How to Change 5000 Schools: a Practical and Positive Approach for Leading Change at Every Level

Levin book notes

How to Change 5000 Schools: A Practical and Positive Approach for Leading Change at Every Level

By Ben Levin

Book notes Compiled by Jane L. Sigford

Chapter One: A Personal Odyssey

In chapter one Ben Levin describes his professional journey. He got interested in reform as a high school student and college student. He even tried to organize a citywide high school students’ union in his hometown in Winnipeg.

That wasn’t successful. He eventually became chief research officer in a large Ontario district. He had many professional opportunities to be involved in leadership and change initiatives. He taught at University of Manitoba and then at University of Toronto. He is a peer and colleague of Michael Fullan. He became deputy minister of education in Ontario, Canada’s largest province, and the province with the most students –2 million with over 5000 schools, hence the title.

Chapter 2: The Ontario Education Strategy

In the 2nd chapter Levin describes the Ontario education structure and the evolution of the journey they have been on to improve public education. The journey went from a place of top-down mandates and disgruntled teachers and communities to a place now where student performance is better than it’s ever been, teachers are more satisfied with their profession, and communities are more positive toward public education.

The strategy is that the province focused on key goals:

Improve a broad range of student outcomes
Reduce the gaps in achievement
Increase public confidence in public education

There were strategies under those goals and there were other strategies that were corollary.

But the important message is that 1) student learning was the focus, 2) goals were few and concentrated, 3) everyone knew the goals and 4) structures were put in place to provide support in resources, professional development, staffing.

And those issues that were not related to these goals, were seen as distracters, and dealt with accordingly. [underlining mine] Leaders were to be leaders about learning not managers.

Infrastructure:

The message was meant to be respectful, based on partnership, coherent, and aligned, as elements that would make the changes significant, broadly acceptable, and sustainable. P. 40

Respect for staff and professional knowledge—Government began with belief that staffs in our schools are committed professionals who have enormous skill and knowledge to contribute to school improvement. P. 40 How did they do this?

Public statements of gov’t are constantly supportive of public education and work of educators
Gov’t abolished some policies, such as paper-pencil tests of new teachers and compulsory professional development requirements that were perceived as meaningless and punitive. They were replaced with policies such as induction program for all new teachers and a simpler system of teacher performance appraisal that is supportive of professionalism
Staffing increased and teacher workload reduced; prep time increased
Schools were seen as allies and partners in change, not obstacles to it
Focus on capacity-building and many opportunities for teacher learning at all levels

Coherence and alignment through partnership

Partnerships were put in place that were meaningful and contributory. Principals seen as key players (they were also taken out of the teachers’ union) Professional dev. for principals was expanded

Capacity in districts and the ministry

More support for education and administrative leadership and operations in boards, including the use of consultants to help boards improve administrative operations, and leadership networks to help chief superintendents to provide better leadership around pedagogical issues. P. 43
Before most ministries were concerned with issuing policies, distributing money, enforcing rules etc. Now they are trained and expected to be leaders about instruction p. 43

Impacts of the strategy

They are seeing real skill improvements for students, not just increases in test results. Avoided a focus on test pre and drill
Main outcomes:
# of very low-performing schools dropped by 75%
HS graduation rate has risen by 7% over four years
Attrition among young teachers dropped by half
Early retirement among teachers declined sharply
Public confidence increased notably.
In fall of 2007 a group of US chief school officers spent a day to see what was happening. [Was this CCSSO? Have we heard about this? Note mine?]

Adjustment over time: Phases

What they realized is that to be successful, an initiative is started, but it changes over time. That doesn’t mean failure; it means that things change and if one doesn’t evolve, the initiative will die and not make meaningful change.
Some good practices also become embedded and become SOP, such as guided reading, shared reading, use of leveled books, shared writing, data walls to track progress. When things become embedded, that is a healthy sign of positive change. P. 47
There are fewer new initiatives and more focus on deeper implementation of those already underway. Ongoing capacity-building and support reduce the stress of the new. Nonetheless, at all levels of the system, the need for more alignment and coherence remains and will remain an important consideration. P. 48
Changes in approach are not an indication of weakness or failure; they are an indication of learning. p, 48 [underlining mine]
Most importantly the willingness to adjust the strategy, even in the face of political criticism for doing so, builds trust with the education sector since it shows the govt’s genuine desire to work in partnership and to learn from each other.
With the Ontario strategy outlined, the next chapter talks about the reasons large-scale, sustained change is so important yet so difficult to do.

Chapter 3: How Much can we Expect from Public Education

Do we Expect Too much from Schools?

When UNICEF (2002) rated well-being of children in 20 rich countries using data on 6 different outcome areas, the US and UK were at the bottom of the list. Many other countries with less overall wealth are able to have both higher and less unequal outcomes for children at all ages. P. 50
It is unfair to hold schools and educators responsible for social ills such as discrimination or crime, just as it is unfair to expect every individual student to rise above his or her circumstances just by dint of effort. P. 51
A reality of politics and public attitudes is that it’s often easier to try to address social problems through schools than it is to deal with the real underlying factors. Adults appear to be unwilling to adopt good eating habits, so we’ll make kids in schools eat better by banning junk food or eliminating pop from vending machines.
There is nothing wrong with any of this education initiative except the feeling of hypocrisy that we are imposing on young people things that we, as adults, are not prepared or able to do ourselves, such as not eating fast foods ourselves. P. 51
Intractable social problems can create pessimism about schooling.
Limits of school impact are real and have to be acknowledged. Educators should be active in lobbying for improved public policy in areas such as employment, housing, and social benefits. Educators cannot simply say “it’s not our job” or “you are asking too much of us.” To say that we cannot do everything does not absolve us from doing as much as we can. P. 51
First, improving student outcomes is the very purpose of the education system. If schools are unable to alter the life chances of the students who come to them, why invest in public education at all? No matter what background people come from, more education and higher levels of literacy are associated with better outcomes. P. 51-2 [underlining mine]

Research that supports that education makes a difference:

Education and earnings—a year of schooling equivalent to increase in income of nearly $1700 a year in health effect. An additional year of school shows that annual earnings increase by about 10-14% p. 52
Education and civic engagement—Education has causal relationship to multiple forms of engagement including voter turnout, group memberships, tolerance, and acquisition of political knowledge. P. 52
Education and health—strongly linked to determinants of health such as health behaviors, risky contexts and preventative service use. Child mortality decreases, smoking decreases
Education and positive behavior—Importance of good education underestimated. During past decade in most western countries, public expenditures on health care and law enforcement have increased more than public expenditures on education. Western countries try to remedy the negative effects and social costs of a relatively low educated population by providing unemployment benefits, law enforcement through policing and higher sentencing, and by increasing health care budgets to counter the detrimental effects of unhealthy behavior. P. 53
Cost benefits of education—Addition tax revenues and reductions in cost of public health and crime amounts to almost $256,000 per new high school graduate among black males, yielding two to four dollars in public benefits for every dollar spent. P. 54
Schools can make a significant different. In fact, they make the biggest difference for those with the greatest needs; in other words, schools may have an important role to play in reducing social inequities. P. 54

Aiming Higher for Students

We need to be careful in interpreting data and using it to forecast performance. In the aggregate, previous performance does predict later performance, but predictions that are accurate for populations are not accurate for individuals. P. 55-6 Munro (2004) shows how even predictive instruments with high reliability can still produce surprisingly large numbers of false predictions for individuals. P. 56
Within-group variance is (difference among schools with similar poverty levels) is larger than the between-group variance (the average difference between schools with lower or higher poverty levels. Even with similar demographics, some schools and districts consistently generate much better outcomes. P. 58
Studies of individual schools that have excelled are important because they can show us potential avenues for improvement, but it is a fallacy to assume that what can be done in one school can necessarily be done in all. Stronger evidence about possible improvement comes from large scale evidence more than from studies of individual schools.
Reality is that in learning we do not know what the boundaries of human capability are. What we do know is that barriers that seem impossible are, eventually, broken, and performance gets better. We do know that many people can achieve far more than was anticipated if they have the right opportunities and supports. P. 59 [underlining mine]

What counts as success?

We have multiple goals for kids in school—literacy, working together, knowledge in a wide variety of areas, etc. etc but people do not want to have to choose among their goals. We want them, all, and we want them for all children. To put it bluntly, we want schools to make every child perfect!! P. 60
High levels of achievement across a number of domains are a vital purpose of schools, but the distribution of those skills is also important. Young people who do not get a good education will have much more difficulty both participating in and contributing to our societies which results in higher intergenerational costs.p. 61
For almost all of human history, education has been an activity for elites.
Education is an activity as well where it is not only the goal that matters, but how that goal is achieved. P. 61 We want an education to be something that takes work, that is earned and deserved. The enterprise of schooling itself has to be conducted in ways that fit our ethical sensibilities and standards. P. 61
Fear does not produce superior performance, either for students or for educators and an institution based on fear will not be sustainable. P. 62

Chapter 4 Why Improving Schools is so hard to do

One of biggest challenges in leading school improvement involves realistically assessing the likely barriers and constraints. Reformers tend to be optimists and visionaries who are not hardheaded enough at the outset about all the things than can go wrong or get in the way of their plans. P. 63

It may seem excessively negative to have a whole chapter on problems but the balance between vision, optimism, and realism advocated at the end of the intro. Makes it vital to be sober-minded about what is required for real and lasting improvement. This chapter is about obstacles and how to address them. P 63
Schools are often described as being resistant to change. Looking at the historical record, that seems like a wrong description. In reality, there can be few institutions that have been subject of more change initiatives over time than public schools in many parts of the world. P. 63
Reality is that most schools have been inundated with change. P. 64
Problem is that many of changes have not brought the desired positive effects or have not been sustained. Most of basic features of schooling remain largely unaltered even over a century. P. 64
Joseph Murphy [in Levin] says there are two routes to school reform—prayer and magic. P. 65
Milbrey Mclaughlin [in Levin] says, “Policy cannot mandate what matters.” P. 65
Either changes were never really brought into effect, or they did not last long enough to show results, or they did not bring about the intended improvements for students, p. 65

Why has so much change yielded so little improvement?

Goal of public schools should be real and meaningful learning, across a wide range of desirable student outcomes, with greater equity in those outcomes, in a way that builds and supports positive morale among all those involved in schools and also supports high levels of public confidence in public education [underlining mine]

When put this way, it’s apparent why it is so difficult to achieve.
Problem is to make right changes in right ways. Making real gains across a range of outcomes means that daily teaching and learning practices have to change across many, if not most, classrooms and schools. Greater equity in outcomes suggests changes in programs and resource allocation. Positive morale means that people need real involvement in the changes rather than being on the receiving end of orders they don’t agree with or don’t know how to carry out.

Changing institutions hard for many reasons. Here are some of the main ones:

They have ingrained patterns of belief and behavior that are widely accepted as normal or natural no matter how poorly they work
They may be embedded in intricate systems of laws and regulations as well as competing values that make change difficult. Collaboration across institutions turns out to be inconsistent with privacy laws. P. 66
Inst. have established interest groups and powerful individuals who seek to preserve their own situations and benefits even when doing so does not serve the inst’s goals.
Parents and students may be particularly reluctant to change some long-standing features even when these features do not benefit them
People may not know how to do the new things that are asked of them. People prefer to look competent at doing the wrong thing rather than look incompetent at doing the right thing. [underlining mine]
Institutional longevity or popularity may not be necessarily related to good outcomes for students. If a school or district has capable students, it may add little value but still be seen as quite successful. P. 67

Most educational changes fail for one or more of 3 main reasons:

They are the wrong changes
They do not give adequate attention to political dynamics
They are not implemented effectively. P. 67

Wrong Changes:

Changes should be chosen on 2 criteria:

potential impact—how much difference a given change is likely to make for student outcomes
feasibility—how likely is it that a school or district can implement and sustain this change given the current context

Schools and system should consider both criteria equally. We should aim to choose those changes that have the most potential to make the biggest difference for the most students with the least effort.

Governance changes do not themselves bring about improvements in teaching and learning or in student outcomes. They may be part of a comprehensive strategy but cannot themselves generate much improvement. School choice and charter schools have generated a huge amount of attention but their impact, especially in relation to time and energy invested, has been modest at best. P. 69
Testing and accountability—misguided to think that more assessment or more punishment for poor results will lead to better outcomes, either for students or for students. [Pay for value added for teachers and administrators going the wrong direction—note mine] Negative incentives are less effective than positive incentives and most incentives in accountability system are negative. P. 69
Donald Campbell in Levin “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor. P. 70
Most of the top mgmt theorists (Deming or Drucker) take the view that system improvement requires system efforts and changes, not just pressure or incentives for individuals to improve. P. 70
Changes focused on structures are not going to produce the desired results. Even changes focused on teaching and learning practices may not be the right ones if they do not meet the two criteria discussed earlier. Relatively few innovations have convincing evidence of positive impact on student outcomes, especially where one seeks evidence from multiple locations produced by independent 3rd party parties rather than promoters of the program in question. P. 70-1
Instructional innovations that do not have solid empirical support should be tested or piloted rather than imposed on an entire system. This is both ethical and efficacious.
Venture capitalists expect 90% of their investments to fail otherwise they are not taking enough risks. Failure is part of the price of learning; we have to try lots of things to learn what works. P. 71-2 [It’s hard for us to “fail” in education because we are dealing with people’s children. Note mine.]
Innovations should be evaluated so we can steadily improve our knowledge about effective policies and practices.
We have to consider feasibility too. Changes that assume that large numbers of people will quickly alter their behavior in fundamental ways are unlikely to be workable. Decisions need to consider best way to use scarce time, energy, and other resources. P 72
Need to assess if any given change proposal has power to produce lasting results given resources and effort required.
Additional problem—education systems are highly prone to stand-alone projects. Innovation is called a success but is never implemented widely across entire system.
Whole school change, comprehensive school reforms, have also run into serious problem. If model is only adopted superficially it does not produce desired results. P. 73

Political dynamics