Dr. Fuller, Dr. Lane and I have worked in public education for the last 5 decades. We have dedicated our professional careers to working in urban schools with students of color and poverty. I don't think it is presumptuous to suggest that we are all saddened from an equity perspective by the lack of progress made in the 60 years since the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling. Imagine what a professional educator, who has seriously grappled with Equity and Excellence in public education from the 1950's to 2014, has observed.
The decade of the 1960's included the assassination of two civil rights leaders - Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and the assassination of the president and his brother who was running for president - John F. and Robert Kennedy. Riots, protests, civil rights marches, church bombings, Kent State, the free speech movement at UC Berkeley, a war in Viet Nam, the Moynihan Report.
The decade of the 1970's when states and school districts used forced busing to create integrated schools. This led to school riots with Boston leading the way, court cases, white flight to the suburbs and a changing urban demographic. Crime, poverty, Watergate, rising gas prices, inflation, teachers unions and teachers strikes. 
The decade of the 1980's, with the loss of steel mills and manufacturing jobs, forced a rethinking about the need for all students to graduate high school and attend college. A Nation at Risk, federal defeat of the air traffic controllers union, the breakup of the Soviet Union, AIDS, continued flight to the suburbs, urban decay and the beginning of a new conservative movement led by Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher and the appointment of a conservative supreme court.
The decade beginning in the year 2000 was tumultuous starting with the 9/11 terrorist attack, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, significant economic growth and an even more significant recession in 2008. Income disparity increased, bankruptcies, foreclosures, urban public schools floundering while the choice movement gains momentum, significant achievement gaps based on race and/or poverty.
The Dilemma
Consider....
- America's urban public schools, by any measure, are not succeeding with students of color and poverty. It is 60 years since Brown v. Board of Education and the achievement gap is as large as it ever was.
- Our profession knows what it takes to create a quality school in the inner city - strong leadership, great teachers, high standards, supportive/healthy environment, culture of empowerment, child focused.
- In the year 2014 there are many examples of Schools That Work. Some are district public schools, some are charter schools and some are private/parochial schools.
- The existing public school power brokers - unions, boards, administrators, University Schools of Education - consider charter and private schools as a threat to public education.
- Advocates for students of color and poverty are not willing to sacrifice their children to the needs of the existing power brokers.
Our reaction to these facts is straightforward:
It is morally and ethically unacceptable to settle for anything other than the best education for all of our children. Nothing should get in our way from trying to provide Schools That Work for all of our students.
"Nothing will get in our way" is a provocative concept. This means that access to a quality education for our children is more important than any of the existing institutional players. It does not mean we are anti public education or anti union. It simply means that the priority is to find a quality education for all students. It's 60 years since Brown vs. Board of Education.
Let's see what all this looks like in real terms.
Let's see what all this looks like in real terms.
Dr. Howard Fuller received his B.S. degree in Sociology from Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin, in 1962 and his M.S.A. degree in Social Administration from Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1964. After graduating with his Masters Degree, he became involved in community organizing and the Black Power movement. In 1969, he helped create the Malcolm X Liberation University in North Carolina. The university aimed to educate and prepare students to go to Africa and help those nations with their independence. Although the university closed in 1973, Fuller continued his work in education and activism. In 1986 he received his Ph.D. in Sociological Foundations of Education from Marquette University. Fuller worked for a number of government and non-profit organizations until 1991. He then made a decision that changed the trajectory of his life and education reform in America.
From 1991 - 1995 Dr. Fuller was the Superintendent of the Milwaukee Public Schools. During his tenure, Dr. Fuller implemented a full voucher program into the district. The Milwaukee voucher program provided tuition payments for public school students to attend private, often parochial, schools in Milwaukee. Typical of rust belt cities, Milwaukee was suffering from loss of jobs, loss of the middle class to the suburbs and the loss of the city's tax base. Due to changing demographics, financial restrictions and leadership that was at a loss as to how to succeed in these trying times, the achievement of Milwaukee students plummeted. Fuller decided that providing choice options for poor students in Milwaukee was the best opportunity they had to get a leg up on quality education. As you might imagine Fuller came under attack from the liberal left. Providing tuition vouchers to attend private schools was seen as an attempt to destroy the district, destroy the union, and privatize education.
He was vilified as a "tool of billionaire conservatives." In a recent interview, Fuller defends his actions:
In a recent conversation, he stressed the urgency of reforming our education system. The problem, he says, is “there’s a lot of activity around protecting the status quo.”
In spite of the rhetoric and talk about reform, Howard feels strongly that we don't, at the deepest level, “have a commitment to solve the educational problems in this country for our poorest children, a disproportionate number of whom happen to be children of color.”
Although we talk about our children being important, he explains, “the reality is that the interests of the adults are more important.”
While Fuller is not anti-union, his views differ with the teachers’ unions, specifically regarding how they function and their overall impact on kids.
“I’m not a person that believes that what you need to do in order to make change is to get rid of unions…but I am someone who understands that in order to make significant differences inside traditional districts, you have to do something about the level of power and control that teacher unions have.”
Because of his strong viewpoints about the “status quo” and his movement towards school choice, Fuller has also at times been categorized as being against public education.
He says he does not accept this assumption.
“I believe that one of the things we have to do in this country is create an alternative structure to the existing traditional public school structure. I don't think that’s an issue of being opposed to public education.”Since leaving the school district, Fuller founded the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University which led to his co-founding the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO). He remains an advocate for school choice via charters, tuition vouchers, magnets or any means to help provide options to families that are poor and limited in educational options.
In 2011, Dr. Linda Lane was appointed as the first female African-American Superintendent of the Pittsburgh Public Schools. This was the culmination of a career over four decades as an elementary schoolteacher, executive director of human resources, chief operating officer and deputy superintendent in Des Moines, Iowa. Dr. Lane is a 2003 graduate of the Broad Superintendents Academy.
Dr. Lane came to Pittsburgh in 2007 as the Deputy Superintendent under Mark Roosevelt. When Roosevelt left the District in 2011, she was chosen as the District's Superintendent. Dr. Lane began her tenure as a Superintendent during a particularly difficult time in Pittsburgh public education. The District was losing students to the suburbs and charter schools, financial revenues were down and downsizing would cause the closing of schools and teacher layoffs. As I have articulated in previous blog posts, the rust belt saga occurring in Pittsburgh and most urban centers in the Northeast was wreaking havoc on the city schools.
At the same time, Dr. Lane was charged with implementing three major grants recently awarded to the district to fund the Empowering Effective Teachers (EET) program. EET was focused on improving the quality of teaching and learning.
The Pittsburgh Public Schools received a $40 million grant over 6.5 years from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and $37.4 million over five years from the federal Teacher Incentive Fund. The district also won a three-year $14 million federal School Improvement Grant. Thus the Pittsburgh Public Schools had over $90 million to improve teaching. What made the Pittsburgh Public Schools an interesting prospect for these organizations to invest in was an agreement between the District and the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers to work closely on developing a quality evaluation and teacher support system.
At the same time, Dr. Lane was charged with implementing three major grants recently awarded to the district to fund the Empowering Effective Teachers (EET) program. EET was focused on improving the quality of teaching and learning.
The Pittsburgh Public Schools received a $40 million grant over 6.5 years from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and $37.4 million over five years from the federal Teacher Incentive Fund. The district also won a three-year $14 million federal School Improvement Grant. Thus the Pittsburgh Public Schools had over $90 million to improve teaching. What made the Pittsburgh Public Schools an interesting prospect for these organizations to invest in was an agreement between the District and the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers to work closely on developing a quality evaluation and teacher support system.
RISE (Research-based Inclusive System of Evaluation) was co-developed by the District and the union. RISE is a multimodal methodology for evaluating teacher effectiveness that includes Classroom Observations, Value Added test results and student surveys. In addition, the district and the PFT agreed to a new five year contract that included the evaluation and compensation proposals that came out of the Empowering Effective Teachers project. This included New Career Ladder Positions, a volunteer pilot performance pay plan and language pertaining to using the RISE system of evaluation. There were raises in pay, no increase in health care costs and no mandatory performance plan for teachers on the traditional salary schedule. In essence, the union agreed to participate in the development of RISE and the implementation of pilot programs in exchange for raises, financial incentives for the pilot programs and maintenance of all aspects of the health care program.
As you can imagine, Dr. Lane was walking a fine line to get the district, the union, the funders and the state to embark on this new initiative. The goal was an admirable one - quality teachers for all students. The project was moving along relatively smoothly until 2012. The budget for the 2012-13 school year called for the closing of a large number of schools and the need to layoff 400 teachers. This would be the largest layoff in the history of the school district. According to the PFT/PPS Collective Bargaining Agreement, layoffs should occur based on system seniority - otherwise known as "last in... first out".
Due to the grants and work on creating quality teachers, pressure was brought on the District to layoff not based on seniority, but based on teacher effectiveness. The district was in the midst of a $90 million project to create effective teachers, thus, it was suggested they use RISE to layoff the least effective teachers. A groundswell of support for layoff by effectiveness began. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published an editorial supporting this notion. Members of Pittsburgh's foundation community wrote an editorial supporting this notion. The district's Board of Directors agreed and tasked Dr. Lane to negotiate with the union to get their support. Dr. Lane took the proposal to the union and their response was an unequivocal NO. The union stated that Pennsylvania law said seniority must be the methodology for handling layoffs. This is true, although the law also states the district and union can change this locally if they agree to a new methodology. A+ Schools, a parent focused education policy group, entered the discussion and stated:
Due to the grants and work on creating quality teachers, pressure was brought on the District to layoff not based on seniority, but based on teacher effectiveness. The district was in the midst of a $90 million project to create effective teachers, thus, it was suggested they use RISE to layoff the least effective teachers. A groundswell of support for layoff by effectiveness began. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published an editorial supporting this notion. Members of Pittsburgh's foundation community wrote an editorial supporting this notion. The district's Board of Directors agreed and tasked Dr. Lane to negotiate with the union to get their support. Dr. Lane took the proposal to the union and their response was an unequivocal NO. The union stated that Pennsylvania law said seniority must be the methodology for handling layoffs. This is true, although the law also states the district and union can change this locally if they agree to a new methodology. A+ Schools, a parent focused education policy group, entered the discussion and stated:
A+ Schools asks for courageous leadership from the union and district. We believe they can work together now — as they have done successfully in the past — to find a way to make layoff decisions that uphold the importance of seniority while also keeping our teachers who help their students learn the most, regardless of how long they have taught in the district.
In the end, 285 teachers were laid off (the other 115 lost jobs were handled through attrition, and retirements). Those laid off were the youngest and least experienced of the teaching staff. Many of them had been recruited out of college or from other teaching jobs to become teacher leaders in Pittsburgh.
Dr. Lane knows the history of urban education post Brown vs. Board of Education intimately. She also knows what a School That Works looks like. She chose to put her professional efforts into the traditional public school education model. The Broad Superintendents Academy trained her regarding the complexity of politics, finances and stakeholders in urban public schools. When the time came for Dr. Lane to grapple with the layoffs, she sided with the belief that laying the least effective teachers off first would benefit students the most. This brought great criticism from traditional public school educators, unions and the liberal left. She grappled with the question of whether it is possible to be a public school advocate, a collaborator with the teachers union and do what's right for our children. Unfortunately it appears that these concepts are often at odds with one another.
Dr. Lane continues to work on creating Schools That Work within the District. It is an ongoing fight. The case study on seniority and layoffs suggests that the statement "Nothing should get in our way from trying to provide Schools That Work for all of our students" is not necessarily true when you are working with legacy systems in a model created many years ago under very different circumstances.
Dr. Lane knows the history of urban education post Brown vs. Board of Education intimately. She also knows what a School That Works looks like. She chose to put her professional efforts into the traditional public school education model. The Broad Superintendents Academy trained her regarding the complexity of politics, finances and stakeholders in urban public schools. When the time came for Dr. Lane to grapple with the layoffs, she sided with the belief that laying the least effective teachers off first would benefit students the most. This brought great criticism from traditional public school educators, unions and the liberal left. She grappled with the question of whether it is possible to be a public school advocate, a collaborator with the teachers union and do what's right for our children. Unfortunately it appears that these concepts are often at odds with one another.
Dr. Lane continues to work on creating Schools That Work within the District. It is an ongoing fight. The case study on seniority and layoffs suggests that the statement "Nothing should get in our way from trying to provide Schools That Work for all of our students" is not necessarily true when you are working with legacy systems in a model created many years ago under very different circumstances.
Let me make clear from the start that I am not in the league of Dr. Howard Fuller or Dr. Linda Lane. I hold them both in high regard... Dr. Fuller for breaking away and standing by our children even though he took a beating from his colleagues, the left and even the African American community... and Dr. Lane for remaining committed to the traditional public education model, yet working hard to get it to evolve to a District of Schools That Work. She too has taken a beating from the public, the union and the parents. I am including myself in this post because I have 37 years in urban public education in Pittsburgh and like everyone else, have a story to tell. I worked for 23 years in the Pittsburgh Public Schools as a mathematics teacher, supervisor and Coordinator of Instructional Technology. I taught at Brashear and Peabody HS. I supervised the 105 mathematics teachers at the 14 high schools (prior to the district downsizing). And I worked with all 93 schools (at the time) implementing instructional technology.
In 2001, we developed a very successful Microsoft program at Peabody High School. We were certifying students in Microsoft Office. We were having our greatest success with our most at-risk students. In an attempt to scale the program up I ran up against a high school principal and Director of Vocational Education, both of whom refused the program inspite of its success. After 23 years of fighting with the system to improve education, particularly at the tough schools, the schools with over 65% poverty, the segregated schools, I had enough. I believed we could create a High School That Worked. And the newly passed charter school law gave us a means to this end.
A colleague and I approached a local foundation who gave us a planning grant to take a year and plan a model 21st century charter high school from scratch. Once we had a model that was fleshed out, we approached the Pittsburgh Public Schools Superintendent, the Asst. Superintendent, the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers and the leadership at Peabody High School. We asked them all to work with us to open this model school from within the district. They all said no.
So we opened City Charter High School in 2002. In 2014, there are 650 students attending City High, 65% from poverty, 59% students of color and 84% from the city of Pittsburgh. The graduation rate is over 96% with over 91% of our graduates going to a two (27%) or four (64%) year college. Of those that go to a four year college, 75% graduate in six years with a bachelors degree (as compared to the US average of 56%). City High is a School That Works. In 13 years of operation, the school has provided a quality education option for over 2000 students. I know it sounds pompous, but I believe the school saves lives.
When I left the Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) to start a charter school it was the worst and best day of my life. Both my daughters attended PPS for elementary and middle school. My eldest went to a PPS high school and my youngest went to City Charter High School. I love the Pittsburgh Public Schools. But they weren't moving forward. They were putting obstacles in the way of progress... and our poorer students and African-American students were failing in huge numbers. I had to leave. It was a miserable day when I finally decided the district could not cure itself. A lot of my friends and colleagues felt I was going to the dark side and forsaking public education. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Dr. Fuller, Dr. Lane and I are all teachers, administrators and supporters of quality education. We simply want all children to have opportunity and success. None of the people on the panel argue for school choice out of an abstract belief in free-market philosophy. None have joined some right wing conservative party or are educational laissez faire capitalists. Frankly, and I don't speak for the three of us, I'm guessing we are all pretty upset with both political parties.
Our individual decisions to either break away and start a new model or stay within and negotiate to move the district beyond the status quo is based on educational pragmatism. Government initiatives, school reforms, financial incentives (grants) and Supreme Court rulings have failed over the years despite good intentions and civic enthusiasm. Magnet schools, charter schools and vouchers are methods for students to have educational options. We are trying to provide quality education opportunities for families who can't afford to move or pay tuition and are forced to attend an underachieving local school. Read this statement again.
It is morally and ethically unacceptable to settle for anything other than the best education for all of our children. Nothing should get in our way from trying to provide Schools That Work for all of our students.
I ask you this. Consider your children, or your nephews and nieces, or your neighbors kids or your grandchildren or your siblings. Is it too much to ask that they attend a School That Works? Is it too much to ask for America to provide opportunities to all of its citizens no matter what their financial means, no matter what their race, no matter what?
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