The Takeover of Wilmington Public Schools
This issue has been percolating for awhile, especially since this was announced by the Governor’s office as a Major Education Initiative — and it turns out that this isn’t about education, but about moving around teachers and school leadership to continue to pretend to do something about Wilmington’s failing schools. The NJ writes about this today:
The Delaware Department of Education says six low-income schools in Wilmington are failing, and the way to fix them is to make the more than 200 teachers reapply for their jobs – and to hire elite principals at each school who won’t have to follow most district rules while earning annual salaries of $160,000.
Mark Murphy, secretary of education, says it’s necessary for teachers to reapply for their jobs to ensure that every educator in the six “priority” schools has the commitment and skill to improve student achievement, as measured by the state’s standardized tests.
Teachers and school leadership are evaluated to a fare-thee-well on at least a yearly basis — how is it that this effort to replace school personnel isn’t accompanied by some data that shows just how ineffective they are? I don’t doubt that there are some bad apples here and there, but an entire building? That just tells me that all of the effort to evaluate and push school personnel towards some higher performance simply has not worked. And why would the DOE just notice that it hasn’t worked? (Assuming that it hasn’t — we have no data on this still.) The Delaware DOE (and Red Clay and Christiana) have been on board with the effort to create separate but unequal schools, and now the *unequal* schools are an entrepreneurial opportunity for somebody. Absent any real evidence that the local school staff is seriously lacking, why not just start with empowering the people who are already doing the heavy lifting in these schools with the additional freedom to create a better school?
You only have to see how this works by looking at Philadelphia. Their public schools have not only been at risk for some time (with a state takeover), but middle class parents in Philly are starting to make their way out of the city. Which is pretty heartbreaking for a city that has worked very hard to entice folks back into the city. In some areas, you can see parents banding together to make sure that a neighborhood school thrives, and in others you see parents left out in the cold from the lotteries that get some kids into better schools. Philadelphia is turning into a place where it can be really fun to live, but really tough to get a good education for your kids. Wilmington famously is trying to figure out how to get 5000 people to move into the city — but I don’t see any of the folks involved in that effort dealing with making the schools the kind of places that people move to the city for. Instead, we have a multiple agendas at play here, few of them focused on genuine improvements to the educational experience for city kids.
This really is not rocket science. And it does not help that the State is pointing to charters that serve high-poverty kids as a model. As long as you start with a school that can choose its students, you are never comparing apples with apples. The kids at the schools that the state is targeting are the kids that can’t get to charters. So the challenges are even more concentrated. Yet there are models for changing high-poverty school achievement and all of them work in varying ways to help close the opportunity gap that is always present for high-poverty students. And closing that opportunity gap requires better resources for these schools. Whether it is wrapping the right social services around a student(and/or family) to make it easier for that student to walk in the door ready to learn or educational strategies that are focused on learning based on each student’s real needs (rather than the need of the administration for all to pass a test) or building the kinds of programs that suburban counterparts have access to, there are plenty of models of transformation of schools and even whole districts out there that don’t rely on privatization.
And where were the parents in all of this? I didn’t see parents at the press conference, but I would expect that people who keep mouthing the words “empowering parents”, that they would have arranged to make this announcement and be available to discuss this takeover in rooms full of Wilmington parents. Boston actually sent Harvard University out to figure out what their parents wanted in schools. Who is it in the current set of decision-makers here who are paying attention to Wilmington parents and Wilmington taxpayers? I don’t think that anyone is — given the Markell Administration’s serious disconnect here. On the one hand, Gov. Markell championed development incentives for downtowns (including Wilmington) and on the other hand can’t quite grapple with the kinds of schools that will support a thriving city. The question to ask Gov. Markell and Secretary Mark Murphy is what change would need to happen at (insert the name of any one of the 6 targeted schools) for them to feel comfortable in sending *their* kids there. I’d bet money there’d be alot of dancing around that question.
A takeover of these schools won’t get you to where these schools need to be. You can look at the takeover in Philadelphia for how that story plays out. I’m of the opinion that the kids in the city schools need some additional support — art and music classes, more tutoring, smaller class sized, more personal assessments and focus on learning, but also help for their parents in how to support a learning environment. The latter is key — no more dissing a lack of parental involvement, provide some training in what that looks like and how to do it. What other support services does that child and child’s family need? Dealing with these issues is about helping to close the opportunity gap, which is crucial for these students. The state’s DHSS is ground zero for many of these services (or could be) and I’m at a loss as to why better supports for these kids aren’t on offer, since that is a resource the state controls and can direct to this population. It would be more productive than trying to take over these schools.
Tags: Delaware Education
As you know, I was at the unveiling of this plan. One other point that was emphasized again and again was parent accountability. I kept wondering how one would make parent’s accountable. Charters are able to do this (mandating volunteer hours, having parents sign agreements) because they can kick kids out (counsel out). But how would a public school accomplish this? Well… one way would be to take over these schools and make them charters.
Which raises a ton of questions. Since charters don’t, and won’t, take everyone where would the city children who didn’t get into (or were counseled out) the charter attend school.
What would happen to attendance zones? Would they even exist since charters are all choice schools?
I also attended the Red Clay School Board Meeting last week. It looks like Christina and RCCD won’t be signing the MOU. Of course, that could change, but they seemed pretty adamant. What happens (if anything) if these districts don’t sign the MOU?
Making teachers re apply for jobs is a corporatist dick move that does nothing but throw an already bad situation into chaos by freaking out the teachers. Shocking, I know, considering its coming from Markell and his clueless DoE lackey.
Reapplying is just a way to look busy doing something without addressing bigger issues.
You could have the best teachers in the free world in a classroom with a 10:1 ratio but if you have parents that don’t care, can’t care or just plain aren’t there you are still going to have failure. At some level a school only moves as well as the community it serves.
Fear not, however, as Markell has a horrible record with initiatives. He has a tendency to announce then walk away.
As I understand it, these schools are all in the city limits of Wilmington, the same area plagued by poverty and violence. Poor education feeds into both those problems. The local school districts have been unable to fix the situation. The city government is an ineffectual joke. Markell is at least doing something.
Wilmington is not the only area plagued by poverty and violence in Delaware. The city government has no responsibility for schools and I do think that school boards are complicit in the failure of these schools. Doing something is being done every few years in these schools and this is one of a long line is *fixes* that these schools are subject to. He might be doing something but he isn’t doing anything smart here, and certainly isn’t doing anything that gets to the classroom, which is what counts.
as you know, he is addicted to competitive grants. both programs will fail.
“Fear not, however, as Markell has a horrible record with initiatives. He has a tendency to announce then walk away.”
Only with shame, transparency & public outcry. Time for DSEA, parents & the public school board to team up with the NAACP, ACLU & other and get down to Dover! Local control is a must-otherwise there is no Democracy in Education. Just a Corporate Takeover of another Commodity-our ‘Precious Children.’
Education is the Civil Rights Issue of Our Day!
FYI-the National Urban League supports ‘Common Core’. –follow the $$$
Time to take Action.
From my personal experience, The National Urban League is pro-charter. I met with them over a decade ago about our city schools and they didn’t lift a finger to help – their collective shrug was audible. Their next leader was also a major advocate of putting Prestige Charter into Warner. This takeover of our schools has been going on for a long time. This is simply the next step.
God forbid we actually try smaller class sizes, attractive programs and equitable funding.
When are we going to admit that charter schools are funneling away too much money and the best students from the public school system and leaving public schools in ruins? Our children become winners or losers because of a lottery, a fucking LOTTERY! (Sorry, Jr., but you’re earmarked for failure because you lost the LOTTERY). But what would you expect from a state that takes money away from children and gives it to casinos (Kent County Sports Complex).
Delaware is becoming a craphole under these policies and our children, the ones who aren’t lottery winners, are paying the price.
” Local control is a must-otherwise there is no Democracy in Education. ”
Oh, bullshit. We’re talking about schools in which parents can’t come to back-to-school night, let alone exercise control. It’s a recipe for top-down mischief, or does nobody here remember Wendell Howell?
How long has it been since people have started complaining about our crappy education system? And why are the proposed solutions the same things in new packaging? Our publicly-funded choices are all standardized test-driven, age-segregated assembly lines, except some have a more corporatist approach to management. Aside from updating the subject material, I don’t think that we’ve come very far from the one room schoolhouse with the authoritarian at the chalkboard.
So, why is it that we force kids into an environment where they’re told what to learn, when, for how long, how, and with whom? Maybe I’m guilty of sample bias, but no one in my adult life learns best this way. Why do we think kids will? When was the last time that we honestly reassessed our model of education? And why do we continue to think that fiddling at the margins is going to change what seems so clearly outdated?
I’m glad you brought up the educational situation in Philadelphia – there’s actually a great group of people that are trying to address these questions through a democratic structure of schooling, and I think that they’re probably on to something. http://www.phillyfreeschool.org/
We know that it takes more resources to educate poor kids because of variety of reasons including (a) home life; (b) neighborhood violence; (c) lack of access to technology; (d) cognitive effects of chronic borderline nutrition; (e) school-changing, etc. etc. etc.
We need a way to focus those resources and (this being Delaware) to make charter schools part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
Here’s one possibility: change the funding count so that low-SES kids are counted as 1.5-2.0 in the unit count. Provide that local school community boards composed of parents and teachers determine how to spend the additional funds over and above the basic teaching units. If they want more teachers, fine; if they want computers or Odyssey of the Mind–it’s their call. Allow the additional funding to follow students into charter schools (trust me, they’ll compete to get it) with the provision that any child expelled or counseled out during the year requires a complete repayment to the state of all of funds dispersed in that school year on behalf of the child.
If you don’t think I can’t find places in the DOE budget to mine for the funds to do this, you’d be wrong.
Steve’s another fiddler. If only we can just change the incentives, the Prussian model can still be relevant 200 years later. Industrial revolution era reforms for everyone!
Actually, Steve is addressing some of the things that have real impacts in schools. By using his strategy, it leverages the existing systems to make it better for a school to have poor kids, which is really what we want. From a traditional public school standpoint, that would be to make the environment better overall to cancel out many of the inherent disadvantages of working in a city school (higher taxes, parking woes, a perceived lack of security). And from a charter perspective, we are talking about an incentive to choose low-income students AND keep them on the books.
@painesme
According to your prescription, even what charter schools are doing is fiddling around the edges. And while I’d agree with you in theory, here’s the grim reality: the political imagination and the legal ability to make those kinds of changes don’t exist in the current political system, and too many people and corporations are making BILLIONS of dollars on perpetuating the existing system. Even if the fundamental change you’re talking about had been researched and proven (more on that below), and even if you had the political power to enact it, the transition would still leave millions (thousands in Delaware) of kids behind while you implemented a utopian system. What are you planning to do with the kids in the system right now?
As for what seems to work in education there’s a lot more research on that than you’d probably believe, but you have to first get around the research that has been funded by the government and the corporations who explicitly want to see more of the same.
What little there is out there on designing educational systems that work suggest that the route goes through decentralization (the flattening of hierarchy the internet was bringing us) and changing the very nature of the teaching profession. I’m all in favor of that for the future, but that still doesn’t answer the question: what to do today and next week?
I’ve put on my protective gear before stating that, to some degree, I agree with the Governor’s approach. These schools are failing and they were failing before charter schools were on the scene. Everything should be on the table – evaluate teachers, administrators, facilities,transportation, ancillary services, etc. There are bad teachers and bad administrators and they should go. This shrill attacking of the government isn’t going to bring about any improvements either. Everyone needs to get honest about this situation.
These schools are failing and they were failing before charter schools were on the scene.
Actually pandora and cassandra have been quite specific about when and how those schools started failing, and about whose decisions were involved. Nor did those school have such high minority and high poverty stats 10-12 years ago.
I don’t think it is in any way anti-government to suggest (as the News Journal did) that the actions by the DE DOE were “heavy handed and bureaucratic” or that the current plan (as developed in the “MOU”) has about as much chance of succeeding at I have of learning to ice skate next July. (And, trust me, there’s damnall little chance of that.)
Want honesty? Let’s start by discussing the fact this “Priority Schools” plan appears to be intended to fail, so that the State can simply follow the pattern of Washington DC and Newark NJ–convert the whole damn city into a series of for-profit charters, declare victory, and turn the kids there into a profit center for corporations.
I’ll get honest by saying that the the reasons these schools are failing was due to the districts and school boards deliberately destroying these schools. Up until the opening of Brandywine Springs, Warner and Highlands were rated as top schools. The Governor doesn’t know the history – or is ignoring it.
Red Clay deliberately created high poverty schools. It was part of their plan. To pretend that these schools “just failed” is naive. Choice, charters and the NSA were designed to make them fail. What we’re facing today is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Then again, I lived this and saw exactly what these districts and school boards did. None of this is an accident.
One of the small things lost in the shuffle.
Jack stated twice at the press-show that there was nothing in writing… I’ll quote: “(1) There is nothing in writing. (2) There is nothing in writing.”
Apparently over 50% of Delaware’s midnight oil was burned that evening, for on the next day an 165 page accompanying document was dropped on each school’s administrative staff as well as the MOU.
Three things are possible.
A. The governor does not know what the DOE is doing.
B. The governor lied about what the DOE is doing.
C. Or we are all crazy and 165 pages and a MOU are “nothing in writing”. Maybe because they are stored on bytes, and not in file cabinets, therefore it is technically not “in writing”? Gee. I don’t know.
Can someone explain or redirect to a link showing in small detail how Brandywine Springs impacted the three now priority schools.
2nd Question for Christina followers: Is there an equivalent on the Christina side?
Thanks in advance.
You’re ignoring the fact that those schools succeeded when they had different, better-off, student bodies. The poor students who now make the schools look bad would have been in a different school, making that one look bad instead. Poor students are, as a group, the lowest-achieving students, and everyone in the system knows it.
As a result, public education has followed the practices of private health-insurance: Your best route to success is to slag off the truly needy onto someone else. So we have educators engaged in this endless dance of trying to avoid being stuck with a school full of poor kids. Everyone knows the poor kids will fail, they just want to avoid the blame for it, because avoiding blame is easier than educating poor kids.
“Can someone explain or redirect to a link showing in small detail how Brandywine Springs impacted the three now priority schools.”
Go look at the Delaware Online School Profiles – click the details.
The year before Brandywine Springs opened Warner was 34% low income and Highlands was 44.8 (Shortlidge was always high poverty). Follow the years form there and you’ll have your answers.
Bus these at risk children from fatherless households out into the suburbs and bus the suburb kids into the Wilmington schools. Mix them all up! Where’s Murray Schwartz when we need him?
So let me see if I got this right…
Two award winning schools, suddenly have a new school open which sucks out their top students.
The same leadership, staff, structure, and money remains in place at those award winning schools.
Without top students, the scores now rest on the bottom so it has now become entirely the fault of that same award-winning leadership, staff, structure and money spent. So Mark Murphy is proposing that we a) get rid of the award winning staffs, b) bring in a money grubbing private investor, c) stock the schools with untrained Teacher of America graduates, and d) pay off someone with $160,000 a year salary to take the fall and move to Florida when we finally officially fail and turn these over to charters?
Is that what Pandora just said?
That makes mockery of the entire arrangement… Because obviously the issue is poverty.
Ok, Walt. I’ll bite.
>Bus these at risk children from fatherless households out into the suburbs and bus the suburb kids into the Wilmington schools. Mix them all up! Where’s Murray Schwartz when we need him?
1. Murray Schwartz is dead.
2. The “at risk” children from “fatherless households” were largely from 2 parent WORKING households in 1979-80, when busing was first mandated.
3. Nearly all parties agree that forced busing was an educational failure. Schwartz might disagree, but he’s dead. That doesn’t mean he made the wrong decision. Please review the U.S. Constitution and all other applicable laws and tell me how any HONEST person could have decided otherwise.
4. Go fuck yourself, you ignorant jackass. If you want to make a point, do it with facts.
The problems in these schools won’t be fixed by having the teachers sign a new-fangled “Loyalty Oath” and I can’t even believe that’s on the table. Nor will they be fixed by paying an administrator top dollar. Administration we got. If we paid union teachers to teach class sizes appropriate to the population…which means more like private school numbers, max 20 in any class, we’d begin to get a handle on it. If we made sure they were all getting 3 squares a day, and provided safe, wired, places to study in the afternoons, we’d be helping. But no one gives a big enough d#mn about these kids to do something like that, and it has neither a corporate tie-in or a bunch of fancy metrics to draw in our leaders, so it won’t happen. Oddly enough, I ran across this today. Tell me it doesn’t sound all too familiar. Tell me eliminating all the authority of elected school boards empowers the stakeholders. Sometimes they’re awful, school boards. But they live in the neighborhood. http://www.delaforum.com/2000/newsfront/stories/lapinzskitext.htm
Pandora knows. This is a “made” thing. Can’t be fixed until there’s no incentive to exploit the people any more.Or no ability to.