Figuring out how to improve low performing schools is an on-going national debate. Chicago gets a lot of attention because it’s aggressive in closing failing schools and replacing them with new schools it says will better educate kids. The most radical reform is called “turn around” where every teacher gets fired and new staff takes over. Here’s a look at this strategy from the perspective of one highly qualified teacher. And then meets a less experienced educator who wants her job.

When first-grade teacher Ladwanna Harrison heard the school she worked in would be designated a turnaround, she was devastated.

HARRISON: It just feels awful it feels like someone has sucked the life out of you in just one punch.

Sound: Harrison teaching her class…

Harrison is a highly qualified teacher, by just about any measure. She has a degree in early childhood education, a master’s in reading, and she’s started to work on National Board Certification.  That’s the new gold standard in teaching.

But Harrison says it’s her connection to this south-side neighborhood and her school Holmes Elementary that make her an asset here too.

She grew up just two blocks away and went to Holmes herself.

HARRISON: Some of the kids you’ve know since they were two or three years old because they come with siblings. And we work hard to know these relationships. We see these kids, we work hard to know their stories. And we see them outside of school. They have our cell phone numbers. They call us on the weekends. ‘What are you doing?

But Holmes’ scores are low—they have been for years—and they’re not improving fast enough. The question is whether to improve this school, everyone needs to be replaced. CPS’s policy is to let everyone go, from the principal to the custodian. 

CAWLEY: These schools are failing miserably.

Tim Cawley works for the Academy of Urban School Leadership. AUSL is a private nonprofit teacher training group that’s taking over schools as fast as CPS can shut them down.

CAWLEY: They need a massive reset. A way to signal to the students, the parents, the community—that times have changed. That it’s going to be a new day at the school.

Chicago is investing heavily in AUSL. The group’s budget has grown from $200,000 eight years ago to $71 million today. Even the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has gotten in on the action, donating over $11 million.

AUSL now runs 11 Chicago Public Schools. And this week the Board handed them three more. But back at Holmes, the hot strategy sure doesn’t feel right to Harrison.

HARRISON: No one from the board really comes through. They really don’t see what we do in our classrooms. They might come and walk through for five minutes and look around your room. But they don’t talk to the kids. They don’t sit and talk to you and ask you what’s going on and you know how are things? They don’t offer suggestions to help you.

Harrison can ask AUSL to re-hire her, but so far, in the four elementary turnarounds that AUSL has done, just four teachers have been kept on.

HARRISON: I just think the why. Everyone wants to know why. You don’t know me. You’ve never seen me teach. If they could come in and say, “You know what Ms. Harrison? You’re an awful teacher. I didn’t like the lesson. You’re fired. I would understand that more than you telling me, or putting on the Internet a list saying that I won’t have my job.

Sound: Hatchett teaching her class…

24-year-old Simone Hatchett is one teacher who’d like to take Harrison’s job. Hatchett is teaching about 30 blocks north, at another tough Chicago Public School.

She’s one of 69 AUSL teachers in training—an army preparing to transform the new schools AUSL will be taking over.

Sound upbriefly of Hatchett in lessons with kids…

AUSL believes in starting fresh with a cadre of teachers from it’s own training program. The idea is that a critical mass of them will change school culture overnight.

But many of these teachers, like Hatchett, are barely tested.

During the short writing lesson I observed, Ms. Hatchett wrote out the same grammatical error twice. The AUSL coach said she’d talk to her about. Still Hatchett’s heart is in the right place.

HATCHETT: So my hopes is basically to get a position in one of these turnaround schools to try to help the students out. Because, myself I did go to a school that was at risk. And I know the feeling of having teachers that wasn’t supportive, wasn’t caring.

For a lot of academics, the jury is still out on whether the turnarounds outperform the schools they replace. But lots of kids alredy have their verdict.

Just listen to Margarie Buie and Janel Harmon. They’ve been at failing Harvard Elementary since pre-school. In 2007, AUSL turned their school around.

BUIE and HARMON: The year before last I’m not even going to lie but this school was off the chain. Yeah, and I was part of it. Right this school was off the chain, now…It was like not even a school no more. This was a playhouse. But now it’s more order, it’s professional. They doing what they have to do. And we don’t want Saturday detention. Yeah that’s true, that’s true! Cause I can’t do Saturdays. Or I can’t get called home!

The question is, could this change have been achieved while keeping the handful of talented, caring teachers who are likely to exist within any troubled school?

Ladwanna Harrison says all she wants is to be fairly judged, before being deemed a failure.

HARRISON: We can start over. I can go to a new school and I can get a new classroom and a new group of kids and I’ll be fine and I can start over. But these 25 kids are going to have to see someone completely different. They’re going to walk into a school where they know no adults. No adults.

This week, the board was scheduled to vote on whether to turn Holmes around and fire Harrison. Harrison told me she was praying for a miracle.

Then, in an 11th hour decision, CEO Ron Huberman took Holmes off the school closings list.  Teacher dedication is one reason he gave. 

Four other schools were approved as turnarounds. AUSL will manage three of them, and has already named new principals to take over.

They’ll begin hiring teachers soon.