Josephine Norwood, a Bronzeville mother of three Chicago public school students, has rebounded from two rounds of school closings that displaced her children from their schools. As she watched the Board of Education approve another set of schools for closing or turnaround last week, Mrs. Norwood had a simple question: Can Chicago Public Schools officials promise that the new schools will be better?
“If this process could guarantee the child the best and they would benefit from the school closing, then maybe it is a positive thing,” Mrs. Norwood said. But she spoke out last week, along with many others, about the need for more transparency and proof that the disruptions are warranted.
As the public schools system entered its annual process of selecting schools for closing or turnarounds, parents, teachers and community groups leveled criticism at school officials for the lack of communication with the communities involved and questioned data from the central office that does not match the reality in the schools. Some also pleaded for the district to delay any action until the corrective measures taken at the lowest-performing schools — the wholesale turnover of administrators and teachers — could be better evaluated and a comprehensive plan for school facilities could be developed by a new task force.
In the end, few seemed satisfied. Parents, reform organizations and others expressed concerns that the school district has embarked on yet another failed reform effort. But school officials remained committed to the district’s turnaround strategy.
Ron Huberman, the public schools chief executive, acknowledged that the process was imperfect, but remained committed to it. He said the alternative — tolerating schools that clearly have failed both the system and the children in it — was not acceptable either.
“Turnaround is not for average performing schools or for poor performing schools; turnaround is really about failing schools,” Mr. Huberman told the Chicago News Cooperative in an interview Thursday. In a turnaround, the students stay in place, but the teachers and the principal are replaced to radically alter the school’s culture of teaching and learning.
Mr. Huberman added that some schools recommended for turnaround had just 2 percent to 3 percent of their students meeting state standards. Ten of the district’s 12 turnaround schools show gains that are “much more promising results than I believe we could have achieved through any other methodology,” he said.
The debate is drawing attention because a national program to restructure the worst-performing schools encourages states to use the same strategies that Arne Duncan, the federal education secretary, introduced as chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools.
“Duncan is using Chicago as an example of how this can be done successfully, and people are looking to Chicago to see whether, in fact, it is successful,” said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy in Washington.
This was the first round of closings and turnover proposals that Mr. Duncan’s successor, Mr. Huberman, owned from beginning to end. He was appointed after the process began last year.
Mr. Huberman made a change to require that every child displaced in a closing be assigned to a higher performing school — something that did not always happen in the past.
The action came in response to an October study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research showing that most students affected by closings were transferred into schools that also were academically weak. Mr. Huberman promised that a transferred student’s new school would rank 20 percent higher than the old one on a list of performance criteria, and promised extra resources to help the students’ transition.
The district works with the nonprofit Academy for Urban School Leadership to manage some turnarounds. (Martin Koldyke, founder of the academy, also serves on an advisory board of the Chicago News Cooperative.)
The involvement of an outside agency has been criticized by union teachers and some parents and aldermen, who say the district is outsourcing education.
Mr. Huberman said Thursday that he wanted to bring in more outside organizations to manage turnarounds. “We want the turnaround space to be a competitive landscape,” he said.
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