Interview with an Administrator at HSPVA

     After our discussion with Mike Feinberg concerning charter schools, we decided to take a look at magnet schools. The High School for the Performing and Visual Arts is one of the more specialized magnet schools in HISD, and we decided to start there to see how magnet schools operate. An administrator at HSPVA agreed to meet with us, but has asked for anonymity, so he will be referenced to as the interviewee.

     We started by asking about funding, and received a surprising answer. According to the interviewee, HSPVA receives “significantly more” money than regular comprehensive high schools. This extra money goes toward specialists that are brought in for the fine arts programs. In addition to the relatively large allotments from the tax base, HSPVA also holds fundraisers to generate more funds. As he explains, these fundraisers allow the school to have freedom from the monetary restrictions of HISD and the state of Texas.

     We also discussed the role of the administration in HSPVA. Administrators at HSPVA and all schools have to handle a range of tasks, including satisfying parent complaints, ensuring teachers are performing their jobs, and communicating with the school board and higher levels of administration. An administrator’s relationship with teachers is supervisory in nature and differs from educator to educator: it is “everything from ‘let me hold your hand and walk through [your performance]’ to ‘nice job see you in a week.’” The relationship is both personal yet hierarchical.

     In addition, the administration has three main components to its job: “political... leadership... and management.” Politics clearly places a large burden on administrators because they have to use time to ensure that “the right people get in front of the school board to speak.” How the school board, a publicly elected group of individuals, votes affects how every school operates, thus requiring everyone involved with them to devote time and energy into promoting his or her agenda in this political setting. On top of this political aspect, administrators have to function both as leaders within the school and the community and as supervisors, regulating the actions of the school. As the interviewee states, “my job is to understand everything that goes on in this building...and to make sure there are no train-wrecks.”

     Yet administrators that could be totally devoted to students and teachers are instead spending time catering to the political system that gives them funding. The administrator we interviewed says that “this is a complicated system” because of the “multiple layers of control, spending, and [politics].” He stresses the hierarchy of things, that there is an extensive chain of command of bosses and subordinates. The politics involved with running a school under the school board is draining time and energy from every school’s leading figures.

     
     We then discussed the educational ideals of HSPVA and how the school runs its program. In HSPVA, every student devotes three hours to their specific art form every day, an art form that cannot be changed easily for his or her four years at the school. According to the interviewee, there is only a select few that are willing to devote this amount of time to the arts, and so the artistic program cannot be expanded to other schools in the district. He gives the analogy to “skimming cream,” taking only the cream of the crop for HSPVA. While clearly an excellent means of finding exceptional artists, this also prevents those that could be great from being exposed to the arts, and limits the expansion of the same art that HSPVA is trying to teach and promote.

     The interviewee also offered the suggestion that to create a good education system we must encourage and promote the hopes and dreams of students at lower grade levels. Those who are struggling in lower and middle school lose confidence and will not succeed in high school sometimes even dropping out. This is reminiscent of the interview with Mike Feinberg, who stressed the necessity of an appropriate “mindset” for students to succeed. The interviewee, however, stresses the ramifications of not maintaining this will to learn and perform, mainly that students who have had their aspirations crushed see no point in trying in school. He suggests that at some point in middle school, the child-like will to learn is crushed by schools, and that to fix high schools, we must look into younger grades and see why students lose their passion.

     Looking at magnet schools in general, he explained the myriad of problems. They cost significantly more than regular comprehensive high schools, not including the expensive busing that is required to transport students that are not close to the school. Magnets also are supposed to serve the gifted and talented in their area of expertise, something not in line with the public school agenda of serving every student, or the goal of serving only district students. Thus, magnet schools, while providing a specialized education, do not always fall into the mission of public schools to serve everyone and promote the “no child left behind” doctrine.

     In general, the interviewee believes that HISD provides schools adequate freedom to teach what and how they want. “Exemplary” schools in the school district are allowed to teach freely as long as the students perform well on standardized tests and fulfill the set curriculum. HISD is also one of the few districts that allows schools to determine the number and positions of teachers, and actually gives a large degree of freedom to schools in spending their allotted money. 

     Thus, in the interviewee's opinion, the current system is adequate in providing education, but he believes that there is something in society that “turns students off” at young ages. Akin to Feinberg’s hypothesis, the mentality of society as a whole must be changed to better the system, but this mentality does not go hand in hand with any fundamental transformation of the system itself. 

--George, Joey, & Zach

Interview with Mike Feinberg

     On April 4th, 2011, we met to hold an interview over the phone with KIPP co-founder and Houstonian Mike Feinberg, who had earlier served as the 2010-2011 St. John’s School All School Convocation speaker. We took notes and recorded the phone call via webex and an iPhone. During the call we discussed several topics, including what had caused Feinberg to start KIPP, the logistics of running a charter school, what causes KIPP to be successful, and problems with HISD, public schools, and funding. 

     Our twenty five minute conference call with Mike Feinberg brought up some interesting points about charter schools and their role in education. He emphasized the importance of competition within the system, and pointed out that charter schools are an effective way of producing this competition. The role of KIPP and other charter schools is not to take over the district or fundamentally change the method of delivery, but to introduce healthy competition to improve the level of education throughout the district in question.

     On this note, Feinberg stated that KIPP “want[s] to have the same impact on HISD the way FedEx impacted the Post Office...FedEx didn’t hurt the Post Office, it made it better” by helping to end the government monopoly on mail. In a similar manner, he hopes to end the “government monopoly” on education with schools such as KIPP.

     Feinberg later stated that his primary goal is to turn “the school system into a system of schools” by introducing competition and promoting parent and student choice.  Without charter schools like KIPP, regular public schools have no incentive to improve or progress, because the students have no choice but to return year after year.  One of KIPP’s and Feinberg’s goals is to create a “mindset” conducive for learning, which is in large part created by focusing on the college aspect of education.  Additionally, KIPP works to ensure active parent participation in their child’s school life, ranging from monitoring their child’s homework to being an active part of parent organizations.  Feinberg hopes to influence the entire education system and public
expectations through KIPP’s exemplary approach to teaching.

      Feinberg stated that he is not aiming to expand KIPP to the size of a full district, but rather to demonstrate that with the right mentality, every school can achieve success and improve performance. He believes that the children are not at fault for poor performance, but that the teachers and administrators create an atmosphere averse to learning because of a lack of will to evolve. A change in attitude, starting with healthy competition among schools and within schools, would drastically improve both academic performance and the educational environment. Feinberg noted that KIPP’s per capita expenditures are not drastically more than that of HISD, so funding is not an adequate excuse for poor performance. In fact, KIPP schools run on approximately 90% of the state funding regular HISD schools receive. Feinberg added that even though the KIPP system is extremely scalable, in order to have real change and real success other charter schools must grow and develop in order to promote competition and induce positive changes in the education system as a whole.

      Feinberg also emphasized that having a publicly elected board of education (such as that of HISD and the State of Texas) means that every action has a political connotation, and that it is crippling the system’s high level decisions. These politicians are not committed to doing everything in their power to help the students because they have their own political careers in mind. In addition, Feinberg posits that it is of paramount importance that as a society, we all hold every student from every zip code to the same expectations in success.

      Feinberg’s unique view, being an insider heavily involved with HISD but still distanced by his school’s charter status, clearly illuminates certain issues that would not otherwise be noticed. He identifies problems with HISD and public schooling in general, and lists solutions for both problems which have been solved as well as for remaining issues. His most basic, and emphatic, point however, is that in order for education to advance, the government monopoly must end and competition must arise to challenge schools to perform better.

--George, Joey, & Zach

Who We Are and What We Are Doing

     Education is one of the pillars of society that affects every single person.  In order for the community to achieve success, it is vital that every individual receives a useful and fulfilling education.  Yet this basic necessity of society often falls short of needed expectations.

      The three of us (George Bailey, Joey Cowan, and Zach Long) chose to investigate public education in the US, particularly in the Houston Independent School District, because it is a matter of immense importance for everyone that students receive a useful education.  In the 1950’s, public schools in the US were among the best sources of free education in the world.  However, over time public education programs in this country have fallen behind those of other developed nations.  Even though dropout rates in the US have been slowly decreasing, they remain high compared to what is expected for a developed nation.  Minority and low-income students remain highly susceptible to low high school graduation rates.  In 2008, African American and Hispanic graduation rates were significantly lower than the Caucasian rate.  In light of these trends and the fact that only 85% of Americans receive a high school diploma, the term “Education Crisis” is not far from the mark. 

     To start off our investigation, we watched "Waiting for Superman," a documentary following five students from across the country applying for positions in magnet schools.  This movie made us realize the inequality of opportunity based on a student's socioeconomic background and the zip code they live in.  The system should not force students to attend the schools they are zoned to, because every school is inherently different and may not adequately serve every child's needs.  "Waiting for Superman" illustrated the helpless nature of children facing the school system's inequalities and raised our awareness of the complexity of the problem we have decided to investigate.

     Through independent research and interviews with people inside and outside HISD, we hope to develop an understanding of the problem.  We will meet with people from a variety of school types and review the research and solutions proposed by other investigators.  Weighing the pros and cons of each solution and comparing them with the opinions of those interviewed, we will arrive at our own solution.  As we continue our research, we will post our findings on this blog to record the opinions of those we meet and consolidate the myriad of proposals for the improvement of the education system.

--George, Joey, Zach