Over spring break I finally had a chance to visit New Orleans. The city has flourished in recent years, but you can still see signs of the tremendous damage caused by hurricane Katrina. On a city tour I asked my guide about the impact of the hurricane on the city’s social structure. To my surprise she said that the disruption created by the hurricane might be the best thing that could have happened to New Orleans because it provided the city an opportunity to address long standing problems that previously were untouchable, such as the poor education system.
Whether it comes from a natural disaster or its man made, disruption can initially damage a community. But when addressed in the right way, disruption can empower great social change as long as its coupled with strong planning, adequate financing and community engagement. Sustaining the impacts of disruption is just as important as the disruption itself, and nowhere is this more true than in the realm of education.
Modern Forms of Disruption
Current efforts at disrupting public education center on areas such as technology, universal standards and teacher evaluations. That said, I believe that the current disruptive effort holding the most potential (for good or for bad) in individual communities is through school choice and school restart programs.
Increasingly, struggling states and districts are turning to charters and voucher programs to try and improve their local schools by inducing competition and offering students a choice beyond their traditional neighborhood school. School takeovers have also become increasingly popular whereby the district will shut down a school and reopen it with a new management organization.
This type of disruption can be damaging in the short run but can yield benefits in the long term if acted out under the right conditions. It can spur success in both the takeover schools and in the district at large if approached with the long term in mind. With that in mind, I think it’s important to consider what it takes to use disruption as a force for positive change rather than destruction from both research and examples.
What Effective Disruption Requires
Everything I’ve read and observed suggests that successful and sustainable disruption requires three key things. First, disruption needs to be done with the community, not to the community. When you fail to engage people in the process, you become an outsider imposing your will. We need to approach any efforts at disruption with the mindset of communities as a partner, not as an obstacle to be overcome. I’ve seen several school takeover efforts locally in Memphis that struggled because of opposition from communities that were never fully engaged. For example, consider the conflict around Cornerstone Prep this past fall. Many people felt that their needs and opinions were not adequately being considered and thus the new school generated considerable opposition.
On the flip side is the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ) in New York City where strong community engagement is instrumental to that organization’s success. In addition to running a successful school that regularly achieves some of the best outcomes in the city, the program organizes outreach efforts to interact proactively within Harlem to promote itself as well as solve problems such as asthma, obesity, alcohol and drug abuse. HCZ has achieved remarkable academic outcomes by any measure and its community involvement is an important part of this growth and development.
Second, disruption needs to be adequately supported not only by the community but also financially. Disruption through school choice and takeovers does nothing if we don’t devote adequate resources to assure their success. For example, I’m aware of several charter schools across Memphis that are considerably under resourced. A colleague of mine taught at one of these schools that over a two year period reduced teacher resources, cut salaries and laid teachers off because it lacked the funds to provide basic support to its educators. Under-resourced disruption efforts are worse than no efforts at all.
Third, we need to carefully plan out strategies for disruption before implementing them. Disrupting existing feeder patterns and closing schools can lead to negative rather than positive outcomes if we don’t take into account all relevant factors. Consider my previous school, Hamilton High. Several years ago a rival high school, Southside, was closed and merged with Hamilton for enrollment and performance reasons. This resulted in serious neighborhood conflicts which spilled over into the school and contributed to its decline. We’ve also see this on a larger scale in cities like Chicago where school closings have led to increased gang violence.
This fact is also observed in research, notably by the Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement which examines NCLB school takeover efforts. While observing that few successful efforts have yet to be identified (the study took place in 2005), faulty planning played a huge role in the failure of most school takeovers. The study found that schools that are taken over in May and reopened in August tended to have poor student and staff satisfaction, as well inconsistent student achievement.
Summary and Recommendations
So what does that mean for proponents of disruption? It means that we need to carefully consider the needs of the communities we seek to disrupt, plan carefully and support any such efforts financially. Disruption should never be adopted simply for the sake of disruption. We must engender investment and buy in within communities to ensure that the efforts succeed in the long run. In some ways, one could argue that we need to disrupt in a sustainable way, as outlined by my colleague, Ezra Howard. As such those that advocate for disruption must consider the impacts of disruption in the long term to ensure that their efforts create the type of sustainable success we need for our kids to secure their future. Disruption may be painful at first, but when done right can improve the education our children receive in our public schools.
By Jon Alfuth
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Categories: Ezra Howard, Jon Alfuth, School Quality, Writers
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