Cincinnati’s turnaround is partly due to Joe Nathan from the University of Minnesota, a nationally known school innovator and a founder of the charter school movement. He writes about Cincinnati’s success in a January 9th, Education Week article. I’ve known Joe Nathan since 1970 when he was a second year teacher, and I was a student teacher in Minneapolis where we worked on school reforms together. I called him up to  fill in some of the details.
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Joe Nathan lists the factors necessary for effective educational reform.  Leave one component out, and success may not follow.

School system leaders must visit effective urban schools around the country to determine what works and what doesn’t.

They must create a few, ambitious goals and take accountability seriously. School systems with too many goals may achieve little. Cincinnati picked one - closing the graduation gap. Milwaukee’s Strategic Plan may have too many goals.  

School systems must respect teachers and work closely with teacher unions. Cincinnati has a progressive teacher union. In Milwaukee, our teacher union came late to the reform movement but is now a leader in many educational reforms.

That respect also includes giving teachers meaningful professional development in reading, math, and working with urban youth. Nathan believes in putting good principals in each school and allowing each school to develop curriculum. He does not support establishing a citywide curriculum, something that Milwaukee has been pushing.

Business and communitiy leaders must become actively involved.  They can offer service-learning programs to connect students with the community. The Cincinnati businesses poured significant resources into the school system rather than just relying on a voucher school system to improve schools. Vouchers came to Cincinnati only in the last few years. Nathan, who is vehemently against school vouchers, believes it has had little impact on Cincinnati’s success.  But he also believes that charter schools are critical in challenging school systems to do better.

Cincinnati also created small high schools within larger buildings. Milwaukee has struggled with making large high schools smaller. We should look to see what Cincinnati did differently. But Cincinnati is rethinking one reform that Milwaukee also embraced. Cincinnati converted many elementary schools to grades k-8; however, dissatisfaction is growing because elementary students appear not ready for high school coursework. Now a third of its high schools are grades 7-12, junior-senior high schools.

Cincinnati is a school system to watch.

A version of this article appeared in the Bay View Compass newspaper.