Jamie's post questioning Ohio's worst middle school's plans to turn itself around prompted me to go back and re-read a piece I wrote for the Center on Reinventing Public Education's Hope, Fears, & Reality: A balanced look at American charter schools in 2009, in which I chronicled the lameness of Ohio's school turnaround efforts.?? In it, I argued for a more robust approach to turnarounds that included some form of triage forcing the closure of walking-dead schools:
Many of the efforts to restructure troubled schools under NCLB have been half-hearted at best, and have led to little real change as most districts have treated this sanction more as a paper compliance exercise than a real opportunity to force dramatic changes in their schools.
As I pointed out then, despite Ohio and its schools having spent $48 million dollars in school turnaround efforts over five years to improve struggling schools, few schools had actually improved.?? In part this is because, as the Columbus Dispatch reported last year, ???Statewide, and in Columbus, the most popular [turnaround] option has been to change the principal and some or all of the teachers, and try new curricula.???
Well, apparently we've learned nothing in the Buckeye State as the approach to ???turning around??? the long-suffering Champion Middle School in Columbus is identical to what has been tried and failed and tried and failed over the last decade.?? The proposed changes ??? bringing in a new principal (from another failing middle school), adding technology, reducing class size, etc. are commonly applied strategies to school improvement, but there's no evidence that any of these moves can turn around the state's single worst-performing middle school.
It's nothing short of scandalous that the feds and the state are allocating yet more taxpayer dollars to the Columbus City Schools to try and fix a broken school using the same tired reform strategy that has already failed a generation of young people. A far more rigorous approach is needed here. As Jamie suggested, let's start with the idea of expanding Ohio's law requiring automatic closure for the most troubled charters to district schools. ???Closure??? or ???restart??? (possibly under a proven charter management organization succeeding in school turnarounds) are two options for using School Improvement Grant money, and if schools like Champion don't have the courage to select these rigorous models themselves, the state should do it for them.
After all, as our friend Andy Smarick wrote for Education Next a year ago:
Those hesitant about replacing turnarounds with closures should simply remember that a failed business doesn't indict capitalism and an unseated incumbent doesn't indict democracy. Though temporarily painful, both are essential mechanisms for maintaining long-term system wide quality, responsiveness, and innovation. Closing America's worst urban schools doesn't indict public education nor does it suggest a lack of commitment to disadvantaged students. On the contrary, it reflects our insistence on finally taking the steps necessary to build city school systems that work for the boys and girls most in need.
Indeed, closing and restarting Champion and schools like it (Ohio cities have plenty such schools) may be the most sensible thing to do. Rather than dumping more cash into failing schools and crossing our fingers, the greater commitment to disadvantaged students would be to reassign them to better schools or let a charter management organization with a track record of success take over.
- Terry Ryan
