starry messenger
04-08-2010, 12:28 PM
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/michigan/news.newsmain/article/7/0/1633990/Education/A.Tale.of.Two.Cities%27.School.Systems
Looks like the counter attack is gearing up.
DETROIT, MI (Michigan Radio) - The schools in New Orleans were once considered among the worst in the country. Then Hurricane Katrina tore through, and the school system was rebuilt. It's now considered a laboratory for urban education reform.
Michigan Radio's Sarah Hulett and Jennifer Guerra have this look at what Detroit might learn from the Big Easy. Sarah starts our story in Detroit.
It's about 8:30 a.m., and Robert Bobb is meeting with his finance team.
"OK, let's get started," says Bobb. "Let's talk about the immediate decisions that have to be made."
This is what Bobb calls the War Room. It's where he and his staff pore over numbers at early-morning and late-night meetings. And it's where he's crafting a new vision for Detroit's schools.
"I think Bill, we still have the New Orleans structure?" asks Bobb. "But I still want to come back with the NewCo with just this box here, and then build the New Orleans program around this box...."
You heard Bobb use the term "NewCo." That's lingo used in the business world. An example close to home is General Motors. The OldCo was General Motors Corporation. It had liabilities it wanted to get rid of. As part of the bankruptcy process, it created a new entity - the General Motors Company. The valuable assets went into the new company. Most of the debts and liabilities stayed with the old company. Bobb is looking to do something similar with Detroit's schools.
"The very high-performing schools should be part of NewCo," says Bobb, "and I would put Cass, Renaissance, Bates..."
Bobb lists the handful of Detroit schools with great reputations that would be part of the "new" Detroit Public Schools.
The rest of the district's schools - and it would be the vast majority of them - would be left in the "OldCo," along with the debt.
But a school system isn't a car company. GM's OldCo could sell off factories, and give shareholders and bondholders pennies on the dollar for their investments. The schools left in the OldCo created by Detroit Public Schools would have tens of thousands of students in need of an education.
So the OldCo in this case might do something like New Orleans did.
In that city, the OldCo is called the Recovery School District.
"It's a school improvement arm. A physical school improvement arm," explains Paul Vallas, the man in charge of the Recovery School District, also known as the RSD.
"Go in there, make changes, implement the best practices, recruit and incubate the best leadership team, monitor, provide technical support. I mean that's the mission of the RSD."
After Hurricane Katrina hit, the state decided to wipe the slate clean, declare the city's school system defunct, and start all over again. The old school board took over a small number of the city's best performing schools. The state took over the rest. The goal: To eventually turn most if not all of the RSD-run schools into charter schools, which are basically public schools with more autonomy.
Duke Bradley opened up Mays Prep last year. The charter school took over the pre-K through 2nd grade classes at Carver Elementary, one of the worst performing schools in the RSD.
"Our students scored in the lower 5th percentile of every content area that was tested area. So that's math, science, ELA and social studies. That tells us that we've got a lot of hard work to do." That means 9 hour school days, classes on Saturdays, and at least 1 hour of homework every night.
But not everyone thinks the New Orleans model is the way to go. Diane Ravitch is a professor of education at New York University. "Well, I think that New Orleans has limited lessons to teach," says Ravitch. "For one thing, it's a model that requires you wipe out public education and start out from scratch. I wouldn't recommend that to any city in the country."
And because charter schools compete with traditional schools for students, Ravitch says the charters cherry pick the best kids, leaving the public schools even worse off than they were before.
Back in Detroit, Robert Bobb is working on plans that would borrow directly from the New Orleans playbook, including more charter schools. But he says the political realities of Detroit demand that he also present some kind of hybrid concept.
"Because parts of our community will go ballistic if you say we're going to become like a whole new charter district, which is not the case at all," says Bobb. "Our goal is not to charterize [sic] the district, it's to get it from where it is today, to make it better and stronger going into the future."
Bobb says he expects to present his plans to the public in June.
Contact Sarah Hulett at sarahhu@umich.edu, or Jennifer Guerra at guerraj@umich.edu
Support for "Rebuilding Detroit Schools: A Tale of Two Cities" comes from The Skillman Foundation and from The Kresge Foundation.
I guess OldCo and NewCo are shorthand for the "Old Economy" & "New Economy" framework they are trying to hang on all of this. So people still suffering under the effects of the "Old Economy" under the "New! Economy!" can go screw themselves...
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/03/angry-new-orleans-parents-not-nearly-so.html
Angry New Orleans Parents Not Nearly So Thankful for Katrina as Duncan
Paul Vallas, the man who taught Arne Duncan everything he doesn't know about schools, now runs the discriminatory corporate chain gang charters that have replaced public school.s in New Orleans. Parents have seen their children neglected, abused, and pushed out long enough to know that they want their schools back. From the Times-Picayune:
A crowd openly hostile to Recovery School District Superintendent Paul Vallas used a state board of education meeting to raise concerns about whether charter schools are leaving the most vulnerable children behind.
When Vallas stated at Monday's meeting that charters are doing "a heck of a job" educating public school students, the mostly African-American audience responded with jeers. Many speakers called for the return of neighborhood schools and expressed fears that many charters accept only students with high test scores.
Ellis Lucia, The Times-Picayune archiveRecovery School District Superintendent Paul Vallas
"Charters don't want anything to do with our children. They're sending them away," said Brenda Valteau, who identified herself as a 1961 graduate of George Washington Carver High School. "We're losing our young people to the streets. It sounds like a conspiracy to me."
Most New Orleans public schools were deemed low-performing and in 2005 turned over to the state-run Recovery School District and converted to charters. The Orleans Parish School Board, which once controlled more than 100 schools, retains only 16: 12 of them independently run charters and four traditional public schools.
The Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education's Recovery School District committee usually meets in Baton Rouge, but it held its meeting at McDonogh 35 High School in New Orleans on Monday. More than two dozen parents, teachers and community activists spoke during the public comment section of the meeting, which sometimes took on a raucous air as speakers made provocative statements and the crowd made its approval or disapproval known.
Darryl Kilbert, superintendent of the Orleans Parish School Board, drew cheers when he called for all of the city's public schools to return to local control. Kilbert's reception contrasted with the audience's skepticism toward BESE members from other parts of the state.
"I urge you to hear the voice of the community. I'm saying to you, it's time to bring our schools back home," Orleans Parish School Board member Ira Thomas said, echoing Kilbert's comments.
Vallas said after the meeting that although the RSD still needs to improve its services for special education students, its charter schools have open enrollment policies and do not exclude anyone. The district is improving test scores and building new schools, soliciting plenty of community input in doing so, he said.
"It's basically the same old, same old. It's a group that wants the schools returned to OPSB," Vallas said of Monday night's crowd. "That's it, that's the thrust, that's the theme."
Some speakers at the meeting pleaded to preserve schools with long traditions of educating the city's African-American students. Others called for a new elementary school and high school in the Katrina-devastated Lower 9th Ward.
Jonas Nash led a group of Joseph S. Clark High School graduates concerned about the school's possible conversion to a charter.
"How can there continue to be a Joseph S. Clark High School, when it looks like it's being phased out?" Nash asked.
Vallas acknowledged that the school might become a charter because it is not meeting academic performance standards. But he tried to reassure the alumni group that Clark will exist under the same name.
"There is going to be a Clark High School. The question is what kind of high school is it going to be?" Vallas said. "As there will always be a Clark, there will always be a John McDonogh, there will always be a Carver. There will be a new high school in the Lower 9th Ward. There is going to be a high school in the Lower 9th, because we secured federal funding."
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2010/03/new_teachers_working_long_hard.html
New Orleans charter schools work to sustain teachers' energy, results
Early every morning, Akili Academy's teachers gather for a daily bonding ritual.
Clutching caffeinated beverages, they offer praise to one another for achievements large and small: calming down an upset student, teaching an outstanding lesson on "realistic fiction" to kindergarteners, sorting out unspecified "bathroom issues."
For the finale, the charter school's staff pulls in closer for a quick huddle, like a sports team preparing to take the field. "Who are we proud to be?" one teacher asks. "Akili Academy of New Orleans!" they shout in unison, sending their arms flying. They then head to class before the students arrive.
But this is no casual competition or recreational game. It lasts at least 10 hours every weekday, often spills over into the weekends, and, at times, consumes the lives of the mostly young Akili staff.
"I'm totally tired, and if I'm still working this many hours next year, I maybe wouldn't work a fourth year," said Francis Giesler, an Akili teacher. Giesler, 24, a 2008 graduate of Loyola University, grew up in St. Louis.
While Giesler praises Akili for its supportive work environment, she gives voice to a nagging concern of school reformers and charter leaders across the city and the country. How can a movement predicated in part on superhuman exertions of time and effort sustain itself and grow in the long term?
As Giesler puts it: "How good a school are you if you have really strong results, but can't take that model anywhere else because it was solely reliant on the bodies in the building, and kills people after two years?"
A growing number of schools, particularly charters, embrace a "no excuses" or "whatever it takes" attitude toward closing the achievement gap between poor, minority students and their wealthier peers. Poverty isn't an excuse for school failure. Neither is bad parenting. Or insufficient school funding.
But to overcome these obstacles, a school's staff and students must work harder -- in the evenings, on weekends and through the summer -- and give up some of their personal lives for their jobs.
Arguably nowhere is this trend so pronounced as in New Orleans, where charter schools mushroomed after Hurricane Katrina and hundreds of ambitious young educators like Giesler now live and teach. A looming question facing school leaders is how to maintain momentum as teachers and administrators inevitably grow up, burn out or move on.
Long hours, low pay
Sean Gallagher, Akili's principal and founder, said his teachers are paid to work 50-hour weeks, but often put in 60 or 70, particularly during their first months. He and Stephanie Lyon, the director of curriculum, post about 80 hours a week on a routine basis.
In its first year, Akili's salaries ranged from $41,500 for novices to $52,000 for the school's most veteran teacher, who had seven years of experience. Like others at charter schools, Akili's teachers are at-will employees, without the collective bargaining or tenure of teachers in many traditional school districts.
With dozens of lesson plans and a year under their belts, the teachers work less now than when they first started. But Gallagher said the school still must do more to make work conditions realistic. Akili, located in Gentilly, opened in 2008 with kindergarteners and first-graders, and plans to add a grade each year.
"You're going to run out of people willing to work an 80-hour week," he said. "Everyone here is single; no one has a kid. That's just not (replicable). I want us to look like something any school in New Orleans could do. Right now, we're not there."
Gallagher said he tried to recruit a diverse teaching staff: young and old, novice and experienced, natives and transplants.
But the time commitment proved a deal-breaker with most veteran, New Orleans educators.
At one recruitment fair, a job-seeker stopped by Gallagher's table.
"Longer school day? Longer school year?" the man asked.
When Gallagher nodded, the teacher quickly walked away, saying, "Don't need to talk to you."
In the end, Gallagher asked Teach For America to handpick some candidates. The program puts top college graduates in the classroom for two-year stints.
In its first year, most of Akili's classrooms had two co-teachers, one with at least two years of teaching experience, and the second, a novice hired through Teach For America or teachNOLA, a local recruitment and training program.
All told, five of the school's nine teachers were in their first year. None grew up in New Orleans.
"I want native New Orleanians on our staff," Gallagher said. But "I couldn't get beyond the first phone conversation."
Build the plane, fly it
The work environment is intense. At a new school, everything -- from writing rules to creating schedules -- takes additional time. Educators often describe it as trying to build a plane and fly it at the same time.
Several factors account for the long hours. Teachers have a longer school day and year than most; they write all of their lesson plans from scratch, tailoring them to the students' specific needs; they stay after school with students who need tutoring; they attend frequent staff meetings to discuss subjects ranging from Akili's approach to discipline or double-digit addition; and they relentlessly measure and analyze student performance on such metrics as "counting backwards from 10" and "using critical thinking skills to solve more complex problems."
More intangibly, the school tends to hire teachers who would likely work long hours, regardless of the setting.
Despite the stress and workload, teacher morale at Akili is unusually high, arguably because staff members buy in to the program before they sign up. Not that every teacher stays on board. One experienced teacher left a few weeks into the 2008 school year, leaving a hole in a kindergarten classroom.
A giddy and supportive enthusiasm usually fills the teachers' lounge, which in Akili's first year was in a small space brimming with open laptops, children's books, and empty cans of Starbucks DoubleShot.
Teachers form bond
One morning, teacher Avery Himes arrived first, at 6:30 a.m., carrying a McDonald's bag. He headed straight to the teachers' room, where he fine-tuned a lesson on coins for his kindergarteners.
Himes, a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, relied on his more experienced co-teacher to maintain control over the classroom during the first part of the 2008-09 school year. But as the year progressed, he developed his own gentle-mannered approach.
akili-lounge.JPGTeacher Tara McDonald, left, grabs a snack while doing paperwork as fellow teacher Avery Himes, right, makes copies during their brief break between classes at Akili Academy.
During the next few minutes, the rest of the teachers arrived, until the whir of the copy machine and conversations about lesson plans filled the room.
Giesler burst in, looking uncharacteristically frazzled. "This is the worst day ever!" she exclaimed, noting she did not have time to wait in an unusually long line for coffee.
"It might be that I get more energy from the thought of not having coffee than coffee itself because I am on fire!"
One co-worker handed her a can of DoubleShot. A second promised to make a coffee run during a prep period.
"I love how everyone is banding together to help me in this moment of crisis," Giesler said, joking.
"I really can't complain," she said later. "It's much more of a group effort than I ever thought I would be a part of."
Although a growing number of public schools in New Orleans rely on young staffs, Akili is an extreme.
Experience, enthusiasm
Some ambitious new charter high schools, like New Orleans Charter Science and Math Academy, or Sci Academy, prefer teachers with at least a year of experience. These schools often compete aggressively for teachers with two to four years under their belts, like recent Teach For America alums, who have some knowledge of classroom management but still tend to be young and childless.
Ben Marcovitz, Sci Academy's principal, said what matters most is the quality of the teacher, not the years of experience. But he believes experience makes good teachers better.
Other New Orleans schools, including several that have made significant gains with largely impoverished, minority student populations, tend to employ more veteran educators.
"I love veteran teachers," said Sharon Clark, principal of Sophie B. Wright Charter School. "They come with their own flair and creativity."
Educators will probably always debate the importance of experience, some of which boils down to the contrasting philosophies of school leaders. Some emphasize the importance of building a family-like school culture, where children can develop lifelong relationships with teachers who attend their churches, live in the neighborhood and might even have taught their parents. Others say they care about continuity, but will do whatever it takes to build a high-performing school, even if that means higher teacher turnover.
A growing group of educators and policy wonks say they are not particularly concerned about chronic teacher turnover in urban schools, as long as there's a pipeline of bright workaholics to fill the vacancies.
"I don't think turnover is inherently bad," said Andrew Rotherham, publisher of Education Sector, an education policy think tank. "Planned turnover or turnover you can deal with without yielding quality is fine."
Others stress that more value should be placed on making teaching a viable career for those who do not meet the typical Teach For America profile: young, well-educated and unattached.
Andre Perry, CEO of the University of New Orleans' charter school network, said he worries about relying too heavily on young teachers from out of town. He notes that schools that burn out their teachers after a few years must repeatedly reinvest in replacements. "It just seems inefficient," he said.
Perry encourages school leaders to foster the notion that "teaching is a way of living" that can coincide with having a life outside work.
"We are not creating that enough here in New Orleans," he said. "It's such a brutal lifestyle. We're so focused on performance in such a specific way that we've become robots."
Prospects for growth
A recent report from the Education Sector raised questions about the capacity of top-tier charter networks to expand without additional resources or policy changes.
While teacher salaries tend to be lower at such schools because the staff is less experienced, high turnover rates force the schools to spend more money on recruitment and training, according to the report. Moreover, the schools often depend on infusions of private money to maintain their rigorous programs.
Advocates of alternative recruitment programs point out that attrition rates among first-year teachers in urban schools are high regardless of where the teachers come from or the hours they work. A Harvard study, for instance, found that 61 percent of Teach For America participants stay with teaching beyond the two-year commitment, on par with the overall percentage of new teachers in high-poverty schools.
Yet a couple of studies concluded that some charters burn through teachers more quickly than traditional schools. A recent report by the Texas Center for Educational Research put the average teacher turnover for charter schools in 2006 in that state at 43 percent, compared to 16 percent for traditional public school districts. And a 2007 study by Western Michigan University researchers found younger teachers were significantly more likely to leave charter schools than older ones. It put national attrition rates for new charter school teachers at 40 percent.
Rotherham points out that high rates of turnover can not be attributed to any single factor. "It's a mix of things, but because the debate is so political, supporters or detractors tend to seize on to one piece," he said.
The debates over experience can obscure the more important issue of how to retain the best teachers, whether they are novices or 30-year veterans.
Gallagher said he'll cajole and bargain with young teachers to persuade them to stay in New Orleans as long as possible. Some charter leaders ask teachers to make a five-year commitment, and hope to offer bonuses, significant raises or sabbatical opportunities to successful teachers who stay longer. Some have opened school-based child-care centers to ease the burden on staff with young children.
The lure, charm of the city
How many stay depends partly on how much they like living in New Orleans. But it also depends on how palatable school leaders make the prospect: A teacher working 12-hour days with no end in sight may never envision a long-term commitment.
Kira Orange Jones, Teach For American's regional director, said teachers are far more likely to stay if they feel like they have support from the school's leaders, an asset that several of Akili's teachers say they have in Gallagher and Lyon.
Gallagher and Perry agreed that young teachers need to believe they can have a future in education, whether that means transitioning into a teacher with a life or moving up the ranks to become an administrator.
"When you are a 22-year-old at Vanguard, you can look at the people who are making $300,000 and plan out a path to get there," Gallagher said. "If you are a 22-year-old teacher who works at Akili, where is the path? For that motivated person who wants to grow and climb, this is a hard path for them."
Neither Giesler nor Himes dreams of making $300,000 any time soon. And both teachers want to stay in education for the long term. Both were motivated by the progress Akili's students made in the school's first year. The school does not yet have any students who take the state's iLEAP or LEAP exams. But a different test administered by the school showed that at the start of the 2008-09 school year, 6 percent of the children were at or above grade level, compared to more than 75 percent at the end of the year.
But because they're both dissatisfied with the graduate programs in education available in New Orleans, each plans to move away sometime in the next five years. Himes wants a degree in early childhood education, and Giesler in literacy.
"I would definitely stay and teach here while going to school, but that's not really an option," Himes said. "If you want to make career progressions here you really have to leave and come back."
But he said the workload in his second year compared to his first "feels like night and day."
"Last year I was just trying to make it," he said.
Giesler agreed that the situation has improved. During her first year she didn't leave Akili before 6 p.m. until May, but now she leaves at 5 p.m. two or three times a week and serves as her classroom's lead teacher.
Still, she can't imagine ever balancing her 31 students at Akili with a child of her own.
"I couldn't imagine doing this job with a kid," she says. "I really could not."
Looks like the counter attack is gearing up.
DETROIT, MI (Michigan Radio) - The schools in New Orleans were once considered among the worst in the country. Then Hurricane Katrina tore through, and the school system was rebuilt. It's now considered a laboratory for urban education reform.
Michigan Radio's Sarah Hulett and Jennifer Guerra have this look at what Detroit might learn from the Big Easy. Sarah starts our story in Detroit.
It's about 8:30 a.m., and Robert Bobb is meeting with his finance team.
"OK, let's get started," says Bobb. "Let's talk about the immediate decisions that have to be made."
This is what Bobb calls the War Room. It's where he and his staff pore over numbers at early-morning and late-night meetings. And it's where he's crafting a new vision for Detroit's schools.
"I think Bill, we still have the New Orleans structure?" asks Bobb. "But I still want to come back with the NewCo with just this box here, and then build the New Orleans program around this box...."
You heard Bobb use the term "NewCo." That's lingo used in the business world. An example close to home is General Motors. The OldCo was General Motors Corporation. It had liabilities it wanted to get rid of. As part of the bankruptcy process, it created a new entity - the General Motors Company. The valuable assets went into the new company. Most of the debts and liabilities stayed with the old company. Bobb is looking to do something similar with Detroit's schools.
"The very high-performing schools should be part of NewCo," says Bobb, "and I would put Cass, Renaissance, Bates..."
Bobb lists the handful of Detroit schools with great reputations that would be part of the "new" Detroit Public Schools.
The rest of the district's schools - and it would be the vast majority of them - would be left in the "OldCo," along with the debt.
But a school system isn't a car company. GM's OldCo could sell off factories, and give shareholders and bondholders pennies on the dollar for their investments. The schools left in the OldCo created by Detroit Public Schools would have tens of thousands of students in need of an education.
So the OldCo in this case might do something like New Orleans did.
In that city, the OldCo is called the Recovery School District.
"It's a school improvement arm. A physical school improvement arm," explains Paul Vallas, the man in charge of the Recovery School District, also known as the RSD.
"Go in there, make changes, implement the best practices, recruit and incubate the best leadership team, monitor, provide technical support. I mean that's the mission of the RSD."
After Hurricane Katrina hit, the state decided to wipe the slate clean, declare the city's school system defunct, and start all over again. The old school board took over a small number of the city's best performing schools. The state took over the rest. The goal: To eventually turn most if not all of the RSD-run schools into charter schools, which are basically public schools with more autonomy.
Duke Bradley opened up Mays Prep last year. The charter school took over the pre-K through 2nd grade classes at Carver Elementary, one of the worst performing schools in the RSD.
"Our students scored in the lower 5th percentile of every content area that was tested area. So that's math, science, ELA and social studies. That tells us that we've got a lot of hard work to do." That means 9 hour school days, classes on Saturdays, and at least 1 hour of homework every night.
But not everyone thinks the New Orleans model is the way to go. Diane Ravitch is a professor of education at New York University. "Well, I think that New Orleans has limited lessons to teach," says Ravitch. "For one thing, it's a model that requires you wipe out public education and start out from scratch. I wouldn't recommend that to any city in the country."
And because charter schools compete with traditional schools for students, Ravitch says the charters cherry pick the best kids, leaving the public schools even worse off than they were before.
Back in Detroit, Robert Bobb is working on plans that would borrow directly from the New Orleans playbook, including more charter schools. But he says the political realities of Detroit demand that he also present some kind of hybrid concept.
"Because parts of our community will go ballistic if you say we're going to become like a whole new charter district, which is not the case at all," says Bobb. "Our goal is not to charterize [sic] the district, it's to get it from where it is today, to make it better and stronger going into the future."
Bobb says he expects to present his plans to the public in June.
Contact Sarah Hulett at sarahhu@umich.edu, or Jennifer Guerra at guerraj@umich.edu
Support for "Rebuilding Detroit Schools: A Tale of Two Cities" comes from The Skillman Foundation and from The Kresge Foundation.
I guess OldCo and NewCo are shorthand for the "Old Economy" & "New Economy" framework they are trying to hang on all of this. So people still suffering under the effects of the "Old Economy" under the "New! Economy!" can go screw themselves...
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/03/angry-new-orleans-parents-not-nearly-so.html
Angry New Orleans Parents Not Nearly So Thankful for Katrina as Duncan
Paul Vallas, the man who taught Arne Duncan everything he doesn't know about schools, now runs the discriminatory corporate chain gang charters that have replaced public school.s in New Orleans. Parents have seen their children neglected, abused, and pushed out long enough to know that they want their schools back. From the Times-Picayune:
A crowd openly hostile to Recovery School District Superintendent Paul Vallas used a state board of education meeting to raise concerns about whether charter schools are leaving the most vulnerable children behind.
When Vallas stated at Monday's meeting that charters are doing "a heck of a job" educating public school students, the mostly African-American audience responded with jeers. Many speakers called for the return of neighborhood schools and expressed fears that many charters accept only students with high test scores.
Ellis Lucia, The Times-Picayune archiveRecovery School District Superintendent Paul Vallas
"Charters don't want anything to do with our children. They're sending them away," said Brenda Valteau, who identified herself as a 1961 graduate of George Washington Carver High School. "We're losing our young people to the streets. It sounds like a conspiracy to me."
Most New Orleans public schools were deemed low-performing and in 2005 turned over to the state-run Recovery School District and converted to charters. The Orleans Parish School Board, which once controlled more than 100 schools, retains only 16: 12 of them independently run charters and four traditional public schools.
The Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education's Recovery School District committee usually meets in Baton Rouge, but it held its meeting at McDonogh 35 High School in New Orleans on Monday. More than two dozen parents, teachers and community activists spoke during the public comment section of the meeting, which sometimes took on a raucous air as speakers made provocative statements and the crowd made its approval or disapproval known.
Darryl Kilbert, superintendent of the Orleans Parish School Board, drew cheers when he called for all of the city's public schools to return to local control. Kilbert's reception contrasted with the audience's skepticism toward BESE members from other parts of the state.
"I urge you to hear the voice of the community. I'm saying to you, it's time to bring our schools back home," Orleans Parish School Board member Ira Thomas said, echoing Kilbert's comments.
Vallas said after the meeting that although the RSD still needs to improve its services for special education students, its charter schools have open enrollment policies and do not exclude anyone. The district is improving test scores and building new schools, soliciting plenty of community input in doing so, he said.
"It's basically the same old, same old. It's a group that wants the schools returned to OPSB," Vallas said of Monday night's crowd. "That's it, that's the thrust, that's the theme."
Some speakers at the meeting pleaded to preserve schools with long traditions of educating the city's African-American students. Others called for a new elementary school and high school in the Katrina-devastated Lower 9th Ward.
Jonas Nash led a group of Joseph S. Clark High School graduates concerned about the school's possible conversion to a charter.
"How can there continue to be a Joseph S. Clark High School, when it looks like it's being phased out?" Nash asked.
Vallas acknowledged that the school might become a charter because it is not meeting academic performance standards. But he tried to reassure the alumni group that Clark will exist under the same name.
"There is going to be a Clark High School. The question is what kind of high school is it going to be?" Vallas said. "As there will always be a Clark, there will always be a John McDonogh, there will always be a Carver. There will be a new high school in the Lower 9th Ward. There is going to be a high school in the Lower 9th, because we secured federal funding."
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2010/03/new_teachers_working_long_hard.html
New Orleans charter schools work to sustain teachers' energy, results
Early every morning, Akili Academy's teachers gather for a daily bonding ritual.
Clutching caffeinated beverages, they offer praise to one another for achievements large and small: calming down an upset student, teaching an outstanding lesson on "realistic fiction" to kindergarteners, sorting out unspecified "bathroom issues."
For the finale, the charter school's staff pulls in closer for a quick huddle, like a sports team preparing to take the field. "Who are we proud to be?" one teacher asks. "Akili Academy of New Orleans!" they shout in unison, sending their arms flying. They then head to class before the students arrive.
But this is no casual competition or recreational game. It lasts at least 10 hours every weekday, often spills over into the weekends, and, at times, consumes the lives of the mostly young Akili staff.
"I'm totally tired, and if I'm still working this many hours next year, I maybe wouldn't work a fourth year," said Francis Giesler, an Akili teacher. Giesler, 24, a 2008 graduate of Loyola University, grew up in St. Louis.
While Giesler praises Akili for its supportive work environment, she gives voice to a nagging concern of school reformers and charter leaders across the city and the country. How can a movement predicated in part on superhuman exertions of time and effort sustain itself and grow in the long term?
As Giesler puts it: "How good a school are you if you have really strong results, but can't take that model anywhere else because it was solely reliant on the bodies in the building, and kills people after two years?"
A growing number of schools, particularly charters, embrace a "no excuses" or "whatever it takes" attitude toward closing the achievement gap between poor, minority students and their wealthier peers. Poverty isn't an excuse for school failure. Neither is bad parenting. Or insufficient school funding.
But to overcome these obstacles, a school's staff and students must work harder -- in the evenings, on weekends and through the summer -- and give up some of their personal lives for their jobs.
Arguably nowhere is this trend so pronounced as in New Orleans, where charter schools mushroomed after Hurricane Katrina and hundreds of ambitious young educators like Giesler now live and teach. A looming question facing school leaders is how to maintain momentum as teachers and administrators inevitably grow up, burn out or move on.
Long hours, low pay
Sean Gallagher, Akili's principal and founder, said his teachers are paid to work 50-hour weeks, but often put in 60 or 70, particularly during their first months. He and Stephanie Lyon, the director of curriculum, post about 80 hours a week on a routine basis.
In its first year, Akili's salaries ranged from $41,500 for novices to $52,000 for the school's most veteran teacher, who had seven years of experience. Like others at charter schools, Akili's teachers are at-will employees, without the collective bargaining or tenure of teachers in many traditional school districts.
With dozens of lesson plans and a year under their belts, the teachers work less now than when they first started. But Gallagher said the school still must do more to make work conditions realistic. Akili, located in Gentilly, opened in 2008 with kindergarteners and first-graders, and plans to add a grade each year.
"You're going to run out of people willing to work an 80-hour week," he said. "Everyone here is single; no one has a kid. That's just not (replicable). I want us to look like something any school in New Orleans could do. Right now, we're not there."
Gallagher said he tried to recruit a diverse teaching staff: young and old, novice and experienced, natives and transplants.
But the time commitment proved a deal-breaker with most veteran, New Orleans educators.
At one recruitment fair, a job-seeker stopped by Gallagher's table.
"Longer school day? Longer school year?" the man asked.
When Gallagher nodded, the teacher quickly walked away, saying, "Don't need to talk to you."
In the end, Gallagher asked Teach For America to handpick some candidates. The program puts top college graduates in the classroom for two-year stints.
In its first year, most of Akili's classrooms had two co-teachers, one with at least two years of teaching experience, and the second, a novice hired through Teach For America or teachNOLA, a local recruitment and training program.
All told, five of the school's nine teachers were in their first year. None grew up in New Orleans.
"I want native New Orleanians on our staff," Gallagher said. But "I couldn't get beyond the first phone conversation."
Build the plane, fly it
The work environment is intense. At a new school, everything -- from writing rules to creating schedules -- takes additional time. Educators often describe it as trying to build a plane and fly it at the same time.
Several factors account for the long hours. Teachers have a longer school day and year than most; they write all of their lesson plans from scratch, tailoring them to the students' specific needs; they stay after school with students who need tutoring; they attend frequent staff meetings to discuss subjects ranging from Akili's approach to discipline or double-digit addition; and they relentlessly measure and analyze student performance on such metrics as "counting backwards from 10" and "using critical thinking skills to solve more complex problems."
More intangibly, the school tends to hire teachers who would likely work long hours, regardless of the setting.
Despite the stress and workload, teacher morale at Akili is unusually high, arguably because staff members buy in to the program before they sign up. Not that every teacher stays on board. One experienced teacher left a few weeks into the 2008 school year, leaving a hole in a kindergarten classroom.
A giddy and supportive enthusiasm usually fills the teachers' lounge, which in Akili's first year was in a small space brimming with open laptops, children's books, and empty cans of Starbucks DoubleShot.
Teachers form bond
One morning, teacher Avery Himes arrived first, at 6:30 a.m., carrying a McDonald's bag. He headed straight to the teachers' room, where he fine-tuned a lesson on coins for his kindergarteners.
Himes, a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, relied on his more experienced co-teacher to maintain control over the classroom during the first part of the 2008-09 school year. But as the year progressed, he developed his own gentle-mannered approach.
akili-lounge.JPGTeacher Tara McDonald, left, grabs a snack while doing paperwork as fellow teacher Avery Himes, right, makes copies during their brief break between classes at Akili Academy.
During the next few minutes, the rest of the teachers arrived, until the whir of the copy machine and conversations about lesson plans filled the room.
Giesler burst in, looking uncharacteristically frazzled. "This is the worst day ever!" she exclaimed, noting she did not have time to wait in an unusually long line for coffee.
"It might be that I get more energy from the thought of not having coffee than coffee itself because I am on fire!"
One co-worker handed her a can of DoubleShot. A second promised to make a coffee run during a prep period.
"I love how everyone is banding together to help me in this moment of crisis," Giesler said, joking.
"I really can't complain," she said later. "It's much more of a group effort than I ever thought I would be a part of."
Although a growing number of public schools in New Orleans rely on young staffs, Akili is an extreme.
Experience, enthusiasm
Some ambitious new charter high schools, like New Orleans Charter Science and Math Academy, or Sci Academy, prefer teachers with at least a year of experience. These schools often compete aggressively for teachers with two to four years under their belts, like recent Teach For America alums, who have some knowledge of classroom management but still tend to be young and childless.
Ben Marcovitz, Sci Academy's principal, said what matters most is the quality of the teacher, not the years of experience. But he believes experience makes good teachers better.
Other New Orleans schools, including several that have made significant gains with largely impoverished, minority student populations, tend to employ more veteran educators.
"I love veteran teachers," said Sharon Clark, principal of Sophie B. Wright Charter School. "They come with their own flair and creativity."
Educators will probably always debate the importance of experience, some of which boils down to the contrasting philosophies of school leaders. Some emphasize the importance of building a family-like school culture, where children can develop lifelong relationships with teachers who attend their churches, live in the neighborhood and might even have taught their parents. Others say they care about continuity, but will do whatever it takes to build a high-performing school, even if that means higher teacher turnover.
A growing group of educators and policy wonks say they are not particularly concerned about chronic teacher turnover in urban schools, as long as there's a pipeline of bright workaholics to fill the vacancies.
"I don't think turnover is inherently bad," said Andrew Rotherham, publisher of Education Sector, an education policy think tank. "Planned turnover or turnover you can deal with without yielding quality is fine."
Others stress that more value should be placed on making teaching a viable career for those who do not meet the typical Teach For America profile: young, well-educated and unattached.
Andre Perry, CEO of the University of New Orleans' charter school network, said he worries about relying too heavily on young teachers from out of town. He notes that schools that burn out their teachers after a few years must repeatedly reinvest in replacements. "It just seems inefficient," he said.
Perry encourages school leaders to foster the notion that "teaching is a way of living" that can coincide with having a life outside work.
"We are not creating that enough here in New Orleans," he said. "It's such a brutal lifestyle. We're so focused on performance in such a specific way that we've become robots."
Prospects for growth
A recent report from the Education Sector raised questions about the capacity of top-tier charter networks to expand without additional resources or policy changes.
While teacher salaries tend to be lower at such schools because the staff is less experienced, high turnover rates force the schools to spend more money on recruitment and training, according to the report. Moreover, the schools often depend on infusions of private money to maintain their rigorous programs.
Advocates of alternative recruitment programs point out that attrition rates among first-year teachers in urban schools are high regardless of where the teachers come from or the hours they work. A Harvard study, for instance, found that 61 percent of Teach For America participants stay with teaching beyond the two-year commitment, on par with the overall percentage of new teachers in high-poverty schools.
Yet a couple of studies concluded that some charters burn through teachers more quickly than traditional schools. A recent report by the Texas Center for Educational Research put the average teacher turnover for charter schools in 2006 in that state at 43 percent, compared to 16 percent for traditional public school districts. And a 2007 study by Western Michigan University researchers found younger teachers were significantly more likely to leave charter schools than older ones. It put national attrition rates for new charter school teachers at 40 percent.
Rotherham points out that high rates of turnover can not be attributed to any single factor. "It's a mix of things, but because the debate is so political, supporters or detractors tend to seize on to one piece," he said.
The debates over experience can obscure the more important issue of how to retain the best teachers, whether they are novices or 30-year veterans.
Gallagher said he'll cajole and bargain with young teachers to persuade them to stay in New Orleans as long as possible. Some charter leaders ask teachers to make a five-year commitment, and hope to offer bonuses, significant raises or sabbatical opportunities to successful teachers who stay longer. Some have opened school-based child-care centers to ease the burden on staff with young children.
The lure, charm of the city
How many stay depends partly on how much they like living in New Orleans. But it also depends on how palatable school leaders make the prospect: A teacher working 12-hour days with no end in sight may never envision a long-term commitment.
Kira Orange Jones, Teach For American's regional director, said teachers are far more likely to stay if they feel like they have support from the school's leaders, an asset that several of Akili's teachers say they have in Gallagher and Lyon.
Gallagher and Perry agreed that young teachers need to believe they can have a future in education, whether that means transitioning into a teacher with a life or moving up the ranks to become an administrator.
"When you are a 22-year-old at Vanguard, you can look at the people who are making $300,000 and plan out a path to get there," Gallagher said. "If you are a 22-year-old teacher who works at Akili, where is the path? For that motivated person who wants to grow and climb, this is a hard path for them."
Neither Giesler nor Himes dreams of making $300,000 any time soon. And both teachers want to stay in education for the long term. Both were motivated by the progress Akili's students made in the school's first year. The school does not yet have any students who take the state's iLEAP or LEAP exams. But a different test administered by the school showed that at the start of the 2008-09 school year, 6 percent of the children were at or above grade level, compared to more than 75 percent at the end of the year.
But because they're both dissatisfied with the graduate programs in education available in New Orleans, each plans to move away sometime in the next five years. Himes wants a degree in early childhood education, and Giesler in literacy.
"I would definitely stay and teach here while going to school, but that's not really an option," Himes said. "If you want to make career progressions here you really have to leave and come back."
But he said the workload in his second year compared to his first "feels like night and day."
"Last year I was just trying to make it," he said.
Giesler agreed that the situation has improved. During her first year she didn't leave Akili before 6 p.m. until May, but now she leaves at 5 p.m. two or three times a week and serves as her classroom's lead teacher.
Still, she can't imagine ever balancing her 31 students at Akili with a child of her own.
"I couldn't imagine doing this job with a kid," she says. "I really could not."