nothin A Turnaround Timeout Floated | New Haven Independent

A Turnaround Timeout Floated

Melissa Bailey Photo

As the school district released report cards for its 43 schools, the teachers union president called on the superintendent to take a breath” before restructuring any more low-performing schools.

New Haven Federation of Teachers President Dave Cicarella (pictured) made the remarks Monday night at the regular Board of Education meeting, where the school district announced the latest results in an annual effort to grade each school into three tiers and manage them accordingly. In this second year of the new report cards, all schools remained in the same tier, except High School in the Community, which slipped from Tier II to Tier III, the lowest rank.

Click here to read a presentation on the latest report cards. Scroll down to the bottom of the story to view the rankings.

Cicarella said it’s a nervous time” for schools staff, who are awaiting the next step: After all schools are graded, a small batch each year is chosen to become transformation” schools, selected to implement changes based on how they fare. In the past two years, a couple of low-performing schools each year have been tapped as turnaround schools, where principals have the power to implement dramatic changes, including extending the school day and shedding the teaching staff.

The changes are particularly sensitive for teachers at turnaround schools because they have to reapply for their jobs. The principal — or an outside management company, as the case may be — has the power to get rid of existing staff and hire replacements; teachers who don’t make the cut are sent elsewhere in the district.

We’ve gone through an awful lot of change” in the first two years of the citywide reform effort, Cicarella noted.

In those two years, district has created four official turnaround schools. Two—Brennan/Rogers and Wexler/Grant—were kept in-house, run by district staff. Two others — Domus Academy (formerly Urban Youth Middle) and Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy—were handed over to outside management. A fifth school, Hill Central Music Academy, quietly reconstituted its staff when it became a federally sanctioned turnaround in 2010.

Cicarella said teachers did agree to a small number of turnarounds. They did so when they overwhelmingly ratified a new labor contract in 2009 that allowed the district to change the work rules and governance of some low-performing schools.

On Monday, in the second year of the implementation of these changes, Cicarella bid the district to slow down the process.

We have an awful lot going on,” Cicarella said. We need to look at how these turnarounds are doing before adding more turnaround schools.” 

While he complimented the principals leading the reforms, Cicarella said there’s no data yet to show if the turnarounds are working.

In the first year of the turnaround at Brennan/Rogers, third grade reading scores fell from 21.2 to 13.0 percent proficient. The West Rock school was one of just a few schools to show declines across the board in reading. Test scores at Domus Academy were difficult to compare to the previous year, because so few students took the test at Urban Youth Middle. Test scores from the first year of the next two turnarounds — Wexler/Grant and Clemente — won’t come out until July.

The first year’s a little tough” in any turnaround, responded schools Superintendent Reggie Mayo, but I think we have some positives, too.” He noted that the school culture improved significantly at Domus Academy and Brennan/Rogers, which became city’s first two turnaround schools in the 2010-11 academic year.

Brennan didn’t get the results that we wanted” on standardized tests, Mayo said, but it did improve by other measures: It posted the highest parent participation in the district on a school survey, which is considered a key sign of parental engagement.

At turnarounds, you have a lot of new teachers,” Mayo added. It takes a long time to gel.” Brennan/Rogers took a year to improve school culture, and is now projected to do double-digit gains this year,” he predicted.

Cicarella said one year isn’t enough to get meaningful data on whether a turnaround is working.

Because it’s so stressful on the school system,” he said, we’re hoping to see some empirical data over three years” before adding more turnarounds.

Our position is we need to hold off,” Cicarella said. The district needs to take a breath.”

Mayor John DeStefano, who launched the school reform drive and sits on the school board, acknowledged Cicarella’s concerns but called for the district to proceed on its course.

There’s no correlation” between turnarounds and improving test data, he conceded. Your concerns are fair and on target.” He emphasized that the teachers union has been an incredibly important partner” in launching the reforms; the partnership continues to be recognized nationally.

However, DeStefano endorsed moving forward.

I would hope we’re going to have several turnaround schools” this year, DeStefano told Mayo earlier in the meeting.

Mayo replied that he will analyze the data and determine whether it makes sense to reorganize any of the schools.

We may not have several [turnarounds],” he replied, but we’ll do the best we can.”

Heartbreak”

The city’s 43 schools were graded into Tier I, II or III based on absolute performance on scores, growth on tests, and school climate surveys. In high schools, the graduation rate and graduation trajectory” played a factor. too. In determining the tier, Mayo also took into account the population of each school, including the number of special education and transient students — click here and here to learn how the grading works.

Mayo stressed that many schools showed improvement, even though they didn’t move up a tier. (Read highlights of the schools that improved in this document.) The grades are based on scores over the course of three years; Mayo said he’d watch how the schools fared for a couple more years” before placing them in a higher tier.

That news brought disappointment from Kim Daniley (pictured), who teaches at Celentano Museum Academy. Taking the podium in a public comment session of the meeting, Daniley said when the school was ranked in Tier III last year, the stigma prompted some students to leave.

This year her school, despite being the fourth most-improved school in the state according to the education watchdog group ConnCAN, remained in Tier III. She said she is heartbroken” and disappointed” about the school’s status. Meanwhile, the school received no additional resources” for being in Tier III, she protested.

Mayo pledged to address her concern. He said Celentano is one of four schools with a disproportionately high number of special education students, another being Brennan/Rogers. He said has already been in discussions about equity” in how the district treats those schools. As a traditional school, Celentano gets less money than magnet schools, Mayo acknowledged.

We’ll see about spending more attention” on Tier III schools next year, he vowed.

Report Cards

Here are the rankings:

Elementary/Middle Schools:
Tier I:
Betsy Ross Arts
Davis Street
Edgewood
Nathan Hale
Worthington Hooker

Tier II:
Benjamin Jepson
Bishop Woods
Clinton Avenue
Columbus
Conte-West Hills
East Rock
Engineering & Science (ESUMS)
Fair Haven
John C. Daniels
King/Robinson
Lincoln Bassett
Mauro-Sheridan
Ross Woodward

Tier III:
Augusta Lewis Troup
Barnard
Brennan-Rogers
Celentano
Clemente
Domus Academy
Hill Central
John S. Martinez
Beecher
MicroSociety
Truman
Wexler/Grant

High Schools
Tier I:
Sound School

Tier II:
Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School
Hill Regional Career
Hyde Leadership
Metropolitan Business
New Haven Academy
Riverside Academy

Tier III:
High School in the Community
Dixwell New Light
James Hillhouse
New Horizons
Polly T. McCabe
Wilbur Cross

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