Thursday, July 31, 2008

Union Objects to Proposal to Modify Pact in Denver

Pay in Ferment

http://www.edweek.org/media/2008/07/30/44denver515.jpg

Superintendent Michael Bennet, center, Rudy Andras, left, an A-Plus Denver member, and Alan Gottlieb, a business coalition member, stay after a June ProComp meeting.

Photo by Preston Gannaway/Rocky Mountain News/Polaris Images

Union Objects to Proposal to Modify Pact in Denver

By Vaishali Honawar

Denver’s performance-pay system for teachers has long been hailed as a model, in good part because it was jointly conceived and implemented by the school district and the local teachers’ union. But that collaborative spirit is now in jeopardy, with union and district leaders engaged in a protracted battle over proposed changes to the system.

The two sides are expected to go to the negotiating table Aug. 20 to sort out their differences, and have been meeting separately with mediators in the interim. But the rift is wide enough that the union, in a recent newsletter, called on teachers to prepare for a strike if negotiations fall through.

The district says the time is right for a change: ProComp, or the Professional Compensation Plan for teachers, as it is formally known, was ushered in by Denver voters in 2004, and the agreement calls for negotiations every three years, school officials say.

“ProComp was never intended to become a static plan like a traditional master salary schedule. Over time it needed to be adjusted based on the needs of teachers and the district and the window called for the negotiations is right now,” said schools Superintendent Michael Bennet, pointing out that the district and the union also signed an agreement to open negotiations on ProComp in February of this year.

School officials also say that the changes proposed by the 74,000-student district—including raising teachers’ starting salaries and giving additional incentives to teachers at hard-to-staff schools and of high-demand subjects like math and science—would help attract more teachers.

But the union says it is too early to take those steps.

President Kim Ursetta of the 3,200-member Denver Classroom Teachers Association, an affiliate of the National Education Association, says that while small changes have been made to ProComp over the past two years, she wants to wait until an external evaluation of the pay system, due next year and based on three years of ProComp data, is released before agreeing to any major changes.

“People are always asking me how ProComp’s working, and I say I don’t know,” said Ms. Ursetta. “We want to make sure we are very careful about looking at data and looking at the impact of the changes.”

Where to Put the Money

The only study released on ProComp so far is by Edward W. Wiley, an assistant professor of education at the University of Colorado at Boulder, that looked at two years’ worth of data. It found that teachers who opted into ProComp raised student test scores only slightly compared with their peers who did not take part in the pay plan.

But Mr. Wiley points out that the new system is still in its early stages. “To say it is working or not working are shortsighted responses,” he said. “Reforms take a while to mature, especially in complex urban school districts such as [Denver].”

The district proposal would give ProComp money to increase teacher salaries in the early years, and raise the starting salary from $35,000 to $44,000.

School and union officials agree that Denver has among the lowest teacher salaries in neighboring school districts, a situation that they believe is hurting recruitment and retention.

In a letter to teachers in May, Mr. Bennet pointed out that teachers with fewer than 12 years of experience are nearly 20 times more likely to leave the district than those with 12 or more years of experience.

But the union says the district’s proposal would cause teacher salaries to freeze after a certain point. Ms. Ursetta said the union instead favors an across-the-board increase of 3.5 percent in the traditional salary schedule, which would raise the starting salary to $38,000. She added that she would also like the district to institute more induction and mentoring programs to help keep new teachers.

Mr. Wiley’s study included surveys of principals. Fewer than 14 percent said they believed that the financial incentives currently being offered to teach in hard-to-staff schools were attracting the best teachers.

The district wants to raise the amount of bonuses for teachers in such schools and in hard-to-fill subjects. Under its proposal, teachers would get an almost threefold increase in their ProComp bonuses, from $1,067 each in 2007-08 to $2,925. The union agrees that bonuses for teachers in those hard-to-fill jobs need to be raised, but not by nearly as much.

Behavior Unaffected?

The impasse in Denver is significant at a time when many states and districts are considering, or have already put in place, systems of performance-based pay, often referred to as merit pay.

The idea has traditionally been anathema to teachers’ unions, which typically favor a single salary schedule in which teachers are paid by seniority and education level. Lately, however, the concept has gained popularity among politicians, and both the Democratic and Republican presumptive presidential nominees, Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain, have spoken out in favor of performance pay.

Recent years have also seen some collaborative union-district partnerships on performance pay, with Denver and Minneapolis being among the earliest.

For More Info

See other stories on education issues in Colorado. See data on Colorado's public school system.

In Denver, voters agreed to pay $25 million a year in additional property taxes to implement ProComp and help ensure its success. Teachers were attracted by the fact that the system did not reward teachers just for raising student test scores, but for a combination of factors, including knowledge and skills, performance evaluations, student growth based on test scores, and for serving in high-risk schools as well as in positions that are hard to staff, including math, science, and special education.

The increases were incorporated into teachers’ base salaries, instead of being handed out as one-time bonuses.

About half of Denver’s teachers have opted in to ProComp over the two years it has been in place, and all new teachers are automatically enrolled.

But each year, only part of the funds in ProComp, which add up to $31 million including interest, have been paid out. This school year, for instance, less than $7 million will be given out because of the way the program is structured. School officials say there will be a surplus of $86 million in ProComp coffers by the end of 2008-09.

John Hereford, a co-chairman of a committee on ProComp set up by A-Plus Denver, a nonprofit citizens’ group, said changes are necessary because the system does not appear to be operating as it should.

“We know it is not affecting behavior as we had expected it to, and every year that goes by makes it that much harder to reform,” he said.

Observers say there is some anecdotal evidence that ProComp has attracted more teachers to the district. “We do hear reports from those involved in the hiring process that certain positions are easier to recruit,” Mr. Wiley said.

But the jury is still out on whether pay-for-performance plans actually help student achievement.

“It is fair to say that, across the country, there are not many good, rigorous studies that show performance pay improves student performance,” said Paul Teske, the dean of the school of public affairs at the University of Colorado at Denver, who is conducting the independent study of ProComp that is due out next year.

The ‘Right’ Components

One of the reasons for ProComp’s status as a model plan is the labor-management collaboration in its creation. “The union had to vote positively on ProComp, or it would be dead in the water back then,” Mr. Teske said.

This time around, district officials are trying to impose the changes, union officials say. “Previously, any proposals that would come forward were collaborative, and changes were jointly developed,” Ms. Ursetta said. “But this proposal from the district is coming solely from them.”

Observers like Mr. Hereford of A-Plus Denver acknowledge that union-district cooperation is important to the survival and success of ProComp. But he and others say residents never intended for ProComp funds to be spread out as an increase for all teachers, such as the one the union is demanding.

“A functional, collaborative working relationship with the union is in everybody’s interest,” said Mr. Hereford, a renewable-energy developer who has two children in Denver’s public schools. “It is hard to imagine far-reaching reform would be possible otherwise.”

On the other hand, he said, “letting ProComp drift into a base-pay-type system doesn’t have that surgically precise ability to affect and motivate teachers in an important and direct manner.”

Brad Jupp, a senior policy adviser on ProComp to Superintendent Bennet, said he is disappointed that the union has sought conflict over the proposed changes.

“This was not the way we did business when we were devising ProComp. What made the collaboration work is we were willing to work shoulder to shoulder on tough issues,” said Mr. Jupp who was a union representative when ProComp was first negotiated and who helped lead the initiative from its start.

Despite the differences, all parties voice hope that they will reach an agreement when they go to the table in August.

Ms. Ursetta, when asked about the possibility of a strike, will only say that her goal is to get to a settlement.

Thomas Boasberg, the chief operating officer of the Denver schools, said that there is room for compromise in the district’s proposal, and that he is hopeful of a “good result” given the long history of union-district collaboration over ProComp.

Mr. Wiley and others also note that the plan itself is not in danger of being shelved.

“When I look at the two sides of collective bargaining, I see a lot of similarities there,” Mr. Wiley said. “Nobody’s saying, let’s throw it out; everyone agrees that those [original] components are the right ones.”

Mr. Teske, the university dean, said he believes the proposed changes will only strengthen ProComp.

“If and when it gets negotiated and approved, it will be a better plan,” he said, “and it will have moved the national performance-pay movement in a better direction.”

Monday, July 28, 2008

Alice Armstrong: ‘Differentiated instruction’ can’t replace 1-on-1 work

These are the same buzz words that DOE uses – “differentiated instruction” in place of smaller classes; but how can this occur? Isn’t one a precondition for the other?- Leonie Haimson

Alice Armstrong: ‘Differentiated instruction’ can’t replace 1-on-1 work

Springfield JOURNAL-REGISTER
Posted Jul 28, 2008 @ 12:04 AM
http://www.sj-r.com/opinions/x1470913789/Alice-Armstrong-Differentiated-instruction-can-t-replace-1-on-1-work


Recently, my friend Julie, a nurse, reflected on her days of working in a chronically understaffed hospital.

“Hospital administrators tried to convince us nurses that we were the problem and that if we just sharpened our organizational skills, we could meet all the patients’ needs,” she said.

“Of course, if two patients went into cardiac arrest at the same time, I couldn’t have saved them both. Fortunately, it never happened. But what if it had? What was I supposed to do?” asked Julie.

“Prioritize. Let one of them die,” her husband quipped.

“Sounds just like education,” I said. “Teachers are frequently told that class size doesn’t matter. Mind you, the people claiming size doesn’t matter aren’t in the classroom.”

“They aren’t tending to patients either,” she noted.

Fortunately, an overcrowded classroom is not likely to result in students’ early demises. It does, however, limit the individual attention kids get. Even the most talented teachers cannot work one-on-one with two kids at once.

No need to worry. The educationists, those ivory-tower scholars who crunch data like kids munch cheese puffs, have come to rescue public education — again — with “differentiated instruction,” among this year’s favorite buzz words.

“To differentiate instruction is to recognize students varying background knowledge, readiness, language, preferences in learning, interests, and to react responsively. Differentiated instruction is a process to approach teaching and learning for students of differing abilities in the same class. The intent of differentiating instruction is to maximize each student’s growth and individual success by meeting each student where he or she is, and assisting in the learning process,” writes Tracey Hall, Ph.D.
Easy for Dr. Hall to say. I would like to see her try to execute this teaching technique with 125 high school composition students each day.

Actually, good teachers have been instinctively differentiating instruction, presenting concepts in a variety of ways that appeal to visual, audio and kinesthetic learners for years, long before it became fashionable. These teachers also implement a number of assessment strategies to allow students to capitalize on their strengths.

Still, sometimes nothing can replace a little one-on-one time, particularly in subjective areas such as composition. To teach students to write well, teachers must have their pupils write and write often. Then the teachers must read this writing and bleed all over the paper to explain what worked and what didn’t and why. Doing so takes time, lots of time.

If the average paper requires 10 minutes of grading time and the teacher has 125 students, the instructor needs a whopping 1,250 minutes to grade one set of essays. After investing a chunk of her life in grading these essays, the teacher would like her students to actually read the comments, ponder them and maybe even learn from them. More often than not, however, students look at their grades, wad up their papers and toss them in the garbage.

The teacher would like to cry out, “You just threw away 10 minutes of my life!” Instead, she sighs and tries to erase the vision from her mind’s eye like she erases the chalkboard.

If she had time, she would sit down with each student and go through the paper sentence by sentence making sure her comments were not only read but understood. She could employ such a strategy in a class of 10 or even 15. With 20 or 30 students, however, it is not feasible. She will do the best she can for her students within the confines of her circumstances, but it will never be good enough.

Such is the lot of public school English teachers. No matter how hard they work, no matter how many hours they toil, they always feel like they should be doing more. Guilt comes with the job.

Perhaps what we teachers should do is gather all the money that educationists are spending to study the impact of class size on learning, inject it into the system to reduce class size, have composition students write essays about how to maintain good health so they don’t end up in the hospital with their lives in the hands of overworked nurses, and then work one-on-one with them and teach them to break long-winded, unwieldy sentences into shorter, more effective ones.

Alice Armstrong, a freelance writer and copy editor, taught high school English for 18 years. She can be reached at alice.armstrong@sbcglobal.net.

State Graduation Rates for Black, Latino, and White Male Students

State Graduation Rates for Black, Latino, and White Male Students:

New York Black: 39% Latino: 38% White: 75%

District of Columbia: Black: 55% Latino: 34% White: 84%

State Graduation Rates for Black, Latino, and White Male Students

Table 6: State Graduation Rates for Black, Latino, and White Male Students

State

Black

Latino

White

Alabama

43%

60%

63%

Alaska

53%

* *

69%

Arkansas

63%

70%

74%

Arizona

81%

* *

82%

California

54%

61%

75%

Colorado

58%

62%

78%

Connecticut

51%

51%

83%

District of Columbia

55%

34%

84%

Delaware

51%

40%

69%

Florida

38%

49%

60%

Georgia

40%

47%

58%

Hawaii

53%

46%

61%

Idaho

64%

71%

77%

Illinois

40%

64%

82%

India na

43%

70%

73%

Iowa

69%

84%

87%

Kansas

53%

56%

77%

Kentucky

59%

61%

68%

Louisiana

38%

45%

60%

Maine

85%

* *

75%

Massachusetts

51%

54%

77%

Maryland

55%

69%

79%

Michigan

33%

48%

74%

Minnesota

59%

* *

86%

Missouri

54%

* *

79%

Mississippi

49%

51%

61%

Montana

57%

* *

81%

Nebraska

44%

63%

87%

Nevada

40%

* *

55%

New Hampshire

61%

* *

60%

New Jersey

74%

70%

92%

New Mexico

55%

46%

67%

0A

New York

39%

38%

75%

North Carolina

49%

47%

69%

North Dakota

89%

74%

84%

Ohio

49%

61%

79%

Oklahoma

59%

59%

74%

Oregon

58%

* *

89%

Pennsylvania

58%

* *

84%

Rhode Island

53%

45%

73%

South Carolina

38%

44%

59%

Tennessee

44%

* *

71%

South Dakota

61%

72%

82%

Texas

58%

50%

74%

Utah

69%

* *

88%

Vermont

88%

* *

75%

Virginia

54%

55%

75%

Washington

50%

67%

70%

West Virginia

63%

83%

69%

Wisconsin

36%

65%

87%

Wyoming

41%

67%

72%

USA

47%

57%

75%

* * Data unavailable

Friday, July 25, 2008

New Strategy to Keep Kids Out of Special Ed

Hi Norman,

I thought you may be interested in a new article by U.S.News & World Report education writer, Steve Yaccino. Steve details the methods that the “response to intervention” program employs to identify and avaluate students at risk for learning disabilities, and what challenges the program is up against.

New Strategy to Keep Kids Out of Special Ed
"Response to intervention" aims to determine students' weaknesses before they fall behind

The approach, called response to intervention, uses research-based instruction, data collection, and multiple tiers of intense tutoring to catch struggling students before they need to be placed in special education classes. But implementing RTI successfully presents many challenges, especially in schools with limited resources, and classroom teachers have been generally slow to embrace the method, fearing its emphasis on data could interfere with their quality of instruction.

Have a great weekend,
Whitney

Whitney Akers | Public Relations Assistant | U.S.News & World Report
1050 Thomas Jefferson Street NW | Washington, DC 20007
tel 202-955-2076 | fax 202-955-2056
wakers@usnews.com | www.usnews.com

Green on Ravitch/Finn Clash

http://www.nysun.com/new-york/ravitch-finn-in-a-clash-of-the-titans/82631/?print=8803107121

Ravitch, Finn in a 'Clash of the Titans' on Education Policy

By ELIZABETH GREEN, Staff Reporter of the Sun | July 25, 2008
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/ravitch-finn-in-a-clash-of-the-titans/82631/

In a sign of how substantially her thinking on school policy has evolved, the education historian Diane Ravitch this week is engaging in an online debate with one of her oldest friends and collaborators, the education policy analyst Chester Finn Jr.

At issue: an emerging divide among education policymakers about the best way to improve America's schools.

Everyone seems to agree that the schools are in dire straits, but there is a divide about how to solve that problem.

On one side are leaders including the schools chancellor, Joel Klein; the Reverend Al Sharpton; the federal education secretary, Margaret Spellings, and the mayor of Newark, Cory Booker, who have started an initiative called the Education Equality Project, endorsing strong accountability measures such as those currently written into No Child Left Behind as well as choice options such as charter schools.

On the other side is a group calling itself the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education, which has criticized No Child Left Behind and declared that students need help in more fields than just education to succeed, arguing for improved health care and after-school programs. That group includes the teachers union president Randi Weingarten, the labor economist Lawrence Mishel, and the former Boston school superintendent Thomas Payzant.

The debate between Mr. Finn, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, and Ms. Ravitch, a trustee of Fordham, kicked off when Mr. Finn criticized the Broader, Bolder group, whose proposal Ms. Ravitch has signed.

Mr. Finn said in a Web log post that this camp reflects a dangerous move to shift away from an emphasis on academic excellence and toward a sloppier and less meaningful focus on the "whole child" that happens throughout American history.

"It's a darn shame," Mr. Finn wrote. "Yesterday's push for achievement hasn't yet produced the learning gains we need. But it may be starting to do so. The surest way to curb tomorrow's gains is to change the policy focus and ease the pressure."

He added, "As for the AFT's future direction, all I can say is that President Weingarten's early signals do no credit to Al Shanker's legacy."

Ms. Ravitch is fighting back with a counter-post on Fordham's Web site, edexcellence.net, which is billing the debate as a "Clash of the Titans."

"Will it help or harm children's academic achievement — most especially children who are living in poverty — if they have access to good pre-K programs? Will it help or harm children's academic achievement — most especially the neediest children — if they have access to good medical care, with dental treatment, vision screening, and the like?" she writes.

She also dismisses Mr. Finn's assertion that she is opposing academic standards by criticizing No Child Left Behind, asking how the law can have worked if American students have been falling behind international competitors through its inception.

Mr. Finn's response is that while he believes Ms. Ravitch is not straying from setting high standards, he worries that others are merely searching for diversions.

Students pass state test, but at what cost to their education?

http://www.cleveland.com/brett/blog/index.ssf/2008/07/students_pass_state_test_but_a.html

by Regina Brett
Tuesday July 22, 2008, 3:10 PM

Regina BrettThe school report cards came out in June.

Rocky River Middle School passed the 2008 Ohio Achievement Tests, earned an Excellent rating from the state and met the requirements for Annual Yearly Progress.

For all of those accomplishments, Principal David Root has only one thing to say to the students, staff and citizens of Rocky River:

He's sorry.

Root wants to issue an apology. He sent it to me typed out in two pages, single spaced.

He's sorry that he spent thousands of tax dollars on test materials, practice tests, postage and costs for test administration.

Sorry that his teachers spent less time teaching American history because most of the social studies test questions are about foreign countries.

Sorry that he didn't suspend a student for assaulting another because that student would have missed valuable test days.

Sorry he didn't strictly enforce attendance because all absences count against the school on the State Report Card.

He's sorry for pulling children away from art, music and gym, classes they love, so they could take test-taking strategies.

Sorry that he has to give a test where he can't clarify any questions, make any comments to help in understanding or share the results so students can actually learn from their mistakes.

Sorry that he kept students in school who became sick during the test because if they couldn't finish the test due to illness, the student automatically fails it.

Sorry that the integrity of his teachers is publicly tied to one test.

He apologized for losing eight days of instruction due to testing activities.

For making decisions on assemblies, field trips and musical performances based on how that time away from reading, math, social studies and writing will impact state test results.

For arranging for some students to be labeled "at risk" in front of their peers and put in small groups so the school would have a better chance of passing tests.

For making his focus as a principal no longer helping his staff teach students but helping them teach test indicators.

Root isn't anti-tests. He's all for tests that measure progress and help set teaching goals. But in his eyes, state achievement tests are designed for the media to show how schools rank against each other.

He's been a principal for 24 years, half of them at Rocky River Middle School, the rest in Hudson, Alliance and Zanesville. He loves working with 6th, 7th and 8th graders.

"I have a strong compassion for the puberty stricken," he joked.

His students, who are 11, 12, 13 and 14, worry that teachers they love will be let go based on how well they perform.

One asked him, "If I don't do well, will you fire my teacher?"

He cringed when he heard one say, "I really want to do well, but I'm not that smart."

He wants students to learn how to think, not take tests.

"We don't teach kids anymore," he said. "We teach test-taking skills. We all teach to the test. I long for the days when we used to teach kids."
Unless we get back to those days, principals and teachers all over Ohio will continue to spend your tax dollars to help students become the best test takers they can be.


Nationwide, 96 percent of school board members are elected

Leonie Haimson to the NYC Public School Parents listserve:

Excerpt: Nationwide, 96 percent of school board members are elected, rather than appointed, according to the National School Boards Association. Beyond Chicago, exceptions with appointed school boards include Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland and Washington, D.C. and New York City (though the article gets the NYC situation wrong.)

Doesn’t much of this sound familiar? Arbitrary and large scale closings of schools; other new and more selective schools opened in their place. Little or no public participation in decisionmaking, only hearings where opinion is ignored, and the power of parents as part of the local school councils (in our case, school leadership teams) ignored and eviscerated.

Advocates: ‘Let the people elect school board’: Catalyst Chicago

A petition drive is a long shot, but supporters say the public should have direct control over who gets a seat on the Chicago Board of Education

Since taking over Chicago schools in 1995, Mayor Richard M. Daley has directly appointed each member of the Chicago Board of Education. But a parent advocacy group says the board has become unaccountable to anybody but the mayor, and the time has come for board members to be elected by voters.

Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE) is circulating petitions calling for a citywide referendum on the November ballot on whether the school board should be elected. The Chicago Teachers Union is supporting the petition drive. At least 40,000 signatures of registered voters are needed by Aug. 18.

Leaders of PURE and the teachers’ union say that anger against the board has been building for some time, and hit a critical mass in February when a decision was approved to close or consolidate 18 public schools for low attendance or poor test scores. The closures are part of a sweeping plan to overhaul failing schools and to open 100 new schools under the Renaissance 2010 plan.

Hundreds of parents protested the closings—particularly of the small schools at the Orr High campus—and jammed the board meeting and hearings. They argued that some schools with effective programs were being targeted, and accused the board of making decisions too quickly. The proposed closures were announced in January, and the board finalized its decision a month later. Only one school, Abbott Elementary, was spared.

“It seemed as if the board was determined to close 18 schools in complete opposition to community input,” says Julie Woestehoff, executive director of PURE. “There’s just a sense that they’re not really accountable to the community.” Two other groups, the South Austin Coalition and Blocks Together, support the effort, she says.

Sandra Schultz, educational issues coordinator for the teachers’ union, says many teachers are concerned that the board is “railroading” public opinion. The union isn’t taking an official position on elected versus appointed boards but says the question should be raised with voters.

CPS spokeswoman Ana Vargas says the board is listening to the public. “The Board of Education is appointed by the mayor, who is an elected official,” she says. “So therefore, we’re held accountable to the community. We hold an open meeting every month that is televised where the Board of Education hears public opinions.”

The district declined to make board members available for comment.

Advisory, not binding

PURE faces formidable obstacles to realize its goal of an elected school board. Woestehoff does not have an exact count, but estimates that hundreds, rather than thousands, of signatures have been gathered since May. Even if enough signatures are collected to get the referendum on the ballot, and it receives a majority of votes, the school board would not change immediately. Under state law, referendums are advisory and not binding.

Woestehoff says PURE’s initial focus is to educate people about the issue. The outpouring of protests over school closings shows that the community is ready for change, she says.

“There is more interest and involvement in public education in Chicago than there used to be,” Woestehoff asserts. “The electorate is positioned to make better decisions about the school board.”

The petition drive comes at a time when the Board of Education and local school councils are in a power struggle. Currently, elected councils of parents and community members, created in 1988, have the authority to approve individual school budgets and select principals. School Board President Rufus Williams has made no secret of his desire to neuter LSCs by taking away some of their power around hiring and firing principal. (See related story.)

Earlier this year, representatives of three LSCs sued Chicago Public Schools after their councils had been replaced with advisory groups appointed by the Board of Education. A judge dismissed the lawsuit in April. According to the ruling, the law that created the councils allows the school system to change a council from elected to advisory when a large campus is being converted to new, smaller schools. (The representatives have said they plan to appeal the dismissal.)

Most school boards elected

School reform efforts in other urban districts have often resulted in more authority for mayors and changes to the school board structure.

Nationwide, 96 percent of school board members are elected, rather than appointed, according to the National School Boards Association. Beyond Chicago, exceptions with appointed school boards include Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland and Washington, D.C. In New York City, community education councils, jointly selected by parents and borough presidents, oversee schools.

In Illinois, Chicago is the only district with an appointed, rather than elected, school board. Before 1995, board members were chosen by the mayor from a slate of nominees that were provided by the Chicago School Board Nominating Commission. The 28-member commission, most of whom were community leaders, screened applicants and gave the mayor a choice of three candidates for each position. Critics of the system, including the mayor, complained that the nominating process was cumbersome and rife with politicking.

But proponents of an elected school board say the current appointments are just as political. Schultz says that many teachers feel that Daley has stacked the board with business executives. No board member works as an educator.

“I’m sure there are some things in the schools that could benefit from a business background,” she says. “But each student body is different—the demographics and the teachers themselves. Each school needs to make certain decisions for themselves and not just the blanket business-type decision approach. There are too many variables.”

Reginald Felton, director of federal relations for the National School Boards Association, says the group does not take a position on whether a board should be elected or appointed. Each structure has advantages and disadvantages.

“Obviously if you’re elected, you’re more likely to represent the views of your constituents,” Felton says. “If you’re appointed, you may have to represent the view of the person who appointed you.”

Felton adds that appointed members tend to be people who bring a certain skill to the board that is needed. If the school district is dealing with finance and bond issues, the mayor may appoint a member who is an expert in that area. Elected board members may not have such skills.

A few school districts have “hybrid” boards made up of both elected and appointed members, Felton says. During reform initiatives, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., had hybrid boards and later switched to appointed members.

According to research from the school boards association, takeovers of school districts have yielded mixed results.

West Virginia took over one school district in 1992, but the district was turned over to local control four years later. New Jersey lawmakers axed the Jersey City school board 13 years ago, and the district still has not been able to meet standards set by the state for making the district independent.

Since Daley took over Chicago schools, test scores and graduation rates have improved. Still, teacher turnover remains high, and more than half of all students do not meet academic standards.

Phuong Ly is a freelance writer based in Chicago.

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
212-674-7320
classsizematters@gmail.com
www.classsizematters.org
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/