BY DANA DiFILIPPO
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Schools persistently troubled by poor proficiency test scores, low student and staff attendance and high dropout rates could be closed and reopened with a new academic program and staff next year under a plan Cincinnati Public Schools leaders unveiled Wednesday.
Schools showing no improvement in both one-year and three-year studies of performance data would be targeted, officials said.
"There is an urgent need to raise student achievement and reduce the dropout rates," Deputy Superintendent Rosa Blackwell said.
Under the plan, the district's most successful schools would receive more autonomy. Improving schools would be asked to revise their strategic plans and accept recommendations for further improvement from district leaders.
Unsuccessful schools would either be subject to intervention or redesign.
An "external review team" would visit schools needing intervention, gauge parental involvement, review performance data and assess problems. That team, whose members would be the school's principal, lead teacher and two or three district administrators, could mandate staff training or require the school to implement other reforms. Schools deemed to be beyond rescue would be closed at year's end and teachers would be declared surplus. Surplus teachers could be placed in other schools or reapply at the closed school, which would reopen under a new academic program.
"Redesign would be used only for schools we believe absolutely do not meet the needs of children," Ms. Blackwell said.
The plan was designed jointly by Cincinnati Federation of Teachers leaders and district administrators. Before becoming policy, it must be approved by union members, and school board members must approve it.
School board member Catherine Ingram worried that schools in predominantly poor, black neighborhoods would be targeted. But Superintendent Steven Adamowski stressed that officials won't compare struggling and successful schools.
"A school is competing against itself," he said, referring to one- and three-year measures of progress. "What is important is improvement."
Other board members welcomed the plan.
"When you have a school that is consistently underperforming, it's to me immoral and a crime to postpone doing something about it," board member Harriet Russell said.
Board member Lynn Marmer agreed: "Every year we delay, this is another year those kids in the unsuccessful schools don't have the opportunity to be in better schools. We've tinkered about the edges, and in many cases, that hasn't been enough. We're going to have to make some wholesale changes."
