More summer reading: So Much Reform, So Little Change

 The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools, Payne

(The first of several posts)

This is a wonderful, important book. In my view, it is especially important because our desire to move education policy away from the current obsession with standardized tests and misguided efforts at “accountability” - and into the 21^st-centruy - is going to remain stuck (at least at the state and national level) until we figure out how to address “the persistence of failure in urban schools”.  Here are the ideas that I found most compelling.

Early on, Payne notes that most school “reform” interventions typically deliver considerably less than they promise, No Child Left Behind being the classic example. Over ten years after the initial legislation, it is hard to find anyone who still believes that NCLB will transform education - with the possible exception of those who are paid to believe it. (I saw this particular dynamic at work at a couple of recent PDE presentations at a PSBA conference.)  How does it go, “it’s hard to persuade a man of something when he is paid to believe otherwise?” (Upton Sinclair, more or less)

While this disconnect between theory and reality is sometimes explained by “political expediency or earnest incompetence”, the larger issue is that “people in leadership positions do not have a systemic understanding of the causes of failure.”  Put another way, discussions at the policy level are often –usually- completely disconnected from the daily reality of the classroom, particularly one in an urban school.

Although Payne shares the widely held concern about our overreliance on test scores, he makes the useful point that it’s very difficult to talk about large-scale change, particularly in bottom-tier schools, without referring to test scores. And while there are other useful ways of measuring progress, such as graduation rates and post-secondary achievement, test scores may have greater relevance in these schools. If over half of your students aren’t reading at grade level - as measured by test scores - that is a problem screaming to be addressed. If you’re at 92%, however, moving your scores to 94% may not be your highest priority.

He also suggests that we can learn a lot more from closely examining a few successful outliers to see what they’re doing differently, instead of looking for modest movements in overall averages - where it’s very difficult to tease out the components that are actually making a difference. In his view, we should be trying to determine the set of conditions that produce an environment conducive to significant improvement.

Here’s a key fact:  the degree to which teachers in a given school “trust one another” is highly correlated with whether the school is improving or stagnating. This is entirely consistent with over a decade of school climate research. “Do teachers care about each other?” “Is it safe to discuss frustrations and concerns?” It turns out that the culture of a school is far more important than how the school is organized.  Another critical factor is the level of trust and respect between teachers and principals.  It should be obvious, however, that there is no quick, easy way to create a climate of trust and collaboration.

Here’s another key point, one greatly at odds with most public policy initiatives: there is no magic bullet, no ‘one thing’ that will magically transform these schools. Rather, a lot of issues have to be addressed, all more-or-less together, because they are highly interrelated and any one of them has the potential to pull down a new initiative. 

     Here’s a partial list of what we’re up against:
·        Teacher skepticism about student learning capacity; fixed mindset
·        Weak pre-professional teacher training
·        Weak sense of teacher agency
·        Inadequate instructional supervision
·        Teacher isolation; unwillingness to accept leadership from other teachers
·        Drive-by, unfocused professional development
·        Disconnect between curriculum and assessment
·        Lack of discipline/ classroom management skills
·        Lack of teacher knowledge about students’ backgrounds and interests
·        Inadequate resources
·        Instability of instructional staff and leadership

And perhaps most importantly:

·        A generalized belief that nothing we could do will actually make a difference.