Poor schools' success weighed against the greater opportunities money brings.
High winds may have blown out the heat and electricity at Georgian Forest Elementary one chilly day in 2003, but the learning never faltered.
Teachers at the Silver Spring school forged ahead with the day's lessons, while students huddled in coats and strained to read by the light streaming in through the windows.
Talk about getting back to basics. But in a sense, that is exactly what "Getting Results -- High-Performing, Low-Income Schools in Maryland," a new book, is about: Doing more with less.
"One of the points of the study was to create some positive press on public schools for once -- saying, yes, there are schools out there doing well despite the odds," said author Megan Farnsworth.
Georgian Forest is one of five Maryland public schools Farnsworth profiled in the book, which will be published next week by the Maryland Public Policy Institute in Germantown.
Farnsworth contends that students in high-poverty schools can achieve as much as students in more affluent schools -- if their schools possess certain crucial intangibles, such as teacher commitment, parental support and a curriculum derived from careful analysis of testing results.
"Getting Results" has received acclaim already from experts, ranging from advocates of school choice to the schools superintendent in wealthy Montgomery County.
How Farnsworth's findings may figure in policy debates is a different matter.
While experts agree that her book offers deserved recognition for schools that are beating the odds, some part company when it comes to the conservative agenda of the book's publisher, a think tank that prefers school vouchers to the pricey funding recommendations of the Thornton Commission.
'No excuses' and 'getting results'
A former teacher and curriculum specialist in Burbank, Calif., Farnsworth was the project manager behind "No Excuses," the conservative Heritage Foundation's 2001 nationwide study of low-income schools that performed well on standardized tests.
"Many of those schools I looked at across the country had the same characteristics as these schools in Maryland -- using data to drive instruction and focusing on maintaining high expectations, not just using those as buzz words," she said.
The Heritage Foundation project became a lightning rod among educators by challenging the notion that public funding drives school performance. "The Heritage Foundation has been on a campaign to advance school choice and to advance devices that essentially divert money into other areas," said Patricia A. Foerster, president of the state teachers union, which backs full funding of the $1.3 billion Thornton initiative.
Farnsworth, now an independent education consultant in Michigan, borrowed the "No Excuses" model and applied it to Maryland to produce "Getting Results."
Her study identifies 12 schools as high-poverty and high-performing and profiles five in depth. It spans rural, suburban and urban schools, ranging from all-white Yough Glades Elementary in Garrett County to Montgomery's Georgian Forest Elementary, which is 21 percent white, 37 percent black and 24 percent Hispanic.
In every case, Farnsworth said, the 12 schools she examined met three basic criteria:
*Belonging to the one-third of Maryland schools having the highest percentage of low-income students, as defined by the number qualifying for the federal free or reduced-price meals (FARMS) program.
*Meeting the 2003 Adequate Yearly Progress goals of the federal No Child Left Behind law.
*Ranking in the top third of Maryland schools based on the reading and math results from the 2003 Maryland School Assessment tests.
The results were disappointing, Farnsworth said, in that no school with 75 percent or more FARMS students made the cut. Also, almost three-quarters of the students attending the 12 schools are white.
"There is no excuse for the low academic attainment of Maryland's poorest minority students," Farnsworth writes.
The schools
For the schools recognized in the book, however, the results could not be better.
James R. Sasiadek, principal at Thomas Johnson Elementary in Baltimore city, said the book accurately portrays his school, which celebrated its 100th anniversary last year, its "busiest ever." The school held a spring fair, built an outdoor ecological classroom and, with help from private donors, added a playground.
At the same time, Sasiadek said, the school improved its test scores over 2003.
Poverty and transience of the student population is a continuing challenge. More than 65 percent of the students receive free and reduced meals, and almost 35 percent move in and out of the school annually.
Thomas Johnson Elementary tries to offer students a buffer from the streets, Sasiadek said, by involving community groups and families in the school's improvement. Sasiadek has even called bosses asking for a day off for parents so they can volunteer at school.
As the book shows, he said, teachers lead by example.
"The message I would hope that people get is you have to build a really strong core group of highly trained faculty who are really used to sacrificing for their kids," Sasiadek said.
Donald D. Masline, principal at Georgian Forest Elementary, agreed.
The anecdote about the power outages at Georgian Forest, he said, "speaks to the dedication that this group of people have to this group of kids."
Jerry D. Weast, superintendent of Montgomery County Public Schools, said recruiting the right staff is always paramount.
"I liked the fact that they just didn't believe the data," said Weast, who has endorsed the book and loves crunching data as much as anyone. "They came out and looked at the schools and did a visual."
The book's recommendations -- high expectations, quality teachers, using data, smaller class sizes, parental involvement -- are widely recognized approaches to school improvement, he said.
Which led him to the next question: "The key is, can you implement these things?"
Next step: School choice?
That's where the discussion gets tricky.
Farnsworth and Christopher B. Summers, president of the Maryland Public Policy Institute, reject the notion that school reform requires heavy spending.
"I don't think throwing more money at the problem is going to solve anything," Farnsworth said. "What will is having teachers and school administrators focused on actually improving instruction and teaching, and instead of just buying a curriculum because someone said it is good, looking at the research and making sure it's going to work at their school."
Farnsworth takes issue with the money schools spend on materials, for example.
"Math doesn't change," she said. "You don't need to buy new books all the time; those materials should last. ... Pupil expenditures have been going up for the last 20 years, and the test scores really haven't."
Summers, who described his think tank as a "micro version of the Heritage Foundation," condemns the Thornton Commission's billion-dollar-plus recommendations, passed into law by the Maryland General Assembly in 2002.
"As we've showed in our paper, increased funding doesn't necessarily mean increased test scores," he said. "We don't believe there is a funding problem in the state. Thornton is the poster child of really horrific public policy."
Weast strongly disagreed.
The Thornton funding formula is essential to making the Montgomery school system rich enough to attract quality teachers, he said, given the high cost of living and especially of housing in the county.
Thornton is not just "throwing money" at a problem, Weast said. "I believe in investing in things that work. Money matters, but how you spend it matters most."
Alvin T. Thornton, associate provost at Howard University who steered the Thornton Commission in 2000 and 2001, said the institute's ideas will provoke serious opposition.
"Thornton represents the consensus of the governor, the House and Senate," he said. "What this group should be doing is reviewing the extent to which these high-stakes tests our children are required to take are adequately funded. This is dangerous what they're saying, that low-income children can perform on these high-stakes tests without adequate funding and support."
The Maryland Public Policy Institute is also hard at work on a voucher plan it intends to present to Baltimore city officials. Summers predicts that the school funding crisis in Baltimore will cause the school system to implode, and "we want to pick up the pieces."
Farnsworth also champions school choice, saying it is the best tool for creating that magical, if elusive, working combination of community and parental support for schools.
"If parents in the community have bought into a school, if parents are feeling supported by the school, I think there's much more of that sense of community that's developed," she said.
While schools that manage to cultivate such an environment are admirable, Thornton said, there is no guarantee that another school in different circumstances will be so fortunate.
Educators are always hungry for new information about schools that are succeeding, said Diane Rentner, deputy director for the Center on Education Policy in Washington, D.C.
To the extent that "Getting Results" supplies that information, it ought to be applauded, she said.
But the author's and publisher's faith in school choice as a solution is probably misplaced, Rentner said, pointing to a controversial report in the New York Times last week that charter school students fare worse on standardized tests than their public school peers.
"These are quasi-public entities providing choice, and while they may make kids happier -- I don't want to downplay that -- they've not improved student achievement," Rentner said.
Foerster said that while No Child Left Behind allows low-income students in failing schools to transfer to better schools, often only higher-performing students have taken advantage of the option.
"Public funds available have to be focused where the vast majority of Maryland students are going to be getting their education" -- i.e., public schools, she said.
But school choice is aimed not just at rescuing individual children, Summers said.
"By allowing kids to go to a better school, you now allow competition where government has a monopoly. School choice is not about shutting down the public school system, it's about improving it," he said.
Sasiadek, who is president of the Baltimore County school board as well as a Baltimore city principal, said he sees school choice as fundamentally American.
"It's not just chance and it isn't fate," he said. "[It is] that you can take an active part in making a better life and choose the school that's best for your child ... that might not always be the public schools."
