The Urban Review, Vol. 30, No. 2, 1998

Implementing School Restructuring in the Inner City Louis F. Miron, Edward P. St. John, and Betty Davidson The purpose of this research was to examine school reform at a local level. Our analysis centered on the impact that the Accelerated Schools model had on two inner-city elementary schools in New Orleans. Key to our interpretation was addressing prevalent social issues, including poverty, racism, and single-parent families, embedded in everyday life in urban communities. The findings illuminate the need to resolve racial, social, and ideological conflicts for school change to take root in inner-city schools.

Today, there is much discussion of the impact of school reform on teaching and learning, school organization, and parental involvement. Over a decade has passed since the National Commission on Excellence in Education issued its landmark A Nation at Risk report wherein it described the nation's system of public schools as "a rising tide of mediocrity" (NCEE, 1983, p. 5). Numerous studies have documented the exhaustive production of reform programs at all levels of the public school system—federal, state, and local. Research groups, such as the Center for Policy Research in Education, have sought to quantify the impact of reform activities on such outcome measures as student achievement and curriculum change (Clune, 1989). The bulk of reform1 initiatives has concentrated on the state level. By and large state reforms have either bypassed urban schools and school districts (Levin, 1988), or the special conditions facing these schools (Boyd, 1989; Davis & McCaul, 1991; Kozol, 1991; Miron, 1990) have made it difficult to implement changes in ways that are meaningful to principals, teachers, students, and parents in inner-city schools on a day-to-day basis. The national educational reform movement has failed to address the underlying social issues Louis F. Mir6n is professor, Department of Education, University of California, Irvine. Edward P. St. John is professor, College of Education, University of Dayton. Betty Davidson is assistant professor. College of Education, University of New Orleans. Address correspondence to Dr. Louis F. Mir6n, Department of Education, University of California, 2001 Berkeley Place, Irvine, CA 92697.

137

0042-0972/98/0600-0137$15.00/0 © 1998 Human Sciences Press, Inc.

138

THE URBAN REVIEW

which pervade inner-city schools. In particular, school reform models which do not seek systemic change nor address the unequal power relations in the school and classroom seem destined to fail in the inner city (Sarason, 1982, 1990). This article seeks to fill this gap. It addresses the broader social issues (poverty, racism, and single-parent families) embedded in school reform activity in urban settings. These are the issues that the ideological goals of the reform movement usually ignore in inner-city schools (Bredo, 1989). We divide the paper into three parts: part one examines the conditions of schools in the inner city; part two describes the research methods used for this study; part three describes and interprets the results of two case studies of urban elementary schools in New Orleans, which undertook school restructuring. These two schools implemented the Accelerated Schools Process (ASP), a restructuring process aimed at bringing at-risk students into the educational mainstream. This article examines the concrete school restructuring process principals and teachers employed in two inner-city public schools. We characterize these processes as situated school restructuring because the implementation of the ASP in the urban context, as we hope to illustrate below, is problematic (see endnote no. 1). Both of the schools selected for the study were inner-city schools included in the ASP school restructuring program. These two schools were part of the first schools nationwide to implement the Accelerated Schools project. Thus, understanding the dynamics of importing national reform discourse into local practices will contribute to the knowledge base of implementation on reform models. The case studies, too, are empirically significant because of the conditions of poverty, racism, crime, and other social ills currently running rampant in many urban centers across the United States. The interpretation of the case studies focuses on the reasons for variability in the relative degree of successful implementation of the ASP in the urban context. The paper concludes with the implications for practitioners bent on achieving school restructuring in similar settings. "SITUATED" SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING IN THE INNER CITY Social, economic, and demographic changes in the inner city during the past two decades have left schools located in such surroundings barely able to cope with the educational needs of poor, minority students (Kozol, 1991; Wilson, 1987). Federal policies designed to abate human suffering for inhabitants of urban centers have had only marginal impact (Lemann, 1991). In 1995, the poverty rate of black and Hispanic female-headed families was 53.2 percent and 57.3 percent respectively (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1995). Overall poverty levels rose by 12 percent in the inner city between 1970 and 1980. Between 1970 and 1995, the percentage of single mothers living below the poverty level increased from 30 percent to 52 percent for black women, from 8

IMPLEMENTING SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING IN THE INNER CITY

139

percent to 18 percent for white women, and from 20 percent (1980) to 28 percent for Hispanic women. In 1994, 43.3 percent of African-American children and 41.1 percent of Hispanic children (under the age of 18) lived in poverty (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1996). These bleak statistics of child poverty in the United States are also evident when comparing the conditions in this country to other industrialized nations: American children are twice as likely to be poor as children in Canada; they are 3 times as likely to be poor as British children; and even more staggering, children in our nation are 4 times as likely to be poor as French children, and 7 to 13 times more likely to be poor than German, Dutch, and Swedish children (Children's Defense Fund, 1994). These data are confirmed at the local level and underscore that, in certain economically distressed areas, the situation can be much worse. For example, the Kids Count Data Book (1997) reports that from 1985 to 1994, the number of Louisiana children living in poverty increased from 28 percent to 34 percent. Over that same time period, Louisiana families with children headed by a single parent increased from 23 percent to 33 percent. Focusing at the local level, 57.1 percent of Orleans parish children lived in poverty in 1993; child poverty at the state level was 30.6 percent (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1997). A closer look at some of the empirical data reveals that the economic conditions of the cities exacerbate social problems in the schools, making the implementation of school restructuring problematic. Our case studies portray the plight of inner-city teachers in New Orleans who routinely had to purchase hand soap, classroom supplies, and other essentials for their students during a bitter teachers' strike in 1990. Teachers frequently complained that students came to school unprepared to learn. The problems associated with the lack of necessities, such as children's shoes, make it difficult to maintain even the minimum of academic expectations for their students. In New York City, Freedman (1990) reported that, on average, students in poor neighborhood junior high schools spent less than 20 minutes per year with guidance counselors to discuss high school options. Systemic reform of public education, like the attempts to change other areas of the public sector, does not occur in a social and historical vacuum. Popkewitz (1991) argues that educational reform is shaped by historical power relations and the means by which groups define, acquire, and use knowledge. In the inner city, the school politics engulfing race, gender, ethnicity, and social class have profoundly influenced the form and content of school reform (Boyd, 1989; Fine, 1990; Levin, 1988). School reform in the urban context is situated (Apple, 1985; Giroux, 1983) historically within unequal social and power relations that are embedded in the interconnections among ethnicity, race, gender, and social class. As documented above, educational reform has largely bypassed members of minority groups; moreover, the ideological underpinnings of the reform movement nationwide have ignored the dislocations in the inner city

140

THE URBAN REVIEW

(Wilson, 1987). Put simply, black students (as well as other minorities) have achieved at significantly lower academic levels than their white counterparts, although some gains have been made for black students (The Council of Great City Schools, 1992); and lower socioeconomic groups have generally not fared well under the reform banner (Kozol 1991; Levin 1988). The implementation of school restructuring in the urban context is inextricably tied to the historical development of public education in cities (Tyack, 1974). The rhetoric of school reform is embedded in the ideology of economic growth and the professionalization of the school bureaucracy (Tyack, 1994). Further, in cities such as New Orleans, the politics surrounding the civil rights movement, school desegregation, and the ascendancy of AfricanAmerican political elites both constrain and empower the ability of reformers to make a positive impact on minority groups (Reed, 1988). We argue that, in order to understand the contemporary processes of school restructuring in the urban context, we must situate these processes relationally (Apple, 1985), linking them to the historical development of cities (Katz, 1971; Haymes, 1995). Although the clients of broad educational reform have frequently been the poor and minorities (who are viewed as being a drain on the economy), reform ideologies such as school "excellence" and "choice" often unintentionally have negative consequences for these groups. For example, state reform initiatives designed to lower the teacher-pupil ratio necessitate the use of portable classrooms to house students whose districts cannot afford to build new classrooms or to hire additional teachers (Mir6n, 1990). As less funding is available to support reform in central city schools (First & Mir6n, 1991; Hugg & Mir6n, 1990), what we characterize as ideological strategies emerge from business groups which appeal to educators because of their perceived low cost and corporate support. Since the inequalities of educational outcomes are strongly correlated with race, ethnicity, and social class (Garibaldi et al., 1988; Jencks, 1972), broad reform strategies may exacerbate these inequalities. School-level restructuring initiatives such as the Accelerated Schools Process, Effective Schools, Comer, and Success for All may work in the inner city. However, the impact of inequalities associated with race, ethnicity, and social class on concrete school-restructuring activities makes it less probable that these measures will succeed in inner-city schools. Unless reformers tackle the broader social issues in the urban context, reproduction of these inequalities is probable. We critically analyze the impact of the Accelerated Schools model on not only teaching and learning; we also qualitatively assess, through the case studies, the effects on the surrounding neighborhood—on parental and community involvement, business participation, and overall community support for the school and its restructuring program.

IMPLEMENTING SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING IN THE INNER CITY

141

THE ACCELERATED SCHOOLS RESPONSE In the late 1980s, Henry Levin and his associates developed the Accelerated Schools Project. Levin, an economist by training, was concerned with the impact of the declining levels of academic achievement among poor and minority students on the U.S. economy. Like many progressive academics, Levin foresaw a society riven apart by growing inequality. Moreover, little progress was being made, and strategies to deal effectively with so called at-risk students were very expensive to implement. At-risk students who typically began school two years behind their peers had fallen four grade levels by graduation—if in fact these students finished high school (Levin, 1988). Levin and his colleagues at Stanford University concluded that prior school reform efforts had failed because of their piecemeal approach. In the past, reformers focused on curriculum change, or instruction. Rarely was a wholistic approach pursued. Thus, the underlying philosophy of the Accelerated Schools model is that the school should pursue simultaneous and interactive changes in curricula, in instruction, and in school organization for these changes to have lasting consequences. This guiding philosophy is embodied in three fundamental principles: unity of purpose, building on strengths, and empowerment coupled with responsibility. Unity of purpose refers to the entire school pulling together to support the unique values and goals of the school community—including parents, community leaders, and businesses. The Accelerated Schools approach assumes that schools cannot afford to remain functionally fragmented, by grade levels, program (federal or regular), and diverse teaching philosophies within and across content areas. Building on strengths refers to the axiom that "success cannot be built upon weaknesses" (Levin, 1990). Finally, empowerment coupled with responsibility is the belief that classroom teachers and school administrators must be given the leeway to make decisions at the school which best serve the needs of their students and the school community. Decisions made at the central office level or, worse, at the state or federal level by "remote control" are doomed to failure because teachers will lack the ownership necessary to implement policy decisions. Following an intensive one-week summer training, and start-up funds totaling approximately $10,000 each, the staff (and parents) of two inner-city elementary schools in New Orleans—assisted by university-trained facilitators— embarked on the difficult task of making these abstract, philosophical principles come alive in their schools. It is the relative degree of success or failure in the implementation of the Accelerated Schools model in the urban context that we are interested in describing and interpreting in the following case studies. Many broad educational reform proposals are built upon mainstream societal

142

THE URBAN REVIEW

assumptions, such as all students will be able to take advantage of a precollege high school curriculum. Despite the social realities of the inner city described above, the ideological thrust of the school-restructuring movement nationwide is to build change in schools around traditional middle-class assumptions which historically have tended to ignore these social realities. We trace the origins of these value assumptions in the national school reform movement and analyze the implementation of the ASP in regard to these values and ideological beliefs, below. RESEARCH APPROACH Two research approaches were used in this study. First, we used participant observation methods, since the two schools were involved in a school-restructuring process in which the authors were involved as university facilitators and interventionists. This paper presents the reflective, critical analysis of our own experiences as school interventionists. Second, both schools have been the subject of prior case study research (Davidson, 1992) which was available for our study. Our goals were two: (1) to critically reflect upon our own experience as university facilitators in school restructuring in the urban context, and (2) to investigate whether or not the "situated" character of restructuring affected the successful implementation of the ASP in the two inner-city public schools. School Facilitation The two schools were selected as sites for the pilot-testing of the ASP, a comprehensive school restructuring process that has gained national acclaim (e.g., it was one of only a few restructuring initiatives cited in America 2000). The authors were initially trained as facilitators by the Stanford project team that had developed the process, then assisted the Stanford project team in delivering on-site training in the selected pilot schools. In addition, the authors were site facilitators for the restructuring process for the 1990-1991 academic year and the fall semester of 1991. The two schools were selected from a group of 20 New Orleans schools that initially applied to the program. One school was selected from the applications based on a set of criteria developed by a university selection committee. The committee assigned the greatest weight to the vision the school community was able to articulate in the written application, as well as on-site interviews. School A received some additional money from its corporate sponsor and from the school district, beyond the initial training support from the project. The second school (School B) was selected based on the recommendations of the school district's Chapter I Director. Additional first-year resources for School B were

IMPLEMENTING SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING IN THE INNER CITY

143

provided by the school district, through its Chapter I funding, and from the corporate sponsor. The two schools had equal resources, about $10,000 each. The authors were the primary school facilitators working in both elementary inner-city schools. We collaborated with the Stanford project team on the summer training program, provided in-service training during the school year, and provided technical assistance with many aspects of the school restructuring process, such as meeting with planning teams, providing leads on external resources that could be used in the restructuring process, and communicating with school leaders about the restructuring process. Our observations and reflections based on our experience with the schools have been used in this analysis.

Case Studies Case studies of the two schools were available to the authors for the present analysis. The cases were developed in the fall of 1991, based on interviews conducted during the spring semester of 1991 (Davidson, 1992). Traditional case study techniques—interviews, document reviews, and on-site observations— were used to develop the case studies. The case study researcher consulted with the school principals to select a diverse set of teachers for interviews for case study research. Interviewees included both those teachers who had attended the ASP summer training and those teachers who had not. Additionally, all the planning documents developed by the schools as part of the ASP were available for analysis. The researchers also made numerous site visits to the schools for observations and interviews throughout the school year. In the interviews for the case studies, the teachers were asked about their perceptions of the school before the start of the school-restructuring process and continuing into the present. Questions were asked about the school along five dimensions: (1) relations with the central office; (2) school leadership; (3) teacher involvement; (4) parent involvement; and (5) the foci of pedagogical processes in the school. Questions in each area considered their status before the onset of the ASP and the status at the time of the interview, after nearly a year of implementation. The interviews were conducted by a doctoral student who had not been directly involved in the facilitation of the restructuring processes in these schools, but who was familiar with the personnel, having observed some of the training. All interviewees had an opportunity to review their transcripts. Thus, the case studies provided a reasonably objective measure of participants' perceptions about whether the restructuring had resulted in meaningful changes for teachers and students as well as for parents and community members. The case studies were examined by the authors as part of the development of this paper.

144

THE URBAN REVIEW

Research Questions

Our analysis focused on five research questions that emanated from the literature on urban school reform, discussed above. First, how successful were these schools in their initial restructuring activities? On the surface we were interested in whether the process had been successfully implemented. Like most school-restructuring processes, the ASP includes the following components: an assessment process where school and community members critically examine their school ("taking stock"); a process to involve the school community in setting a shared vision; and a process of restructuring the school into teams ("cadres") to address the most critical needs of the school. We were interested in whether these processes of school restructuring had been successfully implemented. On a deeper level we were concerned with the meaning members of the school community ascribed to the changes, which was judged based on an analysis of interviews. Second, how did the approach used to reorganize the governance process influence the restructuring activities? In the analysis we were interested in taking a step beyond the espoused theory of Accelerated Schools to examine how the approaches actually used to change the governance of the schools influenced their success in implementation, in particular in realizing not only the philosophical/ideological principles but the school-level goals and objectives set forth by the steering committees and ratified by each school. Our analysis also focused on whether there was any evidence that the specific social conditions germane to the urban context (cited above) influenced the success of the process used to change school governance. For instance, did the fact that New Orleans reported a high incidence of singleparent households inhibit the participation of parents? The ASP concepts had initially been tested in environments that were substantially different than urban New Orleans. Therefore, we desired to know what contextual factors facilitated or inhibited restructuring. Additionally, we were interested in how the responses of school administrators to the proposed governance changes either increased or decreased their ability to deal effectively with new school goals. Conversely, we looked for evidence that the complex social conditions reviewed above constrained the agency of principals (Giddens, 1984). Third, how did the corporate support influence the authority structure governing the restructuring process? Given the dependence of school districts on corporate funding, it is important to examine how corporations influence the restructuring process. Our analysis considered how the schools reconciled the influence of the corporation supporting the reform, including the embedded philosophy of the Accelerated School Process, with the policies and regulatory methods used in the school district.

IMPLEMENTING SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING IN THE INNER CITY

145

Fourth, does parental and community empowerment influence the success of the school restructuring process? Although the Accelerated Schools literature (Hopfenberg, Levin, and Associates, 1993) places a value on parental and community involvement in schools, the limited research on Accelerated Schools indicates that this aspect of the process is difficult for some schools to realize (Davidson, 1992). Therefore in this inquiry we were interested in the relationships between parental and community involvement and the ultimate success of the school-restructuring process in the two inner-city schools we studied. Finally, what aspects of the university facilitation process were most successful in facilitating school restructuring? We were also interested in reflecting on our own role as university-based school facilitators and interventionists to see which aspects of our work were most successful. In particular, we focused on the questions related to how external interventionists can facilitate "situating" the school-restructuring process in the urban context. Fortunately, the case studies gave us some independent insights to supplement our own perceptions gained from direct experience. Our analysis of these questions is organized into two parts. First, our analysis of the first two questions is organized into a section focusing on the restructuring process in the two schools. Second, our analyses of the remaining questions are organized into a section that explicitly considers how the ideologies of the reform process influenced this schoolrestructuring process.

SITUATED SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING IN NEW ORLEANS New Orleans is a difficult social context for any school-restructuring process. Orleans parish schools consistently score below national norms in a state that ranks near the bottom on most standardized test scores. As the largest city in the state, New Orleans represents an urban area of great social and economic need. The public schools are almost exclusively minority and low income. There are a few magnet schools that attract middle-class whites and blacks throughout the entire city, usually in near-equal racial numbers. Otherwise, the enrollment in the neighborhood elementary schools in the city is almost exclusively black and poor. These neighborhood schools serve mostly students who receive free and reduced lunch, as was the case with the two neighborhood elementary schools selected for the study. To make matters worse for the schools and the project, there was a major teachers' strike in the fall of 1990. The initial training was completed in the summer of 1990, prior to the start of the fall semester. When school opened, the United Teachers of New Orleans called a strike, and many of the teachers who had participated in the ASP training (about half of the teachers in both schools), walked the picket line. Thus, the principals and university facilitation team

146

THE URBAN REVIEW

were confronted by some very difficult political challenges at the outset of the school-restructuring process. Understanding Success Consideration of whether a school has successfully implemented a restructuring process in the inner city involves both the surface issue of whether certain milestones were accomplished and the question of whether meaningful change really took root in the urban milieu, and how the actors perceived the meaning of the change. In our pilot project in New Orleans, both schools proceeded with implementation at about the same pace and accomplished the same milestones in the first year. These included the formation of school task forces (cadres) to address priority areas identified by teachers, parents, and community members; the development and circulation of a draft vision statement; and the restructuring of school governance (the decision-making process affecting curriculum, staffing, and instructional strategies). After the strike, both schools reassessed their strengths and weaknesses, developed conflict resolution techniques, and, about halfway through the second semester, actually voted as an entire school community on significant programs the school would pilot-test in year two. Thus, both schools successfully completed the project milestones for implementation in the first year of the restructuring process, a relatively superficial indicator of success. The teachers' strike persisted halfway through the first semester, and the hard feelings engendered by the strike extended beyond the settlement, which was dissatisfying for everyone. After the strike, there were deep divisions between striking and nonstriking faculty. In an effort to transcend these conditions, the university facilitators organized workshops on teamwork and conflict resolution for the entire staffs from both schools. The case studies developed at the end of the first academic year provided insight into the extent of deep organizational change in the two schools. On most of the indicators, School A showed evidence of organizational change, especially among internal relations (among the classroom teachers and between teachers and school administrators). Through data gleaned from interviews and observations, it became evident that School A had started to initiate a more collaborative relationship with the central office; teachers in the school had experienced real changes in the principals' leadership style and gained more of a sense of involvement in decision making in the school. Parents, particularly fathers, had begun to become actively involved in the school (Davidson, 1992). For example, as a result of the work of the parental involvement cadre, 50 fathers formed a "dad's club" and met regularly every Saturday morning to provide maintenance for the school facility and the grounds. The group shocked the principal one Saturday morning when the fathers unveiled a new school

IMPLEMENTING SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING IN THE INNER CITY

147

sign showcasing the transformation: a huge sign, displaying the school's new name, the Accelerated Elementary School, greeted teachers, students, and visitors. On the same dimensions, School B appeared to be in turmoil. Most teachers did not feel supported by the principal, and a parents' group had actually requested a recall of the principal. The reverse situation was evident in the curriculum. At the end of the first year, there was more evidence of change in the focus of pedagogy to a childcentered approach at School B. At the urging of the principal, many teachers in the school had begun whole-language approaches in reading and writing instruction and were using math manipulatives. However, these innovations had not been selected by the curriculum cadre (the team of teachers working on curriculum and instruction). Instead, the curriculum cadre had decided to get involved in a districtwide Afrocentric curriculum program, which became the focus of their planning. The principal steadfastly resisted these changes, apparently insulting the mostly African-American teachers by hanging posters of Japanese culture and role models on the walls. In contrast, School A illustrated few signs of curricular change during the 1990-1991 school year (Davidson, 1992). By the end of the fall semester of 1991, these racial and ideological differences began to manifest themselves more directly. School A developed a more collaborative atmosphere, which had begun to spill over into all aspects of school activity. There were experiments underway with new approaches to the teaching of reading and a new Afrocentric program, focusing on dramatic presentations (plays, poetry, and improvisational dance) of African-American history and art. In contrast, the turmoil at School B grew worse, with the principal resisting many of the plans developed by the teacher cadre. A collaborative steering process had developed at School A, consistent with ASP methodologies and philosophical principles, but not at School B. At the end of the 1991 fall semester, the university project team decided to declare a moratorium at School B, until some of the deeper issues in the school were resolved. We, the university facilitators, made the decision to intervene, by shutting down the project owing to the inordinate autocratic style of the principal. These cases clearly illustrate differences between surface and deep organizational changes (Mir6n & Elliott, 1990, 1994). During the first year of the project, the surface evidence indicated that both schools had successfully implemented the project milestones. But there were major differences beneath the surface in how teachers in the two schools interpreted the change process. It appears that in the case of School B, the racial conflicts among the teachers, and between the principal and the surrounding neighborhood, virtually brought the restructuring aims of the ASP to a halt. The capstone came when the project funder withdrew financial and programmatic support for the school.

148

THE URBAN REVIEW

The Restructuring Process Because of the differences between the two schools, we decided to dig beneath the surface to explore differences in how the staff and principal of the two urban schools approached the task of altering the school governance process, vis a vis their encounter with the generic Accelerated Schools reform model. Three factors seem to distinguish the schools. We found evidence of "meaningful inquiry" (see below), conflict resolution, and changes in leadership style. Evidence of Meaningful Inquiry A recent study of two schools that had successfully restructured found that meaningful teacher inquiry at both the school and classroom level appeared integral to the change process (St. John, Miron, & Davidson, 1992). Teachers from both of these schools were trained in and attempted to implement the Accelerated School inquiry process, which, following Dewey, emphasizes collaborative problem solving and incremental pilot-testing of solutions. There were substantial differences in the degree of success that School A and School B initially had with the implementation of the model in their respective urban neighborhoods. At School A, this process began to take hold in the spring of 1991, when the cadres were first formed. Each cadre began to struggle with the complexity of understanding what might work better at their school with respect to instructional strategies, parental involvement, and community support (Sarason, 1995). When the cadres came up with solutions to test, the principal empowered the steering committee and school as a whole to decide on what to endorse and implement the following school year. According to teacher Margaret Wheat, prior to the onset of ASP, and the leadership of Principal Ruth Oliver, the teachers' role at School A was to make sure that you did everything that was expected of you. You were to be a good disciplinarian. You were expected to take care of your problems and just as a last resort that you would go to the principal with a problem, (p. 258)!

Each of the cadres came up with specific proposals. For example, the parental involvement cadre decided to stage a genuine New Orleans-style parade, complete with "second lining" (a dance in black funerals). The curriculum cadre was the slowest to respond, perhaps because there were substantial unmet needs in this area and perhaps because the principal was herself a cadre member. In any event, each of the cadres took responsibility for their own planning processes and for assessing the results of their experiments. Ms. Wheat boasts:

IMPLEMENTING SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING IN THE INNER CITY

149

When the cadre [parental Involvement] came up with the idea of a parade, they had to do everything. Whatever it was they decided, she [Principal Oliver] told them, "Go on, make your plans, let me know, and carry them out. Just inform me about what your [sic] doing." And they did. And everything was carried out by members of the Cadre, (p. 270)

Coworker Suzanne Russell confirms: I think I've seen more from teachers. They're getting more involved. . . . We're kind of running things a little more to me. ... If you want to know what their [sic] doing, you go to those people that are in those cadres. We do not go to Ruth [Oliver] and ask her what's happening in the Parent Cadre. We know who to go to. (p. 271)

Teachers at School A expressed agreement that the Accelerated Schools Process had changed their decision-making involvement. It seemed that before ASP, the teachers had little power to design educational activities. The leadership style of the principal was authoritarian, top-down; the teachers were told what to do, and they did it. The teachers perceived the restructuring at School A not merely as a modification of leadership style, but also as vehicle of empowerment. At School B, the teacher inquiry process got bogged down in apparent racial conflicts between the white principal and the mostly African-American faculty. The previous principal had established more open communications than Principal Brewer. Teacher Sharon Campbell reflects: We [the teachers] had empowerment when I first arrived at [School B]. There were no major problems. The discipline wasn't as it is now because the Principal was very, very supportive, (p. 190)

Under Brewer, the cadres would develop plans and the principal would return them without allowing for further consideration of their plans by a steering committee or the entire school. When we (the university facilitators/researchers) asked why, he indicated that he felt that the cadres had not gone through all the steps of the inquiry process. The principal believed that the teachers had violated both the spirit and the methodology of the ASP. In the fall of 1991, we began to work more closely with School B, attending cadre meetings, encouraging steering-committee meetings and meetings of the school as a whole. Although our own philosophy as action researchers (Anderson, Herr, & Nihlen, 1994) closely paralleled the ASP principles of empowerment with responsibility, we nonetheless felt that our deliberate intervention was required. We needed to take action, to act on our values and core philosophic principles (Mir6n, 1997). This decision on our part resulted in the pilot-testing of some new projects in parent outreach and student discipline and self-esteem; but it

150

THE URBAN REVIEW

was a situation of "too little, too late." School B was still deeply divided on racial and ideological grounds, and some of the cadres even quit using their planning time altogether. Sharon Campbell voices her resentment: Some of the problems they [the teachers] feel is that administration [the principal] isn't supportive of anything that's done. They feel that he [Mr. Brewer] is very critical of things that are done. There is no discipline support. There is no empowerment. They feel that when money is sent in, it is spent the way he sees fit. (p. 197)

During the restructuring process, while the teachers at School A were experiencing an increase in principal support and teacher empowerment, the teachers at School B were feeling powerless. Through their involvement in cadres, the teachers at School B thought they would be working to develop and strengthen academic programs. They quickly discovered that what appeared to be changes to restructure and improve the school community were superficial at best. Underlying issues, such as race and power, would need to be addressed and resolved, before members of the school community would be able to work together toward a shared vision. Thus, in our view, meaningful teacher inquiry—where teachers collectively and systematically engage in problem solving and reflective practice—is one critical aspect of successful restructuring. However, it is not easy to implement this process in an urban setting such as New Orleans, since it requires making other fundamental changes in the school and its relationships to both its internal school community and its surrounding neighborhood. The blatant racial and class conflicts we observed in School B grew overwhelming. The open conflicts between the white British principal, trained in the open school methods, and the neighborhood activists who sided with African-American teachers (who wanted an Afrocentric curriculum implemented), proved ultimately unresolvable. Campbell comments on the hostility in the neighborhood: I think there is a lot of anger and hostility within the parents. . . . The parents feel, this is the main thing, that they don't want him [the principal] here. He will not deal with them and he is very rude and abrupt, (p. 204)

While discussing the changes that had not occurred in the school, Campbell illustrates the frustrations the teachers experience: I think they [the teachers] feel that's [the principal is] the biggest problem. And no one feels that they can go and talk to him without him walking away from them. Rudely just walking away. I think we have a lot to work through with the administrator and the teachers, (p. 196)

IMPLEMENTING SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING IN THE INNER CITY

151

The teachers felt that the principal distanced himself not only from the school community, but also from the surrounding neighborhood. This created a tense environment for all actors involved. The setting was one of prevalent conflict. Eventually, the faculty and the neighborhood residents succeeded in convincing the superintendent and a school board member to launch an investigation which resulted in the removal of the principal. Conflict Resolution The strike surfaced divisions that complicated the ASP. In both schools, the strike accentuated long-standing racial, social, economic, and other deep divisions between groups of faculty. In our view as university facilitators, these divisions needed to be resolved before the restructuring process could take hold, which is the reason that special team-building workshops were offered for both schools after the strike. Variations in the ability of the school communities to resolve these underlying conflicts seem to have had a direct influence on the success of the school-restructuring process. The leadership style of the principal seemed crucial. In School A, where the principal and most of the teachers were black, many of the teachers who had gone out on strike had attended the summer training and were perhaps a little closer to the principal before the strike. During the strike, the principal came to rely on teachers who had not been as close to her in the past. These new relationships exacerbated the feelings of mistrust that the strike engendered. A deep wedge ensued between the central office administration and the United Teachers of New Orleans. Central office personnel shut down school campuses promptly at 3:00, the normal time when school ends. This maneuver was intended to thwart support for the union and all of the striking teachers. However, the move backfired in that it gave impetus to growing sympathy for teachers' concerns among organized parents' groups. In terms of the ASP, these dynamics subordinated the restructuring activities to the political issues embedded in the strike. At the supplemental training session on team building following the strike, the teachers at School A were able to talk about their differences in attitude toward the strike and the central office as they practiced new ways of communicating. This special training, coupled with the fact that the principal was sensitive to healing the divisions when she reinstated the restructuring process with all of her faculty, created an atmosphere that not only resolved conflicts that surfaced during the strike but also helped heal divisions that predated the strike. At School B, the strike also surfaced deep tensions present in the school. A larger percentage of the teachers at School B attended the summer training session. Thus, teachers with Accelerated School training split into two camps— those who struck and those who chose to cross the picket line. The divisions in

152

THE URBAN REVIEW

School B at first appeared to be racial. The principal and many of the younger and newer teachers who did not support the strike were mostly white, while many of the striking teachers were black and had been at the school longer. The special training session for School B was not as successful as in School A, as the striking teachers could not transcend incidents that happened during the strike, especially in confrontations with the principal. Some of these confrontations had clear racial overtones; others, however, were a direct result of the principal siding with the central office in its dealings with the union. After the strike, the principal, who recognized the divisions, made some efforts to get representation of both factions on his initial steering committee. The facilitation team came to the school on several occasions to discuss implementation issues, to suggest ways of healing divisions, and to provide supplemental service training. However, all of these efforts failed. The principal simply had a leadership style that made it too difficult for him to accept and support others' ideas, especially university faculty who he thought knew little about the inner workings of urban schools. At the end of the first year, it was apparent that most classroom teachers did not support the principal (Davidson, 1992). Langston and Elliott voice their concerns. Langston observes that, "The teachers . . . seem to have a lot of resistance toward the Principal" (p. 197). In spite of intensive efforts during the fall of the second year to work with the school on the continued implementation of the restructuring process, only one or two teachers still supported the principal by the end of the Fall 1991 semester. Elliott asserts that the teachers are favorable toward ASP but feel their efforts are being stymied: "Here you know, I think the teachers want to do it and we would like to but we feel like everything we do gets knocked off the block" (p. 210). Changes in Leadership Style It is difficult to be successful as a principal/middle manager in a New Orleans public school without accepting the authority structure in the school system (Bogotch, Murry, & Miron, 1996). The relationships between central office administration and the two principals leading the implementation of the ASP vividly illustrate this dilemma. Principals who can accept, or at least tolerate, control systems with a strong centralized orientation (see Crowson, 1992) are most likely to become appointed and to persist as school administrators. Thus, school restructuring in this context involves a change in the principal's leadership style. This means changing from being in control of school decisions to being a facilitator of meaningful inquiry, which helps empower teachers and makes it easier for classroom teachers to accept the added responsibilities and burdens of a complex restructuring model like the ASP. Teacher Maria Andrieu explains that, in School B prior to ASP,

IMPLEMENTING SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING IN THE INNER CITY

153

everything was more or less kind of set forth in a way in accordance with policy.... We just sort of fell in line and did what we were expected to according to the requirements of the program. My role is just to teach. To teach t h e m . . . . Now I have to get used to this word "empowerment." I never felt that I had any sort of power as a teacher. Because I've been more or less told what to do. Having worked for a number of years, you know, I can well follow directives for the most part. But input on a broader scale, as I kind of grasp from what we're doing—about to do now—is something kind of new to me but sounds good. (pp. 188-189) In these two schools, as indicated above, there was a great deal of variability in both the willingness and ability of each principal to make these changes which would result in relinquishing administrative control. The principal in School A, an African-American woman, had wanted to make changes in curriculum and instructional strategies in the school for years but did not really know how. In spite of the fact that there were divisions among the faculty, she desired to find ways to get everyone involved, specifically both the white and mostly African-American faculty. Principal Oliver relates how things were when she first arrived at School A: My first four years here were spent trying to get them [the teachers] to think a little more for themselves. But I was never successful at it because unless I told them when to do it, how to do it, when to turn it in, and who, what, when, where, how. Unless I answered all of those questions, they were in a flounder, (p. 259) She boasts about the changes underway: Well, right now it's a sharing kind of thing. The teachers have realized how much power they have in and among themselves. Not fully realized yet but they're getting to the point where they know if we just get together as a group, there are a lot of things that we can do that we had not thought about doing before. And that's what I see happening now. It's kind of shared leadership right now. I've seen school leaders [teachers] emerge, (pp. 283-284) A spirit of community evolved in the school, in spite of lingering differences among faculty. The principal was ready to change, and ASP became a vehicle for making it. Oliver explains: We started something called "Administrative Team" . . . and we made decisions for the school and we would bring them back to the faculty and that's sort of how we operated with input from them. They [the administrative team] would come to me and they would express the views of the people that they represented. But it still was . . . basically ... if they could pick up what it was that I wanted, that's what they gave me. And now that we have had a year of Accelerated Schools, it's not like that anymore. Now they [the teachers] tell me, "Oh no, Ruth, that's never going to work. You just shut up because that. . ." And that's what I'm getting now. (pp. 282-283)

154

THE URBAN REVIEW

These changes in leadership style appeared more difficult for the principal at School B. He understood and seemed to believe in the principles of empowerment, at least at an espoused level. However, giving up administrative control was very difficult. Brewer describes his view of the changes at the school: I think across the curriculum we have seen a lot of changes. I think it is going slowly. If you look at the whole school, I would say probably a third of those classrooms, partially at the primary level, are very child centered. As you get up the school [into the upper grades] you see far less the kinds of environments that I would like to see. Now, as I see them and as teachers want them are two different things, (p. 203)

Initially the principal kept turning back faculty decisions because he believed the teachers had not followed the entire inquiry process. According to Brewer, the teachers "did not have the skill that is required to efficiently implement that change process" (p. 212). But teacher Elliott saw the situation differently: We came up with these suggestions ... but [the principal] just basically, it was like "No." It kind of makes you feel like you are wasting your time if all your suggestions are going to get knocked down. (pp. 198-199)

At first, we, as university facilitators ultimately responsible for the success of the project, accepted this reasoning at face value. As described above, however, further excuses lead to either of two probable explanations for the principal's pattern of unilaterally rejecting the recommendations of the cadres: (1) ideologically he did not endorse the recommendations owing to their lack of child centeredness, or (2) racial/gender conflicts overwhelmed the decisionmaking process. We observed that the principal seemed to place trust in white female faculty whereas African-American faculty, mainly female, he resented. On the other hand, we observed that he seemed to have greater confidence in black male faculty. Once some changes in governance began to happen, he had trouble allowing faculty to actually pilot the strategies the steering committee endorsed. He would often seem to explode at faculty who were acting on decisions ratified by a committee consisting of the entire school. As cited above, Brewer believed the teachers lacked the skills to implement the change process (p. 212). Gradually, most teachers quit trying, which destroyed the restructuring process. Ms. Campbell voices the frustration of the teachers: If he [Mr. Brewer] doesn't approve it, it doesn't happen. Although the committee has planned and made the suggestions. And they are willing to work with him and they bring it back to everyone. And everyone's willing. And Mr. Brewer's not willing. So how do we operate that way? (p. 213)

IMPLEMENTING SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING IN THE INNER CITY

155

We found that the principal was not willing to delegate power or responsibility to the faculty. As a result, the sense of trust that should exist for the Accelerated Schools Process to work was not established between the principal and the school community (p. 212). INTERPRETING URBAN SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING We observed that the ideological beliefs and values underlining the strategies in the national educational reform movement—on shared authority, empowerment, and outside facilitation—had an influence on the school-restructuring processes in the two schools. We call these "ideological strategies" (Miron, 1996). The influence of each of these strategies is examined below. Shared Authority School reform has become a mechanism through which school districts have solicited corporate support. Implicit in this strategy lies an assumption that both entities—the supporting corporations and the school district—have a shared role in the governance of the schools. The Corporate Connection The ASP facilitation process was subsidized by a national corporation, a major oil company, which was generous in providing both human and financial resources to assist the schools. In addition to making a generous financial grant of $180,000 over three years to the university to facilitate training, technical assistance, and research, the corporation provided funding directly to the schools to employ in their restructuring activities. The sponsoring corporation also provided supplemental gifts to the schools such as computers, office supplies and, in the case of School A (the school first recommended by the university selection committee), monies to wire and air-condition the school (Bogotch, Mir6n, & Garvin, 1993). Additionally, both schools were also successful at obtaining surrounding business partners to donate time and services. The parental-involvement cadre at School A organized a parade and social gathering in order to inform the community of the changes taking place. Teacher Cora Ford comments on the results: Well since this parade [see earlier quote], we've had other community leaders. . . . And like that they know what's going on and a lot of people have been calling to find out, you know, about the program and what it is all about, (p. 279)

However, there was also evidence that the tensions in the schools influenced the attitudes of corporate sponsors. In particular, representatives of the sponsor-

156

THE URBAN REVIEW

ing corporation, who were publicly invested in facilitating the success of the ASP process in each school, made judgments about the schools. When national corporate sponsors visited School B during the second year of the restructuring project, teachers discussed the racial tensions in the school. The national corporate representative reversed her position regarding the extension of grant support of School B after her field visit to the school. Community activities at School B were slowed initially by the principal's reluctance to approve school-based plans and, ultimately, by the underlying racial and ideological conflicts in the school and in the neighborhood. Campbell remembers the previous administration when parental involvement was high: Parent involvement was good ... we had family/parent breakfasts once a month. We had parent workshops with the Principal with breakfasts. We had a good PTA. (pp. 191-192)

Early in the fall semester, the community relations cadre began planning for a series of new activities. The cadre concluded that the basic problem was that parents did not feel welcome. Campbell summarizes: They [the parents] also feel that they're not wanted. And I think we have been lacking in doing things to involve parents like just inviting them in for coffee, (p. 204)

A parents' breakfast was held and it had a reasonable turnout. Other efforts were made to get parents to observe and to volunteer in the school and in the classroom. These efforts resulted in some modest gains, but even the most involved parents were aware of divisions in the school and the lingering problem that most parents in the community simply did not feel welcome in the school. Many teachers did not cooperate with these formal, planned strategies, although some maintained good relations with groups in the community, for example, the NAACP. Ms Campbell expresses what she feels positive about: Mainly what I'm doing within my classroom with my children; opposed to what's being done within the school ... I've infused Afro-American curriculum within my classroom, (p. 202)

Thus, success in building (and sustaining) constructive relations with parents, and other community members, was somewhat mixed and hampered by underlying racial and social conflicts in the school. These developments provide an interesting juxtaposition to our analysis of the relative success of the implementation of the ASP in each of the two schools. In particular, the classroom teachers' ability to resolve the racial tensions that emerged during the strike influenced not only the capacity of the schools to reorganize their governance processes but also the willingness of

IMPLEMENTING SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING IN THE INNER CITY

157

parents and businesses to support each school (see below). This lends empirical support to the argument that a unity of purpose is essential to the successful implementation of school restructuring (Hopfenberg et al., 1993). It also shed light on the relationship between the schools' capacity to build a unity of purpose (from within) and their prospects for building and maintaining external support, given the politics of complex racial, community, and ideological conflicts. In School A, the schoolwide committee was unified in its aims to substantially involve the neighborhood and the broader community to seek corporate support, which seemed to influence the involvement of these groups. Ford relates: And here lately, they [the parents] found out that we do need them. You know, they're coming around a little more and [sic] since we're on the Accelerated Schools program. I guess parents feel like they are needed, (p. 276)

In contrast, at School B, the deep racial tensions in the school influenced parents and corporations to withdraw their commitment to the ASP in particular, and to the principal in general. These strikingly different strategic responses to shared authority are embedded in each principal's relationship to the administrators in the central office. The Central Office Orleans Parish had systematically cut back on its supervision of schools in the decade prior to the start of the Accelerated Schools project. The district maintained a singular role in selecting textbooks but had limited staff capabilities to supervise instructional practices. Oliver describes her view of the process: The School System sends us Essential Learners Outcomes [ELO's]. And, basically, we use that as a curriculum along with the curriculum guides from the State Department of Education. You know, we figured that was the curriculum, (p. 256) The two principals interpreted these conditions differently, which influenced their implementation of the ASP.

In School A, the principal became a member of the curriculum cadre after changes in the structure and process of school governance. The cadre decided to focus its efforts on instructional innovations, letting the cadre choose the challenge area and select strategies for pilot testing. Teacher Russell observes, "I notice now that we have a lot of flexibility. We basically can move that curriculum around so that it fits the child" (p. 274).

158

THE URBAN REVIEW

This approach led to several innovations, especially in language instruction and in multicultural education. Principal Oliver illustrates: There are different ways of teaching different things. And if we can teach a kid how to add, multiply, divide, and subtract while he's building a backdrop for a play, then that's the way we're going to do it. We're looking at it in a different way. (p. 326)

In contrast, the principal at School B responded in a manner that was more consistent with the old supervisory role of central office (interviews with district staff revealed that he formerly held a position as curriculum supervisor in the central office). An example of this top-down management style is the way the vision statement was put together. According to teacher Elliott: All of a sudden it [the vision statement] was up [on the bulletin board] in the teachers lounge one day. I don't know who, somebody got it, I guess, and put it together and made a vision. But not the whole school. The whole faculty didn't approve the vision, (p. 200)

The principal did not get directly involved in any of the cadres. Instead he tacitly assumed his former role as curriculum supervisor—reproducing his experience as "head" in the British system—recommending innovations directly to teachers, circumventing the Accelerated School's teacher-focused inquiry process. This approach undermined the realization of the empowerment and unity principles espoused by the ASP. It also highlights the somewhat naive attitude in the ASP national movement on the unequal power relations among central office administrators, school administrators, and classroom teachers. The deficiency in ASP was summed up with teacher Andrieu's statement: I think you have done your job. I just feel we need to get together and get ourselves together. And we need to better communicate or be able to better communicate with our Principal. ( p. 207)

Thus, the way the principals and teachers interpreted the school district's policies on curriculum and instruction had an influence on the eventual success of the ASP. In particular, the way they approached the curricular change process was heavily influenced by the way they individually interpreted school policy on instruction (St. John & Griffith, 1995). The principals and teachers in both schools continued to use the district-approved texts, but there were major differences in the ways they approached innovations in the instructional process. One school used the cadre-based inquiry process to foster change, while the principal in the other school circumvented this process by maintaining his supervisory authority over instruction, a form of authority which reflected his past experience working in the central office and his experience as "head" in a

IMPLEMENTING SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING IN THE INNER CITY

159

British school. However, it should be noted that the school district had very little direct influence on the Accelerated School Process. The decision to pull the plug on School B was made by the corporation and the national facilitation team, without consultation from the school district. The dependence of school districts on corporate support for the restructuring process changes the pattern of authority in the governance of schools undergoing change. Because corporations provide funds, their decisions about what to fund and how long to fund it have an influence on what reforms are initiated and how long they are maintained. This arrangement carries with it a change in the authority structure. In this study, we found that the way school personnel interpreted district policy had an influence both on their success with the restructuring process and their continued inclusion in the corporate-funded project. Community Empowerment The two schools were also distinctive from each other in the ways they approached the issues related to community empowerment. Two issues are separately examined below: parental involvement and the university facilitation process. Parental Involvement The ability to initiate and maintain viable partnerships with parents appears to be another factor that is critical to successful school restructuring in an innercity school. Parental empowerment identified by each of the school communities as a critical challenge was a result of their taking-stock process (Hopfenberg and Levin, 1993). In both schools, cadres were formed to plan for improvement in this area. At School A, these efforts seem to have made a quick difference. For example, the community involvement cadre quickly formed a Dad's Club, and the committee recruited a permanent core of dedicated volunteers who were welcomed in the classroom as volunteer labor. School A progressed from few, if any, permanent parent supporters to a core group of 30 parents who volunteered regularly at the school and who maintained a voice in school policy, such as curriculum decisions. Ford expounds: It [the Accelerated Schools Process] has made a difference because we just had a parade about a month ago. And we could not do it just with teachers and students alone. We had a little marching unit and I really had parents come out in the afternoon. ... We were able to talk to other parents, you know. So now they feel, we can't do it by ourself. (pp. 277-278)

160

THE URBAN REVIEW

However, this was not the case at School B. A communication problem existed between the teachers and the principal, and this problem carried over into the community. The community relations cadre concluded that the basic problem was that parents did not feel welcome in the school. Campbell describes the problem: I've made the suggestions and nothing has been done, [i.e.] parent workshops and "Parent Day with the Principal." And I think Mr. Brewer doesn't want to deal with it. I think there is a lot of anger and hostility within the parents. . . . The parents feel, this is the main thing, that they don't want him here. He will not deal with them and he is very rude and abrupt, (p. 204)

Many teachers did not cooperate with these formal, planned strategies, although some maintained good public relations with groups in the community at large. As mentioned above, as a result of these relationships, the parents (and some of the teachers) formed a coalition that led to the resignation by the principal and to his eventual reassignment in the district. Thus, success in building (and sustaining) constructive relations with parents, and other community members, was very mixed and hampered by the underlying racial, ideological, and social conflicts in the school. The Facilitation Process Many of the school-restructuring strategies cited in America 2000 involve apparently successful collaboration between schools and universities. This project represents an attempt to replicate the ASP in a new, untested urban setting. Our experience as university facilitators indicates that it is possible to successfully initiate a school-restructuring process using the ASP methodology. However, achieving even moderate or mixed success in an urban setting witnessing fiscal and "organizational decline" (see Boyd 1989; Crowson and Boyd, 1992) requires moving beyond the importation of models. When we began the ASP, we felt that a sound model was in place nationally, but that it would require adaptation and innovation for successful implementation in New Orleans. Fortunately, there have been improvements in the methodology and training for the ASP during the past four years, which increase the viability of the model in the urban context. We have gained more insight into the ways university-based training centers need to adapt restructuring methodologies, using local knowledge (see Allen-Haynes, 1993) in order to achieve even a modest level of success. First, it is necessary to address social issues specific to urban contexts. In our experience, there were deep divisions within the two schools we worked with, as well as between these schools and their surrounding neighborhoods. Building a unity of purpose, one of the paramount principles of the ASP, is,

IMPLEMENTING SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING IN THE INNER CITY

161

therefore, not a simple task. The ASP methodology is only now beginning to address these contextual issues. The ability to identify and to resolve problems—to observe dysfunctional organizational patterns, to have the capacity and the means to voice them publicly in schoolwide community meetings, and to identify the ways and the means of altering these patterns (and healing racial and other divisions)—seems critical to the successful implementation of school restructuring, at least in this urban setting. Second, any school-restructuring process needs the capacity to adapt quickly to new conditions as they develop. When the strike started in New Orleans, it became immediately evident to us that we had to do something about the problem immediately. We took the initiative, by bringing in conflict resolution specialists to work with the faculty. These trainers had not completed the ASP summer training, but they did have expertise in conflict resolution and team building in schools in the local area, both of which were greatly needed at the time of the strike. If we had not been able to make this adjustment, or if we had simply waited too long to bring in the specialists, we may have been easily set back a year on the project. Finally, the ability to engage in reflective dialogue about the ASP with other university facilitators and members of the school community is central to the facilitation and technical assistance role of university-based trainers and researchers. Public schools have a remarkable capacity to absorb new ideas without changing their basic patterns of organization, power, and social relations. Yet, change along these dimensions seems to hold one of the keys to the sustained implementation of school restructuring. In our experience, both schools were successful at the superficial level of the start-up process of implementation. However, only one of the schools (School A) was able to change its dysfunctional organizational pattern, and address the inequities in social relations (racism, autocratic leadership style, and the exclusion of parents, particularly African-American fathers). Thus, if we had not made and shared observations about contextual issues (social and racial inequalities), we would have had less likelihood of success on this project. The urban context would simply have been too constraining.

CONCLUSION: IMPLICATIONS FOR UNIVERSITY FACILITATORSINTERVENTIONISTS It has been observed that "students in big cities suffer in ways that seem much more resistant to improvement than the educational woes of students in other settings" (Maeroff, 1988, p. 636). Our reflective analysis of the school restructuring process in New Orleans provides insight into both why urban schools are resistant to reform and what has to happen for change to take hold

162

THE URBAN REVIEW

and move toward institutionalization. Our conclusions focus both on social issues in the restructuring process and the influence of ideology on this process. Two types of problems embedded in social context appeared to contribute to dysfunctionalities in these urban schools. First, there were deep unresolved racial and ideological conflicts among factions of the faculty in both schools, which surfaced as a result of the strike. The ability of school leaders to initiate processes that helped to heal these differences was integral to starting a meaningful change process. Moreover, changes in leadership style that resulted in meaningful teacher empowerment and teacher-focused inquiry were necessary for the school-restructuring process to take hold. Second, both of these schools faced divisions between the school and its surrounding community. Local businesses and parents alike tended to ignore the schools, which increased teachers' feelings of isolation and further limited their ability to acquire external support for innovation and change. The teachers' view of parental involvement in School B is summed up by Andrieu: "The attitude I've seen of the parents is this, that they tend to expect a lot but give little. . . . You don't even get any commitments any more" (p. 205). If schools remain internally divided, it can be very difficult, if not impossible, to build better school/community relations. Our experience indicated that community representatives and parents are sensitive to divisions between factions within schools, which makes it difficult for them to get involved in the change process. For parents to become involved in solving school-level problems, they not only need to feel welcome, they also need to feel that they are part of the solution. If these underlying issues are not dealt with in the restructuring process, then it is unlikely that changes in curriculum and instruction will be accepted. In fact, we would caution other facilitators that, despite the goals of the ASP to change patterns in teaching and learning for the benefit of students, other, more immediate concerns (both internal to the school and in the external relations the school maintains with the local community) should receive priority. Of the two schools examined here, School B was immediately successful with the implementation of new curricular methods, while School A was not. However, the school that did experience quick "success" in changing the curriculum also failed to deal with the deeper problems, which left the school divided and isolated and caused the curriculum change process to come to a grinding halt. In contrast, the teachers in School A made slower improvements in teaching and learning but paradoxically began the long process of restructuring by focusing on giving displaced parents a voice in school affairs and letting teachers experiment with new forms of decision making. The contradictory ideological values embedded in the national educational reform movement seriously complicate the facilitation process (Mir6n, 1992, 1996). When private corporations provide support for facilitation processes,

IMPLEMENTING SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING IN THE INNER CITY

163

such as Accelerated Schools, they retain the ability to influence the continuation of the process. As contextual issues surface during the school-restructuring activities, the corporate sponsor may be inclined to withdraw support. The predicament presents a moral dilemma for the university facilitation team and the school personnel. Should these groups keep a lid on the problems, in an effort to maintain funding, or be open and candid? Our belief is that openness is essential, in spite of the risk, but this issue certainly merits further debate. Moreover, the community empowerment process adds substantially to the complexities and level of effort required in the implementation of school restructuring in the social context of inner-city schools. It may be essential to involve parents in a substantive way, as their moral support appears crucial to the success of the restructuring process. Finally, facilitators and school personnel are confronted by a set of moral dilemmas owing to the pervasive influence of both corporate and community interests in the restructuring process. Unless they can reach a shared understanding of how their apparent conflicting values can enhance the restructuring process, they may not be able to contend with the conflicts that surface as part of the process, a condition that emerged in one of the two schools examined here. If these conditions noted above are inherent in urban schools, and we believe that they are, then this would explain why most of the reform initiatives of the 1980s had no substantial effect in urban schools. It seems possible for these schools to absorb new methods without changing some of the basic problems that inhibit meaningful school change. Hopefully, the ASP and other vehicles in the current wave of school reform will emphasize the resolution of racial, ideological, and social conflicts and their ensuing moral dilemmas in urban schools. NOTES 1. Throughout the article, we used the terms reform and restructuring. Although these two terms have similar meaning, we view them as analytically distinct. We view educational "reform" as embracing the values and ideological beliefs of the national movement to reinvent the public sector. On the other hand, school "restructurings" are the specific practices operating in schools to change them from within. While school restructuring activities often uncritically embrace the values of the national movement, we contend that school professionals often seek to divorce such beliefs (and their attendant discursive practices) from their goals of school improvement. For a discussion of the value assumptions embedded in the school reform movement, see Louis F. Mirdn, The Social Construction of Urban Schooling: Situating the Crisis. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1996. Also, see Miron, "Corporate Ideologies and the Politics of Entrepreneurism in New Orleans," Antipode, 24 (4), 263-288. 2. The quotes used throughout the paper come from "Building School Capacity to Accelerate Learning," an unpublished dissertation by B. Davidson (1992). The names of people quoted from and anyone referred to in Schools A and B are pseudonyms.

164

THE URBAN REVIEW

REFERENCES Allen-Haynes, L. (1993). School-university partnerships: A case study. Unpublished dissertation. University of New Orleans. America 2000 Anderson, G. L., Herr, K., and Nihlen, A. S. (1994). Studying your own school: An educator's guide to qualitative practitioner research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. The Annie E. Casey Foundation. (1997). 1997 Kids count data book. Baltimore, MD. Apple, M. (1979). Ideology and curriculum. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Apple, M. (1985). Education and power. London: ARK Paperbacks. Barth, R. (1991). Improving schools from within: Teachers, parents, and principals can make the difference. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Berry, B., and Ginsburg, R. (1989). Creating lead teachers: From policy to implementation. Phi Delta Kappan, 77(8), 616-622. Bogotch, I., Miron, L. F., and Garvin, J. (1993). Meeting national goals through community involvement: A case study. Louisiana Educational Research Journal, 19 (1), 63-69. Bogotch, I., Murry, and Mir6n, L. F. (1996). Boyd, W. L. (1989). What makes ghetto schools work or not work. Paper presented to the conference on The Truly Disadvantaged. Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. Bredo, E. (1989), Ideological dichotomies and practical realities in educational reform. Urban Review, 21(3), 127-144. Cherryholmes, C. (1988). Power and criticism. New York: Teachers College Press. Children's Defense Fund. (1992). Child poverty data report. Washington, DC: Children's Defense Fund. Children's Defense Fund. (1994). Wasting America's future. Boston: Beacon Press. Chubb, J., and Moe, T. (1991). Politics, markets and schools. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Cibulka, J., Reed, J., and Wong, K. (Eds.). (1992). The politics of education in the United States. London: The Palmer Press. Clune, W. (1989). The implementation and effects of high school graduation: First steps toward curricula reform. Policy Briefs. Rutgers, NJ: Center for Policy Research in Education. Comer, J. P. (1980). School power. New York: Free Press. The Council of the Great City Schools. (1992). National urban education goals: Baseline indicators, 1990-1991. Crowson, R. (1992). School community relations under reform. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan. Crowson, R., and Boyd, W. (1992). Urban schools as organizations: Political perspectives. In J. Cibulka, R. Reed, and K. Wong (Eds.), The politics of urban education in the United States (pp. 87-105). London: The Palmer Press. Davidson, B. (1992). Building school capacity to accelerate learning. Unpublished dissertation. University of New Orleans. Davis, B., and McCaul, E. (1991). The emerging crisis: Current and projected status of children in the United States. Orono: Institute for the Study of At-risk Students, University of Maine. Fine, M. (1990). Wrapped too tight. Buffalo, NY: State University of New York Press. First, P. F., and Miron, L. F. (1991). The social construction of adequacy. Journal of Law and Education, 20(4), 421-444. Freedman, S. G. (1990). Small victories: The real world of a teacher, her students, and their high school. New York: Harper and Row. Garibaldi, A., et al. (1988). The black male in New Orleans: A moral and civic imperative. Monograph. New Orleans: Orleans Parish Schools. Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

IMPLEMENTING SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING IN THE INNER CITY

165

Giroux, H. A. (1983). Theory and resistance in education: A pedagogy for the opposition. Boston: Bergin and Harvey. Harvard Principals' Center Summer Training on School Leadership. (1992). Haymes, S. N. (1995). Race, culture and the city: A pedagogy for black urban struggle. Albany: State University of New York Press. Hill, P. T., and Bonan, J. (1991). Decentralization and accountability in public education. Santa Monica: Rand Corp. R-4066. Hopfenberg, W., Levin, H., and Associates. (1993). Accelerated schools resource guide. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Hugg, P., and Mir6n, L. F. (1991). A hybrid theory of education reform. Loyola Law Review. 36(4), 937-980. Jacob, J. E. (1988). Black women and AIDS: Is knowledge enough? Paper presented at the American Psychological Association annual meeting, Atlanta. Jencks, C. (1972). Inequality. New York: Basic Books. Katz, M. B. (1971). Class, bureaucracy and schools. The illusion of educational change in America. New York: Praeger. Kozol, J. (1991). Savage inequalities. New York: Crown Press. Lemann, N. (1990). The promised land. New York: Knopf. Levin, H. L. (1988). Accelerated schools for at-risk students. CPRE Research Series RR-010. Stanford, CA: Center for Policy Research in Education, Stanford University. Levin, H. L. (1990). Address before the participants of the summer training at the University of New Orleans Satellite Center, New Orleans, August. Maeroff, G. (1988). Withered hopes, stillborn dreams: The dismal panorama of urban schools." Phi Delta Kappan. May, 633-638. McLaren, P. (1989). Life in schools. New York: Longman. Meeting of the Harvard Principal's Center. (1992). Cambridge, MA, Summer. Minutes of the Metropolitan Area Committee. Workshop on self-governance. (1990). New Orleans, November. Mir6n, L. F. (1990). Portables and school reform: The urban context. Educational Facility Planner, 28(3), 11-13. Mir6n, L. F. (1992). Corporate ideology and the politics of entrepreneurism in New Orleans. Antipode, 24(4), 263-288. Miron, L. F. (1996). The social construction of urban education: Situating the crisis. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton. Mirdn, L. F., and Brooks, C. (1993). Great expectations: A critical analysis of the lessons of a grassroots movement to reform an urban school board. International Journal of School Reform, 2(3), 242-248. Mir6n, L. F., and Elliott, R. J., (1990). The moral exercise of power: Post-structural implications for school administration. Review Journal of Philosophy and Social Science, 16(1), 31-42. Mir6n, L. F., and Elliott, R. J. (1994). Moral leadership in a post structural era. In S. Maxcy (Ed.), Postmodern school leadership: Meeting the crisis in educational administration. Westport, CT: Praeger. Miron, L. F., and Wimpelberg, R. (1989). A typology of school-business partnerships. Administrators Notebook, 33(1), 1-4. National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983). A nation at risk: The imperative for educational reform. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Osborne, D., and Gaebler, T. (1992). Reinventing government. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. Popkewitz, T. (1991). A political sociology of educational reform. New York: Teachers College Press. Reed, A. (1988). The black urban regime: Structural origins and constraints. Comparative Urban and Community Research, J, 138-189.

166

THE URBAN REVIEW

Ryan, T. (1994). Study of New Orleans City Revenues. New Orleans City Council. Sarason, S. (1982). The culture of the school and the problem of change. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Sarason, S. (1990). The predictable failure of educational reform. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Sarason, S. (1995). Parental Involvement and the political principle. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. (1989). A look at school-based management, Insights,(6), 1-4. St. John, E., and Griffith, A. (1995). Reinterpreting government mandate: A crucial factor in the accelerated schools project. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, April. St. John, E., Miron, L. F., and Davidson, B. (1992). Teacher inquiry and school transformation: An examination of exemplary schools. Louisiana Social Studies Journal, 24(1), 9-16. Tyack, D. (1974). The one best system. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Tyack, D. (1994). The invisible hand of ideology. In Hannaway, J. and Carnoy, M. (eds.), Decentralization and school improvement: Can we fulfill the promise? (pp. 1-34). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1995). Current population reports, Series P60-194, poverty in the United States. Washington, DC. U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1996). Statistical abstract of the United States (116th ed.). Washington, DC. Wilson, W. J. (1987). The truly disadvantaged. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.