Talk Priority Schools

Standing Strong for Students
Fall marks the start of Year Two of PSC providing intensive support to 34 schools across 16 states. To engage educators early in the school year, NEA executed a back-to-school tour showcasing NEA members helping students succeed despite the negative effects of budget cuts and harmful education policies.

President Dennis Van Roekel and Secretary-Treasurer Becky Pringle crisscrossed the nation, meeting with teachers and support professionals committed to a great public school for every student.

The tour allowed the veteran educators to get a personal view of the work of members, who continue to collaborate with their colleagues, school districts, families and community leaders on student-centered reforms and student success. Some tour highlights:

Monday, September 12 (Dayton, OH) – Three years ago, Belmont High School was known as “Hellmont.” Fights and other crime was a near daily occurrence. The school was a revolving door for teachers.  A focus on creating a safe environment has led to an 87 percent decrease in behavioral incidents and record numbers of students taking the ACT.
Photos here.
Media highlights:
Dayton Daily News
WTUZ-FM

Monday, September 12 (Evansville, IN) – Collaboration was the focus of Pringle’s visit to the home of the groundbreaking Equity Schools, which aim to transform schools through professional development for teachers and extended learning time for students.  She visited Evans School and was on hand for  “Breakfast in the Classroom,” a partnership between local leaders, educators, parents and PSC that makes sure students get their school days started with a nutritious meal.  Photos here.
Media highlights:
American Urban Radio Networks

Tuesday, September 13 (Romulus, MI) – Romulus Community Schools faced a tough local election to renew funding, an endeavor that previously failed twice. School leaders and community members joined forces with NEA’s Priority Schools Campaign and on the third try, voters passed the millage. The win ensured continued collaborative reform at Romulus Middle School. Photos here.
Media highlights:
WWJ #1 News Radio

Tuesday, September 13 (Seattle) – West Seattle Elementary School used its first year of School Improvement Grant (SIG) funding to increase wraparound services, especially necessary for its high-needs student population. Health care, counselors—even embedding a local chapter of the YMCA inside the school—have helped educators attend to the needs of the whole child. Pringle also learned about the school’s High Point Scholars program where students can participate in project-based learning, service-learning projects, community development work, outdoor education, peer mentoring, small group instruction, and weekly field trips. Photos here.
Media highlights:
Education leaders video

Wednesday, September 14 (Orlando) – NEA members know that community collaboration works. They also know that effective partnerships and critical resources must be in place to support students. School leaders gathered to discuss best practices of collaborative efforts that give teachers the tools and resources to help every student succeed.
Media highlights:
Orlando Sentinel

Wednesday, September 14 (Clark County, NV) – Educating the whole child involves everyone in the school building, including bus drivers, nurses and cafeteria workers. When teachers work side-by-side with school support staff, students don’t fall through the cracks. This visit focused on the important role education support staff plays in helping to ensure the success of every student. Photos here.
Media highlights:
Becky Pringle on FOX5 TX in Vegas: “We are very excited about our Priority Schools Campaign”

Thursday, September 15 (Miami) – Students are being deprived of essential learning opportunities and families already experiencing financial stress are having to choose between spending on necessities or investing in their children’s future. NEA, in conjunction with the Florida Education Association and the Miami Education Association, continues to sound the alarm about the widespread effects of budget cuts. Photos here.
Media highlights:
Miami Herald

In a new piece at  A2Politico, blogger Chris Savage looks at Michigan Republicans’ attacks on teachers. He also looks at how educators are working hard to make things better for schools, particularly those facing the biggest challenges. Here’s what he has to say about NEA’s Priority Schools Campaign.

 Teachers unions are also working to help poorly-performing districts improve their programs. Last year, the National Education Association (NEA) started the Priority Schools Campaign. This campaign aims to bring all education stakeholders together to help failing schools.

This week, NEA president Dennis Van Roekel [pictured with crutches]visited Michigan as part of NEA’s “2011 Back-to-School Tour.” During his five-day, seven-city tour, Van Roekel is visiting a number “priority schools” and stopped by Romulus Middle School which had received a $5.3 million grant as part of the federal School Improvement Grant program. One of the efforts by the NEA’s Priority School Campaign was to help get a millage passed to support the Romulus school system, a millage that had been twice defeated prior to the NEA’s involvement.

While in Michigan, Van Roekel took time to meet with local administrators, teachers, parents, and other union & community leaders to discuss the benefits of collaboration. I spoke with him and Steve Cook by phone.

“It’s great to get out into these schools and meet face-to-face with the people working hard to improve them,” Van Roekel told me. “The minute you walk into these priority schools, you can feel the energy and you can see that things are getting better. You see the effect of what money can do when combined with cooperation & collaboration between administrators, teachers, students and parents.”

Teachers working with school administrations, parents and the community to improve schools. It’s not sexy. It’s not confrontational. But it’s making a difference. In Romulus, the new funding has allowed them to improve their technology program & equipment and to revamp their curriculum. But, that doesn’t make the news.

Despite the NEA’s effort to draw attention to the “Priority Schools” initiative and the fact that Van Roekel met with the editorial boards of both the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press, the only mention of it from either newspaper was a post on the News’ blog The Watercooler, where the focus is on the MEA’s Cook calling Right to Teach “revenge.” Sensationalism! Confrontation! [The picture above is from Van Roekel's meeting at the Free Press. Editorial Page Editor Brian Dickerson is the one reclining]

When I asked Cook about the effort to allow school districts to outsource/privatize teaching, he said we should “draw a distinction between Senator Pavlov’s bill and what actually works.”

Indeed, a study released this week by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) shows that billions of dollars every year are wasted in the USA through the hiring of contractors.

POGO’s study analyzed the total compensation paid to federal and private sector employees, and annual billing rates for contractor employees across 35 occupational classifications covering over 550 service activities. Our findings were shocking—POGO estimates the government pays billions more annually in taxpayer dollars to hire contractors than it would to hire federal employees to perform comparable services. Specifically, POGO’s study shows that the federal government approves service contract billing rates—deemed fair and reasonable—that pay contractors 1.83 times more than the government pays federal employees in total compensation, and more than 2 times the total compensation paid in the private sector for comparable services.

While this study looked specifically at federal employees, the results are reflected in other studies as well.

What most of us know, and what the NEA’s “Priority School” initiative shows, is that teachers are not greedy, self-interested people on the whole. They care about kids and they care that kids get the best education possible. Every one of us can point to a teacher in their past that motivated them to achieve more than they would have otherwise. We all have a teacher who inspired us to be better and pointed us in the right direction. They are a value to society, not parasites on it.

I’ll finish with an excerpt of something I wrote recently about this. It sums up my feelings on the effort to demonize teachers and how that hurts our kids and our country as a whole.

In any rational society, teachers are not considered “costs.” They are considered assets….Republicans have done an amazingly effective job of turning the public’s perception from seeing teachers as valuable assets to seeing them as parasitic leeches on the jugular vein of society. Rather than valuing them for the important role they play in our society — that of educating our children — they are now coming to be viewed as a “cost,” something to be cut when times get hard.

We have cut their pay, increased their healthcare co-pay amounts, reduced their retirement benefits and made it nearly impossible to bargain on their own behalf. And yet we expect them to effectively educate our children. We do this to help pay for massive tax cuts for businesses. And then we expect them to come to work each day, stand in front of the next generation of leaders and scientists and parents and doctors and trash collectors and make them ready to take their place in society.

Meanwhile, we scream collectively that our schools are failing our children.

I’m not sure how doing all of the things we are doing to our teachers constitutes “making our schools better,” to quote Speaker Bolger. What I do know is that a society that devalues its educators is destined to slowly circle the drain until it glugs down into an empty, fetid tub of ignorance and stupidity….

We are at a turning point in our society with regard to the education of our children. What is happening in Michigan and in Wisconsin to our teachers is going to be our nation’s future unless we act soon. We cannot continue to cast teachers as a “cost” to be cut whenever possible. We must turn around our country’s way of thinking about our educators and their value to society. Because, if we don’t, we will become a nation of uneducated fools. When that happens, our destiny will be controlled by the countries that do value education, not by us.

Read more of Chris Savage’s writing at Eclectablog.

The president of the National Education Association congratulated local education and community leaders for forging effective partnerships that are turning formerly-troubled schools into positive learning environments.  NEA President Dennis Van Roekel kicked off the Association’s “Standing Strong for Students” Back-to-School Tour here today, with visits to Westwood PreK-8 School and Belmont High School.

He visited the two Dayton schools to see how local educators are working with parents and community leaders to improve student success.  “In these changing times, providing every child with a world-class education requires more from all of us,” said Van Roekel, a high-school math teacher from Phoenix, Ariz. “Teaching and learning can’t just occur in the classroom. We must work together to help more students, in more ways and more effectively. We all—teachers, students, parents, elected officials and community leaders—are accountable for our children’s success.”

NEA’s Back-to-School Tour marks the official start of year two of  the Association’s Priority Schools Campaign(PSC), a  multi-year effort in 16 states to help transform 34 low-performing schools.  PSC works in Dayton at Belmont. 

Van Roekel was joined by Ohio Education Association President Patricia Frost-Brooks, Dayton Education Association President David Romick, and Dayton Public Schools Superintendent Lori L. Ward. “From larger classes to shrinking programs, public education is facing unprecedented challenges,” said Frost-Brooks. “Yet with a steadfast commitment to our students, we push on. It’s a pleasure to have President Van Roekel here in Dayton! We’re proud to show off the great collaboration among educators, administrators and the community which is transforming Dayton schools.”

The group began the day with a tour of Westwood, where an emphasis on positive school culture is giving students important life lessons on character and personal responsibility. The results have been overwhelmingly positive; the school’s environment is now more orderly and stable. Students are awarded “Eagle bucks,” good for special privileges and treats, for meeting the high expectations set by the Westwood staff.  

Following the visit to Westwood, Van Roekel and the group traveled  to Belmont High, where collaboration between staff, administration, the school district and law enforcement officials has led to an astounding drop in crime and encouraging improvement in academics.  After a tour of the school, the group was joined by Lieutenant Christopher Williams of the Dayton Police Department for a roundtable discussion during lunch. Van Roekel congratulated the local team on a partnership that has already shown positive results for students.  He led a discussion on the importance of effective partnerships that engage all education stakeholders—teachers, parents, community leaders and elected officials—in helping to ensure the success of every student.

A key component of PSC’s work at Belmont is professional development to help educators engage culturally diverse students and students from low-income families.  PSC will also provide on-site, on-line and on-paper technical assistance in the areas of community and familial engagement. Normally big-ticket line items in a district’s budget, PSC will deliver these much-needed services at no cost to Dayton. In a tough economy, such support allows federal, state and local dollars to go further.

Today through Thursday, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel and Secretary Treasurer Becky Pringle are on the road for first-hand views of the work of members. Van Roekel and Pringle  will visit schools to view union-led innovation, transformation and partnership in Dayton, Ohio, Romulus, Mich., Orlando and Miami, Fla., Evansville, Ind.,  Seattle, Wash., and Las Vegas, Nev.

The back-to-school tour coincides with the start of year two of NEA’s Priority Schools Campaign (PSC), the Association’s multi-year effort to help transform low-performing schools. The PSC campaign is in 36 schools across 16 states.

(Here is a report from this morning in Evansville.)

Pringle Visits Teachers Transforming their Schools in Evansville, Indiana

By Alain Jehlen

“This makes me proud to be a teacher,” said NEA Secretary-Treasurer Becky Pringle visiting Priority Schools in Evansville, Indiana today.

Pringle was on the first leg of a back-to-school tour that will also take her to Seattle and Las Vegas.

In Evanston, she saw an extraordinary level of collaboration between the school administration and the Evanston Teachers Association. The contract they bargained put extra focused attention on three Priority Schools that have had trouble raising their test scores, and empowered educators to make the changes they as professionals believe will work.

In the morning, Pringle watched fifth graders do math on a smart board, talked football with first graders, and saw a team of third grade teachers fine tune their work to make sure each of their children has a learning experience that fits their individual academic skills and personalities.

In the afternoon, she was interviewed by a middle school video production class, turned the tables on them by asking them questions, and even squeezed in a science lesson on how airplanes fly. Pringle is a former eighth grade science teacher.

The third grade planning session came first in the day, before children arrived. It was part of the plan for transforming Evans Elementary School, a plan that the teachers themselves designed, as provided in their Evansville Teachers Association contract.

The three schools also got a federal School Improvement Grant which, among other things, funded extra technology for the children. Each of the three schools worked out their own strategy for helping children learn, within the constraints of state rules.

Speech teacher Claire Reinitz told Pringle the technology helps to level the playing field for Evans students, who come mostly from low-income families but will be mixed with more affluent students when they get to middle school.

The football talk was over cereal and milk at Evans’ Breakfast-In-The-Classroom program. Large, wheeled coolers, paid for by Jeep through a special arrangement facilitated by NEA, are used to bring fresh food into each class as students arrive in the morning. All students share in the free breakfast.

Pringle and a table of first graders talked about their favorite professional teams. One child plays football himself, and Pringle made sure to ask him whether he wears a helmet. He does.

At McGary Middle School, students from a video production class interviewed her on camera, asking about her responsibilities as an NEA officer, and what she liked best in her job.

“This!” answered Pringle. “I miss having students and watching you grow. But I love meeting teachers and students all across the country who are doing exciting things in their classrooms.”

One student asked for her thoughts on testing. Tests are important, Pringle said, but “students are more than a test score. We have to make sure you’re prepared for life, that you can solve problems, because we can’t predict what you’ll face as adults and what careers there will be. You need to be prepared for whatever awaits you.”

Then Pringle asked the students what their favorite subjects are. They all loved the video class, saying it puts them in charge of their own work, and lets them “do cool things with video backgrounds.” None picked science as a favorite subject.

“Don’t you like experiments?” asked Pringle. One boy said he prefers video because “cameras don’t blow up.”

So Pringle quickly gave each student a slip of paper and asked them to predict what would happen if they blew along the top. Every mind was engaged as she had them try it out, and explained that the same principle that lifts the paper when you blow over it also lifts fast-moving airplanes.

Those visiting Evansville schools with Pringle included Evansville Teachers Association President Keith Gambill and Indiana State Teachers Association President Nate Schnellenberger. She also talked with Superintendent David Smith. Smith is a former Evans Teachers Association member. He and ETA President Gambill are both former music teachers and worked together for 25 years.

“If we are not on the same team, we cannot accomplish this work,” Smith said.

“I talk about Evansville all the time when I speak about school transformation, but I don’t hold up Evansville as a cookie-cutter model everyone should follow,” said Pringle. “That doesn’t work. What you did was to empower these teachers to make the best decisions for their school.”

By Mark Simon

A powerful new book came out this past Fall based on careful analysis of the mixed record in the five-year effort to turn around high-poverty, low-performing schools in Chicago. It’s called Organizing Schools for Improvement; Lessons From Chicago, by Anthony Bryk et. al.. It puts to rest any notions that it’s as simple as getting rid of teachers or administrators, or that the causes of poor student achievement are easy to identify. Rather they paint a picture of schools as complex communities, requiring structural supports beyond the schoolhouse door.

At least five interconnected supports are necessary for success: School Leadership, Professional Capacity of the Teaching Staff, School Learning Climate, Parent, School Community Ties, and Instructional Guidance. Without the other factors, the professional capacity of individual teachers, or even the best encouragement of students and the belief that every student can learn will have little effect. Among other things, the authors point to relationships of trust as being key. And they point out that not all high-poverty schools are equal. Some conditions, they argue are so stacked against success that results cannot be used as a judgement of any individual educators.

The authors take a rigorous scientific approach. These “lessons” should become the new standard for how we look at school transformation efforts. The book puts to rest all simplistic notions about school turnaround and is a must-read for policy makers and anyone engaged in school transformation.  It should help silence holier-than-thou politicians and philanthropists who imply that it’s easy.

Mark Simon, former president of Montgomery County Education Association (MD) is with the Mooney Institute for Teacher and Union Leadership.

By Sara Jones

First, I’d like to set the stage for you a bit. Utah is not a collective bargaining state. We are also a local option state. I’m going to give a little bit of background and then talk about where I think we’re going, because I think for us the Priority Schools Campaign is a real opportunity. It’s an opportunity for us to build relationships in our locals, it’s an opportunity for our locals to build better relationships in some school districts that have had poor relationships, and it’s an opportunity to change schools that we’re hearing from our local leaders need to improve. The Utah Education Association (UEA) wants to help in that process of improvement. So, all of this coming together is a great thing for us. read more »

By Peg Dunlap

This work actually started before the School Improvement Grant process. Because we had a number of districts on improvement for Title One, the Kansas State Department of Ed decided that since they didn’t have the capacity to provide assistance they would contract with an outside entity, they chose to use Christopher Cross and Scott Joftus, who have a consulting group, to come in and work with the school districts to help them figure out what could they be doing that would make it more likely that schools in their districts would be successful.

They started with a cohort of five school districts and then in the second year they added another group of about 15 and then in this third year, which is the current year, they’ve added another group of eight, based on the districts on improvement.  What they did was to bring in a protocol that’s kind of a self study for the school districts, and it focus at the central office.  It really asks the district to look at its hiring practices, its administrative procedures, its curriculum alignment, you know, all of those things that tend to happen centrally that can often get in the way of schools being successful with students and teachers being successful. read more »

By Kathleen J. Skinner, Ed.D.

I know many of us quote  that revered philosopher Pogo. ‘I have seen the enemy and he is us.’  I would rather say, ‘We have seen the solution and it is us.’  I think that’s sort of a refrain that we walk into this work with. Eight or nine years ago Massachusetts became involved with the Priority School Initiative.  And we used the initial opportunity to work with middle schools over a three year period in what we called the PSI KEYS Initiative, because we used KEYS as sort of a baseline to help identify the one or two big problems that – if they weren’t solved – made what else they did irrelevant.  And we had a lot of success with some schools and we learned a lot from our mistakes with others.  And I always think, quite frankly, failure is a better teacher than success.

The Center for Education Policy and Practice has four professional staff, support staff and a field of 12 professional development associates who work across the state on professional programs.  Based on that experience and with a lot of encouragement, we made a decision to found an education management organization, The Priority School Redesign Center. read more »

By Ann Randall

Washington went through the first round of School Improvement Grant funding last spring and we’re preparing for the second round.  Last spring, at the same time the process for local applications for School Improvement Grants was being considered by locals in our state, we were also going through the Race to the Top application process.  It was very important for us to do two things with our local association leaders and staff:  we wanted to give them a sense of control over two concurrent major federal initiatives with broad bargaining implications and we wanted to give them enough information that they could make an informed decision about agreeing to either initiative. So we did a series of meetings around the state for governance leaders and staff, showing them the differences between Race to the Top and the School Improvement Grants and helping them understand the application process and implications of both. read more »

By Christy Levings, NEA Executive Committee

If you are a fan of science and space films, the phrase Houston, we have a problem is a clear warning of danger ahead.  After spending two days in San Francisco visiting two schools identified as NEA Priority Schools that will receive School Improvement Grants, I feel that phrase sums up the message I would like to share with Education Secretary Arne Duncan:

Mr. Secretary, you are creating a launch problem for schools that are already filled with hard-working professionals who work with kids that bring tough problems to school with them every day. The schools I visited have not been given time to implement the models for major change that the U. S. Department of Education told school districts they must adopt.  Mr. Secretary, you must carve out time for schools to determine what programs are needed in their schools. They must have time to plan and collaborate together. read more »