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STARTING NEW SCHOOLS: LESSONS FOR SUCCESS
Part 1
Wayne B. Jennings, Ph.D.
The criticism prodding the nation's educators to bring schools into the modern age is reaching firestorm proportions. From presidents, governors, state departments of education and parents, persistent demands are heard to raise student achievement, increase graduation rates, better serve poor and minority students and reduce self-destructive student behaviors.
Though the sum total of educational experimentation today surely ranks higher than at anytime in history, mainstream school practice has changed little and totally dominates the education scene. Secretary of Education, Lamar Alexander spoke of the need for new schools as a university president in 1989:
"I've tried to give leadership to efforts to better educate our children as a governor. And now I see our schools' graduates as a university president. I'm not so sure that we shouldn't scrap the whole system and start over again."1
Three major avenues for educational improvement offer promise:
1. Make incremental improvements in schools. For example, alter the curriculum with interdisciplinary approaches or introduce an advisor-advisee program.
2. Generate comprehensive change in existing schools. For example, introduce most of the known effective school reforms all at once.
3. Start over with a new design for learning. For example, plan and implement a totally experiential school.
A good case can be made for any of these approaches. Most efforts to improve education follow the incremental model by introducing a new element or two. I would argue that the need for major reform is so urgent that incremental improvement is too slow and piecemeal. The second approach, wholesale change of an existing school, is a traumatic experience for staff and has had a poor record of success, particularly at secondary levels.
While school reform needs to proceed on all possible fronts, this paper discusses the third approach, that of starting new schools or programs. As Ted Sizer said,
"Most of the problems that beset education are obvious, well understood, and of long standing. Educators and their critics have been rhetorically hammering away at them for several decades. It is the remedies that seem problematic. None seems to stick. Why? Things remain the same, because it is impossible to change very much without changing most of everything. The result is paraly sis."2
Sizer's point appears to support a new schools' approach to change. However, we might note that Sizer's Coalition of Essential Schools doesn't involve a comprehensive model for change. The Coalition advocates rather modest curriculum changes to improve the existing model.
The approach of working with existing schools dominates because it is far easier to recruit candidate schools to a new procedure than to totally reorganize an existing school or start a new school. In fact, Sizer's coalition was over subscribed immediately and now has about 200 schools. Lessons from history tell us that the improve the existing school movement ultimately disappoints its sponsors.
The education landscape is littered with the dried husks of past programs %14 successful programs that lasted a few years, then withered and either disappeared or remained in name but not spirit. Examples include: the core curriculum, Unified Science and Mathematics in Elementary Schools (USMES), and advisor programs.
Paul Nachtigal's famous study, A Foun dation Goes to School,3 documented what few remnants of the 34 million dollars for educational reform granted by the Ford Foundat ion's during the 1960s still remained when he visited programs just a few years later. That report led foundations all over the nation to shut off public school education grants for more than a decade, as a waste of resources.
The U.S. Office of Education's Experimental Schools program of the early 1970s, in which multi million dollar grants were made to schools in each of five districts, yielded few results five years later. Even the extraordinary resources pumped into those schools failed to produce sustained change in existing programs.
Though millions of dollars have funded innovations with little enduring results, we may concede, however, that knowledge about change is accumulating and may yet provide guidance to reformers which ultimately produces comprehensive and lasting change.
I urge more instances of starting afresh, profiting from what has been learned in past efforts to successfully implement new programs. A new school starts with a clean slate and needs only to develop the program rather than trying to change long standing, firmly entrenched paradigms and practices.
On first thought, it may seem fairly easy to devise and start a new school. One no longer has to battle old philosophies, staff factions and traditions. At least that's the way a number of us thought some years ago as we worked in conventional programs. We contemplated the joys of working in a new program: eager, self motivated learners; staff as a smooth, supportive team; and eager, involved parents.
Little did we realize the landmines, barriers and incredibly long hours along the way. That same easy optimism is often heard about starting new programs accompanied by the same lack of awareness of the problems and stresses of implementing and managing new programs.
Having been a recipient of foundation funding to assist with starting new programs, I can attest that the real problems of educational change are less a matter of money and more a matter of attitudes and procedures.
In this paper, I look primarily at starting new schools from the perspective of players at the school site and school district: principals, teachers, parents, students and central office administrators. I shall assume that the new schools depart significantly or radically from the norm, though I am not advocating any particular type of change. Such a school faces major problems of implementation. Suggestions will be given for addressing the problems of starting new schools.
BACKGROUND
More than two decades ago, I was asked to design and start a program for public school students who were, essentially, unwanted by the secondary schools in an urban system. In effect, we ran 12,000 high school students through a sieve to sift out 100 of the hardest to manage. As we began the program, educators in the system predicted its early demise believing that such students couldn't be served. Over the next two decades, we learned that the problems encoun tered in starting and operating the program, difficult as they were, centered less on managing students than on dealing with the school system.
In 1971, I became the principal of a new public K 12 "open school" for 500 students. A group of politically astute parents had virtually forced the school district to start the school. I had authority to select a staff committed to progressive education practices. The staff met for the first time with the daunting task of organizing a K 12 school two weeks before students arrived. The only thing we had was a general philosophy statement to guide us. We had to generate a curriculum, fast. The school district leased a warehouse to house the school just one week before opening.
Given these conditions we should have fallen on our face %14 and almost did. We worked impossible hours on the program, policies, evaluation and every other aspect of school operation. There were pitched battles with the school district which though it approved the school's prospectus expected usual operations and procedures to apply. For example, staffing and field trips were determined by district formulas %14 it didn't matter that we wanted to configure the staff differently or spend more than the normal field trip allotment.
Nonetheless, we learned to choose our fights and to apply the motto of change agents that, "It's easier to seek forgiveness than to obtain permission." Last year the school celebra ted its twentieth anniversary. I doubt that many of that original staff would undergo the ex perience again because of the toll it took. Enjoying the high morale of students and their amazing amount of learning sustained staff through many difficult times.
In 1982, I helped start a new private school for 150 students in grades 5 12 as part of a nationally known children's theater. The school provided academic learning plus training for all students in drama, vocal music and dance during an eight hour school day. The progressive nature of the program and the oppor tunity to develop talents attracted many more applicants than could be accommodated. We also turned many away because the cost of tuition exceeded parents means, although the per student expenditures were about the same as public schools. The program was wonderfully successful by all measures because we were free to staff creatively and adjust the program to individual student needs. It was one of the few opportunities to start a school without battling a school district; we were the district and that made an enormous difference.
Presently (1992), I am designing and implementing a new comprehen sive public program for "at risk" youth, many of whom are already drop outs. It involves about 2,000 students a year in multiple sites, operates year round with extended hours (days, evenings, Satur days), has differentiated staffing and uses technology extensively along with other alternative methods of instruction. The nature of an "at risk" student body confers freedoms upon practitioners. After all, the regular program was not successful.
I've participated in other start ups of new schools in the last three years: Saturn School of Tomorrow, Chiron Middle School, and EXPO for Excellence Magnet School.
I've also been a teacher and principal in regular public schools, and was a district administrator in charge of staff development. In all of these schools %14 whether traditional or "new design" %14 I worked to introduce promising changes that had been successful elsewhere, or where research and theory supported new practices. Examples include: advisor/advisee programs, interdisciplinary approaches, pupil teacher planning, community based learning, brain based learning, learning based on real life problems and alternative staffing patterns.
Twice as the principal of a conventional school, I introduced schools within schools. Any school principal who has traveled similar routes knows immediately how extremely hard it is to introduce such practices, particularly at the secondary level. Most of the practices mentioned in the previous paragraph have been known for decades as important and needed, yet are rarely found to any significant degree in schools.
I mention these experiences because important lessons can be extracted to help implement the next batches of new schools. I believe new schools represent a robust alternative to incremental improvement of existing schools.
MAJOR PROBLEMS IN CREATING NEW SCHOOLS
Two major problems appear in almost all efforts to establish new schools. These problems can be referred to as system problems and client prob lems. The major system problems involve focus, resources and staffing. Client problems involve the school's customers: parents and students.
System Problems: Focus
Focus is defined as the articulation of the program's mission and description of how the program will operate. Typically, change agents encounter a plethora of questions about the specifics and structure of the new program as they begin planning: What exactly is the curriculum and what teaching methods will be employed? What instructional materials are needed? What technology will be employed? How will the program be evaluated? What is the student's day like? What precise kinds of facility modifications are needed?
Good questions. But they often overwhelm people proposing a new program or school. In one instance, the response to a request to start a new program, resulted in a memo from the district office with sixty questions about details of the new program. One could picture central office folks having spent the afternoon brainstorming questions saying, "There. That should fix them."
The reformers, who have spent their lives in regular schools, usually have a better idea what they don't want to do than exactly what is to be done. They have had so little experience in an alternative setting, their ideas are vague and incomplete. They identify their feelings with the following statements:
"...when the great innovation appears it will seem muddled and strange. It will be only half-understood by its discoverer(s) and a mystery to everyone else. For any idea that does not appear bizarre at first, there is no hope."4
"If you are on the leading edge you can't explain everything. If you knew all about it, it wouldn't be the leading edge."5
Focus problems become easier after experience in alternative schools. Then the reformer finds it less difficult to articulate a new program, though rarely to the satisfaction of conventional administrators and school board members. Often, the people who have to be convinced to support the change are so frozen in old paradigms that the new words and descriptions aren't meaningful. The reformer is left thinking, "Can't they be more understanding and helpful? They just don't get it."
I remember trying at length rather unsuccessfully to describe open education to a traditional thinking colleague. Finally, the other party said, "Oh, you mean it's like the old one room school." Rather than say, "not exactly" and pursue differences, subtle and not so subtle, at some point one just says, "Yes, that's close," and lets it go at that.
The reason the focus problem looms so seriously is that if not resolved in a conclusive way, endless hassles and misunder standings continue to gum up future interactions between the new program and the system for years. Reformers may view the system as an obstructionist bureaucracy.
The focus or understanding problem extends weblike throughout the school district. Not all colleagues in other schools are thrilled to learn about a new school. If the program is substantially different, rumors and false information start to circulate. "Did you know the kids at New School can do anything they want to? They are never assigned home work?" "That kid that transferred last week from New School can't even write; they don't teach reading."
New schools appear to compete with or challenge conventional wisdom. This threatens some people in other schools and in the district office. Innovators may find themselves excluded from district resource distribution routines, denied supplies and most crucially, called upon to prove their program's worth in the first years more rigorously than is ever expected of conventional schools.
Many a new school administrator has looked up from a mountain of paper work and forms to ask plaintively, "How come the regular schools don't have to do all these evaluation activities? Why don't they expect success of all students at the other schools like they expect of us?" Why not indeed?
The problem, aside from the overload of work, may lie in unreasonable expectations for the new school. These may have resulted from the school's initial application documents which seemed to promise to solve almost all the problems in education and to do so quickly. Reformers soon learn the wisdom of the adage, "under promise and over deliver."
System Problems: Resource Allocations
The second system problem is the allocation of resources which profoun dly impacts what the new program can and cannot do. If the same formulas for staffing, technology and textbooks apply to the new program, then operating differently becomes nearly impos sible. The school district's message to the new school says, in effect, "Yes, start this innovative program but follow all usual practices."
New programs run smack into middle management administrators with set processes and standard operating procedures. Seemingly, only dynamite will dislodge the formulas for allocating staff and other line items of the budget.
For example, the new program may wish to install a dance program and contract for a profession al dancer two hours a day. That makes sense to the new program people but not to the personnel department who inquire about licensure, benefits, posting the job; nor to the payroll department who have no staff category for a non certificated teacher; nor to the union; nor to the administra tive staffing division who have no provisions for instruction al services by outside contracting.
By the time the harried new school administrator works through the morass of procedures and regulations, the school year is over and the administrator is exhausted and angry. Even the patrons of the school may begin to wonder about the administrator's managerial effectiveness in being unable to handle such a simple task.
The three Rs of school management should be Redesign and Reallocate Resources. It is unlikely education will receive the vast new resources educators say they must have to lower class size, pay competitive salaries, provide new specialists for hordes of troubled youth, buy computers, etc., etc. If new schools could spend existing resources differently, they might obtain better results.
It astonishes educators, particularly teachers, to learn that the pupil to certificated personnel ratio is under 16 to 1 in the U.S. and the ratio of pupils to all personnel, under 10 1. This figure holds in most districts. Education must do what business and other institutions struggle with: doing more with less, or at least, more with the same resources.
If additional resources flow, so much the better. Waiting to make changes until more money gushes to education is like waiting for Godot. Educators must learn to think more about reallocating present resources and less about obtaining vast new resources. The new school is often prepared to do this but the traditional system hasn't caught up to the concept.
System Problems: Staffing
The third system problem involves staff recruitment and retention. Obviously the new program wants what every program wants, able staff. It also wants control over releasing them if necessary. A saying goes that strong staff will find a way to make a weak design work and weak staff will demolish a strong design.
The staffing problems new schools face involve seniority, bumping privileges, reduction in force, certification, interchangeabil ity of staff with the same certification, errors in the original selection of staff, and filling vacancies.
Once staff are aboard the new program, some may not work out well for one reason or another. An ugly impasse develops if the errant staff member doesn't want to leave and decides to hang on to the job. Some people stay in a program even if unsuccessful because the work site is con veniently close to home. Few school districts have tackled the problem of weak staff in an effective manner; nor have they addressed the special staffing needs of an alternative program. An art teacher is an art teacher %14 an interchangeable part.
System Problems: Summary
The three system problems, focus, resource usage, and staffing encompass the usual problems of bureaucracies with many rules and rule enforcers. In any system there will be rules and monitors. Long standing rules need periodic housekeeping, not just an accretion of more rules and procedures. Unfortunately, the people carrying out their duties of compelling compliance to rules and procedures can get a little officious and sometimes more than a little mysterious about exactly how one can satisfy them. This is less a problem in regular schools where each year is about the same as the last and few changes are made. For new schools, the situation can be a combination of a nightmare, Catch 22 and Kafka.
Client Problems
In contrast to system problems, client problems involve students and parents. If students are assigned involuntarily to the new program, they or their parents may object strenuously if they don't like the new program. For example, in one new junior high school organized under Lloyd Tromp's plan (modular scheduling, student choices, large and small group instruction) most parents accepted the program. But a vociferous group of parents, aided by a few dissident staff members (one a janitor), constantly harped on problems. After four years of this, the school board closed the program and installed a conventional program.
Obvious as it is, new school staff need to realize that complainers make them selves heard more than satisfied people and can bring a program down even when most parents are happy with the program. Thus, there is a need for systematic evaluation procedures and an official representative council to speak for the school.
For example, in a large prestigious suburban high school, a school within a school developed along the lines of the Summerhill philosophy where students had an equal vote with staff and had great freedom to determine their program. The program came under attack on the basis that students were wasting time and not learning anything. Ordinarily, such a program is easily eliminated but in this instance, several parent advocates convinced the school board to take the time to evaluate the program. Strong support for the program emerged and the program survived a few more years.
When students or parents complain about a standard school program, not much sympathy is extended %14 school is school; it doesn't claim to make everyone happy, so people ought to simply adjust. In the case of a new program, involuntary placements create big, virtually insurmountable problems. With voluntary enrollment, different, though substantially fewer, problems arise.
Although students complain about regular schools, students in new schools will find that everything is not perfect. Students most successful in the old system often resist change because they realize they have to the most to lose. They knew all the right buttons to push in conven tional classrooms, and they fear losing out in any realignment. The new program may not employ standard classrooms or use report card grades. Students used to being told what to do are now expected to shoulder initiative and personal respon sibility. It takes time %14 for some students, a long time %14 to assume responsibility for their own learning.
If the new program is progressive, some parents will feel it isn't progressive enough or it isn't structured enough. I remember two parents within the span of an hour complaining about our open education program. One said it was like a prison; the other said it was a zoo!
A common client problem under voluntary enrollment arises when the student likes the program and the parent or one of the parents doesn't. In my experience, the more traditional parent usually wins the argument but at considerable cost to family tranquility. Staff will anguish over losing a student who was thriving in the program.
A serious client problem faced by many new schools is becoming overloaded with "problem" students. New schools soon discover that schools are eager to cast off their difficult students and will counsel them to enroll in the new school. If a school becomes over burdened with more than its share of such students, parents of other students exit the program and the school will lack a representative student body.
New program staff, concentrating on substantive teaching and learning issues, hardly expect client problems to loom in their face. They expect the new program, by virtue of its greater responsive ness and more effective curriculum, to satisfy clients. While that happens for many, staff need awareness of potential problems to avoid the surprise and shock that not everyone is thrilled about their new program.
The two types of problems, focus and client, if anticipated, can be managed to reduce discouragement and the enormous energy drain of constantly responding to problems.
All Contents Copyright © 2004 Wayne Jennings.
