More Than the Numbers: Rooting the Work of Continuous Improvement in the Work of Social Justice

• In Event: Continuous Improvement Research and Critical Theoretical Perspectives: Bridging Two Conversations With a Common Goal

Abstract

Part of the promise of Continuous Improvement is that they will help us reproduce meaningful change at scale and within relatively short periods of time. Experiences like the city of Chicago and the state of Tennessee give credence to that hope. Continuous Improvement research is a broad tent, though, reflected in the wide variety of labels for the work. Some forms of CI might be more efficacious than others. If our concern is with large, under-resourced, demoralized school systems, which approaches offer the most hope? In some of its guises, CI becomes a largely technocratic enterprise, with researchers and practitioners working in a more generative way than has traditionally been the case, looking at the numbers, adjusting interventions and looking at the numbers again. That style of work is definitely associated with some positive outcomes across a number of disciplines. It would not be surprising, as CI matures, if more and more of the work takes on that cast. This paper will argue that this style of CI is not optimal for the urban environment, which presents challenges best answered by impeding the work in an explicit set of social and moral commitments.
The composition of CI groups is crucial to humanize the overly technocratic form. They should reflect experience in relevant practice, supervision, research, knowledge of local practice, and knowledge of community values. This means they are likely most effective when they are diverse enough to include non-professionals. Depending on the work at hand, a CI practice group might include researchers district leaders, principals, teachers, but also community leaders, youth-serving nonprofit staff, students. Many of the people from outside the educational community will be from organizational stakeholder groups. Having multiple stakeholder perspectives means that the evidence can be interrogated from many different angles. Evidence-based discussions can be particularly empowering for groups like community stakeholders who are typically excluded from these conversations. They, in turn, can often speak with a freedom not available to members of a school staff. They can bring a nuanced understanding of local context and history that is often not available to educators and researchers.
Trust can be an important impediment to work in urban schools (Bryk and Schneider 2002). Depending on how it is structured, CI work can be a trust building process or not
(Allport, 1954; Fiske, 2002). Unless trust is developed, it is likely to be very difficult to work in a sustained and meaningful way on sensitive problems of gender, race and class. Although it may seem to be in tension with trust- building, a CI project can be an effective means of accountability. CI can develop cultures where people are being held to account by trust-bound groups to use data they have jointly defined and gathered.
Thus, the forms of CI most likely to get traction against the multiple burdens under which urban schools labor, if they go beyond merely looking at data. It is much more a matter of building the social and organizational structures that will support strategic data use.

Author

• Charles Payne, Rutgers University - Newark