Q&A: Superintendent Murley. Part Four, Changing Demographics and National Politics.

Superintendent Steve Murley sat down recently with Patch to talk about his first year as head of the Iowa City Community School District.

Iowa City Patch: So the population numbers are changing, but another thing that is changing in the district that people probably don't know as much about is it's changing culturally and in terms of racial and economic diversity. How are you dealing with the inflow of different types of people into the district?

Steve Murley: I see it as an asset and an opportunity. When you look at the 60 plus languages that are spoken in our school district... I spoke to one parent who said we have United Nations day at our school, and when we pick different cultures and countries to celebrate we have kids that go home and get stuff out of our closet and bring it in to share it with us on a first hand basis because that's where they're from.The power of that from a teaching perspective is very difficult to measure.

It provides an immense benefit to the children going through our school district that they have access to the breadth of diversity that we have here from the stand point of country of origin, home language, those background issues bring a much larger context to the questions that you're able to ask and answer in the class.

At the same time we have a lot of in-migration from all over the United States. They come to us from the South, they come to us from big cities, because we are a pocket of success during a recession, that's part of that process. We wind up growing, we wind up with a diversity of growth.

Again, it's an asset, because I think that it reflects the world that our kids are going to live in as they move beyond the classroom, whether it is the world of work, armed forces, college, wherever they are going, it reflects the world. 

At the same time, Iowa is a state, and particularly Iowa City as a city, is a place that has a very strong historical emphasis on public education. Those kids that are born here, that grow up here, that come through the system here, often start with a contextual base that has a very high focus on education. And these students make rapid gains that are clearly in some cases different than students that come from outside the Iowa City community school district, that may come from communities with less emphasis on education.

So, for example, they may not have a strong educational background prior to kindergarten, so they come to us with a different set of resources as a kindergarten student than those who are born and raised here in Iowa City. Those present challenges to us.

Anytime you wind up with kids at the starting line who are at different places, it makes it more difficult for a teacher to teach in a classroom in which the differentiation in the education is broader. So it's a hurdle for us, it's a challenge for us. But it's also an opportunity for us, because as we recognize that being able to take those students who come with us with areas that need improvement, bringing them up to speed rapidly, allowing them to use their diverse background as an asset in class as they get older, it means that all children in the district end up benefitting from it. 

It's really incumbent upon us to address the lowest quartile kids as quick as possible, make sure that as they cross that threshold from 3rd to 4th to grade, such as going from learning to transition from learning to read to reading to learn. When those kids hit that reading to learn phase it's incumbent on us to make sure that these kids are ready to go, they're reading at grade level. At that point the diversity turns out to be an asset for us, after you catch everybody up so they're all at the same place moving together collectively as a whole.

Iowa City Patch: Politically, where do you feel like education is going on a national level, and how will that affect things here?

Murley: There are a couple of issues that I'll hit on right way that are getting a lot of play right now from the current administration, but also getting some peripheral play in states that could have a significant impact on Iowa in the long term. For one, there has been a big push nationally for charter schools.

I was fortunate to work in a state (Wisconsin) that had a strong support for charter schools within public schools. So they were instrumentalities of the public schools, but essentially each school district was given the opportunity to choose where and when they would like to innovate outside of state and federal laws within the auspices of the school district. We had governing boards for charter schools made up of staff members and general public, and we had administrators and teachers and support staff that were employees of the district and students who were public school students in those charter schools that might be doing things that looked radically different from what was going on in our regular classes.

But, that change was controlled in the sense that it was contained within the safe confines of the public school system, making sure that all those special education, and English language learner, and all your civil rights issues were being monitored and compliance was assured so that opportunity was available to all.

In some states, Charter schools are run by whoever wants to open one, and they don't have to take Special Education students, they don't have to take English language learners, I'm not in favor of that. It goes against that egalitarian idea that education is for all.

Simultaneously, another argument that's out there that's gaining steam in a lot of states is vouchers, which says let the money follow the child. Rather than funding public education, the state of Iowa will give every kid $5,900 and they can decide where to go to school.

Again, let's go back to that discussion about charter schools, if you're going to use vouchers, and vouchers are set up as such that those that take the vouchers get to choose who they accept, we're going to have a lot of kids that get left behind. You want to talk about a real no child left behind, if you go to a voucher system that doesn't require educational providers to accept those children that walk through the door, so they get to say "We'll take you, but not you or you."

We're going to have kids that get left behind, we're going to have kids that get a substandard education.

I don't think long term, from a viability standpoint, that that is good for our country.

Iowa City Patch: You've mentioned a couple of times that Iowa has a history of supporting public education. However, do you feel that the country as a whole is moving away from public education? I don't get that sense as much from people in the Midwest than when I hear people's views in the larger cities on the coasts. Do you feel there is a growing perception that public education is just not working and they should jettison the whole structure?

Murley: You do hear that, and I think even more so than just saying it's a Midwest issue versus a South or Coastal issue, oftentimes I think it's a large district versus a small to medium sized district issue. You look at Iowa City, we have 12,000 kids, and we're the fifth largest district in the state. You go to most states, a district of 12,000 is middle of the road

So what I think you see, in many areas of the country, not just the Coast but also in the Midwest, but you see a dichotomy between large school districts and small school districts. And in some cases you see public frustration with what appears to be inadequate public education in large school districts. I'm just thinking of the schools that have been in the news lately: Chicago Public Schools, Milwaukee Public Schools, St. Louis Public Schools, you see those concerns voiced about substandard education for students from a high needs population. People look at that and say "That looks broken to me." 

When they take that and extrapolate it to a community like Iowa City, I think that's an erroneous connection. I don't think that we look like those school districts, I don't think that we're facing the challenges in the way that they are. I think that we have addressed our challenges differently because we're not as big, and I think that allows us to do a better job of addressing some of those challenges.

So in some cases it's big versus small, and big is visible. And so if you don't have a child in public school, and 75 percent of households in the United States don't have kids in public school, what they read about public school are things that they see in the New York Times or Newsweek or on TV and what they see is what's happening in large school districts. And when they see those school districts "failing" if they then make the supposition that their neighborhood school is failing, then we have a problem.

Iowa City Patch: So philosophically do you think that there is such a thing as a school district that is too big, that just can't work due to its size? 

Murley: You know, it's tough to say because you find some public schools out there, some large ones, that are running very well. And you can find some out there that aren't, and you can find the same for small school districts. I don't know what too big is. I've been blessed to work in school districts that are in that 7,000 to 12,000 student range and big enough to have good resources, and yet small to have some agility to make some change when needed.

I have not worked in a large public school system like a 20,000 - 50,000 student school district, so I'd hesitate to say how big is too big.

Iowa City Patch: What other political education issues that people should look out for?

Murley: I think content is a huge one. There's a big debate about what kids ought to be learning. I said we are going to ask people in town what they want their kids to know and be able to do as they move through schooling and graduate from our system. I think there is an enormous opportunity for technology to address that issues. 

People will tell you in the text book industry that because California and Texas adopt text books at the state level, they have an enormous influence on what kids in Iowa will learn. Because if you're going to print and bind a text book, and you know that you're selling to our school district of 12,000 kids versus going to Texas with 100,000s of kids, you're going to make sure you go to Texas and make sure your text book meets the needs of the Board of Education of Texas-- not what Iowa City says that they want in their text books. And that can be frustrating for us as we watch some of those debates go on about what the content ought to be in those text books, because that influences what we can teach in the classroom.

I think that one of the things that is part of that discussion is the ongoing transition to a different platform to provide knowledge to kids. It doesn't have to come in a book anymore. How can it come to those students electronically? Can they access those resources in the classroom? Can they get them at home, too?

So I think content is a big issue for us as we move forward. The common core content that is coming from the federal government is reflected in the Iowa Core adopted by the state, so that is going to change our content. And content has an impact on teaching and learning.

Read the first and second and parts in this series on Superintendent Murley's first year in the job.