A SMART START STRATEGY FOR SCHOOL REFORM

No democratic responsibility is more sacred than the care of the young. The nurturing, protection and education of our youth has been advocated by every serious American thinker from Thomas Jefferson to Frederick Douglas to Horace Mann to W.E.B. Dubois to John Dewey to Mary McLeod Bethune to John Gardner to James Nabrit. All who fought in the civil rights movement agreed that better education for all American children was the key to a far better American future. When I sought the chairmanship of the DC City Council Education Committee, I did so because I knew that in our city we had betrayed the best hopes of those who had struggled for that American future. My visits to schools and growing understanding of the realities of public education led me to one stark conclusion: That our current system is not just dysfunctional, it is utterly broken. Yes, many parts excel. Many of its teachers and professionals are deeply committed. But as a system, public education is not working in America.

How did this happen? Incredibly, for a century and a half, there has been little substantive change in public education. In America's public classrooms, the classic approach remains essentially the same as it was years ago: one-size-fits-all with a core curriculum of subjects presented to all students in largely the same manner. Students are divided by age and taught according to this curriculum. And they are promoted based on their perceived mastery of subjects. Or worse, they are advanced as part of a tacit social promotion system that serves no one-and particularly not the children themselves.

The result has been a system ill equipped to address the diverse needs to today's students within the realities of today's social dynamics.

The best way for public education to right size itself is to allow innovation and creativity to flourish. The traditional one-size-fits-all model must be exploded. Children and parents deserve classroom rigor and educational options that for too few students receive in today's classrooms.

Giving parents a choice is a critical factor in the future success of public education. Parental school choice allows each parent to find the right educational fit for their child. But choice is also important because it forces the traditional public education to keep pace with school programs that work. Unfortunately, our traditional public education system will never reform itself internally. No monopoly ever has. True reform will only take place through external pressure. The most effective form of external pressure comes by way of parental choice.

Charter schools, in particular, provide a model for reform that offer hope. Charter schools are, in fact, public schools: They receive public funding, are open to any students, and are overseen by a public agency, which holds them accountable to the academic and fiscal management goals outlined in their charter. Although they enjoy greater flexibility than traditional public schools, charter schools are highly accountable to both the public who must choose them and the sponsor who approves their charter. Significantly, the best charters are allowing for the coordination in one central location of desperately needed services for students parents and community members. They are providing a system malleable enough to respond to children's needs. Charters are, in short, filling a void left by the traditional public school system.

A review of the best practices found in many successful charters and traditional schools suggest that eight core components should be applied forcefully and consistently as guiding principles for sustained, systemic education reform.

1. Provide child learning at a much earlier age.

A core challenge is to support early learning for our children from age three. This is where we will start. If we can begin on this premise, and work persistently and consistently, every goal we have for our children, our economy and our culture will fall into place.

The latest scientific research on how the brain works informs us that a child's brain is at its most active stage of growth from birth to age three. For example, a child learns a language by age two. An adult's potential vocabulary is shaped by words learned before age five. The neurological foundations for later learning of math and logic are set before age four. Moreover, the experience of the child in the first two years of life largely determines how the brain develops into adulthood, along with its overall level of emotional stability.

Waiting until age five to begin learning is a dinosaur-like practice that should be eliminated. Age five is too late! We must focus on providing a good basic foundation in the early years of life.

To succeed, we will have to start early and drive slowly, but we will get there safely and on time. All families, particularly those with limited incomes, must have access to this early public learning opportunity for their children. This early start will decrease the cost of successfully educating a student, since the recurring costs for failure would be eliminated. We spend millions of dollars on remediation, compensatory education, security, special education, retaining students, summer school and incarcerating those who enter the juvenile justice system. Funding early learning will cost taxpayers much less than funding the incarceration of so may of these children in later years.

2. Provide more time to learn: longer school day, longer school year

The current school day does not match the 9-to-5 workforce realities faced by most parents, who now work out of the home for longer and longer hours. Most juvenile crimes are committed between the hours of 3 and 6 pm. The phenomenon of the "latch key" child is a reality that requires the re-thinking of the time of day that our public education system provides its services. In the information age, learning is not limited to the schoolhouse walls, the time of day or the yearly season traditionally designated as the "school day" or the "school year." Our children need more time in school. The current school year does not provide our students with enough time to learn what it takes to succeed in this world.

By way of illustration, the school year in the District of Columbia is 180 days long. In Europe and Japan, students spend as much as 220 to 240 days in school per year. When our students are shortchanged by up to 33 percent of the "time to learn" in their school year, they will suffer during their entire life trying to meet international standards of performance.

3. Implement a rigorous curriculum at elementary levels

Public school students can achieve at much higher levels if the curriculum content provided were of a higher level, taught by teachers who know the subject matter and engage students in active learning. Higher-level content must be taught in the elementary grades. For example, many public school students in the District begin the study of geometry in the 10th grade, after completing a course in algebra in the 9th grade. Geometry is taught in the 6th grade in many American private schools, and in the more successful public schools. It is considered standard for elementary students in Japan and Europe. When the opportunity to engage in higher-level content is denied in the early grades, we place limitations on a student's ability to learn.

In essence, America's public schools must become flexible enough to implement a rigorous elementary curriculum, particularly in the areas of math and science.

4. Implement rigorous curriculum for all high school students

The mismatch in our public education system is threatening the ability of the next generation of our children to compete effectively in a global economy. That disparity becomes tragic later in high schools where the curriculum taught is far more advanced than the knowledge and skills needed. And most of all, there is a mismatch in the level of excellence our children achieve and the level of excellence achieved regularly by students in other industrialized nations. Only six percent of America's high school students study calculus. In Germany, that figure is forty percent. In Japan, 90 percent!

When our students have the opportunity to compete in advanced public and private schools, they do well. It is in our collective self-interest to give every American child such an opportunity.

I propose to provide a high school education for every student that is competitive with the best in education nationwide-in content, quality and excellence. But every student need not complete four years of college. Today's high-tech job market requires training and excellence, but not always through a full college degree. Our school system must match the career opportunities that are emerging nationwide. Every high technology center in America was accompanied by a sustained commitment to creating education excellence at the grade school, high school, technical training and college education levels. North Carolina's Research Triangle, California's Silicon Valley, Massachusetts' Route 128 Corridor, Maryland's 270 Corridor, and Fairfax County's Dulles complex are all the result of serious sustained public investments in quality education.

If we are to participate in the world-class economy growing at our doorstep, we must do what others have done: We must demand, pay for and manage a sweeping re-construction of our public school system. It is not a matter of running our current system more efficiently. We cannot take pride in our children becoming dropouts more quickly.

Immediate actions should include the implementation of a solid core curriculum that all students must complete by age sixteen. These high school curriculums must be designed to offer more rigor in math, science and the arts. The curriculum must also provide compatibility with the best school to career practices.

5. Create smaller schools

All school districts should embargo disposing of school properties until plans for smaller schools are finalized. Construction cannot lead instruction. The trend toward building larger school buildings has been determined by architects, not educators. Large construction does not provide real economies of scale. Dollars that are saved by constructing large school buildings are almost immediately lost through additional staffing for administration, security and the academic and social failure that is so often the result of the isolation and impersonal nature of the large school. Appropriate capital funding must be structured and remain consistently directed toward the construction of smaller school buildings. The recent trend toward creating smaller schools within schools is a step in the right direction.

Students are alienated and anonymous in large schools. Students are lost in an impersonal setting where very few adults, if any, know their name.

A sense of ownership or belonging is not fostered in a school of a thousand or more students. Students do not know their own classmates, and teachers do not know them. Appropriate sized schools are much more likely to become key elements of their neighborhoods and communities.

Parents, employers and other stakeholders can become players in the school's support network, providing tangible contributions and visible models and mentors for students.

Where possible, smaller schools should be designed and constructed across the country.

6. Manage special education for positive results.

Special education has become a sinkhole for tax money and troubled children. Spending has skyrocketed while the number of students served remains constant. The whole concept of student re-entry from special education back into mainstream learning has been lost in the shuffle. Management of special education for the seriously impaired is a serious challenge for the public school system. Children seriously inhibited by learning disabilities should receive appropriate guidance from teachers or counselors. Too many children with advanced levels of difficulty are in expensive and stigmatized care because our system skills for dealing with problem children are poor.

Rebuilding our school system must include rigorous professional training to spot and deal with troubled children, timely contact and referral services with parents, and strong, consistent collaboration with community resources, including the faith community. This effort cannot occur without facing the backlog of thousands of children awaiting professional evaluation. Reliance on regular system staffing for assessments will never resolve this problem.

I strongly support authorizing payment to assessment resources outside the system, using a competitive case rate by any qualified professional. State governments pay for an enormous amount of specialized education services, including separate classrooms, private schools and residential facilities out of the city. Lack of appropriate management, outdated legal mandates and failure to coordinate information and care between all child service agencies has led to exorbitant costs as well as poor outcomes.

Appropriate and effective care for troubled children can only occur by accepting a system-view of public and private services and resources. Child resources must be brought under a coordinated philosophy and strategy. That strategy centers around collaboration with public and private stakeholders in child, youth and family services to produce a seamless and caring service delivery system for troubled children. Such collaboration includes managing special education dollars to assure appropriate care and eliminate waste and duplication as well as instituting fixed rate assessment payments to private sector assessment professionals for children at risk for learning disabilities.

7. Respect, train and reward professional teachers

If the job of teaching is to be more than providing custodial care for children, educators must be helped to educate themselves and to create communities of professionals. Incentives must be implemented to encourage accountability, professionalism and performance.

Performance measurements that simply measure inputs, such as time clocks, demean professionalism and do not ensure better outcomes. Businesses that succeed in "high labor" industries facing global competition must pay well, invest heavily in continuing professional development and make sure working environments enhance entrepreneurial attitudes and performance.

We must increase spending on professional development for teachers. Personnel costs represent hundreds of millions of dollars, which may be a wasted expenditure if we do not continually invest in the renewal of this human capital. Professional development must be viewed as mandatory, necessary for protecting our investments paid out as teacher salaries. Our schools must demand excellence. School leaders must rid the system of unqualified teachers. More importantly, all school districts should provide ongoing professional development for teachers and facilitate the development of a community of professionals in schools.

8. Collaborate across agency lines to reduce truancy, drug abuse, crime and violence.

It is a sad reality of our times that school-aged children use illicit drugs and alcohol. This impacts their ability or willingness to learn and the level of crime and violence among juveniles. There is, however, a relationship between a student's school experience and his or her involvement in drugs, alcohol and crime. Students who are not successful in school are more likely to cut class, be truant or drop out all together. Students who are not successfully engaged in school are at greater risk for illicit drug use, crime and violence. Young women who are academically challenged and engaged in schools are less likely to become teenage mothers and/or enter the juvenile justice system.

Over 80 to 90 percent of our incarcerated juveniles did not have a positive school experience, and most dropped out of school. These students are in our schools for most of the day, and we will have to address their needs during the time that they are with us. It serves no useful purpose to blame parents, blame society or blame anyone else, while continuing to maintain the obsolete practices now offered in our public schools, and which these young people reject as other consumers reject a product that does not meet their needs.

Public education must join forces and collaborate with all other agencies and community based organizations addressing the problem of illicit drug use by children. Dollars must be put into re-engineering schools so that they become places where young people want to be, where they can learn and become productive citizens.

Re-engineering our schools is essential. But we must go further. We must fit school services into a community. School is the largest piece of life for a growing child, but it cannot be all of life. We must integrate our work with the work of parents, churches, businesses and community organizations. We must also collaborate proactively with all agencies charged with responsibilities toward children.

Schools must link with the police, parole officers, youth agencies, health agencies, housing agencies, employment agencies and welfare agencies. This linkage will substantially reduce confuse, reduce costs down the road and rescue countless young people.

In spite of all the problems found in the American public education system, hope does spring eternal for one primary reason: the resiliency of our children. I have run into countless examples of children who come from dysfunctional home settings and who have received limited, if any, nurturing along the way and they still have an inner drive to excel and succeed. These children demonstrate daily an indomitable spirit that guides them through hardships. Oftentimes the determining factor about their eventual ability to succeed or fail is reduced to one or more positive influences in their life.

Our traditional public education system must recognize that the new realities of our society dictate a dynamic, diversified approach to the way children are taught and treated in our schools. One approach no longer works with children. Just as diversity of population is one of the greatest strengths of this country, diversity of educational options and experience will help start meaningful change in public education.

Once education reform is truly depoliticalized and policymakers become open to change, all of America's children will benefit.

Kevin P. Chavous