The Action Space: An Introduction

• In Event: Action Space for School Reform: Taking Stock of Philadelphia, the 1990s and Today

Abstract

Objective
The first presentation will introduce the audience to action-space theory, the main claim of American School Reform: What Works and Why. Action space is a strategic/structural theory about the particular constellation of capacities that make school change possible.

Framework
One of the book’s insights is that reform arguments are only useful as input for grounded and flexible theories of action: reform cannot simply be “installed.” Another is that reform effort is only as powerful as the balance it manages to achieve and maintain among three crucial resources: professional capacity, civic capacity (both elite and grassroots), and fiscal capacity to go beyond ordinary operations. A third insight is that action space for reform, however well-endowed and clever, is inherently temporary and doomed to collapse – often suddenly, though sometimes gently. Finally, a fourth insight – one that runs against a common-sense tendency of Americans to move quickly beyond sight of failure– is that what matters in the end are the connections that each set of reformers makes to past reform efforts, and the opportunities they create in the records they leave behind for future reformers to do the same.

School reform in the U. S. is contested terrain, where beliefs clash about what reform might achieve and why it is needed, and where arguments abound about what kind of reform to pursue. This book traces reform struggles over twenty years in four big and (in this period) influential cities: Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and the Bay Area. Here successive generations of reform leaders managed to assemble the kind of action space needed to make large-scale reform, and the contributors to this book were eyewitnesses to the efforts. Indeed, they were the evaluators who tracked the progress and impact of the efforts. They also happen to be among the nation’s most experienced researchers of American schooling and school policy. Yet the book is not the usual set of cases studies of different cities by different authors; nor is it in any sense a polemical brief favoring one kind or reform over another kind. In a single voice, it offers instead a compelling account of a long-term conversation among these eyewitnesses, and captures what they learned in data-laden stories. In the process, it creates new frames for understanding school reform for a new generation of reform leaders.

Modes of Inquiry & Warrant
The theory of action space was constructed by a team of scholars who evaluated the reform efforts funded by the Annenberg Challenge in several large American cities. These scholars collected extensive quantitative and qualitative data over the course of a decade to evaluate the effects of these reforms (e.g. Corcoran & Christman, 2002; Lockwood & Fruchter; 2001; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2002; Smylie, Wenzel, Allensworth, et al., 2003). The idea for the action space emerged from a discussion of the findings of the evaluation efforts led by the researchers in their respective cities.

Authors

• Gabriel Aaron Reich, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Joseph P. McDonald, New York University