Meaningful Urban Education Reform: Confronting the Learning Crisis in Mathematics and Science

Chapter 1

1 Urban schools have been the target of a series of reforms over the last twenty or more years. During this time, strategies for school improvement to prevent student failure have addressed a wide range of matters: school safety, computer use, parent involvement, business partnerships , and more. Many claim that these earlier efforts have been piecemeal, targeting one or two dimensions of the schooling process rather than the system as a whole. The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) approach, in contrast to the plans that preceded it, emphasizes the simultaneous application of a number of policy levers (called drivers ) to move the reform agenda forward. NSF also emphasizes the point that all children can achieve to high academic standards. In this book we argue that implementing and sustaining systemic reform in mathematics and science for all students requires unremitting effort throughout the national system. Increasingly, with the passage of No Child Left Behind (2001) and related legislation during the George W. Bush administration, education policy emanates from national, state, and local levels. In addition, the federal government has tied funding through national programs such as the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary School Act to requirements affecting teaching and learning at the school and classroom levels such as the 1 Historical Context: How National Science Foundation Reforms Build on Earlier Reforms mandate that all public school teachers will teach only those subjects for which they have been certified. Nonetheless, because the United States is so vast, educational change is still most effectively carried out at the local district level. From the superintendent’s office to the classroom , improving mathematics and science practice to benefit all demands that teaching practices are student-centered, taking student needs into account but also assuming all students can and will learn to high standards . Intensive professional development carried out in the school and focused upon both substantive academic content and pedagogical practices is an essential condition for the improvement of student outcomes. In addition, community resources including both parent involvement and the contributions of civic organizations such as museums and local businesses must combine to accelerate student growth and attainment. Throughout this volume we maintain that unless the strategy in question is designed to (a) promote the academic achievement of all students and to close the achievement gap, (b) engage teachers and school principals in forging a community of learners, and (c) involve parents and stakeholder groups, it will not be sustainable. In agreement with Cuban (2001), we further believe that: • All schools do not need school-based reform; those schools that do are the lowest performers academically and are the hardest to turn around. • School-based reform and district reform in urban areas should work in tandem for desired changes to take root and endure at the school site. • Advocates of research-based school reform who are dependent upon practitioners adhering narrowly to a single design and the use of norm-referenced measures to determine success offer a narrow, technical version of what is a “good” urban school. In doing so, promoters reject teacher expertise while largely ignoring the school’s political and cultural dynamics essential for improvement to occur. • School-based reformers must do their homework on past successes and failures of urban school reform to understand the deeper complexities of the work in which they are engaged (pp. 1–2). In the remainder of this chapter we turn to an examination of systemwide reform as a national strategy for improving teaching and learning, including a discussion of the NSF driver model as the organizing rubric for mobilizing reform in mathematics and science. 2 MEANINGFUL URBAN EDUCATION REFORM SYSTEMIC REFORM Although policies at the national level directed toward educational reform predated the 1980s, several prominent documents published in that decade (for example, National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983; Southern Regional Educational Board, 1981), as well as results from national and international assessments (Crosswhite, Dossey, Swafford, McKnight, and Cooney, 1985; McKnight et al., 1987) revealed the difficulties in providing all students pathways to highlevel academic achievement in America’s public schools. Most notably, the National Commission on Excellence in Education’s report, A Nation at Risk (1983), illuminated problems confronting the nation’s public education and focused society’s attention on the need for a national strategy to improve education. In addition to preserving the status of the Department of Education as a cabinet-level entity, the report also triggered a...