Movie Review
PBS’ Making Schools Work
Maps Success Strategies For Troubled Schools
By Jan Aaron
As she prepares for the new school year, New York educator Daria Rigney has
something else to look forward to: She will be featured in the prime time special
Making Schools Work, airing nationally on PBS, October 5 from 9-11 PM. (Mark
your calendars.) “It’s very exciting,” said Ms. Rigney, a
local instructional Superintendent for District 2 in Manhattan, in a phone
interview from her office. She hasn’t seen the program and won’t
until it airs. The PBS documentary highlights many successful strategies such
as those in her district that are lifting student achievement and turning around
problem schools from coast.
“No topic worries Americans more than the quality of schools,” says
Executive Producer and Correspondent Hedrick Smith. The Pulitzer Prize winning
journalist, who has made 20 PBS prime-time miniseries for Frontline, this time
takes viewers into classrooms from Chicago’s north side to rural Kentucky,
from New York’s lower east side to Mount Vernon, Washington, and across
the sunbelt from Charlotte to Houston to San Diego.
The New York segment spotlights the 1987 districtwide reforms launched by
Anthony Alvarado. Central to his theory was that kids needed to learn more
powerfully from teachers who needed to teach more powerfully. Put into practice,
they were especially effective at PS 126 in District 2 on Manhattan’s
Lower East Side when Ms. Rigney was principal there. “It was called a
hopeless school,” she recalled, adding that radically improving the quality
of education made a great difference. Indeed, according to the film, this laser
like focus on increasing the quality of teaching turned around performance
in District 2 in a decade. The documentary points out the large-scale reforms
continuing in New York schools, under School Chancellor Joel Klein.
Making Schools Work begins where reforms began in 1980’s, with models
designed to carry out reform school by school. It examines an elementary scripted
reading program; a charter middle school program for young teens run like a
boot camp; a program aimed at troubled communities that focuses on building
a culture of learning; and a high school program that actually helps students
realize that there is use for algebra later in life by connecting their academic
activities by to real-world applications.
Want the answers to these questions: What are the secrets to revitalizing
unsuccessful schools? How can schools raise test scores, inspire students and
teachers, and create a consistent climate of achievement? Tune in October 5!#
