Fixing Urban Schools - Essay Example

? Fixing Urban Schools Policy Review MEMORANDUM Fixing Urban Schools March 11, Problem ment: There is a lot of pressure on the system of public schools. Since the 1980s courts, state legislatures and education departments have disassembled local administrative systems and school boards. The schools are now in the hands of state officials, mayors or local appointed boards. This happened in a few states. The takeover by state governments and courts is a way to stop the political gridlock on public school systems. The move intends to reduce the hold of bureaucratic routine, and create room for those with new ideas. Placing new leaders in control of struggling schools is the best way to bring change to urban schools. New leaders often move aggressively to enhance fiscal management, personnel policies, and building maintenance. However, most of them have failed in searching for methods to improve school performance. There are so many problems faced with school controllers because they lack knowledge on how to solve public school problems (Hill & Celio, 1998). Overview of Issue/Problem: In attempting to enhance the performance of their schools, big city leaders face issues of political and intellectual types. The political issue is the complexity of developing and maintaining a strong coalition that can conquer the resistance to change that many large organizations face, whose constituency consists of opposing civil employees and interest groups. Only a number of communities have enjoyed the advantage of both a system of political support and strong ideas. Political support is important because it plays a huge role in making ideas come to life. It is not clear how to solve the issues faced by city schools. Without proper direction, the millions of young people’s future living in the city are at stake. This is because they need the public school system to shape their employment ability and their entry into society (Hill & Celio, 1998). Apart from teachers, members of the school board, mayors, foundation leaders and city council need to have an idea on how to improve school systems. One of the vital elements of reform policies that can transform performance in schools is giving responsibility to other school members other than just superintendents. Most superintendents maintain their jobs for approximately three years. The school officials normally hire a different superintendent serious and confident enough to advance a school and raise the performance of students. Three years is not enough to achieve set goals. When a superintendent leaves, he or she leaves behind partially implemented plans and unfulfilled goals (Hill & Celio, 1998). The reasons why public schools face these issues is poverty, racial isolation, social instability and labor unrest. It is also helpful if local leaders can gather the needed administrative and political support to attain such reforms. The biggest challenge faced by urban schools relates to the reality that the term connotes worries concerning experiences of education for minority and poor youth. Improving public schools hence communicates the idea of conquering inequalities in occupational, educational, and social opportunity throughout economic and racial groups. Overview of Current Policy: The policy of fixing urban schools encourages school restructuring as a way to allow improvement in the achievement of students and the effectiveness of an organization. This happened with the appointment of state officials and local appointed boards to run schools. The move prevented any bureaucracy in the management of urban schools. Because of bureaucracy, schools normally have a poor relationship with community and parental networks. This relationship is important because it helps facilitate the effective education of children. Creating a sense of community for public schools is a suggestion by many scholars. They claim that this is what separates different schools socially. For example, catholic schools run based on functional communities. This means that the members of the school share school facilities such as churches and interact outside class or the school itself. Another policy is for school leaders to find ways of increasing school funding. There lacks a reliable empirical evidence on whether school funding can help schools overcome the issues faced (Rosenholtz, 1985). However, having more money will mean new facilities, a higher number of teachers, and a better quality of motivated and talented teachers. All this will lead to increasing the social attraction of students to schools (Shouse, 1991). Pros and Cons of Current Policy: The advantage of creating a ‘value community’ in a school is because it creates social relationships. A supportive value community will also attract many students to the school. This will increase the money that a school receives. Communal organization creates a consensus over values and beliefs, and a general agenda of activities, coursework, traditions and ceremonies. The problem is that encouraging a community based educational center may lead to a dysfunctional community; in a way that common styles, activities and values work counter to educational goals. This sense of schooling does not really focus so much on academic performance for the student. Teachers may ignore daily realities by viewing positive self-esteem and social relations as rational substitutes for important student effort and academic requirements. The importance of giving responsibility to other school members other than superintendent enables development to continue even after the superintendent completes his three-year contract. It provides an opportunity for other school members to be part of the development process. The problem is that this will create members to be at loggerheads when deciding the direction to take towards the development process. Increasing school funding creates a number of advantages that will eventually lead to better performance by students. Enough funds will ensure that a school has enough resources to provide better quality education. Proposed New Policy: Teacher’s professional development is frequently a policy for school improvement. However, professional development has not been sufficient in improving teaching. This is because its implementation is normally using methods that violate vital conditions for learning. Researchers agree that in order to encourage teacher learning that results to teaching improvement, professional development needs to pay attention to instruction and the outcomes of students in teachers’ schools. They also need to give opportunities for uncompetitive inquiry, feedback and help. Lastly, they should connect teachers to outside expertise while respecting their creativity and discretion. To achieve effectiveness, these experiences need to be continuous and sustained instead of episodic or short-term. In most cases, teachers lack the proper resources to handle new state standards and changing demographics (Newmann, King & Youngs, 2000). There are other ideas that can help schools improve the performance of students. One is that it is recommendable to retrain twenty-five percent of teachers who have students with low scores in their tests. Students in the bottom schools need first priority when it comes to transferring to other schools. It will give these students a chance to improve academically. Different schools have different systems and performance scores, so giving students a chance to explore their educational ability is encourage able through transfer priority. A school can also look for special funding to recruit teams that deal with school design to direct the transformation of schools with low quartile scores. If this does not prove effective, the principal can offer parents a voucher to allow them to transfer their children to a private school or to other districts. There is a rapid change in the demographic of secondary and elementary schools in the US due to high immigration records. These demographic changes are happening alongside execution of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. This act is among the urban policy that the United States is implementing to ensure that educational performance improves in public schools. The policy is a federal law that holds the accountability of schools for the performance of partial English speaking students. No Child Left Behind has the ability to enhance the education of immigrant and partial English speaking students in a number of important ways (Capps,  Fix,  Murray, Passel & Hernandez, 2005). Reason(s) for Policy Adoption: It is important for schools to adopt changes to the policy because it will help improve the quality of education received by students. The policy will encourage better performance by immigrant children and those disadvantaged socio-economically. The use of well-trained teachers will also encourage school attendance. Having motivated teachers will extend the motivation to the students. Their motivation and talent will mean the teachers will have the capability of relating well with the students. Increasing school funding takes a lot of ideas and relations. A school has to have leaders with connections and politically capability to ensure that they receive the needed funds (Shouse, 1991). References Capps, Randolph; Fix, Michael E., Murray, Julie; Passel, Jeffrey S. & Hernandez, S. H. (2005). The new demography of america's schools: Immigration and the no child left behind act. Retrieved on 11 March 2013 from http://www.urban.org/publications/311230.html Hill, Paul P. T. & Celio, Mary B. (1998). Fixing urban schools. Brookings Institution Press. Newmann, Fred M., King, Bruce M. & Youngs, Peter. (2000). Professional development that addresses school capacity: Lessons from urban elementary schools. American Journal of Education, 108(4). Rosenholtz, Susan J. (1985). Effective schools: Interpreting the evidence. American Journal of Education, 93(3), 352-388. Shouse, Roger C. (1991). Teachers as mentors: Building communality in an urban school. Retrieved on 11 March 2013 from http://www.ed.psu.edu/edadm/Shouse/pandpurb.html Read More