System-Wide School Reform: A National and Local Perspective
A Discussion with Dr. Thomas Payzant
Superintendent, Boston Public Schools
A Forum — March 12, 1998
Following a two year post as Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education, Dr. Thomas Payzant was appointed Superintendent of the Boston Public Schools (BPS) in August 1995. An experienced educator and policymaker, Payzant was charged with improving the city's 128 public schools, together serving more than 63,000 students--the highest BPS enrollment in 25 years. BPS is also faced with the challenge of educating large numbers of low-income students; 80 percent of BPS elementary and middle school students are eligible for free and reduced price lunch.
Payzant's focus was, and continues to be, a simple one: "Teaching and Learning." He maintains that teaching and learning are the centerpiece of schooling and must be the primary focus of any school reform effort. Prior to Payzant's appointment, however, Boston had for years been focused on issues such as desegregation and governance at the expense of effective teaching and learning. As a result, academic achievement suffered.
Changing the focus of BPS has been a multi-faceted task for the superintendent. Unlike most school districts, three institutions have oversight of BPS: (1) the Mayor, whose Cabinet includes the superintendent; (2) the City Council, which authorizes the majority of BPS appropriations; and (3) the School Committee, which appoints the superintendent and approves BPS policy. All three are active in BPS and, as a result, Payzant has worked to develop reforms that are appealing not only to teachers, students and their families, but also this diverse "oversight" audience.
The Strategy — "Focus on Children"
Given the challenges facing BPS and the need to serve a broad constituency, Payzant's goal for his first year (1995-6 school year) was to develop a comprehensive reform plan. Passed in July 1996 by the School Committee, the plan was called "Focus on Children," and labeled as its primary goal "improved teaching and learning for all children."* Developed with significant input from community partners--parents, teachers, administrators, businesses, community organizations--this focus was supported by three complementary goals:
- Changing the structure of the BPS to focus on student performance and to serve the community.
- Providing safe, nurturing schools where students receive the support they need to succeed in school.
- Engaging families and the community in school improvement through a unified collaborative structure and effective communication.
These goals and the "Focus on Children" plan requires what Payzant terms a "whole school change strategy." As each school has its own set of challenges and obstacles, flexibility and an emphasis on site-based decision making are crucial, but schools are encouraged to adhere to seven "key essentials," all identified during the first-year reform plan development process:
- An instructional focus around standards (including links to statewide standards frameworks).
- Student-produced work and products used to assess performance and achievement that increase in difficulty and skill at each grade level.
- High quality, sustained professional development targeted at specific areas of need and coordinated with the goals of "Focus on Children."
- Documenting and replicating proven effective practices, both within and outside BPS.
- Aligning resources to teaching and learning priorities.
- Encouraging more parent and community involvement in education decision making.
- Clear and rigorous methods of measuring performance and ensuring accountability for results.
To help schools target these essentials while maintaining a focus on teaching and learning, Payzant and his staff developed a matrix, organized like a checklist, to help principals and teachers set goals and track their progress. Each level of the matrix serves as a benchmark so that at any time a school can assess its performance and develop strategies to meet identified gaps in service.
Maintaining the "Focus"
As his second year approached, Payzant again reached out to the community to develop a consensus for the year's reform plan. Rather than present a new list of challenges and proposals, Payzant explained that the goals--and the plan for meeting them--would remain the same as the year before: "Focus on Children" with an emphasis on teaching and learning. Rather than create a new set of reforms just as schools and communities were adjusting to the old ones, Payzant advocated a long-term approach, ensuring that the initial reforms had a chance to be implemented properly.
"Focus on Children" requires more than the support of teachers, students and parents for the goals of the plan. Payzant has had to ensure that the benefits of "Focus on Children" are demonstrated through assessments and tests. This presents a particularly difficult challenge, as open dialogue about the meaning of standards and testing is critical to building consensus, but gains on such measurements are often incremental and, therefore, difficult to translate into evidence of effective reform. One key early victory was Payzant's success in getting both the Boston Globe and Boston Herald to report BPS' Stanford Achievement Test-9 (SAT-9) scores by average actual performance of students in each school rather than how students in the schools compare to one another. This type of information helps the public determine if students are meeting rigorous standards. The remaining challenge was test scores to demonstrate that "Focus on Children" was truly making a difference in BPS.
Measuring Success
While Payzant has been successful in achieving consensus and support for "Focus on Children," measurable results have come more slowly. SAT-9 scores from his first two years reflect this concern. Compared to the 1995-6 school year (his first as superintendent), evidence of improvement in 1996-7 was mixed. Elementary and middle school students exhibited slightly improved scores on the SAT-9 from 1995-6 to 1996-7, while high school students performed poorly on the test in both years, with little or no improvement from 1995-6 to 1996-7. Even for the higher-scoring younger students, the majority performed only at "basic" and "proficient" levels of achievement, with few demonstrating "advanced" achievement in core academic areas.
Payzant warns that these early results do not mean that "Focus on Children" is failing. New education strategies, particularly ones focused on the core concepts of teaching and learning take time to yield gains in academic achievement. Still, Payzant must demonstrate to the education system and the public that "Focus on Children" is making a difference. To do so, he has created performance benchmarks for schools and the system, spread over the five years of his appointment, that will showcase educational gains as they are realized.
While test scores have not yet noticeably improved, Payzant is able to highlight significant achievement in other areas, which bode well for the long-term impact of "Focus on Children" on academic achievement. The school-to-career (STC) initiative, for example, has identified promising strategies that produce positive results for students and for BPS. STC, which creates small learning communities that integrate core academic knowledge with work-based learning activities, has succeeded in obtaining significant business involvement in BPS, particularly through the industry-led Private Industry Council, and has led to improved school attendance, reduced tardiness, increased college attendance and increased enrollment in more challenging academic courses. While academic achievement has not yet shown significant improvement, STC, as well as the broader "Focus on Children" plan, has begun to foster the changes in the instructional aspect of school that are the prerequisite for improved academic achievement.
The Continuing Challenges
Much work remains to reach Payzant's ultimate goal of "128 schools of excellence." Payzant outlines the following challenges which must be addressed:
- Alerting the public to the urgency of school reform. Demographics in Boston--and the U.S.--are changing at a rapid pace. The number of children in the nation's schools is expanding rapidly. Change must begin now to ensure that the schools are prepared for the future.
- Time is needed for the work that needs to be done. The political need to demonstrate "quick fixes" can be addressed through short-term benchmarks and goals, but longer periods of time are needed to achieve real change and improvement. Students, teachers, principals and others must be provided with the time they need to make specific changes in their schools and institutions.
- New resources are not necessarily required, but those currently available must be used more effectively. Increasing attention must be paid to integrating services and coordinating activities that affect young people in all aspects of their education and development. Significant investment in principals and other school leaders is necessary to ensure that effective leadership is in place to implement state and national policy in the schools, as well as to develop policy from a school-based perspective.
- Minimizing distractions to maintain a focus and continuity on improving teaching and learning. For example, proposed "reforms" such as "educational technology" often generate tremendous public support, but educators and policymakers often fail to recognize that such general proposals alone will not improve schooling. New technology must be carefully linked to teaching and learning if it is to improve student achievement.
- To maintain a "Focus on Children," all aspects of reform must be aligned to tests and standards and the local, state and national levels. This is necessary if effective mechanisms for assessment and accountability are to be developed.
*For additional information, refer to Introducing Focus on Children: A Comprehensive Reform Plan for the Boston Public Schools, Office of Communications, Boston Public Schools, Boston, MA, September 1996.