Education Secretary Arne Duncan's legacy as Chicago schools chief questioned

By Nick Anderson Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, December 29, 2009

CHICAGO -- Soon after Arne Duncan PHOTOS left his job as schools chief here to become one of the most powerful U.S. education secretaries ever, his former students sat for federal achievement tests. This month, the mathematics report card was delivered: Chicago trailed several cities in performance and progress made over six years.

This Story • Test data help cloud Duncan's legacy as Chicago schools chief • Answer Sheet: Why Duncan's record in Chicago is a problem Kim Cody leads a ninth-grade language arts class at North Lawndale College Prep. The charter school opened a campus Miami, Houston and New York had recently on the site of a high school that was shut down. As higher scores than Chicago on the schools chief in Chicago, Arne Duncan encouraged charter National Assessment of Educational school growth. (Photos By John Gress For The Washington Post) Progress. Boston, San Diego and Atlanta had bigger gains. Even fourth-graders in the much-maligned D.C. schools improved nearly twice as much since 2003.

The federal readout is just one measure of Duncan's record as chief executive of the nation's third-largest system. Others show advances on various fronts. But the new math scores signal that Chicago is nowhere near the head of the pack in urban school improvement, even though Duncan often cites the successes of his tenure as he crusades to fix public Brooke Wheeler teaches first grade at the Johnson School of Excellence. Attendance is up, fights down. (John Gress)

1 From www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/28/AR2009122802368.html 1 January 2010 education.

"Chicago is not the story of an education miracle," said Chester E. Finn Jr. of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank in Washington. "It is, however, the story of a large urban system that has made some gains and has made some promising structural changes."

For more than seven years, starting in 2001, Duncan tried to rejuvenate his city's struggling schools: jettisoning staff, hiring turnaround specialists, shutting down those deemed beyond hope. He pushed a back-to- basics curriculum, spawned dozens of charter schools and experimented with performance pay. State and federal test scores and graduation rates rose on his watch, and Chicago became a laboratory for innovation. As a result, the reputation of its schools has improved markedly since 1987, when an earlier education secretary, William Bennett, called them the worst in the country.

'Focused on outcomes'

Yet questions have arisen this year about the magnitude of Duncan's accomplishments. The Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, which represents business, professional, education and cultural leaders, concluded in June that gains on state test scores were inflated when Illinois relaxed passing standards and that too many students still drop out of high school or graduate unprepared for college. The Consortium on Chicago School Research, a nonpartisan group at the University of Chicago, reported in October that Duncan's closure of low-performing schools often shuffled students into comparable schools, yielding little or no academic benefit.

"Obviously, you always want to get better faster," Duncan said in an interview when asked about the federal math scores. "I was focused on outcomes -- improving graduation rates, making sure that students who graduated had a chance to pursue higher ed. You can have the best test scores in the world, but if kids aren't going that next step, you're not changing their lives."

2 From www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/28/AR2009122802368.html 1 January 2010

Duncan also said he had adjusted his school closure policy a few years ago to ensure better opportunities for students. He said that he was unhappy that the state had relaxed passing standards and that graduation rates remain unacceptable. About half of Chicago students fail to graduate on time with their peers.

In January, Duncan said at his Senate confirmation hearing: "We're proud to have made significant progress . . . and to really be a model of national reform. But again, hard work is going to continue there and is far from done."

In the interview, Duncan said he is careful not to exaggerate his record. Critics, however, say his legacy is routinely overblown.

"There's been this rhetoric about dramatic gains, dramatic success, that we have to replicate this model because of its dramatic success," said Julie Woestehoff of the advocacy group Parents United for Responsible Education. "And here in Chicago, we're looking at these schools and going, 'Uh . . . ' "

In 2003, President George W. Bush's education secretary, Rod Paige, faced similar, perhaps stronger, criticism when his much-highlighted record as leader of Houston's schools in the 1990s came under scrutiny. Questions were raised that year about the reliability of Houston's reported dropout rates.

Duncan's record is of more than historical interest. He wields considerable power through the combination of his Chicago connections, shared with President Obama, and his oversight of billions of dollars in reform funding. The Education Department is dangling an unprecedented $3.5 billion in grants for school systems to turn around weak schools and $4 billion for states to pursue innovation.

Huge challenges

With 418,000 students in 675 schools, Chicago faces challenges on a scale exceeded only in Los Angeles and New York. Eighty-five percent of students come from poor families, and 12 percent have limited English skills.

Tours in a handful of Chicago schools this month found educators pushing against formidable obstacles to establish a climate of learning. For some, simply asserting control over a campus represents a big victory.

In the North Lawndale neighborhood west of downtown, dotted by decaying rowhouses and apartments, Johnson Elementary School was given a new staff this year and renamed the Johnson School of Excellence. Duncan, in one of his last actions before leaving Chicago, proposed the restart in January because of the school's perennially low test scores. The nonprofit Academy for Urban School Leadership, which pairs master's degree candidates with teaching mentors in a residency program, runs the school and 13 others under contract. Johnson serves 300 students from pre-K through grade 8.

3 From www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/28/AR2009122802368.html 1 January 2010

In the last school year, officials said, police were called to the campus nearly every day to deal with angry parents or disruptive students.

"It was a war scene," said Jennifer Earthley, mother of a fourth-grader and a fan of the new regime. "The administrators were afraid of the children. The children did what they wanted to do. We have been on the low end for a long time. All we have been looking for is a passionate group of people who care."

Now, attendance is up and fights are down. Students are drilled on respect, manners and lining up in the halls. In one fourth-grade classroom, teacher Katelyn Funderburk counted "5-4-3-2-1" after asking students to pull out their textbooks. "Steven Earthley got it opened fast and folded his hands," she said. "Thank you."

Hitting the reset button

At William R. Harper High School in West Englewood, loudspeakers blared the theme to "Beverly Hills Cop" one afternoon and students swirled in the hallways as the principal shooed stragglers to class. "Let's go! Let's go!" Kenyatta Stansberry called out. "Y'all are going to be late. Let's go, baby! You need to run!"

The 700-student school, in an area blighted with crime and boarded-up houses, had fallen on hard times when Stansberry took over in 2007. She said she spent much of her first year dashing to altercations -- the intercom alert "10-10 on 2," for example, would mean a fight on the second floor -- and extracting the campus from the Crash Town gang's grip.

Then Duncan hit the reset button (another purge a decade earlier had failed to yield much improvement). Stansberry stayed, although most of the staff was let go. She was given extra resources, including three deans to help manage students, money for gifts and incentives, and a reading catch-up program. Misconduct fell, attendance rose and test scores edged up a bit. More ninth-graders were rated on track to receive a diploma.

Neighborhood troubles remain a deep concern. Stansberry said four of her students died violently off campus in the last school year. Such killings became a national issue this fall after a student, Derrion Albert, was beaten to death near Christian Fenger Academy High School on the city's South Side. Duncan returned to Chicago in October with Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to pledge a campaign against youth violence.

As if in solidarity with that goal, posters of Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. flank the whiteboard in English teacher Fadia Afaneh's room at Harper. She high-fived her ninth-graders as they placed commas correctly in sentences, transforming street lingo into standard English. Much of what she teaches is remedial, Afaneh said, but she is determined to help students advance. First, she teaches them to write a complete sentence. Then, a paragraph.

"Basically, all kids deserve an excellent education," she said, "and that doesn't always happen in this country. I know."

4 From www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/28/AR2009122802368.html 1 January 2010

Why Duncan's record in Chicago is a problem

It’s an all too familiar story.

Someone gets appointed to a big job because he supposedly got great results at his old job.

It doesn’t take too long for people to realize that the supposedly great results weren’t so great-- but the boss has taken the new organization on the same route anyway.

This is the story of Rod Paige as education secretary under then president George Bush early in this decade, and now, according to a Washington Post story today [see above] by my colleague Nick Anderson, of Arne Duncan as education secretary under President Obama.

Paige, a former superintendent of Houston’s schools who earned his doctorate in physical education, came under tough criticism for his record in that Texas school district when it became known that the progress made in keeping kids in school appeared to be a statistical trick of under-reporting by high schools.

Now we have Duncan, who the president knew for years in Chicago and hailed as having made enormous progress during his seven years as Chicago school chief, starting in 2001.

Anderson tells us that Duncan tried a lot of approaches to turn around the city’s struggling schools. He got rid of staff, brought on people who are supposed to be experts in turning around schools and shut down those schools thought to be impossible to fix.

There were more efforts, too, but you get the idea. He tried a lot of things.

Some may have helped in some places, but nowhere was there a great turnaround like the one he now demands from other cities.

When, for example, Obama appointed Duncan in December 2008, he said standardized test scores had risen in Chicago’s elementary schools by 29 percentage points during Duncan’s seven years as superintendent.

Well, not so much, it turned out.

According to one research group that issued a report this year, the real improvement was only about 8 percentage points.

And while Obama said that Duncan had improved Chicago’s dropout rate during each of his seven years as Chicago schools boss, which appears to be true, he didn’t mention that 70 percent of 11th graders still fail to meet state standards. Oh, and about half of Chicago’s kids who attend non-selective-enrollment high schools still drop out. 5 From www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/28/AR2009122802368.html 1 January 2010

Another research group found that Duncan’s closure of low-performing schools did little good for students, Anderson reported.

Duncan himself did not call his work as Chicago schools chief an educational miracle, but he never stopped others, including Obama, from making more of it than there really was.

My point? Progress is hard. Progress is uneven. Progress takes different approaches.

No one person has the answer for everybody.

Yet Duncan has decided on specific routes for progress that school districts must take in order to win some of the billions of dollars in federal funds he is dangling--$3.5 billion in grants for systems to turn around weak schools and $4 billion for states to pursue innovation.

This is why so many people are upset at Duncan -- especially those who had hoped Obama would change the educational dynamic of Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” era, with its emphasis on high-stakes standardized tests and charter schools.

They had hoped Duncan would take the country away from NCLB. Instead, he seems to be ratcheting it up, based on a record in Chicago that is hardly shining.

So here we go again. Most unfortunately.

By Valerie Strauss | December 29, 2009; 9:18 AM ET

6 From www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/28/AR2009122802368.html 1 January 2010