Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

HOPE for Newport News Schools

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by

James A. Bacon
in

There’s an interesting press release emanating from Newport News today on PR Newswire. Superintendent Marcus Newsome is understandably proud that his urban school system had four of its five high schools listed in Newsweek Magazine’s list of 1,000 top performing high schools in the country.

Newsom has succeeded in the face of conditions typically cited as reasons for failure. Newport News is a working class town with its fair share of poverty. Approximately 45 percent of the city’s 33,000 students are eligible for free or reduced lunch; 55 percent are African-American and 1o percent are Hispanic.

Newsome credits a systemic approach coupled with “research-based means of changing school cultures” and building strong leadership teams. In partnership with the HOPE Foundation (Harnessing Optimism and Potential through Education), based in Bloomington, Ind., the school system has worked intensively with low-performing schools to train leadership teams of teachers and administrators.

Notes Jay Mathews, creator of the Newsweek list: “The more schools I have examined, the more I have come to believe in the power of high school cultures, which are different in different parts of the country for reasons that often have little to do with the usual keys to high school performance — the incomes and educations of the parents.”

Would somebody please convey this message to our lawmakers? We’ve tried pouring money into schools. Maybe it’s time to try a little HOPE.

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  1. Bob Griendling Avatar
    Bob Griendling

    Jim, Take it from someone whose kids go to a school that is in the top 35 in the NATION according to the Newsweek poll: It’s bogus. All Matthews does is calculate how many kids are taking AP courses. Just because a lot of kids take AP course doesn’t mean they have good teachers with adequate facilities and an administration that promotes creativity and excellence. It’s another verion of teaching to the test, but in this case, it’s enrollment to the ratings.

  2. James Atticus Bowden Avatar
    James Atticus Bowden

    I agree the answer is not money for schools. Our system, Poquoson, used to be second to last in money per student and usually third from highest in achievments.

    I’d check out the details on what a Newsweek ‘high performing’ school is. I’ve lived in Tidewater 15 years. Grew up in the Federally-Occupied-Zone of NoVa. No one moves to NN for the schools. People move to Poquoson, York, or Williamsburg-James City County for government education.

    FYI, My wife is a counselor in York public schools.

    Need more information on how the ratings are determined.

  3. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    Bob and Atticus, I agree totally with both of you: Someone needs to vet the claims of the Newport News school system. It’s just nice to see someone arguing that leadership in the schools can improve educational outcomes. The idea bears similarities to Gov. Warner’s plan to develop a cadre of school turn-around artists. All I’m saying is that the strategy bears investigating before the VEA comes back asking for another $1 billion from the taxpayers.

  4. Will Vehrs Avatar
    Will Vehrs

    I disagree with Bob; I believe Matthews is on to something. He has demonstrated, to my satisfaction, that kids who have taken AP courses do better in college, regardless of how they did on the test.

    Bob, how do you propose to rate schools on “creativity and excellence?” A lot of folks trash SOLs and standardized tests, but I don’t know how they propose to measure performance.

  5. Jeremy Hinton Avatar
    Jeremy Hinton

    Not having any children in NN public schools (yet), i cannot speak as to the level of education there. I can say, however, that they are doing truly remarkable things with their IT infrastructure. This last year they completed bringing all school facilities online with their own dedicated fiber backbone, connecting all locations at gigabit speeds. This replaces what were nearly modem speed connections at some of the facilities. This greatly streamlined operations during SOL testing and has allowed them to centralize much of their IT resources in one or two locations, reducing dedicated resources required at each school. I understand some other area school systems are now considering following suit, with the success of the Newport News program.

    As they trenched and now own their own fiber, this is the opposite of the “outsourcing” recommended by many on this forum. However, to lease the equivalent connectivity service from any of the local ILEC/CLEC would have cost them significantly more over the long term. Since the city already owns the right of ways, this is an example (in my mind) of when it can and does make sense to “do it yourself”.

  6. Bob Griendling Avatar
    Bob Griendling

    Will, how do you measure how smart someone is? How do you measure how the intangibles they’ve learned in school will impact their future success? Why is it that so many of our leaders (W being prime example) were mediocre students by most objective measures?

    I don’t think how many AP courses are taken can measure how good a school is. And I don’t think beyond grades and minimal testing schools should measure performance as much as they do. As an article in yesterday’s Post suggested, Finland has developed students who score highest on standardized tests, but they actually are rarely tested in the classroom.

    Testing is OK to measure minimal achievement. A comprehensive curriculum of challenging courses is good and should be encouraged. But I object to the degree standardized tests have become the sole arbiter of how well students are doing. They are so time consuming and so influential in determining a school’s funding and a teacher’s career that we’re losing the creativity in teaching. This week my kids will have no homework because it’s SOL week. They lose time in class for them and AP tests. Teachers tell my kids that they can‘t go into details about a question they may ask because they have to focus on what will be on the tests.

    I imagine no one commenting on this blog was ever subject to much more than SATs and the Iowa tests. Our parents judged how well we were being educated by what they saw in us. Yes, our grades were a big part of that measurement they used, and frequently it may have been the only measurement they had. But as we’ve learned, they were not very helpful in determining our success.

    My oldest is in college, the second starts in September and the last is two years behind. I tell them that though their grades and tests will largely determine which schools they can go to, where they go to school and the grades they get, let alone the tests they take, will not matter five years after they graduate. It is how they apply what they learn and how they teach themselves the intangibles. Have they obtained critical thinking skills, and have they developed a strong work ethic? Have they learned how to influence people and have they experienced leadership? A lot of that is learned in school but outside the curriculum on which they are tested.

    Teachers can help tremendously. They can nurture and encourage. But we don’t measure critical thinking skills in the SOLs. We don’t test for leadership or measure work ethic.

    True, how many kids take AP courses can help measure motivation and perhaps they help teach more critical thinking skills, but let’s be honest: Most kids take APs for the simple reason they think it will give them a leg up in college admissions, and as I said, where one goes to school is not all that critical. And judging a school on the number of AP courses alone is trite, in my opinion.

    And as educator Patrick Welsh has debated with Matthews, APs are being forced on kids who shouldn’t take them.

    I fear the tests have become a crutch parents lean on, instead of being intimately involved in their children’s education. But more disturbing is that tests have become so important that good teachers are being discouraged. Yes, I think higher salaries would help retain some teachers, but I think trusting them — but verifying through parent involvement — would do wonders for attracting and retaining good teachers. As the Finland article suggests, they make the difference, not the tests. And I’m not sure shuffling your kid to a school that has more students taking AP courses will make much of a difference.

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