You suddenly find yourself with the power to change the Chicago Public Schools. What would you do?
This question was put to about 50 people with the power to make a difference. Three major themes emerge from their answers: The school system must reach out to involve parents, must improve teacher quality and must focus authority and responsibility on individual schools and principals.
Some of those whose comments were invited, including School Board President Frank Gardner, declined to respond for various reasons. What some who did respond had to say, edited and condensed to meet space constraints, appears in alphabetical order:
Michael Bakalis, dean, School of Education, Loyola University of Chicago: Put the needs of children first. They now are secondary to the agendas of the union leadership, school board and political establishment.
Restructure the Chicago public schools bureaucracy, a system void of two essential ingredients-accountability and creativity.
Eliminate the elitism and arrogance that now characterizes the system, one suspicious and fearful of citizen involvement that often assumes the children can`t learn.
Look at the lessons of schools in the system that work and at examples of parochial schools in the city that show substantial success, without the accompanying costly and inefficient bureaucracy.
Recognize that no single reform plan will totally solve Chicago`s school problems, until the support systems of community and family are rebuilt.
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Rather than becoming aloof from school issues, recognize that the political and business leadership must be intimately involved. The city`s economic future is directly related to the viability of the school system.
Rev. Willie Barrow, national executive director, Operation PUSH:
Teachers should develop individual work plans for students. The plans should be written, taking into account the student`s strengths and weaknesses, and should include realistic academic and behavioral goals. Students and teachers would sign off on the plans. Each should monitor student progress weekly.
The classroom student-teacher ratio should be no greater than 20 to 1.
Parent-teacher conferences should be scheduled for mid-semester to discuss student plans and academic progress and parental responsibility for monitoring home-community activities. Parents should be encouraged to take an interest in school through volunteer programs. Parent meetings should include discussion of standardized test scores.
A major community effort should be organized to get parents en masse to pick up report cards each grading period.
Educational curriculums should be flexible enough to accommodate differences in learning styles. Curriculum should expose students to history and cultures of peoples from around the world, through foreign language study and student exchange programs.
State Sen. Arthur Berman, chairman, Senate Elementary and Secondary Education Committee:
Reduce the Board of Education`s central bureaucracy, coupled with a shift of personnel and funds to classrooms.
Negotiate performance-based contracts for principals on the basis of elements of student performance and achievement, parental involvement and safe learning environment.
Provide intensive teacher training, peer support and professional development. Increase the level of parent involvement in a strong advisory role to the school principal. Create a school educational authority to implement and achieve real reform and ensure that reforms are enacted in a predetermined, reasonable time frame.
Permit citywide participation in making nominations to the mayor for school board members.
Increase state funding closely tied to student and staff performance, and a cap on the board`s administrative spending.
Chicago School Supt. Manford Byrd Jr.:
No citizen, be they parent, educator or resident, should be exempt or excluded from the responsibility for the well-being of the school system. There must be a national recommitment to public education, a broader understanding of its role in our democracy and a better appreciation for what it has done for development of our society.
As general superintendent of schools the past three years, I have exercised broad powers to improve the school system. Among these actions were a systemwide administrative reorganization which put more personnel in support of schools; the development and implementation of new comprehensive reading and mathematics programs in elementary schools; the development and implementation of new policies on homework and elementary school promotions;
expanded preschool and kindergarten classes, an expanded summer school program and the restoration of after-school programs.
These and other key initiatives have been undertaken specifically to improve the academic performance of students, to provide them more and better opportunities for success and to address some of the particular needs of our atypical student population.
Gary A. Griffin, dean, College of Education, University of Illinois-Chicago:
A basic assumption about school success is that it is based upon people who have the wit and the will to engage in serious and systematic study and experimentation.
I believe the focus for change should be on the individual school. There must be a mutually reinforcing system of staff development and expectation-raising. Requisite knowledge must be distributed across the faculty, not lodged solely in the mind and heart of the principal.
For the redistribution of school leadership to have impact, teachers with leadership responsibilities must be recognized and rewarded. There must be recognition that teaching is primarily intellectual in nature. The clerical work teachers do must be reassigned.
School-based management, decentralization or whatever label is given the next wave of school reform cannot be brought off without ensuring that the necessary knowledge and skill is in place to make the school a reasonable place for decision-making.
Simply taking the keys from one unsuccessful group and giving them to another without the ability to develop successful schools won`t wash. Current proposals for parent involvement, teacher decision-making, community overseers and the like will continue to be politically attractive and intuitively appealing, but they are destined to be no more effective than business as usual.
Joseph Kellman, president, Globe Glass & Mirror Co.; founder, Better Boys Foundations:
Genuine realistic school reform should come about from a fully paid board of corporate executives.
I`m talking about ”six-figure” executives-top educators and community people, with at least one labor person, working full-time. Salaries of such a corporate component would be supplemented by the corporate community.
This isn`t a job for volunteers. We need experts to turn around a $2 billion corporation on the verge of bankruptcy.
Ada Lopez, member, Chicago Board of Education:
If we are to prepare our students for the year 2000, our curriculum must be re-examined, otherwise reform will only result in an exercise in social architecture. We also must re-examine our educational goals.
Our curriculum must emphasize development of logical and creative thinking, the ability to solve problems and communicate effectively, and development of a sense of civic responsibility.
Objectives related to these goals should be recognized and established as priority. Teaching too many short-term incidental factors, which quickly become irrelevant, should be replaced with more relevant factors, goals and objectives.
Richard M. Morrow, chairman of the board, Amoco Corp.:
Among the most pressing challenges are problems confronting disadvantaged children. These youngsters deserve special attention, particularly in the years before they enter the education process.
Quality preschool programs have been shown to be an effective means of encouraging disadvantaged young people to stay in school. Without early intervention, many will enter school lacking the social and intellectual experiences necessary for learning.
Schools must stress basic reading, writing and arithmetic education and the development of problem solving, communication and teamwork skills. Moreover, they must develop programs that encourage young people to stay in school.
Schools must create a learning environment where values are imparted, where concepts of right and wrong are stressed and where an appreciation for our democratic institutions is presented.
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Patricia O`Hern, member, Chicago Board of Education:
Every citizen must face up to the responsibility that the child belongs to all of us. We must educate every child. We must support the child, including being a volunteer in school or making sure the child is prepared to learn when he gets there.
Responsibility also rests with the State of Illinois, which makes one of lowest contributions to education in the nation. Real estate taxes in Chicago are not comparable to suburban districts. We need to face the reality of real estate taxes. We get what we pay for. We must raise the levy for education in Chicago.
The legislature must permit the system and administration to rid itself of teachers who are not functioning. We need a change in the state law. The current law leans toward the union. I`m not surprised: last year the union spent a half-million dollars in its lobbying efforts in Springfield.
Beyond that, you can`t keep beating the system up. By doing so, you send a very negative message to our young people. We need to be more positive. All of us need to help, to get involved. It`s just not money. We need to change some attitudes.
Eugene Sawyer, mayor of Chicago:
We need an all-out offensive to mobilize the entire Chicago metropolitan community in a ”Don`t Wait, Educate” campaign.
We should require teachers and principals to take a sincerity oath, pledging that ”our youth can learn, our schools will teach.”
We should convene a daylong meeting of the school board, teachers union and interested businesses to agree on a citywide, coordinated offensive to make getting an education fashionable. We should enlist celebrities to reinforce the pro-education message and saturate various media, public meetings and special events with this message.
We should cut at least 10 percent of the non-instructional fat from the central administration and redirect those funds to the classroom. We should wipe away rules that probibit principals from being in charge of their schools. We should do away with marginally competent teachers.
To reinforce overall school management, we should put school superintendents on performance-based contracts, requiring them to achieve specific graduation and achievement test standards. Failure to achieve the goals should be considered a breach of contract and grounds for dismissal.
We should reward good teachers with higher salaries and institute a Chicago ”Academy Awards” program for teachers, which not only would give them recognition but a cash award.
We should require parents, the most important players in school reform, to spend at least three hours a week working with their children on homework. Teachers should do report cards on parental involvement in their children`s school work.
Loren Smith, CEO and chairman, Citicorp Savings of Illinois:
The main problem is one of management. We should borrow a solution from private industry-decentralization.
Put resources where the people are. Let priorities be set by the people who own the problem-the local parents, community, teachers and school principal. They own the problem and manage resources more efficiently.
James Thompson, governor of Illinois:
Chicago public schools can be improved by consistently offering quality education to all students. Selectively, the schools have shown this is possible.
This means sufficient early education programs for the youngest students and alternative education programs at the secondary level.
Another key to improvement is emphasis on prevention programs, so truants and dropouts can have their needs addressed before it`s too late.
The school system must be accountable to the publics it serves. Staff and financial resources must be examined carefully and directed towards improved instruction. The schools must also be adequately funded with local and state resources so programs can be stable over time.
We should not be spending much time and energy on organization issues but focus on identifying the problems-high dropout rates, low student performance, lack of parental involvement, lack of trust by the business sector due to poor skills of graduates, inadequate and unstable funding-and resolving them together.
Jacqueline Vaughn, president, Chicago Teachers Union:
Chicago public schools can be improved through a restructured system that emphasizes a greater role for parents, shared decision-making between teachers, principals and parents on matters related to student performance, selection of textbooks and materials and expenditure of discretionary funds.
They can be improved by a significant reduction in administrative spending, with transfer of those savings to local schools where shared decision-making takes place on how to enhance the educational program to produce improved student achievement.
The present system could be improved by implementing the CTU model of school-based management at the local level and by enhancing the concept of shared decision-making between parents, teachers and principals.
Partnerships should be promoted between representatives of the school community, parents, teachers, principals and business and civic leaders to jointly seek new sources of revenue to finance educational improvements. Such improvements would include smaller class size, acquisition of textbooks and materials and the establishment or expansion of teacher training centers to retrain teachers in new technology and skills.