EdPower and its CEO Marcus Robinson have been charged with the task of helping to turn around an underperforming Arlington Community High School.
Earlier this month, the Indiana Board of Education for the first time approved the state takeover of five schools – four in Indianapolis and one in Gary. Each of those schools will be separated from its school district and run independently by an outside company or nonprofit group.
The state believes EdPower can help the school progress by implementing structure to improve existing programs. The company will begin putting practices in place next summer.
“The name will not change and it will not become a charter school,” said Robinson. “We are going to help implement programs to help students succeed.”
State Superintendent Tony Bennett said EdPower was chosen due to its incredible success with Charles A. Tindley Accelerated School, which opened in 2004. Like Arlington, the school houses middle and high school students. It has won local and national awards for student achievement including four star school distinction placing Tindley in the top 25 percent of schools and Indiana. Additionally, based on 2010-11 student test score data, the school ranks seventh in English/language arts and 10th in math out of 110 public junior-high schools in Indiana. Tindley began with 160 students and currently has 500.
Robinson recently held the first of several community forums at Tindley to discuss how EdPower will work with Arlington.
After the forum, Robinson spoke with the Recorder about key things he wanted the community to know regarding EdPower’s role in helping to turnaround the school.
Recorder: What is EdPower?
Robinson: EdPower is a 501c3 organization that provides educational services. Over the last 10 years, our basic service has been the Charles A. Tindley Accelerated School and we’ve been doing some educational consulting. We have several lines of business and one of those lines is accelerated schools.
We’re growing into this work of turnaround schools trying to help schools come from behind and be great. Right now, Arlington is the only school we’re going to work with.
There currently is not a plan in place regarding Arlington because you want community involvement. Do you have specifics in mind of what you expect from the community?
We as a community need to decide what Arlington needs to become. We need to figure out what the outcomes for kids need to be when they graduate.
From our standpoint (Charles A. Tindley) we know how to take the academic program and make it better and the kids stronger in terms of skills. But, that doesn’t really give us any clarity about outcomes. We could come up with an outcome but that isn’t necessarily connected to what the community wants to see (Arlington) become.
We want to talk to Arlington students, parents, alumni, people who live in the neighborhood who have had family graduate from the school about what the school needs to be when kids graduate. Once we can figure out what kind of outcomes we want from kids, then we want to craft a community vision around what the life of the school needs to be like. For instance, right now IPS has single gender programs going on at Arlington. We’re happy to continue that, but let’s talk about if that’s the right modality for teaching our kids. The community conversations need to be responding around the real needs of the school.
IPS has tried several tactics to help Arlington improve. What does EdPower bring differently to the table?
It’s difficult to say what we do differently until we get in and see what they’re actually doing. I can say that we serve a high poverty population, essentially an all African-American population, and we don’t let the fact that kids are from the inner city and that they have struggles get in the way of them being successful academically.
We feel like we really know what it takes to take kids from behind. Hopefully, we have some strategies and some processes that perhaps IPS hasn’t considered and that they can learn from. Our goal is to make sure the school is on a solid track to return to the district and whatever we put into the school is sustainable once the district takes over.
How does the board of directors work? Do EdPower and Tindley have the same board?
We have one board of directors and that board will be responsible for EdPower, Tindley and Arlington. There will not be any closed door meetings.
The contract is for five years. Do you think EdPower can accomplish its goals?
We can accomplish our goals because our goals are ultimately to put in place a framework to improve the school. We are going to reorganize the day, realign how we work with kids, we’re going to bring in new staffing and professional development to the table and we’re going to bring in real accountability to make sure no kids are falling through the cracks.
Is part of the contract with the state to have a certain number of kids pass or is it simply to put policies in place?
No, but I think we have to be real about the crisis. Seventy-five percent of the kids in the school can’t prove proficiency on a state test of basic skills. That’s not a few of the kids or half of the kids. That’s almost most of the kids who are not where they need to be to do anything with their lives. From that standpoint we have a sense of urgency about how we have to do that work.
The state isn’t saying we have to (improve) scores by a certain percentage but we know we need to do that.
Where is the money coming from to help fund some of the practices EdPower wants to put in place? Is Edpower getting compensated for the work?
Yes. We have to build a support structure around the staff of Arlington. EdPower can’t finance that. I can’t tell you specifically because I haven’t seen the contract, but we know we’re going to have to bring in extra support. We’re working with the state to find those resources.
When will the contract be signed?
Hopefully by the end of the month.
