CCSD's Love Affair with Broad Ending?

The Charleston County School District's new chief academic officer will be a 29-year resident of Charleston instead of a hired gun trained by the Broad Institute, as were Superintendent Nancy McGinley, who served as chief academic officer prior to her promotion; Randy Bynum, fleeting academic officer under McGinley; and Maria Goodloe-Johnson, former superintendent.

Doug Gepford, who has served in several different roles in the district, recently as overseer of verifying addresses in the district and culling the infamous Buist waiting list, has been appointed. Let's wish him good fortune.

Too Embarrassing: YouthBuild and CCSD

Is Renee Chewning of Sea Islands YouthBuild Charter School calling Randy Bynum, Chief Academic Officer of CCSD, a liar?

How else to interpret her remarks in response to the findings of CCSD's team visit to her hapless charter school. [See School board votes 8-1 to keep YouthBuild open.]

This failed attempt at assisting those overage students who were not allowed back to Murray Hill Academy is like a nightmare that won't go away. See my analysis

Another Sea Islands YouthBuild Update?

Space for YouthBuild? That's Easy

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: CCSD & First Baptist Johns Island

CCSD has failed in its oversight of tax dollars and students. According to Tuesday's article, "the school district has given the school $347,000 this year and will give $73,000 more." Talk about throwing good money after bad! This sum that is approaching half a million dollars is going for a school where maybe 10 students will show up on any given day.

It's March. The school still does not have a state-approved building, and yet the board went against its own previous requirements for one, voting to continue funding this charade of a school.

Of course, given the P & C's tender feelings towards the CCSD school board, the announcement was hidden on page 6 of the local section of the paper. Even the reporter stated, "School officials' accusations about the lack of learning, supervision and safety at Sea Islands YouthBuild Charter School were so serious that school board members debated Monday whether they should close the school." Debated, yes. Did nothing.

Are we to assume that the school board doesn't trust Mr. Bynum? That his statements that he did give a report to Chewning, saw an unsupervised table saw being used, and could not find attendance records are all lies, lies, lies? Why have an Academic Officer, then? We could save the money.

Would You Believe. . Broad Lectures on Charter Schools

Strange, isn't it? Our local CCSD superintendents and administrators have fought the new Charter School for Math and Science with all they've got. In fact, they're not finished yet--even though the end game is at hand.

So it seems hilarious that the P & C published on Monday's op-ed page a long piece by Eli Broad, founder of the Broad Foundation that produced Maria Goodloe-Johnson, Nancy McGinley, and Randy Bynum. In it Broad earnestly touts the benefits of public charter schools.

Maybe they didn't listen in class?

Fix Dropout Rate? Start with Preschool

Most of us read with interest CCSD's latest attempt to address the dropout rate among African-American males [see Retreat's goal: Help black male students in the P & C's Sunday edition]. The actual rate is a secret (if anyone actually knows, which I doubt), but if the overall dropout rate hovers around a horrible 50%, can we assume that for black males it is close to 75%?

The participants recommended several ideas that Randy Bynum, Chief Academic Officer, promised to take to CCSD for possible implementation, obfuscation, and/or the circular file. However, the remarks made by Lee Gaillard, interim principal at Murray Hill and former Burke High principal and coach, made the most sense. Among other comments, Gaillard suggested that "the community needs more dialogue and follow-up on this issue"; that he "remembers intense local discussions in 1975 about violence in schools that ended after a few years, and now it's 2008 and the same problems still exist"; and that [too?] "much of the discussion focused on middle and high school students, and he'd like to see more talk about what could be done for preschool and elementary-aged students."

So it was with interest that I read this column in today's Washington Post. Note the comments about what [statistically] has worked. CCSD must seriously keep track of the effects of its various programs. Too often "fixes" have not been shown to produce the desired results.

Dropout Solutions That Work

By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 15, 2008; 10:08 AM

I am starting this column with a chart, something journalists are never supposed to do. I found it on page 179 of a new book with one of those titles, "The Price We Pay: Economic and Social Consequences of Inadequate Education," that scholars consider necessary but discourages readers. I beg you to stay with me, because this particular chart is surprising and important (I have changed the format slightly to make it easier to absorb).

Table 9-1. Interventions that Demonstrably Raise the High School Graduation Rate

(Intervention -- Extra high school graduates if intervention is given to 100 students)

1. Perry Preschool Program (1.8 years of a center-based program for 2.5 hours per weekday, child-teacher ratio of 5:1; home visits; group meetings of parents.) 19 extra graduates.

2. First Things First (Comprehensive school reform based on small learning communities with dedicated teachers, family advocates and instructional improvement efforts.) 16 extra graduates.

3. Chicago Child-Parent Center program (Center-based preschool program: parental involvement, outreach and health/nutrition services. Based in public schools.) 11 extra graduates.

4. Project STAR: class size reduction (4 years of schooling in grades K-3 with class size reduced from 25 to 15.) 11 extra graduates.

5. Teacher salary increase (10 percent increase, K-12) 5 extra graduates.

This list is the work of Clive R. Belfield of Queens College of the City University of New York and Henry M. Levin of Teachers College at Columbia University, editors of the book and authors of the chapter in which the chart appears. Belfield and Levin are among the best of the economists who are doing some of the most promising research on how to fix schools.

Dropouts are probably the biggest and least soluble problem in high school. About 30 percent of ninth graders don't finish high school in four years nationally. That figure rises to 50 percent in our poorest neighborhoods. Few school systems are doing much about it, in part because there is so little information on what should be done.

Yet the five programs listed in the chart do work, based on solid research, Belfield and Levin say. The bad news is those were the only programs of proven value they could find after examining hundreds of articles and reports. They wanted programs whose results had been rigorously evaluated and had proven to produce significant increases in graduation rates. They found, instead, "few experimental designs with random assignment, few quasi-experimental studies with strong design to ensure equivalent groups for comparison, and few rigorous statistical and econometric methods to identify effects of interventions." [italics mine]

Notice something else: Only one of these five programs is something that high school educators can do, even though they are the people getting most of the blame for our high dropout rates. Some critics say I should not be putting high schools with high dropout rates but superior college preparation programs on my lists of best schools. The chart buttresses my view that the fine educators in those schools deserve a break on this issue, since most of the effective anti-dropout programs start long before students reach high school.

Each of the five solutions identified by Belfield and Levin is interesting. All should be on the top of every presidential candidate's agenda, and indeed many of them are, at least in a general way. The first and third most effective methods are preschool programs, something many candidates support. The Perry Preschool Program began in Michigan 40 years ago. It has the rare advantage of data on its participants' subsequent lives that extends to the present day. The Chicago Child-Parent Center program had a similar long-term focus, following its participants up to age 20.

Some presidential candidates also support reducing class size, which is what Project STAR in Tennessee, the fourth-ranked program, did. Some candidates call for raising teacher salaries, the effects of which were revealed by the fifth-ranked study, by Susanna Loeb and Marianne E. Page.

But the one effective high school program, breaking dysfunctional urban schools into small learning communities, is not discussed very often on the campaign trail. That program, First Things First, was carried out in Kansas City, Kan. It was part of a national switch to smaller high schools that is drawing a great deal of support, including millions of dollars from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Belfield and Levin spend much of their chapter calculating which of the five methods was most cost effective. First Things First won that race, with benefits 3.54 times greater than its cost. Next in line were the Chicago Parent-Child Centers (benefits 3.09 times greater than costs), the teacher salary increase (2.55) , the Perry Preschool Program (2.31) and the class size reduction (1.46).

These are the estimates of two economists crunching their numbers on computers, not the real life experience of teachers, parents, students and taxpayers taking these ideas and using them in their own communities. Their situations are likely to be different from those of the schools covered in these studies. Belfield and Levin point out that there may be other good programs that reduce dropouts, but the research on them is not good enough yet. This is a start. Where we go next depends on how serious we are about solving one of our worst social problems.

CCSD: Just in Case You Forgot About Broad

The latest press release from CCSD:

CCSD Chief Academic Officer Graduates from Prestigious Urban Superintendents Academy
November 16, 2007
CHARLESTON – Chief Academic Officer Randolph Bynum has successfully
completed the prestigious Broad Superintendents Academy of the Broad
Center for the Management of School Systems. Mr. Bynum is one of only
eleven 2007 graduates nationwide of this rigorous ten-month executive
management training program.
“I am so proud of Mr. Bynum’s accomplishment. As our county’s academic
chief, who has already made such great contributions to our schools, this
experience will prove invaluable for him and for us,” said CCSD
Superintendent of Schools Dr. Nancy McGinley, herself a graduate of the
inaugural Broad Academy class.

Otherwise known as an employment agency for those hoping to move up in the superintendent game. Seems to work. Wonder how long Mr. Bynum will be with us.