how to reach success

36 American School Board Journal ■ www.asbj.com ■ May 2010

hy do some school reform efforts work whenothers don’t?As researchers from the University of

Southern California’s Center on EducationalGovernance, we want to find the answer tothat question. So when we had the chance to

watch four urban districts work through the early stages ofreform, we jumped at it.In 2006, we helped the Weingart Foundation develop the

Urban School Districts Reform Initiative (USDRI) andselect four districts for grants ranging from $750,000 tomore than $1 million. The three-year grants targeted specif-ic projects at small-to-medium urban districts in SouthernCalifornia: Desert Sands Unified, Inglewood Unified,Lennox Elementary, and Pomona Unified, each of whichhad a school reform plan under way. Once grants were awarded, we formed a collaborative

learning community with the foundation and the four dis-tricts, and observed each district work through early obsta-cles. Each reform varied in content and approach, yet each

project followed a broadly similar strategy. We identified six features of early success, key ingredi-

ents for any district’s reform recipe. They are: suitability,superintendent leadership, reform champions, retainingfocus, advancing through stages, and communication.

Positioning for success

As each district’s leaders defined their project’s size andscope, we noticed that their strategic positioning alwaysincluded three key ingredients: suitability, superintendentleadership, and reform champions.Suitability addresses the reform’s potential success and

how various constituents greet the reform. Your projectsmust suit your district. Ask yourself: Does the project’s con-tent align and integrate with your mission, your strategicplan, your context? At the same time, is the reform ambi-tious enough to improve district operations and, ultimately,student performance?Our four districts chose projects that addressed funda-

mental and high-priority issues, using different ways to fit

Colin Anderson

Andrew Thomas and Priscilla Wohlstetter

W

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American School Board Journal ■ www.asbj.com ■ May 2010 37

the project to the district’s mission and local context.Desert Sands’ USDRI funds helped to accelerate a technol-ogy initiative—increased computer usage in classrooms—that had been in the district’s strategic plan since 1993.Lennox Elementary built an after-school program in whichEnglish language learners created school newspapers andlearned to strengthen writing, interviewing, listening, andresearching skills. The other two districts started projects from scratch,

aligning them with existing district programs and priorities.Inglewood’s then-superintendent, who has a math back-ground, knew that building instructional leadership capacityat the principal level would improve secondary math instruc-tion. The project was new, but its methods conformed to anongoing districtwide push to reorganize schools around pro-fessional learning communities and expand the use of data-driven instructional decision- making.Pomona’s superintendent, who previously had served as

the district’s chief academic officer for five years, hadwatched principal evaluation and accountability languishfor years. She used the funds to create a new evaluation sys-tem that dovetailed with the district’s mission and vision,and addressed a “weak link” in overall district governance.For added effectiveness and coherence, an outside contrac-tor’s coaching program for principals needed to mesh withany principal evaluation tool.

Leadership from the top

The second key ingredient in strategic positioning is super-intendent leadership.In all four projects, superintendents played relatively

hands-on roles without micromanaging, which producedresults. They struck this “high accountability, high support”balance by personally overseeing the overall developmentof related curricular and instructional strategies. And, justas importantly, they secured, controlled, and used studentachievement and related data.Inglewood’s superintendent hired two consultants to

lead professional development and recruited a high schoolprincipal with a mathematics background to work at thedistrict headquarters. The superintendent remainedinvolved through daily updates and campus visits, but oth-ers carried out the bulk of the work. Meticulous about data and benchmarking, Pomona’s

superintendent kept a notebook of test scores, evaluations,and memos from each school and brought it on site visits.Access to detailed student data helped her scrutinize theprincipals’ instructional decisions. With teacher and admin-istrator evaluations in hand, she could hold staff account-able for their schoolwide goals. This level of personal involvement and attention to

results shows how much the superintendent values thereform, which helps the work of others with more direct

responsibility for implementation.

Finding reform champions

In observing the four districts, we noticed a third key ingre-dient for early reform success: reform champions whosecolleagues told us they were “the glue that keeps the wholeprogram together.”Each districtwide reform had staff members who func-

tioned as the project’s day-to-day leaders. Effective reformchampions must have sufficient decision-making authorityand access to adequate resources. As Pomona’s reformexpanded to more schools, its champions appealed to thesuperintendent for additional staff to go on site visits. AtLennox, the reform champion had access to the district’s sec-ond-in-command, who helped “remove the roadblocks” thatotherwise would have prevented the program from beingimplemented.Champions also must have skills, competence, and expe-

rience in the reform’s content area. The champion for theLennox after-school program was a bilingual English-lan-guage development intervention specialist for the districtand a National Board-certified former teacher who hadtaught several elementary grades at different schools, hadserved on one school’s leadership team, and had been a leadteacher. Pomona chose two district administrators whowere former principals with complementary experience.Desert Sands’ champion had been the IT director for 14years and was seen as “very passionate and very visionary... and he gets the nuts-and-bolts people behind him.”At Inglewood, unique among the four districts, the super-

intendent served as the reform champion. During the pro-ject’s second year, when the school board did not renew thesuperintendent’s contract, the director of secondaryinstruction (a former math teacher) subsequently steppedin to play the role of reform champion.

Strategic implementation

Preplanning helps you launch your reform, but it’s just thefirst step. Early success depends also on strategic imple-mentation and three more ingredients: retaining focus,advancing in stages, and maintaining communication.Successful reforms tend to have clear, concrete objec-

tives; as the reform progresses, its participants retain a tan-gible sense of what they are trying to achieve. Successfulreforms also stay focused.The four districts did so in two ways. They aligned the

reform projects with the district’s mission, the local con-text, and related district programs. They also broadcasttheir successes. Principals wanted to know the standards on which their

performance would be evaluated, the superintendent want-ed unambiguous understanding and acceptance of thosesame standards, and others wanted to understand how the


38 American School Board Journal ■ www.asbj.com ■ May 2010

standards affected their work. Only clearly articulated andunambiguously interpreted objectives would result in theultimate goal: higher-performing principals running schoolswith greater student achievement. Desert Sands’ superintendent retired shortly after the ini-

tiative’s launch, but the reform was so entwined with the dis-trict’s strategic plan that the project didn’t falter. The newsuperintendent attributed the smooth transition to the fact thather team was “pre-organized [with] time frames, next steps.”Likewise, when Inglewood started its second year without asuperintendent, it benefited from a “solid plan” that enabledteachers and administrators to “hit the ground running.” Positive public feedback helped promote the reforms’

visibility, while negative feedback was addressed privately.The Desert Sands superintendent appreciated the impor-tance of good news: She said the project leader “does agood job of keeping the goals in front of his staff and thenhelping teachers and principals at the school sites celebratethe small victories as implementation goes along.” For Lennox’s pilot after-school program, the project

head personally recruited teachers; moving forward, sheleveraged positive publicity to increase teacher participa-tion. District administrators widely distributed the after-school program’s student newspaper and published positivestudent outcomes in district and community newsletters. Inthe second year, recruiting teachers and students becamemuch less difficult.

Advancing in stages

Equally important is advancing the reform in stages. All fourdistricts began their projects on a manageable scale andthen ramped them up to include more participants. Thisallowed them to respond to feedback and adapt to changingconditions while remaining true to the goals of the reform. Some feedback came from formal evaluations keyed to

established benchmarks. Other feedback was less formal,resulting from classroom observations or conversationswith participants at the school sites. But in all cases, imple-mentation was “context-sensitive” and rolled out in stages.Desert Sands’ technology integration project began with

about “600-plus teachers in elementary schools from gradesK-5.” The second year, the emphasis was on middle schools.The plan also began with the most motivated and interestedteachers, expanding as interest grew among the faculty. Inthis way, officials could develop training materials andprocesses as they went along and tailor training to the spe-cific needs of their teachers. Lennox began its after-school project with a yearlong

pilot at one elementary school before expanding to others.According to the project lead, this step-by-step rolloutschedule allowed the others “to not just automatically dowhat the pilot does, but modify it in ways that are going tobe important to allow it to be as successful as possible as wego to the other sites.”

Inglewood wanted its secondary math instructionreform to grow in a “viral” fashion. Rather than seeking tochange the behavior of all teachers at all schools, projectleaders focused on training “cadres” who would becomechange agents at their respective schools. Teachers andassistant principals attended monthly Saturday meetings onusing data to improve mathematics achievement. The ideawas that teachers would return to their schools and sharetheir new knowledge.

Communication is critical

The last key ingredient is maintaining communicationamong all levels of the school system. Information shouldflow from the school board, district offices, and reformleaders down to every participant and school site, and backup again to the board level. Multiple communication channels increase information

flow, and all four districts relied on multiple forms. Onesuperintendent maintained an open-door policy; anotherrequired that associate superintendents write a “Friday let-ter” to update her on each week’s progress. Smaller school districts have relatively flat organization-

al structures, which facilitate communication. The superin-tendents in the four districts often interacted directly withprincipals and teachers. Central office administrators alsowere part of the communication process, building trustingrelationships along the way.Lateral, or teacher-to-teacher, communication also is

important. When an Inglewood eighth-grade teacher, whowas the only algebra teacher at her K-8 school, took the ini-tiative to call a meeting of all the district’s eighth-grade alge-bra teachers, the reform champion called it “a great strategy.”“That’s what we’re trying to develop,” the champion said.

“This process changes the culture of your school and that’swhat we’re getting all of the teachers to understand.”With the perspective gained from years in this project, we

advise districts pursuing major reform projects to plan bold-ly, but lead sensitively. Choose a reform that fits your dis-trict’s capacities and context, designate a reform champion,and ensure that the superintendent is ready to lead with a bal-ance of hands-on involvement and background support.Once positioned for success, execute the project with

the right level of focus, involvement, speed, and flow ofinformation and communication across all groups.Including the six key ingredients will help ensure yourreform’s success. ■

Andrew Thomas is an adjunct professor and a postdoctoralresearch associate at the Center on Educational Governance atthe University of Southern California’s Rossier School ofEducation. Priscilla Wohlstetter, the Diane and MacDonaldBecket Professor of Educational Policy at the school, is directorof the Center on Educational Governance and the principal inves-tigator of the Urban School Districts Reform Initiative.


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