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Putting the foxes in charge of the henhouses
Have you ever noticed school boards’ tendency to shut down their most successful schools? I tell the story of two such schools in my book, How to get the right education for your child. I’m guessing that the reason behind this tendency may be that the exceptional schools make the rest look bad.
In this vein, I offer a story from Georgia, where the school board is trying to shut down its award-winning Fulton Science Academy Middle School. The details are complicated - they always are - but the bottom line is that the Fulton County District is trying very hard to find reasons to close Fulton Science Academy, as opposed to finding reasons to keep it open and, for that matter, creating more schools like it.
The bottom line is - there are not enough incentives for the Fulton County District to keep its good schools open and too many incentives for it to close its good schools. This doesn’t make any sense.
Unfortunately, the same sort of upside-down incentive structure exists in Ontario. It doesn’t make any sense here either.
Bottom line - the Fulton Science Academy and the two other charter school associated with the middle school, are not following the processes and goals of the overall school board, following administration processes as well as the ideology and dogma held by the top levels of a school board.
Six months ago, the charter school was an angel, until the arrival of the new superintendent, Avossa. About six months ago, I bumped into some articles where superintendents of school districts were being replaced. Some Americans have said the superintendent job has become a new class for migrant workers, except it is high pay, and every few years, the superintendents who are described as harden CEOs, are force to move out, resigned or volunteer to exit, into another plum job running another district.
“The Broad Superintendents Academy* is a 10-month executive management training program run by The Broad Center to prepare talented executives to lead urban public school systems.”, is the culprit and as such Avossa is a graduate just this year.
http://broadacademy.org/fellows/2011.html
In Outrages, “The Broad (rhymes with “road”) Superintendents Academy is a 10-month
executive management training program run by The Broad Center to prepare top leaders from education, military, business, nonprofit and government sectors to lead urban public school systems. The Broad Superintendents Academy is
the only program in the country that recruits and trains executives with non-education backgrounds as well as successful high-level educators.
Participants keep their jobs while attending extended weekend sessions across the country.
The Broad Superintendents Academy has trained more working superintendents in large urban school districts than any other national training program.”
http://www.susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=9629
As for Avossa, the Fulton district no doubt in the near future, will do the same as he did in his last district, ” Well, Avossa was instrumental in creating a new testing regime in Charlotte-Mecklenburg that has some parents upset. The district is planning to create 52 new tests that it will use not to evaluate students, but to evaluate their teachers. The scores on those tests will be part of a performance-pay package that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district is hoping to start, though Superintendent Peter Gorham acknowledges he still doesn’t have the money part worked out.”
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/District_Dossier/2011/04/
Charter schools as strong as the Fulton charter schools, in closing achievement gaps, represents a threat to Avossa and his pet projects of teacher evaluation, and as well the charter schools administration and finance processes and procedures. Four hours ago, “By unanimous vote, the Fulton County School Board has killed a request from the charter Fulton Science Academy Middle School to continue to operate for another ten years.”
http://sandysprings.patch.com/articles/fulton-school-board-denies-fulton-science-academy-middle-school-charter-156f621f
Avossa, has now force the charter school to operate in a 3 year window, which will now make it very difficult to hire teachers in a 3 year window, and thus destabilized the hiring practices, of ensuring teachers can look forward to a position for at least 10 years.
A big problem in American school districts, and no doubt in my mind, Doug is correct to rant about as he does, but he should not be ranting about charter schools, but the political and gamesmanship that is well on its way to reshape public education as if schools, teachers and students are widgets, that can bark on command.