missionTo create and sustain

networks of high-achieving

and equitable small schools.

Transforming Large Schools into New Small Autonomous Schools: Lessons Learned About Equity, Structure and Teacher Practice

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

Steve Jubb, Executive Director, Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools

Katrina Scott-George, Special Assistant to the State Administrator, Oakland Unified School District

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

We wanted New Small Autonomous Schools of choice

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--to each other, to families

Choice for students, families and teachers

Small Is Not Enough

History: Description of a four stage process for district transformation

Stage 1: Initiation - laying the foundation. (2000 - 2002)Define the problem and make initial responses

Create model schools to prove success is possible

Strategic Planning outcome: Develop consensus on district vision, Theory of Action, key results

Stage 2: Transition - buffers and bridges (2002 - 2004)Protect the new and emerging schools (buffers)

Protect strategic thinkers to redesign systems (bridges)

Develop infrastructure

Strategic Planning outcome: Develop business plan

Stage 3: Growth - scaling up innovations (2004 - 2007)Scale up new systems

Create more new schools

Strategic Planning outcome: Implement business plan

Stage 4: Institutionalization - merging practices (‘07-’10)

Strategic Planning outcome: Reevaluation and realignment of business plan

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 the school leaders, teachers, students and family members who formed design teams.

Small Is Not Enough

Stage 3: gestation

Implementation Plan

Schools and Coaching

NSAS

Letter of Intent

Design Proposal

Autonomy for Accountability

Compact

Letter of Interest

NSAIS

New Small School Development

Stage 2a: conception

Stage 2b: development

Stage 2c: planning

Stage 1: inspiration

Stage 4: formation

Incubator (Stage 2)

Leadership and team

development

Design and proposal

development

Implementation planning and

leader training

Visioning and standard setting

Opening school

Goal setting

Incubation and coaching to create new schools

Tasks

Products

Stages

Policies and practices for

success

Consistently high student achievement

Evaluation & cycles of

inquiry

Stage 5: maturation

Small Is Not Enough

From stand alone schools to high school conversions

The high school work asks us to do what we are asking of our entire district community…

“let hope triumph over experience”

We are born into a set of conditions that is often far less than ideal. We start with our reality and seek openings to change the way.

We can practice thinking about and working with people who are not ‘stars’, and learn how to help them change their reality and ours.

Small Is Not Enough

Why the emphasis on high schools?

• Revenue Impact - the biggest drop in enrollment and attendance occurs at the high school level

• Student Impact - very poor student outcomes - large numbers of students can benefit

• System Impact - High schools have greatest impact on district systems and culture

• Equity - all students eventually pass through high schools

• Resources - external funding and coaching is targeted at high schools

• Reality Check - high schools can provide a real demonstration that the model works to alter conditions and outcomes

Small Is Not Enough

• Scale - the # of traditional schools is small, fewer leaders to work with

• Readiness - significant steps have already been taken to convert or begin the conversion process at three high schools. The executive director is very experienced and knowledgeable about existing district operational practices and constraints

• Choice barriers - High school students are more independent, and mobile and can more easily overcome barriers to choice.

• Momentum Gain - success will help to drown resistance while creating a manageable pace and timeline for reform

Why the emphasis on high schools?

Small Is Not Enough

• School community organizing requirements are very high in converting an existing school. People are already invested in structures and relationships.

• The shift in will, skill, knowledge and capacity required by a conversion mirrors the shift needed district wide if we hope to reform the system - it provides our best opportunity for success.

• Conversions are complex, they need management support, technical assistance and hard resources not just coaching of principals and staff. The central office HAD to get in involved.

Converting a school is entirely different than creating a new school.

Small Is Not Enough

Reform agreement development process

• District requests BayCES recommendation on conversion plan

• BayCES works with site to develop a conversion plan

• District and site negotiate around conversion plan and district and site commitments

• District and site sign reform agreement

• BayCES and district sign MOU

• BayCES and site sign support agreement

Small Is Not Enough

Areas of redesign in high school conversions

• Structure/School Design

• Leadership • Instruction

• Management and governance

• Community and family partnerships

Small Is Not Enough

BayCES Coaching to Support:• Goal setting and action planning• Data-based and practitioner inquiry• Researched based practices and strategies in high schools• Effective use of collaboration time• Effective meeting facilitation• Building professional learning communities• Professional Development planning and delivery• Key instructional practices • Looking at Student/Teacher Work Protocols• Leadership development and training • Exhibition and portfolio planning and implementation• Brokering strategic support from the BayCES network of

schools and regional content and curriculum providers

Small Is Not Enough

Facilitation and management to:

• Coordinate and manage the overall conversion project

• Track and problem solve key issues of interconnection

• Manage and revise the conversion timeline

• Support the development of the new governance and management structure

• Goal setting and data analysis to inform changes in timeline or course of action

• Chart school wide benchmarks, outcomes, and indicators of progress

• To develop a scope of services plan

Small Is Not Enough

District costs

• Dedicated central administration staff conversion project manager incubation manager (RFP development, proposal review,

implementation planning, leadership development)• Distributed central administration staff time

the work of school creation involves a reallocation of staff time from almost every department and at every level including staff at the cabinet level and represents a real cost.

support of the Executive Directors• Facilities conversion cost

turning a large campus into small schools is much cheaper than building a new facility but still involves significant costs

• Operational start-up costs incurred by new schools and the district

Small Is Not Enough

Central administration commitments

• Facilities budget and scope of work (including technology) aligned with conversion plan

• High School Network development and support from executive director

• Coordination of central administration supports and site conversion project management

• Approval of per pupil budget allocation

• Support, to the furthest extent possible, to define and facilitate school autonomies in budget, staffing, schedule and calendar, facilities, governance, curriculum

• Commitment to support design teams with implementation planning and leadership development

• Commitment to develop Autonomy for Accountability Compacts with each school

• Incubation support, RFP development, proposal review

Small Is Not Enough

A working definition of equity

The work of eliminating systemic barriers to learning

Eliminating the predictability of success or failures that currently correlates with any social or cultural factor, especially race, class and primary language

Discovering and cultivating the unique gifts, talents and interests that every human being possesses

Small Is Not Enough

Assumptions we made

• We must build structures that serve the students we have now

• We do not have all the resources our students deserve, so we must prioritize the ones we have.

• We control the most important means of success: our own actions, values, and beliefs

• We can solve our own problems if we support one another and work together

• We can learn collaboratively what we need to know (every challenge is addressed somewhere by somebody).

• We are smarter together than alone.

Small Is Not Enough

Design assumptions

If designing for equitable schools is: a collective decision to interrupt policies and practices

that reproduce and perpetuate inequity; and to organize and prioritize human and material

resources to achieve a powerful vision of high and equitable achievement for each student;

and to initiate total system transformation…THEN… The designs had to be bold and strong enough to

withstand recidivism--the inevitable pull and pressure to return to “normal”

These had to be autonomous small schools, each with their own school code

Small Is Not Enough

Examples of Inequitable Design Practices

• 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 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

Small Is Not Enough

Ten Core Design Priorities For Conversions

1. A cohort of students;

2. Taught by a team of teachers;

3. Covering core content areas in a heterogeneous, college prep curriculum;

4. With clear performance standards exhibited regularly through public examples of student work:

5. Over all or a contiguous and significant portion of the school day;

Small Is Not Enough

Ten Core Design Priorities For Smaller Learning Communities

6. With teacher-student-family relationships that last two years or more;

7. With significant shared collaboration and professional development time for teachers programmed into each day and week;

8. Family conference and home visit times calendared regularly;

9. In an physical area identifiable as “our small school or learning community; and

Small Is Not Enough

Ten Core Design Priorities For Smaller Learning Communities

10.Governed by leaders with significant accountability and autonomy over six areas: 1. schedule, 2. budget, 3. calendar, 4. curriculum & assessment, 5. physical space, and 6. governance.

Small Is Not Enough

‘02 - ‘03

‘04 - ‘05

‘03 - ‘04 B

‘05 - ‘06 Architecture

Maynard Pilot

Robeson YES

Fremont Upper Division

9th Grade House

Fremont-in-transition

Fremont-in-transition

Architecture

Media

Maynard

Maynard Mandela

Mandela

Mandela

Robeson YES

YES

Rev. 8/23/02

Fremont SLC transitional structure => NSAIS

Architecture

MandelaPilot

Arch. Pilot

Robeson

Small Is Not Enough

‘Inside’ infrastructure investment strategy

Effective school regeneration strategy

Stabilize system and establish standards and controls

Build central technology and data infrastructure

- Financial data mgmt - Student data mgmt- Human resource data mgmt- Facilities data mgmt

Develop integrated planning systems- workforce planning- facilities master planning- technology master planning- budget planning- school planning- student assignment planning

‘Outside’ management re-design strategy

Incubate LESN hub outside the system

- Create a dedicated design team as an external entity

- Establish an advisory board of industry experts

- Design system to manage all district schools

- Negotiate board, union, government policy

After design phase, LESN accepts ‘new’ effective schools

- Transition schools to LESN- Eventually all schools

transition to LESN

THREE SIMULTANEOUS STRANDS OF WORK

Establish standards for schools, leadership, sites and the system of schools

Clear path, mechanisms and supports to transform schools

- Accountability system to move good schools to great schools, intervene in struggling schools and close failing schools

- Strengthen adaptive incubator to create replacement schools

Intensive principal development program to transform leadership- aspiring leaders- new leaders

Aggressive modernization program to transform sites

- Facilities - Technology