Group seeks to determine equality in Pittsburgh public schools
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Citing varying rates of success at city schools, the education group A+ Schools yesterday unveiled an effort aimed at determining whether students have equal access to quality teaching and other resources.
The initiative, School Works, will include confidential interviews with 21 of the Pittsburgh Public Schools' middle-grade and high-school principals in October.
A+ Schools is recruiting 75 volunteers to interview principals about staffing, training, coursework, support services, learning opportunities and other resources.
Carey Harris, A+ Schools' executive director, said the interviews will be supplemented with data to be requested from the district. She said the district agreed to make principals available for interviews, and she believes it will turn over data, too.
Ms. Harris said the initiative is modeled after the Ready Schools Project in Washington, D.C.
The initiative comes about a week after the district announced that it had met the federal achievement standard known as "adequate yearly progress" for 2008-09. Officials said Pittsburgh, four years into an academic-improvement effort, is the largest district in the state ever to make AYP.
"That is certainly an achievement to be celebrated. But that's more like the bottom requirement than the ceiling that we're reaching for," said Sala Udin, chairman of A+ Schools and president and CEO of the Coro Center for Civic Leadership.
While district Superintendent Mark Roosevelt has said his accelerated learning academies and certain other initiatives were designed to funnel additional resources to disadvantaged neighborhoods, school board members Mark Brentley Sr. and Randall Taylor frequently raise equity concerns.
At an education committee meeting last week, Mr. Taylor downplayed the district's attainment of AYP, saying some schools continue to post "tragic" test scores.
A 2006 Rand Corp. study also found significant disparities in graduation rates at the district's 10 high schools.
Mr. Roosevelt has said the district has "pockets of excellence," something parents accustomed to school-shopping well know.
Joslyn Rhodes, an A+ board member and retired city teacher, said parents shouldn't be concerned about quality varying from school to school.
"This is one city," she said.
Ms. Harris said volunteers will be trained before they're dispatched in teams of three to interview principals. She said the volunteers will work from a list of questions developed by A+ Schools and the Ready Schools Project.
Ms. Harris said the findings will be discussed at a series of community meetings to begin in January. Then, she said, the findings will become part of the group's advocacy agenda.
She said the initiative eventually may be expanded to include interviews with teachers. John Tarka, president of the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers, said teachers would provide a "candid assessment" and add to the effort.
"I would encourage A+ schools, as soon as it possibly can, to fold teachers into the information-gathering process," he said.
Prospective volunteers may sign up by calling A+ Schools at 412-258-2660 or by sending an e-mail to info@aplusschools.org.
First Published August 19, 2009 12:00 am
