Word: blakney
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...with most education reforms, it will take years before researchers can declare this one a success or a failure. But throughout the school year, TIME has followed three individuals who have been at the center of this ambitious experiment: fifth-grade teacher Marla Blakney, seventh-grade student Shaliah Denmark and elementary school principal Anita Duke. All three spent the past nine months in Philadelphia public schools that had been taken over by for-profit operators. Their experiences tell a more nuanced story than the one predicted by privatization's cheerleaders and critics when TIME first wrote about them and their...
...read I AM NOT FOR SALE! SAY NO TO PRIVATIZATION! But by the time an Edison team arrived at Harrity Elementary School in the poverty-ravaged southwestern part of the city last September, the staff was ready to try anything. "It couldn't have gotten any worse," says Marla Blakney, a raspy-voiced fifth-year teacher who has an exceptionally warm rapport with her students. "We were so sick of failing...
...first month of school, Edison introduced new math and reading programs, reduced the size of reading classes, eliminated some nonteaching staff, added more time for teacher training and brought in a computerized monthly testing program. "They were so much in our faces in the beginning," says Blakney, a former accountant. "I have never worked so hard in my life, including in the corporate world." As her school's math coordinator, Blakney was charged with mastering the challenging new math curriculum and teaching it to her colleagues. She also ran the math club and served on the school's leadership team...
...Edison's reforms have stuck. Blakney was enthusiastic about the company's innovations last fall, but her use of the chants and cheers waned over the months, and by midyear the extra hours she was spending out of the classroom for training seemed excessive. "I'd rather be with my kids," she says. But Edison's mandated monthly testing of her students has become Blakney's favorite new instructional tool, because it allows her to efficiently track her class's learning. Whipping out her laptop, she shows a visitor the scores her students have achieved and how they stack...
...students and the others at Harrity do well on the year-end tests--and Blakney thinks they will--she will give much of the credit to the school's new principal, Johnetta Smith, whom Edison chose for her success in the similarly beleaguered Washington system. The Harrity staff calls Smith "the lady with roller skates" for her seeming ability to be everywhere in the building at once. Blakney says she likes the fact that Philly schools chief Vallas will let Edison keep all 20 of its schools. "I have taken Vallas' lead," she says. "So far he's standing...