Is there any hope for failing city schools? Most media stories tend to say no, but a study issued by The RAND Corporation's Center for the Study of the Teaching Profession tells a different story. Failing urban schools can be turned around, "but only if the entire community realizes that the city's future is on the line and joins in a comprehensive reform drive.
The RAND report, "Educational Progress: Cities Mobilize to Improve Their Schools," was written by Paul T. Hill, Arthur E. Wise and Leslie Shapiro, and supported by the James S. McDonnell Foundation, RAND studied six cities where efforts at school reform were reported - Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Miami, Memphis and San Diego - and looked at the lessons they provide for other big-city school systems.
Some of the key findings from the study of these districts are:
• Big-city schools can be turned around, but it's not easy. It takes the same business and civic coalitions that are brought together to redevelop downtown areas.
• Successful reform requires getting support from outside the schools and from inside: "an outside strand of business, political and university leaders who gather community support behind educational issues and goals, and an inside strand of school officials who reorganize to make the agreed changes. Progress is most rapid where both strands are well developed.
• "Popular support must be based on a recognition of the long-haul threat that failing schools pose to the city's economic and social future, not on a sure-fire gimmick or quick programmatic panacea."
• There must be more openness about the deficiencies of the schools and the poor performance of students. This "complicates the lives of administrators and board members, but it also 'pays off in terms of community support' for improvement."
• Systems that improve have active superintendents who are able to win broad public support for changes, "but he or she need not dominate the process. In fact, the most promising processes are those where the superintendent, business, political and teachers' union leaders are in coalition."
• Business leaders can help provide funds, but their most important role is placing education high on the public agenda and "providing broad, strategic thinking."
• Plans for school change don't become real "classroom changes without the participation of a powerful, well-led teachers' union."
• "'Choice' plans that encourage parents to seek alternatives to public schooling are not necessary for improvement of bit-city schools."
The report does not claim that these school districts have already solved most of their problems. It will take many more years and long-range solutions to do that. But the most successful districts have put enough groups and organizational commitments in place to create mechanisms for lasting change. When the individual superintendents, boards, union and business leaders who started the reform ball rolling are gone, the reform momentum will likely continue.
The only bad news in the RAND report is for the peddlers of the "unions-hijack-reform" philosophy. According to the report, the unions in Miami, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati are the strongest and the other three relatively weak. But it was in the strong-union districts that the union played the most constructive and farreaching role in reform. The report concludes: "A powerful teachers' union with aggressive leadership is indispensable to a successful school improvement effort. This conclusion contradicts the widely held belief that such unions are the major barriers to school improvement.
"A strong union constrains the school board, the superintendent and community leadership, but with the cohesion and structure of an effective union, teachers can constructively influence reform. They must, however, have leaders who they believe represent their personal and professional interests. If they're unorganized or poorly led, neither their own leaders, the school board, and the superintendent nor the community can persuade them to support changes in classroom practice.
"The indispensable role of teachers' unions becomes clear in cities where the improvement effort has an inside strategy to match the outside strategy of mobilizing community interest and resources. Such a strategy requires a strong union to gain the attention and command the respect of activist teachers. The union, in effect, serves as a major conduit for transmitting information and compliance pressure into the classroom.
" ... the bargaining power of a strong teachers' union influences the improvement strategy, but it also ensures that an agreed-on strategy will be implemented. Weak teachers' unions in Memphis and San Diego can neither bargain effectively with the board and superintendent nor gain teacher cooperation with school improvements .... Cities with weak unions lack the leverage and leadership required to persuade teachers, even on behalf of improvements that teacher leaders personally favor."
Thus, there's an ironic conclusion. In those cities where teachers' union leaders have been tough and adversarial and have led strikes, the teachers are more likely to trust the leadership to move them in new directions of reform. Also, these leaders are likely to take greater risks because they feel the support of their members as a result of their previous militant action.
You might even say that education reform is a new form of union militancy. If that's the case, then it's time for more local unions - and superintendents, school boards and civic groups - to become militant. As RAND concludes, "A failing urban school system can be turned around but only if the entire community unites on its behalf"