Chapter 4 - Challenges to Implementing Systemic Reform

A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Systemic Reform - October 1996

Chapter 4
Challenges to Implementing Systemic Reform

In Chapter 3, we presented brief summaries of the strategies and major components of systemic reform in California, Michigan and Vermont. While the history and substance of reform differs across these three states, educators and policy makers face common challenges in implementing education reform. In this chapter, we use data collected from teachers, schools, school districts and the states to discuss the context of reform in the three states, to describe how our three states and our sample districts and schools are approaching reform, and to identify the challenges they face as they develop a vision of reform, struggle to align major policy components, restructure their governance structures and address issues of equity.

We open this chapter with two cautions. First, we remind the reader that our sample of districts and schools was purposive, drawn to capture the policies and practices of reforming schools and districts located in reforming states. On the one hand, this means we must be careful in generalizing our findings to other schools within each of our districts or to other districts within each of the three study states. On the other hand, to the extent that states, districts and schools with different fiscal, political and demographic characteristics face similar challenges in reforming their educational practices, we have reason to believe that what we are observing in our sample sites will have applications to other states and school districts.

Second, it is too early in this reform movement to assess the impact of any particular state, district and/or school strategy. Although California initiated some components of what has become known as "systemic reform" ten years ago, some linkages are incomplete (like professional development and assessment) or weakly specified (like pre-service education). Michigan and Vermont have been at their reforms for only four or five years. Vermont respondents noted that they spent the first 2 1/2 years of their reform developing and reaching consensus on their Common Core, and have yet to expand their assessment program beyond mathematics and writing or into the high school. Their new teacher credentialing requirements do not go into effect until 1995. While California has a comprehensive set of curriculum frameworks, Michigan and Vermont are only in the process of developing these instruments.

Therefore, this is not a report of "what works" in systemic reform. Rather, it describes the approaches used by educators and policymakers as they undertake major reform efforts in diverse settings, the issues that confront them, and the strategies they have developed to address these challenges. Our findings also underscore the complexity of these reform activities. In Chapter 5, we describe the reported practices of a sample of teachers in our sites in relationship to these state and district policies and to the teachers' opportunities for professional development. We explore the ways in which policymakers can use systemic tools to enhance teacher practice and build the capacity of their schools and school districts in Chapter 6.
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