Community Voice: What Most School-Improvement Theories Omit

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The New York City public school system, like other large urban systems, has shifted over the years through many different approaches to improving schools. I have experienced or participated in many of them, from my student days at Brandeis High School in the 1960s through much of my career as an education reformer, including participation on Chancellor’s Klein’s planning team to convert local school boards into regions.

In the experience of the Annenberg Institute, negative consequences usually follow when districts churn through major reforms too quickly without involving the community in working out the implications. The New York City Department of Education has changed its theory of action at least twice over the past eight years without adequately communicating and clarifying the significant changes in roles and responsibilities these changes entail. The resulting confusion undermines parents’ and educators’ ability to use data, accountability, and choice to promote equity and excellence within and across schools. Moreover, these shifts have occurred in a high-stakes environment where professional compensation and employment are tied to student performance and where chronic school failure can lead to school closure.

District leaders most commonly apply three broad theories of action to raise student performance and build school capacity at scale:

• creating professional learning communities in which teachers and principals collaborate to identify needs and solutions;
  
  
• managing instruction by using a common curriculum or instructional framework in all schools; and/or
  
  
• creating a portfolio of schools, giving them the resources and freedom to seek appropriate supports to enhance teaching and learning.

These approaches to district reinvention all require major shifts in roles and responsibilities at the central office, intermediate (e.g., regional) and school levels. Leaders of schools and districts who beat the odds of success realize that education improvement occurs in a larger political and cultural context that must be understood and, where necessary, changed — sometimes through force of will, but also through strategic and results-oriented community engagement. This more community-centered approach is critical in a city where the relationship between political power and student achievement remains highly correlated with race, ethnicity, and income and where schools have historically been battlegrounds in which groups vie for access and influence.

While the portfolio model increases levers for parent and student engagement at the school level, it also weakens the levers parents and school leaders use to address systemic failures and equities, potentially undermining the community support needed to sustain reforms even in the face of promising results. Addressing this shortcoming should be a high priority for the new chancellor — and one that should be addressed collaboratively rather than by fiat.

FURTHER RESOURCES

A growing body of research shows that community organizing is an effective and indispensable strategy for sustainable school reform. AISR staff have made important contributions to this emerging field of research.

• Urban Schools, Public Will
  Urban Schools, Public Will by the Annenberg Institute's Norm Fruchter draws on a rich array of research and personal experience to examine why, fifty years beyond Brown v. Board, urban districts have failed poor students of color and what must be done to transform our city schools. (2007)
  > More information, order in print
  
  
• Organizing for Educational Justice
  An in-depth account of community-based school reform that offers a powerful model for parents searching for ways to change public education. The work of AISR’s Eric Zachary figures prominently in this new book from the University of Minnesota Press by Hunter College professor Michael Fabricant.
  > Description, press, order in print
  > AISR commentary: Community Organizing for Educational Improvement
  
  
• Organized Communities, Stronger Schools: Case Study Series
  This study looked at organizing efforts by residents of seven urban communities across the country to improve their public schools. AISR developed a series of seven case studies based on the research. Each case documents the organizing efforts of a community group in a site and its effect on resource equity and district accountability for improved educational outcomes.
  > Information about the research project, case study downloads, tools

PREPARED BY 

Warren Simmons
Executive Director
Annenberg Institute for School Reform
warren_simmons@brown.edu