Believing in Ourselves: Urban Middle School Reform

Believing in Ourselves

Part II - Chapter 6

POWER PIECES

What propelled -- or dragged down -- these districts on middle grades reform was the context for change, which was different in each of the five sites. The context developed from local circumstances, traditions of power, politics, and leadership often disjointed from the true needs of students.

As alike as urban districts and distressed urban schools may be, it is the differences in the structures around them that determine the course of reform.

People used to be surprised at the idea and even argue against the point that public education is political. Didn't the wresting of schools by "professionals" from the ward bosses of Boston at the turn of the century set the pattern for urban school systems to be above the fray of politics?

Perhaps ward politics is gone, but not the political nature of urban school systems.

For example, the "old money" one finds in a Baltimore or a Milwaukee supports the museums, the tourist development, the do-good partnerships with schools. However, such investments come with political strings attached. Acquiescence by school leadership to community power structures means that control over school reforms often is diffused, with school boards and/or superintendents not always able to determine the direction and pace of reform.

In Baltimore, the mayor appoints the school board and thus, in reality, the superintendent. School policies often reflect another major influence in the city -- a local foundation whose CEO has served on both the local and state boards of education and who has his own agenda on how to produce change in schools. The school system is vulnerable to this sort of influence because it lacks any core vision itself.

Milwaukee's business and civic communities play a large role in determining the priorities of the district. The most energetic effort of recent years is a community-funded school-to-work initiative that, in essence, represents a Kp;12 reform plan. Always lurking in policy talks in this city, however, is the possibility of the business community's support of wide-scale vouchers or choice plans. The groundwork for Milwaukee's current voucher plan (expanded 10-fold in 1995 by the governor and legislature to allow 15,000 students to use vouchers at private or parochial schools) was laid by a local corporate foundation. The teacher union's opposition to greater choice created dissension, a battle over control of the school board, and the eventual resignation of the reform-minded Howard Fuller as superintendent.

The consolidation in the 1970s of Louisville and surrounding Jefferson County -- and their smooth transition through desegregation -- is credited to the leadership of the business community. That leadership also plays a heavy role in selecting superintendents, and its early support and funding for greater technology use in the schools gave Louisville a special advantage. Still, the transition to a new superintendent -- after 11 years of leadership from the same person -- is turning out to be difficult for the school board and the community. Stability is never a given in urban districts.

Unlike many urban districts, San Diego fits numerous resources into an overall plan framed by "design tasks" that incorporate vision and direction for the district.

San Diego, on the other hand, does not have a large business community to draw upon for support. Its reforms depend largely upon two types of alliances -- with community agencies that serve children and families and with outside funding sources, such as foundations. However, unlike many urban districts active in developing outside resources that remain discrete projects, San Diego fits its numerous resource pieces into an overall plan framed by five "design tasks" that incorporate vision and direction for the whole district.

For a long time, the San Diego school district's philosophy was "let a thousand flowers bloom," says Deputy Superintendent Frank Till. It learned over time that "the schools can only talk from their own level, and that often means they set standards lower than they should be." The district's intervention is to make sure principals are receiving professional development and that they fully understand the vision and objectives of the district. San Diego also is organizing principal contacts on a cluster basis, spanning Kp;12 leadership in areas of the city.

In Oakland, the advocacy community perhaps pushes harder on the schools than any other group. Businesses have supported reform and contributed to individual efforts, but the organizers for reform tend to be outside the system. Although advocacy groups prefer to improve what exists, "there is a lot of interest in charter schools in this community," says Martine Makower of the Urban Strategies Council. Oakland's troubles with managing the schools has led to state interventions in the past. However, for the first time in more than two decades, the new superintendent comes from within the system, a factor that may help stabilize relationships between the district office and the schools.

ALONG COME THE STATES

The power game that influences what happens in schools extends to state-level policymaking. In recent years, initiatives of state officials, especially governors and legislators, are more directive in the sense that they set standards and accountability, while giving flexibility at the local level to meet the standards. The debate over top-down versus bottom-up reform largely has been settled by accepting the fact that both are needed -- in a delicate balance.

"If people are honestly making an effort to grow and learn, the we need to support them...(but) there should be no more 'safe' schools for teachers who cannot
or do not want to be professional."

Howard Hardin, coordinator of the Clark project in Louisville, doubts that teachers and principals will change because of top-down threats. "If people are honestly making an effort to grow and learn, then we need to support them," he says. "If not, then we must find ways to encourage them to find employment elsewhere. There should be no more 'safe' schools for teachers who cannot or do not want to be professional."

Research on the Kentucky Education Reform Act indicates that a major influence on improving student performance is the possibility that repeated failure of a school to improve could lead to closure by the state. The opposite -- rewards for superior performance -- certainly has been in the minds of most Kentucky teachers since KERA began.

At Western Middle School, teachers decided they would not only get the school off the bottom but go for exceptional improvement. They focused on math because of successes with such interventions as the Algebra Project. The result was that students passed the expected threshold in an extraordinary way (they also scored above the threshold on reading and writing), and teachers won a big bonus.

Calverton Middle School in Baltimore, which slipped on almost all major indicators of performance during the Clark years, is now a "reconstituted" school under Maryland's school reform law. Because of low scores on the Maryland State Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) -- a test that emphasizes critical thinking and interdisciplinary learning (neither of which Calverton had paid much attention to) -- the school must present plans for improvement and be monitored. Eventually, without improvement, it could be closed. "It took us five years to realize we did not have all the stakeholders on board," says Calverton teacher Carol Skowrunski. "Now, we're under the gun. The staff -- those who stay -- will become more conscientious because we are being watched."

State policies are just as subject to politics as are local ones, however. For example, the other Clark school in Baltimore, West Baltimore Middle School, also performed poorly on the MSPAP but was kept off of the reconstituted list in 1994 because the superintendent and the mayor negotiated with the state for a shorter list. "No one bought accountability," charges Chris Lambert of Students First. "North Avenue [the central office] fought state reconstitution, and the message given to the community was that 'We slew Goliath.'" After opposing state action, the school district acknowledged a year later that West Baltimore was in academic trouble, placed it on the district's own "school alert" list, and changed principals.

HOME-GROWN PRESSURE

Pressure from the threat of closure surfaced in Milwaukee as well, where the superintendent wanted to close one of the Clark schools, Parkman Middle School, because of its consistently poor student performance. Lafayette Golden, the third principal in five years, is anxious about "making a difference quickly in student outcomes." Faced with having no school, teachers apparently took notice. Shirley Owens, parent coordinator at Parkman, notes with mixed feelings that results on state tests improved recently, but, she asks, "was that only because we have been threatened with closing?" The teachers, she believes, "work hard on what they want to work on, but there's no one here...to kick butt."

Many middle school teachers in San Diego readily discuss the frameworks and refer to them when
talking about their classroom practices.

The governor's veto of funding for the California Learning Assessment System (CLAS), a new state assessment program, removed a positive force for school improvement in that state. Based upon the California curriculum frameworks and emphasizing performance, analysis, and problem solving, CLAS influenced teachers to change their instruction. Designed by teachers, as were the curriculum frameworks, the assessments had been accepted by most teachers as a reform tool.

The veto of the assessment program did not do away with the state curriculum frameworks, however. They remain as standard-setting documents, providing a certain uniformity for instruction that has a high level of teacher buy-in. Many middle school teachers in San Diego, for example, readily discuss the frameworks and refer to them when talking about their classroom practices. This emphasis on curriculum content reflects district policies that hold improved curriculum and instruction to be vital priorities for schools -- focused on higher achievement for all students.

Oakland spent a lot of time supplementing the same curriculum frameworks to reflect what it believed was a more appropriate curriculum for urban, minority students. It was slow to organize a districtwide effort to improve the teaching of content. Not until the 1994p;95 school year did the district sponsor a series of workshops by subject areas based on research and new curriculum resources, aimed at reaching all teachers in a sustained way.

SCHOOL-BASED TO DO WHAT?

Where districts do not pressure schools to perform, states have applied pressure in some fashion, as in the reform plans of Maryland and Kentucky. This is a power dance with new steps to learn all the time, particularly as individual schools take on greater decisionmaking responsibilities under school-based management and accept accountability in return. School-based management, as many of the Clark schools have learned, is a means, but not an end-point for reform.

If the district views school-based management as just that -- a management rearrangement -- then schools may not rise above such an expectation to address achievement issues. Deciding how to divide up money for field trips does not exactly challenge teachers professionally. School-based decisionmaking's most important function is to allow schools to organize for higher achievement, with the framework for standards a top-down contribution.

At the same time that decisions are being handed over to schools, some central offices also are trimming their resources to help the schools. For example, 10 years ago the Louisville district employed 12 experts in language arts dispersed to the regional offices and three experts in the central office, according to Hardin. Today, the district has only one language arts specialist.

Donald Luebke, a long-term middle school principal in Milwaukee and now a consultant to the district, laments the erosion of team planning time in schools, an essential for a true middle school. It used to be one full class period four days a week, he says, but because the state said there was not enough teacher-student contact time, team planning has been reduced to 30 minutes three days a week.

School-based decisionmaking's most important function is to allow schools to organize for higher achievement, with the standards framework a top-down contribution.

Indeed, budget cuts have forced all five of the districts in the Clark network to cut central office staff, but San Diego was the only district that seemed to be systematically analyzing how to reshape itself to serve schools as they become more autonomous. At least, central office personnel were asking principals and others how the central office could serve schools better. Most central offices retained a top-down attitude toward the schools even as they were pushing decisionmaking down into the schools, allocating to the schools limited control of budgets and personnel decisions. Nor were the central offices providing schools with resources and development opportunities to take on major decisions, such as training on consensus building.

NO ANSWERS YET

The dilemma faced by state and district policymakers and officials is that the ultimate tool for dealing with school failure -- takeovers or closures -- has no record that has been tracked by research and that can inform decisionmaking. State takeovers of entire systems, as in New Jersey, yield physical improvements but so far little in the way of improvement in student achievement. The reconstitution process in Maryland is too new to say whether it works or not. Kentucky's plan is to send in exemplary school administrators for a year to help failing schools, but this was not triggered until 1995. California's interventions with Oakland were limited and not focused on systemic change.

The top-down, bottom-up relationships in the education reform movement are still to be worked out. And several of the Clark schools are in the middle of interventions that have yet to prove what they can accomplish.

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from Believing in Ourselves: Progress and Struggle in Middle School Reform. By Anne C. Lewis. Published in 1995 by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.