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Is removing staff at poor-performing schools effective?
This headline question is rarely asked. It is easier to blame the cycle of failure and despair on teachers than to blame it on chronic poverty.
by Scott Stephens
David Erdelyi is a survivor.
He is the only teacher still working at Cleveland's Paul Revere School who was around on Aug. 7, 1997. That was the day when, less than a month before classes were to begin, the entire faculty and staff were told their school was failing and that they would be replaced.
When the dust cleared, one-third of the teachers at the East Side school - including Erdelyi - were rehired. But a majority of the colleagues Erdelyi had taught beside for eight years were either shipped out to other schools in Cleveland or took jobs outside the district.
"It really hurt me," recalled Erdelyi, a fourth-grade math teacher. "I really liked the facul- ty that was there. It was my first teaching gig. We had a veteran group, and a lot of teachers took me under their wing. It really shook us to the foundation."
That episode marked the first time Cleveland dabbled with reconstitution, a controversial reform that had been used by big-city districts in San Francisco, Chicago and Philadelphia.
Often called the Clint Eastwood solution for low-performing schools, reconstitution - all the rage in the mid-1990s - seems to be making a comeback.
In January, Cincinnati school officials announced that the entire staff at William H. Taft Elementary School in the city's Mount Auburn neighborhood would be removed next year because of chronically low student test scores.
That decree came at the same time as a proclamation by Chicago school officials that they planned to fire the staffs of eight struggling schools and replace them with better-qualified teachers.
Critics of reconstitution say it puts too much of the blame for academic failure on teachers. But supporters say it's often the only way to break a cycle of failure and despair. Their argument has gained new muscle with the federal No Child Left Behind law, which threatens to close schools that don't adequately educate children.
Under the law, some 5,000 of the 100,000 public schools in the United States are on track to fall into the most extreme federal definition of failure by the 2009-10 school year.
While reconstitution is a tempting tool for success-starved districts, experts warn that it cannot work in a vacuum. Other changes - more resources, a safer environment, relaxed union work rules - are necessary for real transformation, said Frederick Hess, director of education policy issues at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
"If you try to do this stuff in a dysfunctional environment, you're basically rolling the rock uphill," Hess said.
But changing an environment can be difficult. A recent report by Mass Insight, a Massachusetts-based research institute, noted that Ohio has been a strong local-control state that has resisted state involvement in restructuring. But that hands-off approach might be changing.
A state law that went into effect last July calls for districts that are floundering academically for four years to be assigned a five-member "academic distress commission." The commissions will have broad powers to make changes, including reconstituting school staffs.
The Cincinnati reconstitution plan could be a model for the rest of the state. Under a 1999 agreement proposed by the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers and agreed to by the administration, the district has successfully reconstituted 10 low-performing schools.
"It's a process that's well accepted by our teachers and well accepted by the public that does right by our students," said Tim Kraus, the teachers union president. "It creates an opportunity to create a great school."
The redesign of William H. Taft is the latest example. While the district and the union are still working out the details, the plan announced in January calls for working with education professors at the University of Cincinnati to turn the school into an academy that specializes in science, technology, engineering and math.
In addition to getting a new faculty and principal, the school will feature flashy technology, science labs, a new foreign-language curriculum and partnerships with local businesses. The district hopes to capture nearly $900,000 in state grants to pay for the makeover.
Taft teachers can reapply for their original jobs or take a position at another city school.
"It creates a rational process that protects employees and gives them the respect they deserve," Kraus said.
That's what former Cleveland Superintendent Richard Boyd said he was aiming for in Cleveland when he ordered two schools reconstituted and 10 more put on a watch list.
That order was eventually overturned by an arbitrator, who ruled the district - then under court-ordered state control - violated the teachers' contract.
"We tried to do it the right way in Cleveland," Boyd said recently. "Frankly, I was trying to send a message. I thought it was important to say to teachers and principals that it's not adequate to maintain the status quo.
"We learn as we go in any field, and I think lessons have been learned about reconstitution," he added. "In retrospect, I'm less certain that it's the way to go."
The issue remains a sore point with the Paul Revere faculty, a tight-knit group that still holds annual reunions.
"It's like being on a ball team on which two-thirds of the players are new," Erdelyi said. "I really think the school took a couple of steps backward."
— Scott Stephens
Cleveland Plain Dealer
2008-03-07
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