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Aftermath of the 'Miracle Schools' OpEd

On May 31st The New York Times published an OpEd by Diane Ravitch which shook the foundation of the corporate reform movement. To convince the public that rapid transfomational improvement can be accomplished in high-poverty schools with nothing more than replacing the adults with more committed ones, politicians like Duncan and Obama needed to offer proof.

This sentiment is profiled on the NEA website in a page where Duncan answered questions for NEA memebers. "Test scores are tied to parents’ incomes. When will politicians realize that although schools can help to mitigate some of the disparities in society, we cannot be the great equalizer that will leave no child behind?"

To which Duncan responded "I disagree. I see extraordinary high-performance schools where 95 percent of children live below the poverty line, where 95 percent are graduating, and 90 percent of those who graduate are going on to college. I think we have to raise expectations. We have too many examples—whether it’s inner-city urban schools or rural schools—where, year after year, class after class, not just one child somehow breaking out in some miracle, but where schools and school systems are routinely beating the odds. So I would really challenge that teacher to look at what’s happening, in New York City and other places around the country, rural and urban, where children from desperate poverty are being very, very successful because adults had the highest of expectations, pushing so hard to help them."

Duncan's 95-95-90 is a variant on the 90-90-90 schools. Depending on the source the three stats could mean percent of poverty, percent minority, percent graduating, percent having 'high achievement,' or percent going to college.

One of the schools from the OpEd, Urban Prep had nearly 90% in poverty, and 100% of graduates being admitted to college, but by neglecting to mention that only about 60% graduated and 17% passes state tests, he implied that this was one of his 95-95-90 schools. The other two schools had similar problems. Maybe they had one good stat, like in the case of Bruce Randolph. Maybe they had two.

After the OpEd was published, Ravitch was attacked by Jon Alter and also by David Brooks. There was also a defense from the head of Urban Prep. They accused her of attacking their schools. They admitted that these schools were still low-performing, but suddenly focused on the fact that they were improving.

We love when schools are improving. But when politicians exaggerate the rate that they are improving and use those exaggerated claims as justification for shutting down schools and firing teachers at schools with a similar rate of improvement, that's a problem.

A few weeks later, likely in direct response to the OpEd, Newsweek published a list of the top ten miracle schools. We realized, then, that we had to more formally define the term miracle school. We did so on our miracleschools.com website, where we collect and invite others to submit on similar miracle stories.

What we found was (Noel, you are good at this part ...)

Duncan desperately 'needs' a miracle school to justify his heavy handed strategies for school reform. In the absence of any true miracle school, he has to hold up a school that has some good stats and hopes that nobody will delve deeper. Aside from the Newsweek article, we've noticed that you don't hear a lot about miracle schools from politicians anymore. They surely have someone research the schools before touting them, knowing they are likely to end up as part of a miracleschools investigation.

The absence of any miracle schools is proof that it takes a lot more to overcome the effects of poverty on achievement than just the adults 'getting it right.' We find that the miracle schools aren't a whole lot better than the failing schools they are replacing.

Even if they do find a true miracle school, it wouldn't prove anything. (fill in details)

The next progression after getting some true miracle schools would be to find a miracle district. Even though Duncan's miracle schools have been outed, that hasn't stopped him from declaring New Orleans RSD as his miracle district. He really needs this to be true, but we'll show, eventually, with a lot of help, that it isn't.

Epilogue: Miami Central, despite being hailed as a turnaround was still slated to get closed down this year. It is saved for now, but an excellent example of how blurry the line between false miracle school and failing school actually is.