Caesar Rodney Institute Loves Jack Markell’s Schools Plan… ’nuff said
I have to admit that I have not been paying much attention to the “priority schools” discussion, but if Delaware’s radical wing-nut “think tank” likes it, Markell must have concocted the Ebola/ISIL of school reform plans.
The Markell Administration’s reform plan could
help all Delaware students succeedThe establishment of a plan to turn six of Delaware’s lowest performing public schools into “priority schools” has provided the education establishment with an opportunity to implement reform for the entire public school system.
If the Markell Administration’s initiative succeeds the state’s public schools will have a readily-available blueprint for success for the First State.
Looks like Markell plans to spend the final two years of his administration destroying what’s left of public education in Delaware. Never mind that Markell, and Carper before him, have been wrong on education every step of the way.
But the corporate backers and ‘think-tank’ propagandists are with him. (BTW, looks like Markell’s auditioning for a role as a national ‘spokesman’ for ‘education reform’ upon his departure from office. After all, chasing money, whether ‘good’ or ‘bad’, is what Markell does best.)
It’s time to put pressure on the General Assembly to stand up to the Governor on this issue. Before he becomes head of the Rodel Foundation…
It’s such a perfectly concocted idea that the only thing missing from the priority schools initiative is an actual plan other than “fire everyone!”
In November 2012 I wrote:
Mike O. said this at the same time:
Ed Reformers were very smart. They knew that starting with the city would create suburban apathy (and even some rejoicing) and I have no doubt that we’ll be seeing Priority Schools heading to suburbia – which really means more charters and privatization. I’m not sure we can stop it because we’ve probably waited too long.
For 19 years, Ron Russo, CRI’s new education demagogue, has been singing the same old song. He’ll tell anyone who will listen how instrumental he was in helping the late Mike Ferguson write the original draft of the charter school regulations he cites in his CRI piece and he laments how the General Assembly did not see fit to incorporate all those regulations into the original legislation. Then Russo went on to lead the new Charter School of Wilmington, skimming the best and the brightest of the traditional public school crop via an entrance exam that he says really wasn’t an entrance exam.
Make no mistake, Russo’s vision is every school a charter school, and what he’s rooting for here is not an improvement of the priority schools under current or interim management but rather an unprecedented takeover by the governor so they all can be turned into charters.
News Journal editorial writer John Sweeney has been a Russo lackey ever since his kids attended CSW. Couple Sweeney’s homage for Russo with the paper’s adoration of the governor and you can bet that what’s left of the state’s largest media outlet will stand foursquare behind the priority schools plan as it sucks money from school budgets into consultants’ pockets while having minimal impact on student achievement.
Full Article
Why we should care about “Priority Schools”
*Editor’s note: This is Ron Russo’s debut article as the Senior Fellow of the Center for Education Excellence.
The establishment of six priority schools to turn around Delaware’s lowest performing schools has provided the education bureaucracy with an opportunity to implement a systemic change for the entire public school system. If the new methods of operation prove effective for these targeted schools, then the new methodology should be adopted throughout the system. I am referring to how the schools operate and not their specific curriculum, procedures, etc. Those areas are to be determined by the individual school.
While the Red Clay and Christina School Districts will soon be discussing alternative agreements with the Delaware Department of Education, a look at the DOE’s original Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) provides insights to the proposed changes. Some of the provisions bear a resemblance to the “Charter School Act of 1995”that also was intended to foster systemic change.
Under its statement of principles the MOU says, “Persistently low performing schools need autonomy to identify and build programs and capacity that address their specific needs. Decisions regarding curriculum, instructional practices, schedule, and length of day should be made at the school as part of a comprehensive improvement plan. In exchange for that autonomy, school leaders are accountable for substantially improving school performance.” The original 1995 DOE draft of charter school regulations prepared by Mike Ferguson, State Superintendent of Public Schools, said such things as, “Reliance on bureaucratic decisions would be a thing of the past” and “Teachers…can minimize the bureaucracies that perhaps once stifled their creativity” and “…empower local communities to try new, unique solutions to problems that are facing their own schools”. The concept of local control is not new. The reality will be.
In his April presentation sponsored by the Rodel Foundation of Delaware, “What Delaware can learn from the Rest of the World”, Andreas Scheleicher, a member of Rodel’s International Advisory Group and a director of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), used graphs to show the positive effect of local, front-line autonomy. When this school autonomy includes distributive leadership that involves teachers in the decision making process student performance is increased. Together they work to create a culture of high expectations. Many of the expected changes in the priority schools are covered in Scheleicher’s April presentation, “How Delaware compares with the rest of the world” which you can read at http://www.rodelfoundationde.org.
This new authority includes hiring and dismissing all staff, arranging the school calendar and school schedule, designing curriculum aligned to Delaware standards, and employing instructional practices and methodology. The schools will have autonomy from any district requirements not mandated by state or federal law.
Finances are also locally administered. Additional funds are available and according to the MOU each priority school has the “right to develop and implement its own school budget and expenditure plan.” How the funds are used is critical. The key issue is not so much the total amount of funding as it is how the funds are allocated. The CATO Institute cites the fact that student performance has remained stagnant over the last 40 years while per pupil funding has tripled. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that only 52% of public education expenditures are spent on instruction. The Heritage Foundation recommends systemic education reforms that improve resource allocation and encourages effective school leadership.
The critical role played by the school leader is universally recognized. According to the MOU “without quality leaders, schools will not improve”. The principal’s compensation “should be no less than $160,000”. The selection process will be a rigorous one. Any candidate selected by a district will require the approval of the state. For teachers the school will devise a “salary scale and criteria for additional compensation.” If this priority school effort is successful in raising student performance would it not be reasonable to use it as a model for all public schools? Perhaps we should consider more autonomy and school-wide bonus programs across the board.
At the Vision Coalition Conference on October 29, 2014 Governor Markel commented on the fact that within districts teachers with seniority can choice into a school when a vacancy occurs. He pointed out that not a single teacher in the priority schools had made that selection into the school. The Governor told the audience that if no agreement was reached with the Red Clay and Christina School Districts he had only three options. He could close the schools, convert them to charter schools, or turn them over to a school management company. It would be a difficult decision but it was one he was ready to make.
The success of the priority schools will provide a benefit for all Delawareans. As the operational lessons learned are dispersed among all schools and the education of our students is significantly increased the economic climate will improve. New businesses will be attracted; property values will go up, crime rates will go down, etc. This “priority school” endeavor is not just for the City of Wilmington anymore.
Ron R. Russo, Senior Fellow
http://caesarrodney.org/index.cfm?ref=30200&ref2=489
“The Markell Administration’s reform plan could help all Delaware students succeed.”
Nice focus group tested wordsmithing. But, no. No it won’t. I agree with El Som, Markell has gotten it wrong every step of the way on education (and the environment, business, and infrastructure).
There is a saying in Delaware education circles regarding testing, for example. “Stop weighing the pig, its not getting any fatter.”
They’re going to keep messing around and continue to lose good educators to neighboring states (that already pay higher and aren’t that far) or to the private sector. This is a bad plan, based on bad premises.
One thing is for sure – whether it’s Markell’s plan, or the Legislature’s plan, or the DoE’s plan, or whoever is pulling the lever’s plan, continuing to just throw money at the problem is not fixing it and will not fix it in the future.
Education has become a cash cow from Head-Start all the way up through Higher Ed.
This is all eventually going to come down to public school districts vs. charter schools. Only problem with that is the fact that charter school parents are starting to wise up to the fact that things aren’t what they seem with charters (see the recent situation at Providence Creek Academy for evidence of that). When these parents start demanding changes the charter schools can’t or won’t be able to accommodate, the shit will hit the fan!
The greatest irony of the original priority schools MOU is that while its statement of principles says it intends to give more resources and greater autonomy to the local schools, it does precisely the opposite. To wit:
1. It creates an extra layer of upward accountability, not just to the district but to DOE.
2. It makes DOE and not the community the entity responsible for determining what constitutes a successful school; while theoretically a school could try “any” plan, it is actually allowed only to attempt plans that will raise high-stakes test scores. Other valuable objectives (reducing student truancy, providing magnet programs, etc.) are automatically subordinated by DOE (not the community) to ancillary and not central importance.
3. It puts in a token amount of resources while pretending otherwise. The amount of money per year per school is the equivalent of paying for 1.5 more teachers per school, which–while being a good thing–is hardly a transformational reinforcement of resources. For example, most of these schools have faculties of 25-30 people, so adding 1.5 positions certainly isn’t revolutionary.
In other words, in Newspeak the DOE assertion of an emphasis on local autonomy is a double-plus-ungood fiction.
Steve,
I am hearing a burgeoning voice in the community for ceding the 6 schools to the state to watch them do what they do to schools in trouble: privatize, charterize, or close them
Am I hearing this right, WE (liberal, democrats, republicans, green party, etc) agree that Markell’s idea on education, IS BAD. Numerous educators, the teachers that work in the trenches. Feel that “Common Core” is NOT working! I’m impressed, we are working together, let our voices be heard, as one for education, for the students!
Now, can we tackle the Bloom Energy debacle?? I’m sorry, one issue at a time!