Why the anger at closing bad schools?
Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division escort the Little Rock Nine students into the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. (1957)
A court decision last week blocking New York City’s efforts to shut down 19 failing schools may be the end of that fight, but more heated battles over whether to close schools are likely to crop up in New York and elsewhere in the coming months.
The federal government is now in the process of handing out “school improvement grants” to districts across the country in an effort to turn around failing schools, and one of the four options is to shut them down.
The New York case shows us that it’s unlikely these schools will go quietly. The fights over closings are likely to shape up in the way conflicts over schools usually do: with teachers’ unions on the side of saving schools, and reformers in the mold of NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein promoting closures as a way to make accountability real.
What was a little more surprising in the New York case was the third party in the picture, the NAACP, which joined the case on the side of the teachers’ union. Local leaders of the civil rights group said they were participating because African-American parents were complaining that the closures violated their children’s rights.
This is not the first time school closings have sparked anger in African-American communities. In the 1960s and ’70s, during another massive reform effort – school desegregation – hundreds of schools, most of them in black neighborhoods, were closed. Although African Americans overwhelmingly supported desegregation, the school closures didn’t go over well – even when the schools were housed in aging buildings and didn’t seem to serve students well. Closing schools in the black part of town was usually a tactic to soften white resistance to desegregation. That way, white students wouldn’t have to venture into black areas; instead, blacks took on much of the burdens of busing.
Just as infuriating to many blacks was the disregard for the history and importance of these schools in their communities. They were not just schools; they were centers where people gathered to socialize and attend cultural events. They were also reminders of the history that blacks had overcome to bring education to their children.
Many of the schools, particularly in the segregated South, were built and supported without much help from the government. The money often came from the meager wages of farmers and factory workers, as well as Northern philanthropists. Education historian Vanessa Siddle Walker has documented how caring for the well-being of students, not just their academic achievement, was a central mission of black schools. It was a mission that black parents valued, and one they feared would be lost if whites took over their children’s education. In one county in North Carolina, black parents refused to send their children to the newly desegregated white school for an entire year to protest the closure of their own school on the other side of town.
It’s not that black parents didn’t want quality schools for their children — quite the opposite. The protests were rooted in concerns that African-American children would fair worse in their new schools.
Although it turned out that black children tended to perform better academically in desegregated environments — the achievement gap was its smallest ever during the height of desegregation — African-American parents were often dismayed by continued inequalities, like ability-tracking that isolated black students from their white peers and higher rates of suspensions for black students.
In the end, closing black schools helped undermine support for desegregation among African Americans. Today, it’s a tactic that’s been all but abandoned.
Although current circumstances surrounding school closings are substantially different than what happened during desegregation – for one, New York never had a desegregation program – reformers pushing school closure might be wise to pay attention to past anger at closures. It’s also worth noting that several of the schools slated for closure in New York City were built just a few years ago to replace other failing schools.
New York City deputy mayor, Dennis Walcott, a former civil rights leader himself, told the New York Times back in February that it was “mind-boggling and incredible” that the NAACP would join “a lawsuit to keep persistently failing schools open.”
A quick look at history suggests it shouldn’t be so hard to believe.
Recess round-up: July 6, 2010
A daily dose of education news around the nation – just in time for a little mid-day break!
School improvements: Seattle schools superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson is about to embark on a handful of academic initiatives, including a new school-improvement plan that will support and pressure schools to improve. (Seattle Times)
Special ed: In New Jersey, special education is one area that cannot be cut, one line-item not up for discussion. (The Star-Ledger)
Early ed: In Michigan, the “Sandbox Party” has been established to boost early childhood education funding by $2.6 million. (Lansing State Journal)
Teacher layoffs: In California, “the schools with the lowest test scores – and traditionally the highest numbers of poor and minority students – tend to be staffed with the least experienced teachers.” (Sacramento Bee)
Glenn Beck U: Fox News host “Glenn Beck announced Tuesday that he has launched an online ‘academic program’ teaching classes in ‘religion, American history and economics.'” (Politico)
Waiting for Superman screening: Envision, a non-profit organization that addresses global issues through documentaries, offers an opportunity to see Waiting for Superman in New York City on Saturday, July 10. Stay late for a discussion led by Elizabeth Green of Gotham Schools, who will speak with the producer and a number of education policy experts. To register and RSVP for the viewing, click here. (GothamSchools)
Recess round-up: July 2, 2010
A daily dose of education news around the nation – just in time for a little mid-day break!
Student loans: After the government took over originating federal student loans on Thursday, Sallie Mae announced it is cutting as much as a third of its staff and consolidating offices into a new national headquarters in Delaware. The company is expected to change its focus to higher-margin and riskier private loans.
D.C. schools: Michelle A. Rhee suggested Wednesday that her continued service as D.C. Schools Chancellor hinges on Mayor Adrian Fenty’s re-election. His opponent Vince Gray introduced his education plan on Thursday, proposing both a powerful chancellor and community input.
Education flicks: Schools will be center-screen this summer, as four documentaries will tackle topics such as school failure, charter schools and teacher tenure. (USA TODAY)
Advertising: States everywhere are trying to figure out how to recruit better teachers. Tennessee’s answer? Spend $200,000 on social media, TV and print advertising campaigns. (The Commercial Appeal)
But not everyone has the funds to fill the airwaves. In the face of economic troubles, community colleges are cutting their advertising budgets. (Inside Higher Ed)
Special education: The New Jersey School Boards Association is requesting that the governor’s proposed cap on property-tax increases include waivers for costly special-education needs. (NorthJersey.com)
Common standards: And the count continues: A month after they were introduced, 20 states have now adopted the common core standards. (Education Week)
And Justin Snider, of The Hechinger Report, urges Iowa to adopt the common standards. (Des Moines Register)
School closings: A state appellate court has ruled that the 19 schools slated for closure in New York City must be kept open, as the NYC Department of Education “failed to adequately notify the public about the ramifications of the closings.” (New York Times)
Michelle Rhee and seniority-based layoffs: Breaking the status quo?
An editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal praised Washington, D.C.’s new teacher contract, which eliminates the “first in, last out” system of teacher layoffs common across the country. When it comes time to hand out pink slips, new teachers are traditionally let go and old teachers are kept on — regardless of teacher effectiveness or performance.
“Seniority used to drive all kinds of decisions, including who was hired or laid off,” D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee told the Journal. “Now that will be determined by performance and by quality.”
Rhee herself has suggested that other school systems, including the New York City public schools, should learn from her success. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, disagrees that her model is readily applicable to New York City. But the Journal appears to be on Rhee’s side.
“School reforms can sometimes seem like a Sisyphean task, but D.C.’s breakout on teacher tenure shows that the status quo can be broken,” the editorial reads. “Let’s hope more big city mayors and chancellors have the courage of Ms. Rhee’s and Mayor [Adrian] Fenty’s convictions.”
The new rules in D.C. might be best understood as part of a larger trend rather than an isolated event though. As school budget cuts soar and districts around the country are letting teachers go in massive quantities, the long-established practice of seniority-based firing is being called into question by many.
Tim Daly, president of The New Teacher Project, thinks that eventually all districts will look at multiple variables to determine which teachers to keep and which ones to let go.
“I don’t think it’s necessarily that the concept of tenure will go away,” Daly said. “What is changing rapidly is that there must be evidence of strong performance to continue a teacher’s employment.”
Colorado made headlines this spring as it passed sweeping new legislation that would change how tenure was earned by teachers – while also making it possible to take tenure away. California has considered similar legislation, and several states are now taking a closer look at their tenure systems.
The Indianapolis Public Schools recently took a small step toward changing how it lays teachers off. Although first- and second-year teachers will still be the first up for layoffs, other factors can be taken into consideration as well. If layoffs must extend to teachers with up to five years of experience, a point system — which encompasses instructional skills, classroom management and seniority — will be used to make decisions.
As with most changes to the contracts of government employees, eliminating seniority-based layoffs is a deeply political issue. Attempts to change the “status quo,” as the Journal refers to it, can be slow in coming in part because of teacher union resistance. Still, a study by The New Teacher Project revealed that teachers might not be universally opposed to a new approach to layoffs. In fact, many of them support it.
The organization surveyed over 9,000 teachers in two large urban districts and found that 74 percent of the teachers — and 64 percent of teachers who had tenure — thought additional factors should be considered when determining who to lay off.
Saving teachers vs. saving reform: A false dichotomy?
UPDATE: The House has passed the military spending bill which includes the $10 billion teacher jobs saving measure. President Obama has threatened a veto it. First, though, the bill has to be reconciled with a Senate bill passed in May, and that could take a while.
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A proposal to move a chunk of money designated for education reform over to saving teaching jobs is causing a major fuss in Washington, D.C. this week. The proposal is attached to a war bill, and it would shift about $10 billion out of various pots designated for promoting education reforms favored by the Obama administration, including increasing the number of charter schools, paying teachers for performance, and Obama’s signature Race to the Top contest.
(photo courtesy of Patsy Lynch)
Fans and opponents of the proposal are arguing over whether Congress should focus on saving education jobs or saving education reforms. Opponents say the plan threatens the administration’s reform agenda, which has been on a roll this year as states have passed new laws raising charter school caps and made other changes to education policy in order to qualify for Race to the Top. The money that would come out of the Race to the Top pot for teacher jobs amounts to about 10 percent of the $4.35 billion total. The Teacher Incentive Fund, which pays for teacher merit pay programs, would take a bigger hit proportionally, as would the charter school fund.
Fans counter that the diversion of funds will help avert layoffs, which the National Education Association says could affect more than 80 percent of the nation’s school districts and lead to increased class size, shortened school years and school weeks, and fewer programs.
So which is more important — funneling money to the districts that have embraced the Obama administration’s reform goals, or spreading the money around to all districts, regardless of their stance on reforms? Or is this a false dichotomy?
In a couple of the school districts I’ve visited recently, administrators were worried about losing teachers, but mainly because that meant redirecting staff who had been participating in new programs meant to reform instruction and improve educational offerings within the school. This includes things like literacy coaches, pre-k and kindergarten, and curriculum specialists. Their work is often invisible, and perhaps not as drastic as opening new charters or restructuring teacher pay, but in many of the districts that have seen lots of improvement in recent years – where high-visibility changes like charters are happening, too — these reforms also seem important.
Arguing over teachers vs. reform may mask some of this nuance, and may not be all that helpful in figuring out how to expand the number of successful schools, which will depend both on thoughtful, effective reforms and a sufficient number of people to carry them out.
Then again, some might say all this money being thrown at education won’t really matter either way you toss it. What’s your take?
Reactions
President Obama has weighed in on the debate, asking Congress not to take the money for jobs from his Race to the Top fund.
Over at Huffington Post, Kati Haycock, from Education Trust, says the proposal “breaks a national promise” to schools.
Also on Huffington Post, Diane Ravitch says lawmakers should support the bill, and goes on to argue that Obama’s “reforms” are just a Republican wish list anyway.
And Eliza Krigman, writing that “saving teachers’ jobs has never been more controversial,” provides a list of more supporters and detractors of the bill.
Recess round-up: July 1, 2010
A daily dose of education news around the nation – just in time for a little mid-day break!
Race to the Top: Delaware officials have released a list of schools to which the state’s Race to the Top winnings will be doled out. (Delaware Online)
College accreditation: Critics are charging that for-profit universities are buying struggling non-profit peers and drastically changing the programs while keeping the same accreditation. (Inside Higher Ed)
Achievement gap: A new study shows that Native American students at schools run by the federal Bureau of Indian Education perform worse on standardized tests than the peers in regular public schools. (AP)
Innovative schools: The Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta has enjoyed huge success on tests. But the price is high: the academy spends double the amount per student that public schools in Georgia spend. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
Full-day kindergarten: The Meridan School District in Idaho weighs alternating full-day kindergarten (three days one week, two the next) versus switching to a half-day schedule. (Idaho Stateman)
School budgets: There’s good news for public schools in Michigan; they stand to receive an additional $11 per pupil from the state for the 2010-2011 school year. That’s much better than the cuts of $165 per pupil they endured last year. (Detroit Free Press)
Gender gap: Michael Sadowski argues that the so-called “crisis” over males’ test scores compared to their female peers “may require solutions that emphasize ‘context’ rather than ‘crisis.’” (Harvard Education Letter)
Assignment memo: Bridging middle school and high school
Wondering what we’re working on? Here’s a sneak peek at one story:
Bridge programs
It’s just a few weeks or even a few days over the summer, but educators hope it might be enough to change someone’s life. As part of a national movement to prevent dropouts, high schools around the country are paying attention to their incoming ninth-graders a little early through bridge programs, giving students the chance to ease the transition to high school before the tests and papers start.
So how do these programs work? Do they really work? And, as many different extra programs are being slashed from budgets across the country, what does the future hold for bridge programs?
Check back with The Hechinger Report later for the full story.
Got a comment about the story? Idea for a new angle? Share your thoughts below!
Tobacco-growing state tops list of smoke-free campuses
Go figure. North Carolina, deep in the heart of tobacco-growing country, appears to have the highest number of “100 percent tobacco-free” college and university campuses in the nation.
Central Piedmont Community College is one of 31 North Carolina campuses that are considered 100 percent smoke free. (Photo courtesy DouG!)
A national list compiled by the American Lung Association and a smoke-free effort in Oregon shows North Carolina with 31 campuses considered “100 percent tobacco-free” and two more scheduled to convert in August. Most of the North Carolina campuses on the list are community and technical colleges, which typically are easier places to implement and enforce smoking bans than sprawling four-year institutions.
As of this week, the list included 249 campuses in the nation that are “prohibiting smoking and all forms of tobacco use everywhere on campus (e.g. no designated smoking areas).”
Health and wellness directors expect the 100 percent tobacco-free trend to pick up speed at public and private institutions across the country. St. Catherine University, a private Catholic women’s school based in St. Paul, Minn., will go completely tobacco-free in August. Its sister campus in Minneapolis, which is significantly smaller, has been tobacco-free since 2008. Altogether, Minnesota has 16 institutions on the national list, one of the highest counts in the nation.
Among the “toughest questions” St. Kate’s considered before adopting its new policy were the impact of student smokers opting for off-campus housing instead of dormitories and the safety of resident students if they wanted to smoke in the middle of the night, said Dr. Amy Kelly, a physician and director of health and wellness at St. Kate’s.
“In the end, the committee decided that if it’s going to be a tobacco-free campus, there’s not going to be an exception,” Kelly said. Like other tobacco-free campuses, St. Kate’s offers smoking cessation programs.
Minnesota State University Moorhead, which adopted its tobacco-free policy in 2008, is on the national list even though it exempts student theater productions and American Indian cultural ceremonies held on campus. But those exemptions are among the few permitted by Minnesota’s clean air laws. Moorhead doesn’t have “designated smoking areas,” so technically it’s “100 percent tobacco-free.”
One issue Minnesota State Moorhead didn’t anticipate is the reaction from off-campus neighbors, said Carol Grimm, director of health and wellness. The institution measures 5-by-14 city blocks.
“We’re a landlocked university so we have residents on three sides of us, and one of the things we struggled with was continuing that good relationship with the neighbors,” Grimm said. “There was a litter issue that came on top of that (smoking), obviously. We had to create a good environment for neighbors, too.”
The solution? The university placed 12 receptacles on the perimeter of the campus for tobacco debris.
Missing from the list is the state’s largest higher-education institution — University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Although the university just announced that researchers grew breathable lungs in a laboratory, it hasn’t adopted a restrictive tobacco-free policy yet.
— Casey Selix, Minnpost.com
Recess round-up: June 30, 2010
A daily dose of education news around the nation – just in time for a little mid-day break!
College tuition: Private, nonprofit colleges will increase tuition by an average of 4.5 percent next year, the second smallest increase in nearly 40 years. Student aid will also go up by 6.9 percent. (Inside Higher Ed)
School budgets: Property taxes are set to increase by an average of 2.9 percent in Iowa, which will bring in an additional $136 million for the state’s schools. (Des Moines Register)
Testing: Students in Louisiana start strong and finish weak, according to a new report. Fourth-graders score well on standardized tests, while eighth-graders fall behind. (NoLa.com)
Charter schools: Boston School Superintendent Carol R. Johnson is proposing to have Unlocking Potential Inc., a new Boston nonprofit charter management organization, take over one of the city’s lowest-performing schools. (Boston Globe)
School reform: Nevada gubernatorial hopeful Brian Sandoval unveiled his plans for improving the state’s schools, including ending teacher tenure and firing administrators at low-performing schools. (Reno Gazette-Journal)
Education spending: Utah spends the least of all 50 states on its students, according to a report by the Census Bureau. The state spends an average of $5,765 per student, compared to a national average of $10,259. (Examiner.com)
State standards: A new report says that Georgia needs to strengthen its standards in math and reading and get more of its eighth-graders to enroll in college-prep math courses. (Augusta Chronicle)
Rubber rooms: Gone from New York City, but alive elsewhere?
An Insane Asylum in New Jersey on the National Register of Historic Places
Yesterday was the final day of the 2009-10 school year in New York City, which means the city’s infamous “rubber rooms” also closed their doors. For good.
Those unfamiliar with the concept of “rubber rooms” can get up to speed here. The term itself is often said to refer to the padded walls of an insane asylum — or a solitary-confinement prison cell — and its first use is thought to go back a decade or so. But there’s evidence the term is much older. William Safire used it in 1983, in fact, saying it was “bureaucratese for an office without work to do.” That’s exactly what the rubber rooms in New York City were — places where people were paid not to work.
A short piece in yesterday’s New York Times served to remind readers of the insanity that is the rubber room. Teachers are escorted to the room by a security guard. The lunchroom down the hall cannot be used for lunch. Dishes must be done in the bathroom sink. And then fights break out. That’s my chair! … Stop playing the guitar! … Don’t throw your garbage at me!
Sounds like a short story by Franz Kafka.
Except it’s real, unlike Kafka’s Gregor Samsa — who awakes one day to find himself transformed into a giant insect.
My favorite part about the rubber room saga is the clear and compelling role that journalism played in shutting down New York City’s rubber rooms. Interestingly, both city officials and union leaders have been calling for an end to the rubber rooms for years. And, believe it or not, newspapers have been covering rubber rooms for years. The New York Times first reported on rubber rooms in 2004.
But it wasn’t until Steven Brill’s scathing piece in the New Yorker last August that everyone seems to have started paying attention. As the article made the rounds, shutting down the rubber rooms became a priority for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and UFT President Michael Mulgrew.
Outrage went mainstream. That the rubber rooms were said to cost the city $30-60 million a year fueled the fire, not least because of massive budget cuts necessitated by the recession. Taxpayers demanded to know how, in this era of tight budgets, the city could justify throwing away millions of dollars on people who were paid to do nothing.
A documentary called The Rubber Room, five years in the making, began grabbing headlines. A trailer was released. Excerpts of the documentary were included in Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for “Superman,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and took home the audience award for best U.S. documentary.
And then the announcement on tax day, April 15th, that the rubber rooms would be shuttered. All sides rushed to declare victory.
Bloomberg conceded that media coverage had influenced the decision. “Given the amount of press this subject has gotten, to say that this is a big deal is probably an understatement.” If you watch the video of the press conference, you’ll see wry smiles on both Bloomberg and Klein’s faces as the mayor says these words.
A clearer case of journalism influencing politics would be hard to find.
Rubber rooms are now dead in New York City, but they appear to be alive and well elsewhere. Read about the situation in Los Angeles here and here. In what other cities are rubber rooms thriving? Please let us know in the “Comments” section below!
