Trying Again to Transform Weakest Schools

Teachers receive training as part of a school restructuring. From left, Lizzie Jones, Sonja Jones, Natalie McCuiston, Barbara Mayers and Gloria Fergusson. (Photos By James A. Parcell -- The Washington Post)

At Ballou, teachers were told this year that they would have to reapply for their jobs, with no guarantee of being rehired. But Ballou officials did not follow up on those plans, teachers said.

Earlier this year, Janey began negotiating with several groups -- including the Federal City Council, the Kimsey Foundation and New Leaders for New Schools, which trains new principals -- to develop plans for helping improve Ballou. But the talks were halted after school board member William Lockridge (District 4) complained loudly to Janey that the group was not involving parents and teachers.

The group "did not sit down with anyone on the local school restructuring team," Lockridge said. There was "push-back on the plan."

Gloria Benjamin, assistant superintendent for support services, said her staff is taking another year to properly prepare the plan for high schools. Besides proposing to convert Eastern into a Latin academy, school system officials are considering making Ballou a media and communication arts school, Spingarn a boarding school for students interested in construction, Anacostia a health and medical science school and Cardozo a school for the study of transportation and aeronautics.

Benjamin said the system needs another year not only to develop the programs but also to recruit the right students. "We have to market our career academies," Benjamin said. "We are also ratcheting up our partnerships with business."

Mary Levy, director of the Public Education Reform Project for the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, said restructuring plans in the past have not worked very well. Ballou, Cardozo and other schools on the restructuring list received extensive intervention -- new principals, new teachers and new instructional materials -- 10 years ago.

The failure of previous intervention programs, she said, shows that "this has to be done right. For the most part, these schools were not better but perhaps worse than before they were reconstituted."

Given that experience, Levy said, it is good that the school system is taking another year to plan the career-academy element of the restructuring. "I'd rather they slowed it down and take the time to implement it correctly," she said.