The Culture of Urban School Reform

• In Event: Reculturing Schooling: Strategies and Consequences

Abstract

Although there has been some positive movement during the past 30 years in urban education, the stubborn persistence of low-performing schools that disproportionately educate children of color is immoral. This paper explores well-intended reforms in the U.S. over the past years that do not align with school realities and, thus, have little effect on the education of urban children. American education policy discussions misalign with the daily realities in urban schools, especially those in poor and beleaguered neighborhoods. Both liberals and conservatives have spent countless hours pursuing questions of limited value in their efforts to improve urban education. As a nation, the U.S. fails to account for weaknesses in the social infrastructure and the dysfunctional organizational environments in which urban schools and school systems are situated.

The history of education reform in American public schools reveals a legacy of unclear ideas on what and how change should occur. The improvement of urban schools is possible. It requires investment, changes in beliefs, and collective responsibility among unions, state and district bureaucracies, school and system leaders, educational and political reformers and social reformers outside education as well as in it. While change is painfully slow and unsteady, there are pockets of school improvement, and some urban districts have established successful reforms on a larger scale. Careful, deliberate implementation of future reforms founded upon thoughtful, reflective decisions may define the horizon for urban education reform.

Building on, and moving forward from, the author’s book on educational change (Payne 2010), this paper acknowledges the absence of clear solutions but insists that there have been no more insights for educating children from the social margins than those of William Moore did in 1895 when he said “provide children with teaching that is determined, energetic, and engaging. Hold them to high standards. . . Recognize the reality of race, poverty, and other social barriers, but help children see themselves as contributing citizens of both a racial community and a larger one. Above all, no matter where in the social structure students are coming from, act as if their possibilities are boundless.”

This analysis is applied with particular reference to the U.S. Race to the Top policy strategy in terms of whether it is a repetition of previous reform errors in the manner predicted and bemoaned by the late Seymour Sarason (Sarason 2006); whether it is a betrayal of true and authentic standards and quality teaching (Ravitch 2010); whether it is a regression to “Second Way” market style reforms accompanied by excessive standardization that other nations appear to have abandoned (Hargreaves & Shirley 2009); whether it focuses on the “wrong drivers” of educational change such as technology and monetary incentives (Fullan 2011); whether it is out of alignment with successful educational change in other high performing countries (Tucker 2011); or whether it creates a platform for new forms of innovation, improvement and the achievement of genuine social justice that can engage with the cultures of marginalized youth and transform the cultures of urban education.

Author

• Charles M. Payne, University of Chicago