Mark Zuckerberg, $100 million to Newark Schools! A Portland gift? Questions!
What will Mark Zuckerberg’s generous contribution ($100 million) to Newark Schools accomplish? Mark is the ‘wealthy wunderkind’ and founding stakeholder of Facebook fame who is the ‘ fictional’ subject of a recent movie about Facebook’s founding: “The Social Network.”
Will Mark’s gift invite the eventual pruning or removal of the persistent achievement gap we find deeply rooted there and in the Portland Public Schools? Portland Public School’s Superintendent Carol Smith recently asked the PPS Board to support to placing a $500 million bond measure on the ballot to upgrade school facilities. A poll shows it would pass. But if $500 million were solicited for instructional programs, would it be approved? Not without many questions being answered.
Would present Portland Public School administrators be ‘up to’ speed on the leadership variables required?
Probably the funds won’t accomplish much if money alone captures center stage in Newark and funds mainly purchase a ‘new’ cadre of traditionally ‘credentialed’ teachers. Would a contribution of equal size in Portland succeed with even one teacher ‘on board’ who exhibits the customary (widely accepted?) lack of vision and expectations of students?
Would designers, if invited to advise Portland officials, be given sufficient discretion to implement and have the authority (weight?) to require (read insist upon) the necessary details of their instructional models and changes in school culture?
Would the traditional certification and degree requirements in Oregon be deemed part of their ‘experiments’ or rather a means to our ends? Would the Portland Teacher’s Union (NEA/OEA) input/support be sought?
Would a thorough examination of pertinent non-anecdotal research precede implementation of a chosen model here? Would a comparative search examine successful’common components’ of models designed for different grade levels? Would instructional strategies be examined for use that share generic characteristics?
Would founding teachers, project model participants, academicians, journalists,parentsand other interested parties views be considered?
Would available long term, follow up of longitudinal data (long-term data) or meta-analyses be considered in decisions about preferred models?
Would assessments measure absolute achievement relative to a norm-referenced test or employ a multi-year ‘gains analysis’? Would the program evaluation be carried out by outside assessors?
These questions would have to be answered in Newark. With our own funds or a major gift, parallel reflection would need to occur in Portland Public Schools. We owe it to the students of both cities!
In Portland, one might welcome an extended discussion of the above questions (gift or no gift) rather than the extended debate we’ve witnessed about the configuration of grades in buildings, school closures and boundary changes we’ve witnessed this past year.
Are these issues a sufficient condition for solving the persistent achievement gap in Portland Public Schools? Superintendent Carole Smith’s ‘Milestone Framework’ documents where we are. So much for diagnosis! The Framework is a tool to be sure to highlight the gap. But where will we go from there and what explains PPS’s persistent multi-year failure to close it’s gap. Where’s the remediation?
