Schools for Tomorrow Blog

While it is probably human nature to look to solve a particular problem with a “silver bullet” (magic pill, pixie dust, panacea, Batman, whatever) – that single, usually simple solution rarely seems to exist in the complex world in which we actually live.

Certainly education policy research, as well as 30+ years of pretty well-analyzed experience on the ground, suggests that no silver bullet will solve yawning achievement gaps and lower than desirable average performance, whether in Colorado or any other state.  But, we tend to continue looking, instead of focusing our efforts on implementing a handful of policies that show at least some promise of gains.

I am reminded of this most recently by the CSAP results in Denver and Aurora.  Hopefully, those positive results are more indicative of a real turnaround taking hold in those urban districts, and not a one-year blip or statistical “regression to the mean” type result.

Assuming the more positive outlook, what is interesting is the different approaches in these neighboring urban districts.  While there are some overlaps, Aurora’s former military leader John Barry has pursued a series of reforms related to the Broad Foundation training he received to become a superintendent.  I know there was some initial skepticism in the Colorado reform community about these approaches, but they may now be paying off.

Michael Bennet in Denver focused upon The Denver Plan, better literacy, reading, and ESL training, middle school focus, and a variety of leadership and quasi-autonomy reforms.  They too seem to be working.

On the other hand, Mapleton has been the district that many reformers have highlighted as doing lots of great things.  But, their CSAP scores have been moving in the opposite direction, and not just this year – perhaps a long implementation dip, but you have to worry a bit.

All of this says to me that we know a few things that work, but a lot more effort needs to be expended in combining them and really implementing them thoughtfully, not just chasing the next magic fad.  And, that takes a little time and patience, not as an excuse, but as a reality.

 

This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.