Boston Unveils Five-Year School Restructuring Plan

By Bianca Vázquez Toness
Nov 19, 2009, 8:16 AM
5 Comments

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Boston’s public schools are in for a shakeup. Superintendent Carol Johnson has laid out a five-year timetable for bringing the whole district up to par.

“What we must do from this day forward is to create a community of schools where there are no ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots.’ Where achievement and access gaps are a thing of the past,” Johnson said as she released the draft plan at a School Committee meeting Wednesday night.

Specifically, the “Acceleration Agenda,” as Johnson calls it, targets 14 failing schools. The message: Shape up, or else.

Most of the schools are in Roxbury and Dorchester, in clusters of poor neighborhoods, and it’s a mix of elementary schools, middle schools and high schools.

Three of them are pilot schools, the Boston invention that was supposed to be the district’s answer to charter schools, allowing the principals more autonomy and easing teachers’ work rules.

Johnson unveiled the proposal at Orchard Gardens Elementary and Middle School in Roxbury, a pilot school in a brand new building. But they have had a lot of problems at the school and it is one of the so-called “turn-around” schools.

The two other pilot schools on the list were Harbor Middle School in Dorchester and English High School in Jamaica Plain.

Elementary schools on the list were Curtis Guild in East Boston, Elihu Greenwood in Hyde Park, John F. Kennedy in Jamaica Plain, John P. Holland in Dorchester, Paul A. Dever in Dorchester, Ralph Waldo Emerson in Roxbury, William Blackstone in the South End and William Monroe Trotter in Dorchester.

Maurice J. Tobin K-8 and Henry L. Dearborn Middle School in Roxbury as well as Odyssey High School in South Boston are also being targeted.

Johnson’s plan was not very detailed. It was more of a motivational speech, with more urgency than in previous presentations to the School Committee. Basically, they will have a number of interventions for both minor and major overhauls and something called “fresh start,” which is completely reinventing a school — closing it down and making all the teachers reapply for their jobs.

“There are no places to hide,” Johnson said. “Accountability must exist everywhere. And everyone must be evaluated on whether our students succeed.”

She said she will redesign the teacher performance process, assist principals in evaluating teachers and expedite dispute resolutions. She is banking on getting some concessions from the union, but she is also hoping that some legislation at the State House will give districts the ability to override some elements of union contracts.

Boston Teachers Union President Richard Stutman said he would cooperate, but he said this would not result in teachers at struggling schools losing their jobs.

“The current contract, the current law, says that those teachers can go somewhere else and thrive,” Stutman said. “It may be in a different school, but they go somewhere else and that’s what I believe will come out of the state Legislature. So she probably will not have the right to do anything such as close a school and dismiss the teachers on the spot.”

Interestingly, there didn’t appear to be any parents from the targeted schools at the meeting, but there were parents from schools that have already gone through a similar “turnaround” process, and they spoke about that experience in such glowing terms that it made some audience members wonder if they were planted there.

The proposal is still a draft plan. The School Committee has to vote on it, likely next month. In the meantime, there will be meetings between school and union officials and public hearings where parents and students will get a chance to weigh in.

Please follow our community rules when engaging in comment discussion on wbur.org.

http://margotwelch.com(notrelevant,really) Margot Welch

Can you please report on what else was/ is in the bill BESIDES the school closings?
http://webhost.bridgew.edu/jhayesboh James Hayes-Bohanan

I was very disappointed in WBUR’s coverage of this on Thursday morning. Bob Oakes asked whether protections for teachers could be brushed aside, appearing to take for granted that they should be.

Parents from underperforming schools were present at the meeting being described. This suggests that fostering parental involvement might be at least as important as changing the treatment of teachers. Reporting here did not go very deep.
Natalie

It is unbelievable the way the teachers are the first to be blamed.

It is very apparent, yet nobody will say it, that the reason schools fail in very low income areas is because of social issues. You have kids coming from chaotic homes, terrified of gunfire, not eating adequately, not having a proper schedule, and then teachers are expected to perform miracles.

Is this true in all low income areas? No, of course not. My daughter teaches in a public school in an area filled with immigrants from South and Central America. Almost all of the kids come from two parent families – all though they are poor, all of the parents work, they usually have three or four jobs between them. They show up for every teacher conference, show, and send in what they can when asked for the classroom, even though they have very little.

Even though English is a second language to many families (the kids are fluent in no time at all), the school is performing well. The obvious difference is not the income but the fabric of their families.

For anything to change in these poorly performing schools, the social issues must be addressed. It is not the kids’ fault.
Ellen

It is also very apparent, but noone dares mention it – there are some children in the classroom who point blank do not belong there. One or two very disruptive children can destroy the teacher’s ability to control the class. The remaining children are left languishing in no man’s land. Until the culture of society, the school systems and the schools comes to grips with the fact that attending schools should be a privilege and not a right, nothing will change. How can you blame a teacher for not performing up to standards when they have such huge road blocks. Remove the children who habitually and obviously do not want to be in the classroom. Give them some alternative classes to attend. The remaining children have some desire to learn. The situation as it stands now is that the schools systems are letting the disruptive children determine the quality of education for the rest of the students. We are running the risk of having our schools taught to the lowest common denominator. Please explain to me how a teacher with all the resources in the world can possibly be effective in a situation where they are teaching to children who don’t want to learn.
Jon Shore

Under Tom Payzant and Mike Contompasis, the BPS “Office of Strategic Planning” (since renamed under Dr. Johnson, “The Office of Federal/State Programs, and Grants”) purposely set up school populations inequitably so that they would fail! A school with a high Special Ed population and a high ELL population, historically, will not pass MCAS.

In the past, these “underperforming schools” qualified the BPS for more State and Federal Grants. This money didn’t go to the failing schools in direct services, but was “absorbed” by BPS and “filtered” out to all schools. If you look at the school profiles of those schools earmarked for “turn-around,” you’ll notice the high percent of ELL students and high percent of Special Ed students assigned to these schools! You do not assign students groups with a history of failing MCAS to a school that you want to make AYP!

Bashing teacher unions and faulting teachers is a political technique called “demonizing the opposition.” Now the plan is to suggest that student failure is the teachers fault! It is just a way, at no cost to the city, to extend the school day for free. To ask the union, to make concessions on behalf of teachers, who did not create the student assignment inequities, is outrageous!

To take advantage of teachers, by not paying them for the additional hours and days worked, is a sure cost cutting measure for the city, but it is contemptible, and disrespectful, to teachers and not in the best interest of “the children.” I was disappointed that Dr. Johnson is taking this route. It is obviously that Payzant/Contompasis team members, still salting Court Street, has not filled her in on the historical aspects of school program assignments. Perhaps the “fresh start” should begin with them.