Washington DC

An administration focused solely on students and their performance

Five-year plan was introduced, aimed at achieving six interrelated goals: 

• creating compelling schools (including placing social workers, psychologists, art, music, and physical education teachers in every school);

• attracting great people (hiring and retaining the best educators and managers in the country); 

• creating an aligned curriculum (rigorous, and imparting skills and knowledge for productive lives beyond school, either in college or the workforce); 

• gathering and using comprehensive and accurate data (to enable well-founded decisions based on measurable results); 

• ensuring an effective central office (streamlined and efficient); and 

• engaging with the community (partnerships with parents, families, and community members, so that parents know what a good education is and how to demand it for their children). 

 

Impact

Within the first year of the reform programme, DC-CAS (District of Columbia Comprehensive Assessment System) test results showed promising improvements. In the July 2008 examinations: 

• Elementary schools increased their reading scores by 8 percentage points, and mathematics scores by 11 points.

• Secondary schools made nine percentage point gains in both reading and mathematics. 

• The number of schools with proficiency rates below 20 per cent dropped from 50 to 29

• Some of these schools doubled or tripled their average reading and mathematics scores: of the 19 schools that did so, 14 are in the city’s neediest neighbourhoods (DCPS 2008).

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Challenges for reform 

Reforming an existing education system raises numerous important and difficult issues. The public needs to support and invest in the reform process, and a central part of this is a good communication strategy that directly addresses people’s fears and concerns. Parents affected by change will naturally be concerned. It is important to involve them in decision-making (such as the Local School Restructuring Teams in DC) and empower them with information (such as the soon-to- be-opened parent centres around Washington, DC).

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Boston

Whole School Improvement (WSI)

Goal: Six essential things that ‘good schools’ do: 

• organise activities around instruction; 

• obtain and regularly use detailed data about students’ performance; 

• offer professional development for teachers that is embedded in their daily work; 

• build leaders; 

• manage resources effectively; and 

• reach out to parents and the community

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About the reform project

WSI provided a framework for instructional improvement, school reorganisation, and measures of success. 

The Effective Practice Network (EPN) of schools was established for sharing ideas, and testing and spreading good practice. Twenty-five school leaders talked, shared ideas, and tested innovations in a well-resourced and well-supported context. In the last ten years, Boston Public Schools (BPS) and Boston Plan for Excellence (BPE) together raised $100 million from national foundations to test ideas that were relatively unproven, and document them. Some of these reforms have been extended to a wider group of schools, with district budget support. 

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Factors influencing reform 

Reform’s success depends on stability and time – at least five years. 

• In many districts the constant turnover of superintendents and school boards results in instability, but Boston enjoys a stable environment. 

• The superintendent had a hypothesis that the most important thing to do was to improve instruction in the classrooms, through the sustained development of teachers and the implementation of structured curricula at a deliberate pace. He structured his budget accordingly, and stuck with this hypothesis for more than 10 years, which enabled him to make an impact. 

• Payzant viewed the school district as a large and inclusive network which included the mayor, school boards, superintendents, the central office, schools, teachers, universities, reform organisations, local corporate sectors, and churches. He chose to focus on long-term systemic and structural change for Boston rather than small reform projects.