Over the past few weeks we’ve written a lot about the ASD, from data analysis of their performance to coverage of their community meetings last week. We’ve also also reached out to groups and individuals across the city with stakes in the ASD takeover process, from School board members to state legislators, community organizations to teacher groups. Because this is such a huge issue, we’ve opened up the opportunity for commentary to non-teacher groups to ensure we hear everyone’s voice that is being influenced by the ASD.

In that spirit, I also feel that we would be remiss if we did not reach out to the ASD for their thoughts and comments as well. We did contact them about our coverage and analysis and received the following response from Elliot Smalley, the ASD’s Chief of Staff.

Rather than chop it up, I’ve decided to post Mr. Smalley’s email in its entirety. This not an endorsement of the ASD by this blog, but rather a part of a larger effort to ensure that we have as much openness and transparency around this process in Memphis as possible. Since the ASD is the process, I believe that it is important to also hear their thoughts on the process, undiluted.

You can read the entire response below, but to summarize, he responds to our coverage of the meetings, offers some thoughts on the ASD’s performance so far, and goes deeper into the matching process overall and how the ASD made some of the decisions that they did this year. Well worth a read if you want to get more into the behind-the-scenes for how these decisions were made and how we got to the point that we are today. Here it is (italicized):

School matching reflections

I want to start by saying thanks for the attention you’re paying to this.  (And not just our matching process—all of your posts, from school choice for parents (Amen to that) to book lists for teachers (love seeing Maia’s name in lights) to data analyses.)  There’s nothing more important than getting education right for kids, and we’re humbled to simply be part of this conversation and effort in Memphis.

I read your coverage of our meetings, and I thought I’d focus my response on a few big ideas across two key themes—the meetings and the work.  I want to address the meetings, specifically, and also talk about broader ASD themes and misconceptions.

The meetings.  There were really several sets—Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday—and I thought they got better as the week went on.  By better, I don’t mean calmer or quieter, because that’s not what we look for in community engagement.  We want to hear from people, honor and feel the emotion of people caring about their schools, and generate as much participation as possible.  The quality of information sharing, the level of listening and learning from charter operators, and the focus on kids and achievement seemed to improve as the week went on.

Since last week, our charter operators and the Achievement Advisory Council (AAC) have been carrying the engagement torch—I just heard today about a good meeting involving YES Prep—and that’s how this should work.  Last week’s meetings aren’t the matching process.  They’re the introduction.  The process is happening every day, in communities all across Memphis, and goes until the AAC makes its recommendations in early December.  After that, the engagement continues as the operators further connect with school communities around planning for next year.

Unlike this extended engagement, the first series of meetings are very ASD-focused because it’s our first time standing with parents (we met directly with teachers the previous week) explaining why we’re here—e.g. purpose, criteria for selection, ASD history—and what this means for families.  More and more, we’ve tried to step to the side and give our operators the opportunity to listen, learn, and share.  This means answering questions like “how will you make things better” and “what do you offer my child,” which are 100% in the operators’ wheelhouse, and critically important for parents.  That’s why we’re excited about our operators working with the AAC over the next month to broaden the conversation—convening, surveying, and listening to parents in ways that inform their planning and help the AAC make a recommendation to us in mid-December.

A final note on the meetings—in the spirit of responding directly to your coverage, I thought “revolt” was a pretty sensational word choice.  I don’t think it represented the collective vibe.  We had loud, contentious meetings last year, too.  It’s absolutely right for people to come in skeptical, emotional, and confused by this.  It’s a lot to take in.  For teachers, especially, it’s difficult news.  Understanding this, our goals aren’t to claim we have every answer, but to stand humbly before parents, teachers, and community members; to listen and learn; to make sure we’re sharing every bit of information we have; and to always keep our focus on what’s best for kids.

We definitely don’t always hit these goals, and can get better at this.  So thanks for the feedback on the meetings—we need it—and please keep it coming.  If you have suggestions for how we can better structure these meetings, or add anything to the process that would be helpful, I’m all ears.  Please email me at [email protected].

The work.  Last week’s meetings generated a lot of attention and chatter, and I want to address a few big themes that seem to have risen to the surface.  My main goal here is clarity.  The muddier this gets for parents, the harder it is for them to understand what it means and focus their energy on feedback to operators and the AAC.

• How we developed the criteria for matching.  We started with the Priority schools list—by law, all of these schools are automatically eligible for the ASD.  The new Priority list was just released in August.  (7 out of the 10 schools remaining on our matching list are returnees to the Priority  list.) We wanted to look deeper than Priority status and make sure we were focused on the schools that would most benefit from ASD intervention, so we partnered with Shelby County Schools to agree on six extra performance criteria used to objectively identify schools that are among the lowest performing of the bottom 5%.  We also factored in school feeder patterns (neighborhoods with multiple Priority schools).  The main thing here is clearing up confusion around how the extra six performance criteria were created—this wasn’t done unilaterally by the ASD, but collaboratively with Shelby County.

• How our schools are doing compared to Priority schools going through matching. Our schools need to get better.  I want to start there.  But we’ve only run schools for two years, and two-thirds of our schools were in their first year last year, when we nearly tripled our number of schools.  It’s important to note that only charters are going through the matching process.  If you look at our 2^nd year charters, their average composite proficiency growth over two years is 11.2, compared with an average growth of 2.2 over three years in the 10 Priority schools on our matching list.  All three of our 2^nd year charters had Level 5 growth last year.  Two are off the Priority list.  I say this not to suggest that every ASD school is where it needs to be—far from it—but that when it comes to ASD charters with at least two years’ experience running schools, these schools are showing real promise.  Where our schools aren’t performing, we’re going to hold ourselves accountable.  It’s just way too early to draw major conclusions about school performance and policy implications.  There may be a time for a mea culpa or a moratorium, but not after two years.
• How we chose Raleigh-Egypt as a “transition” school with an automatic pairing. This year, we made the decision for Raleigh-Egypt to go through a transition (vs. matching) process for several reasons.  After Shelby County Schools and the ASD agreed on the extra criteria and added these to the selection process, there were only four Memphis high schools remaining for consideration.  The other three simply weren’t as viable because they either weren’t in a Focus neighborhood (with multiple Priority schools in the feeder pattern), had too few students (this is important for Green Dot to be able to run their comprehensive high school program, and to make an impact on as many students as possible).  Green Dot is the only high school operator growing in 2015, so we didn’t have another operator to engage in a matching process with Raleigh Egypt.  We could have added another high school to the list, but knowing it wasn’t viable, we didn’t want to arbitrarily engage another school community if we (Green Dot and the ASD) weren’t seriously interested in the match.  We don’t create dog and pony shows for outreach—we want to be clear and honest with parents from the start.  And this isn’t a new thing—we took the same approach last year with Bobby White’s Frayser Community Schools at Frayser High School and with the Achievement Schools growing into Whitney and Georgian Hills. This is also the process we’re taking with Green Dot at Wooddale this year.
• How co-location works.  For some charters, there is tremendous value to the phase-in approach, because it allows them to start small and really build their culture and program with one grade of students at a time, adding a grade each year until they’re operating the entire school.  Our phase-in charters averaged 22 point gains in reading and 16 point gains in math last year.  But we don’t make decisions about co-location and what to do with the phase-out grades—that’s in SCS’s court. We’re getting a lot of questions about this, and have to defer to SCS.