Building an “excellent school system”
Given the critical situation in the city's schools, unrealistic expectations for rapid performance improvement, and pressure from ideologues from all quarters, many speculated that the superintendent's role would be impossible. was. But I was inspired by the scale of the challenge and the passionate commitment of many community leaders.
We started with the theory that the unit of change is the school itself, and what we are building is what my former boss, Joel Klein, then head of New York City Schools, called “the great schools.” system,” and not the “great school system.” Great school system. ” This was a subtle but profound difference because it means we aim to have 100 good schools serving all children in all regions, regardless of governance structure. .
First, we needed to establish a unified goal for the district. “Every child should be able to go to university.'' That is correct, collegebut also careerBecause we believed, and because Newark families wanted it, that the choice of higher education should be made by students, not simply by lack of preparation.
In poll after poll after poll, focus group after focus group, they told us very clearly: They want their kids to graduate from college. Furthermore, they believed that the phrase “career ready” was a euphemism for having low expectations. The family felt that academic excellence was a passport out of poverty.
Most of the parents have been with us since day one. The problem was well-meaning funders and other influencers who tried to muddy the waters by discussing everything other than whether students could read and do math at grade level.
When we started sharing real data on the number of young people who earned diplomas demonstrating proficiency and mastery of hard content, we began to encounter real backlash both within and outside of the school system. This was a subject I became more and more familiar with. In many cases, what a family wants and what a family advocate actively supports can be very different.
Securing schools that have the “four elements”
Once our North Star was established, we did everything in our power to improve the district, school by school. There was a growing body of research and evidence about high-performing schools in high-poverty areas. Combined with our team's years of on-the-ground school transformation experience, we focus on the four fundamental elements that all quality schools have: people, content, culture and conditions. Ta.
Our goal is to ensure that every NPS school is a four-factor school, enabling everyone to make steady progress toward college readiness. Our Philosophy: By focusing on what works regardless of ideology, we often find ways to combine the best of seemingly disparate views or to forge new paths that transcend old dualistic thinking. This leads to a three-way solution. Our mantra: Execution matters.
people. From leadership teams to teachers, mental health professionals and custodial staff, it's important to have the right people in the right seats.
We know intuitively the power that great teachers have, and a growing body of research supports this belief, showing that teachers are the most important element within a school that determines a child's academic level. Masu. Furthermore, the most important factor in having a good teacher in every classroom is the quality of the principal.
We focused on leadership from day one in Newark. I've never been to a great school with a mediocre principal, and I've never been to a failing school with a great principal (except perhaps at the beginning of a turnaround). Within two years, we have replaced nearly a quarter of our principals through active recruitment and selection, and have positioned ourselves not only as well-versed in instruction, but as community organizers and agents of change. We prioritized New Arcades and Leaders who consider themselves to be agents.
At the time, many states were beginning to use quantitative test score data to evaluate teachers, and New Jersey was looking to follow suit. However, my team and I felt that the science of such a “value-added” approach did not hold when determining the effectiveness of individual teachers. Not only did we feel that using a value-added approach to teacher evaluation was unfair to teachers, but we also felt that including such a poison pill in the new evaluation plan was a risk that could sabotage the entire effort. I also knew it would cause some backlash. We are so obsessed with using test scores as a shortcut to accountability that our questioning of their use in teacher evaluations undermines education reform. It received a lot of criticism from hard-line education reformers who were concerned that this might be the case.
To help non-charter schools accelerate their “people” component, we negotiated what is widely considered an ambitious contract with Newark teachers. Despite agreeing to major labor reforms after more than 200 hours of negotiations, some members of the Newark Teachers Union and its national affiliate, the American Federation of Teachers, have been working hard for several years since the contract was overwhelmingly ratified. Within weeks, he was vocal in his opposition to labor reform. Teachers. Both groups resist placement based on seniority, the certainty of teachers having tenure (regardless of what they do), and any form of accountability, no matter how nuanced. has a long track record of preserving some of the sacrosanct elements of teacher labor negotiations. On the other hand, many of our own ideas have proven popular among everyday teachers. They said the quality of the teacher in the classroom next door was a factor in whether they wanted to stay at the school. The main reason I have been pushing for it was, and I still believe, that teachers' unions need to evolve to be part of the solution, or else they will become obsolete. Because I believed that it would happen.
We also had to completely rebuild and restructure our central office to serve schools and families. This required dividing senior leaders into new teams and having them articulate how they would deliver on his four elements at the school level. It also meant creating a clear plan with goals aligned with proper management and coaching, rather than just doing what has been done before.
content. High-quality schools require high-quality, culturally competent curricula. You also need frameworks, protocols, and data that drive good instruction and continuous improvement.
I started work in Newark about a year after the Common Core State Standards became popular nationwide and the same month that New Jersey adopted them. Common Core has given us clear, evidence-based goals. This also prompted us to examine our curriculum through a more rigorous lens.
The research here is undeniable. High-quality, culturally appropriate materials are essential to helping students truly understand difficult content. But historically, we have under-invested in this area in the early post-reform period. nation in crisis.
High-quality educational materials are a difficult element to properly utilize when working only at the school or small network level. Scale is your friend. These decisions are better made at the system level. At the system level, content experts can spend the time they need to address academic needs, cultural contexts, and consistency and coordination among many different curricula and assessments. This area was also the area that generated the most consensus in Newark at the time. We conducted “teach-ins” with administrators, educators, influencers, and families, all of whom really understood and supported the mandate for good, rigorous content that was consistent across the city. It seemed like he was doing it.
culture. Schools with purposefully selected environments characterized by high standards and high support produce better student outcomes.
From our first day in Newark, we focused on original research efforts and emerging and promising practices that connect children's feelings, adult feelings, and student outcomes. After several years of comparing student achievement results with survey responses from staff, students, and families, researchers Tony Brick and Barbara Schneider found that schools with high levels of trust outperformed other schools' expectations. I found that the chances of getting it were much higher. Economists like Ron Ferguson and social policy experts like Christopher Jencks have found a direct correlation between adult expectations, student surveys, and student outcomes.
Related to this, an area where I have seen some of the greatest challenges for adults in establishing and maintaining culture is in responding to conflict and disruptive events. Adult bias is most evident in how students deal with discipline, struggle, and conflict. This is an issue not only from an equity and justice standpoint, but also from a student academic performance standpoint. Students who need the most support and time to work on assignments are often the ones most excluded. Students cannot learn if they feel ashamed or helpless. So it's no surprise to me that the data show that the relationship between discipline gaps and performance is more causal than correlational.
For these reasons, we hired administrators with the skills to build a culture and work with families. We have established an entire central administrative team focused on student welfare and discipline.
Although we have made progress, it is true that cultural strategies are difficult to implement for a variety of reasons. Too often, discussions about what student culture should look like are preachy, ideological, or theoretical, and lack promising practical, research-based practices. Building a culture is not a matter of coloring the numbers. Although effective cultures do not feel the same in all schools, they share important elements. This is a subtle point and difficult to teach administrators. Cultural activities must surface and address adult prejudices about what children can achieve and what is considered 'risky' behavior, which can cause real discomfort and resistance.
conditions. This factor is all about strong operations and infrastructure.
It is important to address the physical environment and daily routines. Unless we address the conditions in which children learn and teachers teach, none of the other components of strong schools and systems will succeed. Newark had to do a lot of work on this material.
When I entered Malcolm X Shabazz High School, a river flowed through the fourth floor on rainy days. In the humid city, where average temperatures reach over 90 degrees for months, many schools lacked air conditioning. Some schools were not even wired for internet access, and only a few had laptops to lend to students for the day.
Local leaders have openly talked about a “rolling start” at the beginning of the new school year, giving them weeks to sort out the basics, from admissions procedures to special education schedules and services to busing and books. I mentioned the fact that it took. To be honest, I had never heard of a system where instruction does not start from the first day.
Some of these intolerable conditions are due to bad public policy and others to poor management. My team and I believe that a school's success depends on how visitors are greeted at the door (if they are welcome at all) and how quickly families get answers to their questions. He says that you can judge based on whether you can do it. A School Operations Manager was created to address the operational needs of the school. At the time, this got me into trouble with the administrators union (because it was seen as infringing on the role and job of a district administrator). Even today, our operational approach is considered innovative, but this shows how little we prioritize the context of our schools.