(no subject)

[eirias]

Interesting article on an educational experiment, wherein one school was converted to several smaller schools under the same roof. The benefits and drawbacks of this arrangement are predictable, and it's surprising to me that nobody thought of them in advance.

Comments

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I will have to read this article later because I'm stealing time from work right now, but I want to just say two things --

1) This sort of experiment is very trendy these days. One of the places I've worked was in the process of it at the time (and going through it in the worst possible way), and it's been sweeping Boston in general.

2) As someone who went to a consortium college, I am generally in favor of this sort of thing, but there's a factor I find is essentially never mentioned in these case studies of school reform -- any reform which has significant teacher support is likely to be successful, in the short term at least, merely because people are approaching their job with motivation and vision. I think which vision is much less important. But articles almost never bring this up. I shall be delighted if this one does :).

[littlepurple.livejournal.com]

any reform which has significant teacher support is likely to be successful, in the short term at least, merely because people are approaching their job with motivation and vision.

I think the whole language reading approach which was adopted in california, in which they abandoned all phonic approach showed clearly that this is not true. Teachers were enthusiastic, and the kids still sucked at reading.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Quite right. I should have had a special parenthesis to the effect of "except for spectacularly stupid ideas such as whole language, which has been a dramatic failure essentially everywhere". I always forget about that one, because I already knew how to read in first grade, and they used phonics anyway...

I'm mostly thinking, though, not of specific curricular measures, but rather of whole-school structures and vision statements.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

A naive reading of your vision hypothesis would say that the best schools will be the ones that change philosophies every three years or so, so that vision never gets stale... I realize that this is probably not what you're arguing, but I'm curious why not - whether your "meta-vision" has something to say about the place of revolution?

I mean, I guess this assumes that vision can get stale. It seems obvious that such a thing would be subject to generational effects, probably over much shorter timespans than an actual generation, but then again maybe not? How do you sustain vision?

[roamin-umpire.livejournal.com]

Changing frequently doesn't work because, for most people, it takes a fair bit of emotional investment to get behind something like this - it is, among other things, an act of faith. If you change what the people are supposed to believe in too frequently, they stop believing. Also, if your last three "visions" were less than effective, the odds that folks will get behind the next one aren't terribly good.

Vision can get stale, but it doesn't have to. If the vision is compelling and remains relevant to the organization, then it can continue to motivate people, even the veterans for whom the new-vision-smell has worn off. The key, I think, is that the people need to (borrowing a management phrase) "take ownership of" the vision - they need to feel that they have an integral role in pursuing the vision, instilling it in new members, projecting it to the outside world, and updating it when needed, at least in some small way.

I claim no particular skill at creating or sustaining vision. However, from what I've seen, people who do have that skill are energetic, enthusiastic people. They can articulate their goals and the reasons that others should help to pursue them. Their actions are directed towards the goal and produce concrete manifestations of the vision. And they make people feel that their accomplishments are also helping to instantiate the vision - feeling useless/unable to help is an awfully powerful demotivator. ("Wow, I got nothing done today. I suck. I'm probably not going to get anything done tomorrow, either." And doom ensues.)

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

That would be a naive reading! *g* But that's what I get for posting hastily and without adequate detail.

If you change too frequently, you get Cambridge. It's just terrible.

What I'm saying, though, is not directed so much to what schools ought to do as to a bias often observed but seldom acknowledged in school case studies: people say "school X implemented reform Y and it has been successful -- therefore reform Y is a great thing and everyone should do it!", but they don't acknowledge that the success might have been a result of a temporary upswing in enthusiasm and commitment on the part of the teachers, and similar success would have been seen with essentially any reform.

As for how you sustain vision...well, I don't know. I see that some places do and some places don't, but I'm not sure how this works.

There's an important element of turnover management (which I think most public schools get wrong, and some private schools get wrong in the opposite direction). You want *just enough* turnover -- enough to cycle out unmotivated people and bring in fresh blood, but not so much that you're constantly building from scratch. Connected to this is an element of personnel management; you want to be honest about your school mission to job applicants and critically vet them for whether they can support it. You need to be able to decline to hire people who won't be fully on board (in some markets, this is very hard).

My guess is that once a decade is often enough for a serious re-examination of your vision statement. (Crises -- of school culture, academic standards, or student attraction/retention -- may also prompt a reexamination.) I think a school which is healthy will be very slow to cycle out the best parts of its traditions, and will keep certain guiding principles in mind for decades if not for their entire history -- my school is still about "educating boys along right lines from the beginning", as our first headmaster said -- but at the same time it will be open to changing research, faculty passions, parent desires, and student needs.

[rms10.livejournal.com]

It sounds like their biggest mistake was having five vastly different schools under one roof. My high school has gotten so large that they've split it into three or four "schools", but it's done randomly, and it's mainly for administrative purposes. You're not stuck there, and of course there are AP classes, music classes, etc., that aren't in one of the "schools".

[roamin-umpire.livejournal.com]

Yes, a lot of what happened was unsurprising. Here are the things that caught my attention:

- The excessive stereotyping on the part of the students is obvious in retrospect, but it's not the first thing I thought of.
- "the problem is us" (the teachers). Sadly, I tend to agree with this. Enthusiasm is a tough thing to maintain, and given the poor material compensation, a lot of teachers just kind of coast along. Hell, I found myself doing that last year - I called it "triage" and wondered why I wasn't mad as hell at the kids who weren't taking advantage of the opportunities they had.
- The NYU professor hit it right on the money. The phrase I put on my cover letters that landed me several interview requests was that I wanted to work somewhere that "academic rigor and the expectation of success are part of the institutional culture." This, I think, more than anything determines the success of the school.
If there is a culture already in place, changing it is not an easy thing. It starts with the faculty, and you need every faculty member to buy in to the vision. Which means that you need (a) a vision worth buying into, and (b) someone charasmatic and eloquent enough to make them believe. Or a group of people - enthusiasm does tend to be catching. But it's a hard thing to do, and you need just about everyone on board - a few nay-sayers can really drag things down. So what you really need to do is convert the staff, or replace them. (It almost sounds cult-like. It almost is.)

I've certainly become convinced that every school needs an administrator who takes responsibility for staff development and morale. I almost want to become an administrator just for that reason.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

What I actually found most unsurprising was the observation that to the extent that the organization is subdivided, benefits derived from an economy of scale will disappear - e.g. their observation that they needed five times as many "math tiles" (whatever those are) because sharing was no longer practical. Like, couldn't they have foreseen this, and thus planned for it?

[roamin-umpire.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this one does seem rather obvious. But this is what happens when a person or group with lots of resources and energy starts out in a field in which they have little to no experience - obvious things get overlooked. The Gates Foundation also is in a big rush, which doesn't help.

It would seem to me they could pool resources some anyway. In fact, they almost certainly did - I highly doubt, for example, they had five school nurses.

Ah, well. Chalk it up as a learning experience, if nothing else...

... except, of course, that the kids at the school during the staff's learning process get the fuzzy end of the lollipop.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

(And sometimes you need (c) -- wide-ranging powers to fire and hire. I think public schools' near-inability to do this is a serious obstacle to vision in school reform.)

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

The stereotyping is unsurprising but I'm not sure to what extent it's a problem -- it's human nature to have group boundaries and to have somewhat jingoistic ideas about people inside and outside them. The same problems existed before they divided the school; it's just that the stereotypes were applied to subgroups within the school and to other schools in the same sports league, not to subpopulations that divided along institutional lines.

I think it's only really harmful if it leads to cross-school bullying or to people cutting themselves off from opportunities. And this is another of the advantage of having small schools with liberal cross-registration, and various whole-school or cross-school activities such as sports; if people have ample opportunities to socialize with and work alongside people from other small schools, the stereotyping will be lessened.

[rshruti.livejournal.com]

I find it weird that they had smaller schools but didn't hire new staff. I understand that most students knew their teachers more personally in the smaller schools despite not having smaller classes, but it seems to me that money would just generally be better spent on hiring a lot more teachers, putting dividers up in the classrooms, and having smaller class sizes. I've never tried teaching a big class, but it's a lot easier for a teacher to engage a smaller group than a larger one. I'm confused about why small class size and basic curriculum seemed secondary to overall school organization.

[roamin-umpire.livejournal.com]

Well, it does say in the article that some teachers believed that the Gates Foundation folks think class size is irrelevant, or minimally relevant. It's right in the same area as the "the problem is us" line.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

(Within limits: I find a ten-person class easier than a fifteen-person class, but also easier than a four-person class. However, this particular critical mass issue is a problem I am fortunate to have...)

Anyway, I think class size and institutional structure address somewhat different issuues. Class size most strongly addresses academics, especially quality and type of teaching. Institutional structure more addresses student psychological and emotional needs; it has more impact on school culture. Of course, you would like all of these things to be good, but if you have to choose you might decide that the overall student experience is more important to you than the pedagogical aspect, and you might gamble that an improved psychological environment with more adult contact will result in improved academic performance even without smaller classes.

Mind you I have had the great fortune to teach in small schools with small class sizes and I appreciate both.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I had 2 college classes that had about 7 students. One was quite nice. The other, well the class was just boring. It sounded interesting, but it wasn't taught that well. That led to 7 students, none of whom wanted to be there. And if one or two wasn't there for the day, it was much more socially painful to sit through. You don't want to look horribly bored or uninterested, but it just doesn't feel as bad to be in a large class of mostly uninterested people. Probably in part because you expect more class participation in a small class, and when no one wants to participate it becomes awkward.

But anyhow, I do agree with the critical mass concept, although think it is less of an issue when everyone is interested in being there. One of the most fun times I had substitute teaching was working with just 2 second graders for a good portion of a day. They were both energetic and still in the phase of wanting to do well and impress the teacher, so it was a lot of fun. The biggest discipline problem I had was making them take turns, not just blurt out the answer, so I could make sure both of them were understanding the material and getting practice. I love that problem, kids so excited about learning that you have to keep them just slightly contained. But you can't expect public schools to be full of kids who enjoy class and want to learn and can still have fun with it. That gets beaten out of them somewhere in late Elementary or Middle School.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

OK, now I've actually mostly read the article. Looks like, in my opinion, they got some things right, some things wrong.

Right:
I do believe in the small-schools aspect of a close community where adults and students know one another and it's harder for students to fall through the cracks. Tremendous benefit. The place I'm teaching at this year, where each teacher is responsible for about 40-50 students (which is a third of the load at many public schools) and we have good communication systems? One teacher noticed within the first two days that a particular student wore clothing to hide her body even when it was very hot, I (thus alerted to keep a closer eye on her) noticed a day later that she wasn't really eating her lunch, and inside a week she was meeting with the counselor to talk about body and eating issues. This is a good thing, and it doesn't much happen in larger environments.

And this particular school designed each smaller school with a personality and focus. Some places do this and some don't when they convert. The schools that don't are really missing out. In fact, I think one of the big problems with public education is that it is *possible* to set up a new school without any special vision; you can just make, you know, a school, like all the others. But we know students have different learning styles and personalities and perhaps one size doesn't fit all. Having different kinds of schools available serves students better, as well as requiring that each school *does* have some kind of special vision.

Bad:
As mentioned, they sacrificed economies of scale. The school I worked at which was undergoing conversion had precisely the same problem -- they were so keen on everyone being part of a small community that they made it a prison. Large schools have genuine efficiency advantages, and they also have program advantages -- an 1800-person high school may be able to support a marine biology course, but a 300-person school probably can't. Small non-specialized schools disserve students at the margins -- any margins. The ideal small-schools model -- and, again, I show my Claremont biases here -- has distinct small schools but the schedule and culture allow for crossover, to minimize the loss of economies and opportunities of scale.

If I were in charge, it would look something like this:

There would be a common schedule, or at least a set of well-interlocking schedules. Each school would have enough faculty to offer its core curriculum and the advanced courses most appropriate to its vision internally. It would be possible to complete your education entirely within your school, if you so desired.

The curriculum would be set up in such a way to encourage or require people to spend a certain amount of time within the core, decreasing as they aged. Ninth graders would spend all their time within their school, ensuring that their core faculty got to know them (with the possible exception of foreign language -- your offerings are enormously reduced if you have to duplicate them in every school -- and the occasional student with very unusual educational needs). Tenth graders would be able to move outside more, etc. You could accomplish this in several ways -- require certain courses to be taken in-school; require a certain number of credits in-school; or simply set up the required classes in such a way that the default is to take most of them in-school. Probably you should preferentially schedule people in-school -- if they have the option of taking something in-school, they should.

And, of course, extracurriculars should offer ample opportunities to cross these boundaries. I am a big believer in setting up your school day such that cliques can be broken up and people have the opportunity of socializing with, or the necessity of working with, different groups of people. Additionally, some people thrive in a large environment with its attendant opportunities. Clubs, sports, at least some dances/parties, and one layer of student government should be whole-school.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Not exactly good or bad but just a problem:
Student assignment.

The article mentions people freaking out that they actually had to compete for incoming eighth graders. My heart totally fails to bleed here. Suck it up, guys -- if your program doesn't inspire loyalty you're doing something wrong. (Yes, I know I am one of the few people in education who thinks market signals are a good thing.)

But Cambridge experienced another facet of the same problem. They had had a sort of proto-small-schools model which they were rejiggering along newer, trendier lines. One of the reasons was that the old model, which did assignment by a total freedom-of-choice model, had resulted in tremendous race and class discrepancies. The parents who were well-informed and well-connected -- by and large, the richer, whiter ones -- knew about the two good schools and got their kids into them. The poor parents, the immigrants, the non-English-speaking, and generally the blacker ones, without this sort of information and access, ended up with their kids in spectacularly crappy schools by default.

An assignment plan needs to have some element of choice. It needs some opportunity for better programs to snag top students. It needs some way for people to gravitate toward the programs that best suit their personalities and learning styles and goals. It needs some opportunity for students and parents to feel invested in their particular school. However, it also needs brakes on choice. It needs some way to ensure that children whose parents don't know the system aren't unduly punished. It needs some way to prevent separate-and-unequal from forming along race lines, class lines -- anything other than "ineptitude of teachers" lines, which is a management and not a social problem.

So the idea of how to allow and how to manage choice within districts is a complicated one. Cambridge, naturally, solved it badly, by having some tremendously complex formula with a nod to every special interest group and no choice whatsoever. I, better appreciating the value of randomness, would probably do something whereby the first n% of each school's class happened through choice (forming the school-spirited core and propagating the personality of each school), and the rest were randomly assigned (modulo sibling preference, either to be in the same school as an older sibling or not). There would have to be some kind of limited transfer protocol as well...however, if your schools are sensible about allowing cross-registration, there shouldn't be a huge need for transferring because everyone has access to all needed resources.

[leora.livejournal.com]

The faculty seemed to want to allow cross-registration, but the grant didn't allow it. I do think this was stupid on the part of the grant and it'd have worked better with cross-registration options.

Also, even if the kids do do better, it doesn't mean much of anything. They did hire a little as they did hire a few more people and many of the faculty members put in a lot more hours of work to make this work. Yes, with more manpower you can improve schools, much like your more enthusiasm comment. So, showing schools can work better with more manpower... it's just not impressive. Especially as they can't maintain the increased manpower.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Oh, and that bit about the article where people who have no experience about education run up against problems internal to education and are surprised by it? ARGH. So true.

Everyone went to school. Everyone's an expert. Everyone knows education is a problem and has an armchair-quarterback solution. And people inside the profession should listen, because it can be such an insular and hive-mind place that it has difficulty generating new ideas...but people outside the profession really should recognize that they are hopeless n00bs and have no business implementing solutions without first forming a coalition with people inside, and listening.

One of the frequent guest-bloggers on Marginal Revolution offered a set of suggestions for teachers a while ago, and almost every single one of them was something that is already widely implemented.

Yeah.

And yet people are so often surprised to discover they are clueless.

Yeah.