Bad Schools

How Do We Fix Them?

child ready for school
Ready for School

Will four billion dollars fix our bad schools? That's how much the Obama Administration is willing to invest to turn around the nations five thousand worst schools.

It's called an extreme makeover for bad schools, or turnaround schools. The idea is to fire the teachers and principals, turn the schools into charters, lengthen the day and the year, or shut the schools down completely. Whatever it takes for a fast turn around in our education system. Whatever it takes to increase test scores, decrease dropout rates and improve classroom culture, fast. Is this a high risk approach and is it possible?

Another name is Rapid Transformation and whether or not is really works is any ones guess. We are, however, investing billions of dollars to find out.

Advocates of this approach say the early results are encouraging. Mastery Charter Schools is one example of how schools can be changed by keeping the kids and changing the adults. Mastery has taken over three schools for the School District of Philadelphia since 2006. With new teachers and administrators these schools have all been successful turnarounds.

The test scores at these schools have increased by double digits. Part of that success is due to the "no excuses" philosophy where discipline is stressed as much as academics. In a way, they pulled the rug out from under the students. What were once food fights and brawls are now uniforms and silent halls.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has been behind this philosophy for many years, since the days when he shut down 38 schools in the Chicago area. At the time kids were sent to different schools and many of them wound up in schools with rival neighborhoods. In many cases the result was violence. Duncan revised his stance and switched to keeping the kids in their local schools but replacing teachers and staff.

This seems to be the direction intended for the billions of tax dollars we are willing to spend. It's an idea brought on by big business. To "turnaround" a company you replace the leadership of the company and reorganize from there. The same is being said about schools, the kids are not bad, the parents and the communities are not bad, but the schools are simply poorly run.

It's obvious our schools need improving, and money is being offered to do just that. So do you have ideas on the best way to do this. As a parent or a teacher, or even a student, what would you do. Another alternative being used is better incentive pay to teachers based on the performance of the students. This approach also has it's pros and cons. How would you spend the money in hopes of improving the productivity of our schools and eliminating bad schools?