Rhode Island Controversy
One of the big news stories this week is Central Falls High School in Rhode Island. The school district is under pressure from their state department of education to make some changes at the low performing school. This Providence Journal story describes the details.
The state’s tiniest, poorest city has become the center of a national battle over dramatic school reform. On the one side, federal and state education officials say they must take painful and dramatic steps to transform the nation’s lowest-performing schools. On the other side, teachers unions say such efforts undermine hard-won protections in their contracts.
“This is hard work and these are tough decisions, but students only have one chance for an education,” Education Secretary Duncan said, “and when schools continue to struggle we have a collective obligation to take action.”
Duncan is requiring states, for the first time, to identify their lowest 5 percent of schools — those that have chronically poor performance and low graduation rates — and fix them using one of four methods: school closure; takeover by a charter or school-management organization; transformation which requires a longer school day, among other changes; and “turnaround” which requires the entire teaching staff be fired and no more than 50 percent rehired in the fall.
State Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist moved swiftly on this new requirement, identifying on Jan. 11 six of the “persistently lowest-performing” schools: Central Falls High School, which has very low test scores and a graduation rate of 48 percent, and five schools in Providence. Gist also started the clock on the changes, telling the districts they had until March 17 to decide which of the models they wanted to use. Her actions make Rhode Island one of the first states to publicly release a list of affected schools and put into motion the new federal mandate.
Gallo and the teachers initially agreed they wanted the transformation model, which would protect the teachers’ jobs.
But talks broke down when the two sides could not agree on what transformation entailed.
Gallo wanted teachers to agree to a set of six conditions she said were crucial to improving the school. Teachers would have to spend more time with students in and out of the classroom and commit to training sessions after school with other teachers.
But Gallo said she could pay teachers for only some of the extra duties. Union leaders said they wanted teachers to be paid for more of the additional work and at a higher pay rate — $90 per hour rather than the $30 per hour offered by Gallo.
After negotiations broke down, Gallo said she no longer had confidence the high school could be transformed and instead recommended the turnaround model. Gist approved Gallo’s proposal Tuesday morning and gave the district 120 days to develop a detailed plan.
I suspect every education reformer who reads this story is smiling. While I’m sure there are probably circumstances where disfunction is so deeply entrenched that you need to replace the entire staff, I’m hopeful that the district will be able to identify those teachers who have something to offer their students, who should be hired back. I think most schools have a mixture of teachers whose skills range from poor to excellent.
The school certainly has significant achievement issues that cry out for reform. If you check out their GreatSchools.Net data, you’ll see that only 4% of their 11th graders are at grade-level in math compared to the state average of 29%. While their reading and writing scores are higher, they’re still well below the state average. Their graduation rate is an appalling 48%.
I’m glad to see that Rhode Island in general and this district in particular are taking school accountability seriously. Hopefully that sense of urgency and serious efforts to improve the achievement of these schools that are in the lowest 5% will migrate to some other states like California. Most students only get one chance at each grade. The adults in the mix need to stop accepting failure year after year in the same schools.
Melinda Gates: Education reform, one classroom at a time Unfortunate Name of the Day
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