborhoods. All of them end up in college.
There are several reasons METCO works:
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p>1) It is voluntary, the kids who enter the program choose it. That weeds out the students who don’t care about education.
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p>2) It has very controlled numbers. Educating 2 or 3 kids who may be harder to educate within a class of easy-to-educate kids is an achievable task. Flipping the ratio is not an achievable task.
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p>Longmeadow dropped its METCO program, by the way. Some have speculated that it was because NCLB requires proficiency in various ethnic subgroups in the very near future, but only if there is a significant number of students in those sub-groups. Dropping METCO virtually ensures that there is not a significant number in any subgroup.
I was unaware that Longmeadow cut it’s Metco program. I could be for the reasons you suggest, or it could be that the last round of 9c cuts from the Governor made huge cuts in the Metco program.
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p>Let me contest your other points. Firstly, the “choice” for Metco doesn’t really hold. The waiting list is over 10,000. Families sign up their children when they are born. Metco is a race based program, so the only qualification is that the racial mix of the program is similar of that to the city of Boston (or Springfield). We have parents who think they hit the lottery and then totally disengage from the school. We have other parents who are fully engaged in everything we do but those parents are the exception not the rule. So the notion that the Metco population is substantially different from the city population is a myth.
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p>Your second point is correct about the ratio. But Metco is a desegregation program. It’s point is to integrate suburban schools, not to change the racial makeup of the Boston/Springfield schools. It’s not intended to be a full solution to the problems of urban schools. Just part of a solution.
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p>There are schools that only take a handful of kids. Our district doesn’t do that. Our Metco population represents about 9% of our total population. In my school alone an incoming Kindergarten class of 140 students will have 14 Metco students. Frankly we have both the room and the desire to take more students, but the recent cuts in Metco funding from the state have left us having to take dollars from the local budget to fund our program, as well as to hold bake sales and other fundraisers to keep Metco services for students.
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p>We don’t worry about AYP or subgroups scores. In my district the schools continually ask for more Metco students.
My point about METCO choice is this: in urban schools, but there are a lot parents who are concerned about their child’s education, and there are parents who don’t care one bit. There is a lottery process with METCO that requires a parent to sign up. Do you think a parent who doesn’t care one bit is going to sign up? No way. Only parents who value education will sign up.
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p>That means the METCO population differs from the population of the sending district. That’s why I bristle when people point to METCO to make the point that since some urban kids are doing really well in suburban districts, then the problem is obviously the urban school, and in particular their teachers and administration. It’s not a proper comparison.
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p>Longmeadow voted to not accept new METCO students in Feb 2007. It wasn’t even reported in the paper at the time. A few months later they stopped accepting school choice kids. The public talk centered on that the school committee felt that the district was “losing money” on the program, that the $5,000 per-student reimbursement didn’t make up for the expense to educate the kids.
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p>I did misspeak though, they did not cut participation in the program — I found a later article that said that the school committee voted to later accept 2 METCO kids instead of 0 for 2007-08. As reported at that time, there was concern about the Springfield kids having “special needs”. I recall, at the time it was cut, in the newspaper’s online discussion forums, talk that the Springfield kids were “making the town’s scores look bad”. There were no more articles on the subject, so I don’t know what the status is. The town apparently still participates in the program, but I don’t know if they are taking in new students.
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p>I found it interesting that a school committee member, speaking to address the “special needs” concern, said that METCO kids “are screened to make sure they are able to handle the work before being accepted.” I had thought it was random lottery.
that the urban schools are doing a bad job. It’s just that suburban schools have more resources to bring to bear, and fewer students with significant problems. That allows us to be able to ensure success for our Boston students. That’s why Metco is not a full solution, only a partial solution. Still it should be expanded and not contracted like it apparently is in Longmeadow.
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p>That school committee member in Longmeadow was likely misinformed about students being screened. Either that or they were breaking the law. The law around Metco selection allows districts to give priority to siblings, and it requires the total Metco program to represent the racial makeup of the sending school district (Boston or Springfield). The only exclusions allowed are special needs students who have significant enough needs to require an outside program. Special needs students for whom the receiving district has programs in place can and do participate fully.
You’ve attributed a lot more to my post than is actually there. Be that as it may…
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p>My main point is that there is nothing in the current system that prevents…
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p>Springfield’s FY09 per pupil expenditure was $14,345. Is a class size of 10 “intensly personal” enough? That’s $140K per class of 10… you could afford 10 laptops and a teacher salary of $100K — more than enough to ensure top talent and a year round / full time professional.
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p>If that could solve all the education problems in Springfield would you do it? I would!
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p>Question is… what is stopping the adults from stepping up and taking responsibility? The students can’t change where they come from. No one can. But the adults can change what happens inside that school. Everything. Why shouldn’t we hold the adults accountable?
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p>And just for fair disclosure, I’ve taught in these schools. Low SES, high percentage of non-English speaking students, where 30% of the student body would return to Mexico for the month of January. I’ve seen success with these students. If I could do it. If my colleagues could do it. Why can’t Springfield?
I’m not sure where you get the 2009 number of $14,345 from, but the State DOE website lists the 2007-08 number in Springfield as $12,911. Longmeadow spends $11,614. Is it reasonable to expect that it costs just 11% more to bring students from Springfield’s economic demographics to the same level as students with Longmeadow’s economic demographics? Many wealthy Eastern MA districts (Dover, Lincoln, Waltham) spend $15k-18k per student.
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p>It’s disingenuous to suggest that those expenses could all be spent on a teacher and some laptops. It costs money to heat and maintain buildings, purchase supplies, administer the district, bus students, etc.
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p>Where do you get your information that class sizes in Springfield are 10 students per teacher? This report says that the ratio is 13.5 students per teacher, but I suspect that number is misleading, because there is only 1 “district” listed that shows a number over 20, and that is ironically the Robert M. Hughes charter school in Springfield. And at 13.5 to 1, Springfield has a higher ratio than 53% of the other “districts” (which include charter schools) in the state.
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p>I doubt 13.5 to 1 translates to class sizes of 13.5 students — I’ve heard many reports of classes of 25 students in both Springfield and other districts.
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p>I’m not sure where you’re going about “holding adults accountable”. For what? The failure of the children? Which adults? Their parents? — sure, they are responsible! Hold them accountable if you can find them (many parents are in prison, many other kids come from single-parent households) — though I don’t quite know how you hold someone like that accountable, what would you do, throw them in prison? “Holding them accountable” is a nice jingo, by the way.
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p>But I don’t suspect you’re indicting the parents. You seem to be saying just what I thought you said in the first post — laying failure on the teachers, administration, and school committee in those communities. Again, take a random sampling of students from a poorly performing district, place them all into the same building in a highly performing district, and those students will not come close to performing as well as the native kids in the district. It’s all about concentration of poverty, spending, resources, and background.
PPE for FY09
Source: http://finance1.doe.mass.edu/s…
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p>I didn’t say Springfield HAS class sizes of 10:1. I asked if low class size is what it takes, why not just do it?
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p>Your response:
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p>Then why continue to spend money on those things?
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p>Seriously — you’ve got a district that is in corrective action and has an abysmal graduation rate.
Source:http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/ayp/ayp_report/district.aspx?linkid=30&orgcode=02810000&fycode=2009&orgtypecode=5&
Source:http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/02/high_school_graduation_rates_m.html
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p>You’ve already aptly pointed out that the students and environment in Springfield and Longmeadow are vastly different. The results are too.
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p>What is the same is the infrastructure, the materials, the proceess — same school structure, same large administrative level, same bad curriculum, same worthless professional development, same waste of resources being poured into public buildings.
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p>Work as a single unit with the city. Set up a virtual school and leverage other public spaces during the day and virtual spaces.
Source: http://www.pavcsk12.org/
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p>Of the buildings you still need, sell them and lease them back. Saves $$$$ that can be reinvested in instruction.
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p>Eliminate most of the mid-level management. You either are working with students or your directly managing those who do. Otherwise, you’re not contributing value.
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p>The thing about your post is you offer NO SOLUTIONS. It does absolutely no good for the students to blame the parents. I don’t argue the point that it’s the parents’ fault because it’s a pointless argument once you’re inside the school structure.
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p>But let’s say the parents are the problem. What are you gong to do about it? Are you willing to use some of your school budget to offer parenting classes? No? Then stop complaining about a situation that you can’t control and start putting your energy in changing the things you can.
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p>Holding accountable means you either do your job effectively, or you’re fired. I would think that’s a simple enough concept. Clearly what Springfield is currently doing doesn’t work. Every year more students FAIL. And still that’s not enough to spur action. Still you continue to think it’s more important to fund a Fine Arts administrator and football team than to ensure students can read.
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p>What does it take for you to accept that the people responsible for what happens in the district, in the schools, in the classrooms need to act? If you can’t come to that acceptance, then there is no hope for those kids.
Thanks for providing the FY09 numbers. I’m surprised that there was a 10% jump from FY08 to FY09. It’s still not wildly out of line with many other communities though, which also increased (though not as much).
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p>I actually did offer solutions:
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p>Those ideas seem make more sense to me than selling off the school buildings and creating a district of “virtual schools”. Sale/leaseback only gets you a chunk of upfront money with a long future of least payments that cost way more in the long run. My ideas can be addressed without social engineering other communities — though they will require buy-in from the state to help with both money to reduce class sizes and money/policies that help bring the middle class to urban areas — maybe by working on housing policy that offers more options for run-down tenements than just converting them into long-term affordable housing.
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p>I believe that teachers and administrators should be held accountable, but fairly. If you give two kids play-doh, one hard as a rock, the other brand new, and tell them to make a house with it they would instantly realize that judging the results the same would be patently unfair. Yet that is what you’re suggesting we do.
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p>We still should talk about the game being rigged, because the ultimate solution lies in de-rigging it. If you want districts to perform the same and to judge the results the same, then take steps to make sure that the inputs to the districts are the same. Do something about the forces that both compel and allow economic segregation in this state.
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p>In the meantime, get more middle class kids into those districts, spend the money to get down to classes of 10 and less, and create innovative programs that address the fact that not everyone learns the same or is excited about school in the same way. I am confident that doing that will show more improvements than firing teachers and administrators and creating “virtual schools”.
until the Norwegian Curling team and their pants beat the Swiss today in their semifinal match in Vancouver.
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p>Just a little levity before this thread turns into a meat grinder of civility.
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p>I do, however, have some thoughts on this I’d like to share a little later.
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p>In the meantime, go pants!
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…and the turn of phrase “meat grinder of civility”!
This is a stupid idea, driven not by research but by the misguided belief that for low or no cost, student achievement can be improved by school reorganization, particularly as it involves teacher unions. Calling the recently passed legislation a way to eliminate the achievement gap is downright demagoguery.
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p>As NoPolitician, who, I believe, is no educator, correctly writes, the greatest factor affecting school achievement is the population of schools themselves. Of course, addressing out-of-school factors costs money and require us to acknowledge the pernicious effects of poverty. There isn’t an influential politician in the country who is ready to acknowledge the role of out of school factors.
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p>As Sabutai says, the devil is in the details. If the details of innovation resembles the innovation of charter schools, the details are a joke. Many (Most?) of the best practices appearing on the DESE site are hardly innovative. Some, such as character education, are contradicted by research. The quality of these practices isn’t measured or documented by research techniques.
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p>Although I generally disagree with Diane Weir on education (she thinks education would improve dramatically if everyone used scripted learning), I agree when she suggests that it’s instruction that matters. A wealth of research suggests that teachers and instruction are the most important variables that can be altered. We even know what instructional practices work (see Marzano for a simple, readable list of some).
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p>I see no reason why you couldn’t have developed a program for plain, old schools to innovate without all the rigamarole. Why not give us the “opportunity for local educators to implement innovative practices within traditional public school settings, take charge of their own schools, and control their own budgets, staffing, scheduling, and curricula”? Why not have schools apply to implement “innovations” without the reorganizational aspects?
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p>Mark L. Bail
English Teacher, Department Chair
…let’s at least get them correct.
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p>I do not think “education would improve dramatically if everyone used scripted learning.”
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p>I believe the decades of data that demonstrate one curriculum program — Direct Instruction — can predictably produce significant gains in reading and arithmetic in the elementary grades. Therefore, I think that educational outcomes would improve if schools who do not effectively teach reading and math stopped trying to guess there way out of the situation and actually use what works.
My two cents, you rate schools on the relative increase in MCAS scores. If the school does well leave them alone. The result is important not the method.
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Schools that do poorly need to be disbanded, just as businesses are (well at least usually).
I think Mark’s analysis is on the money; that is, it’s about money, isn’t it?
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p>Really addressing the root causes of achievement gaps and inequality requires serious investment in out-of-school factors on a pretty broad scale. Right now, there’s no extra money to be had, so we get what seem like gimmicky ideas involving new forms of governance and new names for old ideas.
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p>Meanwhile, there are existing schools that basically do a good job but are facing disastrous budget forecasts and looking at cutting to the bone and beyond. And there are schools that are struggling and would welcome real guidance and resources to help them improve, without all the dislocation and chaos involved in starting from scratch.
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p>If flexibility to innovate is such a good thing, why not let existing schools have such flexibility?
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p>Of course one thing blocking flexibility and innovation is our assessment and accountability system. Why not create flexibility there?
Will they be required to reflect the demographics of the district in which they exist? Will they have the same percentage of ELL students, Special Education students, minority students, and low income students as the rest of the district?
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p>If you are using an unweighted lottery as with Charter Schools, then these Innovation Schools will be no different than the Horace Mann Charters. I’m in favor of any school Public, Private, Charter, or Innovation that teaches all children (not a self selected group) at a high level. This is what Education Reform should really be about.
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p>Don’t give us more of this faux competition and innovation nonsense. Let’s go after the most difficult to teach students and get them to achieve well.
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p>Oh and while you are at it, let’s fund the Special Education Circuit breaker at 100% so that public schools have the resources necessary to do their jobs well.
That’s truly an area that is out of the local district control. The state approves and negotiates the rates for the out of district schools. They should fund what is really a statewide district. It’s a volatile part of the local budget.
do you oppose the large number of suburban districts…which draw lines around their community which block most affordable housing.
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p>they claim they serve “all kids” in this carefully constructed district. others would say otherwise. where do you stand?
When mandatory busing was ordered in Springfield, this was the cue for the white middle class to leave the city.
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p>What now exists is a meta-example of what used to exist, on a larger scale — there used to be poor neighborhoods surrounded by wealthy neighborhoods in Springfield, all racially segregated. Now there is Springfield and wealthy suburban communities, all racially segregated.
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p>Look at the racial breakdown in Springfield schools versus each district surrounding it:
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White
Black
Hispanic
Asian
Springfield
14.7
22.3
56.7
2.2
Longmeadow
88.1
2.8
2.1
5.9
East Longmeadow
91.0
3.1
1.9
3.6
Hampden/Wilbraham
88.9
3.0
3.4
2.8
Ludlow
91.1
1.8
5.4
0.6
Chicopee
65.5
3.1
27.2
1.6
West Springfield
75.5
3.4
14.2
4.2
Agawam
93.6
1.1
2.8
1.3
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p>Racial segregation is bad. It is worse now, because prior to mandated desegregation efforts, there was a presumption that schools be given equal resources. That presumption is no longer the case across town lines.
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p>Don’t get me wrong — segregation was and is a bad thing. However, when the Supreme Court ruled against intra-district busing, that virtually guaranteed that cities like Springfield would become racially isolated.
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p>Here is the low-income breakdown in each of those districts:
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Springfield
81.4
Longmeadow
3.4
East Longmeadow
9.6
Hampden/Wilbraham
10.0
Ludlow
24.5
Chicopee
60.8
West Springfield
42.9
Agawam
22.0
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p>Anyone care to take a guess at the performance ranking of those districts?
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p>Now how about trying to rank those communities by the amount of family (not senior) low income housing they have?
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p>Massachusetts is incredibly segregated, both racially and economically. Proposition 2.5 is an incredible incentive to keep things that way, with new construction geared, in many communities, toward units that are $400k and up.
I don’t think that self-selection is necessarily a bad thing as long as there is an acceptable stated public purpose for it (a school that promoted ethnic segregation would be bad).
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p>For example, what if a city started a middle school that focused on science and scientific theory? Such a school could specialize in science to the point where it became attractive to parents and students who valued that type of instruction. A school like that could be more desirable than a general public school, couldn’t it?
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p>Springfield has a Montessouri-based magnet school. It has proven to be very popular, and has both a racial balance and an economic balance that more resembles the city rather than the rest of the school district — meaning that it has succeeded in attracting populations that live in Springfield but typically do not choose Springfield public schools.
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p>When Springfield had specialized high schools, they were considered among the very best in the nation. It had Classical, for students preparing for traditional colleges; Technical, for students preparing for technically-oriented careers like engineers and draftsman; Commerce, for students preparing for the business world and accounting careers, and Trade, for students preparing for trade-oriented work such as plumbing, electricians, etc. I’m not saying the same breakdown would be appropriate, but I think that the separate themes were an important reason for those schools’ success, because it allowed the students to specialize where they wanted to specialize.
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p>Each school district does not have to reflect the demographics of the state, so why should an innovation school have to reflect the demographics of the district? That seems like an unfair rule for such schools to have to follow when districts in general don’t have to follow it.
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p>I think the best way to tackle underperforming students is to not put them all in one place. Break the problem into smaller pieces and it can be solved more easily. Concentrate it and it becomes hopeless.
Maybe I’m wrong but I’ll bet you find the majority (not all) of schools that do well are in small school districts.
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p>I’m from a small town with a very good school system (which spends way below the state average). I have friends from Maryland, also from a small town with just about the same demographics, but their school system stinks. Years back the state formed county wide school districts, the system become bureaucratic and dysfunctional. If you have the funds you send you kids to the local parochial school even if you aren’t religious.
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If you want to help Deval Patrick get re-elected, RESIGN. You are a huge liability.
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p>Please do the right thing and say good-bye.
Thanks for the 0 rating. You seem to be totally clueless as to reality.
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p>In 2006, Patrick beat Muffy by 2,223 votes in Gloucester. What do you think is going to happen this year? People are so angry they will vote Deval out of office just to get rid of Paul Reville. The same thing is true in any other town where a charter school was rammed down the throats of a community that can’t afford it and didn’t want it.
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p>Paul Reville’s arrogance just proves what people believed all along – that the awarding of charters is a scam, is done for political reasons, and now Paul Reville is a poster child for this bad behavior.
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p>The only thing better than Paul Reville resigning is for Deval to publicly fire him on a slow news day.
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p>And Mark – this is a reality based blog. Get real.
in Gloucester. I’ve commented on other threads. (They must be the ones you decided not to go back and give zeroes too). Go to my page if you want to know whether or not I’m reality-based. For the record, I side with Gloucester.
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p>Offer a realistic strategy for dealing with the problem, aside from snarks hijacking threads on other topics, I’ll be glad to sign my name to it. I’ve already stated that, because on his education policy, I’m not casting my vote for Patrick.
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p>The reason I gave your comment a zero is that we already had a Reville thread hijacked by the Gloucster problem. I think I defended the hijackers on that one, but there’s more to education in Massachusetts than a charter school in Gloucester.
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p>You tell me what you think your comment deserves, and I’ll consider going back and changing my rating.
Maybe I would agree with you in normal circumstances. However, this is the one place where this arrogant twit might actually read criticism, if only because it is a thread about what he thinks.
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p>This guy would lose to David Paterson in any popularity poll.
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We should look at Boston’s Pilot Schools as case studies in this concept. Under an agreement between the City of Boston and the Boston Teachers’ Union in the mid ’90’s, pilot schools were created under similar guidelines as what is being proposed under the Innovation Schools concept.
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p>So, how are they doing? I don’t have any numbers to support any of my ideas; if anyone has any hard data about the pilot schools to add to this discussion I’d be interested in reading it.
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p>I do have some experience having taught in two different pilot high schools in the mid to late ’90’s. I’d have to say, in short, that they don’t live up to the promise.
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p>Both schools had the advantage of being small schools with a strong community feeling. This certainly helped in terms of attendance and kids generally feeling safe and having an overall more positive feeling about school. These should not be dismissed – if kids don’t feel safe and hate going to school there’s a lot less hope of them learning, performing well on tests. etc. Both schools also attracted very dedicated and dynamic young teachers who were able to build very strong relationships with kids. This also cannot be dismissed as irrelevant.
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p>However, both schools suffered from very high turnover of staff. While I don’t really know if the turnover was worse than in other public schools, they certainly didn’t do any better. The constant turnover of teachers meant constantly reinventing the wheel and just generally suffering from the problems of relatively inexperienced staff. There was most certainly no spreading of innovation going on – we were too focused on just surviving in a poorly run school (and many of my newer colleagues were just learning to survive day-to-day in the classroom) to worry about spreading our innovations to other schools.
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p>The biggest problem I saw in the pilot schools was very poor leadership. Administrators were allowed to start new pilot school programs because they were dynamic and visionary, but unfortunately did not have the administrative skills necessary to effectively run a school. Blinded by their vision of what the school should become, the day-to-day administrative functions were neglected, and teachers were taken advantage of (being required to work excessive hours, cover classes for each other without compensation with no notice, for example). At one school there was even suspected financial mismanagement. There was absolutely no oversight of the school, even when the superintendent was notified. After three almost complete turnovers of staff in 7 years, the principal was finally let go.
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p>While there are certainly success stories among the pilot schools, most pilot schools are plagued by the same problems I observed to some degree – high turnover, poor administration, and, I suspect, not much better student performance (at least on standardized tests, which are the only measure that seems to matter to the current administration).
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p>So I wonder if Reville could comment on lessons learned from the Boston Pilot Schools as they apply to his “Innovation Schools”.
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p>Two other things puzzle me here:
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p>I am puzzled by Reville’s comment that the Innovation Schools are “not about structure and governance.” I don’t understand that – isn’t this precisely what Innovation Schools are? If it’s about teaching and learning, why not implement a program that goes into schools as they exist to address teaching and learning? I’m confused.
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p>How, exactly, will Innovation Schools “spread innovation throughout the Commonwealth”? Clearly this hasn’t happened with Charters or Pilot schools – what is different about Innovation Schools that will, suddenly, make this magical spreading of innovation happen?
Sounds as if they needed a union.
Why would ANYone want to work in one? Why would ANYone want to work ina turnaround school. why would ANYone want to work in Central Falls, RI, after the example they have now set?