Continuous Improvement in Memphis: Creating Coherence in Urban Environments

• In Event: Can Continuous Improvement Work in the Turbulent World of Urban Districts?

Abstract

Increasingly, school systems are using CI to realize ambitious and equitable instruction. Yet districts reside in environments that place formidable demands on school leaders and house multiple educational beliefs. This presentation illuminates how three elementary principals drew on divergent theories, frames, and narratives to enact CI routines as part of a school turnaround network. The analysis is informed by a longitudinal, mixed-methods project that investigated the Shelby County iZone’s pursuit of organizational change. The data include 150 semi-structured interviews with iZone administrators, school leaders, and mathematics teachers in three schools.

The iZone is a district-led effort to improve 23 low-performing schools in Tennessee. All iZone schools are in Memphis and serve communities beset by intergenerational poverty. More than 95% of iZone students are eligible for free lunch, and a majority identify as African American. The design of the iZone was conducive to an effective CI process. iZone leaders instituted a common curriculum, measurement tools, theory of instruction, leadership practices and a system of coaching. In mathematics, the iZone emphasized conceptual learning, inquiry-oriented, grade-level instruction.

To support improvement, iZone leaders designed a 9-week Cycle of Professional Learning (CPL) rooted in the principles of CI. The CPL asked school leaders to use a common instructional protocol to identify a school-wide problem of practice aligned with the instructional vision. School leaders then designed professional learning opportunities to address the problem of practice, collect data, and provide feedback. Principals and their instructional leadership teams then identified the next problem of practice to be tackled by the subsequent CPL.

Despite common tools and routines, the principals in our study identified markedly variable educational problems informed by different educational beliefs. Their approaches also represented divergent solutions to managing a series of environmental challenges. In one school, pressure to improve tested outcomes motivated the principal to use the CPL primarily to increase test scores rather than focus on improving instruction. In a second case, the CPL was driven by a trio of concerns that included enacting the curriculum, improving outcomes, and ensuring that no student fell behind. Pulled in multiple directions, the CPL in this school degenerated into a frantic effort to solve short-term problems of student learning rather than an incremental approach to improving practice. The third principal adhered to the iZone instructional model, using the CPL to focus on teachers’ ability to ask cognitively demanding questions while eschewing a short-term approach to raising test scores.

Responding to different environmental pressures, each principal’s implementation of CPL embodied a different vision of instruction and established alternative learning opportunities for students. Rather than representing productive variation, two of the principals total departure from the iZone instructional undermined the network’s coherence and capacity to support improvement. We find that the explicit nature of CI routines belies a field in which institutional forces represent markedly different ideas about teaching and learning, as well as differing approaches to managing contemporary educational environments. Our findings encourage scholars to grapple with the dilemma of constructing coherent systems in pluralistic and often chaotic environments.

Authors

• Joshua L. Glazer, The George Washington University

• Adrian M. Larbi-Cherif, Manhattan Strategy Group

• Ashley L. Ison, San Francisco State University