Editor’s note: The following essay was prepared by the principals,
associate principals and superintendent of the Orange Southwest
Supervisory Union. They are David Barnett, T. Elijah Hawkes, Susan
McKelvie, Erica McLaughlin, Patricia Miller and Brent Kay.

We
appreciate the recent discussion of the trust and accountability
challenges that school communities are facing today — challenges that
lead, too frequently, to many of our colleagues leaving the profession.

We
are writing, however, from a district where there’s relative leadership
stability, and where the relationship we have with our School Board is
one that empowers us to focus on what matters most, in the areas where
we have qualifications to act.

From our perspective, there are
two things we must do to address the current trust and accountability
troubles in our school communities:

1. Resist the myth that America’s schools are failures.

2. Redefine the roles of school boards and administrators.

Resist the myth

Research
polls consistently reveal that most Americans think their own schools
are solid but that other public schools are in crisis. Why do we tell
one story about our own community but believe a different story about
others?

We believe it because there are powerful forces in
America actively selling the narrative of school disaster. Their intent
is to dismantle and privatize public schools and turn them into sources
of personal profit.

During the last 30 years, a coordinated
public relations attack has been levied on public schools, including
reports and slogans like “A Nation at Risk,” documentaries like “2
Million Minutes,” propaganda films like “Waiting for Superman,” and a
chorus of “We’re bad in math compared to Finland” headlines.

This
attack in the media works in concert with public policy measures that
destabilize public schools. No Child Left Behind, as this newspaper’s
editors noted, is a potent example.

Yes, there are ample areas
for improvement in schools. We know this acutely, because our work —
every day — is about driving the change that’s needed. But America’s
schools are not the disaster that many would want us to believe. In
terms of childhood poverty, infant mortality, teenage pregnancy,
prescription drug abuse and teen suicide, we do have a crisis in
America, and we look bad compared to other industrialized democracies.
But apples to apples, if you compare test scores of students in the U.S.
to Finland, and you control for poverty, our students are world
leaders.

Much of the reason there is confusion and distrust in
our public school system — and why school leaders are so demoralized and
defeated — is because of the national school disaster myth. So we must
get past the slogans and recognize it as a highly politicized effort to
funnel huge sums of taxpayer dollars into the private sector. As Vermont
elects a governor this November, who will then appoint a state
secretary of education, let us carefully listen for hints of this
disaster myth in their framing of the issues, for what’s at stake is the
erosion of the Vermont Strong public sphere and our commitment to the
common good.

Redefine roles

At the same time as
we work to tell a truer story about public schools in America, here in
the public sphere in Vermont, we must more carefully define the roles
and responsibilities of school boards and administrators — and their
relationship with the general public.

The role of school boards
must flow from sound governance practice: a primary focus on
establishing desired outcomes for schools and students, followed by
rigorous monitoring to ensure the desired outcomes are achieved. This is
essential to the future success of Vermont schools.

In
comparison, administration must focus on achieving the board-determined
outcomes and report on progress at appropriate intervals. The school
board tells you where to go; the administrators determine how to get
there. Further, we need to focus the role of the principal so it centers
on educational leadership — not roof leaks, snow plowing, food services
and the like.

If we carefully define the roles of all members of
the system, and act according to sound governance procedures, the work
will get done, and students will graduate with the character, skills and
knowledge they need to contribute to the fulfillment of their dreams
and to the welfare of all. Moreover, it will allow school boards and
administration to better engage their communities in dialogue about what
students need to know and be able to do in order to succeed in the 21st
century.

Universal access to a free, high-quality education is a
commitment our country has made that we must never let fade. Let us
safeguard this public enshrinement of the rights of all, and always meet
the challenge of this mandate with the passion, compassion,
self-discipline and professionalism that it demands.

David Barnett, principal

T. Elijah Hawkes, associate principal

Susan McKelvie, principal

Erica McLaughlin, principal

Patricia Miller, associate principal

Brent Kay, superintendent

Orange Southwest Supervisory Union

The New Orleans Imperative says:
July 22, 2012 at 4:54 pm
While the New York story played out differently because of the players. local and state politics the script for the wrong-headed school reformers is basically the same. In New Orleans post Hurricane Katrina we changed the criteria for failing schools thus declaring more than 100 public schools as failing and turned it over to the free market (charters). Just like New York the reforms created a failure, seven years later the New Orleans reformed school district ranked 69 out of 70 of all the school districts in the state taking mandated standardized tests last spring. Equally as disturbing, the high poverty schools in the reformed school district in New Orleans scored lower than the high poverty schools in several cities across Louisiana in 11 of 12 areas tested. The bottom line is that despite the billions of dollars from the federal government and foundations, firing of all those old bad teachers, no teacher union and no local elected school board the New Orleans reforms failed miserably.
But despite their failure, the Governor and the state department of education is taking its failed model to school districts across the state and have recently passed a ill fated voucher program that will take put more state funds in the private sector and fail more children.
Unbelievable but True!!!