When the reserved man with rust-red hair introduced himself during a probation-related workshop at Von Humboldt Elementary School one Saturday morning, teachers largely gave him the silent treatment.
Some thought to themselves, “Oh boy, another central office bureaucrat claiming to have all the answers,” they said.
Other teachers just wondered, “Who is this guy?”
“It did nothing for me,” another teacher said of the talk in an interview afterwards.
In fact, Clifton Burgess, Von Humboldt’s new probation manager, is the most powerful person in the school’s probation odyssey. As supervisor of the school’s probation team, he is the school board’s point person and he can recommend the firing of any wayward administrator or teacher, or dissolve a local school council.
As Clemente High School, another school on academic probation located six blocks away, is taken over by Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Officer Paul Vallas because of a leadership crisis and spending scandal, Von Humboldt has been undergoing a more typical, if not entirely tension free, experience with probation.
Von Humboldt, one of Chicago’s largest elementary schools and one that sends 90 percent of its graduates to Clemente High, has reached the mid-point of its first year on academic probation. And Burgess has become the latest to join the school’s probation team, which includes the principal, an education consultant, a local school council member, and a yet unnamed intern business manager.
His arrival carries an air of urgency, given that the Illinois Goal Assessment Program tests are just four weeks away and the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills less than three months down the road.
Both tests are considered key gauges of whether the much-touted probation initiative announced by the School Reform Board of Trustees in September turns out to be just another in a long list of ignominious attempts at reforming some of Chicago’s worst schools.
The test results will also give some sense of how quickly any turnarounds can be expected at the 109 schools on the list.
Meanwhile, the doubt and suspicion expressed by the teachers at Von Humboldt at 2620 W. Hirsch St. reflects an underlying uneasiness about the takeover of the schools by Mayor Richard Daley in the summer of 1995 and the launching of the boldest initiative yet to improve schools.
Probation is built on the premise that troubled schools can’t improve education on their own. Yet many educators and parents at local schools doubt that outsiders such as probation managers can do a better job of solving the longstanding problems of disintegrated families, violence and gangs that affect most children attending schools like Von Humboldt.
Moreover, some argue that if gains are posted in test scores this spring, it will be the result of years of work that began before Daley took over the schools.
To ease teachers’ anxieties, accountability officer Patricia Harvey said she will hold regular meetings with teacher representatives from each probation school.
When told of teachers’ skeptical remarks about his first appearance at Von Humboldt, Burgess empathized humorously.
“From the teachers’ ranks, anybody that comes from the central office is always looked at like `a fat bureaucrat who doesn’t know my work, who doesn’t know my job here,’ ” said Burgess, 50, who makes $85,000 a year in addition to a $5,000 stipend he receives as probation manager of Von Humboldt and another school. ” `He’ll never (make) an impact. He’s here today and gone tomorrow, and he won’t have any involvement and I’ll still be doing my job.’
“And I hope that’s the case. I hope they’re still doing their job–only a little bit better,” he said.
Certainly Burgess and the 78 other probation managers find themselves in the middle of it all–and could very well become scapegoats if schools don’t post any significant progress.
Perhaps mindful of that, Burgess has already started addressing plans by Principal Christ Kalamatas to begin remediating a handful of teachers, the first formal step in a disciplinary procedure that could lead to termination, they said.
Burgess has a lofty job title–co-director of the board’s Chicago Systemic Initiative, a project funded by the National Science Foundation to improve math, science and technology instruction in urban schools–but he cultivates a low profile.
His introduction was purposefully conciliatory, if sometimes trite. He sprinkled his remarks with references to his experience as a teacher and principal in an effort to connect with teachers who have seen their share of academic setbacks.
“Someone asked me, what are you looking for? And I answered I’m only looking for (classroom) spaces of kids that are smiling and involved,” Burgess told the Saturday gathering of 54 of the school’s 82 teachers.
These remarks were part of his strategy to send a message to teachers that he doesn’t intend to storm classrooms and to administrators like Kalamatas that he doesn’t intend to usurp their authority.
His initial humor and conciliation aside, Burgess said he will be a taskmaster in trying to improve education for the 1,368 pupils at Von Humboldt.
“When I was principal, you may be my best buddy in the teachers’ lounge and we may have the same kinds of parenting problems and moans and groans, but . . . I’m still here for one reason, and it’s not for my best buddies, it’s for the kids,” Burgess said. “Whatever it takes to improve Von Humboldt, Christ will do it with my support.”
Four months into the probation initiative, the crackdown is just completing its infant stages.
All probation schools have been assigned a probation manager (a school board official like Burgess, a current principal or a retired principal) and an “external partner,” probation parlance for a consultant or college expert who will analyze a school’s shortcomings and train teachers and principals.
The school board has fallen behind schedule in approving the 109 probation schools’ “corrective action plans,” the document that details improvements for each school and serves as the measure for determining whether any principal or teacher should be fired.
Though school officials had said all 109 corrective action plans would be approved in January, only 25 were approved. Von Humboldt’s is still being prepared.
Predictably, at least one opposition effort is under way. The principals and LSC members in U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush’s South Side district have formed the Principals Council of the 1st Congressional District, partly because 25 percent of all schools in the largely African-American district are now on probation, a Rush spokesman said.
Members met recently with Vallas to complain that reports of probation assessment teams contained misleading and incorrect information about school problems, and that the corrective action plans are not providing new funds for academic changes, said Bess Bezirgan, a spokeswoman for Rush.
“There’s a lot of politics involved in this and the school board is under the thumb of City Hall, and that raises questions for the congressman and the principals,” Bezirgan said. “Whether this (probation) approach is effective and whether it hurts more than it helps–these are all the kinds of questions that the council is addressing.”
Vallas said he felt he addressed all concerns of Rush’s group and added that he has started meeting with other congressmen about probation.
“There’s whining out there,” by principals, Vallas said. “But the majority are seeing it as a constructive thing. That doesn’t mean that some people aren’t very threatened.”
As probation manager, Burgess is charged with overseeing three areas: Von Humboldt’s administrators, the local school council and teachers.
If he determines that anyone stands in the way of improvement at Von Humboldt and fails to follow the corrective action plan, Burgess can urge the school board to remove them.
So far, Burgess has found no problems with Von Humboldt’s administrators or the local school council, he said. But Burgess is assisting Kalamatas in plans to remediate the poor performance of as many as five teachers.
“It’s such a very delicate issue because it’s not the kind of the thing that ever remains confidential. As soon as the teacher is affected by it, the whole staff knows what’s happening. It ripples so fast through the staff,” Burgess said.
Burgess and Kalamatas are considering more training for teachers over the summer, but they must find incentives, such as graduate course credit, for teachers to spend their summer break essentially going back to school, Burgess said.
A new analysis of Iowa Test scores compiled by teachers at the Saturday workshops and the school’s external partner has provided rich detail on what student skills need to be improved in each grade. Later this month, some short-term improvements in curriculum will be made, with more changes like reassigning teachers scheduled for next September.
The analysis shows that a large number of 6th and 8th graders at Von Humboldt will likely have to attend mandatory summer school under a recent board policy that eliminates automatic promotions for those grades.
Nonetheless, the analysis of Von Humboldt’s poor test scores was nothing to be ashamed of, according to Kalamatas and Burgess. In fact, they were enthusiastic because for the first time in recent memory, Von Humboldt knows exactly where to improve.
At the same time, Kalamatas admitted with exasperation, “We got a lot of work to do.”
In general, Burgess said he felt Von Humboldt was in good shape to improve under the probation process.
During one of his weekly visits to Von Humboldt, Burgess, a former teacher and principal at Newberry Math and Science Magnet Academy, was visibly the central office functionary. He wore his Chicago Public Schools ID card on the pocket of a navy pin-stripe suit as he was walking the corridors.
Exhibiting his partiality toward math and science, Burgess said he found the school in need of more computers and a certified librarian.
He visited the school’s science fair in the gymnasium and shortly afterward bumped into Kalamatas in the hallway.
Burgess told him he was pleased to find no cliched science projects such as model volcanoes. Instead, Burgess said he found serious science projects and added he was impressed by how science teachers in every grade contributed.
“This is only their second one, so they did a nice job of it,” Burgess said.
Burgess deliberately avoided entering classrooms, eavesdropping from the corridors.
He said he could size up a classroom partly by whether the door was open, though he acknowledged a closed door sometimes meant an effort to merely shut out noise.
“The teacher who props that door open is basically saying that, `Hey, I got the world by the tail in here and I’m doing my thing,’ ” Burgess said.
After his unannounced tour of the school, Burgess said he found several doors closed, but he took into account that his visit came at the end of a busy week.
Overall, he seemed satisfied.
“It was Friday midday, and learning had not stopped at Von Humboldt,” he said.
