I am particularly interested in the response some of you may have to the idea that each child should have a program individually tailored to her/his needs and that some children will graduate at 14 and others at 21.
Selma ----- Original Message ----- From: "Keith Hudson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Selma Singer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "liz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "JOHN AND MARIA GRIMANIS" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Varda Ullman Novick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Irenestuber" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "nick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "liz2" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "jennifer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "trish" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2002 3:43 AM Subject: Re: Schools/education Hi Selma, At 13:24 15/04/02 -0400, you wrote: (SS) <<<< I tried to email this article directly from the Globe but, for some reason, it refused to cooperate to print. I do hope you can get it and would love to hear what you think. Selma >>>> A superb article and most encouraging. I show it below for those interested. The two strong points I took from it were: (a) that Richard DeLorenzo had a great degree of autonomy; (b) he consulted with his "customers" rather than the authorities or experts (he thinks this was the strongest factor of success). This is what we badly need -- whether we have state supported education or private. We need diversity. We need schools to respond to their local needs. We need freedom for those who have a real vocation to teach. My main complaint against state education in England is that it has been centrally directed, and very heavily, too. It is failing badly. We have variations in standards far greater than if we gave freedom to schools. Slowly, painfully, we are learning the lesson of Richard DeLorenzo. Keith Hudson <<<< CHUGACH'S MODEL OF SCHOOL SUCCESS David S. Broder The Chugach School District is one of the strangest in America. Encompassing 22,000 square miles of remote Alaskan wilderness, ranging from the islands of Prince William Sound to isolated ''bush'' villages, it has only 214 students and barely two dozen teachers on its staff. Unemployment in the area tops 50 percent, and three-fourths of the people, many of them Aleuts, are below the poverty line. Two of the school board members live what are tactfully called ''subsistence lifestyles.'' Another is an 81-year-old retired woman bartender. Yet in seven years, this school district, facing challenges of almost unimaginable scope and complexity, has transformed itself into a national model of education reform whose methods are being copied not only across Alaska, but now in the Seattle public schools as well. Last week, the Chugach superintendent, Richard DeLorenzo, stood before a ballroom full of high-powered executives, explaining how little Chugach had won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, an honor that in the past has gone to companies such as Cadillac and Ritz-Carlton as a signal of their success in providing customer satisfaction. The rigorous competition- named for the late commerce secretary in the Reagan administration- has been around for 14 years, but this is the first time any winners have been found in the education world. In addition to Chugach, the five honorees this year included the Pearl River School District, an affluent area in Rockland County, north of New York City, and the University of Wisconsin-Stout in Menomonie. All three represent remarkably successful collaborations among local communities, educators, and businesses in setting common goals and relentlessly measuring where they stand in achieving them. But it is the Chugach story that carries the strongest message to districts that take seriously President Bush's challenge to ''leave no child behind.'' In 1994, when DeLorenzo arrived, the average Chugach student was 3 three years behind grade level in reading and lagging badly in other areas as well. Now these students have moved from the 28th percentile nationally in reading to the 71st percentile; from the 53rd percentile in math to the 78th; and from the 22nd percentile in spelling to the 65th. When state proficiency exams began in 2000, Chugach students topped the Alaska average by 8 percent in reading, 17 percent in math, and 35 percent in writing. This was not accomplished, DeLorenzo stressed, by ''teaching to the test.'' To the contrary, the Chugach curriculum goes beyond the basics to include technology (a laptop is provided every student), science, and social studies. Special emphasis is placed on service learning (involving students in community projects), personal health (to offset alcoholism, which is widespread in the villages), cultural awareness (to broaden horizons) and career development (to ease transition to work). The district provides performance pay bonuses and scholarship benefits to its teachers and offers them an unusually robust 30 days a year of in-service training. It has done this while cutting the administrative overhead from 25 percent to 10 percent of state and federal funds, putting the savings and a growing amount of foundation support into instructional programs. But the key to success, DeLorenzo said, was the application of ''Baldrige principles'' to the whole process. It began with structured discussions with the ''customers,'' the parents and other villagers, local businesses, and the students themselves, to identify their needs and goals. The whole system was then redesigned to achieve those results. Instead of measuring ''seat time'' in the classroom and promoting students from grade to grade, whatever their skills, an individual work plan is developed for each student, who then proceeds at his or her own pace. Teachers monitor pupils' progress constantly and report to their families on how they are doing. Some students meet all the graduation requirements by 14; others have stayed in school until 21. Subjecting familiar bureaucratic structures and methods to rigorous scrutiny in pursuit of measurable improvements in customer satisfaction is the defining characteristic of the Baldrige approach, whether it be in check-printing companies or fast-food chains (two other winners this year) or in schools. This systemic approach to education reform, championed by organizations such as the National Alliance of Business, is being tried in a growing number of districts across the country, and DeLorenzo recently lobbied Secretary of Education Rod Paige to embrace it as the best bet to achieve Bush's goals. Few places face the physical and social challenges of Chugach. DeLorenzo says he will not rest until at least a million other youngsters are experiencing the success his 214 students have come to know. 15 April David S. Broderis a syndicated columnist. >>>> __________________________________________________________ "Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say." John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
