Former CMS leaders in thick of Guilford tablet mess

Peter Gorman and Maurice "Mo" Green,  former superintendent and deputy superintendent of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools,  are facing questions about their roles in a botched purchase of tablets for 15,000 Guilford County students and faculty,  according to the Greensboro-based Rhino Times.

Gorman

Green left his job as Gorman's deputy to take Guilford's top job in 2008. Gorman resigned as CMS superintendent in 2011 to work for the news division of Rupert Murdoch's education technology company,  now known as Amplify.  That's the company that got a $3.2 million contract with Guilford County Schools to provide the tablets,  which have been recalled after problems with cracked screens,  overheating and exposed wires,  according to various news sources.

Green

The Rhino Times, an alternative weekly that used to have a Charlotte publication, made a public records request for emails between the district and Amplify.  "The emails disclose a close and long-lasting relationship between former Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools administrators,"  especially Gorman and Green,  Paul Clark reports.  Former CMS staffers Nora Carr,  Jocelyn Becoats and Cynthia Shah-Kahn,  who now work for Green,  and Robert Avossa,  now superintendent in Fulton County,  Ga.,  were all part of the email exchange about the selection of Amplify,  the purchase of tablets and/or publicity about the purchase,  according to the article.

"The reason the school board got only one choice appears to lie in the complex web of pre-existing relationships between former Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools administrators,"  Clark writes.  "The Guilford County school board has a terminal case of Charlotte envy.  Almost everything launched at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools finds its way to Guilford County."

I haven't done any reporting on this situation  --  CMS keeps me more than busy  --  but the article raises some important questions about the process in Guilford and the tactics used to sell and promote educational technology.  I had to grin when I saw that Shah-Kahn had rejected Amplify's attempt to get the district to sign off on a fake quote from Green promoting the company.  "The mo quote is awful,"  she is quoted as saying in an email to Guilford administrators.

Every district in America is spending big bucks on educational technology,  which means every taxpayer in America has a vested interest.  The Guilford mess is a good reminder that it's wise to be cautious,  even when the vendor has a familiar face.

Student's view: Don't grade me on teacher tests

Leave it to a teenager to put a fresh spin on a topic.  At a school board meeting earlier this month Celia Collias, a junior at Myers Park High,  joined a group urging Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to resist adding more state exams that are being created to rate teachers.

Her argument:  It's not fair to count those exams toward student grades.  After all,  if they really measure teacher effectiveness,  a low score just means we had a bad teacher,  right?

She's far from the first person to question the tests,  known as Measures of Student Learning. Local parents,  teachers and advocates have aired doubts about the value of the exams and the time they take away from other classroom work.  So have board members and Superintendent Heath Morrison.  State and federal education officials are still mulling whether to delay the plan to add more MSLs this year.

Still,  Celia's analysis made me smile.  She highlighted a kind of Catch 22:  The tests are supposed to measure teacher effectiveness.  But of course student effort  (not to mention intelligence,  preparation and mood that day)  shapes the scores.  Officials say the exams should count toward final grades to motivate students to give it their best shot.  So if students try hard and still get a lousy score their grade drops,  even if it's the teacher's fault.

The folks who support value-added ratings for teachers  --  and there are many who do, all across the country  --  would say that's oversimplified.  They say they can create formulas that tease out the teacher's contribution to student success or failure.  But it's not clear whether regular people  --  not to mention teachers whose careers are at stake  --  believe them.

Two years ago,  CMS officials made a valiant effort to create a value-added formula and explain it to employees and the public.  I think it's fair to say they failed.  Backlash was strong,  including parents threatening to keep their kids home on testing days.  Key players,  including Superintendent Peter Gorman and performance pay director Andy Baxter,  left CMS and the new crew quickly dropped the effort.

Dr. William Sanders and the Cary-based SAS Institute say they have a formula that works.  It's well regarded in national education circles,  and N.C. education officials have hired them to crunch state test scores for teacher evaluations.  But the rest of us can't examine that formula because it's how SAS earns its income.  Morrison has raised doubts about pinning his teachers'  evaluations to a formula that can't be fact-checked.

So stay tuned.  The quest to create better teacher evaluations is an important one.  We'll be hearing plenty more about this.  And Celia and her classmates will be waiting to learn whether new state exams will shape their grades this year.

CMS wants Amay James back

The school board approved a plan Tuesday to end Brookstone School's lease on the old Amay James prekindergarten center in 2015 so Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools can use the space for nearby Reid Park Academy, a CMS preK-8 school.

It's just one of the ways that current officials are trying to cope with a 2010 decision to close about a dozen schools,  moves that previous leaders said were forced by looming budget cuts.  Among the most dramatic changes:  CMS closed three low-performing middle schools,  reassigning students to eight hastily-created preK-8 schools.  Other schools,  including all the free-standing prekindergarten centers, were closed because then-Superintendent Peter Gorman said they were not delivering academic benefits, not attracting students or not cost-effective.

Now the district is launching a campaign for approval of $290 million in school bonds in November.  The No. 1 project is reopening two of the closed schools  Oakhurst Elementary will become a math/science/arts magnet and the former Starmount prekindergarten center will be a neighborhood elementary school.  (Click here for the new CMS bond page launched this week,  which includes detailed descriptions of proposed projects).  The cost for converting both buildings,  which are currently used for staff offices,  is $5.94 million.

Also on the list is $30.4 million to build a new preK-8 school in west Charlotte to relieve the overcrowded Reid Park and nearby Berryhill School,  another of the preK-8 schools that was created as part of the closing plan.  The new school would open in 2017.  Amay James,  which is now being leased to the private Christian elementary school,  would serve as a stopgap.

Crowding isn't the only issue sparking follow-up expenses.  CMS hurried to turn elementary schools into buildings that could serve middle-schoolers and 4-year-olds in time for the opening of school in 2011.  The 2013 bond includes $24.7 million to finish the job at six of the schools,  including the addition of gyms and special classrooms.  That work will be done in August 2019,  eight years after the schools converted.

As Superintendent Heath Morrison,  who started in 2012,  doesn't argue for the wisdom of the closings.  He notes that he reversed the one closing decision that overlapped into his time,  a vote to close University Park creative arts magnet and merge it with First Ward in a complicated year-round schedule.

Instead,  Morrison hopes to convince voters that CMS is making wise financial decisions moving ahead.  For instance:  Reopening Oakhurst and Starmount will cost about $30 million less than building two new elementary schools would have.  Building new combined elementary/middle schools for about $30 million costs about $18 million less than building an elementary and a middle school.  And leasing the closed schools or using them for CMS offices gives the district flexibility it wouldn't have had it it sold the property.  Before asking for new buildings,  Morrison said,  CMS first asks,  "What do we have in our inventory?"

Update:  Thanks to an anonymous commenter who's better than me at web site sleuthing,  here's the link to a report on past bond projects that's fresher than the March version posted on the CMS bond site. Some people have complained about CMS lists that omit cancelled or delayed projects. This one seems to include everything (see, for instance, cancelled renovations for Amay James and Davidson IB Middle School, both closed in 2011).

Principal pipeline: Promise and hurdles

Developing a cadre of effective principals isn't easy, according to a new Wallace Foundation study of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and five other districts.

"Building a Stronger Principalship"  chronicles the first-year efforts of six districts trying to develop a  "principal pipeline."  Those districts  --   CMS;  New York City;  Denver;  Gwinnett County, Ga.; Hillsborough County, Fla.;  and Prince George's County, Md.  --  will continue the grant-supported study through 2016,  trying to find better ways to recruit,  train and evaluate principals and assistant principals.

West Charlotte's John Wall (center), one of Morrison's first principal hires

One early hazard noted:  A focus on accountability can lead to principal firings,  "thus simultaneously increasing the demand for new principals while making the position less attractive to prospective applicants." That may sound familiar in an area that has seen significant principal churn and complaints that veterans are being run off.  But CMS wasn't one of the three districts where the issue was noted.  The study includes this quote from New York City (a district that hires as many as 200 principals a year):  "The principalship is not that attractive any more. People see it as a career ender. Think about it: you go into a failing school, you’re given maybe two years to turn it around, and if you don’t, you’re gone [and no longer have a job]."

The study gives CMS credit for a strong partnership with Winthrop University,  which collaborated with district leaders to create a Leaders for Tomorrow graduate program to train principals with the skills CMS seeks. The district is also noted for its five-year program of coaching and education for new principals.

The study focuses on 2011-12,  the transition year between Peter Gorman and Heath Morrison.

During his first year,  which just ended,  Morrison named 26 principals,  including one for the new Grand Oak Elementary that brings CMS to 160 schools.  Morrison told me he counts it as a victory that there seems to be less confusion and turmoil about principal changes than there was when he arrived.  He credits that partly to better communication and community involvement.  He's also striving to create enough of a leadership bench that when a successful principal moves on,  there's a member of that school team ready to step in.

CMS pay studies: Season Four begins

Most of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' task forces have wrapped up their work, with reports due later this month.  But one is just gearing up. Welcome to Season Four of  "CMS employees study better ways to get paid."

Season One: Performance Pay debuted under Superintendent Peter Gorman,  with teachers invited to contribute to a long-term plan to shift all employees to a pay system based on performance.  It began with studies showing the current teacher pay scale,  based on longevity and credentials,  has little to do with rewarding effectiveness.  It quickly exploded into controversy over testing,  value-added ratings and a legislative push that many teachers saw as an attempt by Gorman to go behind their backs. The dramatic season finale featured Gorman's 2011 resignation,  as he moved on to a job in private industry.

Season Two: Talent Effectiveness brought the mild-mannered interim Superintendent Hugh Hattabaugh assuring employees that the lack of money for rewards was actually a good thing,  creating a pressure-free environment for a new group of teachers to study effective teaching. Susan Varga, a middle-school math teacher, signed on to a year-long advisory post,  while many remained skeptical. That season ended as expected,  with Hattabaugh returning to Florida and a new superintendent taking over.

By the time Heath Morrison introduced Season Three: Strategic Compensation,  the ongoing saga was getting national viewers. Another group of educators signed up to help craft a plan for revising pay in a way that would be meaningful and -- unlike the many pilot programs CMS has tried -- sustainable.  They aimed toward a March 1 deadline for sending their plan to state officials.  With less than a week to go,  some of those teachers told the school board how delighted they were that Morrison was really listening to them.  But  there was a plot twist:  CMS had decided not to submit a state plan after all.

When I talked to Morrison recently about his first year,  he said that because there was no state money to support a new strategy, “I didn’t feel a need to rush this.”  His top staff and the educators who helped create the plan are continuing to review it,  he said,  but so far neither employees nor the public have seen results.  He said the latest compensation task force,  which begins its work this summer,  will incorporate that work,  and all members of the past panel are invited to stay on board.

I talked to a couple of teachers who served on last year's task force,  and they voiced a mix of confusion and  optimism.  "He may not be going as fast as some people would like," said task force member Michael Pillsbury, a math teacher at Randolph Middle, "but I think he's on the right track."

I'm not sure what's left to study.  As Morrison is quick to note,  the lack of state money for even a bare-bones raise puts a damper on brainstorming better ways to reward employees.

At the very least,  we can surely anticipate a new name for the project.  And we can count on a new cast:  Morrison recently named his second new human resources director in seven months,  and Chief Operating Officer Millard House,  who spearheaded last year's strategic compensation study,  just announced he's leaving CMS. 

Guards for superintendents, family

The contract for newly-hired Wake County Superintendent Jim Merrill has a lot of education reporters wondering how scary things are in North Carolina.

“In the event of public controversy or threat to the Superintendent or his immediate family arising from the Superintendent’s position with the school system,  if the board or Superintendent ever deems it necessary for the protection of the Superintendent or his immediate family,  the Board will provide security measures that it deems reasonable and appropriate to enhance the safety of the Superintendent and/or his immediate family," it says.

Merrill

My colleague at the News & Observer, Keung Hui, sent out a query to the Education Writers Association listserve asking if anyone had heard of this kind of thing.  The overwhelming response was incredulity.

I recall being shocked when Peter Gorman got a similar clause added to his contract with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in 2009.  I dashed over to find out who was threatening him and/or his family and when we could expect to see a contingent of guards escorting him. He and his spokeswoman,  Nora Carr,  assured me there was no problem.  Carr said Gorman had gotten the idea from his former deputy,  Mo Green,  who had just been hired as Guilford County superintendent and had a security clause.  "I think in this day and age it's a wise precaution,"  Carr (who is now Green's chief of staff)  said at the time.

It's tempting to crack wise about violent Carolinians,  and lord knows Wake County has its share of controversy these days.  But best I can tell,  it's just one of those  "cover your bases" things that lawyers throw in during contract negotiations (Green happens to be a lawyer, who started his education career at the attorney for CMS).  Merrill has the same provision in his contract with Virginia Beach schools and has never used it in his seven years with that district, Hui reports.  A Google search turned up examples of similar contract phrasing for superintendents hired in Pennsylvania and Texas in recent years.

Heath Morrison,  who took Gorman's place,  doesn't have a security provision. "It is not something I lifted up,"  he said when I asked.

Fair share from CMS?

Mecklenburg County Commissioner Matthew Ridenhour last week asked Superintendent Heath Morrison for a breakdown of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools spending by voting district. Such a breakdown,  he said,  might help address concerns that lead some people to talk about splitting the countywide district into smaller ones.

Ridenhour

Ridenhour, a Republican elected last year,  is jumping into a longstanding debate over the fairness of how and where CMS spends its money.  The gist:  Schools in low-income neighborhoods get extra money to help overcome student disadvantages.  They tend to have higher per-pupil spending than suburban schools,  partly because of that extra aid and partly because suburban schools are generally larger,  spreading basic operating costs among more kids.  But residents of more affluent zones tend to pay more in property taxes,  leading to rumblings about unfairness.

Morrison,  who started the CMS job in July,  said he'll try to answer Ridenhour's question.  I'll be curious to see what he comes up with.

His predecessor,  Peter Gorman,  calculated per-pupil spending at each school as part of a CMS equity report.  The county has used those numbers to create a per-pupil average for each district.

But Morrison's crew didn't do an equity report and hasn't released updated per-pupil spending numbers.

Dunlap

And as County Commissioner George Dunlap,  a Democrat and former school board member,  noted,  school locations don't correspond to services that residents of a voting district receive.  Many students live in one district and attend school in another,  especially if they're in magnet or alternative schools.

"This is one community,"  Dunlap said.  "I don't think we ought to be trying to split it up by district."

One of the drawbacks of covering education for more than a decade is that some of the back-and-forth starts to feel like watching an old married couple argue.  County Commissioner Bill James, an accountant and a Republican, has been arguing for years that CMS gets too much money and doesn't provide enough results.  This time around,  he didn't seem to find the energy for critiquing the numbers.

James

"I just don't really feel that educational achievement is getting better,"  James said after watching a presentation on CMS academic gains.  "Maybe it's a lack of PR on the part of CMS."

"Feelings are not facts,"  responded Dunlap.  "Just because you feel a certain way doesn't make it true."

Dunlap urged his colleagues to look at the data and see how much progress CMS has made toward narrowing the performance gaps between black, Hispanic and white students and between poor and middle-class students.

At the risk of being a party-pooper  --  and the even bigger risk of getting in the middle of a political spitting match  --  I'd note that those numbers aren't as meaningful as they look.  That's because the CMS charts compare results from 2008,  when students took state exams only once,  with those from 2012,  when students who failed the first time retook the test.  The state launched that requirement in 2009,  and the result was an immediate jump in pass rates.  Groups that had more students falling just below the grade-level cutoff  (such as black, Hispanic and low-income students)  saw big gains,  while the change was smaller for groups where most students passed on the first try  (white, Asian and middle-class students).

At the time, Gorman blasted the retesting as artificial inflation of results.  For the first couple of years he offered comparisons of pass rates before and after the retest bump.

That's probably not practical now.  But if CMS wants to make a fair comparison,  all it has to do is use 2009,  rather than 2008,  as the baseline.  If the gaps have still narrowed,  it says something about student achievement,  not just changing rules.

Testing makes strange bedfellows

Diane Ravitch and Heath Morrison form an unlikely mutual admiration society.

Ravitch

Ravitch, an author and advocate who was in town Wednesday for lectures at UNC Charlotte, is wary of leaders trained by the Broad Superintendents Academy.  She views philanthropist Eli Broad as part of the  "billionaire boys club"  pushing a reform agenda that's demoralizing teachers, weakening public schools and handing over public education to corporate interests.

Gorman

Peter Gorman,  a Broad graduate and former superintendent of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools,  is a case study in the kind of things Ravitch doesn't like.  He rolled out lots of new tests,  planning to use them to rate teacher effectiveness.  He closed several high-poverty schools,  citing low performance and the pressure of the recession. Then he resigned to take a job with the new education division of  Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Ravitch contends that such testing and technology companies are the only real beneficiaries of Broad-style reform.

Morrison

Ravitch says she met Morrison,  also a Broad graduate,  when she spoke at an American Association of School Administrators meeting about a year and a half ago.  Morrison,  who was superintendent in Reno, Nev., approached her afterward to tell her  "we're not all like that."

"He pretty much said,  'Watch me,' "  Ravitch said Wednesday.

After Morrison was hired to lead Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools,  he posted a recommended reading list.  Ravitch's  "The Death and Life of the Great American School System"  was featured prominently. But what persuaded Ravitch that Morrison was really different was a December article in the Observer reporting his strong criticism of North Carolina's testing program.  In her education blog,  Ravitch hailed  "wonderful news from Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina,"  and said that because of his comments,  she would  "happily add Heath Morrison to the honor roll as a champion of American public education."

Meanwhile,  the struggle over testing in North Carolina continues.  MecklenburgACTS,  which fought Gorman's testing push,  has launched a new petition drive to get the state to postpone and rethink its latest round of testing,  which is tied to national Common Core standards.  UNCC students have created United to End Standardized Testing,  or UnTEST.  Mooresville Superintendent Mark Edwards,  recently named national Superintendent of the Year,  is working with Morrison to try to persuade state officials that while some testing is helpful and appropriate,  the current plans go too far.

Rebecca Garland,  chief academic officer for the N.C. Department of Public Instruction,  says opponents are exaggerating the scope of new testing.  In the December article,  Morrison referred to 177 new state tests,  a number that  MecklenburgACTS leaders Pamela Grundy and Carol Sawyer repeated in an opinion piece on the Observer's editorial page this week.

"Never, at any point in time, has NCDPI planned to implement 177 new tests across the state,"  Garland writes in a rebuttal submitted to the Observer today.  "In 2012-13, there were 35 new tests, but for many different subjects that have not been traditionally tested.  We will add an additional nine next year."

Here is Garland's description of the new tests, which is the most detailed I've seen:

Of the 35 added this year, six are specifically to meet the needs of students in the Occupational Course of Study, which is designed for students with disabilities.  Within the 35, there also are exams designed for various implementation plans for the new standards.  For example, a typical high school junior would only take one math Common Exam.  The district will select from four options (Algebra II, Common Core Math III, Common Core Integrated Math III, and Common Core Algebra II) based on decisions they have made locally about transitioning to the new standards.  

At the high school level, new tests should REPLACE current tests that teachers are using during the regular final exam schedule. For example, a World History student who previously spent 90 minutes taking a teacher-made final exam will now spend that time taking a Common Exam in World History. No additional testing time is required.

At the middle school level there will be five new assessments -- two in science (grades 6 and 7) and three in social studies (one each for grades 6-8).  This ensures no students are left out when we look at the picture of teacher impact on student growth.  For example, a seventh-grade teacher may teach English to 25 students and social studies to 60 other students.  Should we ignore those 60 students when we look at how students are growing?  The answer, of course, is no.

At the elementary level, there are three new exams – fourth-grade social studies and science and fifth-grade social studies – that schools may use if they need to or if they choose to use them. A school would need to use these only if they had elementary school teachers who do not teach English Language Arts or mathematics. For example, if a fifth-grade teacher were to teach only science and social studies, their school would need a way to measure the impact of that teacher on their students. That’s where these new exams would be used.

CMS publishes Gorman leadership book

Updated 4:30 p.m.. with cost details:
If the new superintendent wants to take a page from the Pete Gorman leadership book, he or she will literally be able to do so.

CMS has quietly released  "Within Reach: Leadership Lessons in School Reform from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools," focusing on the Gorman years.  It's co-authored by Tim Quinn and Michelle Keith,  who helped create the Broad Superintendents Academy that trained Gorman,  with the former superintendent listed as a contributor.  The book costs $13.50,  and proceeds will go to the CMS Foundation.

"We have not witnessed a sustained reform story any more successful than that of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools from 2006-2011,"  the introduction says.  "As Dr. Peter Gorman assumed the district superintendency in July 2006,  the  'stars were aligned'  for significant strides in district transformation and subsequent leaps in student achievement."

In his forward, Gorman writes that he was "in the right place at the right time"  to experience  "the most outstanding professional experience an educational leader could have."

From the samples available on Amazon,  the tone is pretty much what you'd expect from a leadership guide:  Upbeat and a bit dry.  My copy hasn't arrived yet,  but I'm guessing this won't be a candid tale of Gorman's encounters with the city's politicians,  pundits and activists,  nor will it offer details about challenges that ranged from a gay penguin book-ban controversy to a teacher caught shooting heroin in a classroom.  People who see Gorman in a less rosy light,  thanks to such things as school closings,  teacher layoffs and a controversial rollout of performance pay,  may take issue with the official view of the Gorman era.

County Commissioner Bill James and others quickly began raising questions about whether CMS labor or money was spent on the publication. Tahira Stalberte with the public information office says all costs were covered by a grant Gorman received from the C.D. Spangler Foundation.  That includes $57,778 to the authors,  $1,740 to the CMS print shop for layout and design and about $30 to the self-publishing site that created 100 copies of the book.  So far,  Stalberte says,  the CMS Foundation has gotten about $25 from sales.

Gorman speaking in Charlotte: Shh!

As several of you have let me know, former Charlotte-Mecklenburg Superintendent Peter Gorman is speaking tonight in the Queens University/BB&T  "distinguished leaders in action"  lecture series.  I signed up online weeks ago,  figuring it would be a great chance to hear from a man who shaped five crucial years of CMS history  and has been publicly silent since his abrupt resignation to take a private-sector job last summer.

This morning, Christa Robaina from the Queens McColl School of Business emailed to say she'd noticed my registration,  and I won't be allowed in.

"We have always worked with our media partners to offer an interview prior to the lecture if the guest speaker was willing, but have never allowed the media to attend the lecture events so our speakers may have a candid forum with our students, alumni and invited guests of the University,"  she wrote.  However, Gorman also said no to interviews.


So the question arises:  What is Gorman going to say about his leadership experience in CMS that he's not willing to say to the general public?  And how confidential can a lecture to an auditorium full of people be?

If you're going to be there, please let me know what he says  --  and consider tweeting with the hashtag #gormanspeaks.  As a superintendent,  Gorman prided himself on transparency,  which included regular communication with the media.  As a former superintendent,  we'll see how he does with citizen journalists.

Gorman: Close schools, pack your bags

Former Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent Peter Gorman isn't talking to the Charlotte media anymore,  but he certainly has some interesting things to say as he makes the national rounds.

Lew Powell,  a former Observer colleague,  forwarded this recent item from City Beat,  a Memphis,  Tenn.,  blog.  It reports on a confab between Memphis officials and Gorman (who now works for the education division of News Corp.),  then-board Chair Eric Davis,  former board Chair Arthur Griffin and an unnamed former CMS principal.

"The system won a national award this year for excellence in urban education,  but this was not a butt-patting session,"  reports John Branston,  a senior editor for The Memphis Flyer.  Branston's report continues:

“Progress has been painfully slow,  and at the rate we are moving in Charlotte it will still be 15 years before the achievement gap is closed,”  said former superintendent Pete Gorman.

He urged the committee to  “build a bench”  of future principals and assistant principals from among promising young teachers;  move good principals and five teachers as a group to the toughest schools but not against their will;  give new leadership three years to turn around a school;  give good schools more autonomy;  measure improvement , not raw scores,  so that even college-prep schools must show improvement year over year;  pick a superintendent for the consolidated district sooner rather than later;  give the schools with the poorest students the most money,  and give the wealthiest schools the least money;  and expect to move on if you are the superintendent that has to close schools.

“You can’t close schools well,”  he said,  adding that "to do the job well,  I sometimes question if it's physically possible."

Gorman,  as most Charlotte readers know,  launched a push in fall 2010 to close about a dozen schools in 2011-12.  He announced his resignation in June,  just after the board approved a 2011-12 budget.  Many of the newly-merged schools are now dealing with discipline problems,  although the staff that remains to deal with aftermath still voices hope that there will be academic benefits.

Follow-up on Cochrane turnaround

I got an email today from David Markus,  the writer of the Edutopia package on Cochrane's "turnaround" that I wrote about yesterday.

I had re-messaged Markus,  the publication's editorial director,  to let him know former Cochrane Principal Terry Brown was challenging his account of then-Superintendent Peter Gorman visiting the east Charlotte middle school in 2006 and proclaiming,  "This may be the worst school I have ever seen."  Brown,  who ended a three-year stint as Cochrane's principal at the end of the 2006-07 school year,  says Gorman never visited the school while he was there.  Brown said he and Gorman had several conversations during the year that the two of them shared in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools,  and Gorman never gave him any indication that he held such dim views of Cochrane's academic performance.

Markus stands by his reporting: "In an email to me on November 2nd, Pete Gorman corroborated the 'worst' school quote and added that his visit to Cochrane was the most disheartening school visit of his career."  No word from Gorman;  I haven't been able to reach him since he announced his resignation in June.

I still don't know who pitched the Cochrane turnaround story,  which has gotten national and local attention,  or whether Markus realized that part of the proficiency gains he cited came from a change in N.C. testing rules that bumped up most low-scoring schools.  But on the general topic, Markus said:

"We believe it is a  'turnaround'  for the statistics we cite.  As a student of school turnarounds I am sure you know that when a school has fallen as low as Cochrane had,  it will take several years to dig out.  Cochrane is well on its way after only a few,  but as we make plain in our package,  their rise to excellence is not nearly complete.  Nor is it guaranteed.  That said I am very impressed with (Principal) Josh Bishop's team and the results they are achieving."

We're certainly in agreement that turnarounds are complex and slow.  This got me curious enough to do my own walk down memory lane ... actually, the N.C. school report cards. Here's what the numbers show, with some context.

At the end of 2006-07,  the year Gorman may or may not have proclaimed Cochrane the worst,  67 percent of its students passed the reading exam and 37 percent passed math.  The school fell short of the state target for growth,  generally described as an average of one year's academic gain per student.

In 2007-08,  after Brown's retirement,  Valarie Williams was hired to lead Cochrane.  State officials also introduced an eighth-grade science exam,  and bumped up the number of correct answers needed to pass the reading test.  Most educators agreed the old cut-off was too low,  but the change brought a plunge in pass rates across the state,  especially for minority and low-income students and the schools (such as  Cochrane) that served them.  In 2008, Cochrane's pass rates were 32 percent in reading, 34 percent in math and 14 percent in science.  Cochrane again failed to make the growth target.

In 2008-09,  North Carolina started requiring students who failed state exams to try again,  boosting pass rates across the state.  That year Cochrane hit 47 percent in reading,  54 percent in math and 35 percent in science,  and it met the "expected growth" target.

In February 2010,  Gorman reassigned Williams to Vance High School as part of his "strategic staffing" plan to improve that school.  Josh Bishop became interim principal (he got the permanent job at the start of 2010-11).  That year ended with Cochrane at 52 percent passing reading, 67 percent passing math and  61 percent passing science. The school made "high growth."

Last year Cochrane held steady at 52 percent passing reading, declined to 59 percent passing math and rose to 63 percent passing science,  with an "expected growth" rating.  It was a year when many CMS schools saw some slump in scores.

The gains in math and science are impressive, even with the retesting boost.  Still,  it's worth noting that Cochrane continues to hover around 50 percent proficiency on reading.  In 2011,  only 43 percent of students passed both reading and math exams,  a mark that signals readiness to move on to the tougher high school courses.  And the black,  Hispanic and low-income students who make up the majority of Cochrane's students had pass rates about 10 percentage points lower than the average for those same groups in CMS and statewide.

Cochrane turnaround tale ... really?

The contrast between Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools'  glowing national image and the controversy that surrounds it at home is a source of much discussion.

I suspect those of us in the thick of things do tend to fixate on problems.  Up close,  bumps in the road can look like mountains.

But if problems get exaggerated locally,  I've also seen success exaggerated nationally.  Most recent case in point:  The Edutopia package on Cochrane's  "turnaround"  that's been widely circulated.  I first saw it on the ASCD Smartbrief,  a national roundup of education reporting,  early this month.  CMS officials played the video portion at the conclusion of a Dec.  13 report on schools in transition.

My first reaction was confusion.  Cochrane,  an east Charlotte middle school that's starting to add high school grades this year,  hasn't been on my  "success story"  radar.  Had I missed something?

A look at my data sheets said no.  Cochrane ended 2011 with a composite pass rate of 58 percent on state exams.  Of 35 CMS middle schools,  only four scored lower  --  and two of those,  Spaugh and Williams, closed this year.  More telling,  only two middle schools earned a lower growth rating,  a measure designed to make sure schools are judged on how much their students gain,  not just how well prepared they are when they arrive.

So why is one of the district's weakest middle schools being highlighted as a school that  "beats the odds every day"?  David Markus,  Edutopia's editorial director and the writer of the main article,  hasn't responded to my message asking who suggested the story.  In another part of the package,  an endnote thanks The Broad Foundation for sharing research about top urban districts.

The package focuses mostly on Cochrane's significant gains in pass rates from 2008 to 2011.  What's not  mentioned is that the same can be said for most struggling schools in North Carolina,  thanks to a change in testing that took effect in 2009.  In 2008,  students took the test once.  Starting in 2009,  those who fell below the "passing" line were required to try again,  and be counted as passing if they met the mark on the second test.  Generally,  the more failing students a school had,  the bigger the  "retest"  bump it showed.  As CMS superintendent,  Peter Gorman frequently blasted the retesting system as giving schools an artificial inflation in pass rates.

Gorman, who left CMS in June to work with education technology for Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.,  is featured in a dramatic opening to Markus'  story.  It describes Gorman visiting Cochrane in 2006,  the year he started as superintendent: "Known for his no-nonsense determination to turn around the district's failing schools, Gorman minces no words in describing Cochrane: 'This may be the worst school I have ever seen.' "  Gorman is later quoted as saying, five years later, "There was no instructional focus. It was the most disheartening school visit of my career."

Terry Brown,  Cochrane's principal in 2006-07,  called me after reading the first version of this post.  While I had noted that Gorman certainly wasn't saying such things publicly at that time,  and that administrators tend to give their most vivid  "bad schools"  accounts in hindsight,  Brown, who retired in 2007, says this goes beyond dramatic reconstruction.

"Gorman never visited Cochrane the first year he was there.  Not one time,"  Brown said.  "He was scheduled and canceled.  I'm appalled.  None of this is true."


Bottom line:  Edutopia, a publication of the George Lucas Educational Foundation,  is dedicated to highlighting academic solutions that include technology, teacher development and "comprehensive assessment."  CMS is well known for those approaches,  and Cochrane,  as noted prominently in the story,  is working with Texas Instruments to use technology in math instruction.  One sign that it's helping,  from my spreadsheets:  CMS reported that last year only 49 percent of Cochrane sixth-graders were proficient on math exams,  while 65 percent of eighth-graders were.  One troubling signal:  That's down from 75 percent of Cochrane eighth-graders proficient in math the previous year.

I don't want to detract from the hard work and high aspirations of the faculty and students at Cochrane.  I'd love to write their turnaround story sometime down the road,  when I see solid evidence that it's justified.  All this is just to say that improving education is complicated business,  and it's wise to scrutinize naysayers and cheerleaders alike.

Gorman trashing CMS? Not really

Updated 6:30 p.m. -- first of all, here's a link to the transcript that's easier to scan than hours of video.

A report on WBT radio about former Superintendent Peter Gorman's comments at an education conference got some buzz over the weekend,  as people circulated the audio clip with their own commentary.  By the time it was filtered through County Commissioner Bill James,  Gorman was calling board members crazy and describing Bright Beginnings prekindergarten as  "the worst."

Neither is true.  Jeff Sonier,  the reporter who did the WBT report,  was kind enough to forward me the full video links to a Sept.  27 Hamilton Project conference on  "Promoting K-12 Education to Advance Student Achievement,"  which featured Gorman as a panelist.  What I saw was hardly Gorman Gone Wild.  Instead,  it was a long,  nuanced discussion of education reform,  most of which will sound familiar to anyone who heard Gorman speak during his five-year stint in Charlotte.

There is one surprise,  which Sonier correctly reported:  Gorman tells the panel that CMS research found that  "the worst after-school program you could be involved with in Charlotte was the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools after-school program;  the quality was just so poor."  (It's at about the one-hour mark in the video of the first session,  on "The Power and Pitfalls of Incentives in Education.")

That was news to me. On June 28, shortly after Gorman resigned, the staff gave a routine update on the after-school enrichment program to the board; the PowerPoint gives no hint of quality problems. I know where to look for some research reports that don't get much public airing,  but I found nothing evaluating after-school.  CMS spokeswoman LaTarzja Henry said this morning that officials have been looking for such a report since WBT asked last week:  "We have been unable to locate any research that suggests that."  I emailed a public-relations staffer at News Corp.,  Gorman's new employer,  asking that Gorman point me to the research and/or clarify his comments.  I got nothing but a prompt  "no comment."

New: At day's end, spokeswoman Tahira Stalberte says CMS officials believe Gorman was talking about a report on after-school tutoring, not the after-school program. But she said Gorman himself has not made that clear to CMS, and neither the report nor anyone who can talk about it will be available until tomorrow. Here's a story on the after-school question.

The after-school program serves school-age students.  Gorman did not discuss the quality of Bright Beginnings,  which provides full-day education to 4-year-olds whose skills put them at risk of falling behind in kindergarten.  The cost of that program has been controversial,  and James has been critical of spending county money on pre-K.

As for school board "craziness,"  it's no secret to CMS-watchers that Gorman had his clashes and frustrations with board members.  But the video doesn't show him  "poking fun at his former bosses,"  as Sonier's WBT clip indicates.  Gorman introduces the after-school comment by praising the board for being willing to spend money on research and evaluation,  even during a budget crunch.  During the second session,  on start times, grade configurations and teacher assignments,  Gorman does make the quoted remark that "there's a huge disconnect with what goes on at a school board meeting and what goes on in a school,"  and that  "I often viewed my job ... as to protect our staff from the craziness that goes on at a board meeting"  (all this is at about the 35-minute mark).  But he prefaces that comment by saying  "I enjoyed the board I worked for,"  and follows up by talking about the unlimited number of public comments that open many meetings.  "You might as well say,  'Why don't we try to get as many people to come and try to take us off target as possible,' "  he says.

In a third panel on "New Assessments for Improved Accountability,"  Gorman talks about how the current teacher evaluation system overstates the number who are successful  --  a theme he sounded for at least a couple of years in CMS, as he pushed to change the way teachers are evaluated and paid.

Sonier and WBT are right about one big point:  Gorman has refused to speak to local media about CMS since the June day he handed in his resignation,  and that does lead people to wonder what was on his mind when he left.  For those with time,   the Hamilton Project discussion provides some intriguing insights on what he thinks about incentives for students and teachers,  starting schools later and making performance pay work.  But it's hardly throwing CMS under the bus, as the Pundit House blog labeled it.

With the exception of the after-school comment  (I'll report more on that if and when I can find the research he's talking about), Gorman struck me as positive about CMS.  If anything,  he erred on the side of optimism.  For instance,  he talks about closing  "large, low-performing middle schools"  and sending the students to K-8 schools.  "We didn't then put the children in low-performing elementary schools,"  he says.  I suppose that depends on how you define "low-performing,"  but some of the elementaries that added grades 6-8 logged among the district's lowest scores in reading, math and science in 2011.  When I asked Gorman about that issue before he left,  he said was pinning his hopes on principals' plans to reverse that kind of performance.

Salary wars: Superintendents vs. CEOs

Former CMS Superintendent Peter Gorman is on the cover of the most recent District Administration magazine as an example of the pay gap between head honchos in public school systems and private enterprise.

An article on the magazine's 11th annual salary survey leads with the fact that News Corp. "snatched two leading school district administrators to head its new education division"  --  Gorman from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and Kristen Kane,  former chief operating officer of the New York City Department of Education.

The article notes that battles over superintendent pay are raging nationwide.  Expect to hear a lot of debate locally about what CMS should pay its next superintendent,  which the board plans to hire in spring 2012.  The salary survey won't provide a clear answer on the going rate for a district this size,  simply because there are so few  (CMS is the nation's 18th largest district,  according the data sheet with the Broad Prize).

The national average for 2010-11 was $161,992,  according to the survey,  but most of those are for much smaller districts.  "Salaries of more than $225,000 were seen in districts with enrollment levels of more than 25,000 students,"  the article reports.  CMS has about 138,000.  Gorman was making $267,150 when he left,  with an additional $30,000 in supplemental retirement pay and the option for a performance bonus up to 10 percent.

The District Administration article quotes Dan Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Superintendents, on salaries in that range:  "An outlier for a salary may be $300,000 for large city school systems,  and there aren’t too many of those.  If we’re looking at $300,000 as the high end, that same person in the private sector leading a company of that magnitude would be making well over $1 million  --  that’s just a fact.”

Gorman to CMS staff: Thanks for everything

Superintendent Peter Gorman isn't making speeches or doing interviews, but he sent a farewell message to employees this afternoon, as he closes out his five years leading Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Here it is:

From: Peter C. Gorman


Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2011 1:20 PM

To: cmsmailall

Subject: Thank you and good-bye

Dear CMS employees,

Today is the last day I will lead CMS as superintendent. Hugh Hattabaugh begins as interim superintendent tomorrow and I will assist him in the transition and finish a few final projects between now and Aug. 1, when my employment with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools officially ends.

Each and every one of you has been part of the successes we have achieved. Those successes have been substantial. We have narrowed the achievement gap. We have raised achievement levels. We have nearly doubled the number of high-achieving schools. We have built a robust accountability structure. We decentralized CMS to make it more accessible to the community. We have turned around some of our lowest-performing schools with Strategic Staffing. We have brought substantial private investment – in money and in time – to CMS that has allowed us to broaden and enrich our curriculum and our initiatives. We have weathered the worst economic climate since the Great Depression. We had a successful bond request that allowed us to build some much-needed new schools. We have also closed some schools.

This is a very special district. CMS is blessed with so many assets – great teachers, skilled staff, a broad range of expertise in every area and a community that cares very much about its schools. Most important, it has you, the employees who come to work every day prepared to help our students learn and grow and succeed.

All of this has strengthened CMS and helped our students. None of it would have been possible without you. Thank you for the hard work, the trust you put in me as your superintendent and your willingness to persevere in good times and in bad. We’ve certainly had both.

I wish you all the best as you continue to make CMS the most innovative, effective public school district in the country. Thank you for everything you do.

Pete

Peter C. Gorman
Superintendent
Government Center
600 East 4th Street
Charlotte, NC 28202

Gorman looking forward to anonymity

When he announced his resignation from the head of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Peter Gorman's staff said he would have nothing else to say to the press. Which left us with questions, frankly, since he's still on the public payroll as superintendent till Aug. 15. (OK, we always have questions). He might not be talking to us anymore, but he did answer questions this morning at a meeting of the Small Business Professionals of Charlotte.

According to tweets from people at the meeting, Gorman had plenty to say about his five-year tenure with CMS, and also answered questions. Joseph Margolis, a freelance copywriter, said he was among about 25-30 people present. He sent out a tweet quoting Gorman as telling the crowd: "I'm at a unique phase in my career. Ask me anything!"

According to the folks tweeting, these were some of the highlights of Gorman's talk:

• He is "looking forward to anonymity."
• He will not be involved in finding his replacement.
  
• There have been 200 principal changes in five years.
• Thomasboro Elementary is the most expensive school to educate kids; Ballantyne elementary is the least expensive.
• Our great teachers don't like poor teachers, want room to do their job well and get good compensation.
• CMS will pay the price for the severe cuts we've had to do, especially in high schools.
• As long as we cluster poverty in particular schools, we're going to have challenges.
  

Since he hasn't made himself available to the press, I tweeted some of the attendees and asked them to ask him what his role will be. Since he's in office two more months, it doesn't seem unreasonable to wonder what he'll be doing until he leaves for his new job with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Is he superintendent in name only for the next two months? Do all these reforms he's been pushing come to a screeching halt? It all might become clearer tomorrow, when the school board meets at 6 p.m. to begin mapping out the search for his replacement.

Margolis says attendees did ask him my question about his role for the next two months. Gorman's answer: he's going to be the superintendent as long as the board has him, and until the day he leaves. Which doesn't exactly clarify my question. But apparently Gorman isn't planning to clear it up -- at least not to the press, anyway. Margolis tells me the superintendent reiterated at the meeting that he isn't making any further comments to the media.

The Broad barrage

If only I could have cloned myself, I'd have been out front on the Eli Broad story.

Last summer, in writing an application for a seminar at Columbia University, I outlined the involvement of the Broad Foundation in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and discussed my interest in exploring how private philanthropy is shaping public education. When I got there, it turned out a lot of us were asking similar questions.

Now that I've finally broken off time and gotten some information on grant money from CMS, everyone's buzzing about Broad. Readers have been sending me great links. So, for those who want to delve deeper than the print article can go, here's more.

The nudge that finally got me focused on Broad was a recent article in the Raleigh News & Observer about how Broad might influence their new superintendent, who is being mentored by fellow Broad Superintendents Academy graduate Peter Gorman. There's also a WakeEd blog item that explores that issue.

Newsweek just published an investigation of whether investments by Broad, Gates and other education philanthropists have had the desired results. The conclusion: Not usually. The magazine looks at 10 school districts, none in the Southeast.

If you're trying to sort out the Broad/CMS connection, one of the biggest challenges is figuring out the "performance management" project that's gotten big bucks from Broad, Gates and Dell. CMS officials have been talking about this for years, and I've never quite gotten my head around a way to describe it in a newspaper article. When I asked CMS folks to help me with a clear, concise description, they sent me a four-page report. Here it is. The condensed version, from Chief Accountability Officer Robert Avossa: It's about providing educators with data to make decisions and creating systems to hold people accountable for results. Testing and performance pay are part of performance management, but it's a broader effort that includes CMS's school progress reports and school quality reviews.

The Broad Foundation Web site contains some details about the CMS connection, but it takes some hunting (again, thanks to readers who got me started). Here's a description of the Broad approach to investing, and here's where they list CMS as one of the foundation's investments in "redesigned, high-performing institutions." Here's information about the academy that trained Gorman and Wake's Anthony Tata, and the residency program that has placed other administrators in CMS.

An astute reader noted that Gorman is a member of the Broad Center's board of directors, and questioned whether that makes it a conflict for CMS to be a finalist for the Broad Prize for Urban Education. Foundation spokeswoman Erica Lepping said it would be if Gorman were a foundation board member. But the center is a separate nonprofit group that's funded by the foundation, she said, and is not involved in awarding the prize, which brings national prestige and hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships.

On the anti-Broad side, "How to tell if your district is infected by the Broad virus," orginally posted on a Seattle education blog, is getting a lot of circulation. And here's the Parents Across America "guide to the Broad Foundation." Those who are interested in the perspective of Diane Ravitch, a PFA founder and national education writer/researcher, can find more about the role of philanthropists in her book "The Death and Life of the Great American School System."

I cringed when I saw that the "virus" checklist includes "Local newspaper fails to report on much of this." I'll take the blame for putting Broad below the breaking news about school closings, performance pay and such. If Broad has a strategy for squelching news coverage, the only part I saw in action was that the school board's Broad-sponsored retreats were often too dull to generate stories.


Got more recommended reading? Post links in comments. The spam filter may snag them, but I'll check periodically to retrieve them. Be patient, though; it is Mothers Day.

Gorman on Rahm Emanuel short list?

The Chicago Tribune reports today that Rahm Emanuel, who recently left the White House to become mayor of the Windy City, may be looking outside for someone to lead the city's troubled schools.

The article says he's looking at inside candidates, but "many believe he wants to nab a proven leader or education innovator from outside Illinois." Charlotte-Mecklenburg's Peter Gorman is among four outside candidates said to be on Emanuel's "short list," along with Jerry Weast, who was superintendent in Guilford County in the 1990s and retired as superintendent in Montgomery County, Md.

Gorman's response to the speculation: "Not interested in being superintendent anywhere else!"

This is becoming a familiar drill, as superintendent jobs come open and people speculate about names that are prominent on the national education scene. Next comes the part where I remind you that superintendents always say they're not interested in leaving right up until they make a public finalist list, and you weigh in on whether Gorman's departure would be a tragedy or a cause for celebration.

The thing that's got me grinning this time is imagining Gorman, after five years' immersion in ever-so-polite Charlotte, dealing with Emanuel's infamously earthy tirades. Talk about culture shock!

Revamped schools drawing interest

Families apparently aren't rebelling against the money-saving school closure/consolidation plan the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board approved late last year. If they were of a mind to opt out of the new K-8 campuses or the revamped Harding high school, it might easily show up as a surge in magnet school lottery requests.

But at their weekly press briefing, Superintendent Peter Gorman and his aides said they don't see any sign of higher-than-normal magnet school applications from children bound for the revamped schools. They said, for instance, that they saw no evidence fifth-graders zoned for K-8 campuses are applying in higher-than-normal numbers for middle-school magnet programs. Harding, a previously all-magnet school that will accept Waddell's students next fall, also showed strong enrollment numbers. Harding's International Baccalaureate magnet drew 714 students, nearly as many as it had last year.

Of course, pessimists could argue that many parents might not have seen magnets as a practical option, now that CMS requires them in many instances to ferry their kids to less-than-convenient shuttle stops to catch magnet buses. CMS officials prefer the non-pessimist view. "The response of the community has been positive to the changes we've made," said Mike Raible, facility planning guru for CMS.

For more details on the issue, see Ann's story from last week, which also includes a link to a CMS page with all lottery results for all the magnet schools.