School superintendents or "stupor"intendent? What were they thinking?

Suppose you were the superintendent of a poor scoring district and your students were the recipient of an amazing 10 million dollar gift. The NICHD (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development) Research Program in Reading Development, Reading Disorders and Reading Instruction and nationally known reading expert Dr Louisa Moats have come to your school district to work with your students at no cost to you. Congress has decided to invest 10 million dollars in reading research and implementation to help the children in your district read at grade level or above! The experts have worked with your students in 9 schools on basic reading skills. The poor and below average readers have made wonderful progress. All students have raised scores up to proficient or at the very least, average reading ability. The NICHD professionals have raised the scores and want to help implement the program across the district. They want to meet with you to help out implement a districtwide program. What would you do?

Would you : 

A) Meet with them and plan a system wide implementation?

B) Show up 2 hours late, listen in a hurry, then blow it off

C) Don't show up at all and send the chief academic officer to greet them with a sarcastic "What do YOU want?"

D) Come to the meeting but tell them you are "too preoccupied with the "fundamentals" and are not ready to turn your attention to  reading."

Did you pick one yet?

The correct answer depends on the superintendent: 

Answers:

B)  Show up 2 hours late, listen in a hurry, then blow it off,  Arlene Ackerman (former superintendent of Washington DC and San Francisco)*

C) Don't show up at all and send your chief academic officer to greet them with a sarcastic "What do YOU want? Clifford P Janey (former superintendent of Wahington DC)

D) Come to the meeting but state you are "too preoccupied with the fundamentals and are not ready to turn your attention to reading." Michelle Rhee (current Washington DC superintendent)

No one answered A.

Why don't superintendents see literacy as a fundamental piece to education? If these 3 superintendents who are highly educated can't figure it out, how can they lead the teachers? What are they thinking?

The DC schools continue to degrade:

In an interview with the documentary, Children of the Code, Ms. Moats stated,

"Then came the opportunity, to go to Washington to direct a five year study of reading instruction and reading development in inner city schools. The project was funded by the University of Texas and headed by Barbara Foorman. I got the job of running the D.C. site of that study. Barbara was in Houston with Jack Fletcher and Dave Francis and we worked on this as a team. I’m still writing up data from that study. It was tremendously informative and it was extremely difficult work because the schools had so many problems and were so dysfunctional.

Nevertheless, in the course of the four years that we stuck it out in D.C. we were able to bring these kids to the average range through intensive professional development for the teachers and equipping them with comprehensive reading programs. We put coaches in the classrooms and had within our project a very consistent, research based approach. In the better functioning schools the kids were above average.

I came out of that experience knowing that the district was totally disinterested in anything we were doing; there was no follow through, there was no support from the district to carry on any of the work we did. All the schools are back where they were."

I corresponded with Dr. Moats and she told me the rest of the story:

"At the end of the study, Dr. Foorman and I did a presentation to the district leaders about the study results (kids were average and above readers at the end of 4th grade) and how we obtained them. The principals in the 9 participating schools requested support for continuing the practices and programs that had worked, and never got any support or acknowledgement that I know of after the project ended. The district kept its contract with Houghton Mifflin even though we had pointed out the relative strengths of another approach (Open Court) that was working exceedingly well in several schools that wanted to keep the program.

Interestingly, DC finally got funded for Reading First in the last round of applications. They needed a lot of outside help to write the grant, which they got from someone else (not me). The grant specified that the same kind of professional development would be used as was used in the NICHD project. But there was no coordination with the rest of the district and very poor organization throughout, and my colleague who went to do the teaching found that chaos reigned as usual.  The implementation was very poor and I doubt if anything was gained there."

In fall 2007, the San Francisco Community Advisory Committee (CAC) for special education board members met with Superintendent Carlos Garcia. I am the first vice chair of the CAC. I brought in lots of evidence about reading research to present. There was polite listening, but Mr Garcia's look was vacant.  Last month, the CAC reviewed the entire professional development schedule for school year 2008-09. NOTHING on reading.  There has been no feedback from Mr. Garcia to this date. The CAC has repeatedly asked SELPA Director, David Wax, about professional development about reading.  There is no information to report. In a parent focus group in December 2008, I brought up the lack of reading instruction again. The looks of district staff were very confused.

Why don't the administation in charge understand reading instruction is THE key component of education? Why do we send our kids to school?  To learn how to READ!!  All districts are supposed to have had a "Response to Intervention" (RTI) program in place for the last several years.  The RTI program is supposed to make sure children are getting scientifically proven reading methodology.  Struggeling readers are supposed to get more intensive intervention in reading. Where is SFUSD's RTI program?  

Don't let San Francisco fall into the same trap Washington DC has.  Please let Superintendent Garcia,  Asst Superintendent Karling Aguilera Forte know that reading is important.

You can email our school district decision makers at:

Carlos Garcia CarlosGarcia@sfusd.edu

Karling Aguilera-Forte Aguilera-FortK1@sfusd.edu

* Remember how Arlene Ackerman boasted about SHE raising scores in DC so she could get her SF superintendent job?  Those high scores were the work of Dr Moats!