As the first year of school turnarounds at scale comes to a close, we are bound to read of more failures such as the infamous restart of Central Falls High School in Rhode Island.
Bureaucrats often take a good idea such as "Restorative Practices," but because they are so convinced that teachers' "low expectations" are the problem, implementation becomes a joke. One reason why Dale Dearnley quit teaching at Central Falls was the shallow implementation of an idealistic disciplinary system that revealed students enjoyed going to the "Restorative Room" because "they can socialize with their friends, [and] joke around with a so-called 'behavior specialist.'"
Fair is fair, though, and we should honor leaders who respect the moral core of students, and do the hard work required to create safe and orderly schools. Apparently it took ten years for Dr. Bertie Simmons to turn around Furr High School, in Houston, but when violence spun out of control, the hand-picked principal decided against expelling gangbangers. Instead, "She took 32 gang members, none of whom had ever been on an airplane, to Ground Zero. They saw the empty footprints. They walked the hallowed ground. They prayed in Trinity Church. Dr. Simmons also took them to the United Nations, to Chinatown, to Central Park, to the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. They even saw a Broadway show. In one trip, these kids saw more of the world than they had seen their entire lives. When they got back to Houston, the violence abruptly stopped."
Probably the best example of what it takes to turnaround the toughest schools is Kenyatta Stansberry, the tattooed, spiky-haired principal of Marshall High School in Chicago. Stansberry, "the Marine," "will not take any lip. She can defuse a hard-core gangbanger." And "she patrols Facebook into the night, looking for signs of a brewing school fight or just to tell her students. 'It's 11 p.m. Time to go to bed.'"
To gain control of the school, however, 161 students were sent elsewhere, 104 of them transferred to other schools, and 34 went to alternative schools. Then, the love part of the tough love approach was able to show results. Stansberry identified a core group of troublemakers and met with them once a week. "That group of 10 is now down to five -- she calls them 'the Fab Five.'"
I wonder whether the principals of the 104 transfers will be equally diligent in addressing behavior, so that the influx of potential troublemakers does not further damage their schools. It is true that "troublemakers" are potential leaders, but turning them around takes a commitment that has been lost on most data-driven reformers.
I have experienced the hard work, as well as the joy, of appealing to the better angels of teens, as we introduce them to the wider world. Because of NCLB, however, we do not even bring kids in Oklahoma City on field trips to the Murrah Federal Building Bombing Memorial. But while I expect many more stories about turnarounds that failed after taking the quick and easy approach of blaming violence and disorder on teachers, I hope that true believers in turnarounds will learn from Dr. Simmons and Ms. Stansberry. 　
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These schools serve very poor students who bring the problems of poverty into the school — namely one-parent homes, sometimes parents being on drugs. These schools generally are in dangerous neighborhoods. Sometimes there’s a lack of security in the building itself. These schools have teachers that are frequently discouraged because they’ve tried to improve for years and they’re not being given adequate help. And a number schools do everything right and they still don’t succeed in turning around. And some schools that have become better, if they don’t receive assistance over a couple more years, will slide back and wind up in the same type of trouble [that they were in] before.
I agree that the turnaround craze is absurd. Typically, the policy just makes things worse for neighboring neighborhood schools by dumping the toughest challenges on them. I hope that "the 2 schools noted in this article are great examples of solutions based on correct assessmentÂs of the problems and well designed and implementeÂd solutions for them, done by those best positioned to get the job done, the staff in the school." I wrote under that assumption. But if those two turned out to not be real, I might have to wait a long, long time before finding another success story to use to make the point that I think we all three agree on.
The 2 schools noted in this article are great examples of solutions based on correct assessmentÂs of the problems and well designed and implementeÂd solutions for them, done by those best positioned to get the job done, the staff in the school.
As far as posts on the crazy turnaround craze, click my archive. You'll see that we agree on that too.
If you teach at Orr, then you teach at a school that is like mine - or worse. I sure don't want to get into an argument with someone who shares my world and most of my opinions.
Besides, if I hadn't cited those two schools, I might have to wait months or longer to learn about two turnarounds that worked ... As I have been writing, even advocates of turnarounds seem to be making excuses for a new wave of reports on failed turnovers.
That is almost always the only realistic way to fix a really bad school. I have looked at a lot of these so called education miracles and it always comes down to getting rid of the trouble makers and preventing new ones from entering. The rest is just window dressing and old fashioned teaching.
And FoxNews recently posted this editorial: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/06/06/there-are-proven-tools-to-make-schools-safer-just-have-to-use-them/
Did you hear last night's NPR report on All Things Considered by Cluadio Sanchez that explained the failure of Restorative Practices as "letting the bad kids run wild," and the superintendent blaming the teachers?
To make any of those systems work, I want redundancy. Try the alternative program, and at the same time, give teachers what they want, disciplinary backing so whatever consequences are credible.
  I listened to the All Things Considered segment at your prompting. Nothing I heard on that program resembled anything that I would recognize as Restorative Practices. Unless I missed something.
 The whole school approach to Restorative Practices may be rare, but you are correct in your assumption that done properly it can work. I have seen it in operation where key members of the administration were both behind the program and backed up their teachers fully.
  In the interest of full disclosure, the organization I work for -- the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP.org) -- has had great success with its SaferSanerSchools Whole School Change Program (SaferSanerSchools.org), which is now being implemented in 22 schools across the country, from San Francisco to New York City, and it also runs a demonstration school for troubled youth alongside its graduate school in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which you would be welcome to visit (though it’s closed for the summer. The IIRP also grants master’s degrees in restorative practices to educators and others who work with children and youth.
Yours,
Josh
Could it be that a successful turnaround is defined as a turnaround that works?
That line should be in Bold, italics, red ink, etc because that is the exact reason (not the only one however) why some charters and many private schools show better results than public schools. Selectivism...
My question is what happened to the schools that received an influx of these students? Set to close next year is my guess..
1)Real reform will not come from Washington or the people who sell the test prep materials. It will come from stakeholders in each school who discuss how they can make their school better and then take action. Of course there have to be guidelines and accountability, but the one size fits all mentality of NCLB does not work. Children, schools, and communities are different.
2) Stop selling the idea that every child can and should go to college. Everyone should be educated, but when we sell the idea of college for all, we have some parents demanding all A's for their children so they can go to college. The teacher who doesn't give the A becomes the enemy. It is time to give realistic grades for testing of material in a curriculum that is rigorous. Encourage students to be productive wage earners who can support themselves in a career they enjoy. If the career requires college, fine. If not, get the necessary training and go for it.
3) Air condition schools . We lose so much productive learning time in many places in May, June, September, October because classrooms are so uncomfortable. We expect kids to learn? Highly paid professionals are expected to work in ridiculous conditions. Even minimum wage earners at Walmart have AC! I speak to many friends who think our schools here in CT are air conditioned- because when they come into the office to pick up their child, the office is air conditioned.
In turnaround schools, there are the same feelings, I bet, but administrators feel more free to ban our complaints about violence and disorder.
I am not satisfied with them achieving at 84% because that is C level. C is average. I do not want C students. (I will of course make myself satisfied because I know that C is better than D but C is not good.)
If you light the backfire now in preschool and clamp down on behavior problems consistently, classrooms would be much better environments for learning and we might just burn out this chaos we call public school education. It would take awhile, but eventually the learning would spread, and reach the high schools, leaving a trail of calm.
class size has no correlation to student performance