Whole-School Reform from the inside

Unlike those who are ready to call comprehensive school reform a failed strategy for improving urban schools, Mr. Lytle -- himself an urban superintendent -- firmly believes that working with a group of national developers is much to be preferred to "going it alone" in improving the effectiveness of urban schools. OVER THE past several months the RAND Corporation, the Phi Delta Kappan, and other professional journals have published a number of books, articles, commentaries, and letters raising serious questions about the efficacy of comprehensive or "whole-school" reform as a solution to the long-standing challenges of improving urban schools and minority student achievement. (See, for example, the debate between Stanley Pogrow and Robert Slavin in the February 2002 Kappan.) However, none of the authors of these publications actually works in a school or district engaged in whole-school reform, and none considers the range of ways that schools engaged in this sort of reform may be changing and growing from the experience. I write from the perspective of a superintendent in a state where every urban district is implementing a complex, court-mandated set of education reforms, including: * preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds; * state curriculum standards to be met by all students; * reduced class size; * school management teams and school-based budgeting; * expanded social service supports; * new and rehabilitated school facilities; and * adoption by every school of a "research-based" comprehensive/whole- school reform model selected from a group approved by the state department of education. (If an elementary school does not choose a model, then it must implement Success for All.) Districts are to implement these reforms in addition to being responsible for special education inclusion programs, programs for bilingual students and those with limited proficiency in English, new approaches to scheduling and school organization, high-stakes testing, and accountability requirements. To support these programs, the New Jersey legislature and the state's taxpayers have provided substantial additional funding to all 30 urban districts and 400+ schools affected by the court order. In Trenton we estimate our base per-pupil cost at more than $14,000, making us among the best-funded urban districts in the country. We have the resources to educate our students, as do most New Jersey cities. I make these points to support my thesis that a discussion of whole-school reform that does not take New Jersey into account is very much incomplete. Unlike Memphis and other districts and states where some but not all schools were involved in whole-school reform, New Jersey represents the only large-scale trial of whole-school reform where the prospects for long-term support, adequate resources, and sustained implementation and evaluation are likelihoods. Further, the New Jersey approach is truly holistic, including as it does an array of programs -- such as preschool - - considered by the court and the attorneys for the plaintiffs to be the conditions for equal opportunity. Our results in Trenton during the past three years have been encouraging and provide early justification for the approach New Jersey is taking. Student performance on state tests and the nationally normed tests we use has shown consistent improvement. The number of high school graduates has tripled, and performance on many other indicators has been equally positive. But we are well aware of the RAND studies1 and of the prospect that performance improvements may well plateau. When we began implementation, our approach to meeting the whole-school reform mandate was to encourage schools to choose the model they felt was most appropriate for them. Our 24 schools are now in the third or fourth year of implementing one of seven models, ranging from highly prescriptive ones like Success for All to somewhat more conceptual ones like Co-nect and Coalition of Essential Schools. …