Education Reform, Progress and Prospects

A Forum — January 17, 2003

Background

To celebrate its ten years of service as a non-partisan, professional development organization educating the youth policy community and bridging the gaps between policy, practice, and research, AYPF commissioned a series of four papers focusing on the next decade of youth policy. At this forum, school reform advocate Robert Schwartz discussed how the standards-based strategy might be combined with two other school reform strategies to bring about improvements in education at the secondary level. Warren Simmons and Gene Bottoms responded to Schwartz’s proposal.

Forum Summary

Robert Schwartz, Lecturer on Education at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and former president of Achieve, Inc., argued that much progress has taken place over the last five years: education has become a front-burner political issue and the standards movement has focused attention like no other set of prior reform policies on the achievement gaps between our highest and lowest performing schools and students. Perhaps the most significant improvement, however, has been the shift in attitudes of policymakers and educators: success is now measured in terms of the progress that is made in lowest performing districts and schools and for students. There are now data to show that reform policies have produced significant gains on state assessment and on other independent measures. Yet the improvements that have taken place have not penetrated classrooms in our middle and high schools. What will it now take to extend the gains we are seeing in elementary grades through our middle grades and high schools?

Schwartz argued that the standards movement by itself will not generate the kind of fundamental structural and pedagogical reforms needed to extend these gains and to ensure that all students leave high school with the skills and knowledge necessary for successful transition to college or work. He suggested drawing upon the strength of two additional reform strategies: network and market-based reforms. From the standards strategy, Schwartz suggested retaining the intensive focus on literacy and math, and the expectation that all teachers, regardless of subject taught, should be responsible for paying continuing attention to developing the reading, writing, and quantitative skills of all students. From the network-based reform strategy, he recommended drawing on the idea that the school, not the state, should be the focal point of reform and that improvement comes best not from prescriptive top-down mandates, but from providing opportunities for schools to band together to share resources and learn from one another. From the market-based reform strategy Schwartz said we should embrace the goal of creating a broad and diverse array of educational options and then letting parents, teachers, and students choose among them.

The challenge for states will be to figure out how to structure some measure of quality control across an increasingly diverse array of secondary school options without creating a set of statewide assessments that unduly constrain the curricular and programmatic choices available to schools. While Schwartz applauded the message that the No Child Left Behind Act sends about student proficiency expectations, he also stated that he has serious concerns that the law’s accountability provisions are overly prescriptive and formulaic and that they may inhibit the innovations which are necessary for improvement.

Gene Bottoms, Senior Vice President of the Southern Regional Education Board, agreed with Schwartz on several key points, including the necessity of drawing upon the three reform strategies. However, he disagreed that there is a growing body of evidence that supports the need for more flexibility at the high school level. Flexibility often translates into lower standards. If anything, poor students, minority students, and career-oriented students need less flexibility and more structure if we are serious about closing the gap between many of these students and the skills they need to succeed in further study and in high-performance jobs. And, without some form of external exams, choices will result in lower standards and further broaden rather than narrow achievement gaps. At the same time, Bottoms agreed with Schwartz that different instructional pedagogy and organizational structures through which students can learn a solid academic core are needed. We need to offer choices that include, in addition to this academic core, a career-concentration, and we must teach in ways that engage and motivate students to make the effort necessary to meet high standards, said Bottoms. To achieve these multiple goals, we might explore some new options: transitioning half-day high school vocational centers into full-time technical high schools, dual enrollment in community college, and virtual technical high schools, concluded Bottoms.

Warren Simmons, Executive Director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, Brown University, also addressed what it will take over the next decade to produce significant improvements in education. He argued that how you define the problems and their solutions depends on where you sit; standards-based reform, for example, appears to be more sensible and coherent from the federal than from the school or district level.

He asked, “What progress have districts and states made in developing capacity over the last decade?” If we look at the responses of states and the federal government to the standards movement, we see that they have moved ahead in getting accountability measures in place and in specifying standards, however, they have not coupled this progress with the assistance schools and districts need or provided resources necessary to reach standards and be accountable. They have not helped to build the capacity that is necessary for change to take place, said Simmons.

Simmons posed the question, “What kind of system is needed at the state, district, and school levels to help achieve standards and build capacity to change?” His response included: 1) mechanisms for generating and distributing highly qualified teachers and administrators for all schools; 2) high quality instructional materials; 3) trusting relations between all members of the school community; 4) mechanisms and tools to compare equity across schools; 5) substantial amounts of time; and 6) extensive community involvement. As we try to move toward the vision of education described by Schwartz, the question we need to ask is, continued Simmons, “What kinds of resources, tools, policies, and infrastructure are needed if states, districts, and schools are to make these changes? We need to focus on building capacity if change is to take place.”

American Youth Policy Forum   1836 Jefferson Place NW,  Washington DC 20036
Telephone 202-775-9731      |      Fax 202-775-9733      |     Email aypf@aypf.org