After mulling over this concept for years, the Chicago Tribune's recent RFP for ideas to move the City forward motivated me to write it down. Although the Tribune's effort is predicated on Daniel Burnham's adage of "Make No Little Plans", they have only published ideas that tweak existing programs. Here is an idea for a reboot, not a tweak.
Posted at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Only one component of our nation's education system consistently draws praise and envy from the rest of the world – Higher Education. Our colleges and universities vary dramatically in size, location and curriculum. None has exclusive boundaries; most compete regionally and nationally to recruit top students and faculty. Despite the differences, all types of institutions succeed. While 84% of the top twenty- five colleges are private not-for-profits, 43% of the top 100 National Colleges ranked by US News and World report are government institutions. Clearly, one size does not fit all. Could Chicago apply this lesson to its own K-12 schools? Could Chicago Public Schools (CPS) reboot to produce a homegrown, highly skilled workforce for the 21st Century? The "Network of Networks" offers a blueprint for urban education.
CPS governs 681 schools; it directly operates the vast majority. It educates a student body of 400,000, which would rank as the 45th largest city in the US, ahead of Minneapolis. Currently, only a third of the annual budget goes to teachers’ salaries and overhead expenses represent more than 50% of the overall operating income of a typical school.
In a marketplace that rewards innovation and agility, Chicago’s public schools are being crushed by the weight of its own top-down model, like a glacier and moving just as fast.
Further retarding progress is the nearly exclusive reliance on direct-instruction classrooms, where a single teacher directs up to thirty students. Known as the "Prussian Education model," this system was developed before the City of Chicago was founded and arrived in the US over 150 years ago during the advent of compulsory education.
Perhaps in decades past, when the economy rewarded both brawn and intellect, the model could afford to neglect the development of some students. Those days are over.
Today, individual instructors must challenge and engage students with dramatically different achievement backgrounds and prepare them for standardized tests. Selective enrollment schools can narrow the spectrum of student backgrounds to fit the old Prussian model, so a teacher instructing to the mean level of achievement can produce excellent results. Open enrollment schools, however, cannot; teachers must “differentiate” among learners. This can work when elite teachers passionately invest in the success of each student--but is this viable on a massive scale?
Just as mismatches occur in evolutionary processes, the current top-down model, which fostered the growth of human capital successfully for past generations, no longer works. Perhaps we have reached an achievement plateau due to no fault of the CPS administration or the labor force charged with carrying out their mission. CPS and the Chicago Teachers Union often times find themselves at odds but perhaps the real culprit is a system that has tied a Gordian knot.
If you were determined to learn something today, would you seek a group of twenty-nine peers and solicit a single instructor? Or would you be more likely to seek out a YouTube video? An Audio book? Would you conduct a Google search or watch a Webinar? Maybe you would reach out to a group of colleagues or a respected mentor. Would you invest more in learning if you got to choose the method?
Could it be that one-size does not fit all when it comes to education? Could it be that it never actually did but just didn’t matter that much? Could pluralism be a suitable response to contemporary need for differentiation? Does it make sense to unleash multiple new models all seeking to educate individuals instead of classes?
Chicagoans still seem to hold two mythical ideas about urban education. First, schools seem to be built on a prototype, a concrete manifestation of the one-size fits all mentality. Even today, Chicago continues to build schools just as they do fire stations and police stations. They all come from the same playbook. CPS standards dictate the design of everything from the layout of a computer closet to a classroom, creating a well- intended, but suffocating, consistency that perpetuates a single model.
To be sure, economic benefits derive from standardization and purchasing at scale, but educating individuals effectively will require pluralism.
A second myth is “If We Build It, They Will Come”. The fantasy is that a building can attract need. Nothing could be further from the truth. The City, as a living organism, constantly repairs and rebuilds itself while its own resources, including human capital, shuffle and move. If one neighborhood loses residents, the existence of a school will not pull them back. Institutions are important but they can’t remain immutable while the underlying society changes.
Our society is substantially more mobile than it was when the current education model took hold.
Putting increased emphasis on multimodal transportation, both locally and regionally, will be the lifeblood of schools that want to extend their reach while diminishing the exclusivity of their physical location. Students, and parents of elementary-aged students, should be able to travel anywhere in the City on public transportation for free.
In the City of Chicago, schools are currently permitted only in residential neighborhoods. To build a school in any other part of the City requires special permission or a lengthy rezoning process. Within a residential neighborhood, students have little choice but to attend the school within mandated geographic boundaries. There is limited choice.
Ironically, the District finds itself in parallel with the territorial behavior of gangs, who imperil their own institutions. Would it not make more sense to encourage mobility and disassociate a school with a single residential community? Wouldn’t the ability to choose a school in a different location jumpstart the renewal of a neighborhood characterized by an under achieving school? Wouldn’t this freedom eradicate the boundary mentality that serves to perpetuate the lack of equity undergirded by the real estate tax system?
Would it not make more sense to allow schools to locate in major commercial corridors or near transportation hubs? Instead of a gerrymandered map that dictates attendance, could Chicago develop a marketplace of options that are well served by transportation?
Let's replace the CPS monolith with a “Network of Networks." Under this plan, CPS would remain the authorizing agent of multiple networks; each network would be a group of schools run by a single entity--governmental, private not-for-profit, or private for-profit. Authorized for five years, each network would target an age group (pre-school, elementary or high school) and would operate multiple campuses across the City. Networks could not focus on any particular ethnic group or geographic location; rather, schools of any network would be scattered across the entire City limits. Networks would be rewarded for both absolute and relative academic achievement, with the greatest rewards reserved for relative achievement of their least performing school. Consequently, networks would compete against each other for both high and low achieving students.
Entrepreneurial networks would be incented to seek out the most under-served students, increasing the likelihood that they would locate schools in areas where transportation access is poor. Networks serving older students would recruit from networks of younger students, creating a market for networks graduating high achievers. After a review process, successful networks could expand and unsuccessful networks would be compelled to contract or disband.
Each year, the United States graduates an oversupply of teachers without the credentials or prestige of other traditional professions. CPS currently employs almost 24,000 teachers. As a group, they have an average ACT score of 19, which is not even college ready.
As described in Amanda Ripley’s recent book The Smartest Kids in the World, class size, school size, and parent involvement pale in comparison to the impact a highly qualified teacher can have on student achievement. A master teacher is a consistent predictor of student success. Creating competition among school networks for the best and brightest teachers would likely raise both teachers’ salaries and student achievement. Consequently, elite colleges throughout the US would be motivated to fill an emerging need for training master teachers.
If the existing per student stipend that CPS now grants to charters remained constant across all networks, substantial operating expenses could be redirected to performance incentives. The cost of central administration would shrink to cover just authorizing functions, including data gathering and compliance oversight. Quite probably, enough money could be saved to initiate free preschool in the City. Extending the networks to preschool age children would present the most effective opportunity to close the achievement gap.
Existing charter networks could readily transition to the Network of Networks model. CPS could spawn government-run networks that would be autonomous and responsible for their own curriculum development, culture, and staffing. Other private for-profit and not-for-profit enterprises could aspire to create their own new networks. Public private partnerships could develop.
Controlling each network’s growth would ensure promising results. Each new school added to a network would start with only one or two grade levels so that a supportive culture could be established. A new class would start each year until the school reached full enrollment. Over time, strong networks would grow and weak ones would contract. At some point, an upper limit for growth of a single network would be needed to ensure pluralism and competition. For illustration, the current 681 CPS Schools, without accounting for any new preschools, could be recast as a central network of:
- Twenty networks operating 20 schools each (400 schools)
- Eight networks operating 12 schools each (96 schools)
- Sixteen networks operating 6 schools each (96 schools)
- Thirty networks operating 3 schools each (90 schools)
The Chicago Loop has benefited enormously from the expansion of Higher Education—which is now the second largest private industry in the area, behind banking. Instead of relegating our schools to only residential neighborhoods, where their character has traditionally been stand-alone, imposing, and authoritarian, let's invite them to more animated civic locations, where their presence can stimulate commercial development.
On City arteries well served by transportation, new schools can open in multiuse buildings, where developers would continue to pay real estate taxes. As schools invoke more models than just direct instruction, their physical needs will change and will be less use specific. This will allow more flexibility within the real estate markets for both building owners and lenders. School facilities will more likely resemble office space, and will consequently be freer to adapt and move with demand. Instead of expecting sports facilities on every campus, shared spaces among schools and the greater community will maximize the use of expensive facilities seven days a week.
As neighborhoods have lost population, mostly on the West and South sides, CPS has closed schools to strident criticism. At the same time, CPS plans to build new schools in densely populated neighborhoods that are currently underserved. What should the City do with the closed school properties? Plant a seed. Literally and figuratively. Many of the closed schools--built for another time and poorly maintained—should be demolished to make way for trees and ground cover in a land banking effort. Seeding these sparsely populated neighborhoods with the next generation of parks, while strengthening the Urbs in Horto credo, could be the highest and best use of the land.
Perhaps a small footprint of these sites could be reserved for redevelopment of a preschool, a senior focused education facility, or a transportation hub to support overall student mobility.
Just as we sometimes confuse comfort with well-being, our cultural traditions may stand in the way of necessary change. We must move beyond an out-dated understanding of public education and explore new initiatives to carry our children and our workforce forward. If Chicago proves to be the first US city to effectively build human capital, they will come. In droves.
Posted at 07:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)