CMS drama as performance art

I walked up to the Levine Museum of the New South Wednesday night for a forum on changing demographics and public schools, and found myself at one of the most unusual education events I've encountered.

The organizers from UNC Charlotte decided to forgo a traditional panel discussion in favor of performance art. School-related headlines spanning decades flashed on a screen, while performers read excerpts from court rulings, newspaper articles and personal essays. Civil rights lawyer James Ferguson, one of the readers, interspersed the prose with a cappella verses of Jacob's Ladder, with lyrics such as "Tell me, do you love all children? Leaders of our youth."

And so, 48 hours after covering an NAACP meeting with a crowd fired up to fight school closings in 2011, I watched a headline that was obviously decades old flash on screen: "Negro Groups Complain About School Closings."

Katie McCormick with the UNCC library said she'd started planning this session about a year ago, before the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board launched the student-assignment review that has people up in arms over proposed closings. "It turns out that this topic was more timely than we imagined," she said.

The historians were quick to incorporate breaking news. It was surreal to hear the final few minutes of the performance, where Ferguson and another reader turned quotes and snippets from articles I wrote last week into a sort of point-counterpoint poetry.

The discussion that followed wasn't exactly the bullet-point, solution-finding exercise that you see at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools forums. A mom about to send her child to kindergarten mused about feeling overwhelmed. A more experienced CMS parent commiserated: "It's always been overwhelming to get your kids in CMS."

Older speakers talked about living through desegregation. A Mallard Creek High School student gave his take on resegregation. Northerners and Southerners traded barbs over who was responsible for racial separation.

There was a strong sense of repeating history. A teacher at University Park Elementary, an arts magnet that's slated for closing next year, said it feels like we're going in circles, but as an artist she prefers to think of spirals.

"We can spiral upward," she said, "or we can spiral down."

Where was Gorman?

A whole lot of things went haywire last Tuesday, when a public forum on school closings drew an overflow crowd to the Government Center. The meeting ended with arrests and anger, which continues to simmer as the forums and meetings move toward a Nov. 9 vote.

One of the things I've been hearing is that Superintendent Peter Gorman and the board disrespected the people who showed up to speak by failing to listen to the "open mike" comments. I understand why people think that, but I don't think it's correct.

Here's the deal: The session took place in the formal meeting chamber, where board members normally sit around a dais, looking out at the audience (and into bright lights). There are two podiums for speakers; during regular meetings they address the board with their back to the audience. This time, speakers were given a hand-held mike so they could face the crowd. A couple of board members took their normal seats at the dais, which meant they were looking at speakers' backs.

Others stood at the edges of the chamber, where they could see better. Gorman said today he was standing in the doorway at the right side of the room. If you knew the faces, you could spot the leaders. But if you didn't, all you saw was a lot of empty seats at the dais.

Legitimate concerns remain about the proposals and the process, where speakers' time was cut short and some were turned away (they're supposed to be invited back for a special comment session next Tuesday). But it's worth noting that from what I could tell, the folks making decisions didn't bail out on public comments.

The scoop from The Apple

Superintendent Peter Gorman's news conference this morning wasn't as celebratory as he and his crew had hoped, since Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools didn't snag the Broad Prize for Urban Education* at Tuesday's ceremony in New York City. But there were some interesting nuggets from the event.

First, the serious education stuff: Gorman said Gwinnett County Public Schools, which took the top prize, is pursuing many of the same strategies as CMS. The suburban Atlanta district has moved from a top-down strategy of "telling people what to teach and how to teach it" to one that grants more freedom to successful educators. Gwinnett Superintendent Alvin Wilbanks is also focused on building the effectiveness of principals and teachers.

There was also talk about the importance of leadership stability -- that is, having a superintendent who not only lays out his vision but sticks around to make it work. Wilbanks has held his job 14 years, the longest-serving leader of a big district, Gorman said.

Now the celebrity gossip: Gorman says he had a brief chat with NBC anchor Brian Williams, who gave the keynote speech at the Broad Prize ceremony. He says Williams told him about spending  time in North Carolina because he has a child at Elon University. "He also shared that he likes NASCAR," Gorman said.

And finally, a public-relations official's nightmare: LaTarzja Henry was getting ready for the award ceremony and flipped on the TV in her Manhattan hotel room. And there, on New York City TV, was a report on a student injured by an exploding pen in CMS's Turning Point Academy.


*As some have noted, our print-edition headline and photo caption were wrong in stating that CMS took second place. The four remaining finalists were not ranked. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the also-rans to the stage one by one before announcing the winner. CMS was the last eliminated, which added to the suspense but did not mean the Charlotte crew outscored Montgomery County, Md., and two districts in El Paso, Texas. As Gorman quipped today, "we like to say we tied for second."

No champagne for CMS

Update: Gwinnett County Public Schools outside Atlanta took the top prize. I watched the webcast with CMS principals, who had stayed after their regular meeting to see how the district fared. After almost an hour of speeches, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan called out the four non-winning districts first. It was down to CMS and Gwinnett when CMS was called as the final runner-up. Still, $250,000 in scholarships isn't a bad consolation prize.


Later this morning, philanthropist Eli Broad and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will announce the winner of the 2010 Broad Prize for Urban Education. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is one of five finalists, and there's a big local crew in New York City for the ceremony.

CMS was a finalist in 2005, but this time feels different. Despite all the furor at home over proposed school closings, Superintendent Peter Gorman (who was trained at the Broad Superintendents Academy) has been getting national buzz for his "strategic staffing" quest to get top principals and teachers into struggling urban schools. A recent article in Newsweek touted the plan as "an ingenious school-turnaround strategy" that gives CMS "a serious shot at winning" the Broad Prize. Duncan recently toured Sterling Elementary, one of the strategic staffing schools.

If CMS wins, it means $1 million in scholarships for local graduates (even finalist status brings $250,000) and national bragging rights for district leaders.
 
A 13-person CMS delegation is there to get the news: Gorman; Board Chair Eric Davis, Vice Chair Tom Tate, board members Kaye McGarry, Trent Merchant and Joe White and former board Chair  Molly Griffin; Chief Academic Officer Ann Clark; Chief Operating Officer Hugh Hattabaugh; Chief Accountability Officer Robert Avossa; LaTarzja Henry, the top public-relations official; Denise Watts, a strategic staffing principal promoted to oversee high-poverty schools; and Mary McCray, a CMS teacher who heads the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Association of Educators.

When asked about the travel tab, Henry said it was included in the CMS budget. But Gorman later called to say he is paying for it out of a $250,000 grant the C.D. Spangler Foundation gave him for personal development. The tally wasn't immediately available, but Henry said the group is staying at the Sheraton New York in midtown Manhattan.

So does the advance buzz and the big contingent mean the decision has been leaked? Gorman insists not. He said the Broad crew told him the winning superintendent will find out about five minutes before the announcement, with strict orders not to tip the news to anyone else.

Stay tuned. Some CMS employees who didn't make the trip will be watching the webcast. I'll be there too, hoping the technology works and posting as soon as I know anything.

CMS student assignment: There's more!

Plans for school closings and arrests at a public forum have hogged the spotlight, but there's a new step emerging in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board's student assignment review.

After the drama at Tuesday's meeting, the board formally introduced proposed revisions to the policies that guide the assignment lottery (to read them, click here, then click items V a, b and c). The changes incorporate the guiding principles this board passed during the summer and remove confusing historical references that piled up over the years. They also eliminate the lottery for non-magnet schools, which had tapered off to virtually nothing in practice anyway.

"You almost needed a guidebook to get through it," Superintendent Peter Gorman said of the existing policies. "It will be much simplified."

If you're just hearing about this, never fear: You haven't missed a chance to weigh in. The board plans to hold public hearings on the policies at its next two meetings before voting. That means this could be piled on what's bound to be a marathon meeting Nov. 9, when members have vowed to make decisions on the list of closings, consolidations and other proposed school changes for 2011-12.

How much hope for new preK-8 schools?

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools will hold the first of its public forums today (6-8 p.m. at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center, 600 E. Fourth St.) on proposals to close high-poverty, low-scoring middle schools and move the students to new preK-8 schools housed at current elementary schools.

Belatedly, here's a link to the Johns Hopkins University study comparing achievement in Philadelphia K-8 and middle schools, which Superintendent Peter Gorman handed out to the school board recently. The hard copy the board got was 56 pages, and this journal article sent by CMS is 35, but as best I can tell from a quick scan, it covers the same key points.

Interestingly, the copy the board got had lots of yellow highlights on pages 6 and 7 (pages 3 and 4 on the link), where the researchers summarize other studies that have found higher test scores, better attendance, more satisfied parents and stronger neighborhood ties at K-8 schools. The highlighted sections also note apparent benefits from avoiding the transition to a new school in sixth grade, when academic performance often slumps. That's a point CMS leaders have emphasized in pushing for the local changes.

But if you keep reading, the researchers note that those studies were small and not highly rigorous; the Johns Hopkins crew set out to do a more sophisticated analysis of how much advantage such schools really have and what factors are linked to those benefits.

Keep reading even further, past a lot of stuff that's tough going for those of us who aren't  researchers or statisticians, and you get to some conclusions that seem to undermine the premise of CMS's plan. These researchers found that the advantages of merging elementary and middle-school grades are relatively small when other factors are accounted for, and that "a district is not likely to replicate the K-8 advantage based upon size and school transition alone if its student population is predominantly from high-minority and high-poverty backgrounds."

The study also warns that the cost of converting to K-8 schools can be high: "(A)dministrators must ask themselves if such a massive reform is truly worth the resources given the likely impacts. They must also compare it to other possible reforms and decide if with K-8 conversions, they are getting the best possible 'bang for their buck' in terms of reform finances."

I assume CMS leaders are asking those questions, since they distributed the study. I'm still playing phone tag to get their answers. More on that in the very near future.

"Superman": Charlotte is waiting

Will Charlotte audiences pack a theater to watch a documentary about urban education?

If someone had asked me that a few weeks ago, I'd have responded with an "Are you serious?" smirk. But the buzz about "Waiting for 'Superman' " has been building since its national debut, including a feature on Oprah. When I went with a group of education reporters to see it in New York City, the huge theater was selling out on weekday evenings.

The film by Davis Guggenheim, director of "An Inconvenient Truth," opens in Charlotte on Friday. It's likely to swell the surge of education-reform energy building here and nationwide.

The title will make sense to local folks who attended Geoffrey Canada's Charlotte talk in March. Canada, one of the country's most charismatic education leaders, created the Harlem Children's Zone, which provides "cradle to career" services designed to break the link between poverty and academic failure. He tells of growing up in the ghetto and fantasizing that Superman would save him, then crying when his mother told him Superman wasn't real.

His message, and that of the film, is that we all have to be the heroes.

Education wonks will find plenty to debate. Does it oversimplify complicated issues? Sure. Does it present  charter schools as The Big Solution? Sort of. I don't think I'm spoiling anything to say that charter-school lotteries serve as the dramatic hook. My sense is that's less about creating a "great charters/lousy traditional schools" dichotomy than about painting a vivid picture of the slim odds some children face in seeking an excellent education. Here, many families seek Charlotte-Mecklenburg magnets as a ticket out of weak schools (though the computerized lottery and notification letters wouldn't make good theater).

What "Superman" undeniably does is put human faces on the children and parents fighting odds that are stacked against them by poverty and failing schools. We may walk out of the theater arguing about causes and solutions to the problems. But it will be hard to walk out with a shrug.