Reform school confidential; what we can learn for three of America's boldest school reforms

Washington Monthly, Oct, 1992 by Katherine Boo

Of course, with a million bucks of his own money countering the education lobby, Ross Perot did manage to secure merit pay in Texas; Bill Clinton obtained a one-time-only basic literacy test for Arkansas teachers back in 1983. But there, in that corner of the map, you have all the significant state-level reform in teacher training and evaluation since A Nation at Risk. Almost everywhere else, a diploma--earned with a host of questionable pedagogical courses, a few weeks of practice teaching, and virtually no testing of subject knowledge--still equals a license to teach. Once teachers get those licenses, you can only hope that the semi-literate ones also have a predilection for pedophilia; little else will get them dismissed.

Teacher quality is an educational necessity that

V liberals are particularly shoddy at confronting. Teachers obviously deserve protection from unfair job actions, just as they deserve decent pay and working conditions. But as Rochester parents understand viscerally, there is another issue here--one of expectations. While pay can't be tied inextricably to performance until the wonks create the perfect test or the administrators fill classrooms with uniform percentages of good kids and bad, allowing teachers to teach with no real-world standards has predictable consequences. In Rochester, for example, state-level reform recently changed the way students would learn math; the new thing, sensibly, was mastering concepts and critical thinking instead of memorizing formulae. Yet what was good for students was a pain in the neck for their teachers, who would have to revise their ancient lesson plans. With no incentive to change their ways, they balked, clinging to the old memorize-the-Pythagorean methods. Droves of students failed their state math exams.

Even sadder was the fizzling of one of Rochester's most promising ideas. Every high school and middle school teacher had agreed to counsel 20 pupils and get involved with their parents--a plan to ensure that in reformed Rochester no child would slip quietly between the cracks. But some teachers refused to visit their poorer students' homes. They were petrified. Parents across the city quickly organized "diplomatic corps"--local parents who'd escort teachers into the projects. But the teachers wouldn't use them. Now the corps don't exist anymore, the teachers aren't making their visits, and you can almost hear the cracks widening.

Office politics

If Rochester's plan was to shower money and power on teachers, Chicago's plan was to wrest it from administrators and give it to parents. And when you ask Chicago school officials about the success of their dramatic decentralizing plan--one the Tribune called the most radical assault on the administrative power structure in American educational history --you invariably hear the story of Spry Elementary. There is a good lesson there, but not perhaps the one the central office wants to convey.

A few years back, the overcrowded, underfunded Spry was the fief of a Bad Old Principal whom parents routinely complained about to an indifferent central office. Then came reform, which usurped the central office's power and gave local councils composed of parents, who know what's best for their kids, the power to fire principals and set policy for individuals schools. Heady with this new control, the first thing the Spry council did was dump that Bad Old Principal for someone more responsive and aggressive. Today, Spry's classes are smaller and its test scores are inching up. Parents are happy, teachers are happy, students are happy. In fact, everybody seems happy except the students at Clay School across town. That's where the Bad Old Principal now collects his salary.