Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, December 16, 2010

Governor-elect Tom Corbett has stated that he is interested in producing a new report card for Pennsylvania’s schools.  Currently each school in the state does receive a state-developed performance report that is primarily based on how well its students perform on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA).  Mr. Corbett is interested in creating a simple and easy to understand accountability document that uses a letter grading system from A to F, similar to that which is used in most student report cards.  His intention is to make this tool available to parents so that they can easily evaluate the performance of their child’s school.

More importantly, he stated that he wants to establish a rationale for redistributing public funds for the use of private or parochial schools.  This would be done by giving vouchers to students who attend public schools that have received an “F’ as a grade.

Currently, parents of students who attend a public school in Pennsylvania can find online a report card for their children’s school as well as a listing of their school’s Adequate Yearly Progress status.  A complete list of the results of all schools in the Philadelphia School District can be found here. The state of Pennsylvania has been providing this information to the public for several years.

So does the governor proposes to discard this system in favor a new and yet undermined one?  Or will the present system be maintained and a parallel process be developed and also be implemented?  Either way his proposal raises several important questions.

In the current economic environment where public funds are likely to decrease, how can the governor-elect rationalize the use of declining state education resources in order to pay for the creation of a new and potentially expensive school assessment system when a suitable system already exist?

Will every public, private and parochial school in the state that receives public funds as part of a school choice option receive a letter grade as a participant in this proposed assessment system?

What criteria will be used to determine the grade for individual schools?

Will indicators other than student attendance, academic performance, and teacher qualifications be considered?

If so what will those indicators be?

The Philadelphia School District has already developed its own expensive and misleading school report card. I have discussed this less-than-fair or transparent process in this recent post.   Additionally Philadelphia has created yet another school assessment system, the School Performance Index.  It is used to rank district schools on a score continuum of 1 to 10.  The information that is used to determine these rankings comes almost exclusively from one year’s worth of standardized test results.  Little consideration is give to any other factors in judging a school’s success in the computation of this index.

Hopefully Mr. Corbett does not have in mind school assessment tools similar to the ones being used in Philadelphia.  If this is the case, then school districts across the state, whether affluent or under-resourced, will find that some of their schools will receive a failing grade.

Mr. Corbett’s school evaluation proposal on its face sounds like it will be just one more attempt to characterize public schools as failures in order to justify redirecting public dollars to the coffers of private, non profit or for-profit organizations.

This is the time to question the wisdom of this idea.  Informed public discussion and debate on this issue now will save us from the frustration of asking later, “Why close the barn door after the horse is gone?”

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, December 14, 2010

During my tenure as principal of Meade Elementary School, I was actively involved in the local community’s efforts to renew and rebuild the housing stock in the area that encompassed my school.  Since the mid 1990’s, it has been my privilege to serve as a board member of two separate local community development corporations.  As a result of the work of these non-profit organizations, more than one thousand new homes have been built in North Central Philadelphia.

Through my experiences on these boards, I have been able to witness first hand, the challenges that small minority businesses face as they attempt to secure a winning bid on publicly financed construction projects.  It isn’t an easy feat for them to accomplish.

Because they do not benefit from the economy of scale that large corporations enjoy, these small businesses lack many of the prerequisites that would help them to secure work on larger projects. As a result, they find themselves trapped in a “catch 22” scenario.  In comparison to larger companies, for example, they are often underfinanced, have less company-owned equipment and have a smaller pool of qualified employees.  In order to address these issues, they need to build a portfolio of lucrative projects.  To do so they need to acquire experience and resources.  The only way to accomplish this is by getting the work.  But, they don’t get the work because they lack the experience and resources; thus the “catch 22”.

The School District of Philadelphia is a significant funder of construction activities in the city.  The maintenance and general upkeep of the many facilities owned by the district is considerable.  The school district has set a goal to award 20 percent of its contracts for professional services, procurement and construction work to firms owned by minorities and women.  In setting this goal, the district is positioned to help provide greater opportunities for such firms to build their capacity and compete for larger contracts. The School Reform Commission’s intention to spur economic opportunities in this fashion for our local citizens, is a worthy and notable goal.

Unfortunately, the recent controversy concerning the school district’s awarding of a no bid emergency contract to a minority owned business has raised concerns about the manner in which the district is pursuing this goal.  According to undisclosed sources, Dr. Ackerman directed her staff to give a $7.5 million no bid contract to a minority firm to install security cameras in 19 schools. In so doing, she overruled the prior decision of her staff to award this contract to another firm. At first, Ackerman denied that this was the case.  Later, Leroy B. Nunnery II, her chief deputy took responsibility for making this decision.  Amid the confusion and accusations, local leaders and government officials have offered their support for the superintendent.

The uproar generated by this decision has created an unnecessary and unfavorable distraction to the district’s noteworthy efforts to open up economic opportunities for minority owned businesses.  The clumsy and heavy-handed tactics demonstrated by the district’s leadership in awarding a contract to IBS Communications is the wrong way to try to make right, the inequitable distribution of district work to disadvantaged businesses.

At a time when our city, state and nation are facing an increasingly difficult economic period, we must be especially careful to not tarnish our district’s credibility as a responsible steward of public funds.   Such administrative bungling doesn’t repair the growing public distrust of the superintendent’s ability to lead.   Nor does exposing minority businesses to this type of negative publicity help to advance their efforts in the long run.

Notes from the Field
Submitted by Frank Murphy, December 9, 2010

Several months ago at the school district’s request, consultants employed by textbook publisher McGraw Hill, created customized pacing and instructional guides for its Glencoe and Imagine It programs. These programs are currently in use in the district’s Empowerment Schools. The glossy, professionally produced documents are three hundred plus pages in length. Multiple copies were distributed to the teachers at each grade level in each Empowerment School. Throughout the summer and into the fall, paid consultants also conducted extensive professional development sessions for teachers on the use of these guides. Now, barely three months into the school year, these materials are being abandoned to make way for a newly mandated instructional plan for the Empowerment Schools.

This is just one of many examples of how basic district services are being outsourced by district leadership. This growing trend is a result of the strategies implemented by the last two district superintendents, Paul Vallas and Arlene Ackerman. As a result of their actions, important components of the school district’s infrastructure have been dismantled. The elimination of regional offices and more pointedly, the handing over of district schools to independent management contractors, are both prime examples of the Philadelphia School District’s movement away from being the provider of the city’s educational services to the funder of services being provided by other non-profit and/or for profit organizations. Read the rest of this entry »

Notes from the Field
Submitted by Frank Murphy, December 7, 2010

In recent days, principals and school-based instructional support teachers have received instructions from representatives of the school district’s central administration on how to explain to teachers the “mid course corrections” to the instructional programs at Empowerment Schools and Promise Academies.

District officials claim that these changes are being initiated in response to the requests of classroom teachers. Since training for the new literacy programs were instituted at school sites, teachers at professional development sessions have complained about the lack of time allocated for writing instruction. (Currently only fifteen minutes is scheduled). Teachers have also been insistent on voicing their dissatisfaction concerning the elimination of any opportunity for small group guided reading instruction. In response to these concerns, the central administration has decided to implement all components of the Glencoe and Imagine It basal reading programs in their entirety.

Now teachers will be expected to utilize a full complement of scripted materials during a 120-minute literacy block for Imagine It and a 90-minute block for Glencoe.
Time will be allocated for small group instruction during these reformatted literacy blocks. Teachers are being directed to not refer to this small group work as guided reading. District officials claim that test scores have not increased sufficiently using guided reading; therefore it is an ineffective instructional approach. This does seem to make sense, since the purpose of guided reading instruction is to assist students to develop higher level reading comprehension skills, not to tweak test scores.

Instead, teachers will follow the book companies’ designs for small group instruction: the reteaching of specific isolated skills that were taught in whole class lessons. In this format, students will continue to be organized into fixed homogenous groups for instructional purposes. They will be led through a prescribed series of lessons by the teacher. This is quite different than what teachers do when they conduct a small group guided reading lesson. Read the rest of this entry »

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, December 2, 2010

The principals of all K-8 Empowerment and Promise Academies have been directed to attend a meeting sponsored by The Office of Empowerment Schools Support on Friday December 3, 2010.   At this meeting, principals will be briefed on what are being called “mid course corrections” that will be imposed on their reading and math programs.  These corrections call for modifications to the literacy and math schedules of all students in the Empowerment Schools.  This will involve changes to instructional times as well as teacher assignments.  Allegedly these actions will position the Empowerment Schools for greater success this year. These changes are being instituted in response to a number of concerns raised about the implementation of the core literacy and math programs in Empowerment Schools.

Who voiced these concerns is not clear.   It doesn’t seem likely that it was school-based staff.   The proposed changes are not ones that would be recommended by anyone who understands how an elementary school works.  Central office staff, book company representatives or both seem to be behind this latest upheaval to the operation of individual schools.

These are the latest mandates being communicated to the school sites:

• instructional time for Imagine It will be expanded to 120 minutes in grades K-6;

• instructional time for Glencoe Literature will be expanded to 90 minutes in grades 7 and 8;

• instructional time for Prentice Hall Math will be expanded to 90 minutes in grades 7 and 8;

•pacing guides for Imagine It, Glencoe Literature and Prentice Hall Math will be removed.

Elementary school teachers spend a considerable amount of their time during the months of September and October establishing and implementing predictable classroom procedures and routines.  Doing so creates a solid foundation on which to maximize instructional time on task and to manage student behavior.  This has been no easy feat this year for the teachers in Empowerment Schools.  After administrators from the central office conducted walkthroughs in September and October, they insisted on changes at various schools that required the reorganization of student rosters and teacher schedules.  As a result, students and teachers have had a difficult time getting settled into this school year.

Now, once again school schedules and teaching rosters will be required to change in order to carry out this “mid-course correction.”  This is not an appropriate practice.  Elementary school children are not well served by being in an instructional environment where the routines and procedures are constantly in flux.  Such inconsistency causes confusion and uncertainty.   Changing instructors stifles the development of important teacher and student connections that are so important for creating safe learning environments.  Implementing such a change just prior to the winter holidays when other interruptions to the regular school schedule are likely, makes this a particularly unsound idea.

Increasing the time allotments for these scripted reading and math programs will certainly impact on other important subject areas that are part of the curriculum. For example, in grades seven and eight there will be one hundred and thirty five minutes left in the instructional day after these changes are instituted.  Subtract ninety minutes for the corrective reading and math programs for many students.  That leaves forty-five minutes for students to have access to meaningful instruction in writing, algebra, science, social studies, music, art and physical education. What choices will be made for carving up the precious little time left?

The proposed “mid-year corrections” appear to be an effort to increase the amount of central office monitoring taking place at all Empowerment Schools. Additional visits from central office staff and book company representatives are promised for the purpose of monitoring the fidelity to the new timeframes. Additionally, all future instructional materials will now be ordered by the Office of Empowerment Schools Support, rather than at the school sites.

During the next two weeks, the Office of Empowerment Schools will work with individual schools to create these newly mandated schedules and rosters.  This all sounds like more administrative tactics that are intended to eliminate any instructional practices in schools that are not endorsed by the central office and the book company representatives who advise them.

What an unwanted holiday present this will be for our district teachers who understand and utilize effective literacy practices.