Schools - Washington Post - Boston's Success Could Be Lesson for [other] Schools

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Boston's Success Could Be Lesson for D.C. Schools
Facing Similar Challenges a Decade Ago, Leader Persevered to Reverse Course

By Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 9, 2006; A01

BOSTON -- The sprawling old urban high school in a diverse middle-class neighborhood is so clean and quiet, it has the feel of an empty summer day. Eleventh-graders in one class work silently on algebra as a teacher roams, whispering pointers to individuals. Outside, the yellow brick halls are graffiti-free. And for the first time in a decade, the bathrooms are unlocked all day. In fact, the only remaining indicator of the Hyde Park school's urban existence is a metal detector at the front door.

This is the gleaming new face of the Boston public school system. Once so overwrought with racial conflict that it was deemed broken beyond repair, it is now held up as a model of urban school reform.

In the past 10 years, the Boston schools, led by the same superintendent, have seen a steady upward trajectory of performance. State and national tests show that while reading gains have been slower, mirroring national trends, math performance has been extraordinary. Seventy percent of 10th-graders passed math last year, compared with 25 percent in 1998. During the same time period, proficiency in language arts among fourth-graders went from 4 percent to 25 percent. Eighth-grade math performance has gone from 11 percent proficient in 1998 to 17 percent proficient today.

And 76 percent of the Class of 2004 -- the most recent tally -- pursued postsecondary education or training, up seven percentage points from the Class of 2000.

Officials in Boston have achieved these gains with a school district that is remarkably similar to that of Washington, D.C., in terms of minority demographics, poverty levels and overall budget. Few would dispute, however, that today the two districts are a universe apart in quality of instruction, leadership stability and achievement.

As urban schools nationally demonstrate growth in both state-mandated student assessments and administrative operations, Washington has consistently hovered at the bottom of the pack, showing some modest gains only last year, and has yet to turn the corner on stability. Whereas Boston's chief school officer, Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant, has been in place for a decade, Washington's superintendent, Clifford B. Janey, came to the job 18 months ago and is the fifth person to run the District's schools in 10 years.

Payzant walked into a similar and troubled situation in 1995. Court-ordered busing in the mid-1970s, and the sometimes violent resistance to it, had turned a decent operation into one of the most chaotic in the nation. There was no coherent curriculum, and there were no published standards for students or teachers. Financial and personnel accounting were archaic. And there were disproportionate funding allocations for special-needs kids. Superintendents turned over regularly after wrestling with a contentious and divisive school board.

Shortly before Payzant arrived, the city voted to shift from a fractious elected board of education to a board appointed by Mayor Thomas M. Menino -- a factor many say has been key to the superintendent's success. Another was that he toughed it out.

"There is routinely a lot of turnover in urban school districts. From the perspective of the teachers, each year brings a new set of goals, new programs, a new set of expectations. . . . And they haven't even begun to understand last year's plan," said Payzant, 65, who is widely credited with the turnaround and who is retiring in June. "From Day One here, you have to have a consistent plan and everyone on the same page."

Through partnerships with the city government, local universities and outside funders, the system has plowed money into developing standards, training teachers and principals, and splitting mega-high schools into learning boutiques.

Janey said in a interview that, like other urban administrators, he has looked to Boston (where he once worked) for "constructive guidance" as he struggles to bolster Washington's abysmal record. He has adapted Boston's standards in reading, language arts and math for the District and he has switched Washington to the Massachusetts assessment model, a new testing system that was administered for the first time last month.

Still, potential benefactors and educators are watching nervously, many privately fretting that although he is on the right track, Janey is moving too slowly. Some fault him for not immediately embracing outside financial contributors and foundations interested in providing the kind of extra money that was critical for Boston's progress.

"The jury is still out," cautioned Michael D. Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a D.C.-based nonprofit that advocates for urban schools. "The 2006 results . . . will give him a better baseline. At that point, it will be clear what the standards are, what the assessment looks like and what the results are. Then the system needs to put the hammer down."

Janey's job, most agree, is made that much harder by the District's cumbersome bureaucracy. Some cities have come to appreciate the advantages of mayor-controlled districts to enact change quickly and avoid the public politicking that can paralyze elected school boards.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa has been aggressively pushing a plan that would replace the elected school board with mayoral control of the troubled system. And in New York City -- another district on the vanguard of reform -- Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in 2002 prevailed in his effort to take over the schools and centralize power. One month later, he appointed a chancellor who reports to him and the mayor-appointed board. "Mayoral control is critical to school reform," said New York City's schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, who added that in New York an elected school board led to "dysfunction."

"You have to take the politics out of education," said Boston's Menino.

Janey, in contrast, finds himself accountable to wide array of elected officials -- the mayor; the City Council; the half-elected, half-appointed school board; and Congress -- guaranteeing that he can never make an expeditious decision without some political overlay. "A lot of people think of themselves in control, and a lot of people want to be. So you have wannabes and you have the people who legislatively have some piece of oversight. And that oversight can be quite overbearing in terms of the work," Janey said.

For Payzant, a career superintendent and a veteran of President Bill Clinton's Education Department, the trick was developing a tactful mix of community outreach and top-down governance. After countless community meetings when he first arrived, some decisions had to be made at the top, he said, "because there was an urgency to get it done." He offered a plan within eight months of his arrival -- speedy by most standards.

At the same time, he moved quickly to refocus and expand the grant pool to meet the system's agenda, raising nearly $100 million over the past decade from enthusiastic foundations -- such as Annenberg, Gates and Carnegie -- as well as from private donors.

He was blunt with benefactors. "I need to have your help in targeting your resources on our major initiatives that are designed to get improvement across the board," he told them.

One of the most critical uses for external money was for bringing up teacher standards. "At the heart of reform, you have to have a clear understanding of what the kids are supposed to know and good professional development to bring teachers in alignment with the plan," said Ellen Guiney, executive director of the Boston Plan for Excellence, a local education foundation that played a significant role in shaping the changes.

Payzant was able to remove school principals from collective bargaining his first year on the job, which gave him the ability to fire poor performers. Although the teachers union has resisted certain changes, Payzant has been able to negotiate some discretion in hiring teachers at low-performing schools.

A "teacher residency" program was established to offer applicants another path to certification. Today, teachers work with professional "coaches" in schools, some of whom are volunteers from local colleges, and must attend summer orientation. Three years ago, Payzant also started a "principals institute" to home-grow administrators.

"I do not know of any school district that has as comprehensive a professional development and support system," said Irwin Blumer, a professor at Boston College, which supports the system with academic expertise and hands-on work with school administrators.

With Gates Foundation grants, Boston has divided four large high schools into 13 smaller schools. Hyde Park, once an underperforming high school, was this year broken into three thematic schools decided with community input: engineering, social justice, and science and health. "The staff is more engaged, and I'm more engaged," said Linda Cabral, who was the headmaster of the larger school and now leads the smaller Community Academy of Science and Health, which resides on the top floor. "Students are less likely to slip through the cracks."

Boston administrators know they still have a ways to go as they look to hire a new superintendent. Reading proficiency must be raised, the achievement gap closed, the quality of schools evened out, and -- critically important for progress -- parents must be brought into the process. But the difference between then and now: The search committee is flooded with good applicants who see Boston's promise.

"We are looking for someone who understands the foundation that is in place and the challenges we have," said the school board chairman, Elizabeth Reilinger.

Staff writer V. Dion Haynes and research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report from Washington.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/08/AR2006050801398_pf.html


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