The District Role in Instructional Improvement

Abstract

Are changing conditions affecting the capacity of districts to provide focus, to coordinate support, and to scale up successful reforms? From a study of the roles played by central office staff members in shaping and supporting instructional reforms in three large urban districts, the authors derive an answer. RECENT literature on school improvement has stressed the important role that districts can play in improving instruction by providing vision, focus, support, and policy coordination and by building commitment at the school level.1 However, large school districts have always had difficulty carrying out these tasks and persisting with a reform focus long enough to see results. Changes in leadership, new state policies, and changes in funding have been major impediments. Some critics have even argued that districts are inherently incapable of stimulating and sustaining meaningful reforms in teaching and learning because of their political and bureaucratic character.2 While the successful implementation of instructional reforms in locations as diverse as District 2 in New York City; Union City, New Jersey; Cincinnati, Ohio; El Paso, Texas; and Long Beach, California, argues against this harsh conclusion, the current policy environment certainly makes this work more difficult. Many large urban districts are attempting to carry out these functions in environments characterized by decentralized decision making, high-stakes accountability, and increasing competition among providers of comprehensive school reform designs and other research-based instructional improvement strategies. Are these changing conditions affecting the capacity of districts to provide focus, to coordinate support, and to scale up successful reforms? The Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) examined the roles played by central office staff members in shaping and supporting instructional reforms in three large urban districts. In this article, the three districts have been given the pseudonyms of Metropolis, River City, and Sun City. They are located in three different states, and their enrollments range from 50,000 students to more than 200,000. The Findings Our findings are presented below in three broad categories, representing the major strategic decisions that face any organization seeking to improve its performance. Deciding what to do - the problem of design and adoption - is the first of these tasks. The second is determining how to get it done - the problem of support and coordination. The organization needs to focus people's attention on the desired changes, ensure effective implementation, reduce distractions, and buffer the work from competing agendas. Finally, there is the task of scaling up the reforms if they are successful - the problem of replication. While these categories overlap, they are useful organizers for the presentation of our findings. Design and Adoption Central office staff members in the three districts were struggling to define their roles. They wanted schools to make decisions about improvement strategies and professional development, but they also wanted them to adopt best practices. However, they were uncertain about who should determine what was best and on what basis such determinations should be made. Should schools be left to figure it out for themselves, or should the central office point them in the right direction and limit their options? Should the role of the central office be limited to providing schools with good information about specific programs and designs, including what the research evidence shows? District staff members agonized over these and related questions. Making a shift to evidence-based practice proved to be difficult in all three jurisdictions. River City set up a screening process that examined the alignment between local standards and various whole-school designs with externally developed curricula and then reviewed the evidence supporting the claims of the developers. …