Bekah McNeel

Tag: Mohammed Choudhury

The McNeels Choose a School, part six: What’s going to happen at Hawthorne? And why?

January 25, 2019 No Comments

Applications are in for our three choice schools. It was super easy. Everyone should do it. 

While we applied, we were automatically registered for our neighborhood school, Hawthorne Academy. It’s a valid option. It’s the kind of school where our kids would be fine. We’d be fine. Everyone at Hawthorne is giving it their all, from what I hear. They just have a vision problem.

Unrealized potential is really frustrating. And where there’s frustration, there’s fighting. It’s one thing when the fight comes to you, it’s another thing to choose to go to the fight. With your kids in tow.

Allow me to explain.

When I first started writing about education in 2013, Hawthorne was a school that folks were watching. Located along the San Antonio River, adjacent to the hottest real estate in San Antonio (the Pearl), it was one of those schools poised to naturally grow its enrollment as a formerly semi-industrial neighborhood filled with people.  

It was one of SAISD’s first in-district charters, focused on Core Knowledge, fine arts, and leadership. Librarian Bonnye Cavazos was the spark that brought in partnerships with neighborhoods, academics, museums, and more. 

Ironically, in the same article wherein I profiled Hawthorne, I wrote about Lamar Elementary, which was similarly located in gentrifying Mahncke Park, with lots of museum partnerships, community involvement, etc.

I say “ironically” because the two seem to have switched places, six years later.

At the time, Lamar was fighting low enrollment. The middle class parents moving into the neighborhood eyed it somewhat suspiciously, though a healthy handful were investing time and energy into getting more resources, forging partnerships, etc.

Under the leadership of Brian Sparks, Lamar is quickly becoming one of the more beloved success stories of SAISD. Parent engagement is up with a strong effort to reach all socioeconomic groups, enrollment is up, partnerships are thriving, and the school’s identity is strong. It has ridden the wave of investment in the cultural institutions with whom it partners.

Not that Lamar is without its challenges, but I’m not going to get into those here. 

Hawthorne, with the same leadership it had in 2013, seems to be stuck. Enrollment is declining. Parents are frustrated. The Core Knowledge curriculum seems to have faded away, while the rest of the charter is in jeopardy as it comes up for renewal this spring. The “leadership” component, it has been suggested, could come from “Leader in Me” curriculum, the same basic Stephen Covey product used all over other school districts and the Alamo Colleges. It’s exactly the kind of pre-packaged, mass market stuff that in-district charters are supposed to be avoiding. 

Some parents at Hawthorne have put forth another idea. They would like to see Hawthorne embrace its place along the San Antonio River more fully, and to partner with civic institutions like San Antonio River Authority (SARA), The Tobin Center, The Culinary Institute of America, The Missions, the University of the Incarnate Word, and others to create a place-based curriculum. As a River School, students could feel connected to the city and see real life applications of what they learn in school. They could see science in action at SARA and the CIA, arts at the Tobin Center, history at the Missions. And they could connect to all of it via the same familiar route: the river.

That idea comes straight from parents whose children are and have been enrolled at Hawthorne for a while. They have been digitally walking around with a Word document asking people to read it.

Now, a few things I’ve learned about parent-led initiatives: Many are enrichment-focused, with little impact on academic subjects. Many are also niche interest projects that will live and die with the parents who champion them. Also, most, like the River School idea, are spearheaded by white, professional class parents. When that happens you have to look at who the idea actually benefits, and who actually wants to see it happen.

However, the River School idea may actually be different, because it’s built off of the existing charter, and has a wall-to-wall vision for the whole school. Not an after-school club, school within a school, or an elective. It would be a marshaling of resources for every child in the school, and bring many low-income kids into contact with powerful institutions, giving them a sense of ownership and belonging in their city.  

From an equity standpoint, I like the River School idea.

SAISD has two in-house resources that could further develop this initial idea if parents and teachers wanted to do so. 

First, they have access to the funding they would need to realize the more ambitious parts of the plan. Senate Bill 1882 would allow a partnership with any of those nonprofit entities (or an umbrella nonprofit formed by the City of San Antonio), to bring in extra per student funding. Unless something changes drastically in the Legislature this year, that will likely be around $1,400 per student more, which could fund supplemental activities and supplies and personnel needed to facilitate all the off-campus learning and on-campus professional development, hosting of partner organizations, etc. 

Next, they can look to a similar model in Dallas ISD. While City Lab High School opened after Mohammed Choudhury left Dallas to become SAISD’s chief innovation officer, he was part of the design process. He knows what needs to happen to make sure students were academically on track while using the city as their classroom.

Of course, mention Choudhury’s name (or any member of Superintendent Pedro Martinez’s cabinet), and conspiracy theories start flying. Something about wanting to turn all SAISD schools into charter schools (because of Democracy Prep at Stewart), or funnel resources to the middle class (because of Diverse by Design schools)…I honestly can’t tell if the theories are misunderstandings, misinformation, or just a bad game of telephone.

But I’m not here to defend or skewer the guy. He knows how to design a school like this, it’s a design parents seem to want, and a design that’s having success somewhere comparable. CAST Tech does similar stuff, ALA does similar stuff. Hawthorne could take that “stuff” and make it something really distinctive and empowering for the kids, and I just hope that it wouldn’t be tripped up by people’s suspicions about how a bureaucrat feels about charter schools—which has nothing to do with the parents’ River School proposal. That would be a shame.

Hopefully, they won’t. The school has been given an extension on its charter revision, and hopefully they will use that time to summon their creative juices and come up with something that inspires the teachers, students, and parents. Hawthorne could very easily recapture its moxie. They’ve got all the ingredients, they just need the right recipe.

Texas School Finance Commission: You get the teacher you pay for

February 22, 2018 No Comments

A teacher at Olmos Elementary in North East ISD works with students. Photo by Robin Jerstad for Folo Media

When Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath was Dallas ISD Trustee Mike Morath, he championed a performance-based teacher salary system.

Three years in, student outcomes are up, teachers are happy, and it’s going very well, DISD superintendent Michael Hinojosa told the Texas School Finance Commission, except that it’s bleeding the district dry.

“We’ve put all our money into teachers, and (now) we don’t have any,” Hinojosa said. 

Gov. Greg Abbott’s 2017 commission to study school finance met for the third time today, with two groups on the agenda: teachers and pre-schoolers. (The pre-kinder presentations will be covered in a subsequent blog post.)

Teacher quality, pay, retention, and evaluation occupied most of the day for the commission, which seems appropriate as personnel costs account for about 42.9% of total education spending in Texas, according to the Texas Education Agency.

Practitioners, interest groups, and experts all agreed that teacher quality is essential to equitable education. They also agreed that compensation matters. 

Some go above and beyond trying to quantify the value-add (or subtract) of a good (or bad) teacher. The commission heard from Eric Hanushek, a Stanford University economist who made the argument that one good teacher can add $430,000 to the lifetime earnings of his or her class. Hanushek also went so far as to say that money spent incentivizing teacher performance was more effective than the total amount of money spent on education. 

“If you confine your discussion to how much you spend or how much you add, you’re not going to get very far,” he said, perhaps unintentionally echoing Craig Enoch, the first presenter of the first commission meeting.

When pressed by commission member Rep. Diego Bernal (D-San Antonio), Hanushek would not say that total money spent didn’t matter at all, only that how it was spent mattered more. Like Enoch before him, Hanushek presented a scatter plot graph that, he said, demonstrated no correlation between increased spending and improved outcomes for students. States like New York and Wyoming increased their spending more than any other states between 1992 and 2011, but it was frugal Florida with the highest growth. 

From Eric Hanushek’s presentation to the Texas School Finance Commission

Commission member Rep. Paul Bettencourt (R- Houston) immediately suggested looking into what Florida is doing right.

“It’s hard to put any state in the shoes of any other state,” cautioned Hanushek, though he did note that Florida has a robust school choice program instituted under former governor Jeb Bush.

After spending a very long time discussing the minutia of Hanushek’s data, too long according to commission chair Scott Brister, the commission got back on track to talk about teachers. 

Teacher attrition in Texas was 16.5% in 2016. Environment was a major factor in attrition, presenter after presenter confirmed, as was lack of opportunity to grow in any way other than seniority or leaving the classroom to get into administration. Compensation, of course, is one way to measure professional growth.

Hinojosa, as well as representatives from Lubbock ISD and rural districts, spoke about the various systems of teacher compensation and talent development they have in place, and how that relates to both student performance and teacher retention. While the systems varied in scope and sophistication, all shared common elements: 1) pathways for teachers to promote up without leaving the classroom, such as a “master teacher” track, 2) evaluations systems that consider factors beyond state test scores, and 3) more pay for high performing teachers. 

DISD, which has the most highly developed system, the Teacher Excellence Incentive, also uses incentive pay to get the most effective teachers in front of the students with the most obstacles between themselves and their goals. These thirteen ACE (Accelerating Campus Excellence) schools where high performing teachers are paid an extra stipend, have gained considerable ground in academic and disciplinary outcomes as well as parent satisfaction, according to the district.

Commission member Todd Williams, education policy advisor to Dallas Mayor Mike Rowlings, reported that it would cost around $1,200 per student to implement the ACE model at the average Texas school.

Pay is only part of the equation, Holdsworth Center executive vice president Kate Rogers said. At the Holdsworth Center, the focus is on intrinsic motivation in talent development. Rather than “carrots and sticks” she said, they train district leadership to cultivate those inherently driven to succeed. Such people will be attracted to a system where their compensation reflects their performance, Rogers explained, but they don’t need compensation to drive their performance.

Nikki Beaty, a teacher at a high need school in Lubbock ISD, affirmed Rogers’ assessment. Lubbock ISD also uses performance pay to encourage the best teachers to stay in high-obstacle classrooms. While she would be there anyway, Beaty said, the extra pay was an encouragement to her family, who sacrificed along with her when her students needed extra time and energy from her. That support made it easier to stay, and affirmed her commitment. 

Lubbock’s system includes intensive mentoring and professional development, and Beaty said that works with the performance pay to create a collaborative professional environment.

Many teachers support the idea of differentiated pay, said representatives from the Association of Texas Professional Educators, the largest teacher representative group in Texas, as long as it is accompanied by sufficient minimum salary requirements and effective mentoring.

All of these efforts, many presenters noted, amounted to professionalizing and adding prestige to what has become a discounted career.

“It’s not that highly regarded respected position it used to be,” said Don Rogers of the Rural Texas Educators Association.

Of course, Finland and Singapore each came up several times. These countries are known for the high social capital and carried by the teaching profession. 

Dallas ISD and a growing number of other districts appear to be moving in that direction. But superintendent after superintendent confirmed that, at current funding levels, it is unsustainable. In Dallas ISD non-instructional staff has not received a cost of living wage increase in over a year. In Lubbock the program will simply end. Centerpoint ISD, could not afford pay increases, so they used days off and special mentoring lunches, paid for by the superintendent himself.

This kind of inconsistency keeps teachers from enthusiastic buy in, ATPE executive director Gary Godsey said.

With that testimony before them and around them, those going before the commission to say that money doesn’t matter appear to be increasingly in the minority.

To be continued…

Post Script

The night before the commission meeting Bernal sat on a panel for an “Ed Chat” hosted by Communities in Schools of San Antonio. To Bernal’s right, co-panelist Raúl Rodríguez Barocio lamented the lack of competitive spirit in the city, and the drain that put on the middle class. (It should be noted that Hanushek made the same comment about Texas as a whole.)

On Bernal’s left, sat part of the solution. Panelist Mohammed Choudhury, chief innovation officer at San Antonio ISD, was part of the team that designed the DISD system, and there’s no reason he can’t do the same in San Antonio except that,“it’s expensive.”  He noted that SAISD had to raise its tax rate to pay for the district’s new master teacher initiative. The district also received a $46 million federal grant for teacher incentives.