Apr 27, 2006 5:20 PM
The Department of Education’s decision to end the Extended Time Schools program this summer closes the book on one of the city’s — and nation’s — most successful programs for turning around low-achieving schools.
The 40 ETS schools, using a dense web of academic interventions and supports, were able to raise student achievement and increase retention of highly qualified teachers at much higher rates than the rest of the system, and this in schools that the state had marked for possible closure.
Extended time wasn’t even the half of it. There were at least eight factors that worked in tandem:
Since Joel Klein became chancellor, he has dismantled the program little by little, leaving staff and students to carry on with less help (and increasing worry). Now he has announced he will end the suspense by ending the program entirely, though the UFT was able to negotiate a one-year grace period for existing staff on salary [“DOE, UFT agree to new housing aid; One-year grace period for ETS” on page 2].
When the ETS program began in 1998 — born of a collaboration between the UFT and then Chancellor Rudy Crew — these 40 Schools Under Registration Review (SURR) had extensive and complex problems. Students entered far behind; they moved frequently; the buildings were dangerous, disorderly and in disrepair; principals came and went. Teachers often quit midyear, seeing there was nothing they could do for their students.
But in a few short years, the changes were dramatic. By 2002, the Chancellor’s District, which housed the ETS schools, was cited by the Council of the Great City Schools as one of four model “turnaround” districts in the country. Accolades from other quarters followed. Most tangible, and impressive, were the extraordinary gains that students in the ETS schools made in overcoming chronic illiteracy and innumeracy, and in meeting demanding state standards. The buildings may still have been substandard, but the students were thriving.
“Every objective analysis concluded that the Chancellor’s District was a success, with student scores rising at rates well above the rest of the system. It was particularly effective at improving the performance of students in the lowest quadrant, Level 1,” UFT President Randi Weingarten said in a 2004 speech.
How was this accomplished? It was not through the tough talk and table-pounding that sometimes passes for accountability among non-educators. Drill-and-kill test prep was not substituted for curriculum. No one threatened to fire any teacher or administrator who didn’t “perform.”
In fact, there was no silver bullet involved — no one reform or strategy could be identified as the driving force behind improvement. Teachers did not receive prizes or bonuses for test scores. Students were not pre-selected. The neighborhoods those schools served did not change appreciably.
Instead, what set the ETS program apart was the comprehensive web of research-based instructional and improvement strategies that these schools implemented together.
The pattern of student achievement in the ETS schools over the last six years appears to support the view that their success was the result of all these factors working together. From 1999 through 2002, when the program was fully functioning with all of these elements in place, the percentage of ETS students meeting reading standards, while lower than the school system average on an absolute basis, improved at a noticeably faster rate than the average improvement in the rest of the system.
During those years, the ETS schools gained 7.7 points in the percentage of students meeting reading standards compared to 2.9 points for the system overall [see Level 3 and 4 section of chart above]. There was a similar pattern in math. At the same time, the percentage of students far below reading standards (Level 1) declined at a dramatically faster pace than the rest of the system [see Level 1 section of chart], almost 15 percentage points versus 4.3 points systemwide. The math declines in Level 1s in ETS schools were three times the system average.
The Board of Education produced two reports on the ETS schools, comparing them to other SURR schools that received additional resources but did not join the ETS program. It found that the ETS schools outperformed the non-ETS SURR schools in both reading and math. In addition, ETS schools increased their numbers of certified teachers while the comparison SURR schools lost ground. A UFT survey found that in the 2002-2003 school year just five ETS teachers transferred out compared with 47 transfers from non-ETS SURR schools.
Perhaps by 2003 these schools would have taken a breather anyway. But when the chancellor launched his Children First initiative in 2003, he ejected Success for All in favor of his selected reading thrust, Balanced Literacy. In addition, he gave the ETS schools less freedom to pursue their program, insisting, for example, that they comply with various instructional methods and schedules he put in place. Class sizes began to creep up, and the demands of test prep cut into the targeted interventions that ETS schools had designed.
From 2003, the ETS school scores show a different rate of change. They continued to improve, both in the percentage of children meeting standards and the declines in Level 1s, but the rate of change just slightly outdistanced or closely paralleled the system averages.
From 2003 to 2005, ETS school students went up 10.8 points in reading, the exact same gain as the system overall. The ETS schools reduced their Level 1s by 8.3 points over those years versus 6 points in the overall system. In math, the ETS schools gained 10 points while citywide schools gained 11 points in percentages meeting standards. Level 1s in math fell 7.5 points in the ETS schools and 7.1 points in all schools.
Only the chancellor can say why he decided to formally end the program. He argues that the extra 37.5 minutes in the new contract virtually replaces the extended time in ETS schools, though in fact its benefits do not extend to most students. He has substituted his own interim diagnostic assessments. And he has shown little interest in one key ETS element: lower class size. The UFT was able to convince former Chancellor Levy to hold on to Chancellor Crew’s program, but it was always the chancellor’s call to keep the program alive, and this chancellor opted to kill it.
This is a perfect example of throwing out the baby with the bathwater: a reform that works is shed by a successors. ETS schools, rest in peace for now, though successes such as these are not easily buried. Reincarnation is always a possibility.