YouthBuild Builds at Last: CCSD Soap Opera

The long, sad odyssey of Sea Islands YouthBuild Charter School seems to be coming to a resolution, if a temporary one. Today's P & C reports that the school finally has a building. [See Sea Islands YouthBuild Home at Last ]

At the end of the school year. The school managed to dodge the cut-off of district funds several times during the year [see several postings on this blog], but this summer the CCSD School Board will be forced to choose: is it going to fund this school in the future or not? Has the school met its obligations to remain in good standing?

Comparisons have been made between Sea Islands and the new Charter School for Math and Science over the last few months. It's time to take stock. The two charters certainly have been treated differently by the CCSD School Board; that's because, leaving aside differences in their missions, these two charters are entirely different in genesis, motivation, and parental involvement. Perhaps there are some lessons to be learned.

• Sea Islands was encouraged by 75 Calhoun to form under the well-meaning guidance of a former employee of CCSD and friend of 75 Calhoun in order to meet the needs of older at-risk students who would no longer be eligible for Murray Hill Academy because the district changed its policies regarding Murray Hill. The students targeted for YouthBuild were unlikely to have much parental support or involvement in its organization.
  
• Charter School for Math and Science started as a grass-roots effort among parents of District 20 students who were discouraged by their choices of failing schools. From the beginning, it seems, the CCSD board was miffed that it did not control the actions of this group.
  
• When the CCSD Board of Trustees approved YouthBuild, it failed in its duty to these needy students by trustingly accepting the word of its organizer that a facility that would meet state standards was available for use. Such was not the case.
• The CCSD Board of Trustees never trusted CSMS in any regard because it hated the idea of a charter high school downtown, with members repeatedly hinting that its organizers were racists. Strong grass-roots support among all races downtown won over public opinion.
  
• The lack of a building and monthly perambulations of YouthBuild from pillar to post, coupled with lack of busing, guaranteed a major reduction in the number of students in attendance. Meanwhile, the district continued to pay funds based on initial numbers of students. Records of attendance were not made available to the district when requested.
• When CSMS organizers saw the old Rivers High School building sitting vacant and requested its use, the School Board attempted to quash and/or gain control over it by suggesting exorbitant rent, then raising the number of millions needed to bring the building up to standards (never mind that the building had been vacant for a very brief period) to a ridiculous figure.
• Perhaps as part of its agreement with CCSD to keep getting funding despite its not following the rules, Sea Islands did not ask for space in public school buildings, although certainly such space exists. Now it has signed a three-year contract to rent an old warehouse that students themselves will renovate.
  

According to Larry Blasch, chairman of YouthBuild's board, "the school will spend another $30,000 improving the space so it can clear state and local inspections and be occupied by students." So the space will finally meet requirements just as school is getting out for the summer?

Given that expenditure and the signing of a three-year contract, it seems reasonable to assume that the fix is in, even though the Board will be not updated in regard to continuing its support until its meeting later this month.

Taxpayers deserve to know what CCSD has gotten for their money in regard to students at YouthBuild: How many credits have been earned per tax dollar? How many diplomas?

And has CCSD learned its lesson?

CCSD: Themes as Sleight of Word

To wax philosophical--what is a "magnet" school?

While it might seem a silly question to those of you unfamiliar with the sleight of word performed regularly by CCSD, it's no small matter to the thousands of students who must attend CCSD's failing schools. CCSD prides itself on never having defined what it means by "magnet"--just ask Board member Gregg Meyers or supporters of Charleston Progressive Academy! A definition might actually force the district to admit that some of its "magnets" are more equal than others. According to Public School Review [see What Is a Magnet School], magnet schools receive extra funding. As Charleston Progressive knows only too well, one can be a magnet in CCSD without any such promise or follow through. Then there's Buist.

Now Superintendent Nancy McGinley plans to muddy the murky waters even further by encouraging "themes" to create "mini-magnets" in 11 failing elementary schools. McGinley and her mouthpiece, Diette Courrege, the reporter who wrote about the themed schools in Friday's P & C, suggest that somehow the situation of these 11 themed schools is analogous to that of the St. Andrews School of Math and Science. [See 11 Schools to Pursue Themes ]

Only to someone who doesn't know Charleston all that well!

According to native Pennsylvanian McGinley, "St. Andrews was a struggling, traditional neighborhood school, but it has been in high demand since it began accepting students from across the county and added the math and science focus." Struggling? Does she really think that the student population of that school's attendance area resembles the 11 schools she has in mind to emulate it? What planet is she on? Furthermore, St. Andrews has suffered an attendance "surplus" ever since previous Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson threw a sop to vociferious parents whose children did not get into Buist by dumping them wholesale at St. Andrews [hence last year's trailer fiasco].

Also, "each school will have a district staff member assigned to them [sic] to provide support." Yes, we can imagine what that will consist of. How about "watchdog"?

Sometimes it seems as though CCSD won't be happy until every student in the county is bused to a school in another attendance zone. Can themes alone work here to improve these schools academically and INTEGRATE them? Of course not. Is McGinley hoping that parents who live in the failing schools' attendance zones but send their children elsewhere will return? Let's not kid ourselves that a theme will convince them.

How about discipline?

Budget Storm?: CCSD Transparency Needed

A "Perfect Storm" of a budget process this year for the Charleston County School District, at least according to its superintendent? How about a Perfect Opportunity?

In coming weeks we will begin to hear about what must be cut from CCSD's operating budget. No one will like it. Superintendent McGinley has already prepared the way with her budget "forums" in various parts of the district.

Needless to say, this process has been long on promising an "excellent" education for every child in the district, and short on details of how this miracle will be accomplished next year for the first time ever! The video of McGinley and the Power Point presentation on the CCSD website have little detail beyond stating that we will have less to spend and more bills to pay in 2009. These public "forums" appear to have been designed to be as nonspecific as possible while meeting the minimum requirements for public hearings. Why hasn't the School Board pointed out to McGinley how misleading and ultimately undermining of public confidence such a process is?

No one in the community will trust the budget process until CCSD's expenditures are transparent. Here is CCSD's opportunity to begin regaining trust by starting, as a reader has suggested, with a truly independent forensic audit of the entire financial operation. Not only does the District have the need, it's the perfect time with a new Chief Financial Officer just come on board.

Several years ago the last one, limited just to cell-phone usage, saved about a million dollars in the first year by plugging the holes in the system allowing expensive and duplicate contracts while being unable to prevent abuse of the equipment by some CCSD employees.

Here's the opportunity to take the same approach with the bus system, food services, concessions, facilities management, copy equipment, etc. CCSD could save many times annually what it recovered on the cell-phone system.

A good forensic auditor wouldn't cost CCSD a dime. The auditor's work can be paid for by a reasonable and relatively small percentage of whatever money it actually recovers for CCSD and whatever is documented as saving the district in the first year after it identifies measurable waste and how to stop it.

Okay, so that won't solve this year's problems. It's a start.

SC Legislature: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Do I often agree with the editorial staff of the P & C? What do you think? However, Thursday's editorial, A Way to Fund School Buses, hit a nerve.

Either the state legislature wants to update the ancient buses used statewide, or it doesn't. I bet if we try we can come up with a long list of expenditures in the new budget that should have much lower priority than protecting public school children with safe buses. Let's face it, due to the idiotic changes in funding of school operating costs and their inevitable downturn in revenue (if not this time, some time!), school districts will be focusing on keeping the lights on, not replacing buses.

If using the politicians' slush fund is the way to go, as the editorial suggests, so be it. If not, find the money somewhere else--maybe in that inflated matching of contributions to pension funds for state legislators.

CCSD Teacher Coaches: Another Failed Idea

Sometimes you wonder--what were they thinking? Then you remember, they probably weren't thinking at all. They were simply responding to stimuli from NCLB to get those failing schools up to standards.

What else would explain taking more than 60 experienced teachers out of the classroom to make the lives of teachers IN the classroom more difficult by increasing the paper workload? Or assigning individual teacher coaches to "coach" entire faculties of larger schools? Or asking teacher coaches to "coach" outside of their academic areas?

The answer, of course, is that these *bright* ideas come from those administrators who have spent little, if any, time in an actual classroom teaching an actual academic subject.

Thanks to budget problems (!), as reported in last week's P & C, these missteps may be on their way to the dustbins of history in CCSD. Ask yourself, would CCSD's Superintendent McGinley have continued this ineffective program that has been costing the district (by my estimate) roughly $300,000 per year if there were no budgeting problems?

Or would the taxpayers of CCSD be told how the program is paying off? Of course, the P & C article neglects to mention whose idea these coaches were, but the reasonable guess is McGinley herself. Wasn't she Chief Academic Officer? Too embarrassing to remember, I guess.

Summey-McGinley: Let's Ask the Real Questions

While the citizens of Charleston County continue to anticipate true give-and-take meetings with CCSD Superintendent McGinley, Mayor Keith Summey of North Charleston managed to arrange a meeting for himself and his City Council. As reported in the P & C, Wednesday became an opportunity for both officials to spout platitudes and congratulate each other on their sound ideas. [See North Charleston Asks Education Questions . ]

Summey's impetus seems to have been the desire to convince the City Council to vote funds for three-hour after-school programs at all of North Charleston's elementary schools. These would require parental involvement and the part-time services of a teacher-coordinator (paid by the city). McGinley thinks CCSD and North Charleston should "work together to figure out how to fund them." Right.

McGinley's motivation clearly was to show off to the Council her enlightened policies and plans while glossing over the past failures of CCSD (to be fair, not done on her watch). These include (1) encouraging teachers who want to curry favor with 75 Calhoun ("move up the education ladder") to teach in failing schools and (2) replacing more than half of the experienced principals in the district with "talented individuals." Of course, she trotted out the usual excuses about high-poverty areas, poorly-educated parents (whose fault is that?), and the "comeback" of "once-stigmatized trade-school courses" (who took them out? who stigmatized them?).

Since Summey urged her not to leave CCSD until they come to fruition, he bit--hook, line, and sinker. But there's no reason to think that he wasn't already privately convinced before the public meeting took place.

In perhaps the most ironic follow-up I've seen recently, the article goes on to quote Bill Lewis's contribution that "the district is spending $211 million to build or upgrade new schools in North Charleston."

We've all seen the correlation between brand-spanking-new school buildings and achievement. Yes? And Lewis had the temerity to include the new campus for the Academic Magnet and School of the Arts in his numbers! Let's take those millions out, Bill. Those are only North Charleston schools geographically. Wouldn't it be interesting to discover what percentage of students graduating from North Charleston elementary schools attend either AMHS or the School of the Arts? Let's guess: 1 -2 % tops would be mine.

Other comments made reveal the fuzzy thinking involved in the planning of these programs that practically guarantees poor outcomes:

• Summey wants to "mandate" parental involvement. Isn't he concerned that the children whose parents won't (or are unable to) participate and thus won't be eligible are those that extra help needs to reach the most.
• Somehow the "site-coordinator" (teacher) will be deciding upon "recreation or whatever specialty" individual children are "interested in." Will playing video or soccer games make for academic success? Will the child choose to be "interested in" drilling math facts?
• If these programs "could help parents as well," to read and write adequately, where will its focus be? On children's achievement or that of their parents? Did anybody say "adult education classes"?
• Summey wants "local businesses to look to the schools for part-time help"--that would be high schools presumably. Has it occurred to him or to CCSD that business-school partnerships rather than vague desires would ensure results?

Summey really wants to improve the elementary schools in North Charleston? He needs to invite Director Cecelia Gordon Rogers of the Charleston Development Academy Charter School to a City Council meeting for a chat. As I said back in February,

I hope that others [. . .] are taking notes on how Ebenezer AME, Rogers, and the community have succeeded with this school. Visiting the school's website, I was struck by the following statement: " CDA incorporates The Charleston Plan of Excellence, The Coherent Curriculum, and The Core Knowledge Curriculum [italics mine] as the foundation teaching tools."

The Core Curriculum (an anathema to McGinley, no doubt) is one of the best hopes for those unfortunate children who enter elementary school from low-income and poorly-educated backgrounds. It can level the playing field if given a chance. Kids in the "projects" are succeeding at CDA.

Just ask Ms. Rogers how, Mr. Summey.

P & C Charter School Piece Good for a Laugh

CCSD is an "incubator"! Why, thank goodness. Our failing school system has a positive aspect as an incubator for charter schools, no less! I'm sure the various folk involved with the new Charter School for Math and Science got a good chortle over that one this morning, but maybe Courrege is right--just not in the positive way she spins it.

From Merriam-Webster's On-line Dictionary:

one that incubates: as a: an apparatus by which eggs are hatched artificially b: an apparatus with a chamber used to provide controlled environmental conditions especially for the cultivation of microorganisms or the care and protection of premature or sick babies c: an organization or place that aids the development of new business ventures especially by providing low-cost commercial space, management assistance, or shared services

Yes, we can agree that CCSD has provided the "controlled environmental conditions" needed for the spread of charter schools. That would disastrous policies and poor planning that have led to the mess we are in today, one that encourages parents to get their children out of traditional public schools in any way they can.

Even in a back-handed way, we can agree that CCSD has aided "the development of new [charter schools]," albeit in a negative fashion. That is, as more and more diverse groups of constituents find common cause in jumping ship from its sinking system, new charter schools are being born. However, someone needs to read the last part of the definition to CCSD: that of "providing low-cost commericial space, management assistance, or shared services." Well, actually these charter schools can thrive without the last two!

In fact, if trends keep up, perhaps the CCSD School Board will no longer need to exist.

See School district has most charter schools in state, expected to grow

Bill "Tear-em-Down" Lewis Continues CCSD Rampage

My prediction is that, when Bill Lewis gets through with CCSD, there won't be a building left standing that wasn't built on his watch.

The latest controversy is over tearing down the Jennie Moore Elementary building in Mt. Pleasant. See [Group fights to save school .] Funny thing, those most affected are objecting. Today's P & C neatly encapsulates Lewis's philosophy of razing. According to the article,

Bill Lewis is executive director of the school district's building program.

• which qualifies him to tear down every ante-Lewis school in the County.
  

The preservation group [Gullah Heritage Foundation] has been invited to participate in the planning process for the new schools to ensure the Gullah heritage is incorporated in the new campus. . .

• a plaque? a picture?
  

but the school district isn't in the position to give a building to them because the Jennie Moore land is needed for new schools, [Lewis] said.

• because of the way he's planning to utilize the property
  

The school district has been able to buy the land adjacent to Jennie Moore, which is an ideal spot for the new Laing

• which brings up another school that shouldn't be moved, but when Bill Lewis talks, CCSD listens--or is it the other way around?
  

and creates a similar synergy to the schools in Park West, Lewis said.

• "Synergy" is a 50-cent word for "traffic jam"
  

Jennie Moore will be expanded from 500 to 800 students,

• so that it will lose its small-school atmosphere and become another "government learning center" to warehouse students
  

and the cost to renovate, expand and ensure that it meets current codes would cost almost the same as a new building, he said.

• well, then don't expand. Anyway, after what's happened with Lewis's figures on renovating the old Rivers High Building, does anyone trust his calculations?
  

Laing Middle also will be expanded,

• so that it, too, will become another government learning center to warehouse students
  

and its current site is too small to hold a new school with the desired capacity.

• let's see--who's desiring this capacity? Lewis or the parents of students now slated to attend Laing?
  

The district plans to sell the Laing site and use the proceeds to help fund its new building.

• Sell? No kidding. I wonder which developer with ties to CCSD and Joe Riley will be buying.
  

All schools are built to be community centers, Lewis said.

• Well, now that's clear!

Another Sea Islands YouthBuild Update?

In the ongoing saga of the building-less Sea Islands YouthBuild Charter School, as of January 24th, the following information appeared in the P & C:

Charter officials are negotiating almost daily on a multi-year lease, and they hope that will be finished by the end of next week [Note: that would be by February 1st]. Two state agencies also must sign off on the building, and that hasn't happened yet. Chewning [the director] hopes students will be able to move into the new site by the third week in February.

For those of you who might have forgotten, CCSD closed Murray Hill Academy to older students, while agreeing to expand YouthBuild into a charter school to accommodate them. YouthBuild's director promised a suitable facility without having one, and CCSD Board members didn't verify that it did.

These shenanigans have resulted in the following headlines:

• August 22, 2007: "Students Start from Scratch" (spin about its lack of equipment);
  
• September 8: "Charter School in Jeopardy";
• September 12: "YouthBuild Charter Officials Perplexed by Board Directive"(can't understand why charter would be yanked if it doesn't have a building);
• September 13: "YouthBuild Told Why It Must Close";
• September 22: "Johns Is. School Evicted";
• October 5--"District: Charter Won't Get Funding";
  
• October 16--"Panel: Give Charter School 90 Days";
• October 23--"Charter School Given 60-Day Reprieve";
• October 25--"Jury Could Decide School Eviction Case in 2 Weeks";
• November 7--"YouthBuild Charter School, Landlord Reach Agreement";
  
• November 9--"When School Suffers, Students Do Too";
• November 24--" Charter School Requests Services";
  
• November 25--"Charter School Students to Study at Home While Facility in Limbo";
• December 27--"YouthBuild Still Without School Site"; (the end of the 60-day reprieve?)
  
• January 24, 2008--"Charter School Has Temporary Site for Classes"(after spending two weeks at a Boy Scout facility on Wadmalaw Island).
  

Are we actually going to hear next week about YouthBuild's new permanent facility? Are even 20 of the original 75 students left in the program after these months of confusion? Is the CCSD School Board still keeping track?

Finally, how much money has been given to the school so far, and is it accounted for?

New Plans? Sigh. Sound Familiar?

When you read the link to the following posting, remember that the Seattle district is about the same size as CCSD: A Waste of Editorial Space . Here's a taste to whet your appetite:

And so we wait. For more review outcomes and a new plan. The Plan to End All Plans. Sorry to be cynical but we've seen it before.

CCSD's Cinderella Gets Invitation to the Ball

"Of all human powers operating on the affairs of mankind, none is greater than that of competition. It is action and reaction." So said Henry Clay, nineteenth-century Kentucky statesman, past Speaker of the House of Representatives, the "Great Compromiser," and multiple-time nominee for President of the United States.

Does anyone believe that CCSD would have gotten around to adding rigorous course offerings at Burke High School if the downtown Charter High School for Math and Science had not taken form?

• Sure, lots of talk but no action in the decade or so since the Academic Magnet moved from trailers at Burke to the old Navy Base. Those were Burke students in geography but not in makeup or name anyway.
  
• Sure, lots of talk but no action as Burke gradually deteriorated to its unsatisfactory rating and near takeover by the State Department of Education.
  
• Sure, lots of talk but no action as parents of students living in District 20 found various routes (including permission to attend high schools off the peninsula) to avoid attending Burke, resulting in a decline in the size of its student body and de facto segregation.

Oh, excuse me. I should have said effective action. Lots of motion has occurred. Even lots of taxpayer dollars have been thrown at the problem. Look at the A+ Program instituted by Goodloe-Johnson that failed for various reasons, not the least of which was that it was not properly implemented or supported. None of them have worked.

Probably more than a third of high-school-age students resident on the peninsula attend schools-other-than-Burke, with resulting transportation costs for CCSD that are probably in the hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last decade. Finally NCLB has added the options, thanks to several years of Burke's failing to make progress on its standards, of changing the school's structure, allowing it to become a charter school, replacing all teachers and administrators--well, you get the idea. CCSD is being forced to address the Burke problem again for the 2009-2010 school year, both from competition for higher-achieving students from CHSMS and from NCLB oversight.

Thanks to millions of taxpayer dollars, Burke High Middle has a beautiful facility, even if its playing-field situation is less than stellar; however, there are other ways to have a "Corridor of Shame" than decrepit buildings. You only have to contemplate what has happened to schools on the peninsula since their consolidation with those in Charleston's suburbs. It's been a downhill slide all the way. While you could argue that CCSD's academic "corridor of shame" actually meanders all over its district (with the exception of Mt. Pleasant), certainly District 20 has become the Cinderella ill-treated by the stepmother and her ugly step-sisters. Even true representation on its Board of Trustees has been bought away by political payoffs and at-large voting.

So, with great fanfare, Superintendent McGinley officially announces her plan for an "AP Academy" at Burke, first put forward as a counterpart to approval of CHSMS last year.
[See Burke to offer new AP Academy ].

Everyone wishes those at Burke who will try to make this "school-within-a-school" effective the best of luck. It is not automatically doomed to join its sister programs in failure, but as the old proverb goes, "The devil is in the details." One detail that should have been obvious is that the Academy will begin in the ninth grade: it should have begun at LEAST as early as the seventh. And that would have been possible, since Burke High Middle, as its name implies, does contain seventh and eighth grades. This start at ninth grade probably was a political decision made primarily because only middle school students at Burke would have been given the opportunity for these classes, leaving out other middle-schoolers on the peninsula. [Hmm. Why not spread resources to other middle-schoolers, say those at Charleston Progressive Academy? Oh, I forgot--that's a "magnet" school. It doesn't need an AP Academy. Right? What a can of worms that would open.]

Effective middle-school teachers are saints. There are some great middle-school teachers out there. They are definitely racking up brownie points in heaven by teaching at the sixth through eight grade level. Anyone who has ever attended middle school, subbed in middle school, or taught in middle school knows exactly what I am talking about. Despite the best efforts of all, middle schools in general [and that goes for many private ones as well as public] are sinkholes of academics for all but the most highly motivated and gifted. It's the nature of the beast. Whoever decided to invent schools that separate these specific grades from their saner counterparts deserves a special place in hell--maybe in the ninth circle,--that would be traitors to preteens.

Why do I say to start at seventh grade at the latest? Partly for the above reasons gleaned from personal observation and partly from knowledge of the national College-Board sponsored AP program itself. Probably McGinley is well aware (at least I hope she is) that the CB recommends the use of Vertical Teams to prepare students for AP courses. If you look at the materials for these Vertical Teams, you will see that they assume that preparation begins prior to high school. That is especially necessary for students who come from less-educated, lower-income families. Isn't that what CCSD is dealing with here?

A rigorous academic course in ninth grade is a shock to incoming students, no matter what previous school they attended. Even students from highly rated middle schools will have difficulty reaching the place they need to be to take AP courses successfully in the junior or senior years. We can hope that CCSD's administration has thoroughly thought through the needs of this program at Burke and will extend the serious help needed to make it successful.

If my calculations are correct, CCSD plans for up to 50% of its incoming freshmen to be in these honors courses. That's a high percentage for any school, even those with entrance requirements (except for the Academic Magnets of this world). Only time will tell.

Reality Check: $14 Million Elephant in the Room

Does anyone with an office in the Taj Mahal EVER admit a mistake?

If the results of CCSD's hiring of Community Education Partners (CEP) also portend the results of Superintendent McGinley's newer plans, we're in real trouble here. The P & C 's article Tuesday regarding Murray Hill Academy was as polite as it could possibly have been, given the circumstances of this major fiasco. Probably CCSD school board members at Monday's meeting also veiled their comments.

It's time for a reality check here.

1. Would CCSD have hired CEP if then-Chief Academic Officer McGinley had not recommended they do so (probably at the urging of her Broad Foundation helpers)? NO
2. Did McGinley assume that Charleston's problems were analogous to Philadelphia's? YES
3. Did CCSD spend $5 million to "warehouse" perhaps a total of 600 students over a period of 2 and 1/2 years? WOW
4. For this princely sum, did CEP ever provide an effective principal and enough certified teachers for students to get credits? NO
5. Did McGinley negotiate a contract with CEP that required students to attend for 180 days but now claim that is too long to be effective for CCSD's students? YES
6. Did the building never reach capacity because CCSD didn't assign enough students? YES
7. Was the $9 million building built specifically for CEP according to its specifications? WHAT FORESIGHT
8. Did CCSD assign fewer than 70 students to that new $9 million building this fall? YES
9. Is McGinley suggesting rooms in this specially-built school be used for office space? YES
10. That would be because the Taj Mahal has grown too small for all its bureaucrats or because it is falling apart? WHO KNOWS?

This list could be longer, but what would be the point? According to McGinley, "Charleston has been fortunate to have the company run Murray Hill." What does she think would happen if she admitted a mistake? Would the sky fall? Or would community members begin to be more confident that she's leveling with them?

More importantly, how can we hold CCSD more responsible for spending in the future? Just think of all those lovely building and renovation projects Bill Lewis has on the table and his escalating estimates for the renovation of the old Rivers High School building. Is anyone watching the store?

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.

Seattle's Planning to Plan: Familiar?

Some of you may get a kick from this posting on Save Seattle's Schools [Various Topics]
on January 13th:

6. Planned Planning. There are a lot of plans floating around, but I've noticed that nearly all of the plans are not action plans, but plans for making plans. These include the Entry Plan, the Strategic Framework, the plan to use McKinsey & Company, the Strategic Framework they will write, the new Facilities Master Plan, the Southeast Initiative, the plan for writing a new Assignment Plan complete with a plan to do wholesale revision of program placement. None of these are, themselves, action plans. For all of this planning, I see very little action planning – let alone planned action.

7. Unplanned Action. Meanwhile, most of the action that I see the District doing is actually unplanned. These include the decision to surplus M L King (with no plan for the property), the decision to semi-merge Denny and Sealth (with no academic plan).

8. Planned Confusion. I can no longer keep track of all of the Superintendent's plans. Is she still moving forward with her Entry Plan or has it been scrapped? I think it has been scrapped. I think the plan to reconfigure APP has been scrapped, but how will it constrain the New Assignment Plan if APP can't be moved? Will the District continue to follow the Strategic Framework or has it been scrapped? The Superintendent praises it on her web page, but McKinsey and Company are going to help her replace it. Are all plans on hold until we hear from the McKinsey and Company consultants? When we have their plan will we stick to it? Do we still plan to change the Student Assignment Plan or will that plan be pushed out yet another year?

CCSD Rearranging Deck Chairs Again

Notable for what it isn't--an inspired response to the requirements "of the new Education and Economic Development Act, which requires school districts to offer clusters of courses in career areas such as health, business and engineering." Oh, it may very well meet bureaucratic needs to fulfill the letter of the law, and it may even be the best CCSD can do at the moment, given its propensity to treat career courses like the poor stepchild of the school system. The latter is the problem.

I checked the CCSD website to see if further explanation (beyond Monday's P & C article) had been posted, but to no avail, so I am left to speculate on what the accompanying chart really means, i.e., what is NOT included in the shuffling of the deck chairs. [double-click on the image if you wish to read the chart].

• Students are being given nine days' notice to decide if they wish to transfer to another school for an elective? Will they or their parents fully understand what the elective provides in the way of career advancement?
• No bus transportation? Why not? So those who don't have access to a car can't transfer? According to the article, the state is providing funds for transportation.
  
• Why are Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate included on the chart at all? When did AP become Interdisciplinary Studies? Not. These are not career courses!
• Do the three zones extend to this so-called Interdisciplinary Studies? Hard to tell on the chart, but if they do, that means that students in North Charleston have no hope of AP unless they make it into the Academic Magnet.
• In fact, thanks to the "zones," students in the north area generally get the short end of the stick. Just look at the school ["engineering, etc."] offered to students at Stall and North Charleston. And they can't transfer to Wando because . . . ?
  
• Does Burke offer AP? If so, what?
• The label of "Schools" is grandiose, although I suspect generated by the new law. "School of Arts and Humanities"? This is a career cluster? You tell me--what is "education and training" in this "school"?
• Please note the wide open spaces under "School of engineering, industrial, and manufacturing technologies," especially in the areas of "manufacturing" and "architecture and construction." Isn't this area generally what people mean by career electives?
  
• And, then, under the "School of health, human and public services," just out of curiosity, what course prepares high school students for a career in government and public administration?
  
• In fact, looking at the whole chart, isn't that the problem: what are these "career" courses? Do they, in fact, prepare students for careers in those fields, or they serve as less academic "fill-ins" for students who have weak academic skills [you know, sort of like the "underwater basketweaving" course we all joked about in college--whatever it's actual name was].

The New York public school system has warehouses [I use the word advisedly] full of students in so-called career schools whose offerings have little to do with careers and more to do with pushing students through to diplomas. Let's hope that these "schools" don't portend the same fate.

CCSD's Vocational Partership: Read Between the Lines

Waaah! We don't have the proper classrooms to offer career classes at our high schools! But to make up for it, we're thinking creatively about the needs of students in the second half of the 21st century!

That, in its essence, is the response of Bob Olson, CCSD bureaucrat, to a successful partnership between West Ashley and Garrett Academy coddled to completion by a dedicated guidance counselor on his vacation last summer. In the program 19 West Ashley students manage to take career electives at Garrett.

The headlines are about its success [see Career school partnership sparkles]. However, towards the end of the article, we learn what that success means to current CCSD students.

If not for the dedication of a guidance counselor and officials at West Ashley, even this pilot program wouldn't have gotten off the ground.

According to Epstein (the WA guidance counselor), "West Ashley is the only high school in the district that has made this agreement with Garrett a reality, and . . . it's not because downtown district officials were pushing to make it happen." [Note: I hope Epstein's job is secure!]

Instead, CCSD is pushing for pie in the sky, by and by.

"Olson said officials don't have any concrete plans to grow the partnership but said they are looking at other ways to create more options and choices for students." [Nameless officials? Other ways for next year? Don't hold your breath.]

CCSD never imagined that a need would arise for career courses in its other high schools.

"Some of the trade programs need specific types of buildings and can't be housed in traditional classrooms." [Duh. How old are West Ashley, Burke, and Wando High Schools? Did the buildings they replaced have any suitable classrooms? Was the subject even on CCSD's radar screen when these new buildings were planned? Have communities asked for such programs in the past? Yes.]

Where are plans to add programs that don't need specialized settings?

According to Olson, "[nameless] officials are evaluating schools' course offerings, buildings and the community's needs to see what needs to be done in the future." [Ah, yes, the future.]

How about NOW?

As Long as We Need to Restructure Burke

Now that Burke High School (among others in CCSD) has failed to meet AYP for six years, it faces restructuring, according to NCLB. May I remind you of some highlights of Burke's trials over the past 18 months? I'm sure many readers can add the tribulations of the many previous years.


Let's begin with June of 2006. Burke was almost taken over by the State Department of Education, Inez Tenenbaum then Superintendent. It had failed to implement recommendations made by the state review board during the previous year. What happened next? Promises, promises! In fact, Mayor Joe Riley promised at the time to make (and I quote!) Burke "'a renowned national model for excellence.'" Goodloe-Johnson promised that, after a string of six principals over seven years, the new one would do the trick.

Barely three months later, the P & C (of all sources!) broke the scandal that Burke has been used as a dumping ground for troublemakers from other schools in CCSD. [See my posting of You Can't Make This Stuff Up! for details.] Is anyone on the school board following up on these questionable transfers? What percentage of Burke's students do not live in District 20? Do these transfers continue? How about telling us how many students who live in District 20 are bused to CCSD high schools in other parts of the county? Now, that number would be revealing.

Of course, in May of 2007 CCSD held its famous $77,000 meeting at Burke regarding the use of the Rivers High School building. During that meeting (and at various times since) CCSD has hinted that Burke may get an "AP Academy" or other speciality program. As it is, Burke doesn't even offer enough world language courses to qualify students for USC or Clemson, not to mention other deficiencies in its course offerings.

If plans exist to improve Burke, it appears now that the Superintendent will spring them by surprise upon the residents of District 20. Is she going to meet with District 20 constituents (especially PARENTS) to ask what they would like to see with the restructuring of Burke? Surely that's an important step that needs to be part of any restructuring!

Meanwhile, Burke has plenty of room in its practically-new building.

Why not take all those applicants to Academic Magnet who will be rejected for the coming year's class but meet the old generic standard and create a second "academic magnet" at Burke?

Don't like that?

Why not take all 75 students from Sea Islands YouthBuild Charter (who don't have a school building) and create a spectacular building trades program in the space at Burke?

Don't like that either? What about replicating some vocational programs now at Garrett and offering them at Burke?

Most importantly, what does the downtown community as a whole see as the best solution for Burke? And I'm not talking about NAACP officers who live west of the Ashley!

Charter Opponents and Failing AYP Face-Off

The page editors of the P & C' s Local & State section have a sense of humor. How else to explain the following side-by-side headlines in Wednesday's paper: "S.C. Schools Static on Federal Goals: Results Expected to Dive Next Year" and "Group Vows to Fight New Charter School: Johns Island Gathering Backs Haut Gap."


McGinley and Rex can try damage control by touting how much higher S.C.'s standards are than those of other states, but the reality remains. While the state has one of the lowest percentages of students to make it into the twelfth grade, it also leads in having the lowest SAT scores. How those scores would plummet if every student stayed in school and took the SAT (as required in Maine) probably would mirror the "dive" coming next year in meeting AYP!

Back to Haut Gap. Does anyone believe it met AYP for this year? How much might it have improved from the overall score of 65% below basic on the PACT in 2006? What does it say about the school that its rally against the charter school drew only "more than 20" from the community, perhaps half of whom were district, school, and community leaders? L