275: Two Steps Back
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At the end of last school year, I got some surprising news that a public school teacher that I knew named Kathy Lulu's was thinking of quitting teaching. This is American Life from Ira Glass, by the way. I knew Kathy because before this American life started, I was a reporter for NPR's news programs, Morning Edition and all things considered. And the thing that I reported on more than anything was education. Back in the 1990s, Chicago was going through the most ambitious school reform in the country. And as a reporter based out of Chicago, I spent lots of years in lots of classrooms all around the city. And I could say it hands down that Kathy Lulu's was the single best classroom teacher that I ever witnessed. And she taught at a great school. So last spring, when I heard that she might quit, and that she might quit out of frustration, frustration with changes at her school, I visited her classroom. It was the day after school ended, she was packing up. And I barely walked into her room and turned on the tape recorder when this happened. I was saying that I told all my students that I might not be here next year. So if they wanted a letter of recommendation, they had to give me a letter now, so a few of them took advantage of this. But what's funny is a domino effect, because they did it for every teacher, just in case they went to my partner, they went to the writing teacher, so it was cute, it was cute. I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, give me a minute. Okay. Kathy, we haven't even started to talk. No, I know, I know. Why is it just the thought of just not being back at all? It is the thought of not being back, because I really love teaching. And then the other thing is I'm just sad, because I don't understand really how this could happen in just a year, nine months. Don't see how this could happen so fast. Before the changes this past year, Kathy's school, Washington Irving Elementary was special in a couple of ways. They weren't a magnet school, or a charter school, or anything fancy like that. The staff at Irving wanted to prove that you could make school reform work at just a regular neighborhood school. At the start of reform, in fact, Irving was one of the worst schools in the system, but they moved into a brand new building, got an energetic new principal, and doesn't get more symbolic than this. In 1988, the governor of Illinois signed school reform into law in the Irving gymnasium. TV coverage that night showed him under the unflattering fluorescence lights of the gym, with a stack of pens and a thick legal document that was the school reform law. Governor Thompson signed the measure into law in a special ceremony at the new Washington Irving Elementary School in South Oakley. When the reforms go into effect next July 1, school administration will be decentralized, some of the power goes to parents and local school boards, principals will be gaining more control over their own schools. Okay, fast-forward five years. At the height of school reform in Chicago, I spent a full year at Irving Elementary filing a story every few weeks for all things considered about how things were going there. In lots of ways, Irving became a real symbol of what could be done under reform.
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