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Class Notes
	Dear Superintendent Janey... (Published September 7, 2004) By MATT WENNERSTEN

Dear Dr. Janey,

Welcome back to school, or rather, welcome to D.C. Public Schools. You’ve been unofficially on the job now since Aug. 11, but September means your job begins in earnest. As this edition goes to press, students have been back to school for almost a week, which should be enough time to get the flavor of your school district, if not in-depth details of specific schools, principals, teachers or pupils. So, now that you have a taste of DCPS, I write this letter to you as one teacher to another.

Our kids suffer in a wounded school system; I hope that in your tenure we will achieve significant improvements, and I’d like to give you some suggestions on how to go about it. Before I begin, I’d like to commend you for touring the schools before your official start of duty. Thank you for going beyond the status quo and reaching out to the schools.Prior to the start of the academic year, my school, like schools across the city, has been preparing and planning for the challenge ahead of us. Our goals are simple: dramatically improve student literacy and continue to achieve adequate yearly progress in mathematics. We anticipate that reaching these goals will be difficult, and, like any good teacher trying to teach a difficult subject, we created an organizer to guide our thinking and simplify the task. I propose to you that a useful organizer for the year that lies ahead of both of us should be: focus, accountability and excellence.

"Focus" means the concentration of attention or energy on a single point. Kervin Smith, another math teacher at my school, recently told me that in experiments, social scientists have found that people can do a maximum of about seven things at the same time. I would argue to you that if we want to actually do something well, scale that back to only one thing at a time. Educational research also shows that fewer things, in more depth, produce better results than a lot of things shallowly. Any teacher who has tried to cover every chapter in a textbook knows this personally.

There are many pressing things wrong with DCPS: special education lawsuits, decaying buildings, declining enrollments, poor test scores, high drop-out rates, school violence, et al. As you set your agenda for improvement, choose focus over breadth. All of these things have been occurring for several years, despite the efforts of past superintendents to tackle two or three or all of them. Each new superintendent has implemented many random acts of improvement, but the only improvements that last are those that are directed at a common goal. If we can eliminate just one negative from the equation of DCPS, in 2005 we will have that much more energy available to focus on the next.

I was reminded of focus by the recent speech of our outgoing interim superintendent, who stated that "We begin the new academic year with one overarching focus: to improve student literacy and numeracy." Imagine you’re a high school science teacher. In addition to your content area, your overarching focus is literacy and numeracy? Please. Pick one.

"Accountability" means keeping track of data, rewarding success and enforcing consequences. Students know that if no one takes attendance, they can cut class. Teachers know that if they allow students to come five minutes late, soon they’ll be 10 minutes late. Principals know that if they don’t observe teachers and regularly check lesson plans, there will be no formal lesson planning.

Personally, I expect you to know how every dollar is being spent. I expect you to know which principals are doing their job and which are ineffective, or not even present at their school sites. I expect you to know which teachers’ classes had the most improvement in reading last year. And if you don’t make time to find these things out for your self, I expect my fellow D.C. residents to demand it of you.

"Excellence" means expecting more and getting more. Mere improvement is not good enough. Our schools contain lots of great teachers who are helping students improve all the time, but taking a ninth grader from a third-grade reading level to a fourth-grade reading level is not preparing that child to graduate. Goals should be specific, measurable and rigorous. The "soft bigotry of low expectations" is absolutely true, and if you think something is too hard, it will be for you. D.C. high schools' lack of success gives us some advantages – if over half of all students are failing, as they are now, then you have tremendous freedom to try something new without fear of jeopardizing a solid program. However, if your new approach now helps 60 percent of students pass, can we really be satisfied with four out of 10 students still being unable to read on grade level?

Let me close by saying that I’m extremely excited about the coming school year, and I anticipate great things for our kids. I look forward to working with you, all of my colleagues and, most importantly, the families of my students to achieve lasting educational success.

Sincerely,
Matt Wennersten

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Wennersten is a mathematics teacher at Bell Multicultural Senior High School and a graduate of the D.C. Teaching Fellows program. Contact him at mwenners@yahoo.com.

Copyright 2004, The Common Denominator