Today I met with a network in Philadelphia made up of “turn-around” schools. In other words, the schools in Philly that are failing to teach their students are taken over by amazing teachers and leaders. Within months, students who were not making progress for years are working successfully towards their grade level goals (and above in some cases). Sounds like a miracle in the works! Oprah even gave their 10 schools a million dollars each and if Oprah thinks it’s good, it must be! Of course, I love what this is all about and want to learn more about exactly how these challenges are met. How do you come into a failing school and change everything – from such things as the outside appearance (walls, decorations, desks, materials, etc) to the harder parts like curriculum, student, parent and teacher attitude, being able to actually see results and assessing these changes? What about those teachers who were working under their tenure and making no progress? I hope they don’t stay and most don’t. (Existing teachers are asked to interview and it’s decided on whether teachers are kept or not. I was politely told that most of them decide to go onto other city schools because they want to stay within the Philadelphia Public School System – *union, tenure, low accountability, others choose to move to a different school altogether, while on average, a handful of teachers stay and work under new the leadership – A+ for them! )
We Have Something in Common!! I like being in a good and fun-loving relationship!
I was asked to come in because my beliefs as a teacher relate very much to their beliefs as a school, particularly that I want to close the achievement gap. I was asked to explain more about my feelings towards the fact that there is indeed an achievement gap in education. My feelings range. There is a lot that I feel (literally, deep inside me) about the fact that education isn’t equal and that, finally, there is a solution to this problem, one that actually works nonetheless. I also have a very strong opinion for those who don’t “believe in” in the achievement gap, as if it were some legend or folktale that no one can prove. I have even stronger feelings towards those who think that there should be a difference between public schools.
It’s interesting, sad, pathetic (insert appropriate adj) how unaware society can be (I’ll choose interesting)
First, there needs to be an understanding of the fact that there is, indeed, a gap in success between students from low-income families and those who are better off. Believe it or not, there are people who will tell you that schools all over the country are exactly the same it’s just that the students and families in the failing schools don’t care. If it were that simple, there would have been significant changes made years ago and this problem would no longer be. We could all go home and sleep comfortably at night knowing that the education in America is right where it should be and all we have to do is convince people to care about their future.
There also needs to be an understanding as to why this inequality still exists. We can go back many years when the Supreme Court declared it was wrong to separate schools based on race, but that was only the first step towards actually making this dream of equal education a reality. It would be nice if it were that easy, but that’s like trying to ignore many years of history and act like they didn’t happen; like believing that by hitting a magic gavel and saying things need to change and then the next day they actually do. There is so much that needs to be addressed since then. I don’t think many people realize what kind of change really needs to take place in order to have an equal education for our children. There needs to be changes made that stem back many, many years. There have been attempts, but hardly any that have been successful.
How can we make it so everyone (no matter their income status) receives an amazing education? One even better than I received when I was a little girl because education should always be evolving…
There have been many ideas as how to fix this problem; laws created, such as specific objectives written as state standards for each grade and subject, assessing each student based on standardized tests (a type of assessment that has been proven to be the worst way to demonstrate understanding of a skill), paying teachers more for higher performance based solely on those student test scores, taking money from the failing schools and rewarding successful schools with more money, promising teachers a lifelong career within a school no matter their performance, eliminating new teachers when cuts need to be made simply because they had just entered into their careers and did not have “seniority”. There is a long list of what has already been attempted and in most cases, failed.
Have no fear! There is a solution that actually makes sense!
There are charter schools working their hardest to create this equal opportunity of education within any neighborhood for any child. Whether that means actually going into a failing school and revamping it with excellent teachers and leaders or building a school in a failing neighborhood where anyone can attend, changes are being made and proving results.
In short, a charter school is a privately run public school. They can be founded by parents, teachers, political figures, pretty much anyone who has a vision and determination. They are partially funded by the state and in most cases also funded by private donations. Anyone can attend. Charter schools must teach to the same state standards as public schools (they do not get any freedom as far as which standards to teach like a private school does), but are able to decide on how they teach these standards – I worked in an inner-city public school that forced me to use a program to teach reading that was so bad, I had to break the rules. Because charters need to be re-authorized every few years, it would be extremely hard to have a charter school that repeatedly fails their students. Why can’t we review and choose to re-authorize or not to re-authorize every public school?? Makes sense, but charter schools are held to a different standard of accountability. Oh how different every public school would be if that were the case for them!
One of the main reasons charter schools are effective is simply because every single person involved cares about providing students with an exceptional education (and maybe because there is accountability but I don’t necessarily agree with that 100% of the time). It takes too much hard work and dedication to have teachers who don’t truly believe in providing the best education. That is all you really need. If you have a central focus of giving all that you can, everything else falls into place. How you handle challenges, conflicts, and problems are all solved based around the idea that you will do anything you need to in order reform education. How can that fail? Why wouldn’t you want to support that?
Education in America is failing to teach children simply because not every child is succeeding. What do you think about the solution of charter schools? Do you agree with what I talked about above? What is your opinion?
