Fixing Broken Schools: The "Don't Mess With Us" Challenge

At nearly every school, no matter how broken it may be over all, there are pockets of teachers, parents and kids who are doing good things -- a program, a department, a classroom, an activity.  What reformers have slowly come to realize -- this is from a Bill Gates talk in 2008 -- is that these pockets of promise represent both an opportunity and a challenge:  how to make things better over all without steamrolling (or being steamrolled by) pockets of excellence?   

“The problem we tend to run into is that the most influential and well-educated people either have their kids in private schools, or they have their kids in an enclave inside the high school that are called honor’s courses, where the teaching is pretty decent and so, if we go to a school and say, let’s change things here, they say, no way, you’re going to mess our little enclave up. All the kids go through the same front door, but really it’s a separate school inside there that’s allowing us not to be part of that insanity, and so don’t mess with the thing that works well for us. And I do think, if you want to stand up to some of the practices that are not focused on the needs of the students, you need a broad set of parents. I think we’re very weak on this point.”

I'm usually more than happy to criticize the Gates Foundation's efforts and approach, but I see this as a pretty honest, reflective assessment of a challenge that reformers are still coming to terms with. 

Comments

[CarolineSF]

Actually, that's a deceitful and obnoxious way to twist the fact that it's not only poor folks (on whom the "reformers" can trample without compunction) who have a stake in helping and supporting schools rather than crushing them.

And it's especially rich coming from a bunch whose own precious offspring are cloistered in elite private schools that (guaranteed) engage in the exact opposite of the regimented practices that the "reformers" want to force into public schools. (Shout-out to Myron Miner's petition on change.org calling for a longer school day and more test prep for the University of Chicago Lab School.)

The whole notion that diverse schools are only succeeding for more-privileged kids because those kids are isolated in "enclaves" within the school ignores the influence of poverty and community on student achievement. Am I not correct that even in the heart of reform, the Hoover Institution, researcher Eric Hanushek estimates that ~80% of the factors influencing achievement are outside-school factors?

That is simply NOT an honest, reflective assessment, Alexander. It's arrogant, hypocritical crap.

[Mary]

For the sake of argument and respect to you, Mr. Gates, or any other reformer I'm going to assume all of you have spent a lot of time in "failing" NYC schools like Columbus, Samuel Gompers, Legacy High School, HS Of Graphic Communication Arts, etc.; starving, yes...broken, no.

"Broken" means not working/not functioning. People look at the budgets the above mentioned schools "work" with/"function" with and are shocked by the success that happens inside these buildings. Shocked is not overdramatizing.
Most, if not all the schools above and those like them, already have small learning communities within their walls; small schools, if you will, inside larger schools. These smaller communities exist not to shelter the better students from the insanity of the "failing" students, they exist so ELLs, ex-offenders, Over The Counters, students needing remediation, students that are parents themselves, can get more personalized attention and graduate. Most of these students need six years, an unacceptable time frame for reformers.

It works with no money and no resources. It's broken in the eyes of those who are miles away crunching numbers. The "Don't Mess With Us" Challenge is a defensive reaction because those on the ground know the messing leads to far worse outcomes.

[Tom]

What this particularly doesn't deal with is pockets of excellence which serve low income students and thus lack the political clout to resist being run over. There is only one of the Gates-funded small schools left in Providence in its more or less original configuration. This year it continued to outscore the rest of the neighborhood hs's in Providence by 25 points in reading. If someone like, say, Gates had kept the other's from being steamrolled, we'd have at least three higher performing neighborhood high schools now.

[Mary]

I'm a pocket of excellence, for every "level" I teach. I do resist being stamped out, and I think that's a good thing.

It isn't like the Gates Foundation has any excellence to replace me with.