Default | NEWS

2/15/1996 12:14:00 AM

By Michael Cinelli
Rice News Staff

A unified approach to public school reform in Houston was the focus of a Feb. 8 meeting of community, government, corporate, education and foundation leaders at Rice University.

The effort, called the Child-Centered Schools Initiative, is in a formative stage under the leadership of The Brown Foundation, Inc. and the Houston Endowment, Inc. The initiative's aim is to develop a community-wide focus on education reform to qualify for a matching grant from the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.

"I think all of the community-at least all I come in contact with-share a concern for the quality of public education and have a desire to do something about it," said Joe Nelson III, president of the Houston Endowment, in a Houston Chronicle interview after the organizational meeting last week.

The Rice Center for Education is coordinating the effort to bring the community together on the education reform issue.

An estimated 90 people from Houston-area school districts, government organizations, corporations, nonprofit entities and major foundations filled a section of the "R" Room overlooking Rice Stadium last week to discuss what is needed in a unified, comprehensive reform plan.

Ron Sass and Linda McNeil, co-directors of the university's Center for Education, led the program.

"It was an almost overwhelming thing to me how much they pulled together and how common their interests were and how focused they were on the real needs of kids in our schools," Sass told a Chronicle reporter. "We've got a ball rolling that almost has a life of its own."

McNeil said there have been meetings during the past few months with area teachers, principals, superintendents and school board members concerning the need for community support for public school reform.

"Right now almost anyone at any level of a school thinks of themselves as the ones mainly carrying the burden," she told the Chronicle. "What this is trying to do is shift the risk out to the community."

During last week's meeting, the group heard from noted education reform leaders Deborah Meier of New York City's Center for Collaborative Education and Anne Hallett, executive director of Chicago's Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform.

The New York reform effort, Meier told the Chronicle, embraces a movement to create small schools.

"The small-schools movement in New York City, which is a drop in the bucket, has had an enormous impact on the belief that if we change things, it would make a dramatic difference," she said.

The Chicago reform movement involves a systemic redesign of the city's school system and has targeted aid to schools, Hallett said.