- School Closings Not a Question of ‘If’ But ‘How Big’
- Black Principals a Factor in Schools
- Tending Grandsons and Schools
School Closings Not a Question of ‘If’ But ‘How Big’
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
September 29, 2011
The dismal survey data highlighted by DCPS at Tuesday’s D.C. Council middle school hearing had the effect of obscuring a crucial take-away: that a new round of school closings is not a question of if, but only how extensive.
When the hammer falls, probably sometime before the end of the year, it will be difficult to make the case that Chancellor Kaya Henderson took school communities by surprise. Back in March, during the rollout of FY12 school level budgets, she made plain in a message to parents that the city can no longer afford to operate more than 40 schools with fewer than 300 students--more than half of them in Wards 6, 7 and 8. The decision this summer to commission a school-capacity study from the Illinois Facilities Fund --initiated by Deputy Mayor for Education De’Shawn Wright--sent up another hard-to-miss flag that big changes are coming.
Henderson’s testimony Tuesday, while ostensibly about middle schools, once again carried the message. She cited the Prince William County system, which serves 80,000 students across 90 schools (79,115 in 89 schools, according to the PW Web site). DCPS, by contrast, has 47,000 students enrolled in 125 schools.
“We have not planned well,” Henderson said.
She added later: “I expect to spend this winter, hunkered down with my team and the deputy mayor’s team.” Their objective will be how to make DCPS smaller and, hopefully, more effective.
Black Principals a Factor in Schools
The Washington Times
By Ben Wolfgang
September 29, 2011
Sharing skin color with their principal makes life better for many American teachers, according to a major new study from the University of Missouri.
The report, which surveyed more than 37,000 teachers and principals from 7,200 schools across the country, found that black teachers who work for a black principal are generally happier with their jobs, are less likely to leave and say they receive more support, encouragement and recognition from their superiors.
While base salaries are usually negotiated and remain largely equal across racial groups, the study found that black teachers are more likely to receive “supplemental pay,” such as extra money for coaching the high school basketball team, if the principal also is black.
“The takeaway is … people are more comfortable with people who look like themselves,” said Lael Keiser, an associate professor in the university’s Truman School of Public Affairs and co-author of the report.
“This highlights the need for principals to know that they have to work especially hard to communicate when they’re working with teachers who are not similar to them. I highly doubt that there are principals out there who are purposely doing this. Some of it is subconscious,” she said.
White principals appear more likely to pick teachers of their own race for coaching jobs or as advisers for school clubs, which leads to more money in supplemental pay, the report states. But in schools with black principals, “the supplemental salary rates were roughly the same,” regardless of a teacher’s race.
The study, its authors argue, should have “policy implications” for the nation’s public education system.
“We hope these findings could provide justification for policymakers to undertake programs targeted at increasing the flow of minority teachers into the principal pipeline,” Ms. Keiser said.
Previous research, she added, has shown that minority teachers can improve the educational experiences of minority students, mainly because some youngsters are simply more comfortable and feel they have more freedom to express their ideas with a teacher who looks like them.
The same dynamic appears to be true in the teacher/principal relationship, and a minority teacher in a largely white school often becomes “detached” and feels like less a part of the school family, said Judith Richardson, a former principal and director of diversity, equity and urban initiatives at the National Association of Secondary School Principals.
“It’s so important that a staff understands the culture” of the community they’re working in, she said Thursday. “You’ve got to look at what the demographics of the community are.”
Subconscious or not, Ms. Richardson said racial favoritism by a principal, black or white, damages the school’s reputation and can cause more serious problems, like high teacher turnover rates, and could create a tense classroom environment that hinders students’ ability to learn.
“The principal is a 24-hour role model for both staff and students,” she said. “There are children and adults who look to them.”
While much of the responsibility falls on a principal as the head of a school, Ms. Richardson said some teachers and district employees inject race into situations where it may have played no role whatsoever. If a white principal picks a white teacher to serve as adviser of the history club, for example, a black teacher may come to the conclusion that skin color was the biggest contributing factor.
That type of thinking, she said, can be dangerous.
“The question becomes, what is the perception of the person who did not get selected [for a job]? We only know the perception of the people that are involved,” and those perceptions are reflected in the University of Missouri study, Ms. Richardson said.
“From your perspective, you’re always the best candidate that exists. So then you ask, ‘Why was I overlooked?’ ” she added.
The study was published in the latest edition of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management and relied on data from the National Center for Educational Statistics, which each year administers a survey of teachers, principals and other district employees.
Tending Grandsons and Schools
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
September 29, 2011
I have been babysitting my small grandsons for the past week. My method reminds me of President Obama’s decision to grant waivers that free states from some of the more oppressive and dysfunctional parts of the No Child Left Behind law. I let Ben and Tom wander around the apartment, pounding on whatever toys interest them. I check only occasionally to see if they are wet or hungry.
Am I lazy? Irresponsible? Maybe. But my method, and the president’s, encourages creativity and reduces paperwork. It also raises the issue of whether the tighter control employed by other caregivers, and the No Child Left Behind bureaucracy, is worth the trouble.
I thought No Child Left Behind, despite its insane but politically necessary target of making nearly all students proficient by 2014, was a good idea when it took effect in 2002. I still think that it did more good than harm. It forced all districts to measure how much their poor and minority students were learning. There was more political support and money for schools focused on raising the achievement of children who needed extra help.
Stephanie Germeraad of The Education Trust, a Washington-based group that supported No Child Left Behind, listed for me achievement improvements since the law took effect, but made the appropriate disclaimer: “We can’t claim that NCLB caused those gains.”
Math scores for 13-year-old African Americans on the long-term National Assessment of Educational Progress declined at an average of 0.33 points annually from 1996 to 1999 and rose 1.25 points annually from 2004 to 2008. Among 9-year-old African Americans, reading scores declined 1.67 points annually from 1996 to 1999 and rose 1.75 points annually from 2004 to 2008.
The president has left the required annual testing in place, a protection against state changes going too far, the equivalent of babyproofing in my grandsons’ home. Still, ma ny people think we should dump No Child Left Behind altogether. They may be right. But they should lose the fanciful notion that once federal rules requiring testing disappear we will return to schools orchestrated by teachers and not data-happy psychometricians.
Those wishful thinkers have forgotten that before No Child Left Behind was unleashed on America, 33 states already had testing and accountability systems similar to the new federal law. If it had not passed, it is likely that those school systems, including Virginia, Maryland, the District and the biggest states---would have stuck with their tests despite the complaints.
Those state laws, and No Child Left Behind, came out of a popular political movement that began with Southern Democratic governors such as Bill Clinton and Dick Riley in the 1980s. Its leaders felt their economies were being hurt by bad schools. That concern about the effect of education on future jobs is still with us. Legitimate or not (I am among those who think politicians exaggerate schools’ economic effect), it is not going away. Governors and legislators may fiddle with the details, but at least for the next few decades most American students will have to put up with external monitoring of how much they are learning, even if many educators will find it irritating and unnecessary.
Congress, with much bigger problems, may eventually let NCLB die and leave education to the states. Obama emphasized the vitality of local innovations. The most promising changes I have seen in schools in the last three decades were almost all born in classrooms, not committee rooms.
Ideas that are gleaned from a national consensus like No Child Left Behind don’t necessarily need national rules. Like my grandsons, states and districts often do fine following their own instincts, with an occasional critical report or election loss to steer them away from making a big mess. Ben and Tom learn more without their sitter following them everywhere, and I save my energy for the big moments, like Little League.