September 2004

Featured stories from this issue:

Cover Story: A new breed of teachers

CPS alternative certification programs

Teach for America on hotseat

Experience helps career-changers reach Manley students

No consensus on pros, cons

WebExtra: Q&A with Schools CEO Arne Duncan

From the Editor

Notebook

Up Close

Research

Viewpoints

Updates

Grants

Comings and goings

Eye on Education

En Español

WebExtra
Q&A with Arne Duncan

In August, Schools CEO Arne Duncan was a guest on ‘City Voices,’ a public affairs radio show that airs on WNUA/95.5 FM. Duncan talked with Consulting Editor Lorraine Forte about test scores in Chicago Public Schools as well as the controversial Renaissance 2010 plan for shutting down dozens of failing schools and reopening them as charter, contract and small schools.

Test scores are up. Were you surprised?

I wasn’t. Despite the inequitable funding, all the obstacles we face, we are closing the achievement gap with the rest of the state.

Doesn’t that show that with the right leadership, schools can improve? So why take on a major undertaking [that involves] closing schools and changing the structure? Why not focus on leadership and teacher development and keeping parents involved?

I actually don’t see them in conflict at all. At certain schools, the best thing we can do is start over, have a symbolic break from the past, bring in great leadership, great teachers, involve the community in shaping the new schools.

But some of the schools that are being shut down actually are doing pretty well.

Schools that are improving, we want to support. However, schools that are flat-lining or getting worse or are under-capacity, we have to take a very close look at.

But again, with the school that is doing well but is below capacity, why shut them down? Why not turn them into a magnet school so they can bring in kids from surrounding areas?

That’s part of the strategy we’re looking at.

You’ve gotten a lot of criticism, part of it over shutting down schools in the Mid-South community. A formal announcement about that was delayed. When do you plan to announce a final plan?

I don’t think there will ever be a final plan. Each year we’re going to evaluate schools. We have an opportunity now with five or six schools closed to create some new schools, many of which we would like to have open in the fall of ’05. So we’re going to take a year to plan and work very closely with the community. Our transition advisory councils, community leaders and parents have helped to shape these schools and my vision of what they can become. There are broad plans or themes that are important: early childhood education, keeping schools open long hours, better articulation between high schools and elementary schools and even into college.

Going back to your first question, we announced three of the five magnet schools as part of a $9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education. We’re going to look very closely over the next year at where the last two magnet schools will be.

Most of the new schools won’t be required to have LSCs. We’ve heard they’ll have advisory boards and committees, but schools aren’t required to take their recommendations. Do you still consider that to be meaningful parent and community input?

LSCs have played a critical role in seeing our schools improve and will continue to do that. Every good charter school that’s successful has, on its governing board, parents and community members and teachers and all the same constituents that make up the LSCs. No good school can be successful without that. If they don’t involve parents, if they don’t involve community, what happens? Students will stop attending and those schools will go out of business.

We have heard that there may be a template created for contract schools. What will that look like? Will there be specific criteria for what businesses have to do to be sponsors?

We’re going to have a very rigorous request-for-proposal review process. This past year we probably had 25 or 26 very good applicants to run charter schools. We approved only three. All new schools will have five-year performance contracts that will be reviewed annually.

Talk specifically about criteria that partner institutions have to meet.

We’re going to look at curriculum, educational vision, background, experience, governance, community involvement, after-school and enrichment programs. Only those [proposals] that we think can make a dramatic difference in student’s lives will we choose as a partner.

Where are you planning to recruit principals?

There are different pools of great talent. One is assistant principals. We haven’t trained assistant principals as much or as well as we should have. We also have reading specialists making a difference in schools that have historically struggled, who are going to be great instructional leaders, which has got to be the heart of what principals do. We have 25,000 teachers, some of whom might want to be principals. I worry much less about the numbers and more about great quality training.

How will you train them?

Catalyst: Independent coverage of Chicago school reform since 1989.