Gates Foundation gives Millions to NYC DOE for "Transfer Schools".

A few weeks ago I heard a news story. It seems that Bill and Melinda Gates are donating
millions of dollars to the NYC Department of Education. Under the guidance of
the Department of Education a decision was announced to use the funds to open a large
number of new “Transfer” High Schools.

“Oh good”, I thought. “Now those awful kids who cannot read or write and behave so badly will get what’s coming to them. They’ll go to a strict school with real rules and no nonsense teachers. It will be like the army. We will send them all to military school just like rich people do with their kids who get in the way of their plans. If you act up, you’re out; Shunned, deported, exiled, excommunicated from the regular public school system. It will fix everything”.

The issues facing the new New York City Department Of Education are a little more complicated than a military model could handle. But there is a feature that schools like this could share with the military. That is a the presence of a “spine”, a “core”, a central value that is clearly communicated to and understood by all in the organization, a value that finds expression in every practice and policy. People need a “Big Idea” that brings everyone back to the same ground when things get really tough.

Maybe they ought to create “The Same Page School”. When you think about it, the very nature of being human puts us on separate pages constantly. We need to organize ourselves very carefully if we expect to resist realities constant march towards chaos. This is a march in which high school aged “students of the untoward” can find places to escape from learning. Effective instruction has eluded them for eight years. They have had various interactions with school authorities. Now they have their own conditioning. They are, in effect, trained to hide, to cover, to redirect, manipulate, overstate, understate, accuse, attack, and confuse anything that might make them accountable and thereby vulnerable to that gang of strangers and oppressors we call teachers and principals.

How about the teachers and administrators who have been “through the ringer” of school programs and positions and now find themselves in one of these “new schools”? What do they need? Does anyone think for one moment that any of these persons have received intense and focused training for dealing with the specialized issues that are inherit with At Risk students in small school settings?

Small schools do not mean easy schools. Lack of size (population) translates to less funding and scarcity of teaching resources. Most every staff member must wear multiple hats and wear them well. Everyone must perform in a fashion that is extraordinary. The group interpersonal dynamic in a small setting can be your greatest tool or your biggest impediment to success. If anyone needs a “same page” it these folks.

There are a number of ways that one can think of a school with a mission to educate students who are unwanted by neighborhood or standard schools. One is to see them as “second chance schools” with staff and programs tailored to meet students’ special needs. Consistent and compassionate discipline systems and differentiated or compacted curricula to help some catch up while not holding others back would be a good idea. Comprehensive counseling and academic support services to address the issues that lead students to need a second chance in the first place would be another must.

Another way to plan a “transfer school” is for use as a place to send discipline problems that the regular schools will not or cannot deal with. But, with students coming in all times during the year the learning environment is always in flux and it would be pretty near impossible to teach in a school like this without all the necessary afore mentioned extras.

So, you tell the teachers and parents that the school is a “Theme” school. You screen incoming freshman students for interest in your Theme area to create a stable student body base, all the while continuing to intake students that other schools do not want whenever the district placement office tells you to. You follow though by funding programs that focus on your school’s theme art or specialty areas even if the primary needs of the students are for counseling and academic support.

I don’t know just what kind of “Transfer Schools” the Gates Foundation will be funding
in the new DOE plan now, but I can tell you from my experience that dumping untoward students into Theme School programs that are not specifically directed and designed to meet the needs of the populations being brought in will result in no good.

Creating new special schools as a method of taking pressure off of already overworked regular school educators is a way for public schools to avoid learning to educate all students in a normal environment. It very well could result in the sequestering of children with social and learning problems to special, separate, and (due to high rates of miss-behavior) sub-standard and dangerous institutions.

Some where in the medieval past of the Board of Education they had schools for students who were problematic. They were called 600 Schools. I have often heard teachers and
administrators speak wistfully of a time when “bad kids” were sent to places where they
“belonged”. In trying to re-create these ana/chros/ities they are asking principals
and teachers to play the game with a deck that is “stacked” against them. This is because most of the bureaucrats in power only know about moving students and funds and not a thing about providing the kinds of services kids with the special needs are entitled.

The students who show up via these school referrals are by no means “bad seeds”. They generally are world weary and creative survivors of what life has dealt them so far. They deserve a chance but they have baggage. Schools need rooms to keep that baggage and systems for going through it when kids are ready to” unpack”. If Bill and Melinda are going to donate money, let that money be spent intelligently. Check the research on working models for kids who have not been successful in regular schools and use it as a guide.

Most importantly, “Place. Don’t Dump!” Make sure that sending schools have the proper supports in place to help students where they are. Transitions are not often helpful to a person in crisis. Let the “door swing both ways” for students who wish to return to the regular school.

I am not in opposition to small schools. I am opposed to creating special schools without special knowledge and understanding. And I mean understanding about what they are doing not about some other facet of education. You don’t send a generalist to do a specialist job. Its time for educational leaders to get educated!