What do Atlanta, Nashville and Denver have to teach us?
By Meliqueica Meadows and Kenya Vaughn
Of the St. Louis American
“Our district is truly in turmoil, and our student achievement is very low,” said Charlene Jones of the St. Louis Public Schools.
“What’s the most critical chapter necessary to turn it around? What should we do first?”
She directed this question to Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Beverly L. Hall. The morning after the 19th Annual Salute to Excellence in Education gala on Sept. 15, which featured Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin as keynote speaker, a group of academic and civic leaders was convened at the Harris-Stowe State University Library by Harris-Stowe and the St. Louis American Foundation to discuss public education with Hall, whose district has defied the statistics in overcoming many of the problems that plague urban districts.
“It’s not rocket science, it’s professional development,” Hall said.
“We had to invest to get the teachers retrained to use appropriate instructional strategies.”
Her system includes 8,000 employees and 50,000 children. Eighty-eight percent of the students are African-American, with 72 percent qualifying for free or reduced lunch.
She came to town with a firm sense of the problems in St. Louis Public Schools.
“What is going on in St. Louis is not unique,” Hall said.
“But I think you have now probably risen to the top of the heap, because with most of the other urban areas that were in a free fall, drastic measures have been taken. Either state legislature, the mayors – or whatever – have tried to stop the bleeding.”
Success, she said, starts at the top.
“Unless you have good leaders, no matter what you bring in terms of improvement and practice, it won’t happen,” she said.
The leadership team, in her experience, included a strong and savvy mayor who took on the problems in the public schools with unprecedented focus and energy.
“The mayor and I plan together,” Hall said.
“We work closely with her to determine how we go after getting the support both the city and the school system need to survive. She is committed to the children and very supportive.”
Hall previously held top-ranking positions in New York City Public Schools and Newark Public Schools, the largest district in the State of New Jersey. Now Hall also serves as chair of the Advisory Board of the Harvard Urban Superintendents Program, mentoring students in the doctoral program. She was named an associate in practice at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education for 2003-2004.
“Newark had become the poster child of urban education in terms of everything that was wrong,” Hall said. According to Hall, there had been misuse of funds, corruption and very poor student performance for decades.
“They had all types of intervention, they sent in teams and did everything that could possibly be done, and student achievement just kept getting worse,” Hall said.
“If I had not had experiences at Newark and New York, walking into Atlanta would have been a real challenge.”
Upon Hall’s arrival, Atlanta had hired four superintendents in five years.
“Everyone in Atlanta, even our current mayor, had gotten to the point where she wasn’t sure that public schools could work anymore,” Hall said.
“Things had gotten out of control. It was like Vietnam.”
She painted a picture familiar to St. Louisians.
“The board meetings were televised and so outrageous that they were gaining Nielson ratings,” Hall said. “People in Atlanta accused me of taking the best show off of TV.”
Student achievement was very low when Hall arrived in Atlanta. When she began her tenure, the 4th grade tests showed that the district was 80 percent behind the national average.
“What we did was set out system-wide targets around student achievement, student attendance, enrollment in higher-level courses,” she said.
Every school was given targets based on where they were and where they needed to be in order for the system to meet its goals. They have now just about closed the achievement gap, with a mere 4 percent of students behind the national average.
“Now people are coming from all over to figure out what is going on,” Hall said.
“The secretary of education has been here twice this year, because it is hard to believe that some of the schools – with their profiles and demographics – are succeeding.”
She believes the Atlanta model can be exported.
“None of our issues, challenges or opportunities are new,” said Hall. “And I am hoping that eventually our results will not be unique.”
Nor is her work done in Atlanta.
“We have a goal on the table that by 2007-08, 100 percent of our children will meet 70 percent or more of the targets and we’ll become the highest-performing urban school system in America,” Hall said.
Hall addressed a room full of community leaders, including William Tate, PhD, chair of the Department of Education at Washington University; Carol Camp Yeakey, PhD, director of the Washington University Center on Urban Research and Public Policy; Dr. Henry Givens Jr., president of Harris-Stowe State University; Harris-Stowe Board Chair Wayman Smith III; Kay E. Royster, superintendent of schools for the Jennings School District; 19th Alderman Mike McMillian; and Frankie Freeman and Donald M. Suggs, who serve on a new advisory board that reports to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary education.
City and other school board and district officials were invited but did not attend.
To this group, Hall spoke of the importance of community involvement in turning around a school district.
“The community must play a vital role,” Hall said. “No school system can do this alone.”
Denver and Nashville on display
Last Thursday, Sept. 21, the St. Louis Children’s Agenda and Vision for Children at Risk held the first of several scheduled public meetings at the organization’s headquarters, 2433 N. Grand Ave.
Organized by the Institute for Youth, Education and Families at the National League of Cities, the seminar focused on a new series of case studies published by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University.
Several successful models of revamping big-city public education districts were presented, including Denver and Nashville.
Both districts previously had problems similar to those SLPS now faces: low test scores, absenteeism of both students and teachers, and low funding. The common theme in turning the districts around seemed to be the increased authority and role of the mayors of both cities.
Vision for Children at Risk has previously awarded Mayor Slay for his advocacy for St. Louis Public Schools. Slay has been criticized by many grass-roots groups, and recent school board slates he has backed were beaten badly at the polls.
Present at the forum were SLPS Deputy Superintendent John Martin; Byron Clemons, vice-president of the teachers union; SLPS school board member Ron Jackson; and about 20 other local business leaders, parents and educators.
During the Sept. 21 teleconference, Maria Guajardo Lucero – executive director of the Denver Mayor’s Office for Education and Children – said that “centralized authority” and removing “several levels of bureaucracy” enabled the establishment of a coalition to help turn the schools around.
She said the success of this coalition hinged on the “level of formal authority of the mayor.” While Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper did not have the authority to choose a superintendent, the current superintendent was formerly the mayor’s chief of staff.
“There’s a really good working relationship there,” Lucero said.
In Nashville, Mayor Bill Purcell “started a campaign of increasing public confidence and participation in the schools,” according to Marc Hill director of the Mayor’s Office of Children and Youth in Nashville.
Hill advocated less bureaucratic red-tape as a means for improving public schools. He said that in 1960 the city and county in Nashville merged to become one government, with about 570,000 residents in one school district. There is an independently elected school board of nine members with the power to hire and fire the director of schools. The school board is responsible for drafting a proposed operating budget, which is then presented to the mayor and approved by the city council. The mayor does not have line-item control, but may increase or decrease the total allocation of funds.
Hill said the mayor engaged “a broad array of constituency groups,” including parents, community members, business leaders and public officials, in an attempt to improve the schools.
In the last year, the Mayor Purcell has made a total of 483 school visits and has encouraged members of the community to visit schools and speak to teachers, students and principals to find out what their issues and concerns are.
After the Sept. 21 forum, community members said they wanted SLPS to focus on early intervention with students, preventing lead poisoning and working together in a collaborative environment, as opposed to the current adversarial relationship between the mayor, school board and other stakeholders.
Participants at the forum also spoke against relying on vouchers or charter schools instead of fixing the district.
The Children’s Agenda, a coalition of some 300 child advocates and children’s services agencies, has initiated a year-long series of forums focused on public education in the city. Forums will be held approximately bi-weekly over the course of the 2006-2007 school year.
The first phase will be informational in nature, with the goal of identifying critical issues related to public education in the city and establishing a common foundation of policy information and data related to the operations of the schools.
The second phase of the series will establish a stakeholder dialogue in which key community actors can work toward development and implementation of effective strategies to address the many problems confronting the public schools.
The next public forum is tentatively scheduled for October 5, with the topic “What data and information do we need to understand the schools and monitor student achievement?” For more information or to register for the forum, call (314) 534-6015.
MCU targets county schools
On Sunday, the Metropolitan Congregations United (MCU) Mid-County Cluster brought together more than 300 people at its first community meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to hold elected public officials and candidates accountable in supporting public policy that will reduce the drop-out rate in area public schools and improve the health literacy of county residents.
State Sen. Joan Bray (District 24) and 4th Senatorial District Democratic nominee Jeff Smith joined state Rep. Margaret Donnelly, County Councilman Kurt Odenwald and others to discuss public education.
“We’re working as part of MCU to look at issues that are important to our congregations,” said John Roman, co-chair of the public education task force for the Mid-County Cluster of MCU.
“We want to encourage each district to figure out things to help their students, and we want to encourage public officials to set aside money to address the issue of the drop-out rate.”
He said the group has a commitment from legislators to meet with them by December 1 to create programs for districts in Missouri to improve drop-out rates.