How Does Reform Work?

Students of educational improvement have long puzzled over why some school reform ideas blossom while others wither away. An in-depth investigation by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) looks at what actually happens when externally designed reforms enter into school environments.

Implementation of reform models "looks different everywhere," says Elliot Weinbaum, a CPRE researcher and GSE faculty member. He cites several reasons for this: capacity constraints (both human and financial), "mutual adaptation" — each school changes the reform program to meet its own needs and school culture — and of course the simple fact that education reform is always a moving target. "Kids change, and our culture changes, and neighborhoods change, so it's never the same implementation environment as it was when you picked the reform package."

CPRE's work on this subject had its origins in a six-year federally funded study. The first three years were dedicated to the impact of accountability on instruction and professional development: how do schools and teachers respond to pressure? Researchers found that, under accountability pressure, schools are likely to turn to outside agencies for help in designing reforms (using both existing "off-the-shelf" interventions and new reforms). For the next three years, then, "we thought we should look at the relationships between schools and providers," Weinbaum explains.

Accordingly, CPRE researchers worked with providers to identify schools in the early stages of implementing its reform; this allowed researchers to watch how the implementation unfolded and to collect data over time.

And they examined those data exhaustively. In The Implementation Gap (edited by Weinbaum and GSE professor Jon Supovitz), each chapter presents a different analysis of the same data set. One of the seven chapters describes how teacher social networks affect student achievement and the effectiveness of reform; another looks at how central office support affects school reforms. The roles of three different types of leaders form the focus of another chapter.

The study looked at three major models of reform:

  • Literacy-based, which emphasizes the development of students’ literacy skills as a necessary prerequisite for success in any area;
  • Whole-school, which seeks to change the culture and expectations of the entire school; and
  • Data-driven, which posits that schools need to collect and use data better to target areas of academic weakness.

Comparing those three types is hard, notes Weinbaum, as their aspirations are very different. Literacy-based reforms tend to have very defined, prescriptive goals, for instance, while whole-school models lean toward larger, more organizationally driven goals.

Looking forward, Weinbaum would like to explore the role of the school district as a support for individual schools. "Schools under pressure are looking to the district for guidance," he explains. "There's too much going on day to day for the schools to search for reform strategies, so that falls to the central district. How and why they choose what they do — and how individual schools react — is both interesting and important."

Weinbaum also points to high school achievement as an avenue for future research. Student achievement trajectories flatten in high school, but there has not been enough research into why this happens, "which, of course, should drive how we reform high schools — we should be focusing on maximizing student learning and achievement."

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