Robey: 'Readiness' schools: Weighing the pros and cons

As state and national attention becomes ever more focused on student achievement and the corresponding need to redress the persistent achievement gap, Governor Patrick's "Readiness Schools" proposal is an encouraging venture onto the next stage of education reform.

These school models, which are currently being considered by the legislature, are indicative of a renewed willingness on the part of the state's leadership to think creatively about how to identify and address the problems of underperforming schools and help them better meet the very real-and complex-needs of students at-risk.

Two of the three Readiness School models proposed by the Governor (Advantage Schools and Alliance Schools) would allow for increased flexibility and autonomy similar to the charter school model in most other states. With local approval, school committees could convert existing schools to Readiness Schools or develop new schools. A team of teachers, administrators, parent groups, qualified educational management organizations, among others, could put these schools forward, but school committees would oversee their funding and ensure that they were accountable to their local communities. If enacted and implemented as proposed, the Advantage and Alliance Readiness models would also resolve many of the legitimate concerns around the state's charter schools, including the current funding formula that leeches money from local school budgets and whose approval process does not consider local need or inclination.

However, it is in the third Readiness model, Acceleration Schools, where hypothetical problems become real ones and professional and political agendas may be gleaned in the language authorizing them. Theoretically designed to rescue the state's most troubled schools, possibly by giving a private receiver controlling oversight with the funding determined at the discretion of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the potential exists for almost any school in the state to be declared "underperforming" at the discretion of the Commissioner and the Board of Education. Under this model, any school not meeting the federal Adequately Yearly Progress (AYP) standard in any capacity or in any other criteria the state chose to establish could potentially be declared "underperforming" and forced, against the will of the community, to be converted to a Readiness Acceleration School, thereby stripped of any element of local control.

This is not an unlikely scenario as Massachusetts has imposed on its public schools a unique Catch-22 condition. With the highest standards of any state in the nation, every definable group of students in the Commonwealth (low income, learning disabled, language minority, racial cohort) at various grades must reach an MCAS score of 240 by 2014, with adequate yearly progress each year toward that goal. Should a school fall below the path to 240 for two years in a row, sanctions kick in, among them the potential for being labeled "underperforming."

No other state has set such a high bar and there is growing concern that it is mathematically impossible for everyone to reach that bar. As a consequence, nearly three-quarters of our schools will be marked in some degree of "underperformance" between now and 2014. The prospect that the state could authorize "superpowers" to then seize and transfer authority of schools away from local control is irresponsible and undemocratic at best and alarmingly dangerous at worst.

Throughout Massachusetts, we have high performing schools that have some students at risk, as well as schools that must serve and educate many of our most challenged young people. The common denominator is that in all of these schools, teachers and administrators are continually adapting their strategies to address what works best for each child, working collaboratively with the support of the community to mold good students out of students at risk. We applaud the Governor's efforts to help schools remediate themselves in the form of Alliance and Advantage Schools, but fear the potential abuse and loss of local support should an overly aggressive state agency be given free rein to take over schools at will. A reasonable alternative might be that proposed by Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, which would allow districts to establish in-district charter schools, exempt of some union contracts and flexible enough to manage schools effectively.

Little more than 50 years ago this nation, despite seemingly insurmountable odds, courageously enacted legislation that allowed all children to attend any school, regardless of race. Fifty years later, with all stakeholders working together to focus on improvement rather than on punitive sanction, we can realize the goal of all children achieving at the high levels we expect of them.

Katie Robey is a member of the Marlborough School Committee and is president-elect of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees.