CUBE Leadership Training Workshop

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CUBE Leadership Training Workshop

• john a. powell
• Williams Chair in Civil Rights Civil Liberties,
  Moritz College of Law. Director, Kirwan Institute
• May 12, 2005

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Preliminary Questions

• Despite the efforts of school boards around the
  country, why do disparities exist?
• What are we doing wrong? What are we doing right?
• How do we achieve the change we wish to see in
  our schools and districts?

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Overview

• The Position Of School Boards-Why School Boards
  Are Key
• Internal Conditions for Reform
• Institutional and Structural Considerations
  Advocacy Opportunities
• Case Studies Evaluation of Results

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School Boards Social Justice
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A Great Responsibility

• A school is not an island within a community nor
  does it operate in isolation of other societal
  structures and forces
• Schools are anchor institutions, and school board
  members are the driving force behind them
• School boards have a great responsibility, not
  only to ensure equitable education, but to define
  and shape our society

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The Position Of School Boards-Why School Boards
Are Key

• School districts are the buckle in the American
  system of public education. They hold together
  communities and schools and translate state
  policy into effective action. They provide
  schools with resources, personnel, standards,
  operating policies, support services, and
  management systems.
• -Strengthening Urban Boards
• http//www.asbj.com/specialreports/2002pdf/1202pd
  f/1202ASBJS3.pdfsearch'urban20school20boards

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The Position Of School Boards-Why School Boards
Are Key

• Situated between the community and the
  superintendent- school boards are in a powerful
  position to enact change

The School Board
Civic Leadership
Superintendent
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Urban School Boards

• Urban school boards in particular have a
  tremendous opportunity to reach low income
  students of color
• There are 16,850 school districts in the United
  States
• 100 of those districts serve approximately 23 of
  the nations students
• These districts serve 40 of the minority
  students
• They also serve 30 of the economically
  disadvantaged students

http//www.mdrc.org/publications/47/execsum.html
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School Failure School Boards

• In these urban districts, students are performing
  abysmally low
• Fewer than half of high school freshman graduate
  four years later
• More than half are not reading or solving math
  problems at their grade level
• If urban schools are failing, then so too are the
  school boards
• This is not for a lack of effort, but rather a
  need for focused, targeted intervention

http//www.asbj.com/specialreports/2002pdf/1202pdf
/1202ASBJS3.pdfsearch'urban20school20boards
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Social Justice

• Why a distinct focus on race?
• How will this shape reform in ways that
  approaches without an explicit racial focus do
  not?
• Deficits in urban schools are race based, even
  controlling for all other factors, including
  income
• To address these disparities we must understand
  and acknowledge them

• Our solutions cannot be colorblind until
  achievement in schools is!

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Structural Racism

• A structural racism approach seeks to understand
  disparities by examining how history, public
  policies, norms, and institutional practices and
  arrangements, including opportunity structures,
  can interact to maintain racial hierarchies and
  inequitable racial group outcomes.
• Structural racism asks the question How do we
  make meaning of these inequalities? What are the
  inequality generating processes?

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Structural Racism

• Structural racism asserts the following tenants
• Racialized outcomes do not require racist actors-
  theoretically neutral policies and practices can
  function in racist ways
• These policies and practices are not neutral
  however, and as a result the burdens are
  distributed unevenly
• These burdens, or disparities, are the symptoms
  of structural racism

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Structural Racism

• Structural racism can be conceptualized as a web
• Racial and ethnic inequalities are interwoven in
  a way that they are mutually reinforcing
• Singular attempts to address

one aspect of racial and ethnic
inequality, if not monitored, can cause
retrenchment in other areas
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Structural Racism

• The persistent educational inequities such as the
  achievement gap are a reflection of the
  cumulative, durable, group based inequalities
  caused by structural racism

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Opportunity Structures
Fiscal Policies
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Opportunity Structures Structural Racism

• The conceptualization of opportunity structures
  recognizes the multiple factors that impact
  children beyond the walls of schools, and their
  lasting effects on students educational
  experience and achievement
• A structural racism approach seeks to alleviate
  disparities at their sources
• It calls us to move beyond our limited goals of
  addressing the symptoms (i.e. academic
  achievement), to examine and challenge the very
  conditions that are producing those symptoms

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Internal Conditions for Reform

• Recommendations for urban school board change

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School Board Challenges

• School boards face multiple challenges
• Ill defined role, especially between school board
  and superintendent
• Competing political interests of school board
  members
• Data availability, quality of data received, and
  understanding of information and its
  ramifications
• Limited budget
• Despite these challenges, school boards are held
  accountable for setting high standards and
  ensuring that students meet those standards

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Steps for Success
Important steps for successful school board
reform

• Build the foundation for reform
• Collectively define goals
• Research areas of weakness
• Become a policy board
• Develop instructional coherence
• Communicate goals to the superintendent, parents,
  the community
• Empower the superintendent
• Use data to drive decision making
• Gather comprehensive data
• Provide professional development for board
  members, teachers and staff

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Three Education Power Centers

• Aligning the three power centers is critical to
  implementing effective change
• Community
• School board
• Superintendent

The School Board
Community
Superintendent
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Aligning the Three Power Centers

• To achieve this, begin by collectively defining
  constructs and goals such as
• What is the primary role of education?
• What are secondary roles?
• How do we know when we are reaching those goals
  and what led to that success (or failure)?
• What are the roles and responsibilities of each
  party in achieving educational goals?
• What does success look like?

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Identify Goals Monitor Success

• Once the goals have been defined, and baseline
  measurement made, work backwards to success
• Identify steps including key leverage points and
  necessary actions to achieve the goal
• Always monitor to identify retrenchment in other
  areas
• For example, if the goal is higher achievement
  and student performance, a longitudinal measure
  of testing scores may show positive progress
• However, this may mask an increase in drop out
  rates as low achieving students may be left
  behind or pushed out

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Utilize Available Resources

• Understand the issue
• Talk with community leaders, parents, teachers
  and the superintendent
• Review urban school reform literature
• Be aware of initiatives and their success in
  other districts
• Understand the unique characteristics of your
  district that impact the students, their
  families, and the school

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Gather Complete Statistics

• Collect comprehensive data
• Look not only at district performance as a whole,
  but parse the information out by each school
• Also look at data and statistics within each
  school by race and ethnicity of the student
  groups
• Composite information can mask group-based and
  school-wide disparities

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Data Gathering

• Dont just administer assessments, manage
  them!
• Example The Boston Plan for Excellence FAST
  Track tool
• Helps identify patterns of performance among
  groups of students by disaggregating student data
• Performance trends data is analyzed and informs
  necessary instructional interventions

Transforming the American High School New
Directions for State and Local Policy, The Aspen
Institute
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Policy Oversight

• Focus on policy!
• Micromanagement frequently blurs the lines
  between governing the district and operating it
• Frequent changes in policy directions are
  destabilizing and ineffective
• Board members should be focused on long-term,
  district-level policy decisions, not day to day
  operations
• Communicate the policy direction
• The superintendent should be on the same page,
  and empowered to work within the direction
  established by the board

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• Urban districts need policy stability and
  consistency to make and sustain difficult
  changes.
• -WestEd, 2003.Leading in Difficult Times Are
  Urban School Boards Up to the Task?

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School Board Demographics

• Seek and value diversity, not just in the school,
  but on the school board
• According to a 1998 survey, 68 of board members
  reported an income of at least 60,000
• 28 of that group made more than 100,000
  annually
• 75 held a four-year college degree and 46 had
  earned graduate degrees
• 80 were white 6.5 African American and 3.1
  Hispanic

National School Boards Association. (1998).
Education vital signs 1998 Leadership. The
American School Board Journal, 185(12), A13-A15.
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Professional Development

• Professional development is important for school
  board members, teachers and staff
• It is important in staying up to date on policy
  direction trends, structural constraints, and
  successful reform measures including case studies
  of other districts
• It can be used to support
• Overarching district policy directions
• Curricula Reform
• And should be informed by
• School board/teacher needs knowledge gaps
• Student achievement
• District goals
• The impact of structures on the school district
  (i.e. voting reform and the school funding
  paradigm)

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Training Programs

• Examples of governance standards and training
  programs
• California School Boards Associations
  Professional Governance Standards
  http//www.csba.org/pgs/pgs_brochure.pdf
• National Institute for Education Leadership
  Provides policy board training and assistance
  http//www.iel.org/programs/sbep.html

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Institutional and Structural Considerations
Advocacy Opportunities

• Recommended structures and institutions that must
  be addressed in a comprehensive pursuit of
  educational equality

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External Focus

• While the role of school boards is critical,
  school board reform is not a panacea
• Broaden awareness of structures and processes
  that can disenfranchise parents and communities
  of color

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Anchor Institutions

• Remember that schools are anchor institutions in
  a community
• Anchor institutions are significant community or
  regional institution that serve a specific
  community or regional need
• These institutions create a synergy that attracts
  other opportunities and areas near these
  institutions become dense clusters of opportunity
  
• While some opportunities move quickly (investment
  and people), anchor institutions are more stable
  and contribute to the vitality of the area

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No School is an Island

• Build relationships and partnerships!
• Develop a collaborative, positive and productive
  relationship with parents, teachers, the
  superintendent, and the community
• Create a clear plan to engage in ongoing
  communication
• The resulting buy-in has been shown to be a key
  component in sustaining reform over time

Clear Goals Shared Commitment Powerful Change!
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Voting Reform

• Critically examine the board member
  electoral process, is it working and for whom?
• At large voting vs. election-by-area or
  cumulative voting
• Partner with community agencies dedicated to
  voting reform to enable everyone's voice to be
  heard
• Progress In more than 50 jurisdictions
  cumulative voting is used in school board
  elections, including districts in
• Illinois
• New Mexico
• Alabama
• Sisseton, South Dakota
• Amarillo, Texas

http//www.fairvote.org/index.php?page226
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Spatial Arrangements

• Spatial arrangements are intricately tied to
  the challenges facing urban schools
• Disparities in education are grounded in spatial
  arrangements and regional dynamics
• Land use policies and housing discrimination
  block access to high opportunity areas for people
  of color, relegating them into isolated sects of
  concentrated poverty, often in inner-city urban
  areas
• The schools are then segregation by race and
  class, which we will later see has deleterious
  effects on the opportunities for success for
  those children

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Sprawl, Inequity and Education
50 years after the Brown Decision, Americas
schools have re-segregated into affluent white
districts and poor under-funded African American
and Hispanic districts
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School Funding

• Consider other larger structural arrangements
  that are negatively impacting the school district
• Our school funding paradigm reinforces
  disparities and perpetuates poverty
• Address the large gaps in availability in
  resources at a structural level, or attempts to
  increase achievement of low income children and
  students will fail
• Become informed about the issue, talk to and
  consider partnering with community groups
  dedicated to seeing this change

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Case Studies

• Those who have implemented the necessary
  conditions for reform to bring about changes to
  their urban school district

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Case Studies

• Through meeting the conditions for reform and
  working collaboratively for equitable change,
  school boards have seen measures of success
  including
• Growth in overall student performance
• Modest narrowing of the achievement gap between
  white students and students of color
• Improvement at a more rapid rate than the state
  average

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Case Studies

• These urban districts in particular have shown
  some success
• Houston Independent School District
• Sacramento City Unified School District
• Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools

http//www.mdrc.org/publications/47/execsum.html
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Houston Independent School District

• Largest public school system in Texas, 7th
  largest in the US
• Key Challenges
• At risk student body population
• Inexperienced teaching force
• District mismanagement of funds
• Important Conditions for Reform
• Stable leadership, committed to change
• Explicit declaration of Beliefs and Vision
• Hired a superintendent who supported the mission
• Solutions
• Adopted district-wide accountability system
• Implemented a comprehensive curriculum aligned
  with state standards
• Targeted assistance to low-performing schools
• Decentralized, giving schools more control
• Encouraged parent and community involvement
• Focus on targeted professional development
• Implemented data collection standards
• Communications strategy to communicate the
  districts message to the public

http//www.mdrc.org/publications/47/full.pdf
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Houston Independent School District

• Results
• Elementary student performance improved between
  1998 and 2001
• The number of elementary school students
  performing below basic levels of proficiency
  declined
• Although average achievement improving, no
  consistent reduction in racial disparities among
  elementary school students
• Weaker improvements in average achievement and
  reductions in racial achievement gaps at the
  middle school level
• Little improvement of student performance or
  racial disparities in academic achievement at the
  highs school level

http//www.mdrc.org/publications/47/full.pdf
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Sacramento City Unified School District

• Key Challenges
• Superintendent Turnover
• School board infighting, divisive personal
  agendas
• Important Conditions for Reform
• School board members backed by a popular mayor
• Hired a superintendent who supported reform
• Superintendent school board jointly created
  strategic plan
• Solutions
• Defined district-wide focus
• Set explicit goals of student performance and
  accountability for results
• Focused on the schools and students who most
  needed intervention
• Professional development
• Used data to direct efforts, inform instruction
  and track progress
• Development of communications strategy

http//www.mdrc.org/publications/47/full.pdf
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Sacramento City Unified School District

• Results
• Significantly improved overall student
  achievement
• Percentages of students scoring below the 25th
  percentile declined in every racial group
• Disparities in Hispanic-white achievement below
  the 25th percentile narrowed, but disparities in
  African American-white achievement narrowed by
  smaller and less consistent margins.
• Positive trends in average achievement for all
  groups, but smaller and less consistent
  reductions in racial disparities in average
  scores
• Weaker improvements in average achievement and
  reductions in racial achievement gaps at the
  middle school level
• No overall improvement in student performance or
  reduction in racial disparities at the high
  school level

http//www.mdrc.org/publications/47/full.pdf
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Charlotte-Mecklenburg

• Largest school system in North Carolina and the
  26th largest in the US
• Key Challenges
• Low student achievement, significant disparity
  gap
• Low support from parents and community
• Teacher shortage/Inexperienced teachers
• Important Conditions for Reform
• Sought community input in the hiring of the
  superintendent
• Board, superintendent and community on the same
  page
• Solutions
• Developed five year action plan focused on reform
• Created clear goals and measures of
  accountability
• Implemented a uniform curriculum
• Focused on professional development
• Disaggregated and interpreted student achievement
  data to shape strategies and programs
• Focused explicitly on the achievement gap
• Reduced teacher student rations in schools with a
  higher low income population

http//www.mdrc.org/publications/47/full.pdf
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Charlotte-Mecklenburg

• Results
• Elementary student achievement improved
  significantly
• Percentage of students scoring below grade level
  declined among African American and white
  students
• Significant reductions in the percentages of
  African American students scoring below grade
  level, and a substantial narrowing of the
  achievement gap in elementary grades
• Reductions in the percentages of students at the
  bottom of the test score distribution
• Positive trends in student performance and racial
  disparities when measured by average achievement
• Smaller and less consistent improvements in
  student performance and achievement gaps at the
  middle school level

http//www.mdrc.org/publications/47/full.pdf
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Critical Evaluation

• Despite the relative success of these
  initiatives, in most schools there were only
  modest gains in narrowing the achievement gap
  between white students and students of color.
  Why?
• Reform efforts must have an explicit racial
  focus. All of those conditions for reform and
  solutions are important, but they are not enough
• Structural racism is deep, complex, and
  interwoven into the fabric of our society and our
  institutions
• If we wish to see substantive change, our reform
  efforts must be deliberately and intelligently
  designed to eliminate structural and racial
  hierarchy

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Session Two Overview

• What factors are responsible for the disparity
  gap?
• What are some specific targeted interventions
  that have been successful in narrowing it?
• The second half of this workshop will look at the
  current research on the disparity gap, some of
  the factors that are perpetuating it, and
  interventions that have shown success

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• Questions? Comments?

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