Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Sunday, July 23, 2006
The hard way to save a school
(New Omega Principal Tracy Ross )
In today’s DDN, I wrote about the Omega School of Excellence and its effort to totally “reconstitute” the troubled school, a radical approach that included letting all the teachers and administrators go and starting over this year with an entirely new staff.
This is one of the very rare examples anywhere in the country of a total reconstitution.
Last year I wrote about Dayton Public Schools’ use of this tactic. Dayton also took reconstitution seriously in the four cases where they’ve employed it, requiring all the school staff to reapply for their jobs and administrators restaffing the school picked only those teachers who were a good fit with the new philosophy of the reborn school and its new principal.
But in all cases Dayton placed at least some of those teachers back at the school, and sometimes close to half the staff returned. Even so, as I wrote last year, Dayton won accolades for going that far. No Child Left Behind encourages the use of reconstitution for schools that are persistently underperforming. But in most places around the country it’s looked more like “reconstitution lite,” sometimes with changes as mild as just a new principal. So Omega’s total overhaul is exceedingly rare, although it was made easier since the school is small and the teaching staff is only six.
Omega also is an interesting example of the challenges of starting a school from scratch, even with well intentioned and capable founders.
The school grew out of concern at Omega Baptist Church about the problems of middle school youth in Dayton. Church Pastor Daryl Ward and his wife Vanessa Oliver Ward, both ministers, were persuaded that they could help children most by creating a strong middle school option in the city with their own high expectations school. Originally, they pair thought to start a Christian school, but they quickly decided they’d be better off financially to go the charter route.
And Vanessa Ward originally sought out the most challenging school model around — the Knowledge is Power Program, or KIPP. KIPP today is one of the most celebrated new school models. Begun by two young teachers in Houston, KIPP aims to turnaround kids who fall behind with an intensive model. Kids go to school for nine hours a day and on Saturdays for a longer school year than other schools.
Unfortunately, as Ward says, Omega was about a year too soon for KIPP, which in 1999 was really not interested in expanding and had few materials to guide others in replicating the program. (BTW, this is why Dayton, the charter school capital of the country, doesn’t have a KIPP school, a question I’m often asked.) Ward tried anyway and at first with an ambitious KIPP-like program.
But it was hard to maintain. Over time, tight budgets and parent complaints led to cutbacks in Saturday sessions, school hours and other program elements. Then two years ago, as Ward was taken away frequently by family health concerns, the school began to slide into serious academic trouble.
The effort to save the school will be interesting to watch. It’s also the first example I know about of an organization primarily dedicated to reviving schools through reconstitution. That group, KIDS, is an equally ambitious expiriment, and one its founders hope can take its show on the road to other schools soon.
UPDATE: Omega’s revival hits a few bumps.
(Image credit: Jan Underwood, DDN)
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