Prepared Text for Board Meeting –
Marc A. Schare
I want to make a brief
statement about High School Reform in general. First, to be clear, there is a
lot to like about all of the proposals we’ve seen. The proposals that have been
approved by district administration will materially change the lives of
hundreds of kids in the next few years and do so in a very cost effective
fashion. The teachers creating these proposals have done yeoman’s work to make
this a reality.
But..
I have two lingering concerns. They are not concerns
about any of these programs but rather, they involve process.
The first concern is that
this board has not been involved at all in the approval process of these new
programs and to be sure, there are policy decisions imbedded in some of these
proposals. The one that I would seek to have input into is the policy decision
whether or not to charge for credit recovery, however, I would hope that this
and future boards have the opportunity for input into reform efforts at all
three levels.
My second concern is more
substantive. There are volumes written about high school reform and the phrase
means something different to everyone in the room. When I first started
discussing this issue in 2005, I had envisioned a planning
effort that would define what we wanted our district to look like 5 or 10 years
out. Change in large organizations is best when it is incremental, so baby
steps are good, but baby steps are only good if we are convinced that we are
going in the right direction. I’m not yet convinced because I haven’t seen
anything resembling a long term plan for our high schools.
I respect the RFP process
for the creation of small learning communities however, if we attempt to do
this year after year, it is likely that we will, after 10 years, have chaos. Indeed, this year alone brings us 2
business programs which, despite the best efforts of the administration and the
creators to differentiate themselves, are similar enough to create confusion,
except that each will probably artificially draw students based on attendance
area rather than program suitability for each student. 10 years from now, will