http://www.hepg.org/document/21/
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Chicago Lessons
Catching up to the 21st Century
By Susan McLester
June 15, 2007
URL: http://www.techlearning.com/showArticle.php?articleID=196604479
from Technology & Learning
We sat down with Sharnell Jackson, Chicago Public Schools' chief e-learning officer, to get her take on the state of education today.
A 30-year veteran of education in both teaching and administrative positions, Sharnell Jackson is one of the country's most visionary technology leaders. In Chicago, she has led the charge for Web-based curriculum-instruction management as a pathway toward customizing student learning�leading a team in the creation of a portal and suite of interactive tools to enhance leadership and training. She has also driven the widespread deployment of personal digital assistants for early literacy assessment, with training and end-user support for more than 450 elementary school teachers and principals. Jackson has also been active in numerous organizations for ed-tech change, including the International Society for Technology in Education, where she helped develop a Principal's Technology Leadership Institute, National Education Technology Standards assessments, and curriculum. She also served as a co-chair of ISTE's Equity Summit.
Jackson is a very vocal proponent of change and an advocate for investment in public education. She is unique in her ability to both lead and inspire and to take active part in the details of implementing tools for change. She set aside some time to speak with T&L recently.
Q. What is the biggest national issue in education technology today?
A. One huge issue is how we're evaluating the effectiveness of technology in schools. We're publishing studies in the national press that don't truly reflect the impact of technology in the classroom. We need to measure the effectiveness of the implementation before we try to measure the results. For instance, we need to look at how well people are using it, how much time is being spent with it, and whether teachers have the appropriate training and management skills to maximize its use.
The other point to consider is what we are measuring the technology against. One third of our high school students are dropping out�a higher number than ever before. So why aren't we measuring the effectiveness of textbooks?
Q. What programs, initiatives, or people are making the biggest difference right now?
A. Curriculum management systems are driving changes in pedagogy. We use SchoolNet, which helps our teachers look at trends and patterns for their students and better customize learning for them.
Companies like Wireless Generation are providing mobility and opportunities for assessment on the fly. Games and simulations such as Riverwalk, by Harvard's Chris Dede, are harnessing the kind of rich digital media, to which students are accustomed, to encourage problem-solving, creativity, and inquiry-based learning. That game targets middle school science and math students, and will be implemented by our district in the fall.
"Media on Demand" is another technology that is helping teachers offer targeted instruction to students. We use Safari Montage, which allows instructors to search under specific categories for high-quality, standards-aligned video, activities, quizzes, and other resources. We're also using that program to do videoconferencing with other countries. For instance, students studying Japanese are communicating with Japanese speakers in a classroom across the sworld. All of this is being delivered live, right to their desktops.
One initiative making a big difference is ISTE's National Education Technology Standards Refresh, which is updating technology standards to reflect an emphasis on innovation, collaboration, and other 21st-century skills. Another is the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning after-school program, which is taking students to the next level by letting them be producers of music videos and other projects, not just consumers of information.
Among the people making a difference today are ISTE CEO Don Knezek, CoSN CEO Keith Krueger, gaming gurus Chris Dede and Mark Prensky, and Geneva Gay, an expert in multiculturalism who is opening our eyes to the need to consider a student's culture as a key element in determining the way they learn best.
Q. What are the primary issues that need to be addressed nationwide at present?
A. First, we need to look at data before making decisions. The data will provide us with the information we need to help students learn. We also need administrators who have a clear vision for leading teaching and learning. No Child Left Behind focuses on assessment, but not on learning. We need to implement programs that focus on the kind of learning needed for the 21st century.
Also, in this age of outsourcing and declining wages, we need to increase the level of education we're providing our workers of tomorrow. Between 1980 and 2020, minorities in the workforce will double. We need to be sure our students have the skills to keep our national competitive edge, no matter what the color of their complexion. In order to do this, we need to invest in education as a country. We have not invested the way we needed to, and now we're paying for that and have a lot of catching up to do.
Q. What are some of the things we should be doing to catch up?
A. We need to take advantage of artificial-intelligence applications such as Apangea and Cognitive Tutor that offer students virtual tutoring online so they can move ahead at their own pace. We need to make higher education affordable. There are two million folks in prison right now and prison costs are going up. We need to invest in education to help bring that number down. We also need to step up inquiry-based and online learning.
Q. What other bold moves should be made?
A. We need to make education funding and resources a national priority. We need to expand the e-Rate pipeline to accommodate higher levels of technology such as videoconferencing, streaming video, and the cutting-edge technologies that businesses are using. We don't need to be sitting in classrooms with 10-year-old computers and a single T-1 line. Teachers need to be treated as experts and professionals, and education needs to expand into the community to allow parents and businesses and others to become part of the learning.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
EVER Mindful!
In the Classroom, a New Focus on Quieting the Mind
OAKLAND, Calif., June 12 — The lesson began with the striking of a Tibetan singing bowl to induce mindful awareness.
With the sound of their new school bell, the fifth graders at Piedmont Avenue Elementary School here closed their eyes and focused on their breathing, as they tried to imagine “loving kindness” on the playground.
“I was losing at baseball and I was about to throw a bat,” Alex Menton, 11, reported to his classmates the next day. “The mindfulness really helped.”
As summer looms, students at dozens of schools across the country are trying hard to be in the present moment. This is what is known as mindfulness training, in which stress-reducing techniques drawn from Buddhist meditation are wedged between reading and spelling tests.
Mindfulness, while common in hospitals, corporations, professional sports and even prisons, is relatively new in the education of squirming children. But a small but growing number of schools in places like Oakland and Lancaster, Pa., are slowly embracing the concept — as they did yoga five years ago — and institutions, like the psychology department at Stanford University and the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, are trying to measure the effects.
During a five-week pilot program at Piedmont Avenue Elementary, Miss Megan, the “mindful” coach, visited every classroom twice a week, leading 15 minute sessions on how to have “gentle breaths and still bodies.” The sound of the Tibetan bowl reverberated at the start and finish of each lesson.
The techniques, among them focused breathing and concentrating on a single object, are loosely adapted from the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, the molecular biologist who pioneered the secular use of mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts in 1979 to help medical patients cope with chronic pain, anxiety and depression. Susan Kaiser Greenland, the founder of the InnerKids Foundation, which trains schoolchildren and teachers in the Los Angeles area, calls mindfulness “the new ABC’s — learning and leading a balanced life.”
At Stanford, the psychology department is assessing the feasibility of teaching mindfulness to families. “Parents and teachers tell kids 100 times a day to pay attention,” said Philippe R. Goldin, a researcher. “But we never teach them how.”
The experiment at Piedmont, whose student body is roughly 65 percent black, 18 percent Latino and includes a large number of immigrants, is financed by Park Day School, a nearby private school (prompting one teacher to grumble that it was “Cloud Nine-groovy-hippie-liberals bringing ‘enlightenment’ to inner city schools”).
But Angela Haick, the principal of Piedmont Avenue, said she was inspired to try it after observing a class at a local middle school.
“If we can help children slow down and think,” Dr. Haick said, “they have the answers within themselves.”
It seemed alternately loved and ignored, as students in Ms. Graham’s fifth-grade class tried to pay attention to their breath, a calming technique that lasted 20 seconds. Then their coach asked them to “cultivate compassion” by reflecting on their emotions before lashing out at someone on the playground.
Tyran Williams defined mindfulness as “not hitting someone in the mouth.”
“He doesn’t know what to do with his energy,” his mother, Towana Thomas, said at a session for parents. “But one day after school he told me, ‘I’m taking a moment.’ If it works in a child’s mind — with so much going on — there must be something to it.”
Asked their reactions to the sounds of the singing bowl, Yvette Solito, a third grader, wrote that it made her feel “calm, like something on Oprah.” Her classmate Corey Jackson wrote that “it feels like when a bird cracks open its shell.”
Dr. Amy Saltzman, a physician in Palo Alto, Calif., who started the Association for Mindfulness in Education three years ago, thinks of mindfulness education as “talk yoga.” Practitioners tend to use sticky-mat buzzwords like “being present” and “cultivating compassion,” while avoiding anything spiritual.
Dr. Saltzman, co-director of the mindfulness study at Stanford, said the initial findings showed increased control of attention and “less negative internal chatter — what one girl described as ‘the gossip inside my head: I’m stupid, I’m fat or I’m going to fail math,’ ” Dr. Saltzman said.
A recent study of teenagers by Kaiser Permanente in San Jose, Calif., found that meditation techniques helped improve mood disorders, depression, and self-harming behaviors like anorexia and bulimia.
Dr. Susan L. Smalley, a professor of psychiatry at U.C.L.A. and director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center there, which is studying the effects on schoolchildren, said one 4-year-old noticed her mother succumbing to road rage while stuck in traffic. “She said, ‘Mommy, Mommy, you have to sing the breathing song,’ ” Dr. Smalley said.
Although some students take naturally to mindfulness, it is “not a magic bullet,” said Diana Winston, the director of mindfulness education at the U.C.L.A. center. She said the research thus far was “inconclusive” about how effective mindfulness was for children who suffered from trauma-related disorders, for example. It is “a slow process,” Ms. Winston added. “Just because kids sit and listen to the bell doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be more kind.”
Glenn Heuser, who teaches a combined fourth- and fifth-grade class at Piedmont, said one student started crying about a dead grandparent and another over melted lip balm. “It tapped into a very emotional space for them,” Mr. Heuser said. “They struggled with, ‘Is it O.K. to go there?’ ”
Although mindful education may seem like a New Yorker caricature of West Coast life, the school district with possibly the best experience has been Lancaster, Pa., where mindfulness is taught in 25 classes a week at eight schools. The district has a substantial poverty rate, with 75 percent of students qualifying for free lunch.
Midge Kinder, a yoga teacher, and her husband, Rick, started the program six years ago at George Ross Elementary, where their daughter Wynne taught.
Camille Hopkins, the principal, said initially she was skeptical. Growing up in South Philadelphia, “I was never told to take an elevator breath”— a way of breathing in stages, taught in yoga — “or hear the signals of chimes to cool down,” Ms. Hopkins said.
But the stresses today are greater, she conceded, particularly on students who lived with the threat of violence. “A lot of things we watched on TV are part of their everyday life,” she said. “It’s ‘Did you know so-and-so got shot over the weekend.’ ”
In after-school detention, children are asked to “check in with their feelings,” Ms. Hopkins said. “How are you really changing behavior if they’re just sitting there?”
Yolanda Steel, a second-grade teacher at Piedmont, said she was hopeful that the training would help an attention-deficit generation better manage a barrage of stimuli, including PlayStations and text messages. “American children are overstimulated,” Ms. Steel said. “Some have difficulty even closing their eyes.”
But she noted that some students tapped pencils and drummed on desks instead of closing their eyes and listening to the bell. “The premise is nice,” Ms. Steel concluded. “But mindfulness can’t do it all.”
Friday, June 15, 2007
Howell's new Parker HS,model for the future
Friday, June 15, 2007
Howell's new Parker HS,model for the future
Thursday, June 14, 2007John M. Galloway / Special to The Detroit NewsHowell's new Parker High School, which opens this fall, is attached to its football stadium and bleachers.Model school prepares for futureHowell's new $72 million campus is geared toward offering students real-world business training, experience.Valerie Olander / The Detroit NewsSchool is out for Howell High School's 1,900 students who left behind a traditional school with a conventional school day.Next fall, they will step into the new Parker High School, which Michigan educational leaders are already hailing as a statewide model for preparing students for college and their future.The $72 million campus, south of Howell in Livingston County, will have a privately owned credit union and cashless convenience store, both geared toward offering students real-world business training and experience. Lansing Community College will have its own eight-classroom wing and students will be able to choose from more flexible scheduling options, with classes being offered for longer time periods on alternate days, evenings, weekends and even summer."This is an incubator for us to watch as all these ideas come together, said State Superintendent Michael Flanagan. "We're going to be watching this closely."He expects the business partnerships to quantify the new rigorous graduation requirements going into effect for the Class of 2011, the freshman class.Although partnerships are nothing new to the high school experience, Howell has taken it a step further to incorporate it into the classroom.For example, Sterling Services' convenience store is linked to the marketing classroom where students will handle inventory and learn how to conduct sales research, and cause and effect marketing."Even the TV-video production students will be producing ads that will be shown within school. They'll be creating a product," said Principal Bill Smith. "About 60 kids will benefit from the store in its virtual environment and it will be merged with accounting classes. They'll look at supply and demand in economy classes. It's basically a learning lab."The reinvention of the high school experience has coincided with Michigan's tougher high school standards designed to better prepare students for college and the working world. "This is (the) first time (in Michigan) for merging the building structure and curriculum to provide an avenue for these partnerships," Smith said. The college wing expands dual enrollment options for students making it available to all teens, not just for gifted students in accelerated programs. It also allows students to "double dip" on math and science credits needed for high school graduation, by taking community college classes and getting credits toward an associate degree or transferable credits to any state college, Flanagan said."My dream has been that all kids can get a high school diploma and a community college (associate) degree in five years," he said.Smith said Parker's curriculum is set up to accomplish just that. A student who takes full advantage of what is being offered could essentially graduate with a high school diploma in one hand, an associate's degree in the other with practical business and leadership skills to put on a resume, he said.From the outside, Parker High School looks like most learning institutions. Inside, it's open and airy with transom lighting and a multitude of large pane energy-efficient windows to let in the natural light. Motion sensors flip on classroom fluorescents.Howell Superintendent Chuck Breiner, who was been invited to numerous universities, including Harvard University to speak about Parker's mission, said the partnerships are more about student opportunities, rather than financial gain in the face of a school funding crisis. LCC will be paying about $68,000 annually in its lease agreement and contributing another $5,000 in reimbursements for students who succeed in course work. LOC Federal Credit Union, which has 500-square-feet of space, will pay $300 per month.Howell students have been sold on the educational philosophy and the flex scheduling options at Parker, however, one social aspect has been a constant concern."I'm taking the flex scheduling in the a.m. so I can work. The only thing I don't like about it is that I'm afraid I won't see my friends," said Dani Rencsak, who will be a senior this fall.The flex scheduling is partly needed to accommodate the 1,900 students in the district's second high school, built for 1,350, while the existing Howell High is closed 15 months for renovations.However, when both schools are fully operational, flex scheduling will remain, Breiner said.While LCC is the first known college to be built as part of a high school, according to Breiner and Flanagan, the same is true for LOC Federal Credit Union. "School branches" have been set up at other school districts. Typically, the banks operate in cafeterias one day a week to promote savings habits for youngsters, said Debbie Mashinske, LOC's vice president of marketing."We'll have some internships available (at Parker) and right now we're working with teachers to come up with assignments that can be used in other classes," she said.Flanagan said programs that allow hands-on experiences make all the difference in learning."Study after study shows when kids don't learn it's because they don't see the relevance of what they're doing," he said. "It's the relevance piece that kids will get from this."
Howell's new Parker HS,model for the future
Thursday, June 14, 2007John M. Galloway / Special to The Detroit NewsHowell's new Parker High School, which opens this fall, is attached to its football stadium and bleachers.Model school prepares for futureHowell's new $72 million campus is geared toward offering students real-world business training, experience.Valerie Olander / The Detroit NewsSchool is out for Howell High School's 1,900 students who left behind a traditional school with a conventional school day.Next fall, they will step into the new Parker High School, which Michigan educational leaders are already hailing as a statewide model for preparing students for college and their future.The $72 million campus, south of Howell in Livingston County, will have a privately owned credit union and cashless convenience store, both geared toward offering students real-world business training and experience. Lansing Community College will have its own eight-classroom wing and students will be able to choose from more flexible scheduling options, with classes being offered for longer time periods on alternate days, evenings, weekends and even summer."This is an incubator for us to watch as all these ideas come together, said State Superintendent Michael Flanagan. "We're going to be watching this closely."He expects the business partnerships to quantify the new rigorous graduation requirements going into effect for the Class of 2011, the freshman class.Although partnerships are nothing new to the high school experience, Howell has taken it a step further to incorporate it into the classroom.For example, Sterling Services' convenience store is linked to the marketing classroom where students will handle inventory and learn how to conduct sales research, and cause and effect marketing."Even the TV-video production students will be producing ads that will be shown within school. They'll be creating a product," said Principal Bill Smith. "About 60 kids will benefit from the store in its virtual environment and it will be merged with accounting classes. They'll look at supply and demand in economy classes. It's basically a learning lab."The reinvention of the high school experience has coincided with Michigan's tougher high school standards designed to better prepare students for college and the working world. "This is (the) first time (in Michigan) for merging the building structure and curriculum to provide an avenue for these partnerships," Smith said. The college wing expands dual enrollment options for students making it available to all teens, not just for gifted students in accelerated programs. It also allows students to "double dip" on math and science credits needed for high school graduation, by taking community college classes and getting credits toward an associate degree or transferable credits to any state college, Flanagan said."My dream has been that all kids can get a high school diploma and a community college (associate) degree in five years," he said.Smith said Parker's curriculum is set up to accomplish just that. A student who takes full advantage of what is being offered could essentially graduate with a high school diploma in one hand, an associate's degree in the other with practical business and leadership skills to put on a resume, he said.From the outside, Parker High School looks like most learning institutions. Inside, it's open and airy with transom lighting and a multitude of large pane energy-efficient windows to let in the natural light. Motion sensors flip on classroom fluorescents.Howell Superintendent Chuck Breiner, who was been invited to numerous universities, including Harvard University to speak about Parker's mission, said the partnerships are more about student opportunities, rather than financial gain in the face of a school funding crisis. LCC will be paying about $68,000 annually in its lease agreement and contributing another $5,000 in reimbursements for students who succeed in course work. LOC Federal Credit Union, which has 500-square-feet of space, will pay $300 per month.Howell students have been sold on the educational philosophy and the flex scheduling options at Parker, however, one social aspect has been a constant concern."I'm taking the flex scheduling in the a.m. so I can work. The only thing I don't like about it is that I'm afraid I won't see my friends," said Dani Rencsak, who will be a senior this fall.The flex scheduling is partly needed to accommodate the 1,900 students in the district's second high school, built for 1,350, while the existing Howell High is closed 15 months for renovations.However, when both schools are fully operational, flex scheduling will remain, Breiner said.While LCC is the first known college to be built as part of a high school, according to Breiner and Flanagan, the same is true for LOC Federal Credit Union. "School branches" have been set up at other school districts. Typically, the banks operate in cafeterias one day a week to promote savings habits for youngsters, said Debbie Mashinske, LOC's vice president of marketing."We'll have some internships available (at Parker) and right now we're working with teachers to come up with assignments that can be used in other classes," she said.Flanagan said programs that allow hands-on experiences make all the difference in learning."Study after study shows when kids don't learn it's because they don't see the relevance of what they're doing," he said. "It's the relevance piece that kids will get from this."
Is there a message in this bottle?
Students to work for their tuition at new Catholic school
June 15, 2007
A new co-ed Catholic high school in Detroit will use innovative partnerships to put students to work at local businesses, with their salaries going to the school to shave thousands of dollars off the cost of each student's tuition.
Students at Detroit Cristo Rey High School, slated to open for the 2008-09 school year, will be required to work five days a month in entry-level jobs at one of 23 partner businesses, including Marygrove College, Henry Ford Health System and the YMCA.
Students' wages will go directly to the school to cover 70% of the tuition costs. It's a model used by a growing network of Cristo Rey schools across the country and will build on momentum in rebounding southwest Detroit.
At most Catholic schools in the area, tuition averages $6,000 to $8,000 a year per student. The out-of-pocket cost to parents for Detroit Cristo Rey would be about $2,200 a year, said Sister Canice Johnson, project director for the school's planning team.
"We know that some families won't be able to pay that," Johnson added, noting that private donations could further subsidize tuition for students who need it.
Detroit Cristo Rey is to operate out of the vacant Holy Redeemer building and will be the first coed Catholic high school in the city since 2005, when Holy Redeemer, East Catholic and St. Martin de Porres closed.
Community residents, area businesses and church leaders have spent nearly two years meeting and conducting a feasibility study before getting the approval to open Detroit Cristo Rey, which is expected to have 100 to 125 students. A new freshmen class will be added each year for the next three years. The school is expected to reach its capacity of 500 students in about five years.
John Foley is president of the Cristo Rey Network, which began with a single school in 1996 and is expected to grow to 19 by August, when seven new schools in urban areas across the country are slated to open. They boast graduation rates that exceed the public school systems in their communities. Chicago's Cristo Rey school, for example, graduated 89% of its students last year, and 96% of Cristo Rey's 2005 graduates went on to college.
"Our students raised close to $15 million toward their own education through working," Foley said. "They are their own fund-raisers. ... Their self-confidence just overflows. They never realized they were capable of holding down such a job."
Across the 12 schools already in the Cristo Rey Network, 63% of students are Hispanic and 35% are African American, Foley said. All are from economically disadvantaged families, who on average have four members and a household income of $33,051 a year, Johnson said.
"Yes, we are an exclusive school. If you make too much money, you can't come here," Johnson said, without specifying a cut-off income.
Mari Kirkendoll, 51, of southwest Detroit hopes to send her twin sons to the school.
"It's a boost to the self-esteem of the community and certainly a ray of hope," Kirkendoll said. "It will prepare them for the real work world. I think it will reinforce the work ethic that I'm trying to instill in them."
She said she was devastated when Holy Redeemer closed.
"I really thought about sending them out of state, but it still would have been a Catholic school," she said. "I just never lost hope that something would come in place of Holy Redeemer, and I also hoped it would be in this community because it is ... representative of the real world."
The school is cosponsored by the Basilian Fathers along with the Sisters, Servants Immaculate Heart of Mary. It grew out of a grassroots effort of religious and community leaders and concerned parents.
The Cristo Rey Network has agreed to give $450,000 over three years in start-up costs to the Detroit school. The school also is seeking financial support from other donors and already has received funding from the Skillman Foundation, the Sisters of Mercy, the Archdiocese of Detroit, the Irene M. and Milton R. Weed Foundation, Save Our Catholic Schools and Price Waterhouse Coopers.
Maria Elena Rodriguez, corporate work-study partner for Detroit Cristo Rey and president of the Mexicantown Community Development Corp., said the school will be an investment in southwest Detroit's future.
"It's a real shot in the arm," she said Thursday. "What's most important is that our kids are not written off, not only in southwest Detroit, but throughout the city."
Contact KRISTEN JORDAN SHAMUS at 313-222-5997 or kshamus@freepress.com.
Copyright © 2007 Detroit Free Press Inc.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Rethinking NCLB and Tech's Role in Education
Rethinking NCLB and Technology’s Role in Education
The ATTAIN Act, hailed by education and technology industry leaders, recognizes that the use of technology, systemic school change and professional development are essential to global competitiveness.
by Mary Axelson
"Obtaining critical technological skills is of greatest concern to low-income minority students who are falling further behind their higher-income peers in terms of 21st Century college and workplace skills,” said Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard, in testimony before the Committee on Education and Labor. “An effective federal program that provides access to technology for low-income and minority students will help to close this gap."
Accordingly, Roybal recently co-sponsored legislation designed to improve the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT, Title II-D of NCLB) program as part of the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). HR 2449, the Achievement Through Technology and Innovation (ATTAIN) Act, would revamp EETT (Title II-D of NCLB), improving support for disadvantaged schools and students and ensuring that teachers are properly equipped to use the technology effectively.
“One of the most effective ways we can sharpen America’s competitive edge is by investing in technology in the classroom,” said Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX), a co-sponsor. “This bill will further the technological prowess of our nation’s schools and students and will ultimately increase our economic prosperity and capacity for innovation.”
Measuring Technological Literacy
The bill concentrates funds on professional development and systemic reform that leverage 21st century technologies and prioritize funding to schools in need of improvement. The existing legislation asks that students be technologically literate by the eighth grade, and requires states to assess whether this goal has been reached, but provides no definition of the term. ATTAIN defines technological literacy as:
Student knowledge and skills in using contemporary information, communication and learning technologies in a manner necessary for successful life-long learning and citizenship in the knowledge-based, digital, and global 21st century, which includes the abilities to effectively communicate and collaborate; to analyze and solve problems; to access, evaluate, manage and create information and otherwise gain information literacy; and to do so in a safe and ethical manner.
The law clarifies that states are not expected to develop separate assessments of technology literacy, and it opens the task to “embedding such assessment items in other State tests, performance-based assessment portfolios, or through other means." The bill also clarifies that "such assessments shall be used only to track student technology literacy and not for purposes of determining adequate yearly progress."
An NSF project to define and measure technology literacy may also prove influential. Its 2006 report on the issue, Tech Tally: Approaches to Assessing Technological Literacy, recommended new NSF studies asking subsets of students “what they have learned about technology both in and out of school, and how they would troubleshoot everyday problems involving technology;” adding questions about technology to existing tests that measure students' knowledge in mathematics, science, and history; and assessing the technological literacy of teachers.
A few examples of existing technology assessments are worth watching. Two years ago the state of Florida developed a performance-based assessment of teacher’s skills linked to professional development. That technology framework is being expanded to student assessment. The UK’s work with technology-based performance assessments in a virtual world may also receive greater attention if states seek embedded technology assessment.
Professional Development for Global Competitiveness
Along with Representatives Roybal-Allard and Hinojosa, U.S. Representatives Judy Biggert (R-IL) and Ron Kind (D-WI) helped introduce the ATTAIN Act. It is based upon input from education stakeholders, including the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), and the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SEDTA).
Don Knezek, CEO of ISTE, spoke of the focus on professional development. “Teachers are our nation’s most valuable resources and absolutely crucial to whether education technology implementations succeed. The ATTAIN Act’s focus on technology professional development will help ensure that our investments in school hardware, software and infrastructure are leveraged for the benefit of our nation’s students.” The law itself identifies a lack of professional development and systemic change as the reason a recent study of software products showed no academic advantage for the technology.
CoSN CEO Keith Krueger praised the sponsoring legislators for understanding “the important role that education technology plays in meeting NCLB’s goals and equipping our students with the skills necessary to succeed in the modern workforce.”
“We do not want our students to fall behind in this era of innovation and global competition,” said Ken Wasch, president of SIIA. “Technology is vital for providing students with a learning environment that prepares them for the world beyond the classroom. The ATTAIN Act will ensure our educational system adopts modern methods to remain effective in the digital, information economy. We thank Representatives Roybal-Allard, Hinojosa, Biggert and Kind for their leadership on this important legislation.”
The Details
According to press releases, the ATTAIN Act would update the existing EETT program by:
Increasing the share of state-to-local funding distributed by formula from 50% to 60% and adding a minimum grant size in order to assure that more school districts receive allocations of sufficient size to permit them to operate significant education technology programs.
Strengthening the program’s emphasis on teacher quality and technology skills by raising the portion of formula-grants set aside for professional development from 25% to 40%, while emphasizing the importance of timely and ongoing training.
Channeling the 40% of funds allocated for competitive grants, previously unrestricted, to schools and districts for systemic school reform built around the use of technology to redesign curriculum, instruction, assessment and data use.
More closely aligning the program with NCLB’s core mission by giving priority in competitive grant awards to schools identified as in need of improvement, including those with a large percentage of Limited English Proficient students and students with disabilities, as well as by focusing formula grants on students and subjects where proficiency is most lacking.
Renewing NCLB’s commitment to ensuring that students are technologically literate by the eighth grade through requiring states to assess student knowledge and skills, including through embedding assessment items in other state tests and performance-based assessments portfolios.
Drawing state, district and school attention to the age and functionality needs of school technology infrastructure, access and applications by requiring states to provide technical assistance and guidance to districts on updating these resources.
Sources:
Press release from ISTE's Web site
Congresswoman Roybal-Allard’s testimonyNSF Press Release for Tech Tally: Approaches to Assessing Technological Literacy .
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The ATTAIN Act, hailed by education and technology industry leaders, recognizes that the use of technology, systemic school change and professional development are essential to global competitiveness.
by Mary Axelson
"Obtaining critical technological skills is of greatest concern to low-income minority students who are falling further behind their higher-income peers in terms of 21st Century college and workplace skills,” said Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard, in testimony before the Committee on Education and Labor. “An effective federal program that provides access to technology for low-income and minority students will help to close this gap."
Accordingly, Roybal recently co-sponsored legislation designed to improve the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT, Title II-D of NCLB) program as part of the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). HR 2449, the Achievement Through Technology and Innovation (ATTAIN) Act, would revamp EETT (Title II-D of NCLB), improving support for disadvantaged schools and students and ensuring that teachers are properly equipped to use the technology effectively.
“One of the most effective ways we can sharpen America’s competitive edge is by investing in technology in the classroom,” said Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX), a co-sponsor. “This bill will further the technological prowess of our nation’s schools and students and will ultimately increase our economic prosperity and capacity for innovation.”
Measuring Technological Literacy
The bill concentrates funds on professional development and systemic reform that leverage 21st century technologies and prioritize funding to schools in need of improvement. The existing legislation asks that students be technologically literate by the eighth grade, and requires states to assess whether this goal has been reached, but provides no definition of the term. ATTAIN defines technological literacy as:
Student knowledge and skills in using contemporary information, communication and learning technologies in a manner necessary for successful life-long learning and citizenship in the knowledge-based, digital, and global 21st century, which includes the abilities to effectively communicate and collaborate; to analyze and solve problems; to access, evaluate, manage and create information and otherwise gain information literacy; and to do so in a safe and ethical manner.
The law clarifies that states are not expected to develop separate assessments of technology literacy, and it opens the task to “embedding such assessment items in other State tests, performance-based assessment portfolios, or through other means." The bill also clarifies that "such assessments shall be used only to track student technology literacy and not for purposes of determining adequate yearly progress."
An NSF project to define and measure technology literacy may also prove influential. Its 2006 report on the issue, Tech Tally: Approaches to Assessing Technological Literacy, recommended new NSF studies asking subsets of students “what they have learned about technology both in and out of school, and how they would troubleshoot everyday problems involving technology;” adding questions about technology to existing tests that measure students' knowledge in mathematics, science, and history; and assessing the technological literacy of teachers.
A few examples of existing technology assessments are worth watching. Two years ago the state of Florida developed a performance-based assessment of teacher’s skills linked to professional development. That technology framework is being expanded to student assessment. The UK’s work with technology-based performance assessments in a virtual world may also receive greater attention if states seek embedded technology assessment.
Professional Development for Global Competitiveness
Along with Representatives Roybal-Allard and Hinojosa, U.S. Representatives Judy Biggert (R-IL) and Ron Kind (D-WI) helped introduce the ATTAIN Act. It is based upon input from education stakeholders, including the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), and the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SEDTA).
Don Knezek, CEO of ISTE, spoke of the focus on professional development. “Teachers are our nation’s most valuable resources and absolutely crucial to whether education technology implementations succeed. The ATTAIN Act’s focus on technology professional development will help ensure that our investments in school hardware, software and infrastructure are leveraged for the benefit of our nation’s students.” The law itself identifies a lack of professional development and systemic change as the reason a recent study of software products showed no academic advantage for the technology.
CoSN CEO Keith Krueger praised the sponsoring legislators for understanding “the important role that education technology plays in meeting NCLB’s goals and equipping our students with the skills necessary to succeed in the modern workforce.”
“We do not want our students to fall behind in this era of innovation and global competition,” said Ken Wasch, president of SIIA. “Technology is vital for providing students with a learning environment that prepares them for the world beyond the classroom. The ATTAIN Act will ensure our educational system adopts modern methods to remain effective in the digital, information economy. We thank Representatives Roybal-Allard, Hinojosa, Biggert and Kind for their leadership on this important legislation.”
The Details
According to press releases, the ATTAIN Act would update the existing EETT program by:
Increasing the share of state-to-local funding distributed by formula from 50% to 60% and adding a minimum grant size in order to assure that more school districts receive allocations of sufficient size to permit them to operate significant education technology programs.
Strengthening the program’s emphasis on teacher quality and technology skills by raising the portion of formula-grants set aside for professional development from 25% to 40%, while emphasizing the importance of timely and ongoing training.
Channeling the 40% of funds allocated for competitive grants, previously unrestricted, to schools and districts for systemic school reform built around the use of technology to redesign curriculum, instruction, assessment and data use.
More closely aligning the program with NCLB’s core mission by giving priority in competitive grant awards to schools identified as in need of improvement, including those with a large percentage of Limited English Proficient students and students with disabilities, as well as by focusing formula grants on students and subjects where proficiency is most lacking.
Renewing NCLB’s commitment to ensuring that students are technologically literate by the eighth grade through requiring states to assess student knowledge and skills, including through embedding assessment items in other state tests and performance-based assessments portfolios.
Drawing state, district and school attention to the age and functionality needs of school technology infrastructure, access and applications by requiring states to provide technical assistance and guidance to districts on updating these resources.
Sources:
Press release from ISTE's Web site
Congresswoman Roybal-Allard’s testimonyNSF Press Release for Tech Tally: Approaches to Assessing Technological Literacy .
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Wednesday, June 13, 2007
AIM for Openness!
More Criticism Over Fenty's Secrecy
Rhee's Selection as Schools Chief, a Shock to Many, Draws Scrutiny
Rhee's Selection as Schools Chief, a Shock to Many, Draws Scrutiny
By David Nakamura and Nikita Stewart
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 13, 2007; A01
District leaders stood beside Michelle A. Rhee on the steps of city hall yesterday as a show of public support for the newly nominated D.C. schools chancellor, but they complained behind the scenes about the secrecy with which Mayor Adrian M. Fenty made his surprise selection.
On the morning he took direct control of the public schools, Fenty (D) officially introduced Rhee, 37, as his choice to lead the 55,000-student system, and city officials said they were hopeful and would work with her to accelerate educational improvement. But Fenty did not inform the council of his choice until the eve of the announcement and did not give her name to a panel of parents, teachers and students as the takeover legislation required. Fenty, however, said he had complied with the law.
D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D) pledged to hold confirmation hearings on Rhee's nomination quickly. George Parker, president of the Washington Teachers' Union, said he has a good relationship with Rhee from her previous post as chief executive of the nonprofit New Teacher Project. And Robert C. Bobb, head of the new State Board of Education, praised her management skills, although others raised questions about her lack of experience operating large organizations.
Rhee vowed to work tirelessly, calling on one more group of key stakeholders -- students -- to join her.
"You are the folks I am ultimately accountable to," Rhee said at a morning news conference on the steps of the John A. Wilson Building attended by her parents and two young daughters. "To go from where we are now to where we need to be will take tremendous work. Get ready to work hard but get stronger, to be pushed but also to excel. Every day, my pledge is to make decisions with the unwavering confidence that you can do this. My job will be to ensure nothing stands in your way."
Rhee wasted little time making her mark, appointing Kaya Henderson, a vice president at the New Teacher Project, as her deputy. At the same time, two of departing superintendent Clifford B. Janey's top deputies, Peter Parham, chief of staff, and Robert C. Rice, special assistant, resigned.
Yet even as Fenty and Rhee made the rounds yesterday -- they stopped by the school system headquarters on North Capitol Street, then toured Benning Elementary School in Northeast -- council members, parents and school employees were scrambling to learn more about their new schools chief.
Rhee and the New Teacher Project, which recruits and trains teachers to serve in urban districts, are well known in education circles. The organization has two contracts with the D.C. school system totaling $980,000. But Fenty's selection of Rhee came as a shock to most.
Fenty conducted his search furtively, talking to education experts in other cities and rarely consulting with local officials or parents. He had interviewed Rhee at city hall a few weeks ago, but no council members knew of Fenty's interest in her until they both showed up at Gray's office about 11:30 Monday night.
"There he was with Ms. Rhee," Gray said. "He gave me her name but didn't give me a context."
The three sat down, and Fenty introduced her as the next chancellor of public schools. Gray's reaction? "She hasn't had a vast amount of management experience," he said. "There will be a wait-and-see period."
Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) said in an interview that Fenty talks to "everybody except council members" and warned that he will cast a sharp eye on Rhee's background during her confirmation hearing.
The rest of the council first met her yesterday morning about half an hour before the news conference, and Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) was caught so off guard that he forgot her name. "I've been calling her Helen all day," he said.
Janey, the superintendent whom Rhee would replace, learned late Monday that he was being fired. Parents and hard-core school activists were floored by the news.
"We've had six or seven new superintendents over the past 10 years, and every one of them were interviewed by a panel of community members," said Cherita Whiting, a parent activist. "The mayor denied us that."
The takeover legislation approved by the D.C. Council, which transferred power from the school board to Fenty, stated that the mayor was required to convene a panel of parents, students and teachers union members to help vet the selection.
Fenty, who came under similar criticism for being too secretive about his selection of Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier, said he considered roughly 30 potential candidates before settling on Rhee. His aides added that the mayor complied with the takeover legislation by convening a panel that included six people, including Terry Goings, a parent at Coolidge Senior High School.
Goings, who supports Rhee, said yesterday that the panel met once, spoke about the qualities Fenty should look for in a schools chief and did not hear about Rhee until the announcement. They received her résumé yesterday.
Lee Glazer, co-founder of the Save Our Schools coalition, was more startled by the choice than the timing of the decision. "I'm surprised at the individual because she's a nobody with no experience in education," Glazer said.
For the most part, however, parents and public officials said they are willing to support Rhee and give her a chance, even as they acknowledge some doubts about her ability to manage the 11,500-employee school bureaucracy. In selecting Rhee, whose experience working within a school system is limited to three years as a teacher in Baltimore, Fenty bucked tradition. Instead, he followed a trend that began several years ago of big-city mayors naming school chiefs who have not had superintendent experience, education experts said.
Fenty said he was looking for a leader who could offer fresh ideas.
Vanessa Gerideau, a fourth-grade teacher at Benning Elementary, spoke with Rhee during her tour and was excited to learn that they had something in common: Both had participated in the Teach for America program.
"Change needs to happen," said Gerideau, a second-year teacher. She said that she feels supported by her principal and colleagues but that the school system needs to do more for teachers.
Council member Harry Thomas Jr. (D-Ward 5) said some of his constituents are concerned with Rhee's ethnic background. As a Korean American, Rhee will be the first non-black chief in four decades in the predominantly African American school district.
"Those are the first obvious things people are going to ask. Can you deal with the African American children in our system?" Thomas said.
But he said his answer, for now, is that she appears to care about all children. "We all want the same basic things for our children," Thomas added. "She's a mother. That's a good thing. She said she is going to put her children in our schools. That's a better thing. She's putting her own sweat equity in this."
Rhee's longtime allies predicted that she would overcome any doubts.
"What you see in Michelle is constant processing and understanding what's going on and how to do it better," said Kati Haycock, chairman of the New Teacher Project's board of directors. "She wants to get to what's important -- the bottom line. And the bottom line is getting really good teachers for kids. On that kind of focus, she's relentless."
Staff writers Ashlee Clark, Theola Labbé and Yolanda Woodlee contributed to this report.
Head of Non-Profit to Become Education Chancellor in D.C.
Fenty To Oust Janey Today
Head of Nonprofit That Trains Teachers Would Run Schools
Head of Nonprofit That Trains Teachers Would Run Schools
By David Nakamura
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 12, 2007; A01
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty has chosen to fire D.C. School Superintendent Clifford B. Janey and replace him with the founder of a New York-based teacher-training organization, a dramatic step that signals the mayor's desire to bring "radical change" to the failing 55,000-student system.
After assuming control of the schools at midnight, Fenty (D) planned to announce at a 9:30 a.m. news conference today that he has tapped Michelle A. Rhee for the new job of schools chancellor.
Rhee, 37, operates the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit group created in 1997 that recruits and trains teachers to serve in urban districts. Fenty said she would fulfill his desire for a strong manager who would bring new ideas from the outside and remain in the position a long time.
Rhee is well-known in education circles but could prove to be a tough sell with school employees, parents and D.C. Council members, who must confirm the appointment.
She would be the first schools chief in the District who didn't have superintendent experience since retired Army Lt. Gen. Julius W. Becton Jr. left in frustration nearly a decade ago. She has spent just three years working within a school system, as an elementary teacher in Baltimore in the mid-1990s. And, as a Korean American, Rhee would be the system's first non-black chief in nearly four decades.
"This system needs radical change; it really needs a shake-up," Fenty said in an interview. "We did not want to pick someone to tinker around the edges. . . . I was impressed on every level with Michelle: her intellect, sense of urgency and management acumen."
The D.C. school system is among the worst-performing in the nation. Although D.C. public schools are third in per-pupil spending among the nation's 100 largest districts, students rank at or near the bottom in reading and math among 11 major urban school districts. Rhee would become the city's seventh schools chief in a decade, replacing Janey, a career educator who would leave after less than three years at the helm.
Fenty selected Rhee after conducting a secret search, repeatedly saying publicly that he had made no decisions and was considering keeping Janey. In the interview, Fenty said he considered a list of about 30 names during the past two months, including Miami-Dade County Superintendent Rudolph F. Crew. Fenty consulted few, if any, local leaders and parents but sought advice from New York City School Chancellor Joel I. Klein and national education experts.
It is not clear how many other candidates Fenty interviewed for the job, if any.
Rhee was first approached by Fenty's deputy mayor for education, Victor Reinoso, at an education conference in May, and she initially rebuffed the mayor's overtures.
"I said, 'No, not me,' " Rhee said. "I always thought I could have more impact on districts from the role I'm in now."
She changed her mind after meeting with Fenty, who told her he would support whatever changes she wants to make. Although Fenty has been critical of Janey's pace of change, the mayor's education plan includes a nod to Janey, whose Master Education Plan is listed as the starting point for Fenty's reform efforts.
"I don't have an ego around this stuff," Rhee said. "I will look at what Janey did and build on that. He did a very good job on standards and curriculum. . . . I will change the expectations of parents, teachers, the central office and ensure that everyone who is engaged in the education of kids is willing to take a personal responsibility of ensuring outcomes."
Rhee has agreed to a five-year contract worth $250,000 a year, and she is eligible for an annual bonus, the amount of which is up to Fenty, administration officials said. Under the law giving Fenty control of the schools, Rhee would have the title of chancellor.
Fenty was scheduled to inform Janey, who had hoped to stay at the helm, and council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D) of his decision last night. Janey, who earned $274,000 plus a $25,000 bonus this year, is eligible for a severance package of a year's salary, administration officials said.
Rhee, who lives in Denver, has a bachelor's degree in government from Cornell University and a master's in public policy, with a concentration in education policy, from Harvard University.
After spending three years in the Teach for America program, assigned to a Baltimore elementary school, Rhee founded the New Teacher Project in 1997, during the peak of a national teacher shortage.
The organization, which recruits and trains teachers to serve low-performing urban systems, has a contract with D.C. public schools. Rhee's company has grown to 120 employees, but that is tiny compared with the size of her new job.
The D.C. public schools have 11,500 employees, a $1 billion operating budget and a $2.3 billion school modernization program. Many school buildings have leaky roofs, broken plumbing and cracked windows.
"It will be a challenge . . . but I see the potential," Rhee said. "I have seen how the system is run and how it has the potential to run better. That can be done by changing the path."
Rhee said her experience in Baltimore led her to believe that good teachers are the key to improving schools.
During her first year in the classroom, teaching second- and third-graders, Rhee said the students "ran over me."
"I was not a successful teacher," she said. "I was determined from then not to let 8-year-olds run my life."
The next two years, Rhee said, she and another teacher co-taught a group of 70 students, of which only 13 percent were reading on grade level when they entered the class. By the end of two years, she said, 90 percent were reading on grade level. According to the New Teacher Project Web site, Rhee's work in Baltimore was featured on ABC's "Good Morning America" program.
"The lesson I took from that was that teachers are everything," she said.
Rhee estimated that the New Teacher Project has provided 10 to 30 percent of the teachers to the urban systems it works with. The organization also publishes reports aimed at sparking change among school bureaucracies.
In 2005, for example, the company produced a study titled "Unintended Consequences: The Case for Reforming the Staffing Rules in Urban Teachers Union Contracts."
The report examined five urban school systems and concluded that union staffing contracts often make it difficult for systems to get rid of poor teachers, thereby blocking enthusiastic new teachers from being hired. Rhee's organization has sought to broker deals between school districts and teachers unions to solve that problem, she said.
Although he met with Crew, the Miami schools chief, several times, Fenty said he was seeking someone who had not already been a superintendent with a long history inside a district. Too many "career superintendents" move from job to job, staying only a few years at each stop, Fenty said.
"I wanted a real difference-maker, someone who would stay with the mayor the entire time the mayor is there, instead of moving constantly," he said.
Rhee said Reinoso initially approached her at an education conference in New Orleans last month, asking whether she had any suggestions about candidates to lead the District's schools.
Ultimately, however, Fenty said other education experts suggested that he consider Rhee, whose work with the New Teacher Project had scored her an invitation to sit with first lady Laura Bush during the president's 2004 State of the Union address.
Klein was among those who recommended Rhee. Reached by phone yesterday, Klein said he worked on several projects with Rhee related to the transfer rules for teachers in New York.
Klein, a former Justice Department lawyer who had no direct experience managing schools before New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (R) tapped him in 2002, defended Fenty's selection of someone with a nontraditional background.
"That's the choice D.C. needs, given that, year in and year out, they have not gotten results," said Klein, who is scheduled to attend today's news conference.
Rhee, who is separated from her husband, has two daughters, ages 5 and 8, whom she said she would enroll in the District's public schools after the family moves to the area this summer.
"I'm not a career superintendent," Rhee said. "We see the harm that comes when people come in and in 2 1/2 years they're off to the next job after making 4 percent gains. I only took this job because I believe I can do it over the long haul."
AIM for Success!
Successes at a Big-City System
Focus, Funding Help Turn Around Nation's 8th-Largest School District
Focus, Funding Help Turn Around Nation's 8th-Largest School District
By V. Dion Haynes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 12, 2007; A01
PHILADELPHIA -- Darren Romero could see this was no ordinary parent-teacher meeting.
Romero had left his construction job early, having been summoned to M. Hall Stanton Elementary School with a call that his first-grade son, Darren Jr., had fallen behind in reading and math. Now, a large screen flashed video footage of Darren coloring with markers when he should have been working on a money-counting exercise. The teacher pointed to a chart showing Darren's reading level, far below where he should be at this point in the school year.
Then the teacher, principal, literacy coach and other parents shared ideas for helping Darren -- one-on-one tutoring, books on tape that the school could lend, and a clever trick that involved speaking into a curved plastic PVC pipe so he could hear himself read.
This kind of meeting is part of a broad range of reforms introduced in the Philadelphia public schools targeting the lowest-performing students. After five years of intense focus, the strategy in the nation's eighth-largest school district is bearing fruit: Citywide, the number of students reaching "proficient" and "advanced" levels on the Pennsylvania state tests has risen steadily -- in some grades outpacing the average improvements statewide.
As D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) implements his plan to seize control of the struggling public schools, Philadelphia and a handful of other cities are showing signs that it is possible to repair broken school districts, but only through extraordinary effort.
The school systems making the largest gains are united by some common threads: Government and school leaders have set aside differences and harnessed their power behind reforms, superintendents have brought an intense, persuasive leadership style to the process, and efforts have concentrated on raising the test scores of the lowest-performing students.
But Philadelphia also illustrates how hard it can be to sustain improvements. The superintendent credited with much of the gain, Paul Vallas, is leaving the city this month as budget projections show a large deficit threatening his reform program.
Much like Washington's, Philadelphia's public schools have grappled with a daunting assortment of challenges. Five years ago, the 177,000-student district was in such disarray -- with deteriorating buildings, dysfunctional operating systems and dismal test scores -- that the state seized control of the system, which was already in the hands of the mayor.
For years, the Democratic mayor who controlled the schools had pressed the state for more money. The Republican governor said he wouldn't put any more money into such a poorly run district.
They reached a compromise in late 2001: The mayor got the money he needed, and the governor got the accountability he wanted, with the power to appoint a majority of the members on a commission established to run the district.
Over the past five years, the state and the city have kicked in an additional $500 million for reforms.
In 2002, the district appointed Vallas as its chief executive, and he quickly introduced new curricula aligned with Pennsylvania's academic standards and assessments. Teachers receive a guide detailing what lessons they are to teach every week. Vallas doubled the periods for math and reading to 90 minutes. He required schools to test students every two weeks to determine whether they -- or their teachers -- need help. And he expanded some existing programs that were showing results, such as intervention meetings like the one with the Romero family.
Philadelphia students have made steady gains on the state test since 2001, the year before the reforms were introduced. The number of eighth-graders reaching "proficiency" or above in reading, for example, rose 21 percentage points. At the same time, the number of eighth-graders who fell below "basic" levels declined 24 percentage points.
During the past four years, the number of Philadelphia schools making "adequate yearly progress" under the federal No Child Left Behind law soared from 26 to 166. In the District, just 28 of 146 schools met that standard in 2006.
Philadelphia still faces serious challenges, especially maintaining student progress while balancing the budget.
But its strategies succeeded in transforming schools such as M. Hall Stanton. Surrounded by run-down and boarded-up rowhouses in North Philadelphia, the school used to be a place where teachers feared students and where failure was rampant. One recent morning, the halls and classrooms were calm and orderly. More students are on the honor roll. Test scores are among the best in the city. And much of the improvement reflects the new attention to low-performing students, school officials say.
A few weeks after the intervention meeting, Romero said his son was showing progress. "We're using the PVC pipe," Romero said. Darren Jr. is "sounding out his words" with the device. "You can hear yourself. You can get the vowels and sounds extra clear."
Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a Washington-based organization that has worked with the school system on its reform efforts, said Philadelphia "hasn't reached the promised land. They have a long way to go. But they've made enormous strides over the last few years."
"If you can do this in a place as big and tough as Philadelphia," he said, "there's no reason not to make progress instructionally in a school system like D.C."
A New Wave of ReformTwo decades ago, an earlier wave of school reform was sparked across the country by "A Nation at Risk," a widely circulated 1983 federal report that warned how growing mediocrity in education "threatens our very future as a nation and as a people."
The report cited statistics illustrating the failures of schools: U.S. students ranking last on numerous international achievement tests, math and verbal SAT scores dropping steadily from 1963 to 1980 and a dramatic rise in the number of remedial courses required for high school graduates entering colleges and in the military.
The report recommended rigorous standards, more time in school and increased focus on core courses. An array of reforms followed, creating a hodgepodge in districts, with instruction varying widely from school to school and classroom to classroom.
Now, in a reversal of that trend, largely driven by states' attempts to comply with the No Child Left Behind law, school systems are standardizing instruction, with a primary aim of helping failing students.
In Miami, Superintendent Rudolph F. Crew raised test scores by requiring the lowest-performing schools to extend the day by one hour and the year by 10 days. He gave teachers the option of transferring out, then boosted pay by 20 percent to attract replacements committed to the cause. He recruited retired teachers to be tutors and added a cadre of social workers, psychologists and anti-gang specialists.
In Richmond, scores rose as schools began following a standardized curriculum and a pacing chart detailing what lessons should be taught every day.
In Philadelphia, school leaders have gone to great lengths to motivate students. On a recent morning, Stanton Elementary Principal Barbara B. Adderley stood on the auditorium stage, in front of blue and gold curtains, beaming. "I'm so proud of you boys and girls -- you've done such a good job," she told students at an awards ceremony.
She passed out prizes, including backpacks and crayons, to students with the most improved grades. She drew loud cheers when two teachers rolled in from the wings on boys' and girls' bikes. She said students with perfect attendance during state testing week would have a chance to win them.
Six years ago, when she became principal, she said, the environment was so chaotic that some teachers let students eat lunch in the classroom to keep them safe from fights. She said she started to see a reduction in absenteeism and violence when she divided students into three "academies," allowing them to get more individual attention in the smaller groupings.
Last year, 70 percent of Stanton fifth-graders scored at or above state targets in reading, compared with 13 percent in 2003.
Downsizing High SchoolsNot far from Stanton, Strawberry Mansion High School Principal Lois Powell Mondesire welcomed students as they walked through metal detectors on a recent morning. The point of her greeting was not all social: Two neighborhood shootings had occurred the night before, and Mondesire wanted to make sure that no street beefs were brought into school.
In the freshman academy on the fourth floor, William Withers, 16, was conferring with a mentor from a nonprofit education advocacy group, a recent high school graduate. The mentor looked at Withers's A, D and two F's and urged him to sign up for tutoring during lunch or after school.
The freshman academy is separate from the rest of the school, and students receive remedial course work and other help to get them on grade level. A month later, after receiving tutoring, Withers had brought up his D and F's, said his mother, Christenea Blakeley.
Strawberry Mansion's enrollment has been downsized from about 2,500 to 560, part of an effort to establish more personalized high schools. The district is accomplishing that by phasing out middle schools, where large enrollments and frequent violence have made them the most troubled schools. It has been moving sixth- through eighth-graders to elementary schools and thus far converted 30 middle schools into high schools.
The incidence of violence at Strawberry Mansion has dropped dramatically, Mondesire said. Based on the school's previous designation as a "persistently dangerous" school, the district assigned about 12 security guards to the building. Reports of violence have declined by more than 80 percent, Mondesire said, prompting the district to reduce the number of guards to nine. She also attributes the declining violence to the lower enrollment and the separation of students into four academies.
"One of the reasons we had many of the problems before was that a lot of kids -- especially ninth-grade kids -- got lost in the shuffle, and problems would escalate," said Marshall Album, the school's assistant principal, who is in charge of discipline.
"We make sure we know the students," he added. "The respect for the students goes a long way in establishing a [peaceful] environment."
Reggie Mays, an 18-year-old senior, said getting individual attention from Mondesire and teachers has helped transform him from a D student into a B student. In fact, 53 percent of Strawberry Mansion's 11th-graders met or exceeded state targets in math, up from 13 percent in 2003, surpassing the state average.
During his freshman year at the school, Mays said, he went through lots of turmoil at home and was "out of control" at school, repeatedly getting suspended. In his neighborhood nearby, he said, "I've seen people shot, stabbed -- I've seen it all."
In the 10th grade, he signed up for the school's law academy, where he said he received lots of academic and personal support. Prominent Philadelphia lawyers mentored him, inspiring him to pursue his dream of practicing law. Every day, he said, Mondesire and several teachers tutored him. He now takes the role of prosecutor and defense lawyer in the mock trial program.
Earlier this year, he said, Mondesire and other administrators intervened to keep him at Strawberry Mansion when he was moved into foster care and would have been sent to a school across town.
Without the help, Mays said, "I'd be locked up or doing something illegal. . . . I wouldn't have anything to strive for to keep me going."
None of the Philadelphia reforms came cheap.
"Reform costs money," said Jim Nevels, chairman of the city's School Reform Commission. "There has to be an understanding that there have to be funding sources."
Still, even with the progress, the relationship between Vallas and government leaders collapsed over escalating costs of reforms. State officials predict a $192 million deficit if no action is taken. Facing a huge deficit itself , the state might not be able to maintain funding levels for existing reforms or provide the hundreds of millions of dollars Vallas sought for a new round of reforms.
Rather than contend with the possible gutting of his reforms, Vallas opted to quit.
"It's tough," he said. "We're at the stage in our reform" where it cannot go further without adequate funding. He believes that his changes have raised achievement as much as possible and that further gains will require money to expand after-school and summer programs and to reduce class sizes.
Vallas, who will leave by the end of the month, has signed on for another difficult assignment: rebuilding the New Orleans school system.
In his three years as D.C. school superintendent, Clifford B. Janey has pushed some of the same strategies, introducing new standards and testing. Student Support Teams, the D.C. version of intervention meetings, have been credited with reducing the number of students referred to special-education programs. Freshman academies introduced this school year have been applauded by parents but are too new to measure results.
Janey has proposed converting low-performing senior high schools into academies that could offer students more personalized attention and job training. Eastern High in Northeast, for instance, would become a Latin academy, and Anacostia High in Southeast would become a health and medical science academy. But, bogged down in the planning stages, they have yet to be implemented.
When Janey asked the city for an additional $38 million for his reforms, he was turned down.
Thomas M. Brady, former chief business operations officer in the D.C. system who recently was named interim superintendent to replace Vallas, said he believes Janey's reforms have been dragged down by major problems in hiring, payroll, facilities and procurement.
"If you don't fix the backroom and just focus on academics, the system won't be there to sustain the initiatives you're trying to do," he said.
Test scores in the District are up, but not by as much as those in other urban systems.
"School reform doesn't need a lot of study. . . . We know what works and what doesn't work," said Vallas, who previously had served as chief executive of the Chicago public schools. "You bring in action people who can deliver -- people with a track record for getting things done."
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Report from the beachhead...........
Worn Down by Waves of Change
Bureaucracy, Politics Beat Back Succession of Superintendents and Plans
Bureaucracy, Politics Beat Back Succession of Superintendents and Plans
By April Witt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 11, 2007; A01
When a board appointed by Congress seized control of the D.C. public schools in 1996, its members were eager to give the school system a clean break from its troubled past. They fired Superintendent Franklin L. Smith, replaced him with a war hero, retired Army Lt. Gen. Julius W. Becton Jr., and urged Becton not to bother debriefing Smith.
"I finally decided, 'This is crazy,' " said Becton, who arranged a quiet meeting with his predecessor at a downtown office building. The advice Smith gave was ominous.
"I know you are accustomed to giving orders, turning around and saying, 'Forward march!' " Smith recalled telling Becton. "My only advice is that in this job, you turn around and look to see who is following you. Because every time you think people are following you, they are not. And that includes the inside staff."
A year and a half later, it was the general's turn to leave town in frustration, blamed for failing to transform the schools.
The history of D.C. school reform is filled with fix-it plans hailed as silver bullets and would-be saviors who are celebrated before being banished. The constant churn of reform has been a big part of the schools' troubles, according to school officials, community activists and others who have watched the system for decades.
D.C.'s schools are shot through with silver bullets. The revolving door of school superintendents -- six in the past 10 years alone -- has meant that few reforms had time to filter down to the classrooms. Isolated gains achieved under one reform theory were tossed aside, lost or forgotten in the next. Some reforms that did have an impact went awry, accelerating inequality, distrust and decline.
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) will take over the schools tomorrow with a new promise to fix a host of the same problems -- abysmal test scores, dysfunctional management systems, decaying buildings -- that have been identified and targeted, but never corrected, by one would-be reformer after another. Fenty is expected to try a familiar quick fix: replace the current superintendent, Clifford B. Janey, and install his choice in the job, which will be renamed chancellor.
Fenty's takeover comes 40 years after a federal judge ordered the white-dominated, federally appointed school board in June 1967 to stop practices that discriminated against African American children.
"I think this means a bright future for the poor black boys and girls in the school system," a jubilant Julius Hobson, the civil rights leader who initiated the lawsuit that led to the ruling, said at the time. He soon joined the District's first elected school board.
The bright future Hobson envisioned has not materialized. Among the reasons: The District's unique political history exacerbated distrust between blacks and whites and allowed Congress to interfere at a level unseen by school leaders elsewhere.
Urban school systems that have improved student achievement despite the challenges of social ills have done so in large part because politicians, educators and community groups agreed on a single reform strategy and were "pulling together in the same direction" for a long time, said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a nonprofit group based in the District.
In the District, the opposite has happened, said Casserly, who has long advised Washington superintendents. Politicians -- in the city, Congress and the White House -- educators and community activists have engaged in a long-running tug of war.
"The efforts of all those good people pulling in opposite directions," Casserly said, have "resulted over the long run in a school district that didn't move at all."
Good IntentionsOver the decades, sometimes contradictory plans and reports by commissions and consultants, educators and activists, have piled high. They have advocated growing or shrinking the central office, giving the system more money or less, giving individual schools more autonomy or more oversight.
Meanwhile, generations of city children, especially the poorest, have attended crumbling, poorly maintained schools where too many have failed to learn.
"It's gotten to the point where I'm almost embarrassed to be associated with the word 'reform,' " said Mary Levy, a longtime activist who helped craft some of the plans.
With each new superintendent came new promises, "and we abandoned some other things," said Levy, a lawyer with the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. "Looking back on it, in a way what happened was everyone was bitten by the reform bug. It's all very well to throw out the bad, but not if you don't replace it with something at least as good."
Examples of the unintended consequences of constant reform are, unfortunately, numerous.
A comprehensive report from dozens of business and community leaders in the 1980s suggested that the District's curriculum, one of the first in the nation to detail and test what children should know at each grade level, was outdated. So the system was abandoned -- but not replaced. For the next 15 years, the District lacked a comprehensive plan for how to teach and test core subjects such as reading and math.
Reformers' lawsuits have backfired, time and again. In the 1990s, a lawsuit intended to pressure District politicians to pay for fixing fire code violations instead led to the shutdown of schools and contributed to the departures of two superintendents. Lawsuits meant to push the schools to better serve special education students wound up forcing the system to spend about $120 million a year to pay private tuition for 2,400 students out of a system of 55,000, plus $75 million for special education transportation. That left less money to fix the system's own inadequate special education programs that sparked the lawsuits in the first place.
Congress, over the objections of many public school officials, authorized charter schools and private-school vouchers in the District. Those programs, applauded by many for giving families alternatives, have also hurt the system by draining students and dollars, according to many school officials and activists. Another innovation, a funding formula designed to give local schools more autonomy, left the poorest children disproportionately without access to art and music classes, which were more widespread before the reform era began.
Constant change in leadership and philosophy weakened oversight of school system operations, allowing maintenance, finance and payroll problems to fester.
As superintendents and reforms came and went, there were few checks on the bureaucracy. Favoritism and poor performance "just went out of control," said Kevin P. Chavous, who served on the D.C. Council, once headed its education committee and wrote a book in 2005 promoting charter schools.
"Friends of friends were getting contracts and jobs," he said. "They weren't doing the job. We paid more for services than we should have. There was less and less focus on individual academic enrichment of children."
School system employees determined to keep their jobs worked the system to become "almost bulletproof," Chavous said. "They were so self-protecting and had built up such an arsenal of support for their existence that they knew what buttons to push with the threats of layoffs and reforms."
Roots of the ProblemThe District operated separate schools for blacks and whites from the Civil War era until the Supreme Court's 1954 decisions in Brown v. Board of Education and a related District case, Bolling v. Sharpe.
After the court's decisions, President Dwight D. Eisenhower told District officials that he hoped Washington's schools -- then 57 percent black -- could become a model for equal educational opportunity.
Within a dozen years, however, more than 30,000 white students left. Schools were largely resegregated. Booming suburbs, urban renewal that obliterated some traditional black enclaves and housing laws that gave middle-class blacks mobility all contributed.
Some policies of the majority-white appointed school board allowed whites to be concentrated in certain classes or schools. The system also spent more on white students than on black students.
Hobson, the civil rights leader, told Congress in 1966 that in some ways black students fared better under segregation, when black educators shaped their curriculum.
That year, Hobson sued the schools. In Hobson v. Hansen, U.S. Appeals Court Judge J. Skelly Wright ordered sweeping changes to equalize the treatment of students, including integrating teachers and busing pupils to relieve overcrowding in black schools. Wright, a Louisiana native who had been hanged in effigy in New Orleans for enforcing desegregation there, declared the D.C. schools "a monument to the cynicism of the power structure which governs the voteless Capital of the greatest country on earth."
A subsequent decree by Wright attempting to equalize pay for black and white teachers produced an unintended result, a study later found: Many of the best, most experienced black teachers moved to schools in white neighborhoods.
In 1968, Congress, under growing pressure to give the District home rule, approved an elected school board. African American leaders celebrated the chance to reverse a century of racism in management and hiring.
It would take six years for the District to win the right to elect its mayor and council. In the meantime, the school board was "the only game in town" for local politicians, said Chavous, setting the stage for turf battles, nepotism and patronage.
"For a lot of these folks, it was an opportunity to control the government that had historically been controlled by the folks on the Hill," he said. "Our system morphed out of control, I think, largely because of the patronage history and the tendency to view the school system as a jobs system."
Power struggles on the school board grew raucous. Police were occasionally called. At one meeting in the mid-1970s, Superintendent Vincent Reed stepped in to keep one board member from choking another.
Downward SpiralDuring Reed's tenure, from 1975 to 1980, District schools were still viewed favorably by many. Reed, a popular superintendent, had championed the adoption of strict standards for what children should know in each grade. The Competency-Based Curriculum was seen by some parents and teachers as too rigid, but ultimately "it did seem to put a floor under the weaker teachers," said Levy, the lawyer and activist.
In the 1980s, national reports on urban schools spurred a reform movement. A group of 64 District business and community leaders released a comprehensive study in 1989 of deteriorating conditions in the schools. The D.C. Committee on Public Education, or COPE, made sweeping recommendations, from auctioning off underused properties to lengthening the school day.
In the wake of the report, the school board fired Superintendent Andrew Jenkins. At an extraordinarily emotional board meeting, outraged Jenkins supporters hurled water pitchers, glasses and nameplates. One member, Erika Landberg, who was voting to oust Jenkins, was hit in the head. She needed stitches. The offices of some board members who had voted against Jenkins were trashed.
The group of community leaders had criticized Reed's curriculum as outmoded, and it was quickly abandoned. Until Janey came in 2004, no superintendent had managed to both design and implement a comprehensive plan to teach reading and math, Casserly and Levy said.
"Each individual teacher pretty much did what they knew how to do," said Casserly, the Council of the Great City Schools director. "They made it up. Some were very good at it. Some were not."
As oversight of the curriculum unraveled, so did controls over the school system's basic operations. Mary Filardo, head of the District-based urban schools advocacy group 21st Century School Fund, recalled being surprised, as a young mother and new school activist in the 1980s, by how the central office had failed to adopt technology and train employees.
"What you have are pieces of systems," Filardo said. "Some of it that's still on paper. Some of it that's in mainframe systems. Some of it that's in PC systems. One person has one data set, and another one has another."
Filardo grew curious about whether the schools were paying less for trash collection as enrollment fell. She found the person in charge of the data "deep in the bowels of the bureaucracy." The woman put numbers into a computer spreadsheet program but didn't know how to use it properly. Filardo couldn't determine if the schools were overpaying.
"When I started working on school facilities, I thought, 'Of course people want to have all this data and information so they can understand what's really going on,' " Filardo said. "I have concluded that they do not want good information and data. I think there is an anxiety or fear that you will be held accountable for things you can count and measure."
Over the years, opaque school finances allowed corrupt officials to engage in bogus business deals, take kickbacks and create phony invoices and contract with fictitious firms to raid city coffers, court records show.
Many local politicians have railed against school failures without forcing real scrutiny of the dysfunctional system, Filardo said. She repeatedly asked the D.C. Council to audit school capital programs to find out why building projects cost so much, but to no avail, she said.
"They had oversight authority that they could have used, but they didn't," she said. "I think they preferred kind of blaming and pointing the finger."
Franklin L. Smith, who became superintendent in 1991, said schools were harmed by an intense rivalry between school board members and city officials. Unlike in most cities, politicians in the District cannot aspire to statewide office and so battle over a few elective positions.
"As a city council member, where is your incentive to make the board look good?" Smith asked. "There are limited positions, and almost all of them are aspiring to possibly be the mayor one day."
The activist group Parents United for the D.C. Public Schools tried to force city officials to help the schools in 1992 by suing over fire code violations in dilapidated buildings. Members thought they were helping Smith by forcing Mayor Marion Barry, the D.C. Council and Congress to pay to rebuild the schools.
Instead, D.C. Superior Court Judge Kaye K. Christian closed schools with fire code violations. The suit dragged on for years. It contributed to the 1996 ouster of Smith, a favorite of Parents United activists. Politicians, rather than helping fix the schools, decried the code violations as evidence of mismanagement and cut capital funding.
"In our wildest imaginings, we never thought this would happen," Delabian Rice-Thurston, then executive director of Parents United, told The Washington Post the day Smith was fired. "The whole thing -- the lawsuit, the court dates -- it all backfired. Be careful what you wish for; you might get it."
A General's RetreatBecton succeeded Smith at the helm of a broken and intransigent bureaucracy. Smith said he warned him that it can be nearly impossible to dislodge weak longtime employees who have seniority -- and often unseen ties to District politicians. "There are people still there who will gladly tell you, 'I was here when the new superintendent arrived, and I'll be here for the next one,' " Smith said.
Still, "nothing prepared me for the chaos that existed," Becton recalled in an autobiography he is writing, a draft of which he provided to The Post. Payroll records were "a shambles," textbook publishers went unpaid and no one knew how many students were enrolled or where federal grant money was going.
Six months into Becton's regime, in 1997, Judge Christian was still shutting schools with fire code violations. A reporter pressed Becton to grade his performance. He gave himself a C-minus. Barry retorted publicly that Becton was flunking.
The next time the general saw Barry, Becton said, he told the mayor he was in no position to taunt him: "I was in the city when you came here and ran for the school board. Then you ran for president of the school board, then the city council, then mayor. . . . You've had 35 years. I've had six months."
Barry, Becton recalled, "changed the subject."
The mayor created a political conundrum on Capitol Hill for both Becton and his predecessor. Congress controlled the District's spending, and Republicans controlled Congress. Some were openly disdainful of Barry's reelection after a drug conviction.
Becton lobbied for $36 million in supplemental funding to reroof more than 60 schools in response to the Parents United lawsuit. Among those he solicited was U.S. Rep. Charles H. Taylor, a Republican tree farmer from North Carolina, who chaired the appropriations subcommittee on the District. "His comment was, 'I'm not going to give you a goddamned thing until you get rid of that mayor,' " Becton recalled.
"I said, 'Hey, I am the superintendent; I don't have a cotton-picking thing to do with the election of that mayor.' He said, 'Until he goes, you get nothing.' "
Taylor did not return calls seeking comment.
Rebuffed by the House, Becton had to find other funding. Fall 1997 was chaotic. Roofing was still underway when schools were supposed to open. Classes started three weeks late.
Early the next year, Anthony A. Williams, then the District's chief financial officer, issued a report slamming Becton's administration as having made little change in the system's "organizational culture of indifference and resistance."
Soon afterward, Becton quit, saying, "I am tired, I really am-- physically, emotionally, mentally, I'm tired." The lieutenant general had fought in three wars. In Korea, he was gravely wounded and medically evacuated the day before a battle in which most of his unit was killed or captured.
Trying to reform the District's schools, he said, "has been the toughest job that I've ever had."
Push BackShortly after Arlene Ackerman arrived in the District as Becton's chief academic officer, a stranger -- a man standing in the receiving line at a reception in her honor -- squeezed her hand so hard she thought he would break her fingers.
"They say they want you to fix it, but they really don't," she recalled the man telling her. "When you get to the point where you are really fixing things, you will know. You will know because you will get all kinds of unbelievable push back."
After Ackerman succeeded Becton as superintendent, she moved to raise test scores by spending more money in the poorest sections of the city. That sometimes put her at odds with parents and activists in predominantly white Ward 3, where student achievement was typically the highest. When she expanded summer school from 3,000 to 30,000 students, some of those parents initially complained, fearing that scarce resources would be taken from their schools, she said.
Ackerman obtained extra federal money and pressed ahead with the summer school plan. But the school system's personnel office functioned too poorly to recruit additional teachers. Early in her tenure, for example, Ackerman came across a motorized filing system that had broken long ago, trapping hundreds of personnel records behind a wall.
"Somebody told me, 'Oh, this has been this way for years,' " Ackerman said. "Years! I'm thinking, no wonder people are telling me that they can't get data or records."
Ackerman and a few aides worked the phones to contact summer school teacher prospects. "One night, we were calling people until so late that I finally said, 'It's 11 o'clock. We can't call anybody else tonight and ask them if they want to work in D.C. They will know we're desperate,' " she recalled.
Ackerman puzzled over the central office culture. Late one night, after attending a meeting, she returned to headquarters to see a line of people in a hall waiting to see one of her subordinates. She said she eventually came to believe that the man, a longtime employee who no longer works in the system, had amassed great power through his ability to hand out jobs, award contracts and outlast superintendents. "He was like the godfather," Ackerman said.
The school system's inscrutably chaotic operations provide cover for a host of people who have learned how to "game the system," Ackerman said. "It's the way of life in D.C. It may be in other urban school systems, but not as in-your-face as I saw it. And you need an army of people to fight it."
Ackerman balked when she discovered that the school system was paying millions of dollars annually to lawyers representing special education students who had successfully sued for better services. A lawyer sending a short form letter setting up a meeting might bill the schools $450, she said. Ackerman persuaded Congress to cap the amount lawyers could bill the schools at $80 an hour, she said.
Instead of winning plaudits for saving money, "you would have thought that I was responsible for World War III," Ackerman said. "I started getting pressure -- 'we don't need to get a cap,' 'this is not fair' -- and I mean from all parts of the community. Somebody said to me these were trial lawyers who support certain politicians."
Ackerman was summoned to meet with Williams, by then the mayor, about raising the cap. She resigned before the meeting took place, and her initiative was soon rolled back, she said. Williams, in a recent interview, conceded that he "might have caved in" to political pressure even though he fundamentally believed Ackerman had been right to limit money spent on lawyer fees that could have gone to classrooms.
When Ackerman left Washington in 2000, "I cried for six weeks, from the time I said I was leaving to the time I got on the plane," she said. "I felt like I was leaving with so much left to be done."
She cried for the dedicated educators "working inside these incredibly broken circumstances," she said. "To this day, I take my hat off to them and feel humble in their presence."
Williams, who left the mayor's office in January, said he shared Ackerman's anguish over the failures, by him and others, to mobilize the city's disparate communities to pull together to fix the city's schools. "It's my biggest regret as mayor," he said.
The Music StoppedDuring her tenure, Ackerman transformed how individual schools were funded. Previously, the central office had maintained a large pool of money to cover expenses for all schools each year. Ackerman pioneered a popular system under which money would follow each child directly to his or her school, where the principal was supposed to work with a team of parents and teachers to determine how best to spend it.
When Paul L. Vance succeeded Ackerman, some of his administrators noted that many schools -- facing limited budgets and pressure for their students to score well on standardized tests -- were dropping art and music instruction.
While parents in prosperous neighborhoods sometimes held fundraisers to help pay for art and music teachers, poorer schools often did without. By 2005, 37 percent of schools surveyed by the residents group DC VOICE had no music teacher, 32 percent had no art teacher and half had no librarian.
Had she stayed in Washington longer, Ackerman said in a recent interview, she would have tried to prevent such a decline. "You had to have systems in place to monitor it," she said. "I just feel kind of bad. Maybe I shouldn't have done it. But when I put it in place, I didn't know that I'd be leaving."
As Fenty takes over the schools, some longtime activists worry that history will repeat itself. Fenty announced last week that the city was embarking on a privately funded $3.3 million project, tapping McKinsey & Co. to recommend improvements in school operations and another consulting firm, Alvarez & Marsal, to audit school finances. Six years ago, under Vance, McKinsey performed a costly study of the schools that was well-received, but its recommendations were never implemented. "The whole thing sort of petered out," Levy said.
Casserly, of the Council of the Great City Schools, is among those concerned that gains by the Janey administration will be swept away in the next tide of reform. Although Janey has been criticized for moving slowly on improving school buildings and business systems, he has focused on instruction, imposing the first comprehensive standards for teaching and assessing basic skills since reformers tossed away the last ones in 1989.
"I really regret that we're about to turn this all over again," Casserly said. "The impatience of the press and the politicians is going to mean that we're likely to start reforms all over again -- not necessarily better reforms, just a new set of reforms."
Studying the mayor's proposals, Casserly sees "nothing in there that would indicate how student achievement could actually be improved."
District students have taken two sets of standardized tests recently. If the results, due out later this year, show improvements, then that might indicate that Janey's reforms were beginning to work, Casserly said.
"My hunch is that, if Janey is gone, [and] the Board of Education is gone," Casserly said, "the mayor and city council will stand up and say, 'It was us!' "
Staff writers Dan Keating and V. Dion Haynes and research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.
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