Voices in Urban Education

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Skills for Smart Systems
VUE Number 17, Fall 2007

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EXCERPT:
Building a Foundation for Smart Education Systems

Excerpted with permission from Warren Simmons, “From Smart Districts to Smart Education Systems: A Broader Agenda for Educational Development,” from City Schools: How Districts and Communities Can Create Smart Education Systems, edited by Robert Rothman, pp. 191–214. Copyright © by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved.

By Warren Simmons
Warren Simmons is executive director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.
> Author's bio


Alliances between school networks and community agencies and organizations promise to improve educational opportunities, but they require an infrastructure to support and sustain them.

The heightened attention devoted to district reform in recent years is a welcome development. It represents a recognition that the reform movement's attempts to ignore or bypass districts would fail to yield results in an equitable way, and that the state-based or schoolby- school approach would be unlikely to engage communities in a way that would sustain reforms over time.

But the evidence indicates that the efforts to redesign and strengthen districts, while important, are not sufficient. Educators and community members must intensify or expand their efforts so that the vast majority of students, particularly African Americans, Latinos, and students from low-income families, move beyond basic skills to attain levels of performance needed to participate meaningfully in our democracy, in the global economy, and in their communities.

Despite heartening evidence that a growing number of schools serving African American, Latino, and lowincome students can beat the odds and produce dramatic improvements in academic performance (Education Trust 2005), a lack of resources and stability within many large urban school districts and the poor communities they serve prevent success from spreading across schools and over time. Edmund Gordon and Beatrice Bridglall (2005) note that middle-class and affluent families often have the resources needed to build the various forms of capital that enhance and extend school-based learning. The music lessons, sports leagues, national and international travel, concerts and museum visits, and internships that dominate the weekend and after-school experience of more advantaged children and youth serve to build the networks, values, dispositions, and knowledge that reinforce and accelerate schoolbased learning.


Using Community Resources to Support Networks of Schools

Some districts have attempted to bring community resources to bear in support of students. This approach to district reform is reflected in the work of school districts in Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York City. These districts tend to put into the foreground the importance of designing a system that can support a portfolio of schools. Such a system includes a range of schools, including those operated by nonprofit and for-profit organizations, as well as those operated by the district, in order to provide options for students and families and a range of approaches to match varied student needs. Other districts are collaborating with colleges and universities, reform support groups, and community development organizations to establish partnerships that support networks of schools rather than individual ones. These neighborhoodbased networks of schools and partner organizations are known as Local Education Support Networks (LESNs). The shift of emphasis from schoolbased partnerships to LESNs allows multiple schools and partners to pool their resources (e.g., knowledge, tools, funds, facilities). Moreover, LESNs typically treat a local neighborhood or community as a hub for learning, thus increasing opportunities to engage families, cultural institutions, businesses, faith institutions, and community development organizations in the design and implementation of learning activities.