In a Sept 4 conference call with reporters, US Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the closing of underutilized public schools, ordered by school boards and CEOs, “a very difficult decision” and suggested that in the future, districts might find an example in a school district that took the path of opening new schools instead of closing them.
“Districts are facing hard choices where you have underutilization,” he said. “Whether it’s Chicago, whether it’s D.C., Philly’s obviously going through a really tough time—when you have to balance a budget, schools have to make very tough calls, (as do) school boards. But I’ve said very publicly, no one, no educator, ever wakes up in the morning saying, ‘I want to close schools.’ ”
Mr Duncan further characterized the number of schools that have been closed due to low academic performance as a “tiny, tiny, tiny percent” of all closures. For “the overwhelming majority of schools,” he said, “folks are actually doing hard work to keep them open.”
A reporter from WBEZ in Chicago asked Mr Duncan to address this issue, and his response quickly focused on Denver, which, he said, five to eight years ago was closing schools due to underutilization. More recently, Denver has opened new schools and is even seeing an increase in student population. There’s a surprise—NOT. Build up a good school, and people move into the neighborhood; cut one down, and people, just as assuredly, move out. Mr Duncan suggested other urban school districts that are facing possible closures in the future might use a system like Denver as a model.
We’re going to take the education secretary at his word about the “tiny, tiny, tiny percent” of closures that involve turnaround schools rather than underutilized schools. However, I think it misses the point that the number of schools closed in Chicago earlier this year was the largest one-time school closure in American history, but it’s water under the bridge. The schools are closed, and that’s what we need to study.
Closures … Consolidations … Mobility … Academic Harm?
What has happened in Chicago is that students who were attending the closed schools have been transferred to nearby schools. This action has caused a phenomenon known as “mobility.”
A 1994 report by the General Accounting Office, now known by the same acronym as the Government Accountability Office, summarized here, said studies conducted by the US Department of Education and the Denver Public Schools found that students who changed schools four or more times by the eighth grade were four times more likely to drop out of school, even after controlling for the socioeconomic status of the students’ families. No wonder Denver decided it would be better not to close schools!
Now, it’s not the place of the US government to intervene in local school matters, but somebody at the US ED knew about these studies: they conducted some of them, as did the Denver Public Schools. Could they not have advised officials in Chicago that they were creating a situation that would potentially lead to more Chicago kids dropping out of school? People in Chicago could then have discussed the matter using peer-reviewed research, rather than basing their arguments only on emotion.
Look, many students have to change schools because their families move or because of divorce, changes of custody, and so on. Our government, i.e., the public schools, is here creating a situation that adds one to the number of times thousands of students have to change schools.
Problems come up in running the consolidated schools
Part of the problem, of course, is that declining enrollments and reduced funding have made school closures in Chicago and other cities necessary. Many groups are still holding out hope that a judge or UN commissioner will stop the closures, but the school closings and reconfiguration of boundaries help the district address the issue of underused facilities.
That’s understandable, but let’s look at those consolidated facilities a little. One study out of the University of Maryland, while not examining the academic achievement of students who had changed schools, did look at what happens to the management of the school facilities after the consolidation. And it’s not good.
With the ever-growing demands placed on school leaders, particularly those related to high stakes accountability and school climate, there is an urgent need to gain further insight into the principals’ perception on how micropolitics impacts the total school. … Data revealed similarities and differences in the manner in which principals perceived the conflicts and power struggles in their buildings and the causes of these disputes. In most cases the discord stemmed from enduring differences among students and staff members.
One example of discord might be a kid from a closing school who comes from a gang that rivals the gang to which kids at the student’s welcoming school belong. Those differences could certainly be classified as “enduring,” but there’s hope families and communities will come together and open up conversations with each other, I suppose.
What there is no hope for—in Chicago, anyway—is that the schools will reopen. Leaders have lost that opportunity, and they have lost the trust of community members who tried to engage them in rational and objective discussions about the harm that might befall students academically if they’re forced to change schools too often.
It sort of puts the whole “school choice” concept in a new light: The more you invoke your right to choose a different school for your child, the higher his chances become of dropping out, and the less manageable you are likely to make the school environment. That’s what we know.
Other school systems use Denver as a merit-pay model
Denver isn’t just known in the circles of school leaders because of its decision to open, rather than close, schools. It’s also known for its merit pay system, which rewards teachers based on student performance.
The ProComp pilot program has produced some results that have been held up as a model by other cities, including the Charlotte-Mecklinburg Schools in North Carolina, here.
“ProComp provides school-wide and individual teacher incentives in areas such as school performance and growth, student growth, earning advanced degrees and PDUs (Professional Development Units), tuition reimbursement, and serving in High Needs schools. Several of these incentives are base-building in terms of salary and others are one-time incentives,” the Denver Public Schools say on their website.
Including the grammatical errors, that’s an exact quote from dpsk12.org. Now, I’m not some old grammar teacher, and I’ve certainly caught more than my fair share on this blog. The question is not the grammar; rather, it’s if we should consider the Denver Public Schools as a model, given what are, at best, mixed results about the effects on student performance of teacher merit pay.
Ignoring merit pay, what can we learn from Denver?
Since Chicago’s closed schools are, I think, a lost cause, our attention turns to the students who just changed schools for a reason that’s not their fault. Their voice and their academic progress were heeded in Denver, while students in Chicago, who spoke of potential harm to their academic life and threats to their safety, were silenced by school officials through the formal hearing process. In the future, students will provide some of the most needed input into any school reform efforts, and Denver, not Chicago, needs to be our example.
In other words, the closings weren’t the problem in Chicago, despite how many people protested against them; the problem was that school officials, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel, didn’t listen to the protesters, including students. This is typical, though, according to a study from the University of Rochester published last year in The Urban Review:
This study seeks to understand community member participation in and influence over an urban school district’s school closure process. Data from interviews with School Board members, district administrators, and community members, as well as district documents and newspaper articles suggest that district administrators limited participation through committee membership and public hearing procedures. In addition, the development of an “objective” process served to legitimize the decision. Finally, higher income community members influenced the closure process through formal and informal mechanisms, while low-income community members exerted power through alliances with external (powerful) groups.
Even Mr Duncan said students need to play a role in any reform process. Speaking long before WBEZ’s reporter asked the question discussed above—and, as such, no connection between the remark and the situation in Chicago should be inferred—Mr Duncan was clear and direct: “The student voice is critical for positive change,” he said.