Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that Maryland is one of 10 winners in phase two of the federal $4.3 billion Race to the Top, and will receive $250 million over the next two years to boost student achievement, reduce achievement gaps among student subgroups, improve teaching and turn around struggling schools. This award is huge for our state and for Baltimore City Public Schools. It not only sends critical federal dollars our way, but affirms that we as a city and a state are on the right reform track.
Also yesterday, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute released a report that missed the message in Secretary Duncan's announcement. Titled America's Best (and Worst) Cities for School Reform: Attracting Entrepreneurs and Change Agents, the report is an assessment of the climate for reform in the nation's big-city school districts, based on surveys completed by funders and education reform organizations. Nowhere, in all of its 145 pages, is there an assessment of these districts' progress in terms of student outcomes. And in its foreword, the report states, ?We find no immediate relation?ship between the reform-friendly grades for cities in this study and gains in pupil achievement.?
If outcomes aren't part of the reform story, then why bother? That Fordham put out what it purports to be an authoritative report on school reform in the nation's 25 largest urban school districts (plus five other urban districts it deemed interesting) absent any evidence of how students in those districts are actually doing?the real bottom line when it comes to reform?says that this report isn't about what works best for kids. It's about a small group of people validating, for each other, a basic set of shared beliefs.
In this case those basic beliefs amount to a narrow view of reform: charter schools and innovative programs run by outside organizations are the answer to turning school districts around; unions are nothing but obstacles to reform and generally to blame when reforms fail to take hold; and absent private dollars, ideas and programs, districts can't move the needle on school reform. Admittedly, the report's methodology is weak: Not only was there no focus on student outcomes, but for Baltimore City only four local people responded to surveys, and only two additional people in each district were interviewed to ?add context? to these survey results, though the latter interviews were not factored into the district grades. And the report targets a narrow audience?it is written primarily for the education funders and innovators whose opinions it reflects.
But the result is a biased lens on reform that favors some districts over others, especially when it comes to reform resources and support, and a conversation about reform completely devoid of rigor. Together, these amount to a huge disservice to the kids on whose behalf we are working.
While no district received an ?A? grade, I find it interesting that the nine districts that received ?B? grades tend to have fewer of what Fordham seems to consider inherent ?obstacles? to reform. Within these districts' profiles, Fordham emphasizes weak unions or an absence of unions; mayoral control or strong mayoral support; the support of state-level education advocacy groups; multiple or state-level charter authorizers; and a heavy presence of outside educator pipelines such as Teach for America and New Leaders for New Schools.? These factors may add up to a climate ripe for reform, but what about the districts that don't have these so-called conditions for reform but push forward anyway and not only implement bold reforms, but generate the results they're designed to yield? If that isn't innovation and reform, I don't know what is.
I write this as the superintendent of Baltimore City Public Schools, a district that has embraced and put in practice many of the tenets of the Fordham report. We agree that charters play a critical role in urban school reform; that choice and competition matter; that accountability is the great currency of reform; and that schools and districts must recruit, keep, promote and reward exceptional people and prune the ranks of those who fail to bring value to kids. So we have opened 29 charter schools that currently serve 10 percent of our student population, and in the last three years alone we have: created a portfolio of school options and extended school choice to all high school and most middle grades students; moved dollars and authority over those dollars from the central office to the schools, and reduced the size of the central office by more than one-third; closed 12 low-performing schools and opened 21 new schools in partnership with local and national operators, often against tremendous local opposition; replaced nearly two thirds of all principals with 41 of the current 198 hailing from New Leaders for New Schools; and more than doubled the number of new entries into the teaching profession through channels like Teach for America.
We've done all of these things that seem to meet Fordham's criteria for climates conducive to reform. Yet underlying this work in Baltimore is a spirit of reform that I would argue runs deeper than the Fordham lens projects. For us this work is about working with teachers to redefine their participation in new structures of collaboration in the school day. It's about rethinking the role of parents in the accountability and operations of schools. It's about partnering with everyone?a strong school board; a supportive mayor, governor and state superintendent; community-based and non-profit organizations; city agencies; elected officials; and yes, the unions?in creating a climate where everyone understands that, regardless of means or history, they have a role in the success of our students and schools.
I came to Baltimore three years ago because there was a demand for reform. Despite ongoing constraints and early signs of success, there is an even greater demand for the district to improve three years later, and it's coming from everyone. This is a key source of the powerful progress the district has made, and will continue to make. Once it's happening, everyone in Baltimore rallies around the reforms we are implementing, despite any original disagreements. The reform current in Baltimore is strong, taking everyone along with it, and that is what will make the reforms here sustainable over time.
Yet the Fordham report gives Baltimore City a ?C? and ranks it 17th out of the 26 cities, portraying it as a city with a school district too hindered by bureaucratic obstacles to act progressively and move nimbly; in short, as a city and a district with a poor climate for reform. So how does it explain the last three years in which the district saw growth in student achievement across all grades, subjects and student subgroups and exited state corrective action; settled a 26-year old lawsuit governing the education of students with disabilities; saw its student population rise for the first time in four decades; saw the number of students withdrawing from schools shrink by half and the instances of students dropping out decline by more than one-third (in the first two years alone); and engaged partners for those 21 new schools and seven other schools in turnaround? How did that happen in a climate averse to education reform?
Without any anchoring in the facts of what is actually happening with students in the districts it surveyed, the Fordham report represents an elitism that is out of touch with the necessary on-the-ground constraints and realities of urban education reform and, as a result, it limits the reach and potential of numerous reforms now underway. For funders and innovators considering working in Baltimore, the report suggests, ?Don't go there. It's easier somewhere else!? And in so doing, it shortchanges not just Baltimore's, but America's kids. If there is to be a narrow focus in urban education reform, it must be on results. Anything else undermines the challenge. The needs of our kids and an unfettered commitment to them and what we know works in their favor must drive all that we do. That's what they deserve, nothing less.
-Andres Alonso, Superintendent of Baltimore City Public Schools