Deja Vue, Again: Can Failing Schools Be Revived – the Endless, So Far, Futile Quest

/ At last Monday’s Board of Regents Meeting the State rolled out the “new” plan to “reimagine accountability” and revive struggling schools, schools in the lowest assessment categories, Targeted School Improvement (TSI) and Comprehensive School Improvement (CSI). Read the report here 

Unfortunately most CSI and TSI schools are well below resuscitation, and for decades magic bullets have been duds. A host of organizations has enriched themselves and squandered public dollars promising the golden ring.

I served on SURR teams, the previous school accountability system, Schools Under Registration Review. If the school fails to improve it can be restructured or closed. Under the Bloomberg/Klein regency 150 schools were closed, actually restructured into  4-6 small schools in the same building with new staffs, from 120 large comprehensive high schools into almost 500 small theme-based high schools.

 The SURR team lead by a BOCES Regional Superintendent, a principal, subject area specialists, a principal and a teacher union rep and a parent rep. I served as the union rep on many teams. We spent a week in each school, observed every classroom, interviewed everyone who agreed to be interviewed and in the evening beginning to write a findings/recommendations report based on a State template and at the end of the week reported back to the staff our findings and recommendations. The state “massaged” our recommendations and issued a final report, an SED staffer occasionally visited the school.

Sad to say, very little changed in the schools, in spite of the brilliance of our reports. a list of recommendations and some professional development sessions can not turn around years of neglect.

The identified schools student bodies usually had high rates of chronic absenteeism as well as high poverty risk load factors. The Center for NYC Affairs report  “A Better Picture of Poverty: What Chronic Absenteeism and Poverty Risk Load Factors Reveal About NYC’s Lowest Income Elementary Schools” (Read here)  lays out in detail the out of school and in-school factors impacting student achievement. 

Community Schools,  schools that provide a  range of social services. integrating social services into schools is an excellent approach and the identified schools are not community schools.

There are schools whose data improved, they discharged students, moved students to GED programs, sort of an “addition by subtraction” approach.

The plan rolled out by the State is similar to the SURR plan and will have as little actual impact. The State plan violates two immutable rules of personal and organizational change.

* Imposed changes are perceived as punishment, and

* Participation reduces resistance

“We’re from the State we’re here to help you” is not greeted with applause.

The portrait of a TSI/CSI school is chronic absenteeism, high poverty, below grade test scores, a remediation centric curriculum and many poverty risk load factors as well as high staff turnover: a formula for educational disaster.

Districts with CSI/TSI schools are also districts with the lowest student per capita funding.

Perhaps changes in the Foundation Aid Formula will drive dollars to the neediest schools in the neediest districts. 

Lets talk about it after November 5th.