New Orleans Superintendent Paul Vallas gives urban board members tips on transforming their schools
By Del Stover
Fall '09 -- When confronting the legal, fiscal, and bureaucratic obstacles to school reform, more than a few urban educators have silently thought: “If only I could tear up the teacher’s contract. If only I could assign teachers as I thought best. If only I could rebuild my school district from the ground up.”
One urban educator who has come as close to that fantasy as anyone is Paul Vallas, who first earned national attention as CEO of the Chicago Public Schools from 1995 to 2001 and later led the School District of Philadelphia.
In 2007, he was named superintendent of the Louisiana Recovery School District, which has rebuilt the New Orleans school system -- buildings, staff, and operations -- since the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Vallas’ school district also is responsible for 13 state-identified troubled schools elsewhere in the state.
At this summer’s Council of Urban Boards of Education (CUBE) Issues Seminar in Chicago, Vallas shared with urban school leaders seven strategies he believes will make a difference in New Orleans -- and could help urban school boards “transform” their school districts:
1. Implement a comprehensive instructional management system: In New Orleans, Vallas said, such a system allows teachers to assess and track student achievement, upload lesson plans and teacher resources, and quickly target remedial help to students falling behind -- and provide accelerated learning opportunities to students who are not being academically challenged.
“You can control the pace of instruction,” he said.
The up-to-date data on student achievement also can be used by administrators to identify teachers who are struggling in the classroom, he said. This creates opportunities to intervene to ensure “that a teacher isn’t doing damage to students.”
2. Create school leadership teams: Too much of the leadership burden is placed on principals, who subsequently have no time to provide the kind of instructional leadership needed to improve teacher quality and instruction, Vallas said.
School leaders need to spread that burden around by tapping their “best and brightest” teachers to serve as instructional coaches, mentors, and curriculum and instructional leaders, he added. This team of talented instructors should keep abreast of the quality of instruction in its school and lead intervention efforts for students and teachers who need help.
“You’ve got to have the comprehensive instructional management system, but you’ve also got to have a leadership team that can drive and implement that system,” he said.
3. Increase the time students are learning: While the U.S. continues to rely on a traditional 180-day school year, other nations are keeping students in school for 220, 240, or 260 days. That must change, Vallas said. There is no way the U.S. can produce high school graduates as well-educated as those overseas without “more time on task.”
In New Orleans, the school year now extends across 11 months, and the school day is 8.5 hours long -- the equivalent of adding another 50 days to the school year, he said. That schedule change allows teachers to “spend spend more time with interventions and acceleration.”
How to pay for that extra time? With students in school longer, there was little need in New Orleans for costly summer school and afterschool programs, and the savings from eliminating those programs provided the majority of funds for the new school calendar.
4. Expand your pool of talented educators. Alternative certification programs and help from such organizations as Teach for America allow urban schools to tap a larger pool of talented individuals for classrooms, Vallas said. Such talent can transfer learning in a school.
Nontraditional recruits often are less knowledgeable in pedagogy, he admitted, but with the right support, they still can outshine older, traditionally trained teachers who have lost their fire and have low expectations for minority students.
So far, Vallas said, he’s found that professionals switching careers to teach “are uniformly excellent. They are the brightest in their class. They’re innovative. They work like there’s no tomorrow. They are very aggressive, and they have high expectations for kids.”
5. Make learning more relevant to students. Show students how school learning will affect their lives as adults, and urban schools have a powerful tool against the high dropout rates they report, Vallas said.
While it’s true that some students give up on high school because they arrive academically unprepared, others simply are not motivated, he added. Students say that no one in their family went to college, and they aren’t going. So why study?
“There is no expectation that a high school diploma will amount to anything,” he said. So officials in New Orleans cut back on “irrelevant” electives in favor of a work-study program that allows students to explore career options. “Why have seniors take electives if we can use the savings and let them spend the afternoon working at financial institution, working at a hospital ... or spending the afternoon at the police or fire department?”
6. Provide school choice: School choice -- through open enrollment policies and charter schools -- has become increasingly common in urban school systems. But Vallas expressed his conviction that choice creates a competitive market for students that is a powerful motivator for teachers and principals to provide a quality instructional program.
Admittedly, the opportunity for competition is unprecedented in New Orleans, where the Recovery School District had authority to turn over most of its schools to charter operators, and where state officials are strong proponents of privatizing school management. Today, students have many more options about where to attend school.
Competition also is fueled by the district’s freedom from many rules governing tenure, hiring, and staffing assignments. “Teachers and principals are hired, promoted, and retained based on performance,” Vallas said. “The whole hierarchy is based on an individual’s performance. When you do that, and you broaden the pool of eligible hires, you’re guaranteed to have dynamic individuals in your school systems.”
7. Put more technology in your schools. Technology has given teachers in New Orleans access to almost unlimited options in instructional materials, as well as updated records on student academic progress and test results. One resource tapped is online or computerized tutorial programs that can be used to help academically struggling students work independently to improve reading and math skills.
Paying for such technology isn’t easy, but Vallas said that a school board that puts off construction of a new school can use that savings to provide 20 to 25 schools with the “critical mass” of technology needed to transform instruction in the classroom.
Vallas also suggested foregoing technology purchases in favor of leasing. In New Orleans, schools can lease laptops for three years, spread out their costs, and, at the end of the leasing period, turn over ownership of those computers to students. The district then seeks a new lease for the latest technology.
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