Marshall Smith, former education dean at Stanford University, is a leading proponent of systemic reform in schools. Smith recently became Undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Education.
The phrase “systemic reform” seems to be on everyone's lips now. But wasn't that what states were trying to do in the 1980s, when so many omnibus education bills were passed on such issues as teacher licensing, graduation requirements, student tests, and so on?
I don't think so. I call what the states did “comprehensive reform.” Policy-makers did address many parts of the education system, but the fundamental difference is that they didn't try to organize things to focus on a set of clear goals. In the systemic reform I'm thinking about, the focus has to be on content standards [that describe what students need to know and do.]
If you focus on content standards, the second issue is aligning the system to maximize the opportunities kids have to learn the content standards. So teacher training then is focused on teachers learning how to teach the content standards, assessment is aligned with the content standards, and, in states that adopt textbooks, the curriculum materials also have to be aligned with the content standards as well. It's a combination of both a clear set of goals and then alignment.
Sounds very logical, so why aren't states operating in a more systemic fashion?
Well, we have this tendency in American education politics to want quick fixes and project-oriented results. Systemic reform is not a quick fix—it's a long-term struggle, which is going to take sustained attention and a lot of effort.
You were at Stanford at a time when California put into place its version of systemic reform. They had curriculum frameworks tied to student testing, textbook adoption, staff development, and so on. What happened?
Their efforts were really derailed in the late 1980s and early '90s by the combination of a terrible recession in California and the terrific tension between the chief state school officer and the governors. [Democratic school chief Bill Honig feuded with successive Republican governors over the state's education plan, and budget cuts shrank or eliminated some components of Honig's systemic reform strategy.]
That just underscores the political problems of ever making any sort of sustained change in American education. You don't have a common understanding of a set of goals and directions to go.
I'm sure that most educators would say that policies ought not contradict one another, but some are suspicious of systemic reform because they see more centralized control and a focus on standardized outcomes. Couldn't the systemic efforts you're describing undo some of the improvements made in schools that are already restructuring, for example, as part of the networks operated by people like Ted Sizer and John Goodlad?
We need a lot of networks pushing for high standards like those being operated by Sizer and Goodlad. At the same time, we need to push the system to be more coherent and not to undercut those kinds of efforts. We probably agree with Ted and John on 95 percent of the issues.
The difference may be that they believe that all the change has to come from the bottom up. Our view is that we have to create a system that reinforces the ability of local schools to make that change happen. The really fundamental issue here is that we've got to reach 110,000 schools, and the Goodlad and Sizer networks only reach maybe one-half of one percent of them. They serve as terrific examples, but they are not going to meet the problems of kids throughout the nation.
But are policymakers really going to be able to craft a system that makes sense for all 110,000 schools, variable as they are?
What we're trying to do is help create a system where, whenever a decision gets made—whether it's at the federal, state, or local level—the question is always asked: how is this going to influence the way kids learn and are taught? If the decision is going to help move the quality of teaching and learning to the point where all kids have a chance to learn these standards, then it's a good decision. It becomes a resources allocation decision, a way of thinking about all the business of schooling. If that kind of attitude can begin to pervade our decision making, then we've got a real opportunity, because we can continue to sustain the kind of improvement efforts already happening at the school building level. That's really the trick.
