The following article was selected from the Internet Edition of the Chicago Tribune. To visit the site, point your browser to http://chicagotribune.com/. ----------- Chicago Tribune Article Forwarding---------------- Article forwarded by: Cayata Dixon Return e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Article URL: http://chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/article/0,2669,SAV-0106240346,FF.html ---Forwarded article---------------- How to advance school reform . . . Nothing is more dangerous for an institution, or more exhilarating, than rising expectations among the people it serves. Great expectations are exactly what will greet the new stewards of the Chicago Public Schools when they move their family photos into the 5th-floor offices at 125 S. Clark St. this summer. Among the legacies left by outgoing schools chief Paul Vallas and former board president Gery Chico is something that eluded the system for far too long: hope. Time now for their successors to get beyond hope, a feat that will demand a shift in focus to four key priorities. School success can be measured in many ways. Chicago has done so largely by looking at test scores. Why? Because it is easy. Is it meaningful? Only moderately. Any course correction has to focus more on the total experience of teachers and children inside each classroom. Mayor Richard Daley has picked his longtime loyalist Michael Scott to succeed Chico; he hasn't yet named Vallas' successor. But whoever ushers in the next wave of Chicago school reform should consider this overarching agenda: - Financial stability. When a large urban school system has its financial health, it has . . . the start of everything. Keeping the system's books in order, as Vallas and Chico did, is critical before there's hope of classroom reform. Past school regimes ricocheted from one financial crisis to another, scrambling to plug deficits, pay for contracts or keep individual schools open. With so many crises to respond to, who had time to replace cracked windows, plant a garden outside a school or add a new coat of paint? But even gestures as small as those suddenly get students, neighbors, teachers, lawmakers and creditors thinking differently about their schools, and that kind of buy-in is crucial. This week the school board is expected to approve a budget that boasts $350 million in cash reserves--enough to keep the system stable through 2004. Though $2.6 billion has been spent in recent years constructing and renovating schools, $1.5 billion in needed work remains. Vallas and Chico have spent the last year figuring out a complex but clever way to raise that money; Daley should let Vallas finish the deal before he exits. - Principals. Nothing is more important to a school's morale, curriculum or caliber of teachers than its principal. Yet in Chicago, as across the nation, there aren't enough excellent ones. A handful of joint programs, such as one with Northwestern University, have shown success at cultivating and training administrators. Chicago should expand and mine these programs for every first-rate principal it can find. Local School Councils, whose most important role is to hire principals, need to be involved in this effort, too. They spent most of the spring clamoring for more money and power, though without an agenda for what they wanted to accomplish. Here's one idea: Intensify training for LSC members to better recruit and evaluate principals. - Teachers. Everybody remembers a favorite teacher; good ones change children's lives. And yet once we hire teachers and place them in schools we then abandon them--be they terrific, average or dismal. One index-sized card that comes at the end of the school year constitutes a major portion of the system's professional development program. On it is one lonely check mark that indicates how well that teacher has fared over the past year, from superior to inadequate. Virtually no teachers receive inadequate, though those who deserve that check mark populate plenty of classrooms. And even when they do get low marks, the process of ousting mediocre or downright bad teachers remains far too cumbersome, taking as long as 12 to 18 months. This needs to change. There's good reason nearly a third of teachers leave the system within their first five years. Inadequate pay is a factor, as is the quality of the principal. Another is that Chicago teachers rarely receive opportunities to grow professionally. Educators need better mentoring, development and encouragement to seek national board certification, a rigorous, yearlong process that leads to one of the nation's highest teaching honors. The greatest need is in the high schools, where gains in student achievement during elementary years seem to fade to distant memories. Promotions should depend not on how long a teacher has been employed or what kind of degree she has, but on how well she teaches. Evaluations should have consequences; anything else is a waste of time. Extraordinary work should be rewarded with performance bonuses. The system also needs to become far more determined to attract good teachers. Five years ago, CPS hired 20 percent of its new teachers from Chicago State University, an indication of its too-narrow recruitment efforts. Today CPS has cut that reliance to about 6 percent, while upping the number of teachers hailing from more rigorous Big Ten schools. The union should be a more involved partner in this effort, and the hiring season should more aggressively begin in winter and spring rather than a month before school opens. - Lobbying. Daley has taken an armchair approach toward lobbying for Chicago schools in Springfield and Washington. He doesn't mind complaining about this or that from the comfort of his press conference room, but when it comes to pushing hard for specific school reform bills in Springfield, Daley has been virtually inaudible. When Daley exerts himself, his pet measures--an $800 million expansion for McCormick Place, a $587 million overhaul of Soldier Field--often win fast legislative approval. Imagine the possibilities if Daley lobbied that hard for bargain-basement items such as equitable teacher pensions or better funding for charter schools. For most of the last six years, Daley has presided over progress. Now isn't the time to let a team of political minions preside placidly for the next six over a system that has plateaued. This isn't a go-slow venture. The futures of 435,000 children depend on how well Daley carries their education forward at this critical point. The futures of 435,000 kids depend on how well Daley carries forward their education at this critical point. ---------------------------------------------------- This is the CPS Mathematics Teacher Discussion List. To unsubscribe, send a message to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For more information: <http://home.sprintmail.com/~mikelach/subscribe.html>. To search the archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/science%40lists.csi.cps.k12.il.us/>
