The Study

In this article, Assistant Professor Steve Ryan and UCLA colleagues Jeannie Oakes, Karen Hunter Quartz and Martin Lipton describe the trials and tribulations of three demographically different middle schools as they struggled and compromised to become more educative, socially just, caring, and participatory places amid sometimes fierce opposition.

Findings

The authors describe the experiences of three principals whose schools were engaged in a particular reform – the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development’s middle-grades reform effort as outlined in Turning Points: Preparing American Youth for the 21^st Century. Turning Points seeks to create community-like schools that foster meaningful engagement with ideas, as well as with caring people, diverse environments, and democratic processes. The researchers had studied 16 schools in five states engaged in the reform effort for nearly a decade. Their research had shown that “such an agenda invariably aroused fundamental contradictions in an American culture that embraces democratic ends for its schools but resists the democratic means from which the ends cannot be separated.” The essential contradiction was that many Americans – typically the most advantaged and powerful – take the common good to mean an aggregate of the actions of self-interested individuals who are free to be guided by such marketplace values as competition and the accumulation of social and material resources. “So, although the goals of reforms often met with initial agreement, the harmony soon dissipated amid suspicion that enacting the means of reform would help some and would diminish the schooling benefits of others.”  Some reform measures implemented include reorganizing all teachers and students into heterogeneously grouped, multi-age teams, portfolio assessments, dismantling the system of tracking, and mainstreaming a high number of special education students. All the schools also tried to build close connections among educators, children, parents, and the neighborhood. The reform efforts ultimately drew resistance from inside and out. One principal, for example, became the target of angry parents, who considered some of her efforts a “hippie-era leftover.” The parents organized into a group and demanded that the school return to a basic curriculum and traditional teaching. A second principal had to confront “extraordinary nervousness” from the district office, and was badgered by the superintendent to change practices aimed at promoting an inclusive schooling environment that might make middle-class white families uncomfortable. The third principal also became embroiled in controversy over bilingual education. All three principals ultimately made compromises that stalled their reforms. Two of the three principals eventually left their positions. “In the face of resistance …, educators in most schools compromised and scaled back their reform practices,” the authors conclude. “But this did not render their accomplishments meager. And theirs is not a story of failed school reform. Their interventions were often catalysts that converted unproductive struggle  …  into genuine consensus around small shifts in practice that served children better… In nearly all cases, tackling the complex and often contradictory task of creating good American schools made the schools better for children and adults than they would have been otherwise. But things should have gone better for these schools, and in the end we argue that the lessons learned from their experiences can inform a society that wants its schools to be better.”

What It Means To You

As Ryan and his colleagues make clear, creating change in schools is not an easy process. Pressure to abandon or alter reform plans can come from a variety of sources. To what extent does your experience in reform and change parallel those of the educators chronicled in the article? Is the effort worth it, as Ryan and his colleagues conclude?

For More Information

Oakes, J., Quartz, K.H., Ryan, S.& Lipton, M. (2000). Becoming good American schools: The struggle for civic virtue in education reform. Phi Delta Kappan, 81(8), 568-575.

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