The public schools: decline vs. reform vs. change vs. improvement vs. transformation

Why haven't accreditation agencies gotten tougher with urban school systems? See, at the local level, including DC, schools were seen as sources of jobs and contracts and deals, not places of education. Outcomes didn't matter, deals and jobs mattered. This started with the first elected school board in the 1970s.

So the schools declined. Precipitously. But the local government, local populace didn't do much. People who could afford it sent their children to private schools. Or moved out of the city alltogether. In either case, it removed the people likely to advocate for improvement away from oversight of the local school system.

The rest of the people, for the most part, thought things were fine. And the connected people got their contracts. People in their hermetic bubble were content.

Too often, local governments can't muster the political will necessary for transformation (e.g., see the work of the Urban Education Reform study led by Clarence Stone).

That's why you may get state and/or federal involvement, because only with the involvement of a higher level of authority can the logjam be broken.

An Atlanta area school district just lost their accreditation, which is the first time a school district has been deaccredited in recent memory. See "Clayton County schools lose accreditation" from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. From the article:

This is the second time is five years SACS cited Clayton['s School Board] for micromanaging, abuse of power, conflict of interest and other unethical violations.

I wonder if the DC Public Schools is within the jurisdiction of SACS?

Now, instead of dealing with substantive management improvements, regularization of contracting, disconnecting the self-dealing, building a focus on outcomes, the current administration thinks the problem is the teachers. (And probably they are an issue as well.)

Anyway, there are some nice articles in some of the Extra editions of the Washington Post on school successes in other jurisdictions in the region. Why is it that those school systems can succeed without trying to break the Teachers Union? (Which in DC, is another broken institution, just like all the others. cf. _The Future Once Happened Here_.)

-- 'Proficient' Just Doesn't Cut It in Maryland, "Students Pushed To Be 'Advanced'" --
For a school with one of the most economically disadvantaged populations in Montgomery County, Highland Elementary in Silver Spring is remarkably competitive on standardized tests. (Various editions -- because the Post has reduced the news hole in the Extra section -- including Montgomery)

-- Success Story Stokes Hopes For New Year "As Flintstone Makes Gains, Expectations Rise Countywide" (Prince George's County Extra)

Instead of these kinds of articles being distributed within DC, we get editorials favoring Union busting, "More Pay for Good Teachers," and paying students to go to school, "Opening Day in the D.C. Classroom."

And see this piece on education reform by Nat Hentoff in the Village Voice, "Randi Weingarten and the National American Federation of Teachers: No Child Left Unhealed: To work, a public school must be active in students' lives before and after class."