Middle School Rules Consequences

Committed to reform

How long does it take to turn around a struggling school?

More than a year, members of the South Side and North Side high school communities insisted Tuesday. They made a compelling case to state education officials to allow more time to carry out Fort Wayne Community Schools’ ambitious school overhaul.

The support of teachers, parents and students demonstrated at the hearings should assure members of the State Board of Education that reform efforts under way here are a better course than the unproven oversight of any private turnaround operator.

Public Law 221, Indiana’s version of the federal No Child Left Behind accountability law, set up a sequence of increasingly serious sanctions for each year schools fail to meet academic standards. Although the law was adopted in 1999, the rules and technology to carry out the law weren’t in place until 2004. So this is the first year that any Indiana schools have been at risk of reaching a sixth year of probation and the harshest consequences, which include closing or state takeover.

While lamenting the fact that it takes six years to fully intervene, Tony Bennett, superintendent of public instruction, also acknowledged that fewer schools are falling into the highest categories of sanctions. That’s a clue the thoughtfully designed law is working as intended.

It certainly worked at FWCS. In 2005, school officials acknowledged the impending consequences when they announced a plan to close Geyer Middle School and reopen it as a Montessori magnet school.

“We have decided as an administration: Not on our watch. You just don’t sit around and wait for the bottom to fall out,” FWCS Superintendent Wendy Robinson said in announcing the closing six years ago. That decision was followed by the start of a high school “reinvention” initiative, which became the groundwork for the Leading Educational Achievement with Distinction program. North Side, South Side and nine other schools were designated as LEAD schools last year.

At Tuesday’s hearings, FWCS officials thanked Bennett and other state officials for the urgency they lent to the reform program. But the pressure hasn’t worked in all districts. The state superintendent said he learned from a parent in another targeted district that officials there believed the state was bluffing about a takeover.

Fort Wayne officials never adopted that position. With support from a school board that adopted clearly defined goals, they were able to make dramatic changes in staffing, curriculum and procedures at the LEAD schools. But they couldn’t have done it without a shared commitment from administrators, the board, teachers, community groups, parents and students.

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