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Voices in Urban Education
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Skills for Smart Systems
VUE Number 17, Fall 2007
| VUE Home | Archives | Order Print Copy |
Developing Effective Multiple Partnerships
By Jesse Register and Joanne Thompson
Jesse Register is Annenberg Senior Advisor for District Leadership and Joanne Thompson is a research associate in district redesign at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.
> Authors' bios
> Full article [PDF: 10 pages]
---------------------------------------
Reforming low-performing elementary schools, redesigning high schools, and ensuring college access and success for students require school districts to engage multiple partners across a community.
If we are unable to substantially close the existing skill gaps among racial/ethnic groups and substantially boost the literacy levels of the population as a whole, demographic forces will result in a U.S. population in 2030 with tens of millions of adults unable to meet the requirements of the new economy.
–Irwin Kirsh, Henry Braun, Kentaro Yamamoto, and Andrew Sum, America's Perfect Storm
The report America's Perfect Storm,
published by the Educational Testing
Service, reminds us again how changing
conditions in our country and the
world magnify the need to fundamentally
change the outcomes we have
been obtaining in America's public
schools (Kirsh et al. 2007).We must
learn how to succeed where we have
not, up to now, succeeded – at least,
not on a broad scale. Robert Marzano,
Timothy Waters, and Brian McNulty
(2005, p. 67) note in their discussion of
second-order change:
Given the complexity of the challenges we face in public education and the lack of large-scale success, we must ask if school districts across the country have the capacity to be successful with these complex issues. The development of collaborative working relationships with multiple partners is one way that districts can increase capacity to change and reform. Learning how to develop and become members of highly effective partnerships merits serious consideration by district leaders.
This approach is consistent with the concept of “smart education systems” envisioned by Warren Simmons (2007). Simmons notes that attention to district-level reform is a factor in gaining equitable results and has the possibility of engaging communities over time. However, Simmons goes on to say, efforts to strengthen districts alone are not sufficient; he suggests that “smart education systems” in which community organizations and school districts join together to provide needed supports for children and families are necessary.
Written from the perspective of a district leader, our article will explore some concepts and strategies for district leaders to use in helping to create highly effective systems of multiple partners, recognizing that the capacity and the will to work effectively with multiple partners may not be among the skills and attitudes that many district leaders have learned or been taught.
Chattanooga and Hamilton County, Tennessee
As recently as 1975, nearly half of the employed residents of Chattanooga, Tennessee, worked in factories and foundries. College attendance was traditionally low because local plants provided decent wages and lifelong employment for the county's citizens. Recently, however, as the bulk of the manufacturing sector has left the South, many well-paying blue-collar jobs have gone with it. Today, fewer than twenty percent of the county's jobs are in manufacturing.With no traditional imperative for post-secondary education, Tennessee ranks forty-second out of the fifty states in the proportion of adults with four-year college degrees.
It was in this context that the Chattanooga City Schools and the Hamilton County School System merged, in 1997, combining two very different systems. The county system was largely rural and suburban, with a student population of around 22,000, the majority of whom were White, primarily from blue-collar, middle-class families. The city system was primarily urban, with a student population of around 21,000, the majority of whom were African American and from low-income families. A new school board subsequently chose one of us [Jesse Register] to plan the merger and lead the unified district.
Since that time, Hamilton County Schools (HCS) has been immersed in two major reform initiatives that have been quite successful. These initiatives focused on eliminating the achievement gap in urban, high-poverty schools and on systemic high school reform. The multiple partnerships that enabled success in these initiatives are highlighted in the following descriptions. Although it is understood that one model will certainly not fit all districts and communities, suggestions are made that may have general applicability for others as new “smart systems” of engaged, multiple partnerships are attempted.
Addressing the Achievement Gap: The Benwood Initiative
The first major initiative was designed to turn around poor-quality schools in inner-city Chattanooga. The issue became a high priority in 1999, after test-score data were used to rank all elementary schools in the state by reading level. Nine of the bottom twenty were in Chattanooga. Interested in doing something about the problem, the board and the executive director of the Benwood Foundation approached the president of the Public Education Fund (PEF) and the superintendent of HCS to develop a joint effort to address the issue.
Six months later, convinced that PEF and the district had a reasonable plan of action, the Benwood Foundation agreed to spend $5 million over five years, and the PEF an additional $2.5 million, on a plan to reform the nine lowest-performing elementary schools in Chattanooga — the Benwood Schools. This plan, devised jointly by the district, the PEF, the Benwood Foundation, and a growing number of partners, took as its primary strategy improving and stabilizing the quality of faculty and supports for each school. Funding was used primarily to train classroom teachers in reading instruction, hire reading specialists to work with struggling readers, provide coaches for new teachers, and provide leadership training for principals and other school-based instructional leadership.
The Benwood Initiative represented a true partnership involving multiple partners. The Foundation got the ball rolling. The PEF brought coherence and focus to the work. Chattanooga's mayor, Bob Corker, joined the effort as well.
Chattanooga's mayor, Bob Corker, joined the effort as well. He gave a $5,000 bonus to identified highperforming teachers in the Benwood Schools whose students' test scores grew more than the expected growth. He held a yearly reception at his home for high-performing Benwood teachers and arranged for teachers in these schools to get low-interest mortgages as a part of recruitment-incentives packages. He also formed a Chattanooga Education Alliance to garner support for the program from top local business and community leaders.
In addition, the Osborne Foundation agreed to fund a program through the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to provide Benwood teachers a free master's degree, and the University agreed to develop a tailormade program for urban educators in these schools. The PEF contributed $500,000 to the master's program and serves as the coordinator.
The Hamilton County Education Association, the teachers union,was also a valuable partner, and their involvement made the challenge of reversing a decades-old problem of low performance and low teaching standards easier to overcome. The union and the district agreed to reconstitute faculties and to develop school supports that could recruit and retain high-performing groups of teachers. The union and the district formed a collaborative working relationship to address issues such as hiring, transfer policies, and differentiated pay in the contract, and this relationship helped accelerate the overall effort.
Systemic High School Reform: Schools for a New Society
In 2001, PEF and HCS received a five-year, $8 million grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York to participate in its Schools for a New Society initiative. The goal of the initiative was to improve all of the district's high schools by creating a more engaging, challenging, and personalized learning experience for all students. The strength of the PEF-HCS partnership and the success of the Benwood Initiative contributed to the successful attainment of the grant.
Under the initiative, Chattanooga
high schools were reconfigured into
small learning communities organized
as theme-based academies, ranging
from construction and engineering to
liberal and fine arts that, simultaneously,
would prepare students for college-level
work and create interest in the world of
work. While each school had considerable
autonomy in identifying needs and
determining priorities for the academies,
each had to address four basic districtwide
goals:
The Partnership for College Access and Success
Directly complementary to the high school reform initiative, the Partnership for College Access and Success (PCAS) is an eight-city program that helps communities bring together a broad variety of local organizations — the school district, institutions of higher education, community- and faith-based organizations, businesses, and government — to prepare students to succeed in college. Funded by the Lumina Foundation for Education, the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga, and the PEF and coordinated by the PEF with technical assistance from the Academy for Educational Development, PCAS also aims to increase family awareness of opportunities for enrolling in and paying for college. PCAS chose Chattanooga as one of its eight sites, in part, because of initiatives already under way to improve students' access to and success in college, including the Schools for a New Society (SNS) high school reform initiative.
The PCAS partnership is one of equal players: no single partner drives it or controls it. Instead, a steering group representing twenty organizations and community groups meets monthly and uses a set of agreed-upon priorities to drive the work.
College-access counselors, funded by Lumina, SNS, and district funds work to help each school build its short- and long-term capacity to make the changes implicit in the move to a single-path curriculum, the goal of which is to ensure that all students graduate with the option of college. Summer interns help high school upperclassmen and their families explore post-secondary aspirations by taking them on college visits, helping them refine post-graduation education plans, and meeting families in their homes.
PCAS's work is not limited to these three schools. The partnership has provided five full days of professional learning for all high school counselors and community-based organization staff who want to attend. The sessions, developed by counselors and communitybased organization staff, includes topics such as financial aid, college visits, challenges for freshmen, and help for students in writing essays. In addition, partnerships with the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Chattanooga State are aimed at improving retention for entering students.
A Strategy for Building the Capacity of Districts to Engage in Multiple Partnerships
It is crucial that district leaders put aside old behaviors and attitudes so that districts can effectively function as discrete and independent organizations in their communities. A defensive posture of maintaining control and holding authority close and inside the organization does not support the concept of smart education systems or smart districts and inhibits the development of a spirit of collaboration.
Our experiences with the Benwood Foundation and the teachers union, among others, demonstrated for me and other leaders in Hamilton County the importance of partnership and helped us build our capacity to work with organizations that could provide needed ideas and resources.We learned that a welcoming attitude and the cultivation of equal and engaged partners will contribute to building a culture of cooperation and collaboration.
A basic principle of effective collaboration is that participants must have parity. Too often, as districts engage in partnerships with community-based organizations, there is a mindset that the district must be in control. While district control is appropriate in some respects, district leaders need to understand that engaging partners as equals has much greater potential for success. Ownership is important for all participants in successful reform initiatives. Furthermore, district leaders need to cultivate this change in attitude with district executive staff, middle management, and school-based staff. Cooperative relationships among people within the various organizations can lead to success; the absence of these relationships can cause failure. Bringing down barriers to effective collaboration is necessary.
Many partners will be more narrowly focused on single issues, but that is not bad. In fact, that narrow focus may create much greater capacity to effectively deal with an issue. There were many examples in Hamilton County in which the sharp focus of various partners added real value to what the district could accomplish. Perhaps the unique role for the district leadership is keeping the big picture clearly in mind. The idea of equal part ners — some with a razor-sharp focus on key issues and others that keep a broad perspective of how various pieces fit together — makes sense.
It is reasonable to assume that a district could have twenty, thirty, or more partnerships at any given time and that the work of these partnerships would continue to increase the capacity to reform as trust between the partners grows. It is important for the district leader to balance these multiple working relationships with the vision and direction of the district.
Too often, as districts engage in partnerships with community-based organizations, there is a mindset that the district must be in control. District leaders need to understand that engaging partners as equals has much greater potential for success.
Identifying a few key partners that can coordinate the efforts of many other participating organizations with a district is an effective strategy. The PEF in Hamilton County was invaluable in working with other philanthropic and community-based organizations that became engaged in the two comprehensive reform efforts. That key partner greatly enhanced the capacity of the district reform efforts in these two initiatives and helped to organize the efforts of other participants.Without that partnership and a good working relationship between the leadership in the district and in the PEF, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to engage as many participants and find the success that resulted.
A high degree of trust must be established and an effective working relationship must be grown over time to fully develop the capabilities of such a key partnership. District leaders should seek out and cultivate organizations that have the capacity to become that key partner. The advantages for the district leader are significant when these types of relationships are built. The district leader can develop contact with multiple participants in the effort and not be overwhelmed by unmanageable time requirements, in addition to the other responsibilities of overseeing the complexities of a big district, but can still be very connected to the work.
An effective change leadership team was established in Hamilton County to steer the work of systemic high school reform. The leadership team was composed of the superintendent, the president and one other representative from the PEF, the SNS director hired by PEF, and two key participants in the reform initiative from the district. This team met on a monthly basis, and all aspects of the reform were discussed. The superintendent and president of the foundation were always present, an agenda was prepared in advance, and follow-up plans were made at each meeting. This standing team participated in the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, where the team had the opportunity to further develop leadership strategies to steer the comprehensive reform effort.
Creation of leadership teams of district leaders and key outside partners can increase the capacity to engage many participants in multiple reform initiatives, keep close connections to the work, maintain focus and direction in the district, and successfully lead complex reform.
The strategy of developing key partnerships and leadership teams can be expanded to manage multiple complex reform initiatives in a district at the same time. Creation of leadership teams of district leaders and key outside partners can increase the capacity to engage many participants in multiple reform initiatives, keep close connections to the work, maintain focus and direction in the district, and successfully lead complex reform.
The Challenges of Scale and Sustainability
Bringing a successful reform initiative to scale is often a concern for district leaders. If an initiative is successful in one school or community, district leaders will most likely feel pressure to make that initiative available in all schools or communities that have similar needs. Lack of effort to take successful reform to scale may generate negative reaction both inside the district and in the community. In addition, if successful initiatives are brought to scale, the possibilities for sustainability are also much improved. District leadership will likely be more aware of the need to go to scale than many of the participating community partners. Eliciting the help of community partners that might be focused on a single school, community, or project is an important district responsibility.
The urban reform initiative in Hamilton County is a good example of a successful effort to help a set of lowperforming elementary schools and the pressure that arose from other schools in the district to have access to the same system of supports. District and school leadership in the initial set of schools responded by first inviting other schools to participate in staff- and leadership-development opportunities. Then, because of the success of the initiative and effective partnerships with key partners that were very engaged in the work, grant funds were offered to expand the initiative beyond the original set of schools, and lessons learned are being incorporated into districtwide plans. Potentially negative reactions have been turned to positives. Furthermore, the strategic use of grant funds, federal funds, and district funds has helped to ensure sustainability.
A district's capacity to reform can be greatly enhanced by effective development of multiple partners. For many traditional school leaders, learning how to function effectively in such an environment is challenging, but not unrealistic. Perhaps the key to success is a change in attitude for district leaders to engage as partners on an equal basis with other organizations.
Developing key partners to organize the work, engaging many communitybased partners that are passionate about their constituencies and their agendas, collaborating with teachers and the teachers union and finding common purpose, engaging the business community and local government, and engaging philanthropic partners, both locally and nationally, can lead to successful reform. Then it becomes easy to envision annual summits convened by the district, a local education fund, or a local governing body to bring many partners together to consider the community vision for public education and the various roles that each partner plays to accomplish that vision.
REFERENCES
Fullan, M. 2001. Leading in a Culture of Change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Kirsh, I., H. Braun, K. Yamamoto, and A. Sum. 2007. America's Perfect Storm: Three Forces Changing Our Nation's Future. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.
Marzano, R. J., T.Waters, and B. A. McNulty. 2005. School Leadership that Works: From Research to Results. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Simmons,W. 2007. “From Smart Districts to Smart Education Systems: A Broader Agenda for Educational Development.” In City Schools: How Districts and Communities Can Create Smart Education Systems, edited by R. Rothman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
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Archives
Skills for Smart Systems
VUE Number 17, Fall 2007
| VUE Home | Archives | Order Print Copy |
Developing Effective Multiple Partnerships
By Jesse Register and Joanne Thompson
Jesse Register is Annenberg Senior Advisor for District Leadership and Joanne Thompson is a research associate in district redesign at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.
> Authors' bios
> Full article [PDF: 10 pages]
---------------------------------------
Reforming low-performing elementary schools, redesigning high schools, and ensuring college access and success for students require school districts to engage multiple partners across a community.
If we are unable to substantially close the existing skill gaps among racial/ethnic groups and substantially boost the literacy levels of the population as a whole, demographic forces will result in a U.S. population in 2030 with tens of millions of adults unable to meet the requirements of the new economy.
–Irwin Kirsh, Henry Braun, Kentaro Yamamoto, and Andrew Sum, America's Perfect Storm
Witness the decades-old problem of the achievement gap between children from poverty versus children not from poverty. This issue has been a focus of educational reform for decades. . . . In spite of decades of attention, the problem persists.Indeed, addressing this challenge requires attention to very complex issues. In Michael Fullan's words, “The big problems of the day are complex, rife with paradoxes and dilemmas. For these problems, there are no once and for all answers” (Fullan 2001, p. 73).
Given the complexity of the challenges we face in public education and the lack of large-scale success, we must ask if school districts across the country have the capacity to be successful with these complex issues. The development of collaborative working relationships with multiple partners is one way that districts can increase capacity to change and reform. Learning how to develop and become members of highly effective partnerships merits serious consideration by district leaders.
This approach is consistent with the concept of “smart education systems” envisioned by Warren Simmons (2007). Simmons notes that attention to district-level reform is a factor in gaining equitable results and has the possibility of engaging communities over time. However, Simmons goes on to say, efforts to strengthen districts alone are not sufficient; he suggests that “smart education systems” in which community organizations and school districts join together to provide needed supports for children and families are necessary.
Written from the perspective of a district leader, our article will explore some concepts and strategies for district leaders to use in helping to create highly effective systems of multiple partners, recognizing that the capacity and the will to work effectively with multiple partners may not be among the skills and attitudes that many district leaders have learned or been taught.
Chattanooga and Hamilton County, Tennessee
As recently as 1975, nearly half of the employed residents of Chattanooga, Tennessee, worked in factories and foundries. College attendance was traditionally low because local plants provided decent wages and lifelong employment for the county's citizens. Recently, however, as the bulk of the manufacturing sector has left the South, many well-paying blue-collar jobs have gone with it. Today, fewer than twenty percent of the county's jobs are in manufacturing.With no traditional imperative for post-secondary education, Tennessee ranks forty-second out of the fifty states in the proportion of adults with four-year college degrees.
It was in this context that the Chattanooga City Schools and the Hamilton County School System merged, in 1997, combining two very different systems. The county system was largely rural and suburban, with a student population of around 22,000, the majority of whom were White, primarily from blue-collar, middle-class families. The city system was primarily urban, with a student population of around 21,000, the majority of whom were African American and from low-income families. A new school board subsequently chose one of us [Jesse Register] to plan the merger and lead the unified district.
Since that time, Hamilton County Schools (HCS) has been immersed in two major reform initiatives that have been quite successful. These initiatives focused on eliminating the achievement gap in urban, high-poverty schools and on systemic high school reform. The multiple partnerships that enabled success in these initiatives are highlighted in the following descriptions. Although it is understood that one model will certainly not fit all districts and communities, suggestions are made that may have general applicability for others as new “smart systems” of engaged, multiple partnerships are attempted.
Addressing the Achievement Gap: The Benwood Initiative
The first major initiative was designed to turn around poor-quality schools in inner-city Chattanooga. The issue became a high priority in 1999, after test-score data were used to rank all elementary schools in the state by reading level. Nine of the bottom twenty were in Chattanooga. Interested in doing something about the problem, the board and the executive director of the Benwood Foundation approached the president of the Public Education Fund (PEF) and the superintendent of HCS to develop a joint effort to address the issue.
Six months later, convinced that PEF and the district had a reasonable plan of action, the Benwood Foundation agreed to spend $5 million over five years, and the PEF an additional $2.5 million, on a plan to reform the nine lowest-performing elementary schools in Chattanooga — the Benwood Schools. This plan, devised jointly by the district, the PEF, the Benwood Foundation, and a growing number of partners, took as its primary strategy improving and stabilizing the quality of faculty and supports for each school. Funding was used primarily to train classroom teachers in reading instruction, hire reading specialists to work with struggling readers, provide coaches for new teachers, and provide leadership training for principals and other school-based instructional leadership.
The Benwood Initiative represented a true partnership involving multiple partners. The Foundation got the ball rolling. The PEF brought coherence and focus to the work. Chattanooga's mayor, Bob Corker, joined the effort as well.
Chattanooga's mayor, Bob Corker, joined the effort as well. He gave a $5,000 bonus to identified highperforming teachers in the Benwood Schools whose students' test scores grew more than the expected growth. He held a yearly reception at his home for high-performing Benwood teachers and arranged for teachers in these schools to get low-interest mortgages as a part of recruitment-incentives packages. He also formed a Chattanooga Education Alliance to garner support for the program from top local business and community leaders.
In addition, the Osborne Foundation agreed to fund a program through the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to provide Benwood teachers a free master's degree, and the University agreed to develop a tailormade program for urban educators in these schools. The PEF contributed $500,000 to the master's program and serves as the coordinator.
The Hamilton County Education Association, the teachers union,was also a valuable partner, and their involvement made the challenge of reversing a decades-old problem of low performance and low teaching standards easier to overcome. The union and the district agreed to reconstitute faculties and to develop school supports that could recruit and retain high-performing groups of teachers. The union and the district formed a collaborative working relationship to address issues such as hiring, transfer policies, and differentiated pay in the contract, and this relationship helped accelerate the overall effort.
Systemic High School Reform: Schools for a New Society
In 2001, PEF and HCS received a five-year, $8 million grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York to participate in its Schools for a New Society initiative. The goal of the initiative was to improve all of the district's high schools by creating a more engaging, challenging, and personalized learning experience for all students. The strength of the PEF-HCS partnership and the success of the Benwood Initiative contributed to the successful attainment of the grant.
Under the initiative, Chattanooga
high schools were reconfigured into
small learning communities organized
as theme-based academies, ranging
from construction and engineering to
liberal and fine arts that, simultaneously,
would prepare students for college-level
work and create interest in the world of
work. While each school had considerable
autonomy in identifying needs and
determining priorities for the academies,
each had to address four basic districtwide
goals:
- Establish a more challenging, relevant,
and engaging curriculum
- Improve teaching by providing more
professional development for teachers,
leaders, and staff.
- Create a more personalized and
engaging experience for students.
- Allow more flexibility to meet student
needs more effectively.
The Partnership for College Access and Success
Directly complementary to the high school reform initiative, the Partnership for College Access and Success (PCAS) is an eight-city program that helps communities bring together a broad variety of local organizations — the school district, institutions of higher education, community- and faith-based organizations, businesses, and government — to prepare students to succeed in college. Funded by the Lumina Foundation for Education, the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga, and the PEF and coordinated by the PEF with technical assistance from the Academy for Educational Development, PCAS also aims to increase family awareness of opportunities for enrolling in and paying for college. PCAS chose Chattanooga as one of its eight sites, in part, because of initiatives already under way to improve students' access to and success in college, including the Schools for a New Society (SNS) high school reform initiative.
The PCAS partnership is one of equal players: no single partner drives it or controls it. Instead, a steering group representing twenty organizations and community groups meets monthly and uses a set of agreed-upon priorities to drive the work.
College-access counselors, funded by Lumina, SNS, and district funds work to help each school build its short- and long-term capacity to make the changes implicit in the move to a single-path curriculum, the goal of which is to ensure that all students graduate with the option of college. Summer interns help high school upperclassmen and their families explore post-secondary aspirations by taking them on college visits, helping them refine post-graduation education plans, and meeting families in their homes.
PCAS's work is not limited to these three schools. The partnership has provided five full days of professional learning for all high school counselors and community-based organization staff who want to attend. The sessions, developed by counselors and communitybased organization staff, includes topics such as financial aid, college visits, challenges for freshmen, and help for students in writing essays. In addition, partnerships with the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Chattanooga State are aimed at improving retention for entering students.
A Strategy for Building the Capacity of Districts to Engage in Multiple Partnerships
It is crucial that district leaders put aside old behaviors and attitudes so that districts can effectively function as discrete and independent organizations in their communities. A defensive posture of maintaining control and holding authority close and inside the organization does not support the concept of smart education systems or smart districts and inhibits the development of a spirit of collaboration.
Our experiences with the Benwood Foundation and the teachers union, among others, demonstrated for me and other leaders in Hamilton County the importance of partnership and helped us build our capacity to work with organizations that could provide needed ideas and resources.We learned that a welcoming attitude and the cultivation of equal and engaged partners will contribute to building a culture of cooperation and collaboration.
A basic principle of effective collaboration is that participants must have parity. Too often, as districts engage in partnerships with community-based organizations, there is a mindset that the district must be in control. While district control is appropriate in some respects, district leaders need to understand that engaging partners as equals has much greater potential for success. Ownership is important for all participants in successful reform initiatives. Furthermore, district leaders need to cultivate this change in attitude with district executive staff, middle management, and school-based staff. Cooperative relationships among people within the various organizations can lead to success; the absence of these relationships can cause failure. Bringing down barriers to effective collaboration is necessary.
Many partners will be more narrowly focused on single issues, but that is not bad. In fact, that narrow focus may create much greater capacity to effectively deal with an issue. There were many examples in Hamilton County in which the sharp focus of various partners added real value to what the district could accomplish. Perhaps the unique role for the district leadership is keeping the big picture clearly in mind. The idea of equal part ners — some with a razor-sharp focus on key issues and others that keep a broad perspective of how various pieces fit together — makes sense.
It is reasonable to assume that a district could have twenty, thirty, or more partnerships at any given time and that the work of these partnerships would continue to increase the capacity to reform as trust between the partners grows. It is important for the district leader to balance these multiple working relationships with the vision and direction of the district.
Too often, as districts engage in partnerships with community-based organizations, there is a mindset that the district must be in control. District leaders need to understand that engaging partners as equals has much greater potential for success.
Identifying a few key partners that can coordinate the efforts of many other participating organizations with a district is an effective strategy. The PEF in Hamilton County was invaluable in working with other philanthropic and community-based organizations that became engaged in the two comprehensive reform efforts. That key partner greatly enhanced the capacity of the district reform efforts in these two initiatives and helped to organize the efforts of other participants.Without that partnership and a good working relationship between the leadership in the district and in the PEF, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to engage as many participants and find the success that resulted.
A high degree of trust must be established and an effective working relationship must be grown over time to fully develop the capabilities of such a key partnership. District leaders should seek out and cultivate organizations that have the capacity to become that key partner. The advantages for the district leader are significant when these types of relationships are built. The district leader can develop contact with multiple participants in the effort and not be overwhelmed by unmanageable time requirements, in addition to the other responsibilities of overseeing the complexities of a big district, but can still be very connected to the work.
An effective change leadership team was established in Hamilton County to steer the work of systemic high school reform. The leadership team was composed of the superintendent, the president and one other representative from the PEF, the SNS director hired by PEF, and two key participants in the reform initiative from the district. This team met on a monthly basis, and all aspects of the reform were discussed. The superintendent and president of the foundation were always present, an agenda was prepared in advance, and follow-up plans were made at each meeting. This standing team participated in the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, where the team had the opportunity to further develop leadership strategies to steer the comprehensive reform effort.
Creation of leadership teams of district leaders and key outside partners can increase the capacity to engage many participants in multiple reform initiatives, keep close connections to the work, maintain focus and direction in the district, and successfully lead complex reform.
The strategy of developing key partnerships and leadership teams can be expanded to manage multiple complex reform initiatives in a district at the same time. Creation of leadership teams of district leaders and key outside partners can increase the capacity to engage many participants in multiple reform initiatives, keep close connections to the work, maintain focus and direction in the district, and successfully lead complex reform.
The Challenges of Scale and Sustainability
Bringing a successful reform initiative to scale is often a concern for district leaders. If an initiative is successful in one school or community, district leaders will most likely feel pressure to make that initiative available in all schools or communities that have similar needs. Lack of effort to take successful reform to scale may generate negative reaction both inside the district and in the community. In addition, if successful initiatives are brought to scale, the possibilities for sustainability are also much improved. District leadership will likely be more aware of the need to go to scale than many of the participating community partners. Eliciting the help of community partners that might be focused on a single school, community, or project is an important district responsibility.
The urban reform initiative in Hamilton County is a good example of a successful effort to help a set of lowperforming elementary schools and the pressure that arose from other schools in the district to have access to the same system of supports. District and school leadership in the initial set of schools responded by first inviting other schools to participate in staff- and leadership-development opportunities. Then, because of the success of the initiative and effective partnerships with key partners that were very engaged in the work, grant funds were offered to expand the initiative beyond the original set of schools, and lessons learned are being incorporated into districtwide plans. Potentially negative reactions have been turned to positives. Furthermore, the strategic use of grant funds, federal funds, and district funds has helped to ensure sustainability.
A district's capacity to reform can be greatly enhanced by effective development of multiple partners. For many traditional school leaders, learning how to function effectively in such an environment is challenging, but not unrealistic. Perhaps the key to success is a change in attitude for district leaders to engage as partners on an equal basis with other organizations.
Developing key partners to organize the work, engaging many communitybased partners that are passionate about their constituencies and their agendas, collaborating with teachers and the teachers union and finding common purpose, engaging the business community and local government, and engaging philanthropic partners, both locally and nationally, can lead to successful reform. Then it becomes easy to envision annual summits convened by the district, a local education fund, or a local governing body to bring many partners together to consider the community vision for public education and the various roles that each partner plays to accomplish that vision.
REFERENCES
Fullan, M. 2001. Leading in a Culture of Change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Kirsh, I., H. Braun, K. Yamamoto, and A. Sum. 2007. America's Perfect Storm: Three Forces Changing Our Nation's Future. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.
Marzano, R. J., T.Waters, and B. A. McNulty. 2005. School Leadership that Works: From Research to Results. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Simmons,W. 2007. “From Smart Districts to Smart Education Systems: A Broader Agenda for Educational Development.” In City Schools: How Districts and Communities Can Create Smart Education Systems, edited by R. Rothman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
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