In November, a familiar face returned to the Mississippi Department of Education when the state board picked Dr. Tom Burnham to replace Hank Bounds as state superintendent of education.
Burnham left the position in December 1997 after more than 5 years to take over the same position in North Carolina. After he retired, he headed up the University of Mississippi School of Education at the request of former Ole Miss Chancellor Dr. Robert Khayat.
The state board asked Burnham to return to his former position when Bounds retired. Now, Burnham hopes to apply the knowledge acquired from his last two stops to overhaul an educational system with eye-popping statistics.
Of the state’s 799 schools, 406 are underperforming, with 189 on academic watch, six that are low performing, 158 at-risk of failing and 53 that are failing. The state has 359 that fall into the successful and high performing categories, and 34 are star schools.
A closer look at the state’s 151 districts indicates eight failing, 45 at-risk of failing and 37 on academic watch. The remaining 61 schools fall into the successful, high performing and star school categories.
“The enormity of turning all that around is tremendous,” Burnham said. “The expectation is, as you create higher standards, and you establish the benchmarks, these schools will find ways to be successful.”
Burnham said the creation of a common assessment will be a key cog in overhauling the education overhaul. This will allow the state to compare itself to others across the country.
“It does have the potential for shifting Mississippi’s accountability model,” Burnham said. “With a common core and common assessment, we’ll finally know. And if I’m a teacher or administrator, I now know what the assessment measures.”
New Start and conversion charter schools will play a role. Both programs are targeted toward failing schools, and will allow parents to intervene in low-performing schools.
Other key improvements in state education include leadership preparation, a literacy initiative and discipline.
Burnham named leadership and structure as the primary differences between the state’s upper-tier schools and those that are struggling.
“You’re going to find as you walk through those schools, administrators that are very visible in the classroom,” Burnham said. “You have high schools in this country where a principal never goes in a classroom unless there’s a problem. That’s not going to drive success.
“When you begin to analyze why they’re highly successful, you’re going to find leadership. And they’re moving that organization forward. You find a good school, and go into that school, you’re going to find a good principal. You find a failing school, you’re going to find a weak principal.”
Burnham also said improved teaching methods can reduce disciplinary actions and improve performance.
“You keep order by staying on task and keeping children engaged in a meaningful learning process,” Burnham said. “And that means that you’re not going to stand in front of a classroom and be a talking head for 55 minutes.
“It means you have those students engaged in multiple tasks, there’s seamless transitions between them, they’re all related to a common objective and series of goals, and you’re bringing multiple strategies into place.”
The last time Burnham was superintendent, he said the statewide literacy initiative was a key cog of the state’s educational policies. However, after former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale and his wife, Sally, created a $100 million literacy endowment in 2000, Burnham said literacy became a second-tier priority for the state.
“One of the things we’re working on is to bring that back to a tier one priority,” Burnham said. “The Barksdales have found that teaching children to read, of high poverty, is a very labor-intensive process. You have to have a very, very low teacher/adult-student ratio. You have to have a significant number of adults involved.”
Burnham also referenced an upcoming shift in the Barksdale initiative from a focus on the classroom and teacher development to one centered on administrative development. The initiative will hire principals and pay their salary for schools that meet the criteria.
This will go hand-in-hand with the department’s desire to improve and strengthen the supervisory background of principals throughout the state.
Burnham implemented this program at Ole Miss by sending students to schools with higher poverty levels and poor performance records — an eye-opening contrast from the LaFayette County schools the students are familiar with.
The hope is that the students will be better prepared through exposure to a wider spectrum of students.
The state’s recent 15 percent budget cut will be a difficult obstacle to overcome. Pending contingency funds, the state department’s cut may be larger. With those funds, the cut will be 20 percent, and 30 percent without them.
“As difficult as this next year’s going to be for school districts, it’s much more difficult at the state level,” Burnham said. “We’re being tasked to do all these things, and at the same time, revenue is going down. Without contingency money, the department of education is short $1.8 million for salaries.”
Teacher salaries are on the upswing, but Burnham said drastic future increases are unlikely.
In the 2007-’08 school year, the average state teacher’s salary was $42,403, more than $10,000 below the national average $52,800. That figure jumped to $44,498 the next year. Mississippi is second in the country in salary change over the last decade with a 16.2 percent increase.
“Everyone I think would be in agreement that teachers deserve to make more than they’re being paid. Teacher salaries have not kept pace in many ways,” Burnham said. “Salaries do need to be looked at in terms of teaching. I think if you’re really serious about improving student performance, you’ve got to talk about the environment, the school and family structure, the strategy.
“But to say that there’s a correlation between salary and how well a student performs in the classroom would be probably very difficult to connect.”
Burnham said all things aside, the biggest key is developing and improving educational leaders.
“What kind of preparation program are you sending your administrators through? Do they leave you prepared to go into schools and provide quality leadership?” Burnham asked. “You have to advance teaching and learning in that classroom.”
