Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools

by Diane Ravitch

  The turnaround idea had its origins in Chicago when Arne Duncan was superintendent of schools. In June 2004, Duncan and Mayor Richard M. Daley announced an initiative called Renaissance 2010, which involved the eventual closure of some sixty neighborhood schools and their replacement by a hundred new schools. The Gates Foundation and the city’s business leadership enthusiastically supported the program. In 2009, Duncan left Chicago to become Obama’s secretary of education, but by then the pattern had been set: reform would proceed by closing low-performing schools and opening new schools that would presumably be better. This turned out to be the model that Duncan applied to the nation with billions of federal dollars to encourage states and districts to participate.

  Did the turnaround approach work in Chicago?

  Two reports reached diametrically different conclusions in 2012, two years beyond the target date of Renaissance 2010.

  One report was prepared by two respected and independent research groups: the Consortium on Chicago School Research and the American Institutes for Research (AIR). Their report found significant improvement in low-performing elementary schools that had been subject to turnaround treatment. After four years, it said, these schools had narrowed the gap with the school system average by “almost half in reading and two-thirds in math.” High schools subject to turnaround, however, “did not show significant improvements in absences or ninth grade on-track-to-graduate rates over matched comparison schools.”2

  The second report, released at the same time, asserted that “Chicago’s democratically-led elementary schools far out-perform Chicago’s ‘turnaround schools.’ ” The report was prepared by Designs for Change (DFC), a Chicago-based research organization. The DFC report said that thirty-three high-poverty public schools had significantly outperformed the twelve “turnaround” elementary schools.3

  The democratically led schools are run by an elected local school council (LSC). This council is equivalent to a school board. It consists of six parents, two teachers, the principal, one nonteaching staff member, and two community members. The LSC selects the principal, evaluates the principal, approves the budget, monitors the school’s improvement plan, and builds community partnerships. Unlike the “parent trigger,” which sets parent against parent, and parents against teachers, and uses parents to privatize the school, the LSC works within a democratic framework and promotes the principle of collaboration among the school’s constituents. It is no panacea to the problems of urban education, but it is certainly valuable to involve parents and enable them to participate in decision making about their children’s schooling.

  The DFC report made a strong case. At the time, Chicago had 210 neighborhood elementary schools in which at least 95 percent of students were low income. Thirty-three of these high-poverty schools “were above the citywide average for all 480 CPS [Chicago public schools] elementary schools in reading.” Fourteen of these 33 high-scoring schools were more than 90 percent African American; 16 of the 33 were more than 85 percent Latino. All 33 of the high-performing schools were led by elected LSCs that were empowered to choose their principals.

  But not one of the turnaround schools ranked above the citywide average in reading.

  (I hesitate to say whether the Illinois state standards in reading and mathematics are good gauges of school quality, but they are used by the state and the federal government to close schools. As long as the reformers insist that these are the right benchmarks for closing public schools, then the schools they open must be judged by the same measures.)

  Unlike the turnaround schools, the thirty-three democratically led schools never received substantial outside funding and “almost never receive public recognition.”

  DFC presented brief portraits of these unsung, high-performing, high-poverty schools:

  Dunne Technology Academy (352 students, 98% low-income, 99% African American). 77% Meet or Exceed ISAT Standards in Reading, 91% Meet or Exceed ISAT Standards in Math. Close collaboration exists among the LSC, principal, and teachers. Dunne focuses on teaching its students sophisticated video and music production skills. Dunne educates children in a wretched school building, which lacks many basic physical resources that most people regard as essential for a minimally-adequate school building. Dunne’s roof leaks; they have no kitchen, lunchroom, or gym; and the walls are crumbling. Repeated attempts by the LSC and school community to obtain a new building have thus far failed …

  Gallistel Language Academy (1,444 students in three buildings, 93% Latino, 96% low income). 70% of students Meet or Exceed ISAT Standards in Reading. 79% Meet or Exceed ISAT Standards in Math (83% following previous state policy about when English Language Learners had to begin taking the ISAT). Gallistel’s LSC hired a new principal in spring 2000, who has unified the school. Gallistel is intensively over-crowded. 400 to 600 Gallistel parents, teachers, and students have testified at school system facilities hearings each year over the past several years, asking for major repairs. The main building is plagued by electrical outages, leaks, and widely varying temperatures. Despite these obstacles, 75% of Gallistel teachers have remained at the school for at least four years. [Boldface in the original.]

  By contrast, the turnaround elementary schools were not led by an LSC. Instead, they were “tightly controlled” by either an independent contractor (a turnaround company called the Academy for Urban School Leadership, or AUSL) or by a department of the school system called the Office of School Improvement. These organizations have “near-total authority to select staff, define the school’s learning program and oversee other important aspects of students’ learning experiences (such as discipline)” (boldface in the original). In contrast to the thirty-three democratically led schools, the turnaround schools get extra staff, extra resources, and renovated facilities, all part of an additional $7 million per school over a five-year period. The turnaround schools were lavishly praised by the media and regularly touted by Mayor Daley and his successor, Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

  AUSL took over the first of the turnaround schools, Sherman School of Excellence, in 2006–7. AUSL promised that by year five, 80 percent of the students would meet or exceed state standards in reading, mathematics, and science. At the time, only 31 percent of its 584 students (98–99 percent of whom were low income and African American) met state standards in reading. At the end of five years, promised AUSL, the school would have a new culture and would be “permanently reset,” and AUSL could step away from its role.

  Sherman did improve, but it fell far short of AUSL’s bold promise. After five years, 52 percent of the students met state standards in reading, not the 80 percent that was AUSL’s goal. Sherman ranked well below the thirty-three democratically led schools that did not receive extra resources and a new staff. In reading, it was 171st of the 210 high-poverty schools in the city system, far below the democratically controlled, high-performing, high-poverty schools. AUSL returned to the board of education to get an extension of its contract and additional resources for a sixth year in which to exercise total control over the school, despite failing to meet its goals.

  Teacher retention presented another contrast between the highly resourced turnaround schools and the unnoticed, high-performing, high-poverty schools. The turnaround schools had a brand-new, carefully selected staff, half of whom were specially trained by AUSL. Only 42 percent of teachers were still teaching in the original turnaround schools four years later, compared with 71 percent in the non-turnaround elementary schools. The DFC report attributed the superior staff retention rate at the non-turnaround schools to strong leadership, teamwork, and good parent-teacher relations.

  Actually, both reports were correct. The turnaround schools made progress, and the democratically led schools—relying on collaboration but lacking the extra resources of the turnaround schools—were more successful than the turnaround schools.

  It was not mere happenstance that the two dueling reports were released in February 2012. At the end of the month, the board of education was pois
ed to decide whether to turn around and close more schools. The Consortium-AIR report said the turnarounds were successful, at least in the elementary schools; the DFC report said the turnarounds had not met their goals, were expensive, and had lower test scores and higher teacher turnover compared with the democratically led schools.

  On February 22, 2012, the Chicago Board of Education faced a raucous and angry crowd of parents, teachers, and community members who opposed the threat to close their local schools. The board ignored the protests and approved the closure or overhaul of an additional seventeen schools. It awarded six schools to AUSL and four schools to the board’s own Office of School Improvement to manage and announced the closure or phaseout of seven other schools. The decision was not surprising. The board was appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and carried out his wishes. As a teacher from one of the affected schools remarked, “The outcomes were already decided beforehand.” Regardless of the evidence supplied by the DFC report, regardless of the protests of parents and teachers, the Board never considered anything other than more closures and turnarounds. That was the definition of reform in Chicago.4

  A year later, Mayor Emanuel and his board announced their intention to close fifty-four public schools, including schools that Arne Duncan closed and “turned around” in 2002. They said the schools were underutilized; they said it was for the good of the students. But no one doubted that they would keep opening privately managed charter schools as they closed public schools.

  As in so many debates about education issues, there were dueling interpretations and dueling facts. My own view, as should be clear by now, is that public schools are rooted in their communities. They exist to serve the children of the communities. If they are doing a poor job, the leadership of the school system must do whatever is necessary to improve the schools—supply more staff, more specialists, more resources—not close them and replace them with new schools and new names. Accountability must begin at the top, with the leadership of the school system. It is the leadership that has the power to allocate resources and personnel to needy schools, and it is their responsibility to do so. I also believe that when a public school has the strong support of parents and the local community, the citywide school board should not disregard their views; it should work with them to support their local public school and make it better.

  A careful study in California described how difficult it is to achieve a lasting “turnaround” of a low-performing school. The researchers started with a clear definition: a true turnaround school was one that ranked in the bottom third of the state for three consecutive years; it showed a specified level of growth over three years for all subgroups; it sustained its improvement into a fourth year; it improved relative to other schools in the state; and its student population remained demographically similar over time. The researchers identified 2,407 schools in the bottom third of the state rankings. Only 44 schools, or 2 percent, met all their criteria. Few of these schools made “dramatic” progress; typically, it was “slow and steady.” The successful schools described the elements that contributed to their improvement: instructional strategies focused on subgroups (such as English-language learners or students with disabilities) that need extra help; professional development; teacher collaboration; instructional leadership; wise use of data; district support; and parent involvement.5

  The California study showed that deep change is never accomplished in a year or two. It requires patience, persistence, good leadership, and collaboration, not mass firings.

  But the Obama administration was unfazed and remained committed to its belief that the best way to turn around a school was to fire the principal and half or more of the staff.

  In 2012, a few weeks after the Chicago school board’s decision to close more schools, the Education Writers Association discussed the federal turnaround policy. The Department of Education insisted that great progress was being made, but others saw the results as disappointing. Anthony Cody, who attended the meeting, listened to speakers who thought that the federal government was too lenient and that harsher steps must be taken to “break the culture” of low-performing schools. They said that more teachers must be fired to make even greater progress.

  Cody disagreed. Anthony Cody taught middle school science for nearly twenty years in the public schools of Oakland, California. He is a National Board Certified Teacher who blogs regularly for Education Week, the leading K–12 journal. In 2011, he helped organize a national march on Washington to protest punitive federal policies associated with high-stakes testing. As an experienced teacher in a high-poverty school district, Cody was skeptical of the quick fixes that are popular with reformers and policy makers.

  Cody read the dueling papers describing the turnaround efforts in Chicago. He was aware of new research showing that teacher turnover, or churn, had a bad effect on schools, a phenomenon that he had observed in his own school. When he challenged the currently popular “fire and replace” strategy of turnaround, a speaker said to him, “That depends on whether you think old dogs can learn new tricks.”6

  In his own presentation at the conference, Cody told the story of what happened to his school. He was chair of the science department, and the principal asked him what the department’s biggest problem was. He said it was teacher turnover. His department of ten lost two or three teachers every year, which made improvement hard to sustain. Veteran teachers wondered why they should spend time training the new teachers, when they were likely to move on. This attitude undermined collaboration and made it even harder to reduce teacher turnover. It was even worse in some other Oakland schools, where 50–60 percent of teachers left every year, discouraged by the low salaries (compared with affluent districts) and the problems of a high-poverty school.

  Cody’s department obtained a grant to encourage teacher retention. Every new teacher was assigned a mentor, who shared lesson plans, strategies, and curriculum with the newcomer. The department met regularly to exchange ideas and resources. The following year, the department retained every one of its teachers. The approach worked so well that it was extended to the math department, and soon all the teachers were working together, not just to mentor new teachers but to deepen their teaching skills and assessment practices. The model worked so well that the district adopted it in a program called TeamScience, pairing novice science teachers with experienced mentors.

  Cody writes, “We found that we did NOT need to fire anyone in order to improve. Instead of trying to ferret out the weakest links, we sought to RETAIN everyone. Can ‘old dogs learn new tricks’? Yes. And old dogs KNOW a lot of valuable tricks,” which they can build on and share, if they are honored for what they know.

  But then comes the sad denouement. As all these developments were unfolding, the school made steady progress, but not big enough gains to satisfy the constantly rising demands of No Child Left Behind. The school did not meet the goals set by Congress, years ago and three thousand miles away: “It broke the school’s spirit to be cast as failures year after year. Staff meetings were taken over by data experts telling us how to target the students most likely to yield statistical gains. Just as school culture can be purposefully built, it also can be destroyed, and it was. Only one science teacher remains there from the team we built.”

  The theory of turnarounds, Cody wrote, assumes there is “little of value” in schools with low test scores, so it is a simple matter to discard the administrators, the teachers, and the school culture and start over. He concluded that the U.S. Department of Education had made “a fundamental error” by pushing the turnaround strategy. Instead of firing teachers, he wrote, “we are likely to gain much more by creating schools capable of supporting, developing and retaining them.” Certainly there will still be teachers who should be fired, but that is the job of an effective principal, not state or federal policy.

  The federal government bet nearly $5 billion that the Chicago strategy of closing schools and replacing them with new schools would work if applied to the ent
ire nation. Chicago had been closing schools and opening schools for more than a decade. Had it transformed the schools of Chicago? Not many would consider Chicago a national model of school reform. The only thing that is certain is that the turnaround strategy has demoralized teachers and principals and created a climate of fear in the present and uncertainty about the future.

  Arne Duncan had initiated the strategy of closing low-performing schools in 2002. At that time, he closed three elementary schools, fired their staffs, and started over. Two years later, he and Mayor Richard M. Daley made this strategy the centerpiece of their reform plan, called Renaissance 2010. President-elect Barack Obama chose one of the three schools, Dodge Elementary (renamed Dodge Renaissance Academy), as the place to announce his selection of Arne Duncan as secretary of education in 2008. He said of Duncan, “He’s shut down failing schools and replaced their staffs, even when it was unpopular . . . This school right here, Dodge Renaissance Academy, is a perfect example. Since this school was revamped and reopened in 2003, the number of students meeting state standards has tripled.” But somehow the miraculous turnaround evaporated. By 2013, Chicago school officials closed Dodge Renaissance Academy again, along with the other two elementary schools that Duncan had closed and “revamped” in 2002.7

  Surely there are better ways to improve the education of students who have low scores in reading and mathematics than by closing their schools. They may need smaller classes, intensive tutoring, highly skilled teachers. Closing a school is not a reform. It is an admission of failure by those in charge, an acknowledgment that they do not have the knowledge and experience to evaluate the needs of the school, help the students, strengthen the staff, and provide the essential ingredients needed for a good school.