CENTER FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION – School “resegregation” has been in the news lately, but is it real? Are our schools becoming less diverse, even as our student body becomes increasingly so?
Source: Center for Public Education, Originally published February 21, 2017
We recently released a report on school segregation in the U.S. While we think that following national trends are helpful, and that lessons can be learned from one region to another, we also acknowledge that segregation looks different in each region, state, and metropolitan area. So, even though racial balance overall has been improving over the past 10 years as an average of all metropolitan areas in the U.S., the reality is that it’s been getting better in about 65 percent of cities and getting worse in the other 35 percent. We should definitely be working to learn best practices from those who are improving student integration to apply to areas that are getting worse.
Brown v. Board of Education really addressed de jure segregation, or laws that required that black and white students attend different schools. These laws were on the books in 17 southern states at the time of the landmark 1954 court case. States didn’t truly begin to integrate schools until the late 1960s, as the courts enforced Brown v. Board, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the 1968 court case Green v. County School Board of New Kent County. As the graph below shows, the South saw the greatest decrease of black students in racially isolated schools of any region from 1968 to 1989, as they were the ones that originally had segregation laws that were overturned. Court orders were in place in many southern school districts through the 1980s, with a few still being in place today.
What should also be noted in this graph is that the Northeast has the highest rate of black students in isolated school settings. Some of this may be attributable to having smaller school districts, which allows for more sorting and separation of students of different races and less ability for school district leaders to truly integrate schools if they have little diversity within their borders. However, Maryland has one of the highest rates of isolated schools for black students, despite having large, county-wide districts (Maryland also has a high proportion of black students). It may also be due to large, segregated urban areas that have greater impacts on statewide segregation rates. For example, New York City public schools have very few white students, which means that black students are isolated, weighing heavily on racial isolation statistics for the entire state. Nearly two-thirds of black students in the state of New York attend schools that are less than 10 percent white, making New York the most isolating state for black students. Chicago has a similar impact for Illinois.
Of the largest 25 metropolitan areas, Chicago has the highest dissimilarity rate between black and white students; 79 percent of black students would have to move to a school with more white students in order to achieve complete racial balance (in which all schools have equal proportions of each student group). While this, of course, is not practical, as families often live in segregated neighborhoods, it highlights the separation between students living in the same metropolitan area.
We can do better. We did do better, but we let gains in integration slide. School leaders need to start thinking innovatively across attendance zones and district boundaries to ensure that all students are exposed to a diverse set of peers and equal resources. That means having community support from parents who understand that diverse schools benefit all students.
I am pleased to advise that Pennsylvania has submitted its proposed ESSA Consolidated State Plan to the U.S. Department of Education. A copy of the plan may be viewed on the Department’s ESSA webpage. We have also posted a PowerPoint presentation in both English and Spanish to assist Pennsylvanians in understanding the plan. In addition, the Department has revised its ESSA webpage to include updated content on major elements of the plan, as well as a new section on Stakeholder Engagement. This page includes access to all stakeholder comments submitted to the Department during the formal 30-day public comment period. Please stay tuned for additional resources and updates in the weeks ahead.
Submission of Pennsylvania’s Consolidated State Plan is a significant moment for public education in Pennsylvania. The plan underscores the commonwealth’s commitment to creating more balanced and comprehensive school progress measures, reducing testing time, and supporting Pennsylvania’s educators and school leaders.
Highlights of the plan include:
A focus on providing a “well-rounded education” to students, by identifying the subjects and disciplines that should be part of every child’s education, including the arts, social sciences, health and physical education, STEM and computer science, and other areas;
Broadening the scope of the indicators used to measure school success;
A reduction of testing time on the Pennsylvania State System of Assessments (PSSAs) in English language arts and mathematics by 20 percent beginning in spring 2018;
Strategies for addressing the needs of students through school-based supports and community partnerships;
A strong focus on evidence-based professional development for educators and administrators that emphasizes equity; and
Identifying ways to prepare students to successfully enter postsecondary, career programs, apprenticeship programs, or even the workforce.
The Department is grateful to the thousands of Pennsylvanians who participated in review and comment on plan proposals since ESSA was enacted in December 2015. We look forward to continuing these conversations through the USDE plan approval process and on to implementation in our schools and for the benefit of all of our students in Pennsylvania.
Washington — As part of its ongoing efforts to aid Hurricane Harvey relief efforts and in the wake of Hurricane Irma, the Department of Education released the following update:
Higher Education
Last week (Sept. 6 and 7), FSA conducted pre-disaster outreach to nearly 2,400 institutions in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, foreign schools located in the Caribbean, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. FSA also continues to reach out to institutions in Texas and Louisiana impacted by Hurricane Harvey.
On Sept. 8, 2017, FSA issued a post-disaster email to more than 260 institutions in the Caribbean impacted by Hurricane Irma. In the coming days, FSA will send the post-disaster email to institutions in the continental U.S. impacted by Hurricane Irma.
FSA has established contact with nearly 20 institutions in Puerto Rico affected by Hurricane Irma and is responding to requests for regulatory relief and reporting flexibilities.
FSA has invited 446 impacted institutions to participate in a webinar on Wednesday, Sept. 13 at 10:00 a.m. Central Time. FSA and other U.S. Department of Education officials will provide updates on the Department’s guidance related to Hurricane Harvey, as well as ongoing assistance.
FSA has updated the StudentAid.gov/naturaldisaster page to provide general information relevant to students, parents and borrowers affected by a federally declared natural disaster (including hurricanes Harvey and Irma, as well as the wildfires burning in the western U.S.).
K-12
The Department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) has entered into discussions with the Texas Education Agency about its Project School Emergency Response to Violence (SERV) program. Project SERV grants support activities and services that enable schools to restore the learning environment after a natural or man-made disaster.
OESE will be conducting a webinar on Sept. 19 in collaboration with FEMA on its Public Assistance Program. The Public Assistance Program provides supplemental federal disaster grant assistance for debris removal, life-saving emergency protective measures, and the repair, replacement or restoration of disaster-damaged publicly-owned facilities.
OESE is working with its Federal partners and reaching out to State educational agencies in localities impacted by Hurricane Irma to understand the nature and scope of the damage that Irma has inflicted on their educational institutions.
The Department’s Office of Innovation and Improvement (OII) has contacted charter schools or their representatives in state affected by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma regarding their emerging needs. These states are still assessing damage, and the Department expects to provide technical assistance and support as needed in the coming weeks.
OII has contacted the major private school associations in Puerto Rico, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Kentucky via email, in addition to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for their VI schools, to receive updates on the status of their schools in Irma-impacted areas. OII will send a message to all hurricane-impacted areas on Sept. 12 regarding the upcoming ED/FEMA Public Assistance webinar on Sept. 19, 2017.
Office of the Inspector General
On Sept. 10, a team of 10 agents from the Office of the Inspector General arrived at a staging area at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, as part of a quick response team in support of the Federal government’s Emergency Support Function #13 (Public Safety and Security) for Hurricane Irma. They have been assigned to provide security for a Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT) in the Florida Keys.
The Department’s K-12 and Higher Education stakeholders who are seeking informational resources as well as those seeking relief from Department-based administrative requirements should contact the Department toll free at 1-844-348-4082 or by email at HarveyRelief@ed.gov and Irmarelief@ed.gov.
Last week, late nights, family road trips, and endless leisure came to an abrupt halt as children across the country headed back to school. This year, however, there is something else that requires adjustment besides early mornings and evening homework assignments. This year, a revised national education law goes into effect: the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). ESSA is the reauthorization of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) signed into law by Barack Obama in 2015.
ESEA included landmark legislation such as the Adult Education Act (1966), which provided funding for supplemental education centers and mandated educational programming even during “out-of-session” periods for isolated and rural areas; the Women’s Educational Equity Act, which protected women and girls from discrimination in education; ESEA also included protections for those who suffer from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or disability. ESEA has been updated every five years since it was signed into law. The original intention of ESEA was to provide equal access to quality education, emphasize high standards and accountability, authorize funds for professional development, design effective instructional materials, provide supplemental education programs, and promote parental involvement.
Previous reauthorizations include the now infamous No Child Left Behind (NCLB), signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2001. ESSA replaces NCLB.
Education has been hailed the “new civil rights issue.” However, as we know, all too well, a law alone will not save us. The unanimous decision in Brown v. the Board of Education occurred in 1954; it was not until 1988 that school integration reached an all-time high with 45 percent of Black students attending majority-White schools. In 2003, a study by Harvard’s Civil Rights Project found that schools were more segregated in 2000 than in 1970 when busing for desegregation began. So we see, that laws alone will not fix decades of restricted access and rationed opportunity. We also can conclude that without a watchful eye we are bound to repeat history.
During an interview at the University of California Berkley on October 11, 1963, Malcolm X said that if the government, “really passed meaningful laws, it would not be necessary to pass any more laws. There are already enough laws on the law books to protect an American citizen. You only need additional laws when you are dealing with someone, who is not regarded as an American citizen.”
The goal of the 2015 reauthorization of ESEA is equity, but so was that the goal in 1965. A major component of both the 1965 ESEA and ESSA as the 2015 reauthorization is parental involvement. We must be the change we want to see. Laws are an opportunity to hold our leaders accountable. We must hold ourselves accountable for the academic success of our children. At the 1979 Amandla Festival in support of relief and humanitarian aid to Southern Africa, Dick Gregory, in his fifteen minute introduction of Bob Marley and Wailers, stated:
“We the decent people of this planet must stand up and say to the rest of them inhumane, cruel beast that we are not going to tolerate it no more. And then they’ll say, “what are you gon’ do about it?” If I don’t do nothing, but get out of my bed everyday and look myself in the face in the quietness of my living room and say, “I’m not gon’ tolerate it no more, I’m not gon’ tolerate it no more, I’m not gon’ tolerate it no more” that alone, when enough people stand doing it, is enough to win.”
So, let’s challenge ourselves this academic year to say, “we not gon’ tolerate it no more.” We are not going to tolerate inadequate resources, unqualified teachers, unresponsive school boards, and low academic standards. Let’s challenge our children to rise to the occasion. Let’s challenge ourselves to attend community meetings, to join the PTA, to check our children’s homework, and to make sure our children’s teachers know us by name.
Learn more about the Every Student Succeeds Act at nnpa.org/essa.
Lynette Monroe is a master’s student at Howard University. Her research area is public policy and national development. Ms. Monroe is the program assistant for the NNPA’s Every Student Succeeds Act Public Awareness Campaign. Follow Lynette Monroe on Twitter @_monroedoctrine.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The West Virginia Board of Education (WVBE) has been taking steps to ensure a smooth transition for counties since HB2711 dissolves the Regional Education Service Agencies (RESA) on June 30, 2018. RESAs will remain under the control of the West Virginia Board of Education (WVBE) until the time of their closure or until an Educational Service Cooperative (ESC) is formed.
In order to replace the services provided by the RESAs, counties may form and control ESCs. The change provides local control to county superintendents and boards of education to choose to create cooperatives within their region. The decision to create a cooperative to provide services lies solely with the county boards of education.
To ensure the success of the RESA transition included within HB2711, Governor Jim Justice requested the WVBE create a committee to oversee the transition of RESAs to ESCs. The WVBE created a RESA Transition Committee to ensure the necessary support needed by the counties to become cooperatives. The committee, which meets regularly, is made up of state and county education personnel and is actively addressing the concerns of counties to ease the transition process. David Perry, Vice President of the WVBE, was selected to chair the committee due to his past experience and knowledge in school administration and his awareness of RESA services.
The WVBE has worked to ensure there will be no interruption of services during the transition. Various services have been historically coordinated through RESAs and the WVBE RESA transition committee is working to identify how those services will continue to be provided. Those services range from school bus driver training, technology support, teacher alternative certification, adult basic education and public service training. Once formed, ESCs will retain the same cooperative buying authority utilized by RESAs.
“Throughout the transition, we have listened to the concerns of our counties and have brought together the best resources available to ensure supports are in place to assist with the formation of Educational Service Cooperatives,” Perry said. “ESCs will give counties full local control of the programs administered by the ESCs and allow them to create a cooperative that is tailor-made for their needs.”
The next meeting of the RESA Transition Committee is scheduled for October 11, 2017. At the meeting, the committee will be presented with ESC templates that will be developed and presented by the West Virginia School Board Association.
The Revised ESSA Consolidated Plan is now available! There are four main ways to get involved.
Read the Revised ESSA Consolidated Plan
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) replaced No Child Left Behind (NCLB) on December 10, 2015. It is the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). ESSA will be fully operational in school year 2017-18.
Take a minute to let us know what you think of the plan! You can provide feedback through September 5, and your feedback will be considered as OSPI completes the plan for submission to the U.S. Department of Education.
Tell Your Friends & Colleagues!
Share this page on Facebook, Twitter, through email, wherever! We want to hear from as many Washingtonians as possible about the changes coming to our schools!
Recommendations to Help Reporter and Editors Get up to Speed on ESSA
Alexander Russo writes on Phi Delta Kappan that “mainstream news coverage of ESSA so far has been skimpy & superficial, given how important the new federal education law is going to be in coming years.” However, “there’s still more than enough time for education reporters and editors to grab hold of the story.” Russo provides recommendations to help reporters and editors get up to speed, focus on what’s important, and figure out “storytelling tricks.”
There are lots of interesting ways to tell the story of ESSA this fall. Don’t get left behind!
By Alexander Russo
Mainstream news coverage of ESSA (the Every Student Succeeds Act) so far has been skimpy & superficial, given how important the new federal education law is going to be in coming years.
But there’s still more than enough time for education reporters and editors to grab hold of the story.
Revisions and approvals to state plans are going to be a big education story this fall, along with in-state debate about how to turn approved plans into reality. And, as you’ll see, there are lots of easy and smart ways to cover ESSA (despite its scary-long state plans and slow timelines).
The following sections will help you get started, hone in on what’s most important, figure out storytelling tricks, and give you some specific storylines you (and your editors) might like.
GET YOURSELF STARTED
EXPERTS STANDING BY
Sixteen states plus the District of Columbia have already submitted their implementation plans to the U.S. Department of Education (USDE), which has given preliminary responses to many states and has now approved several of those plans. Come September, all of the states will have submitted draft ESSA proposals.
For help figuring out state plans, reporters can look at the plans themselves, talk to state-based associations, advocates, or union leaders, or contact national outfits like the Alliance for Excellent Education, Fordham, the AFT, or the Education Trust. There are also a number of stories and resources specifically designed for education journalists that you can find from the Education Writers Association (EWA) here. The organization, which supports education journalists, held a whole event focused on ESSA last October.
You don’t have to become an ESSA expert. You just have to call them.
CRIB FROM TRADE PUBLICATIONS
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel here. Trade press coverage of ESSA has been strong and steady for much of the past year. Skim the sometimes-wonky stories from EdWeek, EdSource, the 74, or any number of other niche sites and turn them into something that everyday parents and teachers might be interested in reading.
There’s nothing wrong with modeling your coverage after strong stories produced by other outlets in other parts of the country. Just remember to throw them a link for their hard work.
FOCUS ON WHAT MATTERS TO KIDS AND PARENTS
ESSA: WHAT’S THAT?
States are required under ESSA to do extensive outside consulting about their plans, including “teachers, principals, other school leaders, charter school leaders, specialized instructional support personnel, paraprofessionals, administrators, other staff, and parents.” And yet anecdotal reports suggest that many states didn’t mount a particularly robust or effective effort.
Ask some teachers and administrators if they know anything about the law, or chat with some parents dropping their kids off early in the year. If they don’t, ask your state why not – and what it’s going to do about it?
COMPLIANT? LOGICAL?
There are two main things to find out about your state’s ESSA plan that really matter for kids, according to Phillip Lovell, VP for Policy Development and Government Relations at the Alliance for Excellent Education.
First are whether your state is meeting the specific statutory requirements in the law. Relatively flexible as it is, ESSA does contain some very specific requirements that states aren’t supposed to fudge – even if the USDE appears to be letting them do so.
Just as important, according to Lovell and others, is for reporters to make sure that state plans make sense from a logical perspective. “States can be compliant, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the system is actually logical,” Lovell notes.
For example, in the A-F letter grade school ratings systems that states are proposing , does an “A” rating “really mean what a typical parent or member of the public would think an ‘A’ should mean?” Some states have proposed systems that could give A’s to schools with subgroup graduation rates in the 60s and 70s, or to schools with low-performing subgroups. This happened before ESSA and could continue under the new law. “That doesn’t pass the smell test,” says Lovell.
Not sure whether your state’s plan complies with the statute or passes the smell test? Call Lovell or anyone else from the organizations listed above.
Pro tip: Look at independent peer review comments on state plans for additional insights.
TESTING
States vary enormously in how much weight they plan to give annual tests in determining a school’s overall performance. Where does your state fit in, and what are the likely consequences of adding or lessening the weight of tests on school report cards? Are this year’s A and B schools likely to turn into C and D schools? Are this year’s D and F schools magically going to turn into A and B schools?
How the tests get used also varies widely in terms of how much states break out student test scores by subgroups of different kinds of kids, according to Lovell. “That’s a big deal that will really matter for kids,” says Lovell.
Some states set it up so that subgroup performance on tests really does matter. Other states aren’t so aggressive.
PARTICIPATION
ESSA sets a floor of 95 percent for student participation on annual state tests, but the USDE “appears to be ignoring this [participation] requirement,” according to Lovell. If too many kids opt out, the tests aren’t valid and the kids whose scores aren’t included aren’t part of the feedback-accountability loop. How are states addressing it in their plans? “Some states are not doing this or doing this with very little consequences attached,” says Lovell, and the USDE isn’t paying much attention.
Whatever you do, be sure to cover the participation issue as more than just a concern of middle-class white parents, reminds the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights’ Liz King. The participation requirement is an effort to ensure that marginalized students aren’t ignored (and to ensure that school districts couldn’t encourage their lowest performing students to take the day off school).
CHRONIC ABSENTEEISM IS THE NEW KID ON THE BLOCK
Chronic absences are going to be a big new part of what many schools measure under ESSA, and how they’re rated. “Every state that has submitted a plan so far has added — or plans to add — at least one additional measure,” notes Chalkbeat’s Matt Barnum. “The most popular has been chronic absenteeism.”
But how is attendance going to be tracked and transmitted? What is “chronic”? Recent Washington Post coverage found that some District of Columbia schools weren’t recording suspensions and expulsions the way that they were supposed to, in order to comply with district mandates to reduce them. Could the same happen with attendance data?
STORYTELLING TRICKS
HOOK, THEN GO DEEPER
It’s totally fine to use an announcement or a response as a news hook for your ESSA story, but don’t make the bureaucratic back-and-forth all that you cover. Use those arguments as the entry point for delving into the plans and what they mean for parents and kids, say Chiefs for Change’s Margie Yeager and other advocates working on the implementation process. Focus on things like school ratings and interventions that are likely to be most important to them.
FOCUS IN ON A DISTRICT, SCHOOL, OR (KIND OF) KID
There’s no better way to make jargon and bureaucratic procedures real than to focus in on a real, live district, school, teacher, or student and illustrate how the law might affect them. Will the district receive more or less funding? Will the school have to do anything differently than it has in the past? Will the teacher have to get more training? Will the immigrant, special education, or other disadvantaged student get more or different services?
Want to get fancy? Compare two different schools, districts, teachers, or students.
INTERSTATE RIVALRIES
Pretty much every state has a rival state it likes to disparage and/or compare itself to. Californians hate Texans (and vice versa). New Jerseyans hate New Yorkers (and vice versa). So why not make constructive use of the rivalry by highlighting your state’s ESSA plan with another state? Is your state’s report card system stronger or weaker than its rival’s? How about its plan for improving teacher effectiveness or intervening in struggling schools?
While ESSA coverage sometimes can seem like it’s overly concerned with white teachers, middle-class parents and their stressed-out kids, it’s important to remember that ESSA isn’t just focused on low-performing urban schools. The law will also affect middle class and suburban schools where overall achievement may seem fine but subgroups – English language learners, for example – aren’t getting the services they need.
What are those middle-class, higher-achieving schools going to do to meet the requirements of the new law? Nobody’s really covered that yet.
CONNECT THE DOTS
Whether you’re a local/regional reporter who thinks readers appreciate the bigger picture or a national reporter trying to deepen her/his coverage, there are lots of ways to connect ESSA to real life. Some starter questions: How will low-income students take AP exams now that the federal government no longer provides federal funding specifically for that purpose? How will teacher and student lives be affected by the evolution from state- and consortium-designed tests to the ACT and SAT? How many states are reducing testing time – and by how much?
SPECIFIC STORYLINES
STATE-LEVEL WINDFALL
State education departments are going to be in charge of a much bigger pot of funding than they have been in the past – but it’s not entirely clear how well they’re going to spend the money. “Seven percent of Title I, that’s a billion dollars,” says Bellwether’s Chad Aldeman. “Any reporter in any state could grab onto the question of states’ plan for spending that additional money.”
KIDS LEARNING ENGLISH
One great way to look at the law would be through the eyes of a kid or family whose home language isn’t English. One of the most potentially far-reaching elements ESSA requires is an indicator showing how schools are doing education English language learners (ELLs). Is the state’s ELL measure meaningful? Is its definition of who is considered ELL going to change? What new or different is being proposed to help ELL students meet the same standards as other kids?
WHAT ABOUT THE TEACHERS?
Another important and easy way to make your ESSA coverage stand out is to focus on the human beings put in charge of classrooms – something most parents and even the most casual reader can care about. There are big, largely-unexplored provisions of the state plans focusing on the law’s educator equity requirements. Need some help? National Council on Teacher Quality analyzed 17 states’ plans.
Pro tip: Don’t get sucked into the teacher shortage story.
HOW MANY SCHOOLS? HOW MUCH MONEY?
There are lots of basic questions that you can answer for readers that might not be on the front page of your state’s website. How many more (or fewer) under-performing schools would likely be identified under the state’s new plan, using available data? How much more (or less) money would they receive?
States may try and avoid answering these kinds of questions, pointing to new tests, new measures, and new calculations, but some will have come up with estimates and projections they will share if asked (or FOIA’d), and it will be useful to readers to explain what information is and isn’t available.
CAVEAT REPORTER
With ESSA as with most things in education, it’s easy to get pulled into the jargon. Don’t do it. A part of Hechinger’s Liz Willen dies every time an education reporter falls into jargonese. It’s also easy to get distracted by ongoing battles that aren’t really related to ESSA but are part of larger debates. Education funding? Teacher shortages? I’d advise against going there. But if your editor insists, ask hard questions about how issues are really connected to ESSA.
Media coverage of ESSA makes a difference. It was in part through media inquiries that Michigan officials realized that they had not submitted a complete version of their ESSA state plan to the USDE. Media coverage helped reveal that the new law ended AP subsidies for low-income kids.
I’ve got a feeling that there are other similar attention-grabbing stories to break, once reporters like you take a closer look.
If you live anywhere near the Durfee Elementary School building and Central High School on the city’s west side, then you already see it happening. Because you really can’t miss it. It’s kinda big.
Beginning on July 31, 12,000 volunteers descended upon Durfee and the surrounding neighborhood for a six-day whirlwind transformation/overhaul/cleanup designed to remove blight on 300 city blocks, board up 300 vacant houses, and perform essential home repairs for 50 homeowners in the area.
Just one example of what Life Remodeled has done for Detroit neighborhoods
“We invite students from school, we invite community residents, churches, mosques, synagogues, businesses, people from every walk of life that you can imagine,” said Chris Lambert, CEO of Life Remodeled which is spearheading the project.
Lambert said he and his team typically spend at least a year working with the community figuring out what the community wants. Then they work together with that community to plan the blight removal project.
And that’s just for starters.
The initial whirlwind is really the kickoff of what will be at least a two-year effort spearheaded by Life Remodeled to transform the Durfee building into what will be known as a Community Innovation Center, and thereby transform an entire neighborhood in the process. And in case you’re wondering, this isn’t the first time Lambert has managed to pull this off. Life Remodeled, founded in 2011, is already developing a respectable track record of transforming neighborhood schools in troubled areas as a means of upgrading the entire neighborhood.
The organization’s first school-based project, costing roughly $5.5 million, was in 2014 at Cody High School. In 2015, Life Remodeled stepped it up a bit and took on Osborne High School. That project cost approximately $5.7 million. Both of these projects were a long way from the initial project in 2011, which involved pulling together 500 volunteers to build a home for a single mother and her four children in Westland. In six days.
“The process evolved from a vision that was big at the time but miniscule compared to what we’re doing right now. …It’s evolved from focusing on building a house that benefited one family at a time, to now benefiting a community asset that benefits the entire community,” said Lambert.
“This one is very different from what we’ve done in the past. In the past we’ve worked in existing schools that are still operating today. …This one’s very different because we’re working in a vacant school now. The former Durfee Elementary Middle School.”
In addition to other benefits, Lambert said that there has been a noticeable positive impact on crime in the neighborhoods surrounding their earlier school-based projects.
According to Lambert, the Detroit Police Department measured crime stats on the blocks where they worked, both before and after the project, “And it actually dropped in 10 out of 11 categories, “including 47 percent reduction in homicides.”
From the website:
“The Community Innovation Center will operate in collaboration with Central High School and the Detroit Public Schools Community District to provide hands-on education to students. Entrepreneurs will guest lecture in classrooms and students will have the opportunity to learn subjects, like math and finance, with real examples from case studies of business ventures taking place within the center. Community members of all ages will have access to resources and space in order to learn about entrepreneurship and how to start or grow their own businesses. The center will also serve as valuable community and recreational space for families and their kids.”
“As 2017 marks the 50th year anniversary of the 1967 Detroit uprising, Life Remodeled and our partners will invest in the neighborhood surrounding Central High School, the city’s first public high school, in the community where Detroit’s civil unrest began. This year’s project will serve not only as a powerful commemoration of the progress that has been made, but also the progress we continue to strive toward.
We are proud to announce Life Remodeled’s first two-year commitment to Central High School and the surrounding neighborhood as we take on our largest project to date.”
So why did Lambert and crew decide on Durfee for this year’s project?
“We really chose Durfee the same way we chose every other neighborhood. There’s really two things that we look for; significant need, and radical hope. And when we say ‘significant need, what we’re looking for is neighborhoods that have high levels of crime and high levels of blight. And we’re looking for schools that have academic challenges that can be addressed with a construction/renovation project. When it comes to radical hope, we’re looking for a neighborhood that already has a foundation of sustainability in place or in process,” said Lambert.
What the community surrounding Central High does have “is a very rich history of resilience. And it is geographically located in close proximity to downtown and Midtown. And a tremendous amount of development is coming this way. And so what we want to do is help create more equity and inclusivity in the community so the community will have more power to shape the development that’s coming.”
Hopefully, if all goes according to plan, this is the kind of impact that will result in all future developments as well. Using schools as anchors to rescue communities.
“We haven’t decided what neighborhood we’re going to next, but what we’d like to do is to prove that this model of repurposing vacant schools can be of great benefit to the city and continue to do it in other Detroit neighborhoods.”
It’s an idea that definitely beats shutting them all down.
Our blog post last week introduced the topic of “charter-district collaboration”, and reported on the status of Minneapolis’ District-Charter Collaboration Compact, as well as the Minneapolis Public Schools and Hiawatha Academies Collaboration Agreement.
In a January 2017 report, the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) wrote about the status of collaboration in the 23 cities that have signed a District-Charter Collaboration Compact. CRPE determined that five cities—Boston, Chicago, Denver, Central Falls, and New Orleans—have charter and district schools working together in a robust manner such that “systemic issues of equity for students and access to resources are being addressed.”
Below are summaries of the benefits that the aforementioned cities’ districts and charters have experienced from the Compacts, as well as key takeaways for Minneapolis and other Minnesota cities.
Boston
In September 2011, Boston’s mayor, 16 charter school organizations, and Boston Public Schools (BPS) signed their District-Charter Collaborative Compact, with the Catholic Archdiocese joining later on. According to CRPE, “Boston’s Compact is one of the strongest and most successful collaboration efforts in the country.” Some of the benefits that have resulted from the collaboration are:
School partnerships between district, charter, and Catholic schools in order to identify and share classroom level strategies
Shared use of data to locate and learn from classrooms and schools where students are thriving academically
Nationally recognized, researched based professional development for teachers from all three sectors for English language learners
Coordinated release times across sectors helped BPS save roughly $1 million per year in transportation costs
Two charter organizations (three schools) received leases for vacant buildings
The Compact was renewed in the fall of 2015 with new personnel dedicated to continuing the collaborative work between the three sectors. In September of 2015, Mayor Walsh called upon the Compact to help improve Boston’s enrollment process so that it would be “simple, unified, and equitable for all public schools.”
Additionally, in April 2017, the Boston Compact announced one of their new initiatives, the Boston Educators Collaborative. Through the Collaborative, Boston teachers are able to attend free classes that cover a range of topics from mathematical thinking to the impact of culture in the classroom.
Chicago’s District-Charter Collaborative Compact was signed in November 2011 by Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the Illinois State Board of Education, and the Illinois State Charter School Commission (INCS). Over the course of six years, across three CPS superintendents, and with constant help from INCS, Chicago has accomplished substantial achievements for both district and charter schools. Some of the accomplishments include:
Joint lobbying by both district and charter schools produced increases in funding for all public schools
A cross-sector committee designed the School Quality Rating Policy, which is a common tool that provides parents with comparisons of schools across multiple metrics
District and charter leaders are regularly brought together for professional development, with feedback on the program being very positive
Charter schools saw a rise in facility funds from the district
Denver signed their District-Charter Collaborative Compact in December 2010 and, in 2012, they were awarded $4 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to continue and build on their work. Since then, Denver has had several wins, including:
Implementing a common enrollment system
Creating a unified accountability system
Correcting an inequitable distribution of levy dollars across district and charter schools
Cross-sector professional development specifically targeted to better serve special education students and English Language Learners
Denver also has a District-Charter Collaborative Council that discusses and develops policy recommendations to improve the way that the district and charter schools collaborate and work together.
In August 2011, Central Falls signed their District-Charter Collaborative Compact. The Compact had been largely pushed by Central Falls’ superintendent, Dr. Frances Gallo, and received support from the school board. Early in the Compact the focus was on joint professional development, sharing a reading curriculum and bilingual language knowledge, cross-sector teacher fellowships, combined teacher recruitment, and facilities.
Even though Gallo retired in 2015, Central Falls School District and charter school leaders have continued to collaborate. According to their website, the Compact is collaboratively working on strategies around human capital and STEAM learning strategies, special education, and parent engagement.
While New Orleans’ citywide portfolio model is very different from the educational landscape in Minneapolis and other Minnesota cities, there are still lessons that can be learned from their June 2012 Charter-District Collaboration Compact. For example, the initial Compact agreement helped launch the OneApp common enrollment system and produced an “equity report”, which includes information regarding student achievement, growth, and demographic data for each school in New Orleans. They also developed a new, equitable system for distributing per-pupil funding to schools for their students with special needs.
Additionally, New Orleans’ district and charter leaders collaborated to create a set of universal school discipline standards that were adopted by all of the city’s public schools. Further, all of the city’s public schools implemented the Louisiana Recovery School District’s centralized school expulsion system, which has ensured consistent behavioral expectations across schools and has resulted in a decrease in expulsion rates.
Even though Minneapolis’ District-Charter Collaboration Compact is currently inactive, there is no reason why they, or other Minneapolis cities, cannot take advantage of the benefits that come from charter-district collaborative relationships. Some of the key takeaways from the five cities’ Compacts are that collaboration between the two sectors can result in:
Increased funding for all public schools
Sharing of best practices and professional development, particularly with regard to students who are ELL or have special needs
Unified data, accountability, and enrollment systems
Increased charter access to facilities and facility funding
In their report, CRPE asserted that for a rising number of school districts, “cooperative action between districts and charter schools is a necessity, not a nicety.” With over 21 percent of Minneapolis students, 23 percent of St. Paul students, and 15 percent of Duluth students attending charter schools, it’s time for the two sectors to set aside their differences and develop collaborative relationships for the benefit of students, schools, families, and communities.
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