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

Washington Monthly, Oct, 1992 by Katherine Boo

So let's. When the Consortium on Chicago School Research recently polled thousands of Chicago teachers, 57 percent of them reported that the restructuring has had no effect on what they do in their classrooms. Now come closer and see how reform has changed Farren Elementary, where geography--it's nestled into the world's largest housing project, Robert Taylor Homes--has traditionally been destiny.

Here, the city reports that 100 percent of the student body is low-income, and test scores are among the city's lowest. Has reform come to the rescue? This year, Farren's supply budget was cut 95 percent. To purchase the necessary paper and paper clips, Principal William Auksi had to shift the money from programs for kids with remedial learning problems.

"They had enough money," Auksi shrugs. Not surprisingly, tiny Farren does have enough funds to support two handsomely paid assistant principals.

No comprendo, teach

So even a "reformed" education establishment manages to keep bad teachers on the payroll, strangle creativity, and lavish on itself funds meant for kids. But perhaps the most damaging thing isn't what that establishment inflicts, but what it fails to share --power with the parents who have the most to gain and lose from the quality of their children's schools. In Chicago, that's a side effect. In Chelsea, Massachusetts, it's a disease unto itself. There, the disenfranchising of parent has sabotaged one of the most promising and well-intended reform movements in the country.

When John Silber's Boston University (BU) finally obtained a 10-year contract to run the Chelsea schools over the fierce objections of the teachers union and school administration, it was a little like winning a vacation home in Love Canal. The small district was the poorest and arguably the worst in the state. A third of the mostly hispanic student body couldn't do coursework in English, and its dropout rate, the highest in the state, was just barely higher than the rate at which its teenaged girls had kids. But BU was anything but daunted. "I don't want to be arrogant or grandiose," John Silber said at the time, "but I don't think it's utterly fanciful to say we're testing the future viability of American primary and secondary education."

As expected, the conservative Silber took on the patronage-laced administration with ferocity, and by 1990, with a salary boost as sweetener, he cajoled the teachers union into merit pay. But when it came to the classroom, he had a plan that would warm Hillary Clinton's heart. In Chelsea, teaching kids would begin outside the classroom, with health care, parent literacy programs, early training in English. In short, the Chelsea plan would hand over to teachers kids who were, in the education catchphrase, ready to learn. It was a swell idea--indeed, probably the most important in educating underprivileged, at-risk kids, who currently make up about a third of America's public school population. But Silber's perestroika overlooked one thing. More than half of Chelsea parents couldn't even understand BU's various projects, let alone participate in them.