Last fall, when D.C. voters defeated former Mayor Adrian Fenty, they also seemed to have repudiated Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s aggressive efforts to reform the city’s chronically underperforming public schools. Teachers union-backed Vincent Gray promised to continue Rhee’s reforms but without Rhee. But after decades of disappointment, school officials
cannot afford to reinvent the wheel. Chancellor Kaya Henderson can and should implement turnaround strategies that have already worked to improve student achievement and staff morale, regardless of whose name is attached to them.
Take, for example, Fort Wayne, Ind., where officials in 2009 were struggling to reorganize 11 failing schools under No Child Left Behind, while grappling with a $15 million budget shortfall. School officials decided to enroll all 52 district schools in the HOPE Foundation’s Failure Is Not An Option program, which utilizes a decade’s worth of research in low-performing schools to identify best teaching practices and transform dysfunctional school cultures. Remarkably, 96 percent of Fort Wayne’s unionized teachers approved a new contract that made significant changes in the way the failing schools would be managed, including elimination of seniority. Fort Wayne is now one of only 70 school districts in the nation in which all 37 subcategories of students have made Annual Yearly Progress.
Similarly, New York City’s Jackie Robinson Public School 375 was slated for closing because of poor performance. Three years later, after utilizing the foundation’s Intensive School Reform — one of four models approved by the U.S. Department of Education—the school received an A rating from the New York City Department of Education. The HOPE Foundation attempted to do the same in 40 District schools before Rhee “cleaned house,” founder and CEO Alan Blankstein told The Washington Examiner.
Blankstein points out major philosophical differences between Rhee and the foundation’s six principles of school reform: “She believes the answer has to be imported. We believe it’s in the room. She uses draconian measures to impose her own vision. We involve the staff to reshape a school’s culture. The research is extremely clear: If there’s no trust, there’s no student gains. We would be delighted if a whole new fantastic team swooped in, but we don’t see that as a likely scenario. We’re successful without that.”
There’s no arguing with success. If identifying and duplicating successful teaching techniques and leadership qualities of highly effective teachers has already worked in other floundering school districts nationwide, maybe it’s time to bring HOPE back to D.C. as well.
