Believing in Ourselves: Urban Middle School Reform

Believing in Ourselves

Part II - Chapter 9

THE ANOMALY OF
CENTRAL OFFICE LEADERSHIP

Ultimately, middle grades students will do well in urban districts if the districts are able to create consensus and commitment for reform, using student achievement as their measure. All of the Clark districts presented plans to do that, but the experience of the project makes it quite clear that more than plans and individual leadership are necessary for systemic reform.

Urban districts need a consistency of vision and purpose based on high achievement of all students in order to drive middle grades reform - or any systemic reform - through the maze of competing interests,
instability, and politics.

Granted, the urban districts in the Clark network did not intend to drop all of their other priorities to concentrate only on middle school reform. The Clark initiative was just one of many efforts underway in all of the districts. Nor was the foundation's monetary investment enough to finance large-scale change. Compared to Title I resources, for example, the Clark funds were small change. However, they represented discretionary funds schools could use as they wish, money districts could use as leverage to create an exemplar of reform within their middle grades.

Unfortunately, schools initially viewed the grant as a way to set up new "programs" rather than to support fundamental changes that would lead to high expectations -- and higher achievement. The manner that technical assistance first came to the schools -- through foundation-sponsored resource experts who descended on the schools in rapid succession -- probably contributed to the programmatic focus. Schools felt obligated to try out as many new ideas as possible. Some of the schools gradually began to shape the resources to their needs. Some stayed fixed on programs.

Districts reacted the same way, thinking "programs," not systemic reform. Urban districts often are sophisticated grant-getters, with development offices that search for "requests for proposals" to answer. However, they are not accustomed to being more than minimally accountable for results from the outside funding. They also prefer to think in terms of programs, not of reforms for themselves. Once the Clark grant was secured, most of the district offices avoided using the initiative as their opportunity to build a capacity to support reform.

All of them selected central office people to oversee the effort, appointed advisory committees, submitted quarterly reports, and redrew plans half-way through the grant period. These are ordinary and perfunctory tasks, common to grant management. But they do not represent leadership for systemic change, nor do they reflect any new thinking at the district level about how to complement school reforms with district reforms.

"We did not know how to go about the change process," admits Yolanda Peeks, coordinator of the Clark initiative for its last two years in Oakland and now an assistant superintendent. Despite low teacher morale and constant budget problems, Oakland did try. Its original plan for middle grades reform, drawn up by the Clark coordinator with little input from the schools, preceded by only a few months a new superintendent's mandate that each school prepare a five-year plan for improvement. Then followed another central office effort -- 15 demonstration schools that would select from a menu of reform models the one they would implement -- with pressure on the Clark schools from the superintendent to participate.

The agendas kept getting crossed in the three Clark schools.Some of the promised programs and supports to the demonstration schools, such as an extended school year, were cancelled in order to finance yet another middle grades reform plan, introduced in 1995. This was the third middle grades initiative in recent years, and the district "rightly deserves cynicism from teachers because we never completed the process before," says Peeks.

In a very candid assessment of its attempt at middle grades reform, the final report to the Clark Foundation from Oakland officials admitted that, despite some cutting-edge change initiatives, "Oakland remains a traditional, urban school district:

It is sometimes overwhelmed by unexpected crises; it persists in using questionable, "business-as-usual" practices (such as split reading, retentions and summer vacations); it preaches participative management while it honors and promotes old-fashioned authoritarian principals.

After several turnovers of the Clark coordinator in Baltimore, an assistant superintendent took over and developed an elaborate plan for an Institute for Middle School Reform that would link all the city's middle schools, provide staff development, and coordinate various efforts underway in the middle grades. As exemplary as the plan seemed to be, it was just one more activity in a school district flooded with reform projects that floated on good intentions but lacked a visionary anchor. And the Institute was still waiting to be implemented at the end of the Clark grant.

Baltimore's plate included updated facilities, a computer-retrievable curriculum, the Efficacy Project to set high academic standards, and site-based management. "But none of these is connected," observes Chris Lambert of Students First, a project of the local Advocates for Children and Youth, Inc. "No one asks if any of these produces results with kids."

The Fund for Educational Excellence attempted to build a cross-group consensus around middle school reform (business, principals, teachers, parents, students, and community agencies and groups) through a series of forums followed by focus group discussions. The upshot, says the Fund's director, Jerry Baum, was a realization that "a lot of distractions are going on, including tension between the central office and the Enterprise schools (site-based management schools) over who should lead." This causes one to question, he says, whether the lack of a vision for the Baltimore schools "is by default or is deliberate."

Districts selected staff, appointed advisory committees, submitted quarterly reports, and redrew plans. These are ordinary tasks common to grant management. But they do not represent leadership for systemic change.

Similarly, Milwaukee's middle school plan languished in a central office concerned about turnovers and budget cuts, then about the new superintendent's call for a revised Kp;12 curriculum. At the end of the project there was no remaining middle school initiative as such. "It is part of everything else that is going on," says Jasna.

In these three districts, the fuzzy structure around middle school reform prevented the schools from achieving what might have been possible through the grant years. Each of the districts had their coordinators and liaisons, but these people did not have the power to connect the top down with the bottom up. There was faint message -- and little help -- for the schools about how middle grades reform fit into any overall vision for the district, even if such a vision existed. Conversations about middle school reform did not extend beyond the network schools.

A DIFFERENT APPROACH
TO LEADERSHIP

San Diego and Louisville, by contrast, made the message much clearer.

No specific model of urban middles grades reform is suggested by their experience, but the schools in both of these sites thrived and progressed much more than the schools in the other three districts. And middle-grades reform spread beyond the individual project schools. Both districts experienced turnovers in superintendents; San Diego coped with constant budget cuts and a growing minority student enrollment. Why were their results different from the other three cities?

First, the schools understood that they were expected to improve. In San Diego, a long, inclusive process of developing reform initiatives pushed everyone in the school system toward higher student achievement as the goal. The turnover in superintendents, when the deputy moved up to the top spot, only reinforced this purpose for reforms. Under Bertha Pendleton, the objectives became even more specific. The Clark schools, in addition, became centers for data collection and analysis that pinpointed their progress, with lessons both for the schools and for the district.

Louisville's unusual organization -- in which principals reported directly to the superintendent -- also encouraged schools to be accountable. More significant during the grant period, however, was the influence of the Kentucky Education Reform Act, which mandated publicly reported assessments, tied them to sanctions and rewards, and gave each school specific targets for academic improvement.

In the other districts, central office people rarely came
to the schools, or, if they did, they were recognized as not having much power in the structure. In San Diego and Louisville, the central office liaisons had status.

Another important strategy used by San Diego and Louisville was the importance given to the message carrier. In the other districts, central office people rarely came to the schools, or, if they did, they were recognized as not having much power in the structure. Most contacts with the middle schools occurred on the central districts' turf. In San Diego and Louisville, the central office liaisons had status.

San Diego's deputy superintendent served as project coordinator. Similar assignments were made in Baltimore and Milwaukee; the difference, however, was that the liaisons who worked under Bertha Pendleton, now under Frank Till, were and still are part of the inner circle in the district administration. Liaison Cat Xander, for example, visits Mann and Muirlands on a weekly basis at least and has organized districtwide, highly successful one-day conferences on middle grades reform. The Clark schools, notes Till, were used "to change the conversation in the district about reforms."

In 1989, the superintendent in Louisville asked Howard Hardin, who was then directing assessment and school improvement for the district, to take on the Clark initiative. That he placed responsibility so high in the central office indicated "a real commitment from him," says Hardin. Although a new superintendent has since reorganized the central office, plans for districtwide middle school reform are going forward.

A hands-on contact with the schools, Hardin is in the schools regularly, develops community resources for them, confronts them with data he collects through surveys in addition to the state assessment data, and assesses what else and what direction the schools need to take. Realizing that teachers are often reluctant to leave their classrooms for staff development sessions, he piloted a system of interns -- expert teachers who work for a semester out of the central office as standards/curriculum/best practices resources for teachers at the school site.

Some of the success that Xander and Hardin have with the schools is due to their personalities, but more is due to the style of district leadership they represent. Their work in the schools is neither superficial nor autocratic. They support principals and teachers, acting mostly as critical friends.

More of their success is due to the style of district leadership they represent. Their work in the schools is neither superficial nor autocratic. They support principals and teachers, acting mostly as critical friends.

"The bulk of our Clark money went into developing people," says Hardin. Because of that, the impact of professional development opportunities offered by Clark in Louisville did not fade out, as in some of the other cities, but were followed up and focused on the district's goals for the schools.
The three "highs" of the Clark project fit with San Diego's intention to become a standards-based school system, says Till. Thus, professional development offered by the Clark project in San Diego reinforced the emphasis upon standards. The central office, he admits, had once been organized like a high school -- highly departmentalized -- "but it showed it could demonstrate new behaviors," and these transitions are still in progress as the administration continues to ask schools what form of leadership they want in a decentralized system. "We're asking really good questions to get us to the next level," says Till.

Teachers and principals serve as experts for the annual one-day middle-school conferences sponsored by the San Diego district -- put on for about $5,000. It is an annual reminder of best practices in the district and a vehicle for principals and teachers to establish connections with each other over instructional improvements. "We are borrowing from each other," says Muirlands Principal Cassandra Countryman, noting that other schools in her area are now adopting detracking policies. To her, this is evidence of systemic change.

In addition, the middle school principals are doing less "griping" and having more discussions about substantive issues, says Xander. "They are concentrating on moving on together," she says. "They may not be on the same page, but they're in the same book." Julie Elliott of Mann Middle School confirms this change in attitude on a wider scale, describing how the principals in her Crawford Cluster (the schools feeding into Crawford High School) are looking at the Kp;12 spectrum of problems and possible solutions.

A 1995 audit of middle grades reform in San Diego by the Center for Early Adolescence found that "nearly everyone interviewed by the team cited the middle level as having played the lead in district education reform." It also reported "cohesiveness and collegiality among middle-level principals."

The middle school effort in Louisville laid the foundation for plans to go systemwide on middle grades reform. However, it also made it possible for a much larger circle around middle schools to develop. The Coalition of Middle Schools is a new county-wide effort growing out of the Jefferson County Collaborative, a city and county planning group. Over several years, the collaborative has been able to solve turf issues and bring all sorts of services and agencies to the table to ensure that all children and families receive services they need. This effort includes some joint budgeting. Schools are a major player in the collaborative, serving as its fiscal agent and often providing facilities.

In the past, says Lynn Rippy, head of the Youth Alliance in the mayor's office, the schools have not been "accessible institutions" for service providers. That is, they were closed to outsiders. KERA's establishment of Youth Service Centers, so successful at the three Clark schools, opened up the schools and allowed city and county officials to see the possibilities for delivering services to all families. The Coalition of Middle Schools, funded by Clark, turned the focus on middle schools and on involving students and parents in designing the services for them.

Each of the 24 middle schools in the county system now has a business partner. The Coalition worked with all schools on needs assessments, deciding to concentrate on two schools having particular trouble meeting the KERA standards. It also started the first Neighborhood Place, a one-stop service center for families, and plans eventually to cover the whole county with eight centers. The Youth Service Center coordinators are brought together through the Neighborhood Place. Because caseworkers and mentors empower families to work out solutions and stick to them, the impact on families is evident, says Rippy. This has produced a "change in the sense and feeling among the agencies," she says. "They are really cooperating now."

Because of its work with middle schools, she adds, the Coalition has helped the city see its role in school reform. "This has been a healthy experience for the community," she explains, "making it a real school community, not just a collection of buildings."

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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.