TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/070290/0702120.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 8.1 KB | 178 lines

                                                                                EDUCATION, Page 56

Power to the Classroom!


Self-managed schools are all the rage, but so far the reviews
are mixed

By SUSAN TIFFT -- Reported by Mary Cronin


    Joseph Fernandez, who has just completed his first semester
as New York City's schools chancellor, is often compared with
Mikhail Gorbachev. Like the Soviet President, Fernandez is
using a combination of personal charm and high-handedness to
reform a system nearly paralyzed by its own plethoric
bureaucracy. Fernandez's brand of perestroika is called
"school-based management," a system that allows those closest
to the classroom to oversee budgets and set curriculums
largely free of centralized control. "The idea is to give
schools more latitude," says the chancellor, "because generally
they will make better decisions than we will."

    Having pushed that approach in Miami, where he was Dade
County school superintendent for almost three years, Fernandez
is trying to apply it to the nation's largest school system.
Whether or not it works in New York, school-based management
is gathering momentum across the U.S. School districts in 27
states have experimented with it, with varying degrees of
success, over the past five years. Since 1987 the schools in
Rochester have been run by a team of teachers, parents and
administrators. Beginning last fall, locally elected councils
-- composed of six parents, two community residents, two
teachers and the principal -- have been in charge of each of
Chicago's 541 public schools.

    Supporters of school-based management claim that it lifts
teacher morale and makes schools more flexible, factors that
improve learning. But detractors contend that many teachers
find group decision making threatening and onerous. Others
argue that self-governance simply takes turf battles once
fought at the district or state level and dumps them at the
schoolhouse door. "All they have done is decentralize the
politics," says Paul Hill, senior social scientist for the Rand
Corp.

    Does school-based management lead to more effective teaching
or merely create problems for already overburdened educators?
Three case histories illustrate the gains -- and some pains --
that can result from more local control:

    SAN DIEGO. Within six months of her arrival at Linda Vista
Elementary School in July 1987, principal Adel Nadeau
custom-tailored a program to fit her 950 students, 62% of whom
were from Southeast Asia and spoke little or no English. With
the approval of the school district, she and her 33 teachers
decided to split the day in two.

    Mornings are reserved for language skills and social
studies, with students grouped by their proficiency in English
instead of their age. In the afternoons, youngsters of all
abilities are thrown together to study two subjects, which are
taught for three weeks straight, then switched. After three
weeks of computer writing and library research, for example,
a student might spend the next three investigating art and
music. The aim: to help children learn by giving them
concentrated doses of material.

    Without the pressure of grades, which the school eliminated
three years ago, pupils are progressing more quickly, and
attendance has improved. This year, for the first time, Linda
Vista placed 27 children in gifted-student classes, and next
fall will add 24 more. Three multilingual aides regularly visit
parents to talk about what they can do to help their children
achieve. "The idea behind site-based management is to make the
community part of the process," says Nadeau. RJR Nabisco
agrees: last April the company awarded Linda Vista a $550,555
Next Century Schools grant to continue its outstanding work.


    LOUISVILLE. For years the only high scorers at Fairdale High
School were its basketball stars. Good teachers shunned the
school, located on the outskirts of town. Today 31% of Fairdale
graduates go to college, 11% more than in 1987, and there are
nine applications for every available teaching slot. "If you
want to be on the cutting edge of teaching," says social
studies instructor Jackie Powell, "this is the place to be."

    Behind the striking change is principal Marilyn Hohmann and
a committee of elected teachers. They have worked together to
change the school's 1,200 students, 30% of whom live in public
housing projects, from passive recipients of knowledge into
active problem solvers. "Covering the material is not the
goal," says Hohmann. "Learning how to learn is the point."

    The same goes for teachers, many of whom have been grouped
together in interdisciplinary programs. Juniors take "U.S. Is
Us," a daily two-hour course combining history and literature,
led by two social studies teachers, two language-arts teachers
and one special-education teacher. These classes include some
of the brightest youngsters as well as the slowest, an approach
Hohmann calls "teamstreaming." Teaching together takes more
time, commitment and compromise, but it is rapidly becoming the
norm at Fairdale -- a development that pleases ninth-grade
teacher Brenda Butler. "I love the changes," she says. "We
finally have an opportunity to voice our opinions and make
decisions about student learning."


    DADE COUNTY, FLA. During the past three years, 139 of Dade
County's 263 schools have voted to join the
school-based-management movement spearheaded by former
superintendent Fernandez. William Jennings Bryan Elementary
School, which embraced the concept in 1987, is an example of
a school in mid-metamorphosis, experimenting with change on the
one hand while retaining some aspects of more traditional
schools on the other.

    Principal Nora Brandt, elected by the Bryan faculty to lead
them in restructuring, began with the basics, repainting the
rundown stucco building and starting a "Bryan Pride" campaign
to boost children's self-image and team spirit. To pave the way
for improvement, she hired several forceful, imaginative
teachers. Today literacy is paramount at Bryan, where the
student body is one-third white, one-third black and one-third
Hispanic. Teachers stress writing and the classics. Each month
400 children are bused to the Dade County Public Library;
parents receive a "reading tips" newsletter.

    A small senate consisting of Brandt, an assistant principal,
two parents and seven teachers makes proposals to the faculty,
which votes on them monthly. Most teachers feel the system
allows them to concentrate on what they do best. Says science
teacher Jo-Anne Chumbley: "The people in charge here let you
run your own show. I can do things that I wasn't able to do in
18 years of teaching."

    The main lesson of these schools' experience is that
self-governance works best when the principal helps form and
carry out group decisions rather than imposes them from above.
It is also essential to set clear goals. "You need to think
about school-based management; you cannot rush in," says
Dorothy Mazine, a middle-school teacher in Miami Springs, Fla.
"The biggest pitfalls are time, communication and resistance
to change."

    Teachers and administrators must also take care to use their
freedom creatively, evaluating everything from the length of
a typical class period to how math should be taught.
"Restructuring won't make much impact on learning and teaching
if we just tinker with the system," says San Diego
superintendent Thomas Payzant.

    The link between self-governance and student performance is
clear at some schools, unclear at others. Yet this spotty
record is unlikely to mar school-based management's bright
future. In May Citibank gave $2.4 million to help nine
Washington, D.C., schools get their plans under way. Dade
County has taken the notion a step further, asking principals
and teachers to submit ideas for creating 49 new schools from
the ground up. Seven are now in the planning-and-building stage.
More innovations are sure to come. School districts may find
that giving teachers and parents the right to make decisions
about education is like dancing with a bear: once you start,
you cannot decide to stop.