How Can Horace Best Be Helped

California is figuring out ways to “scale up” school reform — that is, to expand the number of schools that are committed to a new vision of teaching and learning. Mr. Honig describes the strategies that the state has developed to encourage and support schools in their reform efforts. BRYANT IS a small elementary school situated in the heart of the Mission District in San Francisco. Its diverse students come from some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, and many don’t speak English. The revised assessment used in California, CLAS (California Learning Assessment System), tests sophisticated thinking and problem-solving skills. In 1993 Bryant’s fourth grade posted the best reading scores in the state, tied by only a handful of schools situated in the highest-income areas of California. What accounts for this seemingly miraculous performance? The anomaly of a fantastic teacher? Certainly La Verne Apodaca, the teacher in question, is among the best teachers in the world. When you visit her class (now in fifth grade — and since second grade with the same teacher), you see all the theories about ideal learning and teaching take shape before your eyes. Students read demanding material and complete sophisticated projects both in school and at home. Their written work is extremely professional, and high-level discussions occur with regularity. Apodaca religiously attends professional development workshops and has successfully translated the emerging ideas of an active, thinking, engaging curriculum into the reality of her inner-city classroom. But it wasn’t only the teacher who made a difference. Seven years ago the test scores of Bryant students placed them at the bottom of the barrel. The transformation of the school was the result of the hard work of a dynamic principal, Barbara Karvelas, and a cohesive, dedicated staff whose members — many hired during the past seven years — have examined every area that could help improve the quality of learning at the school. Teachers keep up with the latest research on curriculum and instruction and work closely with one another in developing creative educational ideas. If a student falls behind, the school has an intelligent intervention program. Parents are actively involved, and resources are devoted to improving the skills of staff members and to finding time to allow them to work together. Similar instances of remarkable performance have occurred in other California schools. In mathematics, for example, many inner-city, suburban, and rural schools, which have been working together for several years to implement a math program based on thinking, significantly outscored other schools and state averages on the CLAS test. Is what happened at Bryant and these other schools so extraordinary that it offers no lessons to educators hoping to initiate large-scale efforts to improve all schools? I think not. Many schools have the potential to accomplish what Bryant has done, as long as they are willing to work as hard and as smart — and are given effective assistance. President Clinton recently remarked that the problem of education reform is not a lack of models of school success. In the past decade, educators have created numerous examples of high-performing schools such as Bryant. What is needed now, the President maintained, are “scaling up” strategies that will get thousands of schools to adopt successful practices. This is a more complex proposition. Indeed, a central assumption of the President’s Goals 2000 legislation is that states and districts can effectively mount these strategic assistance efforts. Unfortunately, many of the country’s leaders and experts (and too many citizens as well) don’t believe that public school educators are capable of organizing effective efforts to bring student performance up to world-class standards. I think those who hold this view are shortchanging the willingness and ability of schools to change and underestimating the capacity of educators.