Memphis City Schools' Plan Falls Short

Rarely has there been a more aptly named document than Memphis City Schools’ “Proposal for Expenditures of Additional State Revenue.”

It’s the Academic Affairs Department’s plan to spend $42 million in new state funds, and it does in fact feel much more like a proposal to spend money than a strategic approach to transform high priority schools threatened with state takeover.

In truth, the title reveals more than just the purpose of the plan. It also reveals something about the culture of Memphis City Schools, which lies at the heart of so many of its challenges.

One From Column A

Sitting in a meeting of high-level administrators putting the elements of the plan together, it’s telling that no one suggested a more inspiring, more uplifting name for the plan – something that suggests a commitment to innovation or to finding the levers for fundamental change in the district.

But the name of the proposal is just an indication of more substantive problems. More to the point, the “proposal for expenditures of additional state revenue” seems little more than a grab bag of every one’s favorite ideas with the objective of spending down the state’s money rather than creating the kinds of innovation needed in Memphis City Schools.

It had the expected impact in the governor’s office where it was seen as “more of the same” and as an indication of the district’s lack of understanding about the seriousness of the challenge facing Memphis City Schools as it relates to the 17 schools. It showed a lack of commitment to “doing what’s really needed” to turn things around, said one state official.

Group Think

Perhaps, the plan was just an unfortunate product of the kind of “group think” that often takes place in bureaucracies, but it’s hard to escape the conclusion that it’s similar to several programs and policies advanced in recent years that come from the district’s top-down approach.

While there are many reasons to praise Supt. Carol Johnson, she seemed to be a prisoner of a tightly-knit coterie of advisers who kept the circle small and the input from the outside smaller. It’s the kind of control and command style of management that marginalizes innovators in the district’s schools and makes it even more difficult to stimulate the kinds of bottom-up solutions that are truly needed.

In Memphis City Schools’ plan, it sets out “three main messages” that are in truth rather pedestrian - “intensive support for schools on probation, improve teaching and support for teachers and invest in academic and student support programs.” In other words, when it was read 210 miles to the east in Nashville, state officials read it as something that could have been written anytime in the past four years and lacked the sense of urgency or new thinking that’s demanded by the current crisis.

Something Outside The Norm

So, what dramatic approach is needed to turn around the 17 high priority schools around? Here’s what Memphis City Schools’ plan said: “Ongoing and focused professional development, modeling of effective teaching and assessment practices; ongoing professional collaboration; effective communication between school staff, parents and students; and visible tracking of student progress on a frequent and regular basis.”

While all are worthy objectives, they are read by education officials as warmed-over platitudes, but more to the point, they are read as givens for a major school districts, the kinds of things that should be taking place as part of its regular course of business.

Then, as if to punctuate the bureaucratic response to the problems of specific schools and their individual challenges and specific needs, the plan then essentially treats all schools the same.

Threadbare

Rather than giving each school the flexibility to customize its own strategies, the district’s plan talks about adding FTEs for this purpose or that purpose (down to the detail of one clerical position for the support team), performance-based incentives, lower student/teacher ratios for English as a Second Language (ESL), planning grants for schools interested in becoming charter schools, laptop computers, and adding 30 minutes to each school day.

All in all, it’s a collection of deserving ideas, but it lacks any sense that it is a real program of change or a real strategic approach pursuing a coordinated, interconnected philosophy for transforming these schools. There’s no feeling that there is a strategic thread holding it all together or that a specific outcome is being south.

While the bureaucrats of the Tennessee Department of Education normally tend toward the same sort of incremental thinking, these are not normal days. DOE officials only reluctantly become more forceful in exercising their power over the high-priority schools in Memphis, after years of doing all that they could to reduce their numbers and the scope of the “Memphis problem,” as it is called.

Something Different

But time has run out, and DOE is directed by a governor who never has to run for reelection again. As a result, there is a new sense of urgency communicated from Governor Phil Bredesen to his DOE minions, and impressed by the governor’s personal interest and his unyielding rhetoric, even DOE is looking for something more these days than the plan submitted by Memphis City Schools.

Reading the “Proposal for Expenditure of Additional State Revenue,” it’s hard not to wonder why local and state educational bureaucrats even feel the need to define strategies now.

How about trying something really revolutionary? Appoint the smartest, most innovative principals - with strong leadership skills - to each of the 17 schools, give them X amount of money and give each of them 90 days to develop a plan tailored for that specific school. These principals need to be the kind of leaders who can work with the neighborhood and parents to identify the needs that characterize that specific school and then individualize the tactical responses based on those needs.

The Real Change

Rather than treat the 17 schools as a monolithic group, this approach recognizes the fundamental truth about them – every one of them is different, with different challenges and with different strengths to exploit.

These are revolutionary times for public education. Around the country, districts are experimenting with exciting new approaches and new programs with promising results.

None of that energy is captured in the plan of Memphis City Schools nor is there any hint that it plans to joint the ranks of the nationally known districts that are well-known for their ambitions, their creativity, their virtuosity and their innovation.

In the end, that’s got to be changed before the 17 schools can be.