Coming Home To Roost

(Wednesday) March 10, 2010

Alexandria City Public Schools received the bad news from the State Department of Education this week. T. C. Williams, our “flagship” high school, has failed to meet adequate yearly progress for six consecutive years and now faces major restructuring under State and Federal guidelines.

The problem comes down to the inability of T. C. students to read and do mathematics. “One out of every seven T. C. students does not pass the language arts assessments, and one out of every four T. C. students does not pass the mathematics assessments used by the state as indicators for Title I eligible schools’ performance.”

There are several points to bear in mind. The first is that this is a problem of very long standing. The low graduation rate of the high school and Alexandria’s failure to educate more than 70% of its children well became evident in the late 1980s. Fixing this was a priority of School Boards whether elected or appointed. The record shows, however, that despite all of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on facilities and educational programs, there has been no significant change. This includes the very expensive and much vaunted laptop program that has obviously produced no gains in student achievement in its six year life.

The second is that the plan to improve student achievement that was put in place in the 1990′s has not worked. That plan consisted of a “Primary Initiative” for elementary schools whereby all students would read and compute on grade level by third grade. It was followed by a “Middle School Blueprint” that sought to continue the improvements in grades six, seven and eight. The belief was that after nine years of rigorous instruction and assessment, students would begin arriving at T. C. fully prepared for high school level work.

This plan seemed to produce results for a while as increasing numbers of elementary schools became accredited along with the middle schools indicating growing student achievement. Then it stalled as the middle school principals retired or moved to other positions and were replaced by younger and much less experienced administrators. The middle schools did not make accreditation. The gains that were made in elementary school were then lost in middle school and the students arriving at the high school were, in fact, not better prepared at all.

The third is that the school system has never really come to grips with the problem of mobility. Students come and go at a great rate, over 30% per year in some schools. Teachers are not given a class that has been well prepared by the system’s teachers in the previous grade because 10 to 30% of students in that class were not in Alexandria’s public schools in the previous year. The schools have to work with large numbers of less well prepared students than they thought.

Dr. Morton Sherman, our new superintendent, has attempted to address middle school issues by completely reorganizing the schools into smaller bodies within the larger school and demanding a change in school “culture” and instructional program. Whether this will produce results will require some time. Clearly, it will have little impact on the eighth graders who have already completed two years of middle school under the old system. Any changes that will be visible in the high school are years away.

Dr. Sherman is now talking about making T. C. a Title I high school to gain some additional funds. Overwhelmingly, school districts attempt to keep their high schools out of Title I because of restrictions imposed. We would oppose any rush into Title I now.

In fact, we are concerned that attempts to “fix” the one in seven students who are deficient in reading or the one in four who are deficient in mathematics, if not well thought out, could run the risk of destroying the achievement of the six out of seven students who read acceptably or the three out of four students who can do their math. You do not fix long-term problems by thrashing around with short-term solutions. You certainly do not fix any problem by employing untried programs and approaches. Alexandria’s students are not guinea pigs!

Dr. Sherman must resist these temptations. He did not create the problem. He will not solve it with change for the sake of change. In fact, it is extremely difficult to make major changes in education as the experience of Alexandria in the last 20 years indicates. Teachers must be instructed in how to use the new programs and materials and administrators must be instructed in how to support teachers. K-12 education is not a year-round enterprise and there is not enough time in the teacher contract year to do this instruction. Rarely is there money to bring teachers in for extra staff development and if the money is available, there is no guarantee that the teachers will be. The art is not having new ideas. New ideas are a dime a dozen. The art is getting good ideas implemented. That separates the great from the merely good superintendents.

We can hark back to the movement for Progressive Education in the 1950s. The ideas of John Dewey were interesting and, on a small experimental scale, they seemed to work. On a large scale, however, they proved impossible to implement and very soon Why Johnny Can’t Read became a best seller.

We are even more concerned with the lack of management controls in our school system. Issues of employee indifference or possible malfeasance are coming to light with great regularity. Teachers seem demoralized. Quality substitute teachers cannot be found for many classes. At T. C., it is hard to know who is minding the store on some days. Student safety and security is once more becoming an issue.

The School Board must come to grips with its own role here. A Board that can propose nearly $6 million in additions with almost no deletions to the budget in a year where there are no additional resources is a weak reed upon which to lean. Let there be no mistake. The majority of this Board has been in office for nearly four years during which T. C. has continued to stagnate and during which the Board members have made almost no worthwhile contributions to improving that school. Like its predecessor, this Board believes they should throw money at problems instead of finding solutions. Members seem preoccupied with elementary schools in their own election districts and pleasing friends and neighbors instead of adopting a citywide viewpoint that includes all of K-12.

All this is coming to a crashing halt. Alexandria’s public educational establishment is out of time. We must have good ideas that can actually be implemented. The City waits and watches with hope. Do not disappoint our children.