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The impact of the MFP is difficult to assess through typical evaluation approaches. It focused its efforts on changing district policies and procedures, so changes in student outcomes are likely to occur in subsequent years. However, the Forum had several concrete accomplishments by the end of EPP funding. These included the development of the CSD preschool-primary transition program, the inclusion of career-oriented information in the elementary school curriculum, the establishment of the school-based health clinic at the middle school, the addition of a professional development school at the high school, the technology-oriented activities in two county school districts, and the adoption of an outcomes-based vocational education curriculum by the CSD. Most notably, the MFP had a major impact on community attitudes toward education through its sponsorship of a series of community meetings. In addition, programs, such as the integrated services program at the elementary school, that were loosely associated with the Forum were established. This section focuses on the impact of Forum activities on the community and on school district policies in both the CSD and county schools. It also includes a brief analysis of the mixed results of some other Forum-associated programs.
One outcome frequently desired from educational partnerships is that they have a positive impact on how the community views the schools. Among the partnerships funded by the EPP, however, few had any impact on community support for or understanding of school-related issues (Tushnet et al., 1995). In contrast, the MFP had a major impact on its community. The difference lies in the attention paid to community support. The second executive director believed that fundamental changes were needed in schools but that the community was complacent about the public schools. Consequently, she led the Forum's efforts to engage the public in an ongoing dialogue about education and the demands of the workplace. Through a series of public meetings and close collaboration with local media outlets, the Forum developed a visible presence in the city. It also gathered support for the changes it was advocating. Few other partnerships devoted similar time and effort to the community, and few had the kind of impact of the MFP.
Although the wholesale strategy of working to change policies and procedures rather than implement model programs on a school-by-school basis (the retail strategy) does not yield data about student enrollment and outcomes, its success can be measured by whether changes in policy occur. And, in both the city and county, there were notable changes. In the CSD, for example, the preschool-primary transition program now exists throughout the district, and a central office staff member has been assigned to work with teachers and principals to ensure that all children benefit from it. The approach involves changing structures, by breaking down the division between the preschool and early primary grades; curriculum, by focusing on reading and mathematics in contexts meaningful to children; and instruction, by grouping children in a variety of ways, not just by age. Similarly, the CSD adoption of an outcomes-based approach to vocational education led to changes in course structure, content, and sequence. The changes were not confined to the vocational track because many outcomes, such as those that focused on problem solving, required changes in nonvocational subjects as well. In the county, the two school districts that actively participated in Forum activities changed practices as well. For example, the school district that was moving toward a technology-oriented curriculum in the high school was engaged in major changes in curriculum and instruction. The school also worked closely with the community so it would receive the necessary support for its efforts.
Activities associated with the Forum had mixed success. The middle school's health clinic was well-used, and the health professionals working in it joined the existing health careers program as mentors to students. However, the integrated services program at the elementary school was not so well-attended. Although the health and human services committee had implemented a community needs assessment in conjunction with the grant application, they found that few families took advantage of the workshops and other activities offered at the center. They raised concerns at Work Group meetings, but neither executive director made the issue central to Forum tasks. The first executive director avoided public discussions of problems, preferring to find solutions through private conversations. Consequently, opportunities to involve a wide group of individuals in diagnosing the cause of the underuse were not taken. And, although the second executive director actively sought agreement, she viewed the integrated services program as ancillary to the core mission of the Forum.
The middle school is perhaps the most successful site of Forum activities in the CSD. Not only are the health clinic and health careers program working well, but the existence of the PDS has influenced morale at the school. It also has changed relationships among teachers and administrators. Further, teachers report teaching in a more oproblem-centeredo way. That is, their efforts are to make school work real and help prepare students to deal with complex vocational and civic issues.
The MFP is among the most fully institutionalized of all EPP-funded partnerships. The Forum has become a permanent fixture in the community, and there is every indication that it will continue. In addition, several activities sponsored by the MFP have been institutionalized in the participating schools and school districts. The following section addresses institutionalization in two ways. First, it focuses on how the partnership structure, the Forum, became institutionalized. Then, it looks at the activities that are likely to continue.
The MFP is embodied by the Forum, which includes representation of the CEOs and other high-level executives from business, education, and health and human service agencies. During the second year of funding, the Forum was organized into a 501c(3) not-for-profit organization. As such, it can hire staff, receive funds, and distribute money to particular activities. The Forum's continuation as a freestanding organization seems certain for two reasons. One reason lies in its increased role in community activities, and the other in the fact that the largest local employer plans to allocate its funds to education through the Forum. Each of these reasons is discussed in turn.
The executive director is well-connected to academic and political circles concerned with preparing youth to enter the new, globally competitive workplace. As such, her ideas, as well as her energy, put the Forum in a central position for community activities. For example, the Forum president serves as chair of the local community development task force subcommittee on education, with the executive director as staff. The purpose of the task force is to align the local development agenda with national policies. The executive director was seen as key to ensuring that the education agenda would fit with emerging policies. Several business representatives expressed continuing support for the Forum because it was oone way to tie us to the nation.o Their support has been in the form of donated space for Forum offices. At the same time, a local union also supports the continuation of the Forum by donating secretarial time.
Perhaps most important in ensuring the continuation of the Forum is the fact that it now has a major role in dispersing private funds to education. About 10 years ago, the largest employer in the community created a mechanism for providing money and other support to educational institutions. Over the years, there have been numerous grants made to the CSD and county school districts. However, concerns were expressed, both within the company and the community at large, that the grants did not have an impact on oimportant things.o Representatives from the company were included in the Forum. When the Forum had been in operation for three years, these representatives suggested that the way for the company to make the greatest impact was to work through the Forum. Currently, the Forum recommends priority funding areas to the company, evaluates grant applications, and recommends which efforts should be supported. Company funds, then, provide the Forum with an ongoing presence in instituting educational reform in the area much as EPP funds had been used to stimulate policy changes and program development.
Activities sponsored by the Forum also have been institutionalized. For example, the preschool-primary transition program is now fully supported by the CSD. And, although the Forum still provides funds and support to the committee developing the curriculum and assessments associated with the outcome-based vocational education program, the CSD assigns staff and supports staff development related to its institutionalization. Further, the two PDSs are likely to continue with their collaboration with the remote university. At the middle school, the health clinic and health careers program will be continued, and the career information component at the elementary school is fully integrated into the curriculum.
In contrast, the various career-related academies at the high school were never fully developed, and further work on them seems unlikely to occur. Similarly, the school-within-a-school program for students who encountered difficulty making the transition from middle school to high school, while more developed, seems unlikely to continue. Both efforts lack administrative support, which makes them vulnerable.
The integrated services program at the elementary school also is at risk when the grant money ends. Although the health and human services subcommittee of the Work Group is committed to its continuation, the center has not become embedded in the community. As a result, members of the subcommittee believe that the center will need two or three additional years of osoft moneyo to demonstrate its value. The source of such money is unclear.
The two county school districts were seeking support to continue Forum-initiated activities. The district that was planning the high technology-oriented school was seeking voter approval for a bond issue that would allow it to make major renovations in the schools. If the bond issue passes, the technology initiative's continuation would be assured.
Finally, the community education efforts are likely to continue. Spurred by the Forum, the local newspaper is committed to at least annual follow-up attention to changes occurring in education in response to the changing workplace. Further, the executive director does not rule out the possibility of new community meetings. She believes that it would be appropriate to allocate funds from the major employer to such an endeavor if Forum members agree.
In sum, the majority of activities initiated or supported by the MFP are either institutionalized or likely to be so. Perhaps more important, Forum representatives have begun to develop and implement new activities. For example, a joint union-business group began providing organizational development support to the CSD. It did so after many discussions by the education subcommittee, which includes representatives from the CSD, about the district's capacity to succeed in changing policies and practices and with the Forum's approval. This development underscores the centrality of the Forum to educational reform in the community.
The MFP provides a rich case for analysis. Its story is of success and failure, with success predominating throughout its history. The unhappiness of some participants in the early years was less related to objective failure than to a sense that more could happen. Their current satisfaction relates to a change in leader and leadership style. The very success of the MFP, however, raises two deeper issues concerning educational partnerships: whether the choice of strategy for educational reform has an impact on equity among students, and whether educational partnerships should aim to include individuals with influence in their organizations or focus more on community representation. This section begins with a brief discussion of the leadership issue and then turns to the two dilemmas faced by the Forum.
The original executive director of the Forum was a well-liked, well-connected man with a long history in the community. His style was to avoid open conflict and to seek areas in which individuals agreed. He saw himself as staff to the Forum, empowered to carry out the wishes of the members, but not to initiate activities. His approach was to meet individually with key Forum members and then build agendas of the Forum and the Work Group that would result in consensual action. Consequently, many issues were never raised nor addressed, and participants expressed frustration with oprogresso despite objective evidence of many successes.
In part, the frustration stemmed from the fact that the Forum represented people with different concerns. The educators were centrally concerned with the CSD's move to site-based management and sought ways to increase teachers' influence on school organization, curriculum, and instruction. PDS provided one model, but the university could not operate professional development schools throughout the city and county. At the same time, efforts to generate an alternative approach, by creating schools-within-a-school at the high school were making little progress. As a result, members of the education subcommittee felt as though they were not making sufficient progress. Similarly, members of the school-to-work transition subcommittee were frustrated by the slow progress in developing the academies at the high school. Only the health and human services subcommittee felt positively because its early effort resulted in successfully competing for a grant.
The first executive director neither confronted the discontent nor addressed the underlying problems. Rather, he tried talking with high school staff and subcommittee members. He was working to develop common understandings, but none seemed to come about. One solution was to bring in an outside facilitator to work with the Forum. In a series of retreats, the Forum attempted to set priorities. However, because such priorities might favor one group over another, the executive director did not actively support particular approaches.
After his retirement, the new executive director took a more active leadership stance. She came to the Forum with deep commitments about what students needed to be able to do to be successfully employed in a high technology, global economy. Her approach was not to find consensus but to build it. She actively promoted her ideas, finding key supporters who could argue the case at Forum and Work Group meetings. Perhaps most important, she offered an agenda of activities that would demonstrate the value of the focus on workplace issues. These activities included assisting the CSD to revise its approach to vocational education, initiating a high technology demonstration school in a county school district, and sponsoring a community education program that would increase support for school reform. She, and the key supporters, did everything they could to ensure the success of these activities.
The more active leadership of the second executive director revived the Forum. She did not denigrate or cease the activities begun earlier that did not relate directly to the workplace issues. Rather, she put the spotlight and the new energy on school-to-work transition, as broadly defined.
The two executive directors offer a contrast between facilitative and visionary leadership. The visionary leader had greater success than her predecessor.
The MFP raises two dilemmas related to the role of educational partnerships in educational reform:
Each of these dilemmas is discussed in turn.
The MFP engaged in two different educational reform strategies over the course of EPP funding. It began with a strategy, termed oretail,o of creating programs on a school-by-school basis. The goal was to develop model programs that could be exported to other schools in the city and county. However, the original focus was on three high-need schools. In one, little progress was made. And, although Forum-generated activities were successful in the other two, there was particular concern that their activities focused on families and students with multiple problems had little to offer county schools. In the end, the retail strategy was too slow and seemed ungeneralizable for participants in the MFP. However, its value lay in the concentrated effort in schools that have great need for change.
The Forum later adopted what it called a owholesaleo strategy, focusing on policies and procedures that would enhance the ability of a school district to support fundamental reform. This led the Forum to continue work with the CSD on the district level and to find districts that were oeager to embrace best practice change strategies.o The change muted some criticisms of the Forum, particularly from county residents. Further, the activities that it initiated were more exciting to Work Group members than the early school-based programs. The new approach seemed to promise greater change, and consequently more impact.
The Forum did not abandon the CSD, encouraging a union-business group to provide assistance with organizational development and continuing its work with the competency-based vocational education program. Both are examples of the owholesaleo strategy.
School reform efforts historically have confronted the dilemma between focused attention to one site and broad policy and information strategies. Both strategies have led to success as well as failure (Berman, 1980; Louis & Miles, 1991; Marsh & Bowman, 1988). In the context in which the MFP operated, the issue is complicated by the fact that the city, in which the retail strategy was pursued, is a largely minority school district that is suffering from numerous financial problems, and the county, which became part of the wholesale strategy, is more affluent and white.
One issue that confronts all educational partnerships is the question of who should represent the participating organizations and communities. On the one hand, involving individuals who hold high positions in the organizations promises to ensure that changes in organizational policies and processes required by the partnership are made. On the other hand, such individuals may not be in touch with the real needs of the community or may not understand resistance to change.
The MFP chose to involve individuals with perceived clout. The Forum comprised top-level executives from educational, business, health, human service, and community agencies. The Work Group included midlevel and above representatives from the same organizations. And, indeed, these individuals made changes in how their organizations operated in response to needs identified through the Forum. Perhaps the most notable was the decision by the large employer to empower the Forum to decide how it should use its charitable funds related to education.
The decision had a downside, as indicated by two areas that were problems for the MFP. The first, of course, was the failure to make progress in the high school. The principal of the school expressed feelings that he was not asked about the activities being developed by the Forum. He did not object to their broad objectives, but believed his input would have helped in their design. Further, he said he was not sure that the academies responded to the school's most important problems. Even some participating teachers agreed. They particularly complained about the requirement that they write formal proposals to the Forum.
Second, the integrated services center was underused. Although the health and human services subcommittee carried out a needs assessment in conjunction with the preparation of the grant application, few activities sponsored by the center were highly used. The health services, particularly related to pre-enrollment health examinations and immunization, were well-used, but the family support activities were not. Members of the health and human services subcommittees discussed ways of increasing community input, but the community was not well-represented on the subcommittee.
Again, the dilemma is made more difficult in the specific community context. In the community, the majority of individuals with power and authority are white and middle and upper class. In the city, at least, the majority of students and their families represent minority groups and are poor.
Although Forum CSD representatives supported the Forum and did not raise questions about differences in treatment between the city and the county, the fact remains that the high technology school, designed to prepare students at the ocutting edge,o is located in a white county school, and the CSD's reform of vocational education, while superior to most urban programs, is a far cry from the edge.
The nature of dilemmas is that there are no easy answers. Each decision carries with it positive and negative outcomes. The Forum, however, demonstrates that educational partnerships, while a potentially important force for educational reform, do not automatically avoidoor solveoproblems that confront civic and social institutions. The Forum also demonstrates that positive outcomes are possible without perfect solutions to ongoing problems.
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This page was last updated January 8, 2002 (jca)