Challenging Myths

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Excerpt - Introduction:

By Robert A. Kronley and Claire Handley, Kronley & Associates
March 2006

This report differs from many current reports about education - it is positive. It tells the unvarnished story of transformative change in public education in one community. Three different organizations in Chattanooga have joined together to do what seemed to many in the community to be undoable – reform nine urban elementary schools, serving predominantly  low-income and minority children, that were mired in failure. These three organizations – the Hamilton County Department of Education (HCDE), the Public Education Foundation (PEF) and the Benwood Foundation – are deepening and enriching teaching and learning in these schools. In this process, they are defying long-held myths about students, teachers, schools and school districts and about what communities can do to support them.

The story begins with HCDE, PEF and the Benwood Foundation and the exceptional partnership they have forged. Each of  these organizations has its own history and traditions, its own culture and its own purpose, yet they came together to craft a vision of what education could be and should be for the students in these schools. It is a vision that has demanded that each trust the others even when they have disagreed. It has required that they suspend their disagreements to take risks individually and collectively. It has also led them to summon a committed will and fierce persistence in the face of doubt and resistance. Each has done so, and it is these traits that distinguish this partnership from others seeking similar goals.

The vision of the partners has come to life in the Benwood Initiative. The Initiative’s broad goal is to transform teaching and learning in these nine schools so that they become places where all children thrive, gaining the knowledge and skills to be successful. The focus of this broader goal is ensuring that every student is reading at grade level by the end of third grade. Success in literacy – reading and writing with understanding, coherence and sophistication – undergirds success in every other subject, and it is what the partners are striving for. ...