Valerie Strauss published an article by David Kirp about his new book, Disrupting Disruption. Kirp is one of my favorite education thinkers because he doesn’t believe in miracles or instant success. He believes in commitment and steady work. His new book describes three districts that have applied that formula successfully.
Valerie Strauss begins:
We live in an era where public school districts are routinely slammed for being hidebound and resistant to change. Some are, but others make changes all the time, sometimes with success. This post looks at a few districts that have done just that.
It was written by David Kirp, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and co-author of “Disrupting Disruption: The Steady Work of Transforming Schools.” A senior fellow at the Learning Policy Institute, a nonprofit education think tank based in California, Kirp has written more than 15 other books and dozens of articles about social issues and have been focused on education and children’s policy. He was the founding director of the Harvard Center for Law and Education, a national support center and advocacy organization that offers help to people experiencing difficulty in the implementation of key education programs and initiatives.
By David Kirp
Public schools are frequently in the news these days, and seldom is the news good. The spotlight is on ideological donnybrooks over how race and gender-related topics are discussed in classrooms; the growing demand that parents, not teachers, decide what their children should be taught; assaults on the system by opportunistic politicians; and the learning loss blame game, with schools faulted for keeping schools closed during the pandemic. Some state lawmakers have proposed junking the common school and replacing it with a market-based regime.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way.
In “Disrupting Disruption,” my co-authors and I shine a light on three racially and ethnically diverse school systems: Roanoke, nestled in Virginia’s Shenandoah mountains; Union, Okla., Tulsa’s neighbor; and Union City, N.J., across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Their students don’t resemble those in highflying places like Wilmette, Ill., or Lexington, Mass., predominantly White and well-off, with their off-the-charts test scores and graduation rates, and they do not appear on any list of the nation’s highest-performing districts. But they look like much of America, where White students don’t constitute a majority, and many come from low-income families.
These districts have earned the support of their communities. Parents have not fled to charter schools because (as their surveys show) they trust their schools to do the right thing. Rather than engaging in school-bashing, local politicians take pride in generously funding their schools, and taxpayers vote for school bonds.
There’s good reason for this vote of confidence — in each instance, the graduation rate is substantially higher than in school systems with similar demographic characteristics; what’s more, the opportunity gap that in most places separates minority students from their classmates is at or near the vanishing point. In other words, they have managed to combine excellence and equality of opportunity.
There is nothing fantastical about what is taking place, no feats of legerdemain, no superman or superwoman running the show. What they are doing to overcome the demographic odds sounds dishwater-dull, no match for the livelier terminology of markets and choice. But genuine reform isn’t sexy, and the “secret sauce” isn’t much of a secret. Here’s their “to do” list.
● Meet the diverse needs of the students; don’t batch-process them.
● Make equity a priority.
● Deliver high-quality early education.
● Fixate on maintaining high-quality education systemwide, rather than islands of excellence, while constantly seeking ways to do better.
● Beware of fads.
● Help teachers become more effective through mentoring and coaching.
● Use data to drive decisions.
● Engage teachers and parents in decision-making.
● Build an administrative structure that incorporates networks of teachers.
● Forge ties with local organizations and the political system.
● Maintain stable leadership and minimize teacher turnover.
Everything on this list will be familiar to any educator with a pulse. The hard part is getting it right.
There’s more. Open the link. This is a realistic, upbeat book that you will want to read. It describes school reforms built on professional knowledge, not hat tricks. If only Arne Duncan had asked David Kirp to advise him, instead of the crew from the Gates and Broad Foundations.
Excellent article. Common sense. No jargon and catch(y) phrases.
(I really like the thoughtful phrasing of “use data to drive decisions” – Not “data driven” (a.k.a. data obsession and ‘let’s give more tests.’)
Two critical friend-like observations from the field
Re: “Build an administrative structure that incorporates networks of teachers.”
Build an administrative network.
A structure can be bureaucratic (yes, still) and worse, the danger of silos. The right hand really not knowing what the other is doing. No one asking at a _____ (dept. name) meeting: “How will this affect or align with the work in the ____(dept. name)?”
Systems and systems thinking is kryptonite to the disrupters!
… and then
2. Build an administrative network that incorporates teachers
Excellent suggestions for improving schools. Especially, involve teachers and parents. Teachers, after all, are the closest thing to experts we have on teaching, itself. But I would add one other important group–students. Students learn best when they buy into what’s happening in the classroom. And they buy into more of what they’ve helped shape. Teachers can and should give them choices. I would give my high school students choices such as: Would you like to do a mock Supreme Court hearing or just have me talk about the Court’s work and then give you a test? Etc. Would you like to read and hear about how our state government works or do a mock legislature. Guess what they chose? No, you can’t do everything that way, but the social sciences and literature lend themselves easily to that approach. And it can be done in grade levels as low as seven–probably lower, but that’s the lowest level I’m familiar with.
Also, involve students in advising the school system. In Columbus, in the early ’70’s our teacher assn. advocated for adding students to city-wide advisory groups, and it worked.
The community pays the bills, does not turn any school into a schoolhouse made of glass, and does not throw stones. That sounds unfamiliar but quite sensible.
a sadly important statement in 2022
Would it be possible to republish this for the Higher Education Inquirer, with appropriate attribution?
“Meet the diverse needs of the students; don’t batch-process them….Federal legislation requires that school systems develop IEPs (individual education plans) for students with special needs. These districts have done much the same for all their students….They have constructed systems that personalize education, devising strategies that match the individual needs of their students.” Yup it isn’t brain science to recommend this, but how can it be done realistically without lowering class size?
In October 2022, last month, EdWeek published this: “Nationwide, the average reading score on NAEP fell 3 points from 2019 to 2022, to 217 in grade 4 and 260 in grade 8.”
EdWeek wasn’t the only media to report this. When I Googled NAEP results, every hit on the first page of the search was about NAEP scores dropping. I found one headline that didn’t turn the NAEP’s recent test scores that focus on the COVID pandemic time period into a disaster of epic proportions and that was NPR.
“Nationwide, the average reading score on NAEP fell 3 points from 2019 to 2022, to 217 in grade 4 and 260 in grade 8.”
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/24/1130629135/naep-test-covid
Then I asked Google about the long term trends and was taken to NAEP’s site and found facts that the Destroy Public Education Crime Syndicate doesn’t want anyone to know.
2020 reading scores compared to 1971, the first year NAEP tested the nation’s children attending OUR public schools, not the school the ALEC/Walton billiaonres control and/or own.
Reading scores were up 12 PTS compared to 1971.
Math scores were up 22 PTS compared to 1971.
https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ltt/?age=9
Click the link and scroll down, and the data, compared to 1971, shows without a doubt that the public school have only demonstrated long-term improvements with little fluctuations along the way.
It’s so easy to make Pub Ed look bad for frauds and liars to cherry-pick the time span and what scores they want to focus on. And since the traditional news media gives bad news a lot more attention than good news since bad news attracts more cadaver flies (really, I mean readers or watchers but its the same thing), the news media inadvertently ends up supporting the Destroy Public School Crime Syndicate BS! propaganda.
Instead, the media should be reporting about the long-term results of the NAEP scores and focus on the fact that improvements all but stopped when the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 was signed into law by the 2nd BUSH.
“In comparison to scores in 1971, the 2020 scores in reading were higher at all selected percentiles (10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th)—with one exception: the reading score for the lowest-performing 13-year-old students at the 10th percentile was not significantly different from that in 1971. Compared to the previous LTT assessments in 2012, the 2020 reading scores for both 9- and 13-year-olds performing at the 10th percentile were lower.” — NAEP
And there is another fact that The Destroy Public Education Crime Syndicate doesn’t want anyone to know. That children living in poverty in every country that administers the international PISA test do poorly on that test, and the US has the 2nd highest child poverty rate in the world among developed countries.
“Poor ranking on international tests misleading about U.S. performance, new report finds a comprehensive analysis of test scores raises questions about how American students compare with peers in other nations.”
The report also found:
“There is an achievement gap between more and less disadvantaged students in every country; surprisingly, that gap is smaller in the United States than in similar post-industrial countries, and not much larger than in the very highest scoring countries.
“Achievement of U.S. disadvantaged students has been rising rapidly over time, while achievement of disadvantaged students in countries to which the United States is frequently unfavorably compared – Canada, Finland and Korea, for example – has been falling rapidly.
“But the highest social class students in United States do worse than their peers in other nations, and this gap widened from 2000 to 2009 on the PISA.
U.S. PISA scores are depressed partly because of a sampling flaw resulting in a disproportionate number of students from high-poverty schools among the test-takers. About 40 percent of the PISA sample in the United States was drawn from schools where half or more of the students are eligible for the free lunch program, though only 32 percent of students nationwide attend such schools.”
https://ed.stanford.edu/news/poor-ranking-international-tests-misleading-about-us-performance-new-report-finds
Did anyone that read this far notice the dates in the last pull quote for when the “gap widened from 2000 to 2009 on the PISA” (after No Child Left Behind) was signed into law? Is this evidence that No Child Left Behind literally made the public schools worse, stopping the long-term trends of improvements since 1971?
Thanks, Lloyd, for the insights. The data you cite is what the public rarely hears or sees on the news. More education writers should delve into actual facts instead of accepting deformer misinformation as facts.
Between 1970 and 2020 our middle class is getting smaller and our poverty is increasing at the same time. Maybe the economy is failing our families, and not the schools that are the main problem.
Great summary, Lloyd– thanks!!
Disruption is categorically evil. Even the end of American slavery, arguably one of the most evil institutions imaginable, was a disruption (the Civil War) that would have been better played out another way.
As bad as the French Monarchy was, the disruption of the reign of Terror set the development of European democracy back a century.
Those who believe disruption is good are usually gaining money and power from it. Do not believe them.
Depending on how one defines disruption, one might view disruption as essential.
Our contemporary way of life, for example, would not be possible without the process of creative destruction. In 1870 almost every other person in the country was a farmer. Agricultural production experienced disruptive technical change and now only 2 in 100 are on the farm, allowing most of us to do different things.
At the end of the 19th century there were an estimated 170,000 horses living and working in New York City, generating huge amounts of manure every day. The horse transportation system was disrupted by the invention of the automobile and that allowed cities to grow manure free.
Electric cars are going to lead to another disruption of the transportation industry. With so many fewer moving parts than internal combustion cars, many familiar parts of the car maintenance industry will disappear. No Jiffy Lube or any other oil change will need to be done because there is no oil. AAMCO Transmissions will go bankrupt because there are no more transmissions.
Disruption is unhealthy for children. They are not horses or corporations.
My point is that disruption created the relative prosperity that children enjoy today. Disruption is why children can go to school instead of having to work the land so they might have enough food to make it through the winter.
Disrupt the economy, not the lives of children. They gain nothing from disruption. Insecurity, uncertainty, fear, and instability are not good for children.
What you are talking about is “change”, not “disruption” which is an adjective applied post oc. To willingly “disrupt” is both condescending and, usually destructive to those being unwillingly disrupted. “Disrupting” is the language of those who wish to take more for themselves than is ethically and justly warranted.
Holy Carbonyldiimidazole, TE. Disruption is NOT why children go to school today instead of working 12 hours a day. Progressive reforms based on the work of heroes like Mother Jones are why children go to school. If the market had its way, kids today would be mining lithium for batteries on the ocean floor.
Leftcoastteacher,
Of course disruption is responsible for children attending school. In the roughly 5,000 years of recorded history almost no generation of children attended any school. As recently as one hundred years ago in the United States less than 17% of people over the age of 25 had graduated from high school and 34% of children between the ages of 5 and 19 were not enrolled in any school. The number worldwide is, of course, much lower.
The growth in the number of people getting an education is progress, not disruption. Read Jill LePore on the failure of disruption in business.
Duane,
The difference between “change” and “disruption” may be in the eye of the beholder. For a taxi driver who spent a lifetime learning the streets of a city, the navigation app that gives anyone instant access to that knowledge is a “disruption”. For the mechanic who knows everything there is to know about an internal combustion engine or a transmission, California outlawing the sale of any new car that has an internal combustion engine and a transmission is a “disruption”.
Do you not agree that these “changes” have been and will be devastating to those who will lose their livelihoods? This has always been the case. Here is an Old Crow song about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-hmhF9cn_k
The lyrics go
“They don’t need us anymore
Hauling freight from shore to shore
That big iron hauls much more
Than we ever could before ”
The “big iron” refers to steam locomotives and railroads. A disruptive technology.
You’re saying education should be discarded, TE.
One dilemma is market based education turns schools into a commodity, and commodities will be constantly disrupted by what is best for the market. Catch 22?
Education Disruption
Children are horses
Producing manure
The logical course is
To dump them, for sure
With robot as student
That makes no mistake
Disruption is prudent
The future’s at stake
Disruptive Future
Electric car
Electric bot
The humans are
Just doomed to rot
Disrupt Schools
Disrupt them with shootings
Disrupt them with drugs
Disrupt them with lootings
Disrupt them with thugs
The point of disruption
Is just to disrupt
By basic deduction
It’s simply enough
It matters not how
And it matters not why
Disrupt the schools now!
Or else they will die!
Disrupt for School’s Sake
Disruption is good
It’s good for the soul
And everyone should
Disrupt as a goal
The Harvard Business School Model
Disruption was inspired
By Harvard bidness type
And schools should be rewired
With edu-bidness hype
The Crowning Achievement: Disruption
Schools can not improve
Without disruptive move
Disruption is the thorn
By which a school’s reborn
To suffer is to grow
And Jesus Christ, you know
Is proof of that reprise
That’s oh, so very wise
The economic system was disrupted by the invention of the economist and that ensured that the economy would never grow manure free.
The Eight Days of Creation
On Day One, God created light
Which fought the once eternal night
On Day Two, God created Heaven
Which led to craps and lucky Seven
On Day Three, God created Earth
And all the plants , for what it’s worth
On Day Four , God created stars
The Sun and moon and planet Mars
On Day five, God created birds
And fish and sharks and seahorse herds
On Day Six, God created goats
And wolves and snakes and human folks
On Seventh Day, He took a rest
And told himself, “It is the best”
On Day the next, He really erred
Economist was what occurred
And God said “Damn, I should have quit”
“While still ahead, it’s gone to shit”
LeftCoastTeacher,
My comments here are not directed at education. It is in the sub-thread that Roy Turrentine started stating the disruption is categorically evil. I disagree with that statement and gave examples disruptions that have ruined and will ruin many people’s lives that most here would agree are good things. It would be interesting to have a discussion about what the world would be like if there were never any disruptions of the existing way of life.
LeftCoasTeacher
My comments here were not directed at economists.
Or clowns.
Or both.
SDP, why make a distinction between economists and clowns? They are cut of the same polyester.
Not all clowns are economists.
And I am so sick and tired of hearing the pitifully tired story of the horse and automobile to excuse any and all attacks on the underclass.
The economists keep telling the same hackneyed story because they are lacking in all creativity.
Economists are like broken records. Disruption, supply and demand, growth, free markets, freedom to choose..click..freedom to choose..click…
Economics
It’s all about freedom
The freedom to buy
The freedom to be dumb
And never ask “why?”
Being an economist means you lacked the math talent to be a mathematician or scientist and lacked the creative talent to be an artist (except bullshit artist, of course)
Diane is right about disruption. That doesn’t mean schools have to be boring. When I asked high school students if they’d like to do a mock trial around the killing in Of Mice & Men, they didn’t feel threatened by that. We discussed it first, and each one had a say. Then we voted. I did that with a number of classes (different books, subjects), ages 12 through 18, and they seemed to love it. A classroom can be, and often is, a second home to kids. Some of the youth I taught were disrupted enough. A few lived in a car. Some saw drugs or other crimes in their neighborhood or home. Some had only one parent. Some had two that fought a lot and threatened each other. My experiences in Ohio were not unusual in America.
Positive, meaningful change is often evolutionary without self-proclaimed miracles. I was part of collaborative project to improve our school. In fact, what Kirp describes is almost a road map for how we did it. All decisions were made by teachers and administrators working together with the goal of improving instruction and outcomes for students. It was a collaborative effort that included support and training for teachers. It required a big commitment on everyone’s part to make the necessary changes. While it was time consuming, it paid off in higher performing students and a better school climate. We developed ways to keep students from falling through the cracks, and we implemented earlier interventions to help struggling students without rushing to classify them. Within five years we applied for and received a Blue Ribbon from the DOE in recognition of our school improvement efforts.
I had a friend that taught in Union City, New Jersey where they did not have smaller classes. We both taught very poor, under educated ELLs. I taught in a smaller diverse school district in the NYC suburbs where we did have smaller class sizes than those in Union City. Somehow, Union City must have been able to make improvements despite larger class sizes.
Change that occurs because of a shared vision is far better and more effective than top down disruption that causes chaos and resentment. People are more accepting of change when they feel valued, and they have ownership of some of the process. Lasting change is a team endeavor that is built on trust and respect, not miracles or untested gimmicks.
Disruption” as applied to education is synonymous with “blow the system up”.
The Deformers who keep repeating the term (which they learned from a monkey at Harvard business school) have no constructive ideas for what it should be replaced with.
Without a thorough understanding of THE fundamental purpose of public education those involved in changing the teaching and learning process can and will be lead to implement educational malpractices such as we’ve seen for the prior 30 ears (even longer).
I discuss that fundamental purpose in the first chapter of my book:
“The purpose of public education is to promote the welfare of the individual so that each person may savor the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the fruits of their own industry.”
Show me (yep I’m from the Show Me State) where I am wrong with that fundamental purpose.
You’re right –
Oh…but “Show Me” was revised in last legislative session.
“Show Me Only if You Agree With Me” State
or
“Show Me Only if the book does not contain an LGBTQ theme or is based… wait for it… CRT!”
or
“Show Me – oh, wait, you’re armed so you don’t have to. Nevermind.”
In my 30 years with the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools, NC, the concern from the school house was that the district was more concerned with national acclaim than success at the school level. Every new initiative was embraced as a means to trumpet Charlotte’s cutting edge approach to education for acclaim. The result was a district that ushered in a new superintendent every three to five years based on a shiny resume promoting “reform” over community substance while failing to build on the actual achievement in integration and community buy-in. The local politicians and press fell over themselves to find the “brightest” leader among the profoundly ambitious that always left unfulfilled. Effective schooling requires engagement with all constituents who are given a say in the community. What happened in Charlotte was the ongoing top down models eventually soured the citizenry that now spends significant time seeking alternatives beyond the public schools. The examples cited in the piece should be the rule in local school governance, but regretfully too many politicians and policy makers continue to pursue the “one best system” to the detriment of all.