missionTo create and sustain

networks of high-achieving

and equitable small schools.

Keeping the Promise: Struggling for Equity, Student Achievement and Small Schools in Oakland Unified

Small is Not Enough: Creating High Achieving Schools for All StudentsJanuary 30 & 31, 2004

Steve Jubb

Executive Director

Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools

Small Is Not Enough

National Public High School Graduation & College Readiness

0% 20% 40% 60% 80%

Graduation Rate

"CollegeReady" Rate

African-American

Hispanic

American Indian

White

Asian

Source: Public High School Graduation and College Readiness in the US

Small Is Not Enough

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

4500

Class of 2000 Class of 2001 Class of 2002

# of students

5th gradersgraduates

CSU/UC eligible

OUSD student attrition classes of 2000 – 2002

Small Is Not Enough State Mandates

I cared, I got hurt, now I’m angry.

I care. I want to help. Listen to me.

Students were falling through the cracks in our

relationships.

Principals have no idea what it takes. We can’t trust schools to do what’s right.

The community holds us hostage. We can’t please everyone. They block progress.

“The district” always fails to deliver. Set us free!

The community is usually threatening and parents barely participate.

My child is not learning. What is the district going to do about it? YOU are failing.

Your teachers are not teaching my child. Our community is being devastated. Do something, NOW.

Schools The “District”

Families &Community

Student Achievement

Students, we are committed to your success.

Students, we are committed to your success.

Students, we are committed to your success.

Not ready for life!

Not ready for college!

Not ready for work!

Small Is Not Enough

In 1998, parents wanted an alternative to some of the most crowded public schools in California.As many as 2000 elementary school students shared campuses built for 500 in multitrack year-round schools.

Portables lined the blacktops.There was no room to play.

In the high schools, students roamed the halls and teachers had to lock their classroom doors to keep order. The system produced abysmal

results.

Students and teachers were rotating classrooms every month.

Small Is Not Enough

In 1999 Oakland Community Organizations (OCO) asked the Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools (BayCES) for assistance in trying to start a small school at Jefferson Elementary School.

BayCES provided research, data and counsel. OCO learned that charters are hard to start.

After we visited small schools in Chicago and New York together we knew that we had to think more systemically. We started dreaming of a system of small schools. We needed to engage the school district.

After being rebuffed twice, OCO turned their attentions to charter schools. Three of six opened.

Small Is Not Enough

A Unique Partnership forNew Small Autonomous Schools

Oakland UnifiedSchoolDistrict

Small Is Not Enough

Our Work Started With New Small Autonomous Schools

New designs, better teaching, deeper connections with community

Small enough to be safe, personalized and relationship based for students, educators and families

Autonomous with control over the important means of success

Accountable for results

Small Is Not Enough

What We Did To Launch Small Schools

• Formed an partnership with Oakland Community Organizations (OCO), representing 35 churches in the low income neighborhoods of East, West, and North Oakland.

• Added OUSD as a partner when Dennis Chaconas became Superintendent in March, 2000; passed a policy in May

• Hired a shared BayCES-OCO organizer to organize teachers so that the teachers union would have to respond positively to the desires of members.

• OCO organized parents and families who demanded small schools as an end to overcrowding, unsafe conditions, and low achievement.

• Developed a model of school incubation and support for design teams that starts with organizing and leadership development for teachers, students and family members.

• We launched 15 small schools and engaged the district in considering a radical redesign of systems

Small Is Not Enough

The One Irrefutable Fact

Education happens …one school

one teacher

one child

at a time.

Small Is Not Enough

The Importance of Respect and Care

"To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin."

bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, Education as the Practice of Freedom

Small Is Not Enough

Local

State

National

Global

The Way It Should Be: A Partnership for Learning

CommunityCentral Office

Schools

Student

Student WorkStudent

Motivation

Mind

Heart

Student Support

Teacher Parent/Family

Small Is Not Enough

If we know what to do, why don’t we have the schools we need? Despite two decades of leadership by thoughtful and competent

people who reflected the demographics of Oakland, the outcomes for students DID NOT IMPROVE SIGNIFICANTLY. They got worse.

Though low income communities of color are the political majority, they have been able to act in a unified way to gather political will behind a common vision for schools. Why not?

We observed that the problem was not the people, it was something larger than the sum of the capacity of individuals. Competent people became incompetent in Oakland.

We reasoned that it had to be a systemic problem—a district poorly designed, inadequately resourced, with an internalized culture of shame, blame and ineffectiveness that continuously reinforced itself.

Small Is Not Enough

The Challenge: A Culture of Blame, Shame and Ineffectiveness

UrgencyOver promising to get support

Rapid top-down Change

Disappointing quality and depth of outcomesBlaming the

Problem on the New Solution Undermining

Leadership Credibility

Leaders Depart, New leaders enter, Urgency Increases

Cynicism Deepens

Small Is Not Enough

Where does this culture of shame and blame come from?

• Communities that suffer from racism, poverty, discrimination and neglect have been hurt deeply

• These communities often feel they have little power to change their reality, which creates anger and more hurt

• These hurts often cause people to distrust one another and especially those in power, causing them to act in ways that seem irrational to those with power

• Communities must adapt and survive, and so they develop cultures to resist, lessen, or transfer the pain

• Often many aspects of these cultures inhibit the formation of the cross-race, cross-cultural alliances needed to gather the power to act

• Belief systems emerge that explain the experience of powerlessness, different belief systems for the powerful and the less powerful

Small Is Not Enough

We Learn to Accept Inequity--It Becomes “Normal”

Assigning new or weaker teachers to the most challenging students (e.g, ninth grade)

Subsidizing low class sizes in advanced courses with high class size in “general” education classes

Counseling loads so large that only some students can receive college counseling

Teachers with no training or opportunities to learn about their students’ home language, history, and culture

Segregating students into tracks that limit postsecondary options

Student contacts so numerous that it is a relief when half the kids don’t show up for class

Small Is Not Enough

Most School Reform Fails to Address the Power Gap

“There are no pedagogical solutions to political problems”

Asa Hilliard

Small Is Not Enough

School reform must address the culture of low expectations!

“We can, whenever we choose, teach all children whose learning is of importance to us. Whether we do so, depends upon how we feel about the fact that we have not done so already.”

—Ron Edmunds, the Founder of the Effective School Movement

Small Is Not Enough

What makes the difference for student achievement and equity?

Instruction: the quality and capacity of the teacher has the greatest impact on student achievement

Family participation: the ability of families to support student learning, make good decisions, and participate as a partner in the learning process

School Design: the allocations of time, personnel and resources in a context that supports good teaching and positive family-school relationships

Leadership: leaders who relentlessly and creatively pursue equitable and high achievement for every student.

Small Is Not Enough

What does it take for full participation of families?

Community Organizing Addresses the need for equal power, in the form of

representative leadership, authentic participation, equitable opportunity and relational accountability

Community Engagement Addresses the need for collaboration, vision building, dialogue,

and connecting the reform to people’s hopes and dreams

Community Outreach Addresses the need for timely and accurate information,

access and entry into educational opportunities

Small Is Not Enough

When We Attempt to Engage the Community, We Rarely Address Power Inequity and Its Consequences

• The system fails to meet the needs of the community because the major forces acting on the system are those entities that have been established to act on behalf of the community (school board members, civic leaders, high level district officials), and not the community itself.

• And the communities, especially those with little political power, have lost control over these entities which instead react to external demands, divergent interests and threats.

• The central power structures becomes increasingly authoritarian, responding to the need to protect their power to act decisively in the face of mounting criticism and low performance.

Small Is Not Enough

Assumptions

• More powerful entities, distant from the community, and perhaps even antagonistic to it, place increasing demands on the system—demands that may be overwhelming, contradictory, nonsensical, or irrelevant.

• The system attempts to respond. But it lacks resources, expertise, collective will and capacity to be effective at such a large scale.

• The voices of students, parents, and teachers in the community, if not strongly organized, cannot compete in placing demands on the system that will force it to be responsive to them.

• However, the system cannot respond effectively to local demands if they are not coherent, with a focused, shared vision of what the communities need and want.

Small Is Not Enough

Conclusions and Implications

Community engagement and outreach are necessary but insufficient means to address issues of inequity and low achievement.

Any strategy for serious engagement must address the unequal power relations that are operating in oppressed communities

Some strategies are: Partnerships with agencies that can organize the community Cross race, cross cultural alliance building Leadership development and support for family & community

participation Advocacy for the less powerful Interruption of inequity when it is identified

Small Is Not Enough

Creating Change: The Courage to Interrupt, The Commitment to Transformo Interruption

o Transition

o Transformation

Transition Transformation

Getting to a vision of equity

Interruption

Small Is Not Enough

Achievements

• 15 new small autonomous schools created since 2000• One high school converted to five small schools, two more will

convert in seven small schools by 2008• 36 new schools to be created by 2008, 22 of them high

schools• Increased attendance for teachers and students• Increased parent involvement in schools• Increases in student achievement and decreases in attrition• We have survived a state takeover and a deficit of an

estimated 100 million dollars• But the future depends ultimately on building a culture of

efficacy, partnership (shared power), and mutual accountability.

Small Is Not Enough

The Leadership Opportunity: A Culture of Efficacy, Partnership and Accountability

A Culture of Efficacy and Accountability

Focus on bold but achievable, short-term goals

Increased confidence, take bolder actions

Support responsible action, celebrate Success & learn from mistakes

Trust people to solve Their own problems

Create conditions for success

Organize People behind a shared vision of Success

Urgency: Listen to the hopes, dreams, and challenges of Families and teachers

Small Is Not Enough

My Lessons Learned

Take responsibility for your ideas Creating equitable schools in an act of hope and faith Nuts and bolts matter--the devil is in the details It is about culture, competence and conditions--they

are all important to get to the outcomes Equity work is personal--you have to be the change

you wish to see in the world