Aaron Regunberg: A Tale of Two Ed Reforms

Friday, March 09, 2012

Aaron Regunberg, GoLocalProv MINDSETTER™

 

This week I heard two stories, one inspiring and one terrifying, that seemed to me to really effectively epitomize the diverging forces that make up America’s education reform debate. Because they struck me as such a study in contrasts, I wanted to share them here.

The first story I read was the tale of D.C. public school teacher Sarah Wysocki, who—despite being widely recognized as one of the most effective teachers at her school—was fired last year because her students’ scores on standardized math and reading tests did not increase as much as was expected (if you haven’t seen the Washington Post article on the issue, you can read it here).

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Wysocki seemed, by all accounts, to be a real force for good in her school and for the young people she worked with. In her May 2011 evaluation, Wsocki’s assistant principal wrote of his visit to her classroom, “It is a pleasure to visit a classroom in which the elements of sound teaching, motivated students and a positive learning environment are so effectively combined,” and urged her to share her methods with the rest of the school’s teaching staff. She drew praise from the school administration for her “new and innovative ways” of engaging families, and was commended by her assistant principal for “dedicating a truly exceptional amount of time towards partnering with [parents]” through invitations to class events and walking home students who lived nearby.

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If you read the whole article, you’ll get a better sense of the high regards Ms. Wysocki’s school community held her in. Bryan Dorsey, head of the school’s PTA in 2010-11 and father of a student in Wysocki’s class, described her to be “one of the best teachers I’ve ever come in contact with. Every time I saw her, she was attentive to the children, went over their schoolwork, she took time with them and made sure.” Speaking of the progress her fifth-graders were making in reading, one of Wysocki’sformer colleagues said, “It was celebrated within the school.”

But none of that really mattered. In July of last year, Wysocki was dismissed from her job. In August she filed an appeal, but her dismissal was upheld. Upon leaving she received a recommendation from her school’s principal, who endorsed her “without reservation” and described her as “enthusiastic, creative, visionary, flexible, motivating and encouraging.” Apparently those are not the traits we want to see in educators nowadays (or at least in educators who will be teaching low-income students of color). What we want to see is an ability to produce arbitrary test results fitted to a value-added assessment tool that the vast majority of experts agree to be faulty. Whether teachers are really doing their jobs, as Ms. Wysocki doubtlessly seemed to be, has been pushed into irrelevancy.

Transformation at Crenshaw High

Needless to say, that story got me feeling pretty low. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before I got a big reminder that despite it all, educators and youth across the country are engaging in the inspirational, innovative, and valuable work we need to create real education reform. What picked me up was a recent article (check it out here) about the school transformation process taking place at Crenshaw High School in South Los Angeles, which since its beginning in 2007 has led to a graduation rate increase of 23 percent and a 19 percent reduction in student suspensions.Of course, this hasn’t stopped the Obama administration from labeling Crenshaw as “persistently failing”because oflow test scores. But Crenshaw’s test scores don’t tell the whole story (I wonder if any school’s really do).

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Labels like “failing” fail to convey the exciting movement that has formed at Crenshaw. Frustrated by constant administrative turnover (five principals in nine years!) and wave after wave of short-lived reform attempts, veteran Crenshaw teachers designed a transformation model that avoided strategies like mass staff layoffs or teacher merit pay tied to student test scores and instead “focuses on creating a new curriculum to show students how education can improve not only their lives but also their struggling neighborhood.”

According to the article, “Crenshaw’s reform plan breaks the school up into teacher-led ‘small learning academies’ with themes such as ‘business’ and ‘social justice.’ Within each academy, teachers work together to create interdisciplinary units built around community problem-solving.

Last semester, the 10th-grade Social Justice Academy focused on school improvement across L.A. For their final project, students had to analyze a data set that included test scores at various schools; neighborhood income levels; school truancy rates; and incarceration rates.In math, students graphed the relationship between income and social opportunity in various south L.A. neighborhoods. In social studies, they read conservative and liberal proposals for school reform and practiced citing data in their own written arguments about how to improve education. In science, students designed experiments that could test policy hypotheses about how to improve education. And in English class, they readOur America, a work of narrative non-fiction about life in the Ida B. Wells housing projects on the South Side of Chicago.”

Instead of basing their plan on the newest, unproven reform fad of the week, the Crenshaw community is striking at the root of the problem. We know, from a significant body of research, that students drop out because they don’t find school relevant to their own lives, because they don’t believe school is actually teaching them the things they need to know to survive and succeed in the challenging worlds they inhabit. What better way to address this problem than asking students to engage directly and critically with the social forces shaping their own lives in their own communities?

And, perhaps more importantly, what better way to ensure that the education students receive actually means something? What frustrates me the most about the current ed reform debate—as exemplified so well by the policies of “no excuses” charters—is the focus on helping students “escape” poverty and their communities, to “get out” and join the professional world and never look back. But an education like that has never and could never have the power to help pull a neighborhood out of poverty. If we really want education to be a force for transforming our nation as a whole, then students have to understand how education can help them be more effective advocates for their families or communities. Somehow, despite all the challenges, Crenshaw High School in South L.A. is doing just that.

I think these two stories serve as effective microcosms for the divergent forces currently struggling over the future of the American education system. They emanate from different values and have different end goals. And I just don’t know how compatible they are with one another. I’m not exactly trying to quote old Pete Seeger and ask, “Which side are you on?” But I do think recognizing the differences and the real conflicts in the education reform debate is crucial if we’re going to begin to work towards the education system our students deserve.

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