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SPEAKOUT: Repair School Culture Jerry Wartgow
Rocky Mountain News, January 4, 2008 About this time of year, we all make resolutions. However, when it comes to school improvement, we'd be better off spending less time making resolutions and more time dealing with realizations about what it really takes to boost student achievement.
There are no quick fixes or silver bullets. A key to successful reform is the development of a discipline of patience and persistence. Frenzied quests by elected officials, school boards, administrators, think tanks and other would-be reformers for simple solutions to the complex issues in our education system do not bring sustainable improvement to our schools.
The desire to make a difference during the short tenure of policy makers has resulted in rapid but fleeting reforms. Successful reformers will be more like a tortoise than a hare in the race to improve our schools. Those who rush from one quick fix and shallow nostrum into another will, like the hare, make a lot of noise and promises. In the end, both they and their schools will be losers.
The essence of education reform is the changing of a culture. Individuals and interest groups with a stake in education differ widely in their values, beliefs, information and even perceptions about what our schools are doing, what they should be doing and how they should go about doing it. These differences, now internalized in the education culture, are enduring and change slowly, if at all. Because the U.S. Constitution established education policy as a state's right, there was no early national dialogue, let alone national consensus, about expectations for schools. Therefore, the education culture has been shaped by priorities of individual states and special interest groups, and a variety of other national issues such as security and defense; religion, race and civil rights; poverty and politics. Until we reach agreement as a nation on the purpose, value and expectations for our schools, and our commitment to pay for it, our national education policy will consist of reform du jour.
Introducing reform initiatives - before developing the civic and institutional capacity to understand, manage and support those reforms - is a recipe for failure. In the rush to implement new and different ways of doing things, we have not provided adequate time or attention to educating the community, teachers, principals and parents about the purpose of the changes and the challenges that will accompany new philosophies, directions and programs.
The development of civic capacity and public will is especially important because many of the most significant issues that impact student performance are communitywide and go far beyond the authority and control of the school. It is seldom possible for a school or district to change its outcomes solely from within. That requires collaboration with political and governmental entities as well as with the special interest groups intricately enmeshed in the lives of the students.
The three L's - legislation, litigation and labor agreements - have mired our schools in bureaucracy and legal processes, and have undermined the ability of those responsible for teaching the three Rs to use common sense, exercise professional judgment and retain control of their schools. Legal fear has infected the culture of our schools and influences decisions made by school officials.
Likewise, union contracts, based on the principle that every incumbent teacher is guaranteed a job, result in bureaucratic burdens and the elimination of discretion by administrators and teachers. Because of adversarial processes inherent in both legal proceedings and collective bargaining, schools often are operated in a manner that is based on the best interests of the adults in the system, not the children. Laws, litigation and detailed provisions in labor agreements don't guarantee attainment of goals.
It is important to keep theory and practice in proper perspective. The leadership challenge is not one of simply organizing to implement known solutions to known problems. Rather, it is one of motivating people to find new solutions to complex problems for which there are no known solutions.
NOTES: Jerry Wartgow is the retired superintendent of Denver Public Schools and author of "Why School Reform is Failing and What We Need To Do About It: 10 Lessons From the Trenches" (rowmaneducation.com). He can be reached at jwartgow@comcast.net.
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