[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.The schools are also different in that they expect parents to signcontracts agreeing to volunteer time and supervise their kids.Everyonewears uniforms.None of the schools has more than five hundred kids.But they do have unions, and they don’t get in the way.To help him continue changing the world, Steve brought in Bainand Co., the consulting firm, to figure out what was working in theGreen Dot schools, and how you would take that information and applyit to transform a big, failing pubic high school.Transformation is a termof art.It means you literally come in and transform a low-performingbig public high school into a cluster of separate, smaller schools.They came up with a plan, which is available for you to downloadand use at the Green Dot website, www.greendotpublicschools.org.Here’s the challenge: What you do first is target your high school.Steve, the organization, and the board (full disclosure: I’m on theboard, and proud to be) picked the worst-performing high school in LosAngeles.Now, I don’t want to be nasty, but that’s quite an honor: theworst-performing high school in a very, very challenged school system.The high school we picked, Jefferson High, in an area formerlyknown as South Central, was, to put it nicely, an unmitigated disaster.Public Schools: The Next Battleground173Adding to the challenge, neither the administration nor the unionwelcomed the arrival of the upstart charter school organization, whichhad decided it could do better.Not even a little did they welcome us.They told Steve to get lost.So Steve organized the parents around them to demand change.Heorganized parents who had never been organized before to believe theyhad a right to a better education for their kids.Here was this guy, ready, willing, and able to open new schoolswhere everyone would wear uniforms and be expected to go to college,and the administration and the unions were blocking it.He had parents sign petitions, and more than a thousand turnedout to deliver them in person to the superintendent.He went to theboard of education.Casey Wasserman of the Wasserman Family Foun-dation, a young philanthropist, in his first major donation decisionsince his grandfather’s death, stepped up to the plate to give Green Dota grant to finance the schools that the board didn’t really want.And thefight went on throughout the spring of 2006.Ultimately, the superintendent had to give in.And now Green Dotis opening five new schools, each of which will begin with a ninth gradeclass, in fall 2006, in the vicinity of the Jefferson campus.Much to the administration’s chagrin, but for understandable rea-sons, some of the most talented and creative teachers at Jefferson—andof course Ann is wrong about this, there are always creative and tal-ented people trying—have seized on the opportunity to work in thenew schools in an atmosphere in which they will be rewarded for theirtalents and encouraged to innovate and develop professionally.As if that weren’t enough, here’s another idea to steal.Right nowSteve Barr is in the middle of organizing a parents union in Los Ange-les whose agenda is to transform the Los Angeles schools as a whole.Aparents’ union? Steve set up this Los Angeles Parents Union to give par-ents a seat at the political table and push for reform.Steal that idea: a parents union.174SoullessYou’re asking, What can a parents union do?Organize parents to transform local schools into small autonomousschools.When I say transform, I mean it.Why not?Everything Green Dot does is built around six basic principles—the Six Tenets, as Green Dot calls them—and you’ll see why.They’rethe building blocks.Here they are:1.Small, Safe Schools: Schools should be small—500 to 525 stu-dents (when was the last time you saw a private school any larger thanthat?)—to ensure that students don’t fall through the cracks and toallow students to receive the personalized attention they need to learneffectively.Students are held accountable for all of their actions andteachers and administrators can develop personal relationships witheach student and his/her family.Smaller schools are safer and decreasethe security risks inherent in urban schools, since problems can be rec-ognized and mitigated earlier.In addition, it is easier to implement theother five tenets in smaller schools.Classes should be kept as small as fi-nancially possible.As part of a school transformation, small schools willoperate in clusters that share services and facilities, such as athleticfields and gymnasia, which will allow for a greater variety of extracur-ricular activities.More important, the clusters of small schools will beable to leverage specialized services, specifically special education andEnglish language learner programs, to meet the needs of students moreeffectively.2.High Expectations for All Students: All stakeholders must have anunwavering belief in the potential of every student and an understand-ing that every student will succeed with the proper support.Every stu-dent will take a rigorous curriculum that ensures that all students whograduate high school will at least have the option to attend college ifthey choose.Extensive student intervention and support programsPublic Schools: The Next Battleground175must be offered before school, after school, and during the school day,in order to help students master a rigorous curriculum.3.Local Control: Principals and teachers should be the key deci-sion makers at the school site and need to be empowered to make alldecisions related to budgeting, hiring, and curriculum.Recommenda-tions and best practices should be provided by the central district, butthe ultimate decision-making power and autonomy need to rest at theschool site [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.The schools are also different in that they expect parents to signcontracts agreeing to volunteer time and supervise their kids.Everyonewears uniforms.None of the schools has more than five hundred kids.But they do have unions, and they don’t get in the way.To help him continue changing the world, Steve brought in Bainand Co., the consulting firm, to figure out what was working in theGreen Dot schools, and how you would take that information and applyit to transform a big, failing pubic high school.Transformation is a termof art.It means you literally come in and transform a low-performingbig public high school into a cluster of separate, smaller schools.They came up with a plan, which is available for you to downloadand use at the Green Dot website, www.greendotpublicschools.org.Here’s the challenge: What you do first is target your high school.Steve, the organization, and the board (full disclosure: I’m on theboard, and proud to be) picked the worst-performing high school in LosAngeles.Now, I don’t want to be nasty, but that’s quite an honor: theworst-performing high school in a very, very challenged school system.The high school we picked, Jefferson High, in an area formerlyknown as South Central, was, to put it nicely, an unmitigated disaster.Public Schools: The Next Battleground173Adding to the challenge, neither the administration nor the unionwelcomed the arrival of the upstart charter school organization, whichhad decided it could do better.Not even a little did they welcome us.They told Steve to get lost.So Steve organized the parents around them to demand change.Heorganized parents who had never been organized before to believe theyhad a right to a better education for their kids.Here was this guy, ready, willing, and able to open new schoolswhere everyone would wear uniforms and be expected to go to college,and the administration and the unions were blocking it.He had parents sign petitions, and more than a thousand turnedout to deliver them in person to the superintendent.He went to theboard of education.Casey Wasserman of the Wasserman Family Foun-dation, a young philanthropist, in his first major donation decisionsince his grandfather’s death, stepped up to the plate to give Green Dota grant to finance the schools that the board didn’t really want.And thefight went on throughout the spring of 2006.Ultimately, the superintendent had to give in.And now Green Dotis opening five new schools, each of which will begin with a ninth gradeclass, in fall 2006, in the vicinity of the Jefferson campus.Much to the administration’s chagrin, but for understandable rea-sons, some of the most talented and creative teachers at Jefferson—andof course Ann is wrong about this, there are always creative and tal-ented people trying—have seized on the opportunity to work in thenew schools in an atmosphere in which they will be rewarded for theirtalents and encouraged to innovate and develop professionally.As if that weren’t enough, here’s another idea to steal.Right nowSteve Barr is in the middle of organizing a parents union in Los Ange-les whose agenda is to transform the Los Angeles schools as a whole.Aparents’ union? Steve set up this Los Angeles Parents Union to give par-ents a seat at the political table and push for reform.Steal that idea: a parents union.174SoullessYou’re asking, What can a parents union do?Organize parents to transform local schools into small autonomousschools.When I say transform, I mean it.Why not?Everything Green Dot does is built around six basic principles—the Six Tenets, as Green Dot calls them—and you’ll see why.They’rethe building blocks.Here they are:1.Small, Safe Schools: Schools should be small—500 to 525 stu-dents (when was the last time you saw a private school any larger thanthat?)—to ensure that students don’t fall through the cracks and toallow students to receive the personalized attention they need to learneffectively.Students are held accountable for all of their actions andteachers and administrators can develop personal relationships witheach student and his/her family.Smaller schools are safer and decreasethe security risks inherent in urban schools, since problems can be rec-ognized and mitigated earlier.In addition, it is easier to implement theother five tenets in smaller schools.Classes should be kept as small as fi-nancially possible.As part of a school transformation, small schools willoperate in clusters that share services and facilities, such as athleticfields and gymnasia, which will allow for a greater variety of extracur-ricular activities.More important, the clusters of small schools will beable to leverage specialized services, specifically special education andEnglish language learner programs, to meet the needs of students moreeffectively.2.High Expectations for All Students: All stakeholders must have anunwavering belief in the potential of every student and an understand-ing that every student will succeed with the proper support.Every stu-dent will take a rigorous curriculum that ensures that all students whograduate high school will at least have the option to attend college ifthey choose.Extensive student intervention and support programsPublic Schools: The Next Battleground175must be offered before school, after school, and during the school day,in order to help students master a rigorous curriculum.3.Local Control: Principals and teachers should be the key deci-sion makers at the school site and need to be empowered to make alldecisions related to budgeting, hiring, and curriculum.Recommenda-tions and best practices should be provided by the central district, butthe ultimate decision-making power and autonomy need to rest at theschool site [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]