How can districts organize and manage themselves to achieve excellence in every school and classroom, not just a few? For the past four years, a joint project of Harvard University鈥檚 business school and its graduate school of education has been pressing that question in partnership with nine large school districts around the country.
Last week, the 4-year old initiative, known as the , or PELP, held its here to share a framework it鈥檚 developed based on what it鈥檚 learning.
And like most business classes at Harvard, the meeting began with a case study鈥攊n this instance, of a mythical district that鈥檚 a composite of what the researchers first encountered when they began working with school systems in 2003.
The 鈥淏ristol City鈥� district鈥檚 superintendent has an ambitious vision: to 鈥渆nsure that each student achieves his or her potential by supporting high-quality teaching and learning and comprehensive academic programs, working in conjunction with the entire community.鈥� But as the discussion quickly uncovered, the superintendent actually has no strategy for achieving that vision, just a frenetic amount of unconnected activities and initiatives.
鈥淗ow familiar does this look to you?鈥� Stacey M. Childress, a lecturer at the Harvard Business School and one of the founders of PELP, asked the audience of district leaders, business executives, consultants, academics, foundation officers, and nonprofit executives. 鈥淢ost of our districts looked like this.鈥�
鈥淭he challenge becomes, once you recognize that there鈥檚 this disconnect between what your big vision says and all this activity,鈥� she said, 鈥渨hat do you do about it?鈥�
Coherence Is Key
The answer, according to the 鈥淧ELP Coherence Framework,鈥� is that districts have to start by focusing on the 鈥渋nstructional core,鈥� the critical work of teaching and learning that goes on in classrooms. They have to set concrete performance objectives and intermediate milestones to determine if they鈥檙e making progress. And they have to articulate an explicit theory of action about the causal relationships between certain actions the district will take and the desired outcomes.
For example, many districts believe that improving the quality of teaching provides the best leverage for increasing student performance. So their theory of action might be: 鈥淭he most direct way to increase student learning is to improve teachers鈥� instructional practice. Therefore, if we help all teachers improve their instructional practice, then we will accomplish high levels of achievement for all students.鈥�
A districtwide strategy to put that theory into action would include the concrete steps to which the organization commits itself to ensure that high-quality teaching is happening in every classroom, every day.
鈥淗aving a well-articulated strategy helps leaders choose what to do,鈥� according to the framework, 鈥渁nd just as importantly, what not to do.鈥�
Equally important, district leaders have to bring the key organizational elements of the school system together in a way that is congruent with the strategy. Those elements include the culture of the district, or expectations about 鈥渉ow things work around here鈥�; formal and informal structures and systems, such as the way decisions get made; accountability mechanisms; compensation arrangements and training programs; the allocation of resources, including people, technology, and data; the management of stakeholder relationships both inside and outside the organization; and the external environment, such as state rules and regulations, union contracts, and public and private funding sources.
Allen S. Grossman, a professor at the business school and the faculty chair for PELP, noted that such external forces can pull superintendents away from having a strategy for large-scale improvement, but that too often those forces serve as 鈥渁n excuse set鈥� for districts鈥� failure to take responsibility for what they can control.
鈥淒istricts wind up with a host of unrelated programs piled on each other, each with its own funding stream,鈥� he said. 鈥淭his lack of coherence is rampant.鈥�
Next-Generation Issues
While the framework draws on models of managing for high performance in the business and nonprofit sectors, Mr. Grossman said, it was designed to fit the particular context and challenges of public education, including charter-management organizations that serve many of the same functions as school districts.
鈥淎lthough public education is a $450 billion enterprise,鈥� he said, 鈥渢here was virtually nothing about how to manage to high performance.鈥�
One goal of the meeting, said Richard F. Elmore, a professor of education at Harvard and a faculty member with PELP, was to get people 鈥渢o think in powerful ways about the next level of work.鈥�
For example, one panel focused on efforts to close achievement gaps by ensuring all students have access to a content-rich and rigorous curriculum, and the pedagogical supports to succeed. Another focused on efforts by districts, charter-management organizations, and for-profit companies to create accountability systems that both encourage self-reflection and analysis on the part of schools and intervene in schools that don鈥檛 improve, as well as data systems to support such work.
James S. Liebman, the chief accountability officer for the 1.1 million-student New York City schools, described the district鈥檚 Children First Intensive, in which teams based in each of the city鈥檚 1,400 public schools will be expected and supported to use data to identify 10 to 20 students 鈥渙utside the school鈥檚 sphere of success,鈥� figure out how to help them, and track their progress over the course of a school year.
Jerry D. Weast, the superintendent of the 138,000-student Montgomery County, Md., public schools, described his district鈥檚 efforts to align its curriculum with what students need to know to succeed in Advanced Placement calculus and English courses, and then map backward from there, starting with what students need to learn in kindergarten.
Since 2002, the district鈥攖he state鈥檚 largest and racially and ethnically most diverse鈥攈as nearly closed the gaps between the percentages of African-American, white, and Hispanic kindergartners meeting end-of-year benchmarks in reading. It has significantly narrowed the gap in the proportion of 5th graders enrolled in higher-level math courses across poorer and more affluent areas of the school system. And the percentage of black students taking one or more AP courses is more than double the national average, while the percent scoring 3 or higher out of a possible 5 on at least one AP exam is more than five times the national average (16 percent vs. 3 percent).
鈥淵ou can鈥檛 get this done by focusing only on high school,鈥� Mr. Weast said of the district鈥檚 efforts. 鈥淗igh school is only 720 days, so you have to start the process in preschool and carry it all the way through.鈥�
In describing the district鈥檚 work, he added: 鈥淲e learned a lot of it right here in PELP. These case studies helped us connect the dots in our strategy, take concrete actions, and accelerate our rate of improvement.鈥�
In addition to working with teams from the partner districts over successive summers, Harvard faculty members visited the school systems to reflect with administrators on the changes they were trying to make and to write case studies about their work. They also drew upon examples from the private sector.
Thirteen years ago, said Mr. Elmore of Harvard, when he began looking for examples of districts working on large-scale improvement efforts, it was hard to find much going on. Now, there are big, ambitious instructional-improvement strategies on the ground in a number of districts, and such efforts are beginning to bear fruit with improved student achievement.
The bad news, he said, is that there is still 鈥渁 very large proportion of [superintendents] who have no idea what we鈥檙e talking about.鈥�
