Warren Harding High School, Bridgeport, CT
The positive school climate and its emphasis on high student expectations, coupled with new teaching strategies and practices introduced through intensive staff training, sets the stage for the curricular/instructional focus of the plan’s remaining phases.
Warren Harding High School, Bridgeport, CT
The school’s attendance rate increased from 67% in October 2010 to a remarkable 92% in October 2011, an increase of 25 points. At 92%, the school had the highest attendance rate in the Bridgeport Public Schools for October.
“Students have a feeling of belonging, a sense that their teachers know and care about them,” said Harding Principal Kevin Walston. “That makes coming to school a lot easier, and a lot more enjoyable.”
Since partnering with Global Partnership Schools in the fall of 2010, Harding has focused on removing barriers to learning and creating a structured environment in which students feel supported. (more…)
Helping you deliver your very best through a strong partnership
Every school has the potential to be a great school. That’s the premise of Global Partnership Schools’ turnaround and restart model.
We know from experience that every school, regardless of performance level, has assets that can be developed and built upon to achieve significant improvements in student learning and school performance.
Global Partnership Schools is committed to helping you develop a high-performing school culture.
View the entire Turnaround/Restart Model brochure.
Kevin L. Walston, Principal at
Warren Harding High School
Bridgeport — Warren Harding High School has clear hallways, new academies and a new principal who stands at the front door each morning to greet students.
Bassick High School has committees, 15 of them, that some would say are working at breakneck speed to reinvent the school’s culture and curriculum by the fall.
Both schools, buoyed by federal School Improvement Grants — $2.2 million at Harding and $2.1 million at Bassick — are racing to reverse rotten test scores, sorry attendance records and graduation rates that not too long ago pegged them both as “Drop Out” factories. They are among 14 schools in the state to get the grants. They have three years to turn things around, yet the approaches being used at the schools are radically different. (more…)
Garrison Middle School 6th grade math teacher Mr. Rommel Soriano, right, hands a smart board marker to 6th grader Imani Johnson during class on Feb. 24. Last summer, the management of Garrison Middle School was taken over by Global Partnership Schools, a private company charged with turning the formerly underperforming school around. Mr. Soriano was one of the teachers who, after reapplying for his job, got it back.
—Matt Roth for Education Week
Some of the nation’s largest and best-known charter-management organizations have not jumped at the opportunity to “restart” schools with federal economic-stimulus money, but a wide range of smaller charter operators, private for-profit companies, and nonprofit groups have filled the gap.
Only about 5 percent of schools receiving “school improvement grants” as part of the federal economic-stimulus package chose to turn around schools with the widely touted restart model, the only option out of four that enables school districts to turn schools over to charter operators as part of the U.S. Department of Education’s $3.5 billion grant competition.
The small proportion of restarts is an indication that most school districts don’t want to take on the political and implementation challenges of shutting down low-performing schools and starting over, said Todd Ziebarth, the vice president for state advocacy and support for the Washington-based National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. “Charter schools in and of themselves are controversial in a number of places. Now you add to that, ‘We’re going to take a school that’s been here for 40 years that’s struggling and shut it down and turn it over to a charter-management organization,’ and you are amping up the controversy surrounding it.” (more…)
AASA National Conference
“Some research says turnarounds don’t work, but we believe in the research that says they can work because we’ve experienced it,” said Manny Rivera, chief executive officer of Global Partnership Schools, during a Thursday session titled “Year One of School Turnarounds.”
Rivera’s company, which he started with another former National Superintendent of the Year Rudy Crew, has provided strategies for improving achievement in low-performing schools in Baltimore, Bridgeport, Conn., and Pueblo Colo.
While too early to provide hard data on the impact on student outcomes — Global Partnership Schools formed only 2½ years ago and is only in its first year of transforming schools — the group passed along anecdotal keys to success based on efforts thus far. (more…)
Manny Rivera, AASA National Conference
By Manuel Rivera
Geoffrey Canada, founder and CEO of Harlem Children’s Zone, has demonstrated the power of community improvement. Embracing the African proverb of “it takes a village to raise a child,” Canada has challenged the school’s surrounding community to take collective ownership of the futures of its children and the well being of the community.
This week, school superintendents and educational leaders representing 35,000 K-12 public schools across the country will gather in Denver for the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) National Conference on Education. We anticipate the workshops and guest lectures to center around accountability issues, budget shortfalls, and the rising number of low-performing schools. Yet, we hope there will be just as much attention directed at the necessity of engaging parents in the school turnaround process. (more…)
By Andrew Brownstein
The flood of federal economic-stimulus money into the nation’s public schools has dramatically increased the demand for education consultants, leaving some stimulus recipients struggling to find seasoned advisers and others uneasy about the pitches they are getting.
The frenzy was caused by the unprecedented size and scope of the nearly $100 billion federal effort, which began two years ago with passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. That infusion has stirred great expectations among policymakers and the public. Faced with nerve-racking timelines, their own bold promises, and a dearth of in-house expertise, states and school districts have anxiously sought advice on how to demonstrate progress and avoid missteps.
“Some are calling it ‘No Consultant Left Behind,’” said Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank based in Washington. (more…)
Harding High School principal Kevin Walston greets students entering the building
BRIDGEPORT — Long before lunch hour begins, the cafeteria at Harding High School fills with students sitting idly around tables. Some chat on cell phones. Others slump in chairs. Not a book in sight.
Most are chronic class-skippers, rounded up by hallway monitors working for a private New York City-based consulting firm charged with trying to turn around one of Connecticut’s worst high schools.
Whether a private company can do what local officials have failed to do is uncertain, but the experiment to rescue Harding – backed by $2.2 million in federal stimulus money – will be watched closely by officials from Hartford to Washington, D.C.
Harding—plagued by high dropout rates, disciplinary problems and academic failure—is one of 14 struggling Connecticut schools to receive U.S. Department of Education School Improvement Grants. (more…)
