No sooner had I hit the ?publish? button on my recent post on school closures than my new issue of Education Week arrived (yes, in the mailbox on the front porch). And after glancing at the front page ? ?Turnaround Team Picks Up the Pace in Ky.? (ummm?) ? I turned to one of the more compelling pages in all of American journalism (yes, with all due respect to the NYT, the NYRB, etc.), ?Commentary.?
I don't know Laura Pappano and have not read her new book, Inside School Turnarounds: Urgent Hopes, Unfolding Stories, but her Ed Week commentary has me reconsidering ?turnarounds?; rather, closure as the preferred turnaround tool.? I would imagine, from reading this essay, that Pappano is a member of the secret sauce society: yes, we have cracked the code.? Says Pappano:? ?It's about relationships.?
I almost stopped reading there, thinking this might be a new age homily about bunny-suited teachers singing kumbaya around the twinkling campfire streaming across the classroom's new interactive smartboard.? But no,? Pappano tells the story of Cincinnati's Taft High School's new principal handshaking and shoe-leathering his way to excellence. Taft evolved from a school with a 25% graduation rate to one with 95%; from 33% of its 10th-graders scoring proficient in math to 96%; from 68% to 96% in reading.? In less than ten years ? is this fast enough is a huge question for policymakers ? the school went from ?academic emergency? to a National Blue Ribbon School nomination.
It's possible, of course, that Cincinnatti has its Ravitch/Stern tag-team, pooh-poohing these gains as PR tricks, but, for the moment, let's assume that the school's turnaround principal, Anthony Smith, did not bus in a new studentbody of ?eastsiders? to boost performance scores.
One thing Smith did not do, according to Pappano, was ?counterintuitive: He kept the staff he inherited.?? He bucked them up, cheerleaded, encouraged them to rise to the occasion.
But he also ? and this is part of the ?relationship? thing ? went door-to-door in the neighborhood and ?asked for residents' support.?? Pappano also describes a relationship Smith made with Jack Cassidy, CEO of Cincinnati Bell, who not only offered cellphones and Internet connections to kids who did well, but gave students his own cellphone number.
I'm sure there's more to it ? this is why there's a book on the subject!
But here's Pappano's takeaway in Ed Week:
Real and sustained improvement?the kind that begins to close achievement gaps in a significant way and gives urban kids access to the same opportunities as their suburban peers?depends on building bridges that allow students to grasp the reward of hard work. It must be rooted in relationships throughout the process of change and in a recalibration of expectations that students have for themselves.
Yes, numbers and test scores matter. But real turnaround may require more labor-intensive relationship-building than advertised. After all, this is not just about improving school report cards, but about improving students' lives.
My only advice: When reading that excerpt, don't skip over the ?hard work? and ?labor-intensive? parts.
?Peter Meyer, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow
