Since No Child Left Behind took effect in 2001, tens of thousands of our country’s schools have been tagged “persistently low performing” and “in need of improvement.” Here in NYS, those names are poised to change to the less punitive “priority” and “focus” schools, if the waiver applied for last month is approved by the US Department of Education. Do the names matter?

The cynical point of view is that some of the fundamental critiques of NCLB—that it points a finger instead of lending a hand, and that it sets an impossible target of 100% student proficiency by 2014—were not taken seriously until they began adversely affecting high-performing schools in more affluent districts. But there is a bit more going on behind this waiver story—and it raises difficult questions about the role of the feds in education. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been reading Hope and Despair in the American City: Why There Are No Bad Schools in Raleigh. And, like many others, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about our urban schools in Rochester and elsewhere and how we “fix” them.

In areas around New York and nationally, there seems to be precious little hope for resurrecting our urban schools and kids —and far too much despair. Dedicated people, much smarter and more creative than I, have been writing about and wrestling with this dilemma for years. Despite years of reform, study and advocacy, the problems remain, as most of the available solutions are constrained by limited resources available only within city boundaries—when community-wide solutions and resources are called for. Read the rest of this entry »

Ontario County’s discussion of regionalizing high schools has made a few headlines of late, and dovetails with potential policy moves at the state level. Part of the Rochester metro area, Ontario encompasses urban, suburban and rural communities. Its 760 square miles are home to nine school districts each with its own high school. In aggregate, these districts educate 5,500 students in grades 9-12, spending at least $50 million per year. Read the rest of this entry »

Closing failing schools and replacing them with new–hopefully better–schools is at the heart of the Portfolio Plan strategy in place in the Rochester City School District. It sure sounds appealing, especially to those who have long felt that education is a world shielded from the consequences of failure. But does it work?

The answer is critically important, not only for the obvious reason that we all want effective schools for children, but also because closing a school necessarily means dismantling a school community. Perhaps that community was dysfunctional, unhealthy, even dangerous, but it was still the daytime home for the students and staff members in it.

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Is college worth the money? This is a seasonal debate, prompted by parades of caps & gowns and the agonizing, “So what do I do now?” from grads burdened with big loans but tiny incomes.

Some facts about college cost are hard to nail down: One source (The College Board) reports that inflation-adjusted “net tuition”—the posted price less grants (called “discounts” in retail)—rose 47% for private four-year institutions from 95-96 to 07-08; for public institutions, the price increase was 34%. Yet another source (The College Board) reports that net tuition & fees actually fell 14% for public institutions and rose a relatively modest 17% for private four-year colleges and universities—over the same period. Read the rest of this entry »

Deep in the Rochester City School District’s 373-page proposed budget is a 27-page section of program profiles and budgets. In addition to outlining the expenses for a total of about $62 million in programs, the section makes the bold attempt to say something about what the programs are doing and how well they are doing it.

It’s not uncommon to find in a government or school budget some language about programs and some reference to performance metrics. But the level of detail attempted in this section is unusual and commendable. Each of 27 programs is briefly described, program objectives are listed, measures toward those objectives are reported, and expenses are listed not only by categories but also on a per-student basis.

The effort was clearly taken more seriously by some programs than others. There are a few where the listed objectives were precisely met in each of five years (which rarely happens in the real world, leading us to question their accuracy). Some programs had objectives as simple as increasing participation in the program. Rigorous evaluation was not evident everywhere.

But the principle established is important: that programs must have specific objectives, measure progress toward those objectives and report them in connection with their spending levels. While many programs report not meeting their objectives, others were heartening. Two examples: Read the rest of this entry »

The Rochester City School District community is in turmoil over the district’s budget proposal.  Conflict with the teachers union over the contract (and most everything else) adds fuel to the fire, and contributes to longstanding community distrust of the district and its numbers, fed by years of threatened and largely abandoned budget cuts.

Controversy is inevitable when significant spending cuts are involved. The anger and misunderstanding is deepened by leadership’s decision to fix longstanding budget inequities at the same time. The proposed shift to roughly equalize per-student funding across the district’s 60-some schools was poorly timed and badly explained to the public. The district put out apples-to-oranges comparisons that confounded the two issues of overall funding cuts and the new school funding model, leaving itself vulnerable to even more criticism than perhaps was warranted.

With all schools experiencing cuts, parents are in an uproar and no school felt enough like a winner to agitate for the plan. Using Facebook, blogs and other online tools for connecting, community opposition to the district’s proposal is perhaps better organized and more vociferous than it has ever been.

The troubled relations between district and union leadership have intensified the rhetoric and left the community experiencing a lot more heat than light. While Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard and Rochester Teachers Association President Adam Urbanski parse line items, the big picture and important facts are obscured, including an accurate understanding of how we got here. Read the rest of this entry »

Confronted by a Regents study declaring that only 5 percent of Rochester City School District graduates are college-ready, Jean-Claude Brizard declares the findings “terrifying.”

One of Brizard’s best qualities is his persistent willingness to look the facts in the face. Too often our education leadership—the district administration and the Board of Education—has been unwilling to state the obvious. It is a natural reaction: The task is herculean. The need is desperate. The consequences of failure are tragic. Read the rest of this entry »

Policy Review Part 4: Role of Culture in School Improvement

Excerpt from CGR Report

As the media tell the story, a war over education policy is being waged between anti-teacher, test-loving, business-minded crusaders and pro-union, anti-testing defenders of children.  The film Waiting for Superman, the Los Angeles Times release of test scores by teacher, and policy changes spurred by Race to the Top have fueled the conflict.

This education “culture war” forms the context in which Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard came to RCSD.

In many ways, culture change is the work of district reform.  And it is difficult to achieve.  An attack on organizational culture is personal for everyone involved, thus is more politically charged and more likely to ignite an emotional reaction.   It’s why winning hearts and minds of staff is so important.

Download report: Policy Review # 4 – Role of Culture in School Improvement

There are days when CGR gets my best. And days when it doesn’t. I care about our work and I’m committed to my colleagues, our trustees, our donors and our clients. But there are days when other priorities intrude. “Family comes first” is socially acceptable. But there are days when I can’t hide behind that. There are days, frankly, when I come first. That doesn’t make me evil. It just makes me human.

Teachers are human, too. They bring the same jumble of motivations to the classroom that I bring to CGR. There are days when the well-being of their students means everything to them. And there are other days when the challenges of work life and the frustrations of home life are simply too much—that’s the day for a movie or a guest speaker! The interests of teachers and students are related, but they are not the same.

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