Thompson: Three Blows to the Head of the RttT

RttT architects, who are gullible enough to believe that charters face the same challenges as neighborhood schools and can thus lead systemic turnaround efforts, should ask what the California Charter School Association knows about this issue that they do not.  The Association. which should be the biggest booster of the effort to turn up to 250 Los Angeles schools over to charters, says that the effort is "simply unworkable" because it would force charters to "effectively take an attendance boundary." The Times editorialized:

"Charter schools usually admit students through a lottery regardless of where in the district they live, a requirement under state law. ... But the California Charter School Association finds the district's attendance-boundary requirement untenable, and some charter operators are threatening to abandon the initiative altogether. Lotteries ...favor students whose parents are informed and involved enough to enter the lotteries in the first place. ... Left out are many students ... who most need well-run schools."

The second and third blows to the turnaround strategies favored by the RttT were delivered by the  Consortium on Chicago School Research and Education Next.  

 The Consortium described the anger and disruption which accompanies school closing (even when the school is reopened in the same building) and concluded that the closings of 38 Chicago schools from 2001 to 2006 did not change the academic outlook of their students.  Only the 6% of students who moved to better schools benefitted.  In theory, Chicago's brand new turnaround strategy or reconstitution could be more promising, but we should heed the Consortium's warning that success depends on "a large supply of 'better' schools" and they are in short supply in urban America - at least in schools that do not cream.   

Frederick Hess joined the fray "the Obama administration’s solution is that we’re going to make all the lousy schools better, but that’s harder than the administration has let on. The next most attractive alternative is to shut them down, and let the kids go to other schools, but this Consortium report has found that that brought little benefit to students in Chicago."

Similarly Andy Smarick challenged to whistling past the graveyard belief that "in education, turnarounds have been tried rarely ... But, in fact, the number and scope of fix-it efforts have been extensive to say the least. ... The history of urban education tells us emphatically that turnarounds are not a reliable strategy for improving our very worst schools. So why does there remain a stubborn insistence on preserving fix-it efforts?"

"The most common, but also the most deeply flawed, justification," wrote Smarick, "is that there are high-performing schools in American cities. But as a Thomas B. Fordham Foundation study noted, 'Much is known about how effective schools work, but it is far less clear how to move an ineffective school from failure to success…. Being a high-performing school and becoming a high-performing school are very different challenges.'"

And his report brings us full circle noting "a 2006 NewSchools Venture Fund study confirmed a widespread aversion to takeover-and-turnaround strategies among successful school operators. Only 4 of 36 organizations interviewed expressed interest in restructuring existing schools."  So, the California  Charter School association is not alone in trying to duck the challenge of serving entire neighborhoods.

But then the Fordham study in Education Next continued the circular argument, favoring school closures despite their failures in Chicago and elsewhere, over turnarounds.  As if this was not confusing enough, Tom Vander Ark added a new wrinkle to the discussion, advocating "blended restarts," but I can't honestly say whether I can tell whether his variation is a distinction with a difference.  He noted that only "a couple of providers have tried (to restart high schools) and it will get better but it will take time."

In other words, you say potato and I say potato, so why don't we call this whole thing off?  Since RttT's fate is so crucial to the future of our poorest children, why battle over tomato, tomato? We should abandon the entire effort of using RttT or the Innovation Fund or whatever to rescue the failed experiment of NCLB-type accountability.

It is counterintuitive but a consensus may be emerging.  Turning around the toughest schools requires more, "better" schools, more better teachers, and more better capacity for addressing the hardest socio-emotional challenges.  Why not invest directly in innovative methods of making schools better, and save the heroic theorizing for a time when an adequate foundation for reform has been built?- John Thompson

Comments

[Dick]

We need a war on empty education slogans. It's in the instruction, S*****.

[Betty]

Very interesting article. The bottom line is we need to figure out how to turn ineffective schools into successful schools. I've been reading a book called "Lives of Passion, School of Hope" by author Rick Posner. It showed me what is possible for our public schools. Now I want to take action in creating these kinds of schools for my children. http://www.rickposner.com/