Thursday, July 15, 2010
Education Model of Education?
Posted by Mary Cashiola on Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 9:17 AM
For all the crap that Memphis City Schools takes — and I'm not saying they don't deserve at least part of the reputation they have — recent events have transformed them into a model of national education reform.
I know what you're thinking: MCS a model? Please, they have a graduation rate of 62 percent. That's hardly a model of education.
But with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as the federal Race to the Top challenge, Memphis' educational system is on the cusp.
Seriously. I wrote about it this week for our paper edition.
[And if you don't believe me, you can read this story from The Washington Post: Gates Foundation playing pivotal role in changes for education system.]
Education reform has taken many forms in the last few decades. Optional schools, charter schools, smaller schools. All of these things have worked ... marginally. Smaller schools, for instance, have helped reduce school violence, but didn't do all that much for student achievement.
The new national thinking — and the research behind it — puts a renewed emphasis on the teacher.
- Justin Fox Burks
- MCS superintendent Kriner Cash
At MCS, they're rethinking teacher evaluations, teacher pay, teacher tenure, and teacher hiring.
Just from the comments I've already heard, I think the initiative is somewhat controversial.
Any time you have that much money going one place (especially an organization that has had its share of corruption) it's going to be controversial.
But I guess I think about the district's TEI proposal in two ways:
One: What is so controversial about hiring teachers earlier? Or paying them more? Or wanting the best teachers to teach the community's students? What's controversial about mandating annual evaluations?
I get that teachers don't want their evaluations tied to their students' test scores, but doesn't that presuppose that student achievement data won't be positive?
I know, a lot of kids in MCS come from single-family homes, they're poor, they don't have early childhood education or access to transportation ... but what's wrong with thinking that failure shouldn't be an option, even in schools with a high concentration of poverty?
(As part of the TEI, the school system is also trying to instill the value of education in its students with the Efficacy Institute's student envoy program.)
Under the state's First to the Top act, 50 percent of a teacher's annual evaluation will be assessed by student achievement.
Thirty-five percent of that is how much the student has progressed over the past year. Not if they're proficient yet or up to grade level, but simply how much they've learned that year, from that teacher.
Two: Yes, there are other ways the district could use that money. For instance, on teacher aides.
Only, they can't. Neither funding source can be used for day-to-day operations.
Both the Gates and the Race to the Top money is earmarked for education reform, and Memphis has a plan for it. I'd rather see the city schools compete for the money and win rather than not compete and do the same thing with the same dwindling resources.
(If we can take federal money to build highways we don't need, we should be able to take federal money and see if it can help improve our students' education. Oops! Soapbox.)
When I was talking to MCS commissioner Tomeka Hart, she told me that she sees each year as a new 13-year plan.
"The purpose of these funds is to go above and beyond what you're already doing," she says.
Even if this fails miserably — and I don't think they're doing anything that's going to hurt student achievement — I'm okay with $160 million being pumped into this community.
Comments (5)
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Here's a potential reform measure that could arguably satisfy the Gates mandate that their gift must be used for reform: Break up MCS into multiple districts of manageable scale, and work from a new reformed organizational structure of K-12 neighborhood areas with dedicated administrations.
One-hundred thousand plus children in a monolithic bureaucracy encumbered by the prevailing insulated and unaccountable administration, the bussing of thousands of students for miles across neighborhood lines, and the associated multi-million dollar service contracts, for everything from food service to maintenance, is almost an impenetrable entity. The cumbersome structure should be dismantled to allow mini-district independence for bringing concentrated energy and attention to a manageable scale. The ultimate comparisons among the various districts will reveal a lot, and each district should be free to operate as it sees fit towards attempting the measured improvements of student progress.
Test scores as the sole measuring device is fraught with problems as inequitable disadvantages preclude many students from a fair assessment. If a collage, if you will, of multiple demonstrable measures of student performance and learning (different things) were allowed by the funding stipulations, a better texture of real student progress arguably could be demonstrated. It certainly would be more human.
Reform means what it implies: reformation, to change and improve by correcting faults. MCS commissioner Tomeka Hart, saying that "The purpose of these funds is to go above and beyond what you're already doing," is both commendable and painfully obvious. Why is MCS attracting all this attention? The overburdened, heavily-challenged school system has the daunting task of contending with incredibly complex social challenges outside of the classroom. Given the present methods and philosophy of delivering education inside the classrooms inseparable from outside forces, a significant number of our city’s children enrolled in MCS enter every day with needs that could exceed what any school could provide. Therefore, without marshalling extensive non-government community support (churches from the greater Memphis area prioritizing directed holistic student and family support, businesses joined in sponsorship and providing access to life-skills growth and job training), simply lessening scale is not enough.
MCS can offer tremendous innovative reform opportunity through 10 districts of 10,000 students, 8 districts of 12,500... some manageable number in an effort to create a small community with the independence to determine necessary measures, including support staff, for it's smaller district population. Maybe the mini-districts are divided into geographical clusters with services contracted intentionally from businesses in each distinct area? That helps promote neighborhood pride and employs neighborhood people who have easier access to work? Maybe some shared macro-district employees are deemed necessary to benefit the mini-districts as others are distributed more locally to the cluster? Numerous high-performance business models can assist such structural reform.
You write of the danger in “do(ing) the same thing with the same dwindling resources.” The idea of mini-districts is to break up the dysfunction of an unmanageable failing district and allow for creative, entrepreneurial models of accountable reform where employing the best leadership can lead to freedom in navigating the many circulating education reform models, including traditional models from all over the world: public and private examples exist, parochial, military, boarding, single sex, vocational... There are many, many different kinds of schools, schools with distinct culture and mission, and MCS must try to emulate the diversity of proven successful models that work.
There is clear evidence that some highly-visible reform efforts, for example, the recent small schools reform effort in New York City (funded by Gates at $5 billion over some 5 years) was officially deemed "inclusive." I visited those schools, and what I witnessed was sad. All that money, seemingly an encumbered “inside-the-box” educational management ethos, still in place, still employed, little consequence for their results.
New York City Schools serves over 1,000,000 students, more than 10 times Memphis's school population, and for comparison of public school reform efforts, Memphis has more Charter Schools in total than all of New York City! Good for us! These various efforts are serving our city’s students with public school funds, families free to enroll as they choose what is best for their own children. Again, there are many kinds of school examples in America, and kids are individuals, unique in their own way. They are not wanton to any system. They are citizens, born free. Students who are free, not bound to one particular system, who have choices, who are respected and challenged, safe and loved... that's what communities must attempt with public school reform. This is much bigger than a big MCS. This is the responsibility of Memphis. All of us.
Break up the singular MCS! It is too big to maintain.
Clay Smythe
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I'm going to steal Tom's line....
Clay Smythe for mayor!!! (well school superintendent is actually more fitting)
$7k per MCS student per year. That's what they recieve.
I could send my kids to Harvard for that. WE could all send our kids to Harvard for that and drive their costs down!
Here's the thing, for the biggest bill you get the worst performance and throwing Bill Gates money at it is supposed to fix it?
Then someone at MCS said it is all the pensions. PENSIONS? If they are paying them in a manner that is causing ANY financial burden from regular funds they are idiots and you should expect crap results all around.
I don't buy it.
Is the MEA a big stumbling block?
You bet your tuchus it is. They aren't cooperating in reducing this way out of proportion boated budget.
Think about this:
The City's budget IS SMALLER!
There are only maybe 100,000 kids at MCS on a good day if we get some more people in. We loose 3000 kids per year and they don't return. I've heard a LOT odf different excuse why the MCS budget is so bloated and the size of it plus different excuses tells me that this a simple case os extreme corruption.
There are not 100,000 kids at MCS, there are maybe 90,000 probably less this year.
Here's the ethos at MCS:
If you keep the results crappy, you will always have a reason to cry for more money.
WHO wins in that scenario?
Not one kid.
Because when you have around 125 schools and only 5 you would want your kids to attend, an optional program to make sure that the "undesirables" never get in unless they move in, which is an undue financial and physical burden enforced upon the citizens by government, and a suable offense, the ones at the good schools are living on the backs of the ones not being given equal distribution of educational resources at MCS. We need to SUE MCS for it's performance and that policy!
Break it up?
TEAR IT DOWN!
What makes anyone at MCS think the know better than Bill Gates how to succeed when he has a string of successes and MCS is ONE BIG ONGOING FAILURE?
The GALL of that organization!
Memphis needs to show up and protest!
For what MCS has done to the youth and adults in this city over a protracted period of time and all the economic damage it has caused families and the city as a whole, they should be dismantled, disable their vehicles, board up their buildings, fire them all, sell their property and start over with a REAL PLAN to educate children properly and equally.
We are being or have been destroyed by our school system, the root of all Memphis problems of crime, financial hardship, and economic segregation, MCS! This system is the root of corruption in Memphis.
SUE!
PROTEST!
PICKET!
WAKE THE HELL UP, MEMPHIS!!
Clay, you have fed yourself full of BS and now you're spreading keeping the status quo.
SAD!
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