"Barbic: Abbott's School Takeover Plan Can Succeed With Right Approach"

Any thoughts on the Achievement School District? (See Educating Texans Phase 2)

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/Barbic-Abbott-s-school-takeover-plan-can-succeed-5457691.php

Barbic: Abbott’s School Takeover Plan Can Succeed With Right Approach
By Chris Barbic
Houston Chronicle

I read with interest Lisa Falkenberg’s recent column on Greg Abbott’s proposed Texas Achievement School District: “Not sold on Abbott’s school takeover plan” (Page B1, April 24). As a Houston resident for 20 years, the founder and leader of YES Prep for close to 15 years, and currently the superintendent of Tennessee’s Achievement School District, I have an informed perspective on how an achievement school district in Texas might work effectively.

The debate about an achievement school district is healthy, and it is fair to ask questions about how this might work in Texas. To the extent Tennessee’s ASD can serve as an example, there are a few common misconceptions raised in Falkenberg’s article worth clarifying.

First, by law, the Tennessee ASD charters can’t pick and choose their students; the charters are not open-enrollment schools. When a charter joins the ASD, it replaces an existing low-performing neighborhood school – one ranked in the bottom 5 percent of schools in our state (Tennessee’s “Priority Schools”). Nothing about that school’s attendance zone changes – all zoned kids are guaranteed seats just as before, and the only kids who can transfer in to our schools are those zoned to other Priority Schools. Our ASD charters have special education populations that are larger than the local district averages – in some cases, more than one-quarter of the school’s population.

Second, it is important to put our first-year results – the entire ASD operation in Tennessee is only 2 ½ years old – in proper context. Prior to any ASD intervention, conditions in Priority Schools were dire – fewer than one in six students could read on grade level and the average ACT score was a 14. In our first year, we earned Level 5 growth as a district (the highest-possible growth rating in Tennessee) and our Memphis schools grew faster than the state average in math and science. Where our kids struggled in reading – many of them are years behind their peers – our schools were fast learners, going into the summer with major adjustments and plans for improvement. We worked hard to create a new culture and conditions for success, earning high marks from teachers and parents.

This is what year one in a school turnaround effort is really about – changing the vision of what is possible and setting schools up for rapid growth in student achievement. It has taken many years for the Priority Schools to get where they are, and it will take more than one year to get them where they need to be.

Over the past two years, we have learned a great deal about what it takes to make an achievement school district work. A nimble and responsive governance structure is most important. In Tennessee, the ASD superintendent reports directly to the state’s commissioner of education. If an achievement school district is created to exist in a bureaucracy more cumbersome than the district and schools it is trying to fix, it will never work.

Next, it is critical that an achievement school district have charter-authorizing power. The ability to authorize charters leverages the great public charters already in Texas and provides them an opportunity to serve the highest-need kids.

And finally, an achievement school district will need adequate startup funding. We were fortunate to use federal “Race to the Top” dollars as startup capital. Texas will need to identify when, where, and how this money will flow.

I encourage state education leaders to think about our lessons learned these past two years in Tennessee as they head into the next legislative session and debate the creation of a Texas achievement school district.

Lawmakers have a head start: An effort in the Legislature last year to create an achievement school district gained bipartisan support before it failed for procedural reasons.

Students in Texas deserve better, and I hope state leaders have the will and power to create bold solutions that will give students the opportunity to pursue their dreams and gain the knowledge to grow up and be productive Texans.

Barbic is superintendent of Tennessee’s Achievement School District. Before moving to Tennessee, he was founder and leader of YES Prep in Houston for 15 years.