By Steve Peha, Columnist
If you follow education – and you follow it on TV, the radio, the Internet or just about anywhere else – you probably think our schools are goin’ to hell in a handbasket. Truth is, it’s hard to tell, given the monkey business states have engaged in with their test scores.
One thing we’re sure about is that there are a whole bunch of bad schools out there. Apparently, we have 2,000 so-called “dropout factories†in our country, high schools that account for more than 50 percent of all the kids who don’t finish 12th grade. Then there’s the 5,000 “worst schools in America†that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has identified for immediate turnarounds.
What you probably don’t hear much about are good schools. And for the purposes of our argument, let’s say that a “good†school is any one where more than 90 percent of students pass all their tests. How many good schools are there? I’m not sure. Out of 100,000 schools in America, maybe 1 percent or 2 percent.
I’ve worked in a few of these schools. They’re usually in wealthy suburbs like Grosse Point, Mich. or Mercer Island, Wash. At least that’s where I’ve found them. In general, their kids are predominately white and exceedingly well prepared to enter kindergarten. Most of these kids could probably pass their tests without much schooling at all, such is the richness of their lives and the value their families’ place on academic achievement.
The problem with many of these good schools is that they never get much better. And why should they, with test scores near the theoretical maximum?
I can think of at least two reasons: (1) State tests are notoriously easy to pass, and many states have intentionally been making them easier with each passing year. So if your scores stay the same, chances are your learning may be going down. (2) Any organization that isn’t focused on getting better eventually begins to get worse. There’s simply no way to take something as complicated as a school or school district and put it in some kind of magical state where nothing ever changes. Absent serious efforts to improve, decline is probable. Absent any effort at all, entropy is all but guaranteed.
The toughest part of making good schools better is that most of the people who work in them think they’re already good enough. Change is hard, and who wants to do hard things when you know your district, state or the federal government will never call you on the carpet for your results?
In general, schools of all types – good, bad and in-between – only make changes when forced to do so by an outside agent. In high-performing suburban school districts, there are only three possibilities for this agency: the community, the parents and the school board.
While the community pays the bills, few community members have the energy and experience to move a school or district one way or another. Most people who live around good schools are just happy to have high property values. As for those powerful parents, most are busy advocating for their own children.
That leaves the school board. We elect board members as the community’s personal accountability system. This small group of people is given oversight of a district and the job of advocating for everyone.
In most districts, especially high-performing districts, school board members typically act as a rubber stamp for the superintendent. They’re not usually any more interested in changing things than anyone else is. But I think they have a vital role to play, if they’ll accept it, in banishing complacency about fixing problems most people don’t like to talk about, and in helping things that are good get even better.
A board member’s most direct responsibility concerns the superintendent: If a new superintendent is to be hired, the board does the hiring. If a change needs to be made, it’s the board that carries out this unenviable task as well.
All change requires leadership, and nothing is more effective than leadership at the top. Where board members do the most good is in spurring on reluctant district leaders to take strong, clear public positions on new initiatives and find succinct solutions to longstanding challenges.
Serving on a school board is time consuming, emotionally exhausting and it doesn’t pay. But board members have a perfect opportunity – and a unique responsibility – to make sure their districts are moving in the best possible direction for all students. In some cases, they may be the only agents of change in the community. That’s a lot to ask of unpaid volunteers. But if board members don’t get out in front of important issues, often no one else will.
Steve Peha is founder and president of Carrboro-based Teaching That Makes Sense Inc.
This column nails the problem in Chapel Hill: We desperately need a school board that will force change from the administration. We need a board that will face up to the failure of the administration’s implementation of differentiation — its utter refusal to offer teachers the adequate support needed to make differentiation work — and to the ways in which we have, for years, rested on our laurels instead of pushing for the very best that all our students can achieve, at every level. This year, with the board’s open seats and worthy candidates on the slate, we have a huge chance to fix this.
Good luck with that!
Administrators, particularly in education, are expert in defending the status quo.
Rule No. 1: When confronted with a problem, they refuse to acknowledge it.
Rule No. 2: When presented with a solution… (see rule No. 1).
I have to agree with your comment regarding “goood schools,” namely, “Most of these kids could probably pass their tests without much schooling at all, such is the richness of their lives and the value their families’ place on academic achievement.”
Communicating the truth regarding the phenomenol level of the talent pool to the outside world, college admissions officers for example, would diminish the illusion that the district is wholly responsible for the high performance.
Students are the worker bees that earn the accolades that the administrators are happy to claim as their own. But little consideration is demonstrated for the welfare of the bee.