City School Stories

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, Jan 11, 2011

The School Performance Index (SPI) rankings for Philadelphia’s elementary, middle and high schools are now posted on the district’s web site.  The unveiling of this information is a precursor to the upcoming announcement of schools that will be placed on this years Renaissance Eligible and Renaissance Alert list.

Last year Meade Elementary School was placed on the alert list.  This designation came as a surprise to the staff and community supporters of Meade.  There were numerous positive accomplishments that this school community had achieved over an extended period of time.  Most significantly Meade had been recognized for having made Adequate Yearly Progress for several years in a row.  Despite an abundance of data indicating the school was serving its students well, Meade was rated 10-7 on the School Performance Index in 2009.  The best rating that a school could receive on this index is 1-1.  The worst rating is 10-10. Read the rest of this entry »

Notes From the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, Jan 4, 2011

During the winter break a teacher forwarded to me a post from the Labor Notes.    It is an interesting piece that details the author’s claim that Bill Gates, and Eli Broad are leading a group of wealthy individuals who are attempting to eliminate organized opposition to their plans for America’s public schools.  According to this article the attention of these billionaires has recently been focused on squashing teacher resistance in Chicago.

On June 12, 20010 the leadership of the Chicago Teacher Union was assumed by candidates from the CORE (Caucus of Rank and File Educators) union slate.  CORE was one of five groups that sought control of this union local.  In a run off election, they defeated the incumbent United Progressive Caucus headed by Marilyn Stewart.  The result of the Chicago teacher election suggests a new direction for teacher unionism. Read the rest of this entry »

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy on, Dec. 20, 2010

During the last few months I have been meeting with teachers and principals from across the city.  In private they are willing to share with me their thoughts and feelings concerning the many changes that have been imposed on our schools by the current school district administration.  The Renaissance school initiative, Empowerment Schools, scripted instruction and central office walkthroughs of school sites, have been the primary topics of these conversations.

I am not hearing positive comments regarding any of these topics.  This is not particularly surprising given the disempowering and disrespectful manner in which these endeavors have been forced on school communities. What is surprising is how in less than three years, the school district has become a threatening and depressing world in which to work.

In recent posts, I have written about the mid-course corrections that have taken place at the Empowerment Schools and Promise Academies. This most recent shift in direction at these schools was abrupt and carried out without the consultation of school staff. This is but one example of the arbitrary management decisions being made by the district’s central office leadership team. Actions like this one are adversely affecting the morale of district employees.  The teachers and principals who shared the information I used in these posts are not interested in quietly complying with unreasonable mandates.  They want to be heard.

The purpose of City School Stories.com is to tell the story of urban public education in America from the perspectives of the principals and teachers who daily work and live in city school communities.  These are the people who best know what is taking place in any particular school.   Yet they are seldom offered the opportunity to describe or explain their work to the general public.  In order to accomplish this goal, I invite readers to continue to share your stories concerning your own classrooms and school.

If you teach in an Empowerment School, how have these most recent changes affected you?

Are you receiving any additional supports as you work to implement yet another set of instructional mandates?

How has the instability created by the frequently changing instructional demands of the central administration affected student management, parent involvement, and colleague collaboration in your school?

Share your story.  You decide what the public needs to know about how our schools operate.  Speak up and speak out.  Do so by submitting a post or comment to City School Stories.

Guest posts to this blog are welcomed and will be published under the category titled Notes From The Field.  If you are not ready to author a post but want to be heard, send an e-mail to mailto:f@cityschoolstories.com with a description of how the school year is unfolding at your school.

We daily accomplish our mission of educating the youth of our society and we need to let the world know of our successes.  Your comments and personal stories will help to tell the general public of our challenges and rewards as urban educators.   Most importantly, by creating a forum to collectively tell our own stories, we say that we will not continue to be passive victims of ill-conceived school reform strategies.  We instead insist on being recognized and treated as the knowledgeable professional educators that we are.

Send your stories, story ideas, or comments to mailto:f@cityschoolstories.com

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.

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, November 25, 2010

The Philadelphia School Annual Reports are now posted on the districts web site.  This is the second year that this document been published.  A cover letter that accompanies the report states, in part, the following:

“As a commitment to improving education for our children, the School District of Philadelphia’s Office of Accountability has developed School Annual Reports. The purpose of these reports is to create consistent, publicly transparent performance measures for our schools.”

What is on the Annual Reports?

Schools are rated on their performance in four different categories:

• Student Achievement: measures academic performance through student report card marks and PSSA test scores.

• School Operations: measures the school’s ability to maintain a positive learning environment.

• Community Satisfaction: measures student, teacher, and parent satisfaction with the school through surveys.

• School-Specific Indicators: shows progress on goals where the school has shown improvement.

By looking at schools in this way, the public is provided with a more comprehensive report on the progress of schools within the School District of Philadelphia.”

Every school in the district receives its own individual report. The number of categories on which a school receives a rating varies, depending on the student sub groups it serves (socio economic, race, special education) and the grade configurations of the school (elementary, middle school, high school, etc).  For each descriptor or indicator on which a school is rated, a performance baseline was established and a targeted percentage of increase was assigned for that item.

In the case of Central High School for example, the baseline for the percentage of students achieving at the proficient or advanced level for math in the 2009 school year was 98.1%.  It was expected that this percentage would increase to 98.2% for the 2010 school year.  The expected percentage increase was obtained this year, so Central High School met the target for this indicator.  According to the information provided on its annual school report, Central’s overall district rating is at the above average level.

Interestingly, despite its overall above average performance, Central failed to meet many of its internal school specific targets.  In total, Central received a grade on 33 different indicators.  The school reached its target goal for only 19 of the 33.  Overall, the school achieved 57% of the objectives established for it by the central administration.

Upon closer examination of the data however, any reasonable person would reject the notion that this school is a failure.  The school did not reach its target for teacher daily attendance.  The target was 97.8%.  The actual teacher attendance rate was 97.5%.  If the goal was for the staff at this school to be in regular attendance, it appears that this goal was met. The student drop out rate was not to exceed 0.2%.  The actual rate was 0.3%.  This percentage most likely represented one student.  The school was also expected to have 0% percent of its students scoring at below basic in math.  In actuality the percentage was 0.4%. Again this represents about one or two students out of hundreds. Central’s failure to reach the target in eleven other areas was the result of not achieving similar hair-splitting objectives.

Many other schools also failed to make their targets in a number of areas.  Masterman High school made 66% of its targets; GAMP, 67%; Franklin Learning Center 56%;  Greenfield 44%; Meredith 73%.  These are schools whose students consistently achieve at high academic levels.  Masterman and Franklin Learning Center were just recognized by the U. S,. Department of Education as Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence.

On the other hand, schools such as Meade that have demonstrated considerable improvement during the course of the year are not sufficiently credited for their progress. Despite the fact that it serves one of the lowest resourced communities in the city, Meade met 81% of its targets.  Additionally, Meade made AYP on the state test thus maintaining its AYP status for six years in a row. These accomplishments though significant, have not resulted in Meade being removed from the Empowerment School or Renaissance Alert list.  These are two classifications that were abruptly assigned to Meade by Dr. Ackerman in February of last year.

So how exactly is a consistent, publicly transparent process for measuring the performance of schools being created when high achieving schools are portrayed as not meeting standards and striving schools are not credited with obtaining significant school improvements?

This process provides little tangible benefit for most schools and for many it tarnishes their reputation.  It manipulates data for the purpose of characterizing public schools in a negative manner.  This is a tactic used by school reformers whose intention it is to dismantle the public school system

If this annual school report system is truly a well-intentioned effort, then its objectives should be more realistic.  It should take into consideration the unique nature of each school community before making a determination regarding its success or failure.  Schools that make progress, along with ones that are consistently high performing, should be equally recognized.

Although its stated purpose was to “create consistent, publicly transparent performance measures for our schools”, so far the annual report card’s only use has been in the evaluation of principals. Last year, principals’ ratings were partially based on how many targets their schools made.  The report’s information was used to leverage principal compliance to the central administration’s agenda.  It criticized school-based leaders in a specific and public manner and put them on notice that they were accountable for everything and anything the central administration dictated.

This degree of accountability does not exist for the leaders of the central administration.  An overall report card for the district’s performance is not published.  As a district, Philadelphia is now entering its eighth year in Corrective Action II.  Yet nowhere is this failure addressed.

Shouldn’t the public expect that the district superintendent and her team be held to the same level of public accountability that they impose on school principals and their teams?

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, November 23, 2010

Notes from the field have begun to arrive at f@cityschoolstories.com. They have been sent from teachers who work at various schools throughout the district.  The frustration and simmering anger of their authors is apparent.  The content of these messages paints an interesting picture of the implementation of the reform agenda of the current school administration. There is a great deal of similarity in the stories I have heard.

One teacher recently showed me a copy of a document that was distributed to the staff at a school-based professional development session.  It was entitled, High-Poverty Students Excel with Direct Instruction. This article was downloaded from the website of an organization called the Heartland Institute. *

*(Among its other topics of interest, this institute’s website additionally offers a large range of reports that challenge the validity of research on global warning and on the supposed ill effects to individuals who are exposed to second hand smoke.)

The authors of the article promote the position that students taught by teachers who utilize “direct instruction” rather than “student center learning” achieve at higher levels.  Unfortunately, the authors do not provide a clear definition of either direct instruction or student centered learning in their discussion.  This is just one of several serious flaws in the studies cited that raise questions about the validity of the information presented.

To support its claims about direct instruction, the article sites two recent studies. One was written by the Manhattan Institute.  It is titled, What Do Teachers Teach?  A survey of America’s Fourth and Eighth Grade.  The article describes the results of a phone survey that was conducted on the behalf of this institute, based on interviews with 403 fourth grade teachers and 806 eighth grade teachers. The teachers included in this survey were selected from a proprietary database of known schoolteachers from Survey Sampling, Inc. of Fairfield, Connecticut, rather than a random sampling. The study does not define the qualifications of the teachers interviewed nor does it delineate their understanding of the terms direct instruction or student-centered learning.   There is no empirical evidence presented to support the article’s claims other than the opinions provided in the survey results, nor is there a review of other research related to this topic included in this study.

Pacific Research Institute produced the second study, They Have Overcome: High-Poverty, High Performance Schools in California. It weaves into a lengthy narrative the responses of eight elementary principals during interviews conducted by staff from this institute.  Principals interviewed were identified by the authors of the study as being from high achieving schools.  Interestingly, this document is exclusively devoted to describing the principals’ responses regarding their experiences using the Open Court Reading series at their schools.  Principals from other high-performing schools not using Open Court were not interviewed.  Empirical evidence and references to other relevant research studies are also absent from this document.

All three of these institutes, Heartland, Manhattan and Pacific Research, are champions of free-market policy solutions in the education arena as well as other areas of public policy.  One has to question why a school district would choose materials from one of these organizations for use at a professional development session, rather than from reputable educational research journals. The choice seems to favor the promotion of ideology over legitimate research as it relates to appropriate instructional practices. Apparently the lack of intellectual rigor evident in the scripted instructional programs being forced on our schoolchildren, is also absent in the delivery of the content offered during teacher professional development sessions.

Even more disturbing than the use of questionable reports and ideological propaganda to promote the new instructional materials being deployed in schools, are the administrative tactics utilized to force teacher compliance.  Teachers, who are not willing to abandon effective literacy practices and programs in favor of these new materials, are finding themselves in difficult positions.   Instead of providing convincing evidence to these teachers of the merits of the new mandated programs, central administration is instead attempting to force their allegiance.

In one school, teachers were called into the assistant principal’s office the day after central office administrative staff conducted a walk through.  They were told that they must immediately stop using guided reading in their classrooms.  The explanation given for this dictate was that working with a guided reading group is an ineffective instructional practice.

At other schools, teachers have been told to remove classroom libraries that were used to support student choice in selecting independent reading books.  They have been directed to rearrange desks into a “U”shape so that students can better see them as they read from an instructional script.   Classroom furniture that might be used to conduct small group instructional lessons has been removed from their rooms.  The administrative justification for these mandates is that they are necessary safeguards to assure the fidelity of the implementation of the Imagine It! reading series in grades K-6 and Glencoe for grades 7-8.

One of the primary rules of school reform that was established with the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act is that effective practices are to be judged on the basis of scientific evidence.  What evidence justifies the abandonment of well-researched literacy practices such as guided reading, independent reading, literacy centers, etc. that have been successfully employed across the country for the last fifteen years?

Since the inception of NCLB, the main indicator of a school’s success has been its scores on the state assessment.  In Philadelphia, district test scores have increased every year for the last eight years.  For seven years of those eight years, a balanced literacy program was utilized in the majority of our public schools.  Teachers in these schools succeeded in helping their students to be more academically successful because they implemented powerful instructional ideas.

It is the responsibility of the leadership of our school district to offer better proof than flimsy reports prepared by ideologically driven think tanks, as justification for the radical changes to the instructional programs being forced on our schools.  Using brute force to change instructional practices suggests that the strength of the ideas being put forth will not empower teachers to teach our children well.

What is happening in your school?  How well are the children you strive to empower being served by the current reform agenda in Philadelphia?  Educators who wish to share their experiences with the implementation of the new scripted literacy and math programs made do so by sending your comments to the link below. mailto:f@cityschoolstories.com.