This book gave me (and the other members of my group) a lot of food for thought and inspired a lot of thoughtful discussion, both in our book club meetings and in the whole class discussion we facilitated.
In So Much Reform, So Little Change, by Charles M. Payne, he clearly articulates the reasons for the failure of reform in urban schools. To begin, he notes the demoralization of urban schools, faculties, administrators, and teachers. In addition to demoralization, urban schools and those who work in them often exhibit organizational irrationality.
As evidence of organizational irrationality, novice teachers, with weak skills are often placed in the most difficult schools. This is something I experienced in my first year as a teacher, not just in terms of the school in which I found myself, but also with the students who were assigned to me; I was assigned the students that the other, more experienced, teachers did not want in their classes. A “degraded professional culture” permeates underperforming urban schools, where teachers frequently work in isolation, have low expectations for achievement, and …When considering many children who enter low performing urban schools, Lee & Burkam state, “…They start out behind, and then we systematically undermine them with poor schools. Poor children start their school careers in much lower-quality schools where they will be in larger classes, with less well-prepared teachers who have a weaker sense of collective responsibility and professional community than the teachers of more advantaged children” (p.70-74).
Furthermore,
urban school reform has not succeeded in many instances due to fixed mindsets,
which focus on stereotypes, self-efficacy, and a lack of connectedness to a
larger, more successful society.
Bureaucracy
and fragmentation further complicate the needs of urban schools. Bureaucracy
often leads to shifts in leadership at the school and district levels, and
teachers lack the confidence to use professional judgment when various reform
agendas are shared. Therefore, lack of stability in personnel, as well as
curriculum, leads to more instability. There is a significant disconnect between policymakers/reformers and realities of the every day world of urban schools, including toxic urban school environments, cultures of failure, distrust, leadership issues, personalities, communication, and unstable staffs. Much of the support offered to schools when new programs are introduced is often superficial, and there is a lack of trust between the providers of the support and school faculty. Too often, programs are introduced, attempted, and abandoned long before implementation can prove successful, for educators or students. The fast food mentality that we can drive through, select a program, and implement it quickly is a major impediment to successful reform. Plant posits, “…programs have been oversold and under-thought-out, adopted with exaggerated hopes, expanded at unrealistic rates, and then jettisoned …The politics which drove that process are still operative, now strengthened by top-down government mandates” (p. 168-169). Again, this instant gratification mentality is one that I have seen played out in the schools where I have worked, with a new program intriduced nearly every year because the previous one (used for a year) did not show the dramatic growth so desperately hoped for.
Payne concludes the text by elucidating the pitfalls of conservative and progressive ideology. He asks, “…do we balance urgency with complexity?” (p.199). He also notes that educators and reformers should advocate for parents to be a part of the solution seeking team focused on changing urban schools.
Considerations for success in urban schools should include time, a more reasonable pace, scale, community, politics, parents, teacher opt-in, follow through, sustainability, and perceptions of stakeholders. Examination should include school culture, attitudes of those trying to reform, strategy sessions with school leaders, and past experience. Plans should be made in advance to foster authentic collaboration, adapt to local contexts, develop guidelines for data collection, and strategies for examining multiple outcome measures. Perhaps his next book will elucidate how to make these things happen!
Finally, in the epilogue, Payne quotes a former teacher and principal. He states the educators had two main goals. “…to make the school so attractive that the children were happy to be there” and “…to make the school a sort of community center” (p. 208). Perhaps, if we aspired to these goals that appear to focus on children, rather than accountability, urban schools would change.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
Below are artifacts from the class presentation/discussion on the book. We started out with a Wordle that contained words we saw often repeated within the text.
Wordle Link: http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/6724203/So_Much_Reform%2C_So_Little_Change
The presentation continued with a slide of quotes we found to be especially thought-provoking. One that I found to be pertainent to my own experiences is the one in the bottom left corner, regarding teacher skepticism. I agree that many teachers are skeptical when faced with the latest "research based" curriculum or strategy, but I also see that many long-time teachers have seen so many educational fads come and go that they are jaded by this merry-go-round of education's greatest hits being repackaged into shiny new cellophane.
I really enjoyed the chance to see how my classmates defined the problems facing education in urban schools. The wheel activity was a fabulous way to facilitate this discussion.
We closed with this quote, which is sad but also true to my own experiences, not just with bureaucracy, but with educational struggles in general. There's nothing like coming into a struggling school with ideas and being told to do whatever because you can't make it any worse.
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