East High School doesn’t look like a school that’s “failing.”
There are no metal detectors guarding the front doors, no broken windows, no
graffiti tagging the lockers. If anything, East carries itself with the air of
a private school. Classes are in session and the marble-walled halls are
ghostly empty and shined to a high gloss. Seeing the high vaulted ceilings in
the entry hall and the lush campus and sprawling sportsplex, one wouldn’t
ordinarily give a second thought to the quality of education within these
walls.
But East, located between Poplar and Walnut Grove only a mile-
and-a-half from the Memphis City Schools Board of Education building, is
failing. It is one of 64 Memphis City Schools the Tennessee Department of
Education put “On Notice” last month when it released its list of 98
low-performing schools statewide. Of Memphis schools, 23 of the low-performers
were high schools, 14 were middle and junior highs, and 27 were elementary
schools. If any one of these schools doesn’t show enough improvement, they —
or, in a worst-case scenario, even the entire school district — could risk
being taken over by the state as early as 2004.
Last year the state named 48 elementary and middle schools
statewide to a “Heads Up” list, their way of saying: We’re not
enforcing anything this year, but if we were, you’d be in trouble. But few
expected that when high schools were added to the list this year that only a
handful in the city — Central, Craigmont, Overton, Ridgeway, Kirby, and White
Station — would avoid the state’s list.
Dr. Oscar Love has been the principal at East since the beginning
of the school year. “Since I’ve been in this system,” he says,
“East has always been one of the premier schools from an outsider’s
perspective. When I had a chance to come to East and work, I was pleased with
that opportunity. I was surprised. I really didn’t expect [to be
listed].”
Built in 1948, East has long been a showplace for the district.
These days it serves about 1,450 students; 97 percent African-American, 2
percent Asian, and 1 percent Caucasian. Sixty-three percent are on free or
reduced lunch plans, indicating they are from low-income families.
Love says he would have been less surprised at the listing if he
had been at East longer. Despite its stately facade, East simply doesn’t have
the test scores.
“It would have been my responsibility to monitor test scores
and have a feel for the academic direction of the school,” says Love,
“and to provide support to maintain that standard, so I would have to
know.”
For the 1998-1999 school year students at East High had an
average score of 17 on the ACT. On the school’s state-issued report card for
2000, the school didn’t fare much better. ACT scores were ranked as
“Deficient” while SAT scores were “Below Average.” On the
TCAP Writing Assessment taken last February, 7 percent of 11th graders
(excluding special education) scored a 5/strong. Forty-seven percent scored a
4/competent and 38 percent scored a 3/limited. No one scored a 6/excellent or
a 1/deficient.
The Making of a List
“In every one of the schools on the [K-8] list, 48 to 73
percent of the kids were below average in reading, language arts, and
mathematics,” says Dr. Connie Smith, executive director of accountability
for the state department of education. “These are significant
problems.”
Between issuing the “Heads Up” and the “On
Notice” lists, the state board of education changed the criteria as to
what qualifies as a low-performing school. This year, as last, the department
of education used the schoolwide achievement averages as one of the indicators
of a failing school, only they made the guidelines stricter. The department
also looked at individual student test scores to see the progress being made
by each school’s lowest-performing students.
State board of education member Cherrie Holden says the criteria
were changed in an effort to make the standards more equitable across the
state. It was a similar concern that led to the initial conception of the
list.
After a lawsuit was brought by smaller school districts in the
state asking for a fairer funding formula, the state legislature enacted the
Basic Education Program (BEP) in 1992. The law guaranteed equitable funding
for both small and larger school districts and mandated smaller class sizes.
The legislation obligated the state to help pay for the funding but put in
place measures to require positive results.
Kathy Christie, vice president for knowledge management in the
Education Commission of the States Clearinghouse, says that in the late ’80s
and early ’90s legislators around the country decided they should handle
school-system accountability because under their state departments of
education very little seemed to be getting done to correct the problems.
“The big thing is now the process is public,” she says.
“Before, there were a number of low-performing schools that no one really
knew about. You only knew when you stepped into them and saw there wasn’t much
going on.”
Increasingly, local and state governing bodies have wanted
clearer information about how their public schools were performing. In July
2000, two years before the BEP legislation required a low-performing schools
list, the state of Tennessee released one.
“Based on what the commissioner’s office told us,” says
Bob Archer, associate superintendent of school administration and student
support for the Memphis City Schools, “there were continuing requests
from the legislators to identify schools even though the law did not require
it until the summer of 2002.”
But releasing the list wasn’t the only thing that got fast-
tracked. So did the other steps of the process. Holden says the state board
considered a four-year “On Notice” plan, but legislators thought
that was too long.
Playing Catch-up
Although state and local educators have asserted that the new
criteria will inevitably place more urban schools on the list, only Memphis
had more than 20 schools named. Other districts weren’t even close. Davidson
County (Nashville) had 9; Hamilton County (Chattanooga) had 11. Some other
smaller districts had one failing school.
“When we put together the different line items [of the new
criteria], no one knew that was how it would end up,” says Holden. A
separate set of criteria with lower standards was even suggested for the
Memphis district but not supported by much of the state board.
Superintendent Johnnie B. Watson explains it this way: “When
we look at the demographics of the schools on the low-performing list and we
look at the demographics of the schools in Shelby County, that tells the story
of why we have more schools on the low-performing list.”
The city schools have had a 25 to 27 percent mobility rate over
the past three years, meaning that more than 1 out of 4 students changed
schools at least once during the school year. About 70 percent of city school
students are on free or reduced lunch plans. Over 100 of Memphis’ schools are
designated as Title I, a federally funded program for high poverty-level
schools. Of the city’s 64 failing schools, 47 are under Title I. Most of the
failing schools not designated Title I are high schools.
Although board and staff members are quick to say that poverty is
not an excuse, they acknowledge that it does play a part in making their jobs
even harder.
Last year, in an effort to halt the problem, Archer directly
supervised each of the low-performing schools. This year, since there are so
many, the schools are once again reporting to one of three zone directors.
“We have a significant number of our students who come to us
without the readiness skills that you would expect students to come to
kindergarten with traditionally,” says Archer. “We have significant
numbers who come to school and don’t know their colors; they don’t know their
numbers; some of them don’t know their name.” While such handicaps might
not be insurmountable, it means the kindergarten teacher has to start teaching
material at an earlier level and cover twice as much ground.
“When you start behind,” says Archer, “you’re
always in a mode of trying to catch up.”
Unfortunately, the problem isn’t always corrected at the
kindergarten level. Failing lower-level schools are feeding failing upper-
level schools. For example, according to 1998-1999 feeder patterns, 60 percent
of students at state-listed Fairley High School come from Geeter Middle
School, 30 percent come from Lanier Junior High, and 6 percent come from
Chickasaw Junior High. Each of those middle schools is also on the state list.
Only 4 percent of Fairley’s students come from Westwood Junior High, a school
not on the list.
Following the feeder pattern further back shows that Geeter
Middle School students come from four elementary schools. Of those, Fairley
Elementary and Westhaven are both listed and make up 53 percent of the
students at Geeter. At Lanier Junior High, 74 percent of the student body
comes from failing elementary schools. At Chickasaw that figure is 56
percent.
This is not to say that the elementary schools are necessarily to
blame. The feeder pattern doesn’t always hold. Hamilton Middle School has five
feeder elementaries; Fairview Junior High has six. None of their feeder
schools is on notice, but both of the middle schools are. And Fairview Junior
High feeds into Central and White Station, both non-list high schools.
Hamilton Middle, on the other hand, feeds Hamilton High and Southside High,
both of which are on the list. There are no simple answers. The problem is
widespread, and since the more upper-level schools are on the list, students
are more likely to enter a failing school as they progess through the
system.
Even more disturbing is that the problem extends citywide.
“It’s almost an even distribution geographically,” says Archer.
“There’s not a pocket in Midtown or a pocket in North Memphis or South
Memphis where these schools are located. They’re pretty evenly distributed
throughout the city.”
Of the seven geographic school board districts within the system,
only District 2 had no schools on the list. That district, which includes
Richland Elementary and Overton High, has only one Title I school, which
suggests that the real problem is poverty.
At a meeting last Saturday, school board members discussed the
city’s culture of poverty, where parents aren’t concerned with their
children’s education and students do not understand that learning is their
responsibility.
“It starts at home,” says board member Michael Hooks
Jr. He tells of going to a school and seeing a parent trying to check a child
out of school for a medical appointment. “The parent couldn’t tell the
school secretary one of the child’s teacher’s names,” Hooks says.
“Not one.”
Even Watson, who holds himself as an example of someone who’s
overcome poverty, says, “The public school system cannot solve all the
ills of society. The public school system did not create this problem. Poverty
helped create this problem.”
On Notice, On Probation, On Reconstitution?
When Watson addressed a group of reporters the morning the state
announced its failing school list, he wouldn’t say that all the schools would
be off the list by 2004. What he said, instead, was that the district was
optimistic that in a few years many of the schools would no longer be on the
list.
With so many district schools listed and so many obstacles to
overcome, it would be miraculous if all 64 Memphis schools were off the list
in three years. Only six of the district’s schools were removed from the 26
named last year.
The state department of education is legally bound to produce a
list of low-performing schools every year before September 30th. Schools
listed then have a year “On Notice” to show improvement. If they
don’t, they are cited as “On Probation.” Schools that don’t improve
in two years are then supposedly subject to a state takeover.
State department of education commissioner Faye P. Taylor and
state school board members have all said publicly and privately that there is
little likelihood of a takeover. “Our intent is not a state
takeover,” says Holden. “We’re taking the data saying, ‘Hey, ya’ll
have a problem.’ Each of those problems is a child.”
“We’re just going year to year,” says Smith, of the
state’s accountability office. “We don’t have specifics yet.”
The first version of the law was so strongly worded that even a
district with only one failing school would automatically get taken over by
the state after the three-year probationary period. But an amendment that took
effect July 1st gives the state some discretion as to what path it chooses to
take with a district. It can still take over at the system level — whether as
a simple takeover or as a total reconstitution — or it can take over an
individual school. If a district takeover occurred, the state would have the
right to force the district to use funding for certain things and would have
control over many of the district’s decisions. Total reconstitution, on the
other hand, means that some, or all, of the school board and the
superintendent would be removed from their positions and a state-appointed
district manager put in place.
Right now, there are no plans either way. And at a recent Memphis
board and staff conference on the failing schools, even board members seemed
frustrated by the state’s lack of a clear plan.
“Last year, I asked [then state education commissioner]
Vernon Coffey to tell me what I’m not doing as a board commissioner to get our
schools off this list,” Hooks said. “I asked, ‘What are you, as the
state, going to do?’ He said, ‘We don’t have a plan.'”
If the state is wary of taking over a system, or even a school,
it might have good reason. There hasn’t been much research done of the
subject; what little there is is mostly anecdotal.
“You hear things like ‘We like it because the atmosphere is
better’ or ‘It’s terrible,’ because people resent having someone else come in
and make their decisions for them,” says Christie.
Proponents of state takeovers say it provides an opportunity for
the state and local governments to combine resources to improve education and
that it allows a competent executive staff to guide the implementation of
school improvement efforts. Those who oppose state intervention say that a
takeover implies that the state has the answers and that the process can
produce showdowns between state and local groups that actually slow student
improvement.
One of the success stories was a takeover in Logan County, West
Virginia, where local officials collaborated with the state government.
Students showed some improvement in test scores, and parents were in support
of the process. Doubters say that such a case isn’t hard evidence.
One of the problems is that there is no standard timetable for
state takeovers. Many can go on for years. In California, the Compton Unified
School District was taken over by the state, primarily for fiscal reasons. But
once there, state legislators decided they needed to address the district’s
test scores as well. That was in 1993. The district only very recently
regained partial control of its functions.
“That’s the argument behind reconstitution,” says
Christie. “If you don’t change the entire staffing of a dysfunctional
school, you can’t move ahead very quickly. On the flip side, there’s the
criticism which says that process doesn’t move very quickly either.”
An Education Commission of the States study done on the subject
in July 1998 and updated in March of this year, suggests that state takeovers
tend to be more effective at curing unwieldy bureaucracies than improving low
test scores. Some states have seen modest improvement in student achievement
after a takeover, but there can also be some chilling side effects.
“Despite these positive results,” reads the study,
“state takeovers have produced results to the contrary, such as the $70
million deficit incurred by the state-appointed administrators in Newark, New
Jersey, and the 10-day teacher strike in Detroit, Michigan, which occurred six
months after the mayor assumed control of the school district.”
The Team Plan
While the threat of a state takeover doesn’t seem a likely
possibility anytime soon, the intent behind that threat is very real.
“We’re going to be in serious trouble in about 15
years,” says Memphis school board commissioner Sara Lewis. “These
[students] are the people that are going to be making the decisions.”
Last year, after the first group of schools was put on notice,
Dr. Marieta Harris, associate superintendent of curriculum, instruction, and
school effectiveness for Memphis City Schools, got together with her staff and
developed a plan.
“They developed an instructional improvement initiative
[III] that involved teaming groups of district-level people with a team of
teachers from within each school,” says Archer. In October of last year,
the state sent staff members from the department of education to assist the
district, and they too were incorporated into the team.
Each team member spends time in the low-performing schools,
observing classes and taking down observed data. The original 26 schools will
receive 20 classroom visits every six weeks; at the newly identified schools,
that number is 30. During each visit, the team looks at everything from
instruction to technology to the paint on the walls.
“I don’t think there’s a school that’s been named where the
people in that school haven’t worked extremely hard,” says Archer.
“Whatever we’ve been doing has not been effective.”
The data from the observations will then be disseminated to the
principal to share with the school’s staff. It’s hoped that the data will help
strengthen weaknesses in the schools and reinforce positive methods.
“One of the problems with this whole process … is the
limited resources. Nobody has funded additional money to deal with low-
performing schools,” says Archer. “Everybody has had to scramble for
resources.” The team members from the district were not hired especially
for this project; they are people who already worked for the district and now
have an added responsibility.
“The state’s problem was that they developed this list of
low-performing schools and identified them, and then they had to figure out
how they were going to assist the districts they identified,” says
Archer.
What they came up with were grants where the criteria have been
shifted toward low-performing schools and “Exemplary Educators” —
retired, “highly successful” educators sent into the schools to
help.
“I think the Exemplary Educators were envisioned to go into
the more rural school districts that maybe don’t have the level of resources
that we have here and actually become the reform person. They would go into a
school and work with the principal and say, ‘I’m going to show you how to fix
this school,'” says Archer. Because Memphis already had a plan, the
Exemplary Educator’s role became that of a mentor or coach for some of the
district’s younger and more inexperienced teachers.
“When you start trying to point out why the students are not
achieving at the level they’re supposed to, it’s a very complicated and
complex question. That’s one of those where if you had an answer, you could
write a book, retire, forget it, and cure everything,” says Archer.
“The state doesn’t have the silver bullet either.”
But in every conversation on how to fix failing schools, there’s
an element of teamwork. The state is committed to working with the individual
districts. The city school system is committed to working with the state. Even
at East, Love says one of his goals is for the school staff to work better as
a team.
“What I look for first of all,” he says, “is
building a team and creating team spirit.”
Love might as well be speaking for the district. In the coming
weeks the superintendent and his staff are hoping to unveil their plan to make
the entire community part of the team.
“We can’t do it by ourselves. We can’t,” says Archer.
“I admit that up front. We need the support of the entire community to
get this job done.”
You can e-mail Mary Cashiola at cashiola@memphisflyer.com.
Memphis’ Failing Schools
Airways Middle
Booker T. Washington High
Brookmeade Elementary
Carver High*
Chickasaw Junior High
Corning Elementary
Cypress Junior High
Denver Elementary
Dunbar Elementary
East High
Fairley Elementary
Fairley High
Fairview Junior High
Frayser Elementary
Frayser High*
Geeter Middle
Georgian Hills Elementary
Georgian Hills Junior High
Graceland Elementary
Hamilton High
Hamilton Middle
Hawkins Mill Elementary
Hillcrest High*
Hollywood Elementary
Humes Middle
Kingsbury High
Lanier Junior High
Larose Elementary
Lester Elementary
Levi Elementary
Lincoln Elementary
Locke Elementary
Longview Middle
Manassas High
Melrose High
Middle College High
Mitchell High
Northside High
Oakhaven High*
Orleans Elementary
Raineshaven Elementary
Raleigh Egypt High
Raleigh Egypt Middle
Riverview Middle
Shannon Elementary
Sharpe Elementary
Sheffield Elementary
Sheffield High*
Sherwood Middle
Southside High
Spring Hill Elementary
Springdale Elementary
Treadwell Elementary
Treadwell High*
Trezevant High*
Vance Middle
Westhaven Elementary
Westside High*
Westwood Elementary
Westwood High
Whitehaven High
Whitney Elementary
Winchester Elementary
Wooddale High
* denotes schools on notice at both high and junior high levels