Education reformers need to bring about systemic change, members of ASCD's Symposium on Urban Curriculum and Instructional Leadership were told at their 22nd annual meeting, held in San Diego, Calif., in December. But presenters at the meeting also made it clear that changing several elements of the education system simultaneously is anything but easy.
School systems need systemic change to align all the pieces so they work for each other, not against each other, said Marilyn Hughes, an education consultant from Aspen, Colo. These "pieces" include curriculum, instruction, assessment, staff development, scheduling, budgeting, goal setting, and so on.
A lack of systemic thinking plagued reform efforts in the 1980s, Hughes said. Educators took a piecemeal approach to reform, failing to consider the effect of changes on other components of the system. "We'd do fragmented things," she said. "Nothing was ever connected."
A shift to systems thinking must begin with a common vision, Hughes said: Educators must first gain consensus on the ideal situation they are striving for. Once they have developed a common vision (including outcomes for students), then they can design every component of the system to promote the vision.
If educators want students to be good communicators, for example, then all aspects of schooling should support that goal. Even the physical environment should convey that conversation among students is valued, not just allowed, Hughes said. For this reason, she changed the "Quiet Corner" in her classroom into a "Conversation Corner" stocked with conversation pieces such as art prints.
A systems approach should also capitalize on individual differences, Hughes said. "We have to stop thinking we all have to be the same person within the system," she urged. Instead, educators should "team up with people who complete us."
Another presenter, Warren Simmons of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, also called for systemic change. "A fragmented delivery system cannot sufficiently improve results," Simmons told the assembled urban leaders. All aspects of schooling "have to be in alignment for reform to take hold."
Simmons advocated standards-based reform to bring about "comprehensive" change. To date, educators "have engaged in reform that's experimental," not standards-based, he said. Teachers try innovations such as learning styles or cooperative learning without understanding what children are supposed to achieve as a result, he charged. This lack of clear outcomes has caused educators to bounce from one innovation to another, leaving teachers and the public confused, doubtful, and cynical about reform. New programs should be selected because they are backed by substantial evidence that they will help children meet clearly defined standards, he asserted.
A Results Orientation
"Outcome-based accountability" is the new reform principle, Simmons said, and standards should be the basic organizing principle for reshaping schools. This new "results orientation" is bolstered by federal legislation, he said, citing the "constant reiteration" of the call to set standards in Goals 2000, the School-to-Work Transition Act, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).
Because some federal funding will now be contingent on standards-setting efforts, "districts have to get into the standards-development business," Simmons said. But these efforts do not have to take place "in a vacuum." A group of educators at the local level can review existing sets of standards and decide which to adopt wholesale and which to revise to meet local needs. Standards-based reform will be systemic, Simmons emphasized, and its ultimate outcome will be to ensure that the vast majority of students are performing well.
The experiences of Cile Chavez, a third presenter at the symposium, demonstrated the dangers inherent in pursuing far-reaching change, however. Chavez, now a consultant, was formerly superintendent of schools in Littleton, Colo., where a back-to-basics backlash put a halt to an ambitious program of changes, including school-centered decision making and performance assessments.
"Parents want improvement but not something drastically different," Chavez said. A performance-based graduation requirement, for example, "scared some parents to death."
Communication with the community was part of the problem. The movement to get back to basics gained momentum, Chavez said, because "we didn't do a good enough job explaining that we'd never left them." And, regarding feedback from the community, she learned that "it's what you don't hear that you have to pay attention to." But Chavez also contended that "it's not just a communications problem." Some people in the community have fundamentally different beliefs about teaching and learning than most educators hold.
Ironically, Chavez had good rapport with a wide range of constituencies. "I don't have a problem with being an extrovert," she said. "I was connected." But she conceded that she failed to reach one constituency—people with no children in school and no other ties to public schools—whose confidence in the change efforts was undermined by the back-to-basics proponents. But Chavez was unsure how educators could have influenced this group themselves. "How do we penetrate a whole market?" she wondered.
To bring change efforts to fruition, a superintendent needs to be "the consummate politician," with lots of political savvy and a firm grasp of community dynamics, Chavez said. Too often, educators are isolated. "We don't see the political dynamics that are expanding exponentially."
Despite the truism that "change takes time," Chavez speculated that change in Littleton may actually have moved too slowly, allowing opponents to stir up fears and mount a campaign. "In school reform, is there a moment when you go for the gold, or do you always move with tentativeness?" she asked. "Change may have a small window of opportunity."
And time may be running out. According to Simmons, members of the business community are losing patience with the public schools' attempts to fix themselves. Some businesspeople say, "If attempts at reform don't work soon, we're not going to support public education; we're going to advocate vouchers." And this sentiment is on the rise, Simmons added. "We've got about four or five years to give the public some solid evidence that systems have merit as a vehicle for reform."
