Education commission reboots with eye on restructuring |
On Board Online • May 27, 2013
By Cathy Woodruff
Senior writer
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s education commission launched its next phase of work last week with an Albany symposium that focused on consolidation and other forms of public education restructuring.
Richard Parsons, who chairs the New NY Education Reform Commission, said the focus on the structure of educational systems would kick off a new start for the group after several of its recommendations from last year – including grants for expanded pre-kindergarten and community-school grants and a new master-teacher program – were adopted by the governor.
“Now, in the second phase, the heavy lifting begins,” Parson told those gathered at the State Museum.
Parsons said the time is right for a methodical study of the state’s public education delivery system and judgments on whether the structure remains effective, relevant, cost efficient and sufficient for encouraging engagement by students and their parents.
Later this year, he said, the commission also will focus on teaching and learning and on school funding, “which is the 800-pound gorilla, of course, in terms of education in New York.”
The four experts who spoke on May 21 at the State Museum symposium described widely differing approaches to restructuring. In each case, however, they highlighted deliberate emphasis on helping public schools operate more efficiently, cutting costs and, most significantly, fostering student learning.
The Achievement School District in Tennessee is a state-created system, still in its first year, for students who attend an amalgam of low-performing neighborhood schools in multiple localities. Some of the schools are operated by Achievement, but most are run by charter school organizations. Almost all are in Memphis, where the bulk of the state’s lowest-ranked schools are located.
“We will only serve kids in the bottom 5 percent of schools,” said Elliot Smalley, Achievement’s chief of staff. As a result of that emphasis, he said, “for the most part, you are looking at a Memphis story.”
Smalley said the Achievement School District’s mission is ambitious and sharply defined: to move the bottom 5 percent of schools in Tennessee up to the top 25 percent within five years.
The next presenter, Mike Griffith from the Education Commission of the States, offered an overview of options for intervention to help failing schools.
He described three common models: state takeovers with varying levels of state control; so-called “mayoral” takeovers that unfold with more perceived local involvement; and “recovery” approaches such as those used in Tennessee’s Achievement District and the New Orleans Recovery District.
Griffith pointed to Detroit as one of the best-known takeover failures, despite repeated reboot efforts. He said Motor City initiatives have consistently lacked essential keys for success: specific educational and financial goals, a clear exit strategy, an administrative team with shared authority and expertise in academics as well as finance, public understanding of the administration’s authority and a healthy level of public engagement and support.
Jerry Weast, former superintendent of the county-wide school district in Montgomery County, Maryland, discussed his experience with school consolidations there and in other states. He described himself as “a teacher on special assignment” in merging districts. He talked about administrative techniques and philosophy that he said contribute to sharp rises in student achievement, employee satisfaction and community engagement.
Weast encouraged creating a collaborative climate that supports shared authority and decision-making. Montgomery County leaders increased the emphasis on professional development for teachers and created opportunities for employees to work full-time and receive benefits by combining work in two job titles (such as bus driver and teacher aide).
“Choose your (desired) outcomes, and then ask yourself: ‘Under what conditions can we achieve those outcomes?’” Weast advised.
The last speaker, Monroe 1 BOCES Superintendent Daniel White, gave panelists a sense of regional collaborations that already could be possible through the BOCES organizations. He said such expanded roles often are thwarted by antiquated state statutes and regulations.
White urged the commission to advocate for removing barriers to money-saving regional consortiums that could provide student transportation, health insurance and management services such as payroll, purchasing, risk management, food service and energy efficiency.
He also recommended more support for BOCES initiatives like regional high schools, such as Tech Valley High in the Capital Region, as well as regional career and technical education (CTE) programs.
As White concluded, Parsons suggested there could be “value in thinking about rebranding” the image of BOCES beyond well-known service such as education of disabled students and CTE.
White agreed. “People see a niche, rather than looking at opportunities to grow,” he said.