January 31, 2008

To Tinker or To Turn-Around: A Bold Experiment in Chicago

Posted by Aaron Tang at 4:46PM

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This news out of Chicago yesterday will provide a great deal of data on a much debated topic in urban school reform: how effective, if at all, are efforts to transform schools by completely starting over in a school building with new teachers and new leadership? Chicago school officials, including Chief of Schools Arne Duncan, are proposing to fire the staffs of eight low-achieving schools and replace them altogether with new educators.

There is little evidence thus far to indicate whether such drastic steps will work. Even though sweeping school-wide restructuring including staff reconstitution is one of the proscribed punishments in the federal No Child Left Behind Act, few schools have yet produced enough student learning data to show whether the turn-arounds actually work. To be fair though, there are thousands of examples of schools that have tried the tinkering approach--a slight policy change here, a couple new teachers there--with little success either.

Some experts who support the plan argue that the only way to bring about wholesale change in chronically under-performing school is to scrap existing cultures of failure and to replace them with new leaders, new teams of teachers, and fresh outlooks. Opponents of the plan point out that identifying and building these kinds of high quality, highly-motivated teaching teams is itself unlikely due to a sub-par urban education job market. Students are likely to get more of the same, but at a steep price in restructuring costs under the turn-around plans according to these detractors.

From my vantage point, I believe that the turning around these schools in such dramatic fashion can be an opportunity for great progress, but nothing is guaranteed. On-lookers are right to note that teacher and principal quality is the most important variable, and that if the newly hired teachers are no better than the old ones, reconstituting the staff will have been all form and little substance. With this in mind, many parents are right to point out that any existing teachers who are on staff and who have proven to increase student achievement on a consistent basis should be retained--there's no reason to throw out the good with the bad.

Let the experiences in my first-year charter school, however, serve as a caution. There is actually much to be learned about traditional public school turnarounds from the experience of newly opened charter schools, since both enterprises have similar opportunities for student benefits: newly hired teaching staff, new curriculum goals, new leadership, new culture. But all too many first year charter schools struggle out of the gate, and a large part of the reason why is that schools are frequently rushed to get ready for the start of the school year. If these Chicago schools slated for turnarounds are not able to attract the best and most dedicated staff, and if they are hurried in the hiring, planning, and preparation processes, I'm afraid that all of the trouble will have been for very little value.