This document has been formatted for printing from your browser from the Web site of the Illinois Association of School Boards.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE -- This document is © copyrighted by the Illinois Association of School Boards. IASB hereby grants to school districts and other Internet users the right to download, print and reproduce this document provided that (a) the Illinois Association of School Boards is noted as publisher and copyright holder of the document and (b) any reproductions of this document are disseminated without charge and not used for any commercial purpose.

Illinois School Board Journal
July/August 2003

Journey to reform faces fuel shortage

by Linda Dawson

Linda Dawson is IASB director of editorial services and Journal editor.

This is the third in a series following the progress of school reform in Illinois. Just as districts are beginning to make progress, a lack of finances may imperil the journey. This series seeks to share information from Decatur School District 61 as well as other Illinois districts on journeys they envision will lead to increased student achievement.

On a sunny April day, when most would have preferred playground duty, teachers and administrators from Decatur School District 61 spent the day indoors, engaged in an important conversation about the future of school reform.

The conversation was billed as a first-of-its-kind Design Summit, which would bring together representatives from each district building with representatives of the reform models used in the district. To lead and add to the conversation, the district also brought in three education experts: Patrick Dolan of Kansas City, Missouri; Stephen Ross from the University of Memphis; and Jo Anderson with the Illinois Education Association.

For the past five years, Decatur schools have been on a journey to school reform. In the first article in this series ("Journey to reform begins with sharing," March/April 2002) that journey was compared to a family trip where the destination is known (increased student achievement), you look for good food and gas prices (best practices) and you keep track of your mileage (test data).

Now, however, our family trip may more closely resemble a field trip where a bus picks up people at different locations, intending to deliver all of them to one destination. The "people," in this situation, represent the different buildings in the district as they have chosen a school reform model. The field trip bus in Decatur is nearly filled to capacity, but the district is still short of the ultimate destination: increased student achievement.

The last of the district's 17 elementary schools has selected a reform model, and all building personnel have been trained in site-based decision making. All three middle schools have had site-based training as well, and all three selected the same model -- Turning Points. Once another model -- Ventures Initiative -- is fully implemented at Dennis and Baum schools, all that will remain is the more difficult task of bringing the district's two high schools into the mix.

Last summer, at the direction of the school board, the district wrote a new strategic plan with an emphasis on student achievement. With well-defined measurable goals, that strategic plan will serve as a map as well as a checklist on this field trip to student achievement.

The Design Summit conversation thus becomes a rest stop: a chance to talk about how the trip is going so far, who else needs to be picked up, how the trip could have been better and what the destination looks like down the road.

But the day's conversation also raised a much bigger question affecting Decatur as well as districts across Illinois and the nation: How can we afford to keep this going?

Mary Anne Schmitt, president and CEO of New American Schools (NAS), the non-partisan, non-profit organization that has helped guide Decatur Public School's journey in comprehensive school reform, said NAS began working with about 2,000 schools in 1996. Funding for three-year demonstration programs came from $200 million directed by the U.S. Department of Education toward all 50 states.

Through NAS, each school in Decatur received grants of up to $50,000 for first-year implementation of its chosen model, according to Brian Hodges, District 61 assistant superintendent. Better than 90 percent of that money then was paid back to the design models to train teachers, either by sending them to conferences or by doing workshops in the district.

For the next two years of model implementation, Hodges said, the schools may receive grants of about the same amount to continue training. Once the original three-year grants run out, the district must pick up sustaining costs, which may run anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000 a year. Sustaining costs would cover training for teachers who are new to the model or to the district, as well as ongoing support for "veteran" model teachers.

Decatur's first experience with NAS was at Stevenson Elementary School, which adopted the Accelerated Schools model in 1998. From May to September 2000, nine more Decatur schools adopted reform models. All of those schools now are at the end of their three-year initial funding.

And for a district that has undergone budget cuts, teacher lay-offs and needed a referendum to salvage the education fund budget, finding money to sustain school reform models is a challenge. With 20 schools in CSR models, sustaining costs would run, at a minimum, $200,000.

"Our district is committed to supporting schools as they embrace the reform models," said Jan Mandernach, District 61 board president, but the board also hopes that the level of financial support from the district will not need to be as great as in the first three years of implementation.

"A coach and professional development on an ongoing basis have to be there so that the integrity of the model remains in place," Mandernach said. But the demands for training and support would not appear to be nearly as great in the fourth or fifth year as at first.

According to District 61's superintendent, Elmer McPherson, as those initial grant monies phase out, the district will look for other grants and partnership agreements with the models in order to supplement its own funds to keep reform moving along.

What the state says

"Whole-school models (of school reform) carry a pretty hefty price tag and commitment," said Robert Schiller, Illinois' state superintendent of schools. "There was good seed money in the beginning from state and federal grants, but every major grant said the district had to bring local resources to complement the money they received."

Unfortunately, Schiller said, a lot of districts ignored that part of the agreement.

Although no one is purposefully looking to dismantle the progress being made to reform schools, he said, financial implications with fewer state and federal dollars available have placed many schools in a survival mode -- a mode and a budget that has no room for such "extras."

In Decatur, cutting those "extras" a few years ago also put more pressure on individual buildings to adopt site-based management, the initial step in accepting comprehensive school reform models. Personnel cuts in central administration meant the district had no way to manage change at the district level, said Jo Anderson, director of IEA's Center for Educational Innovation. "They needed to look to the sites for help."

But the district also didn't want to force site-based management on the buildings, Superintendent McPherson said. "We wanted them to move at their own pace."

Moving at their own pace means it has taken five years for all the elementary and middle school staff to be trained in site-based management. The high schools have yet to be trained. In addition, moving at their own pace also means one school adopted a reform model before site-based training, but many were trained two years before selecting a model.

"At the central office and the board level, we may not have pressed hard enough for that (training) to happen," McPherson said. With new requirements to meet annual yearly progress under No Child Left Behind, "we can't tell the schools they can take their time anymore. It will force the central office to become more powerful again."

And that would confirm Dolan's theory that, without sustained effort in collaboration to shift power from the top of the traditional pyramid to the base, then the system will revert to a military-like structure. Such a structure is symbolized by a commander at the top who leads through middle-ranking officers, who give orders to field troops who may have no idea of where they are going or why ... just that they need to go.

Site-based management, on the other hand, puts direction in the hands of the teachers and the students, allowing them to use and share best practices to achieve better results.

Sharing the results

Sharing was a major focus of Decatur's Design Summit as district personnel and design model representatives tried to look at what has changed ... and what hasn't ... in terms of collaboration and practices.

Table by table, building personnel registered their thoughts, answering questions about the acceptance level for their reform models, the urgency they feel in the process, the new skills they have acquired and the things they feel stand in their way of completing the journey to school reform.

Responses ranged from a level of high acceptance and ease in discussing changes to resistance in buildings with more "seasoned" staff and an understanding of the need for change but not a feeling of urgency.

"Site people are the ones who are going to make the changes that will increase student achievement," McPherson said. "But the only person who likes change is a wet baby. No Child Left Behind may be the impetus to get more of us there."

But even though progress may not have been evident from the shared comments at the Design Summit, Steven Ross, research director with the Center for Research in Educational Policy at the University of Memphis, said he saw lots of positive changes and improvements at the elementary building level. Those changes were measured with a climate survey, which is just one component of the Formative Evaluation Process for School Improvement (FEPSI) that Ross analyzes.

"I saw a change as I sat in the FEPSI tower," Ross said. "Teachers had more of an understanding of research-based reform programs, and they used traditional programs less.

"Your overall climate is higher than the national norm, especially in instructional basis. There's still a lot of traditional teaching going on, but there is less use of work centers and more student-centered activities."

Ross noted that the changes were not as positive at the middle school level. While they are "newer" at doing reform than the elementary schools, he saw less support for comprehensive school reform in the middle schools, and that's troubling.

"Effective implementation of research-based reform models won't happen if teachers can't (because of finances) or won't use the model," Ross said. "Even with effective implementation, student achievement won't improve unless teaching methods improve.

"And even with effective implementation and improved teaching, student achievement may not improve unless there is sufficient time. You can't abandon it after three years because a grant runs out or a new principal comes in. Then you have to start over."

No time to start over

But districts like Decatur have little time now to start over. The clock is ticking to make annual yearly progress under No Child Left Behind. Seven schools in Decatur already are on the Academic Early Warning List: Eisenhower High School; Mound, Thomas Jefferson and Stephen Decatur middle schools; and Harris, Southeast and Washington elementary schools.

Harris and Washington schools both chose the Modern Red Schoolhouse model in May 2000 and will begin their fourth year of implementation in the fall. Southeast opted for America's Choice reform model in May 2001 and begins its third year in the fall. All three middle schools adopted the Turning Points model between May 2000 and May 2001. Eisenhower has yet to complete site-based decision training or adopt any school reform model.

But even with implementation and three years of data, experts often say it can take up to five years to show results under school reform models.

And even with results from five years or more, sustainability will be a big question.

"Our experience has been that the comprehensive school reform models do help student achievement," board president Mandernach said. "But we haven't had schools in it long enough to see that it will be sustained. We just don't have enough data yet to say the reform models are working.

And, she said, reform models aren't the only tools needed to increase student achievement. Professional development for teachers and alignment of curriculum with state standards also will play an important role.

The most important aspect of the journey is to focus on the destination: increased student achievement. The route through reform models, professional development and curriculum may need to be adjusted as new variables are added to the trip.

"Four years ago we would not have guessed all the changes that have come about in education," said educational consultant Patrick Dolan, author of Restructuring Our Schools: A Primer on Systemic Change. "When the feds move, it's very powerful."

But at the same time the federal government made its power push, Dolan said, there are no resources at the state level to continue to fund systemic change. And school districts shouldn't expect much in the way of new activity and grants from the federal level.

Unfortunately, the money to sustain school reform has "dried up" at the worst possible time, according to State Superintendent Schiller. "When you don't have enough money, you make the hard choices."

Those choices will include how to spend precious education dollars next year in Decatur as schools try to sustain the progress they have made in school reform.

As he looked at the progress Decatur has made in the past five years, stretched out in a timeline that covered an entire wall, Dolan had praise for how far the district has come.

"You've done parts of this very, very well," he said. "Some parts of the country are unprepared to play."

But, he added, pointing to the timeline, "This is history. The job is not complete. We still have work to do ... issues to address ... issues around children.

"No one is in this journey alone. We must all be held accountable for the results. We need to foster the capacity to learn from one another. We need the support of our boards and our external friends. We also need that key component of parental involvement. And if you can't get them, go after the grandparents."

"I'm not ashamed to show where we are in terms of data," Superintendent McPherson said as he concluded the Design Summit. "We must hold teachers responsible. You must hold me accountable. We must hold 'we' accountable."