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Our PBS Documentaries> Making Schools Work - Program DescriptionBack >Photography RATIONALE No topic worries American families more than the quality of our schools. It is time to focus on best practice. We Americans have had two decades of ringing proclamations and hand-wringing debate about reforming public education. We have been strong on promises, weak on performance. More focused on debating problems than on devising and disseminating solutions. The issue was defined in 1983 by “A Nation At Risk,” and President Reagan’s crisp precis: “Our educational system is in the grip of a crisis caused by low standards, lack of purpose, ineffective use of resources and a failure to challenge students.” In 1990, the first President Bush proclaimed Goals 2000, vowing to make America “the world champion” of education, first in math and science. As President, Bill Clinton added legislation to put another 100,000 teachers into schools, reduce class sizes, and provide seed money for reform for low-performing schools. But the goal eluded us. Instead of “world champions” in math and science in 2000, our students ranked a lowly 19th out of 38 nations on international tests. The 2000 report card from the National Assessment of Education Progress was bleak: only 32% of America’s fourth graders were reading at the “proficient” level and 30-35% of students in all tested grades were performing below basic skills in math. Now, with K-12 schools costing $380 billion a year, comes a haunting echo of “A Nation at Risk” from the second President Bush. America, he warns, still confronts “the scandal of illiteracy” and “children trapped in schools that will not teach and will not change.” The President and Congress have now mandated that the states pull America’s 47 million students out of educational mediocrity, by setting clear test standards for performance and by holding schools accountable for results. But how can the nation’s 15,000 school districts meet this challenge? Districts need to generate what San Diego Schools former Chancellor Tony Alvarado calls “a ratcheting demand for schools to produce at a high level.” In the words of educational innovator Robert Slavin, “You’ve got to change the culture of the school – create a sense of impatience and high expectations.” Surely step one is to look closely at what is working – to identify clear-minded pioneers of educational progress that have inculcated a culture of achievement. They may not have discovered panaceas, but by demonstrating durable success, they now point the way for others – provided that their stories can be widely shared and adapted. Scale is crucial. With 92,000 schools and 47 million students, reforming schools – one by one – is not enough. Success has to be created faster and on a larger scale than the piecemeal progress of inspiring individual principals or teachers who achieve miracles by dint of their own special talent, energy, and charisma. To scale up, we need to identify educational strategies and models that have shown success in district-wide and in scores or hundreds of schools – not just on test results, but lowering retention and drop-out rates and lifting graduation rates. We need strategies that work, not just in elite schools in affluent suburbs but that have tackled tougher socio-economic terrain and raised the performance of all students, closing the achievement gap between minority students and the highest performers - not just for one year, but continuously. Once we understand the ingredients of their success, we need to publicize their experience so that others can learn from them and widely replicate their lessons. With those benchmarks in mind, our team obtained rigorous assessments from independent educational evaluators at NAEP – the National Assessment of Educational Progress, RAND, the U.S. Department of Education, Council of the Great City Schools, American Institutes for Research, Education Commission of the States, and from such independent scholars as Richard Elmore of Harvard, Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford, and Steven Ross of the University of Memphis. At our request, these and other evaluators singled out the best performing models used in hundreds of schools nationwide. Among elementary school reading programs they cited Success for All, Direct Instruction, and Core Knowledge. Among whole school reform models, they saw the best results from the Comer Process, Accelerated Schools, and High Schools That Work. One major development they saw was the shift in school reform in the mid-90s from “retail” reform, implemented bottom-up, school by school, to “wholesale reform,” initiated top-down at the district level. To independent evaluators, the districts showing the most dramatic improvements, especially in closing the gap between minority and white students, were Houston, Charlotte, and Sacramento, followed by San Diego, and Fort Worth. Also singled out for significant and sustained gains with a unique strategy focused on teacher development was New York City’s District 2. In some key districts, the driver of change is the new emphasis on standards and accountability, especially in North Carolina and Texas, according to studies by NAEP and RAND. “The whole issue of standards and accountability are leading the way in reform and it will live or die with this,” comments Michael Allen, formerly with the Education Commission of the States. Leading experts urge us to learn from these schools that work, to multiply their gains, and to continuously refine and improve their methods. For even the best are not perfect. But they elicit some common themes and offer an escalator upward for most of America’s children. Replicating effective models of reform can rapidly bring educational improvement up to large scale and spare each of America’s 92,000 public schools from inventing its own reform. CONCEPT and STRATEGY MAKING SCHOOLS WORK with Hedrick Smith takes a rare look at educational success stories, not just for a school here and there but for more than a million students from inner cities to rural America. We take you into classrooms from coast to coast to see how some American communities are making schools work. There's no magic formula; they all use different strategies. But the common denominator is results – lifting scores and closing achievement gaps. Our two-hour prime-time nationwide PBS special, MAKING SCHOOLS WORK with Hedrick Smith, originally scheduled by PBS for common carriage on October 5, 2005 from 9-11 pm, is the centerpiece of the multi-media strategy. The national program profiles several different approaches to individual school reform at the elementary, middle and high school levels and in different regions and social settings, as well as district-wide reforms in three major American cities. No medium can rival television for reaching an audience of millions, attracting attention to an issue, and stimulating public action. The immediacy of television and its potential for realistic story telling can convey, as no other medium, the concrete steps taken and strategies employed in the classroom to achieve tangible gains in student achievement. But television needs reinforcement to build an audience and to extend its reach, impact, and shelf life. In our project, MAKING SCHOOLS WORK , we achieve that reinforcement through an extensive multi-media strategy that includes:
In this project, Hedrick Smith Productions draws on its 15-year track record with PBS of producing documentary mini-series for the PBS national service, all for common carriage in prime-time nationwide. MAKING SCHOOLS WORK with Hedrick Smith follows half a dozen such series on the issues of health care, teen violence, the Washington power game, and the impact of the global economy on our middle class. For example, hundreds of university and college government courses use videotapes of our series on The Power Game (1990) and The People and the Power Game (1996). Roughly 2,000 business and graduate MBA programs adopted Challenge to America (1994) and Surviving the Bottom Line (1998) on global economics. The Justice Department included excerpts from Seeking Solutions, our 1999 documentary about teen violence and hate crime, in satellite training films disseminated to 2,000 judicial and penal centers across the country. Our program web sites are all heavily used – for example, more than three million hits each at the sites for Seeking Solutions (1999) and Surviving the Bottom Line (1998), more than one million hits in one month for our health care series, Critical Condition (2000). All have continuing traffic several years after broadcast. Legislative leaders have invited Hedrick Smith for special screenings of our films for members of Congress. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle requested Mr. Smith to show excerpts from Seeking Solutions to the Democratic caucus. Senators Edward Kennedy (D-Mass) and Oren Hatch (R-Utah) sponsored a special Capitol Hill screening and panel discussion of our two-hour documentary, Juggling Work and Family, on the tensions between job and home in American society. THE PROGRAM MAKING SCHOOLS WORK with Hedrick Smith is a two-hour prime-time PBS special that originally aired nationwide for common carriage on Oct. 5, 2005 from 9:00-11:00 pm. The program profiles several different approaches to individual school reform at the elementary, middle and high school levels and in different regions, as well as district-wide reforms in three major American cities. All are examples of effective school reform with proven academic gains, at scale and over several years. Here is the line-up:
HOUR ONE: Comer Process – Faced with wrenching poverty, drugs, and gang violence, Chicago public schools often focus more on survival than on academics. But one bright spot has been the Comer Process, created by Yale University child psychologist Dr. James Comer in 1968. The Comer Process, commonly referred to as the School Development Program, has been used since 1968 by more than 1,150 schools nationwide. There are currently 300 schools across the country participating actively in the Comer network. Unlike models that take a formula approach, Comer emphasizes a holistic strategy, linking a child’s academic growth with his/her social and moral development. To revitalize education, Comer seeks to re-engage parents and teachers in consensus decisions on school strategies, rather than letting principals dominate decision-making. In Chicago, Jordan Community School Principal Maurice Harvey says the Comer Process helped overcome gangs and get the school focused on learning. Rhonda Jones, a parent, credits Comer's program not only with lifting the academic achievement of her children, but with turning her life around. A former drug addict, she stopped her abuse and took a lead in organizing parental involvement in the school – a key component of the Comer process that scholars say contributes significantly to children’s success in the classroom. The KIPP model is distinctive for targeting middle schools – the tough “dumping ground” of public education, which often gets left with mediocre and inexperienced teachers as well as ill-defined curriculums and inadequate resources. But in 1994, two young former “Teach for America” recruits, Michael Feinberg and David Levin, developed KIPP – the Knowledge is Power Program – at a charter school in Houston. Their strategy: hold all students to high academic standards. No exceptions, no excuses, no shortcuts. KIPP requires a longer school day, Saturday and early summer classes, committed parents and round-the-clock teacher availability. Feinberg estimates that KIPP students spend 67% more time in school than the normal school year. KIPP's 3D Academy, a middle school in Houston with roughly 80% Latino and 20% African-American students, mostly on free and reduced lunch, is demolishing stereotypes. In 2003, 93% of its 6th graders passed the state reading test and 97% passed math. Many of them come from families that work two or three minimum-wage jobs. "They will be the first [in their families] to graduate high school and go on to college," says Diana Soliz, Assistant Principal. Reaching over 6,000 students, there are now 38 KIPP middle schools in 17 states and the system is adding 10 new high schools to carry forward its own middle-school graduates. High Schools That Work – Education reformer, Gene Bottoms, doesn’t mince words, “High schools still suffer from being locked in a system geared for 30 years ago. It’s inadequate for the 21st century.” A former vocational education teacher, Bottoms saw tracking that segregated college-bound from work-bound students, leaving one group with a weak curriculum and the other, lacking a rounded education. High Schools That Work aims to raise student achievement, reduce dropout and retention rates, and boost graduation rates by setting rigorous standards and work-based learning for all. It is now used by more than 1,000 schools in 31 states. At Corbin High School in Kentucky's Appalachian region, students like Wanda Kinsey now dream of college even though her parents never went beyond middle school. Wanda, like many ninth-graders, was having a terrible struggle adjusting to high school and falling behind in her academics. But she was rescued by Corbin High School’s Freshman Academy, a special team effort focused on preventing dropouts developed by High Schools That Work. She and her peers now look at how their schooling can help them in life. She takes a regular course load and also has the opportunity for practical hands-on experience working in a greenhouse, school bank, radio station and other enterprises. The program also pushes the college-bound to get practical work skills. Kentucky school officials report more kids graduating, setting higher sights, and signing up for college. Says Bottoms, “We build hope and change low expectations.” HOUR TWO: New York City District 2 – PS 126 epitomized what critics call a hopeless public school – abysmal academic performance, poor leadership, burned-out teachers. In 1998, only 20% of its 500 pre-K–8 students could read at grade level. Discipline was a nightmare. A decade later, more than half the students could read at grade level and discipline problems were rare. What powered this turn-around was the single-minded focus of former district superintendent Anthony Alvarado on radically improving the quality of instruction throughout District 2, one of 32 districts within New York City. Alvarado – nationally recognized as a pioneer in pushing district-wide reform – held principals accountable as instructional leaders, not building managers. He cut central staff and invested in teacher training. He sent literacy experts and mentors to coach teachers in class. When old-timers balked, Alvarado told principals to move them out; when principals didn’t deliver, he fired 20 of them. Surprisingly, his passion for excellence won the support of the teachers union. Though half the district's 22,000 students live in poverty and 11% are immigrants, Alvarado boosted District 2’s student achievement up from 11th to 2nd among New York’s 32 school districts. While his successors maintained his momentum, District 2 has since dissolved and become part of the massive citywide school system under Joel Klein with 1.2 million students in 1,356 schools. As Klein pushes reform throughout the city, he has borrowed heavily from Alvarado’s strategies and has promoted several of Alvarado’s former principals to serve as instructional superintendents for a number of the city’s ten new regions. His deputy chancellor is also a graduate of Alvarado’s District 2 reforms. San Diego – The supreme test for district-wide reform is replication in a new setting. Anthony Alvarado faced that challenge in 1998 when invited to San Diego’s sprawling 200-school, 140,000-student district, near the Mexican border. School Superintendent Alan Bersin hired Alvarado as Academic Chancellor. With improved teaching as their first priority, they reallocated $65 million a year to finance better training and mentoring for teachers and principals, established three-hour teaching blocks for literacy, and created a leadership academy to train new principals in the Alvarado method. The Bersin-Alvarado team moved boldly though it was only narrowly supported by a 3-2 majority in the local school board, and the board was an arena for constant argument over reform. Bersin’s decision to publicly fire 13 principals at the end of their first year caused an explosion of protest because it was so publicly done (unlike Alvarado’s quiet dismissals in New York). By 2001, student scores showed improvement on state tests, but Bersin and Alvarado had become embroiled in a running conflict with the teachers union, the San Diego Education Association, which vigorously resisted the reforms. As many as 15% of the city’s teachers openly protested what they called the top-down Bersin-Alvarado reform. In New York, Alvarado had developed his reform strategies gradually, working with the teachers union (an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers). In San Diego, his reform blueprint was already well formed and Bersin pushed the plan ahead rapidly. Yet Bersin and Alvarado lacked the kind of personal relationships with union leaders that Alvarado had developed over 30 years in New York. The reform effort in San Diego was hampered by a running battle between Bersin-Alvarado and union leaders over such issues as who would control policy, who would pick peer coaches to train teachers, and whether to hire outside consultants to run staff development for teachers. By 2002, Alvarado felt reform was being so watered down and he had become a lightning rod of union discontent that he quit. For three more years, Bersin tried to keep the reform on track, but in 2005 he was forced out after a school board election overturned the pro-reform majority. In spite of the resistance, San Diego showed significant gains in elementary and middle school student performance, especially in reading. However, it showed no headway at the high school level.
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