Chapter 1
Our Urban Schools
Leaders are shaped in part by the context in which they lead. By context I mean the different environments and settings wherein leaders engage with others. Successful leaders are often able to effect changes in context, which are prerequisites for altering what is and creating the conditions for what could be. Whether results are positive or negative depends on many factors. Leaders may be able to control some factors; others defy their influence. Followers will often disagree with leaders as to what should be sustained and what should be changed, why change is necessary, what the pace of change should be, or whether change should occur at all. Understanding context is essential to principalsā and superintendentsā ability to develop strategies for leading change and improvement in urban schools and school districts.
The focus of this book is leadership in Americaās urban schools and school districts, particularly the principals and superintendents who, with teachers and other staff, educate millions of children in elementary, middle, and high schools across America. The quality of instruction in classrooms and the effectiveness of leadership in schools and school districts are the most important variables that schools can influence to improve student achievement. I believe that there are both generic characteristics of effective leadership and particular characteristics that are defined by the purposes of the organizations or institutions leaders lead, and by the contexts in which these organizations function. I will use both my general experience with leadership and my own work and experience serving as a superintendent in five school districtsāSpringfield Township, Pennsylvania; Eugene, Oregon; Oklahoma City; San Diego; and, most recently, Bostonāto convey to aspiring and current school and school district leaders the importance of this work, the challenges they face in doing it, and how it is possible to make a positive difference in the lives of the students they serve.
The Challenge of Urban Scale
The United States has about fourteen thousand public school districts, ninety-five thousand public schools, and three million teachers serving fifty million students. There are still one-room schools serving students of various ages in some rural areas, and there are megaplex buildings serving thousands of students in some cities. Between those two extremes, there are many variations in the organization and structure of public schools; and within larger county and urban school districts, it is not unusual to find schools that are organized with a variety of structures defined by grade levels. With the emergence of public charter schools in recent years, the debate about optimal school size and how best to organize and structure schools has new energy. In states with many small school districts, the call for consolidation to increase efficiency and reduce costs still creates significant political risks for elected officials who are challenging the value of local control, which most communities in America embrace. Local school boards and district leaders face similar tough decisions to close or consolidate schools, particularly where enrollment is declining and budget cuts are endemic.
Conversely, in many urban school districts, particularly at the high school level, there is a trend toward breaking up large comprehensive high schools and creating small schools or small learning communities within them, or starting new small schools housed in a variety of facilities and locations. Educators continue to struggle to honor the logic of creating space for schools to serve their educational purpose. However, the availability of existing space or the cost of new space and resources available to secure it usually become the controlling variables. How to provide sufficient space in schools and classrooms to educate all children is a fundamental systemic challenge and requires strategies that will produce solutions at scale.
New pressures affect urban school districts that are experiencing declining enrollment in addition to the added challenge of making the severe budget cuts that resulted from the recession that began in 2007 and continued through 2010 with no clear end in sight. Many states have had to cut funding to local school districts. Most school districts allocate 80 percent or more of their budgets for salaries and benefits. Many had no choice but to increase class size and cut central office and teaching positions. Those with declining enrollment were forced to consolidate or close schools, even though the politics of doing so were difficult.
The goal of graduating all students with high school diplomas that certify they are ready without remediation to continue their education and prepare for careers creates high expectations for urban district and school leaders who are addressing the additional challenges of doing more with fewer resources. Classrooms must have capable teachers whose instruction will inspire and support each student to meet the high standards that only some students were expected to meet in the past. In many urban school districts, 50 percent of new teachers leave during the first five years of their employment. Retaining effective teachers is essential. Principals must ensure that the teachers in every classroom provide high-quality instruction for each student and receive the support they need to continue to improve their skills. Staff who guide from the middle levels of the central office must understand and execute their support roles as they help school leaders develop their instructional leadership and management skills, as well as hold them accountable for the steady increase in student achievement. The superintendent must set the leadership expectations for all and model the leadership behavior expected of central office and school leaders. Achieving these outcomes also requires systemic strategies that shape the work for improving student achievement throughout the school district. Leaders must meet these challenges to take best practices to scale in school districts and schools.
No longer is success in urban schools defined by a few more students in a classroom achieving at high levels, by a few more classrooms in a school meeting higher standards, or by a few more good schools in a school district. A good school system is not the same as a good system of schools. A good urban school system may have some or even many good schools and aggregate data that suggest it is beating the odds and educating most students well. However, the details embedded in the aggregate data can shine a spotlight on gaps in achievement among different groups of students, which educators must understand and address to ensure that all students are learning and meeting high standards.
A good urban school system may have some or even many good schools and aggregate data that suggest it is beating the odds and educating most students well.
The standards-based framework for school reform was created in the late 1980s and began to gain traction in the early 1990s. It was a radical idea: the expectation was for all students to be educated to high standards that would provide them with access to opportunity beyond high school. The framework had four clear components: standards in each subject for what students should know and be able to do; access for both teachers and learners to a rigorous curriculum aligned with the standards; support for teachers to engage in continuous improvement of their instruction; and data from both formative and summative assessments of student achievement, with the expectation that some data would be used for accountability purposes, and other data would be used by teachers to determine when it was necessary to modify the curriculum or their teaching strategies during the school year and to differentiate instruction. From the outset, the framework was designed with the intent of creating alignment among the components, and coherence for school leaders, teachers, and students.
However, with a commitment to standards-based reform, the goal of having a good school system usually falls short of the mark of ensuring that all children achieve at high levels. It takes time to convince school and district staff that steady growth and improvement for all students are possible. Evidence is essential, and good school systems showcase schools and classrooms where student achievement is improving and achievement gaps are narrowing. Compelling data are more effective in changing beliefs than is emotional rhetoric. The difference in a good system of schools is its effectiveness in taking improvement to scale. In a good system of schools, the commitment is to improve all schools in the system, consistent with the expectation that school leaders and teachers will improve instruction for all students in all classrooms. The goal for the superintendent is to lead a system of schools with a commitment to improve all schools and not have a legacy marked by the improvement of only a few schools. The goal for central office people should be the same whether leadership touches only a few schools where they have responsibilities or serves all schools in the system.
The challenges of reaching the goals of having all children meet rigorous curriculum standards and achieve at high levels and of closing the achievement gaps defined by race, class, disabilities, gender, and native language exist for all leaders with diversity among their students, regardless of the size of school or school district, its location or demographics. However, the challenges for urban district and school leaders and increasingly for leaders in the urban-suburban fringe areas with rapidly changing demographics are unique because of the complexity and scale of the districts and schools they lead.
Most urban school districts have some outstanding schools that serve most students very well. They have the achievement results to demonstrate their success, and if there are opportunities for parent choice in their districts, these schools can point to the number of parents on their waiting lists as validation of their success. What about the other schools and all the other children? The leadership challenge is to take the strategies for improvement within classrooms and within schools to scale: to ensure that all students stay in school, receive quality teaching, learn at high levels, and have what is necessary to access opportunity when they graduate.
In the following sections, I explore further the major issues facing urban district and school leaders, what they need to know and be able to do, and how they can effectively help those they lead ensure that all students will learn and succeed.
Globalization and Technology
Trying to decide whether globalization preceded dramatic advances in technology or the rapid development of technology led to globalization is a debate about the chicken and the egg. It is reasonably clear that one will not succeed without the other, and leaders in all sectors must understand the impact of both. President Obama and Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, have set a goal of reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 2010. If passed, the new legislation would replace the controversial No Child Left Behind Act that preceded it. One of the expectations in the administrationās proposal is that states would be required to develop more rigorous standards that students will be expected to meet to graduate from high school ready for college. The proposed goal is for all students to reach this target by 2020.
Although the debate about the wide variation in the rigor of standards in the fifty states has become more transparent, there is little support for the federal governmentās creating national standards. In 2010, forty-eight states took the unprecedented step to work together to develop common standards in English language arts and mathematics. There is increasing recognition that the standards developed independently by each of the fifty states in the past and the new common standards that may be adopted by many will not be nearly as rigorous as the international standards set by many of the industrialized nations in the world with whom the United States competes.
America has relied for many years on its creativity and commitment to innovation to maintain its leadership position in world trade. But it is no longer alone. Many countries are competing successfully in the international markets for new ideas, services, and products. Ironically, most American colleges and universities are educating international students in undergraduate and graduate programs that develop their skills and enable them to return to their own countries with new insights about creativity and innovation that will help their countries become more entrepreneurial and successful in a flat, competitive, globalized world.
Another dynamic of globalization in recent years has been guest worker programs and offshore worker programs. Many countries bring in workers from other countries to fill jobs requiring low skills and paying low wages, which their own workers will not do. Others bring in workers to fill jobs demanding higher-level skills. During the last few decades, U.S. corporations have been going offshore to find highly educated workers who will perform well in jobs requiring sophisticated skills, at lower wages than highly skilled American workers demand. Globalization has also resulted in a decline in manufacturing in the United States because products manufactured in other nations can be produced at lower cost. The dramatic advances in technology have changed how work is done, and the continuing advances in technology have created a world where competition still exists, but the distribution of intellectual capital is an important driver of interdependence. Globalization and the dramatic advances in technology are beginning to have an impact on how we in America think about teaching and learning, but we are still struggling to embrace new approaches and let go of some of our traditional and outdated ones.
Globalization is flattening the world, reducing isolation, and creating opportunities for both competition and collaboration that demand a willingness to reach beyond our borders and cross international boundaries. Most large U.S. cities have new immigrants arriving from all parts of the world, and as was the case in previous periods in Americaās history, the public schools are the institutions educating the newcomers. Urban public schools have a unique opportunity to become the setting where both newcomers and those students who are third-, fourth-, and fifth-generation Americans learn to respect and embrace diversity, work independently and in groups, acquire a second language, engage in lifelong learning, and become creative and innovative to succeed in the twenty-first century.
Advances in technology have loosened restrictions on where work is done. Location is no longer a primary factor for many jobs, and distance learning offers virtual educational settings. Americaās strengths still are grounded in the creativity and innovations well-educated people can produce, yet we are slow to change our ways of organizing opportunities for learning in most school districts and schools. We must ratchet up our expectations for what students need to know and be able to do, shake off a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching and learning, and acknowledge that the students in Americaās elementary and secondary schools are the first generation to be born into a digital world.
When I began my work as superintendent of the Boston Public Schools (BPS) in fall ...
