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Taking a Proactive Approach to School Reform

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By Anne O'Brien on July 23, 2010

I’ve been loosely following the hype over the recent Brookings’ report on the Harlem Children’s Zone, which calls into question the wisdom of taking a neighborhood approach to education reform. I have read the report, what some have said about it, and HCZ President and CEO Geoffrey Canada’s response to it.

Having drunk the Kool-Aid on the importance wraparound services for students, I must say I sympathize with Canada’s position on a number of counts. Why didn’t the Brookings’ investigators consider growth over time in their analysis? And really, calling into question the whole neighborhood approach to education reform based on the performance of one aspect of the HCZ—one charter school—that 1) does not serve the majority of individuals receiving the Zone’s services and 2) was evaluated in a somewhat suspect way (again, what about growth over time?) seems a bit hasty.

But the main concern I have with this report is its call for a schools-only approach to education reform. That approach is so REACTIVE for a vision of reform. It seems to say that kids come to school “broken” so we must “fix” them, and we can’t do anything to change the baggage they come with. But why not?

Now, on a school level, perhaps you have to be reactive. You have to work with the kids that you have. You have to do your best by them, and you have to ensure that they learn. Got it.

But when you are looking to make large-scale change—at a district, city or state level—you can be proactive. When you are responsible for the education system, you might not want to ignore the fact that most low-income kids are going to come to school behind, without some of the key educational experiences their middle-class peers will have. Or that certain community issues (maybe drugs and violence) are going to distract your students. You may want to put in place a strategy to give those experiences to young children and to address problems of drugs and violence before they greatly impact achievement. It may even cost less—in money, time, other resources and heartache—than it would to react to the fact that the kids didn’t have those supports in the first place.

Should we attempt to wrap around services while ignoring school-level reforms? Absolutely not. This does not have to be either/or. And do we know exactly what services kids need to ensure they come to school each day ready to learn? No. We don’t have all the answers. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t invest in ideas we think may work and then study whether or not they do. That is what being innovative—and proactive—is all about.

Link to this story: http://www.learningfirst.org/taking-proactive-approach-school-reform

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" But that doesn’t mean we

Submitted by J Becker on Fri, 07/23/2010 - 11:16

" But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t invest in ideas we think may work and then study whether or not they do. That is what being innovative—and proactive—is all about."

I think the general idea behind this paper was that there is little evidence that the extra oomph provided by HCZ over any other school, when it comes to social services, didn't seem to result in extra "oomph" for academic achievement which was middle of the pack for schools with a similar model serving kids from the same neighborhood.

The draw out to say this means that wraparound services are a waste or unsuccessful is disingenuous. But to say that for all the love HCZ gets, we haven't seen a truly good evaluation of the promise neighborhood aspect yet is fair. What we have seen is a charter that's performing really well, even if it's not as well as some of the other top flying charter schools (but not everyone has to be knocking the ball into the upper deck-- a home run is a home run). What we haven't seen is a setup where we can evaluate all the other health outcomes, and also, the unique effect the social services had independent of the school.

A lot of folks are talking about promise neighborhoods as though they have been studied to find out if they work-- they haven't really been rigorously and independently verified on that level, yet they are getting tons of scale up money.

My personal opinion is, "Who cares?" because I suspect that many non-school related outcomes are improving for kids in this area and that smart expansion and coordination of social services is a good thing. But I also take Sara Mead's stance that, "What I do believe the body of evidence from HCZ illustrates is that when it comes to improving children's lives, social and community services are not a substitute for reforms that improve the quality of instruction and curriculum going on in their schools. To the extent that "whole child" reformers argue that addressing social and health needs will obviate the need for school reform, or that we can't undertake school reforms until all children's social service needs are met, they're leading us down a blind alley."

Let's do promise neighborhoods to improve children's lives, but let's not forget to do SCHOOL reform, too.

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J Becker - I agree with a lot

Submitted by Anne O'Brien on Fri, 07/23/2010 - 12:01

J Becker - I agree with a lot of what you are saying. I maintain that the study of the charter school should have included growth. Say the test scores of the kids entering the HCZ school were the lowest, by far, of all the schools included in the study. If so, moving up to the middle of the pack could be very impressive. (I have no idea if that is true or not, I am just putting it out there as a possibility.)

I do agree that (as far as I know) there has not been a good evaluation of the promise neighborhood effect yet. I would have preferred that this study (or a study drawing the conclusions that this one did) look at the students who receive other Zone services but DON'T go to the charter school, that go to a traditional public school. That it compared their performance and growth over time with other students in the traditional public school who do not receive any Zone services. Such a set-up might allow such broad conclusions to be drawn. Hopefully those who receive Promise Neighborhood grants through the government will take care to thoroughly study their programs.

And we absolutely should not take school-level reform out of the debate. We need both. I think any strategy that is going to have any large-scale impact on both the academics and lives of students is going to include both school-level reforms and community-level reforms. On that, we agree.

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School reform is a catch

Submitted by jefferson lobo on Fri, 09/16/2011 - 04:05

School reform is a catch phrase that includes a number of programs and policies. Reforms usually change some procedure or rule that affects how the school operates. Terms like "reform" and "renewal" can be thought of as small steps toward change. Compared with school restructuring, reform and renewal do not greatly alter the school's organization.

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Well, I think asking parents

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 12/13/2011 - 13:13

Well, I think asking parents to train their kids better for school would be a much better approach, because if some child is already desparate to learn, he will learn and do well in school without any "school reform"

just my 2 cents.

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