Deinya Phenix, Dorothy Siegel, Ariel Zaltsman, and Norm Fruchter, Institute for Education and Social Policy, Steinhardt School of Education, New York University June 2004
In 1996, then New York City Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew brought ten chronically underperforming schools into his purview, creating a geographically disconnected "virtual district" of schools. Having wrested control of these schools from their administrative sub-districts, he imposed a "Model of Excellence" that included reduced class size, extended school days and years, and mandatory staff development. This report analyzes student performance in the elementary and middle schools of Crew's "virtual district," dubbed the Chancellor's District and eventually including 58 schools. It seems they produced statistically significant gains in reading scores in only three years. Indeed, literacy improvement was a key goal of Crew's plan, and his project seems to have been quite a success in that regard. However, that focus seems to have negatively affected math testing, in which the Chancellor's District performed similarly to other chronically low-performing schools. The policy assumptions challenged by Crew's relative success should be noted, however. According to the authors, he showed how sub-district control of failing schools could be improved by "centralized management, rather than decentralized local control." Overall, a brief but thoughtful consideration of an important experiment; you can find it here.