Search

Public schooling has always been politically fraught, but current disagreements over issues related to race, sexuality, gender, and COVID-19 have reached a tipping point. According to this report from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and RAND, half of school system leaders say that these disagreements are disrupting schooling. Almost one in three district leaders also said their educators had received verbal or written threats about politically controversial topics since fall 2021. The findings come from surveys issued to 300 district and charter network leaders and interviews with superintendents. Their responses shed light on how political polarization has affected classrooms and how districts are responding. This report presents results from the fall 2022 survey of the American School District Panel (ASDP). The ASDP is a research partnership between RAND and CRPE. The panel also collaborates with several other education organizations, including the Council of the Great City Schools and Kitamba, to help improve outcomes for students throughout the United States.

Public education depends on expertise, work, money, and cooperation from multiple actors who have different interests and beliefs. These lead to competition and negotiation--in other words, politics. Failure to consider the politics of reform implementation and sustainability has doomed many promising K-12 school improvement initiatives. This paper analyzes more than 10 years of data on the implementation of the portfolio strategy to identify practical lessons on managing the politics of reform K-12 schools. Sustaining complex reforms like the portfolio strategy in a political environment requires leaders to: (1) Continually seek new supporters and renew the support of existing ones; (2) Expect and prepare for attacks and be alert to the unnecessary harms caused by their own actions, which bolster opposition; (3) Develop information strategies that document intermediate results, alert leaders to emergent problems and actively counter hostile narratives; (4) Be attentive to competing agendas and political liabilities within their own alliances; and (5) Prepare for leadership succession so that reforms have a chance to last long enough to make a difference. These observations challenge the conventional wisdom that sustainable reforms can be built only upon the percolating up of good ideas and initiatives from below. Reform leaders are essential to knitting together fragile coalitions who may be motivated by different goals and aligning new programs and initiatives--and politically reinforcing them over time--so their benefits can accumulate.

This report is part of the American School District Panel (ASDP), a joint project between the Center on Reinventing Public Education, the RAND Corporation, Chiefs for Change, the Council of Great City Schools, and Kitamba, an education consulting firm. The ASDP's primary work is conducting a series of nationally-representative surveys of school districts. In this report, we complement our survey research with in-depth interviews of leaders on the ground in six school systems. Our goal was to learn how these system leaders approached and managed student learning during this difficult year and to gauge what it means for the future. We found: (1) When it came to instruction, the school systems favored "acceleration" over remediation; (2) School systems that had coherent instructional systems in place before the pandemic had an easier time delivering grade-level content; and (3) In some cases, improving instruction alone may not be enough. Two of the systems that faced deeper inequity and performance challenges before the pandemic were considering more fundamental shifts. What happens next will depend not only on district actions but on the nature and depth of students' academic and social needs, which will only become clear over time. [This report was produced by the American School District Panel (ASDP).]

Local superintendents must do an important job while equipped with, at best, modest authority. Superintendents are ultimately responsible for all the schools in their district, and they at least nominally supervise everything that happens in those schools. Yet superintendents cannot count on obedience or even support from the people who work for them, given that both educators and administrators possess wide discretion in implementation. This paper is written to help current and potential superintendents see the full scope of their role and how leaders from various backgrounds can approach it. In a series of studies beginning in the late 1980s, the authors have interviewed superintendents about their successes and failures in building civic support for needed initiatives. The paper draws examples from this earlier work, as well as from Center on Reinventing Public Education's (CRPE's) ongoing tracking of developments in reform-driven cities and the experiences of other public officials whose ability to overcome the structural limitations of their roles offer important lessons for district leadership. Most superintendents, current and aspiring, understand the importance of getting along with other power centers in the school system and the community at large. This paper goes further by attempting to show how superintendents can build coalitions and thereby exercise real power to accomplish things that conventional wisdom would say are beyond them.

State chiefs have new responsibilities under the Every Student Succeeds Act, but their formal powers are still limited. Despite these constraints, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) analysis finds that chiefs can make a difference by wielding their powers strategically, to build coalitions and persuade others. While turnover in the field is high, with 70% of current chiefs on the job less than two years, newcomers are taking their seats at a time of opportunity. Drawing on interviews with current and former state chiefs, authors Hill and Jochim identify chiefs' opportunities for influence in light of the ideas in Richard E. Neustadt's 1960 book, "Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership." The analysis and concrete examples are intended to help current and aspiring chiefs understand how to use their authorities as the basis of bargaining, build their professional reputation, and approach decision-making. Key takeaways include: (1) Chiefs should fully understand their own advantages and think hard about how to bargain effectively with others in the state capital and in school districts; (2) Developing new coalitions takes time and sustained attention. By pulling together broader coalitions than normally control education policy, chiefs can expand the horizons of possibility; (3) To build a personal reputation for effectiveness, a chief must have and be known to have strong and specific goals to build something new or to change the status quo--and communicate them to those affected or those who may serve as a source of support; and (4) In order to maximize power, chiefs must approach every decision as an opportunity to strengthen their future effectiveness. This paper is part of a series of publications from CRPE's "Linking State and Local School Improvement" initiative, meant to inform state education leaders, policymakers, and advocacy groups about how to best support promising local school improvement efforts.

Every sector of the U.S. economy is working on ways to deliver services in a more customized manner. If all goes well, education is headed in the same direction. Personalized learning and globally benchmarked academic standards (a.k.a. Common Core) are the focus of most major school districts and charter school networks. Educators and parents know students must be better prepared to think deeply about complex problems and to have skills that are relevant for jobs that haven't yet been created. Promising school models are showing what's possible, but innovation in the classroom only takes you so far. Twenty-first century learning practices demand twenty-first century systems. This paper goes deep into the question of which system policies are most likely to get in the way of implementing personalized learning at scale. We work outward from the school to define the new capacities and functions districts need to develop. We make the case that districts are currently unwittingly hostile to school-level innovation. For that to change, they must aggressively work to change the incentives, policies, and structures so that they encourage and free up schools to innovate. This is the first of three white papers looking at system redesign from a variety of perspectives. Our next paper, "The Case for Coherent High Schools" [see: ED556237], examines the challenges of high school redesign. Our third and final paper, "Redesigning the District Operating System [see: ED563481], explains why there must be updated central office systems to allow school-level initiative and problem solving.

High school redesign is one of the most elusive reform challenges to date. This paper explains why personalized high schools are hard to get and keep in a traditional school district, and shows how they can be made much more broadly available through changes in policy and philanthropic investments. Drawing from examples of successful and unsuccessful high school redesign efforts, this paper argues that stable leadership, school-level autonomy, and choice for both staff and families are necessary to support high school redesign at scale. One appendix is included: Impediments to Coherency. Endnotes are also included.

In summer of 2014, two groups of scholars and policy experts met separately to rethink educational accountability. These groups came from what most would consider different "camps" on school reform--one focused on transforming teaching for "deeper learning" and the other focused on choice as a means for leveraging school improvement. However, both were motivated by concern that accountability as enacted under No Child Left Behind had begun to create a strait jacket for schools that was undermining the goals of improvement and equity. At the same time, both groups felt it important to maintain the law's goals of focusing the nation on raising achievement for all children and closing the achievement gap. Both believed the federal government still must play a role in ensuring that states and localities work seriously and effectively to improve options for children at risk. The papers resulting from these separate sets of discussions agreed on many important points, including that: (1) Parents and the public need to know whether children are learning what they need to graduate high school, enter and complete four-year college, or get a rewarding, career-ladder job; (2) Student test scores can provide valuable information, but they should be used in combination with other valid evidence of school effectiveness and student progress (e.g., course completion, progress toward graduation, and more); (3) Assessment of schools should focus on meaningful learning, not just on what is easiest to test. Measures should be tightly linked to the knowledge and skills needed for college and career readiness, including students' abilities to learn and solve problems independently, and apply knowledge; (4) Because a student's level and pace of learning in any one year depend in part on what was learned previously and on the efforts of many professionals working together, the consequences of high and low performance should attach to whole schools, rather than to individual educators; (5) School leaders must have sufficient authority, flexibility, and resources to lead their schools and must take affirmative responsibility for fostering school-wide collaboration aimed at continuous improvement in teaching and learning; and (6) States and school districts must have and exercise multiple options when children learn at low rates that threaten their adult opportunities, including remedying resource shortfalls, supporting teacher and leader improvement, changing school staffing, redesigning or replacing chronically ineffective schools, assigning schools to new managers, and allowing families to choose other school options. This paper shows that these agreements have important implications for the design of accountability systems at the local, state, and federal levels, particularly: (1) The need for evidence, judgment, and action, used in combination to ensure that all children learn effectively and that schools continuously improve; (2) The importance both of testing with high-quality instruments used appropriately, and of considering multiple sources of evidence in judging student, educator, or school performance; (3) The need for sophisticated judgment systems that put data in context and weigh and balance evidence to determine constructive actions; (4) The need for a clear and sensible delineation of the roles of different levels of government; and (5) The need for continued capacity building and experimentation with approaches to accountability. This paper ends with five implications for the reauthorization of the "Elementary and Secondary Education Act" (ESEA).

This brief outlines how new K-12 public education governance proposals--relinquishment, smart districts, and the urban school system of the future--are complements, not alternatives, to the portfolio strategy. The portfolio strategy defines the role of government, or how it can steer in public education; the other proposals show how, once government's role is redefined, independent organizations will develop capacity to row (provide schools, assist schools, develop teacher skills, etc.). The portfolio strategy needs mechanisms for operating and improving schools, such as those provided by the other reforms. The other reforms, reciprocally, depend on the portfolio strategy to provide preconditions that they cannot create by themselves. (Contains 2 tables and 8 footnotes.)

This is the first report from an ongoing study of four urban school districts (New York, New Orleans, Chicago, and the District of Columbia) that are experimenting with new school designs and new ways of holding schools accountable for performance. This report introduces the idea of a "portfolio school district," and shows how some leading school districts have put the idea into practice. The report's goal is to help district and community leaders throughout the country judge whether a similar approach could improve the schools in their localities, and if they decide in the affirmative, how to approach building a portfolio strategy of their own. As this report will show, rebuilding a school district on the portfolio model involves challenges of many kinds--technical, organizational, and political. Reform leaders in the districts the authors have studied have made great progress but still have many problems to solve. (Contains 1 figure, 3 tables, and 15 footnotes.)

The search continues for effective ways to educate disadvantaged children in big cities. Different cities have tried varied approaches--intensive work on the professional skills of teachers and administrators in Boston, standardized approaches to instruction in San Diego, and extensive use of vouchers and chartering in Washington, D.C., and Milwaukee. Though some school districts have shown flexibility, government and education sector leaders in some cities have become convinced that they must look outside the traditional boundaries of the district for new ideas, talent, and learning opportunities. While also trying to strengthen existing public schools, leaders in several cities, including New York, Chicago, New Orleans, and the District of Columbia, have adopted a "portfolio strategy". The essence of a portfolio strategy is the provision of public education by multiple means. Districts pursuing a portfolio strategy (portfolio districts) sponsor some schools operated by district employees in the traditional way, and others operated by independent organizations and run under new rules. District and community leaders in cities adopting a portfolio strategy (presently including New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Denver, Philadelphia, Hartford, and the District of Columbia, among others) must search for answers to questions that have seldom been asked in American public education: (1) How do they know whether a given school or initiative is likely to succeed or fail?; (2) When do they shore up a struggling school or abandon it?; (3) How do they avoid being stuck with no option other than to continue supporting a school in which children are not learning?; and (4) How do they make sure students are not hurt by closing a school or replacing one school provider with another? This paper is the first to offer answers to these questions. The authors hoped to mine the experiences of other organizations that have developed the capacity to oversee diverse portfolios of service providers, and to apply lessons learned to the challenges districts face as they adopt portfolio-based strategies. While acknowledging that public education is unique in many ways, the project tried to use the practices evident in other organizations as sources of ideas, and it applies them to education cautiously. Subsequent papers, based on a recently funded national study of districts pursuing portfolio strategies, will provide detailed examples of data systems, analytical methods, and decisionmaking processes. These papers will be available in late 2010. "Managing School Performance" Working Paper Series are appended. (Contains 4 tables and 24 footnotes.)

Big-city school systems face many problems, including high dropout rates, low academic achievement, and achievement gaps between middle-class and low-income children. Many big-city systems are also losing enrollment and facing financial deficits. These problems inevitably lead to criticism of the boards that govern urban school districts, and questions about whether some other governance arrangement might get better results. Seattle faces the same problems as other big-city districts. Critics of the school board have pointed to a few cities that have put mayors in charge of public schools in hope of overcoming political paralysis, pursuing consistent reform strategies, narrowing the achievement gap, and bringing expenses in line with revenues. This paper explores the underlying logic of mayoral interventions into public education, their consequences to date, and their possible suitability for Seattle. The report highlights a range of reforms that aim to improve the governance of urban school districts. (Contains 50 footnotes and 1 table.)

Over the past 15 years, charter schools and teachers unions have battled in state legislatures, the courts and the media. But with increasing frequency, the two groups are facing each other in the everyday operation of schools. This report summarizes the opinions expressed at a meeting of local state, and national leaders from both the charter school and teachers union communities convened to begin to answer questions such as: (1) Will on-the-ground experiences change charter schools or unions? and (2) Will existing conflicts only spread, or will direct experience lead to some moderation within each party? The meeting was held on May 20, 2006 at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington, DC. The report makes the case that if relations are to improve, three things are needed. First, to help ground the discussion in facts, we need better evidence about the charter school teaching force and the impact of chartering on issues that matter to teachers. Second, more exemplars and models of effective union-charter partnerships can help show how important problems can be solved. Finally, both groups could engage in confidence-building measures to demonstrate their desire to make progress, not just give the appearance of openness. Appended are: (1) Participants; and (2) Agenda Questions.

This paper explains how the public education system resists reforms and shows how to make much higher-performing schools available to disadvantaged children. It explains why change is so difficult and why seemingly obvious solutions will not work. The paper also shows how new ideas about teaching, learning, and effective schooling can take hold, and details a portfolio management system--new set of structures and incentives that fosters innovation, adaptability, and performance. Portfolio management is a new and different vision for education reform. It dramatically changes the roles, responsibilities, and incentives of virtually everyone in the public education system. Instead of trying to refurbish an old, ineffective public education structure, it aims to raze the current system to the ground and build a new one. Certainly, the need for such dramatic change is clear. Encumbered by a system that resists meaningful reform, the nation's schools are unable to educate millions of poor and minority students. If reformers are to build such a system, however, they must be prepared to stay with the effort and avoid partial measures. Just as new structures do not get slapped up overnight, this change will take time and effort. After all, it will require nothing less than the total transformation of the nation's public education system. (Contains 25 endnotes, 3 tables, and 1 figure.)

Though the public believes that urban school boards should handle problems with failing schools, urban school boards spend very little time considering ways to turn such schools around or transforming the educational experiences of at-risk students. Today's school board members are expected to be interest representatives, trustees for children, and delegates of the state. These missions are in conflict because they require boards to serve different masters and accomplish different objectives. Mission confusion is one reason why school boards often look disorganized. Legislatures exercise great control over local school boards, since boards operate on a grant of authority from the state. School board duties are defined via accretion. Past approaches to school board missions (i.e., discipline via standards, school board training, and imitating boards of private business) have failed. Options for righting the balance in favor of trusteeship include broadening the constituency to which school board members answer, limiting school boards' basic powers and duties, and eliminating school boards' exclusive authority to oversee schools in a particular geographic area. Three appendices contain data on school board duties defined by accretion under state law, school board responsibilities, and how state and mayoral takeovers have changed school board powers. (Contains 26 footnotes.) (SM)

The most important burden of charter schools is the need to demonstrate that the instruction they provide actually benefits students. They can hire their own teachers, make their own tradeoffs between spending on administration and teaching, locate anywhere in the community, and let parents know in advance what a child must do to succeed in the school. Therefore, charter schools are exempt from many rules, and instead are required to demonstrate student learning. Unlike conventional schools, however, charter schools can lose their public funding and be forced to close if they cannot demonstrate that their students are indeed learning. The question becomes whether performance can replace compliance as a mechanism of accountability to government? Does dependence on parents and teachers force charter schools to ignore their responsibilities to the public? This report studies individual charter schools and their authorizers with differing legal provisions in six states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Michigan. It asks how the schools' relationships with authorizers affect their day-to-day operations, and how they develop relationships of trust and confidence. Major findings regarding internal accountability are discussed. The appendix covers survey data and analysis methods. (DFR)

This report examines the implementation of standards-based reform in Washington and whether the reform strategy has worked. The report is based on a survey of two statewide samples of elementary schools at which students had taken the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) fourth-grade test in 1997 and 1998. The first was a sample of 30 schools at which scores had improved significantly (a rate of 50% or better). The second was a group of 10 schools that served a similar population but which had experienced little, if any, improvement. The researchers interviewed each principal and collected written materials about the school's improvement strategy. Among the key conclusions is that effective changes in teaching methods and materials should be focused and schoolwide, not random and fragmented. Schools that were improving operated as teams, not loose associations. They were marked by professional development and were active in seeking help. Improving schools used their limited resources strategically and called on parents to help. Performance pressure was found to be helpful when it fosters determination and not fear. The study shows that schools can boost student achievement with concerted effort. Specific recommendations are made for policymakers, educators, parents, and community and business leaders. (SLD)

This report is based on a survey of two statewide samples of elementary schools whose fourth-grade students took a state test in reading, writing, mathematics, and listening. The first sample was a group of 30 schools whose scores had improved significantly from 1997 to 1998. The second sample was a comparison group of 10 schools that served demographically similar students and were located in the same parts of the state as the first group but whose scores had improved only slightly or not at all. The principals of the schools, or a principal's designee, were also interviewed. Findings indicate that schools that made significant gains in test scores took a proactive approach toward improvement. Principals and teachers in these schools assessed strengths and weaknesses, set a limited number of priorities, focused on improving instruction, and took the initiative to find the help the school needed. It was also found that effective changes in teaching methods and materials were focused and schoolwide, not random and fragmented; that improving schools operate as teams; that professional development is school development; that performance pressure is positive when it leads to determination, not to fear; and that improving schools do not wait for help as they make strategic use of limited resources. (RJM)

An accountability system is proposed for the education system in Washington. Reform efforts in Washington have been designed to create a school-centered system in which state standards motivate teachers, parents, and principals to search for more effective ways to help students learn. Drawing on the experience of other states, recommendations are made for a statewide accountability system that will: (1) promote school-level instructional improvement by eliminating compliance-oriented rules and regulations and transferring real-dollar resources to schools; (2) stimulate creation of a range of public and private assistance sources; (3) measure and report real, unadjusted student achievement scores; (4) empower local school districts to classify schools, reward success at the local level, work with struggling schools, and reconstitute schools that consistently fail their students; (5) re-align the responsibilities of existing state agencies; (6) create a new State Accountability Commission to review school district progress toward the state standards; and (7) allow teachers and principals to hold students accountable for diligent effort and reasonable behavior. The proposed accountability system meets the standard that all education reform efforts must meet, that of being serious enough to make real measures of student performance, assign clear responsibilities to all actors, and acknowledge the connections between educators' efforts and student achievement. (Contains two figures, two tables, and seven references.) An appendix reviews five state accountability designs. (SLD)

This document addresses the difficulties of urban education, particularly relating to inner cities that contain immigrant and minority students, and argues that schools contribute to the problems of today's urban youth and that schools must do a better job of educating students. It recognizes that schools are burdened by the urban environment but contends that the public cannot wait to change schools until other problems are solved. It grants that someone must address problems, such as poor student health and family instability, but argues that educators have enough to worry about in their own backyards. Better schools will not solve all the problems of American cities, but they are definitely part of the solution. Further, the document argues that: (1) bad public schools are making their own distinct contributions to the problems of cities, (2) there is a substantial consensus among educators and parents about how schools can be made to work for disadvantaged and minority students in the big cities, (3) better inner-city schools are unlikely given today's methods of financing and governance, and (4) better schools are possible in the inner city but only if efforts are made to make a major change in what is meant by a public school. (Contains 19 references.) (GLR)

Although only a few dozen school systems have formally embraced site-based management, thousands of districts across the country are experimenting with it in some form. The study described in this report attempts to distill the experience of pioneering school systems, so that citizens and educators in other localities can benefit from it. During the 1989-90 and 1990-91 school years, a RAND research team studied five major urban and suburban school systems that had adopted site-based management: Columbus, Ohio; Dade County, Florida; Edmonton, Alberta (Canada); Jefferson County (Louisville), Kentucky; and Prince William County, Virginia. Newspaper and scholarly accounts of site-based management in other communities were also considered. The report draws five major conclusions: (1) though site-based management focuses on individual schools, it is really a reform of the entire school system; (2) site-based management will lead to real changes at the school level only if it is a school system's basic reform strategy; (3) site-based schools are likely to evolve over time and to develop distinctive characters, goals, and operating styles; (4) a system of distinctive, site-based schools requires a rethinking of accountability; and (5) the ultimate accountability mechanism for a system of distinctive site-based schools is parental choice. These findings have specific implications for the entire school community. An appendix provides an overview of the five districts studied. (MLH)

This report identifies the strategies that multiproblem urban school districts have used to make major improvements in recent years. A panel of experts familiar with urban school systems nominated over 30 candidate urban districts for study. The following districts were chosen for analysis: (1) Atlanta (Georgia); (2) Cincinnati (Ohio); (3) Memphis (Tennessee); (4) Miami (Florida); (5) Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania); and (6) San Diego (California). Data were drawn from intensive interviews conducted with local school and community leaders in the 1987-88 school year. The major findings include the need for a cooperative effort on the part of the school superintendent, the business community, the teachers' union, and the school board to perform the following tasks: (1) reach out and involve the larger community in educational issues; (2) make information about school needs, resources, and performance widely available; (3) forge communitywide agreement about improvement goals; and (4) subordinate the traditional roles of boards, administrators, and teachers to the larger imperative of systemwide improvement. The roles of the following participants in reform are discussed in detail: (1) school superintendent; (2) school board; (3) business and community leaders; (4) teachers and unions; (5) the media; (6) State and Federal governments; and (7) national foundations. A list of 18 references is appended. (FMW)