by Murph Shapiro, COSEBOC
December 7, 2012
I’ve just finished three different pieces that include lists of successful practices of inner city schools.
The first is a book, Sweating the Small Stuff by David Whitman in which Whitman describes 6 schools ( 4 charters; a parochial high school; and a neighborhood public high school) that have narrowed the achievement gap and produced graduates who go off to college.
The book was written in 2008 and is available as a free download. It has as a premise that all thses schools are paternalistic and while Whitman claims that’s not a negative, many of the schools’ leaders take affront at this description. But that’s another staory for another time. In chapter 9 after his descriptions of each of the schools Whitman teases out the 20 common factors from these successful urban schools.
The second is a more recent (September 2012) report from the Hamilton Project at The Brookings Institute. Failures and Successes from Charter Schools is by Roland Fryer of Harvard and he procvides us with five factors that are successful in charters that can be applied to urban schools. They are in fact part of a school system project in Denver and Houston.
The third and most recent (November 2012) is a report from Public Agenda, Failure is Not an Option, which describes 9 successful urban schools in Ohio and then lists the 11 factors common to all of them. (The nine schools included primary and secondary schools and were a mix of traditional public schools, magnet schools and a charter school.)
After reviewing the lists I found all three had many of the same practices. Some broke them out in detail in the list while one provided the broad subject and gave the details in its explanations.
While many schools may claim they ascribe to every item on the list it is important to understand the kind of committment successful schools demonstrate to these practices.
List are good reminders but implementation is what matters most.