Parents
and Community to blast CPS’ “turnaround model” at AUSL headquarters as school
closings loom
Group to
release proven alternative can save CPS and taxpayers millions while improving
schools and scores
CHICAGO
– On Thursday,
May 16, parents and community members from the schools slated for
‘Turnaround’ by the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) are going to Chicago Academy
High School/Academy of Urban School Leadership (AUSL) Headquarters, 3400 N.
Austin, at 12:45 p.m. to question why the district uses a program that
causes instability for their children and costs millions for taxpayers is
better than a less expensive, research-proven transformation with the teachers
they know and trust.
In
the past month, four CPS Schools slated for “Turnaround” at the estimated cost
of more than $1 million dollars per campus/per year have voted to ask the CPS
to use an alternative model proven to be highly effective, research based, and costing
only one-fifth as much as AUSL, the most frequently used option. The
turnaround strategy that the four schools are asked CPS to approve is called
the CPS-SLI School Transformation Process. It can be used as an
alternative to an approach used in recent years by AUSL in which the entire
faculty and leadership of a school is terminated and a new staff hired.
It costs approximately $1 million to implement the AUSL approach.
“Research
has demonstrated the qualities that schools need to succeed,” said Jesse
Sharkey, vice president of the Chicago Teacher’s Union. “CPS has already
invested in a transformation plan developed by Strategic Learning Initiatives
(SLI) that embraces that research. It is highly effective, already proven
in CPS schools, and can save an enormous amount of money. We urge
CPS to embrace this option. It will be excellent for the children, their
families, their schools and their neighborhoods.”
CPS
itself – with the help of the Chicago non-profit Strategic Learning Initiatives
(SLI) – developed, funded, and demonstrated a viable alternative to the
CPS-AUSL model during an eight-school, four-year demonstration project, over
2006-2010, with high-poverty, low-performing schools. These scores
demonstrated significant turn around and showed sustained improvement.
One
of these schools, Willa Cather Elementary on Chicago’s west side, was
recognized as CPS’s most improved school out of 473 elementary schools based on
ISAT Composite Score. Cather received national attention when the
US House of Representatives held a “Congressional Hearing on Turnaround
Schools” in May, 2010. The Lead Witness featured the results of Cather and
seven other schools that were part of the CPS-SLI Demonstration Project.
Schools
chief executive Barbara Byrd-Bennett recently visited Willa Cather School
Elementary in Garfield Park. She cited Cather as an example of a
high-performing school that had been chosen to become a “welcoming school” for
some of the 51 schools CPS was closing because of excess capacity.
The
six schools facing CPS-AUSL turnaround for next year are Barton, Carter, Dewey
and O’Keeffe on the South Side and Chalmers and Lewis on the West
Side. The faculties at Barton, Carter, Dewey and Lewis have voted
overwhelmingly use the CPS-Strategic Learning Initiatives rather than doing a
AUSL turnaround plan.
Financially,
the CPS-SLI
model costs just one-fifth of the cost of the CPS-AUSL model and has shown as
good or better results. Additionally, this model provides children with
continuity and stability at school by keeping the teachers who are often like
second parents, especially to young children. It also produces creates more
school leaders and is not disruptive for communities, students and
families. It empowers school staffs to improve instruction and to involve
and engage parents. It requires buy-in to the process from the bottom to
the top of the CPS, from the teachers to the CPS leadership. School staff
become empowered to continuously improve their core processes, from classroom
instruction to parent engagement to the leadership provided by the principal
and leadership team.
For
the cost of one CPS-AUSL school, CPS can fund five CPS-SLI schools. That would
be five high-poverty, low-performing schools which could be leading their own
turnaround strategy, and gaining all the related skills, rather than being
fired and their valuable experience lost.
The
annual cost for the CPS-AUSL model is more than $1 million per school. (Designs
for Change,“ Chicago’s Democratically-Led Elementary Schools Far Out Perform
Chicago ‘Turnaround Schools,’” 2012 page 20. (www.designsforchange.org). For Six Turnaround
schools over three years the cost totals $18 million. The CPS-SLI model
is less than $200,000 a year. For six schools over three years the cost totals
$3.6 million (www.cps.org Board Reports,
2006-08). Over three years, the CPS-SLI model would save the CPS and taxpayers
$14.4 million.
###
