Mike Matthews is a special education teacher in the Red Clay Consolidated School District, as well as a past president of the Delaware State Education Association and the Red Clay Education Association.
Twelve years ago, I was a fifth grade teacher at Warner Elementary School, one of six Wilmington schools identified by then-Gov. Jack Markell and the Delaware Department of Education as “priorities.”
It was a challenging time for the teachers, families, community members and students in my building. We were told our school was “failing.” We were told dramatic intervention was necessary. We were told the state needed greater authority to fix what we apparently could not.
At the time, I asked some pretty basic questions in these pages: How did we get here? How were we failing our students? And what could we do better?
Twelve years later, it appears we need to ask those questions again.
Recently, state secretary of education Cindy Marten presented the Delaware Board of Education a working draft of the Delaware School Performance and Success Framework. Much of the proposal is reasonable. Schools should receive help earlier. We should look at more than standardized test scores. Schools with greater needs should receive greater support. We should monitor whether interventions are actually working.
But then, we get to Tier 5: receivership.
Under this proposal, schools would move through five escalating levels of intervention. Tier 4 would allow the state to require a turnaround partner, to direct instructional and operational actions, and to redesign leadership or staffing. Tier 5 would allow a state-appointed receiver or “recovery leader,” a state receivership order and the transfer of powers currently exercised locally.
Interestingly, the department’s own FAQs ask the question many Delawareans will undoubtedly ask: “Is this a state takeover?”
The department’s answer? “No.”
Really?
The department’s own proposal says a state receivership order would determine which powers are transferred and which remain local. It says a state-appointed receiver would assume authority and that authority would later be returned to local governance in phases.
Call it receivership. Call it recovery. Call it intervention.
When Delaware officials take governmental authority away from a locally governed public school system and hand that authority to someone appointed by the state, I’m not sure what else we’re supposed to call it.
And this all feels painfully familiar.
In 2014, the state targeted six Wilmington schools — Warner, Evan G. Shortlidge Academy and Highlands Elementary School in the Red Clay Consolidated School District, plus Bancroft Elementary School, The Bayard School and Stubbs Early Education Center in the Christina School District — for dramatic intervention under the “priority schools” initiative. The state offered millions of dollars, while requiring turnaround plans subject to its approval. The initiative became a major conflict among the DDOE, educators, districts and local communities over staffing and state control.
Back then, I argued that the state was asking the wrong question. And I believe we’re in danger of doing it again. The question isn’t simply: Why aren’t these schools performing better? The better question is: What conditions are we asking these schools to overcome?
When a child arrives at school hungry, there will be differences. When a child arrives at school carrying trauma from violence in his or her neighborhood, there will be differences. When a student has moved among multiple homes or schools during the year, there will be differences.
When a school struggles year after year to fill special education positions, paraprofessional vacancies, counseling positions or other critical jobs, there will be differences.
When one school serves a dramatically greater concentration of children living in poverty, children with disabilities, multilingual learners and children experiencing trauma, there will be differences.
It’s still the equity, equity, equity.
That was true when I wrote about Warner Elementary in 2014. It is true today. And changing who runs the school doesn’t change any of those realities.
There is another reality we need to acknowledge: Schools are increasingly being asked to solve problems that extend far beyond the school building.
We are expected to respond to poverty, food insecurity, housing instability, family stress, trauma, mental health needs, chronic absenteeism and a host of other social pressures that affect a child’s ability to learn. We are expected to identify those problems, support the children experiencing them and somehow make sure they don’t interfere with academic achievement.
And educators want to do that. We want our students to have what they need. We want families to have support. We want children to come to school ready to learn. But wanting to address these problems and having the resources to address them are two very different things.
Schools cannot be expected to function as the safety net for every social problem affecting a child, while being judged primarily on the academic outcomes those problems inevitably influence. If the state expects schools to address the effects of poverty, trauma, housing instability and mental health challenges, then it has to provide the people, funding and services necessary to do that work.
You cannot continually expand the responsibilities of schools, while treating the resources needed to fulfill those responsibilities as optional.
Receivership doesn’t put food in a hungry child’s stomach. Receivership doesn’t hire another reading specialist. Receivership doesn’t reduce a special education teacher’s caseload. Receivership doesn’t put another paraprofessional in a classroom. Receivership doesn’t provide stable housing. Receivership doesn’t make a school psychologist magically appear when there is a vacancy. Receivership doesn’t make poverty disappear.
What receivership changes is who has power.
And the research gives us good reason to question whether changing who has power produces the academic results its advocates hope for. A national study of state takeovers published four years ago in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management found no evidence, on average, of improved math or reading achievement and found evidence of disruption to reading achievement in the early years.
Even the department’s own proposal acknowledges the fundamental problem. On Page 24, the DDOE writes: “Peer-state lesson: broad authority alone does not produce academic improvement.”
Read that again: Broad authority alone does not produce academic improvement.
If that’s the lesson we’ve learned from other states, why is transferring broad authority to the state the final rung of Delaware’s school improvement ladder?
There is another sentence in this proposal that caught my attention: “Accountability is reciprocal.”
Good.
Then, let’s make it reciprocal.
If a school has struggled for years, ask what the principal did. Ask what the teachers did. Ask what the district did. Ask what the school board did.
But let’s also ask what the Delaware Department of Education did. Did the state ensure that the school had enough teachers? Did it ensure that there were enough paraprofessionals? Enough counselors? Enough psychologists? Enough reading specialists? Did it adequately fund the additional needs of students living in poverty? Did it provide schools with the resources necessary to serve multilingual learners and students with disabilities? Did it meaningfully address educator recruitment and retention? Did it intervene with resources when problems first appeared?
Or did we allow inequities to compound year after year and then conclude that the problem must be who sits at the top of the organizational chart?
The department’s own framework says schools should be judged partly on whether students have access to effective educators, stable leaders, rigorous coursework, supports and resources.
Then, let’s judge the state by those measures, too.
None of this means struggling schools should be left alone.
Quite the opposite.
Give them more.
Give them reading specialists. Give them counselors. Give them smaller classes where appropriate. Give them high-dosage tutoring. Give them mental health supports. Give them stable leaders. Give them the staff necessary to properly implement special education and Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports. Give educators time to collaborate. Give families meaningful support. Give schools resources that actually match the level of need walking through their doors every morning.
And then, hold all of us accountable for what happens. Teachers, districts, school boards and, yes, the Department of Education.
Twelve years ago, the educators at Warner, Shortlidge, Highlands, Bancroft, Bayard and Stubbs didn’t need the state to tell them their students faced enormous challenges. They saw those challenges every morning when children walked through their classroom doors.
What they needed was a state willing to recognize that equal treatment of profoundly unequal circumstances isn’t equity.
That lesson hasn’t changed.
The DDOE says in this new proposal that families and communities are partners in improving schools. Then, treat them like partners.
Don’t invite communities to participate in improving their schools right up until the moment the state decides their voices no longer matter.
Fortunately, any proposal this consequential will also have to make its way through the General Assembly. The House of Representatives and Senate education committees are chaired by two people who know public education well: Sen. Laura Sturgeon, D-Hockessin, a retired public school teacher, and Rep. Kim Williams, D-Stanton, a former school board member. Both have been staunch advocates for Delaware’s public schools, and I trust they will give any proposal to transfer authority away from locally governed school systems the thorough vetting it so richly deserves.
Our struggling schools absolutely need intervention.
But the intervention they need is resources, people, expertise, stability and partnership.
Before Delaware creates a mechanism for taking a public school away from its community, perhaps the state should first prove that it has given that community’s school what it needs to succeed.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
