Putting It All Together, Part 2
Ties That Bind

Two themes—tethering learners to broader goals, and tying discrete programs together—are central to schoolwide reform. Both themes are about making connections: connecting disadvantaged kids to the big picture of high standards and lofty learning goals; and connecting the myriad programs for needy kids to each other and to the mainstream. This emphasis on connections is a radical shift—revolutionary, some say—in the delivery of services to disadvantaged schoolchildren. The old approach to Title I (known as Chapter 1 until 1994) and the other compensatory education programs was "categorical"—that is, kids were assigned to a category of disadvantage (poor, migrant, language minority, American Indian) and were served in a separate setting, often cut off from the rest of their classmates.

This approach, however, has been judged a failure. A national study of Title I released in 1994 painted a dismal picture. Poor children still lagged woefully far behind their more affluent peers. Describing the traditional practice of pulling kids out for drill and practice in basic skills as "flawed" and "working on the margins," the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) called for a shift toward the whole-school approach. Congress complied.

Before 1994, only schools with at least 75 percent poor students could blend money and resources to serve all kids. After the 1994 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, schools with 50 percent poor students were allowed to merge funds and programs schoolwide. Although the schoolwide approach has been around since 1978, it wasn't until the 1994 law took effect that huge numbers of schools began to grab the option. From just over 3,000 schoolwides in 1993-94, the number swelled more than fivefold in only four years—to 17,000, according to Education Week. That's a sizable chunk of the 22,000 eligible schools nationwide.

Already, kids appear to be benefitting from the shift. The latest national study of Title I, released this year, shows an upswing in reading and math scores in the highest-poverty schools. And more low-income students are meeting district or state standards in a number of large, urban districts.

Schools are able to make these gains, experts say, because whole-school reform replaces rigidity and fragmentation with flexibility and coordination. The OESE spells out the ways schoolwide approaches can help high-poverty schools become high-achieving schools:

• Accelerate the curriculum so it moves all students toward achieving high standards
• Encourage collaboration and planning among regular classroom teachers, administrators, specialists, and support staff
• Integrate and streamline pupil services, including diagnostic, counseling, and health services
• Increase the intensity and flexibility of instruction
• Coordinate budgets from multiple sources
• Consolidate and tailor staff development to a school's needs
• Create options for extending students' learning time by lengthening the school day or year and expanding early childhood programs
• Involve parents more centrally in planning, decisionmaking, and instructional support roles
• Encourage innovation and new ideas

"A new world has opened up for high-poverty schools" since 1994, Olatokunbo Fashola and Robert Slavin of Johns Hopkins University wrote in Phi Delta Kappan magazine last year. "There is no turning back to the policies of the past."

Mingling pots of money once reserved for narrow populations or choppy programs greatly enhances schools' options and opportunities. In a 1996 issue of Improving America's Schools: A Newsletter on Issues of School Reform published online, the OESE explains that the 1994 reauthorization "enables schoolwide programs to use all available funding sources—federal, state, and local—to reorganize a school's education program to meet the needs of its entire student body." At Eleanor Roosevelt, for instance, the well-stocked Title I Reading Room is open to everyone. Regular teachers and language-minority assistants have access, along with Title I assistants, to hundreds of titles that are conveniently cataloged online by the themes (such as "imagination," "senses," "environment," "community") that frame the school's curriculum.

In reinventing itself, Roosevelt School reformed and realigned the half-dozen vital organs of the educational organism: instruction, curriculum, classroom management, assessment, professional development, and governance. Slavin, the developer of the schoolwide reform model Success for All, emphasized the drastic nature of the schoolwide process by likening it to a "heart-lung transplant" in an interview with Education Week last year. Roosevelt's staff took on the huge task willingly. With strong leadership and a spirit of unity, they were prepared to stay the course. The result perfectly mirrors the profile of a good schoolwide project laid out by the Education Department, with its:

• Inclusive planning process, with an academic focus at the core of the plan
• Comprehensive, sustained professional development
• Cultural inclusiveness
• High value placed on parent and community involvement
• Use of a variety of assessment tools to focus on students' progress

Not all school staffs, however, are ready for the long-term planning and deep-seated changes schoolwide reform requires. "Strategies cannot be put in place when school administrators and/or faculty are reluctant to change, have no or little expectations that anything will happen, or are poorly managed either at the school or classroom level," notes Samuel Stringfield of Johns Hopkins University in a federal study of Title I programs.

Recognizing the administrative, pedagogical, and staffing obstacles schools face when confronted with the awesome task of remaking themselves, the Education Department recently gave them a new avenue for going schoolwide. The Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration program—known in reform circles as CSRD—is a more prescriptive approach to schoolwide reform. That is, it spells out more precisely the components of a good program (see sidebar), and makes schools compete for the $150 million it's parceling out. And, while not required, prepackaged, research-based models are encouraged. These "brand-name" models like Success for All are designed, evaluated, and marketed by universities, nonprofit R&D groups, or for-profit businesses.

The big plus of CSRD is that schools aren't faced with designing a program from scratch.

"The advantages of adopting these 'off-the-shelf' instructional models are clear," write Fashola and Slavin in Kappan. "School staffs need not reinvent the wheel."

Typically, when a school commits to using a comprehensive model, it buys materials and training from the developer, and gets access to networks of other users. The $50,000 CSRD grants cover only some of the start-up costs, warns Elizabeth Hertling in an ERIC Digest, Implementing Whole-School Reform, published in July. First-year expenses, she reports, can range from a low of about $100,000 to a high hovering around the half-million dollar mark.

It's not cheap. Nor is it easy. Even with an off-the-shelf model, schoolwide reform is no quick fix. "What is a mistake," says Stringfield, "is to think you can buy one of them and plug it in."

A 1998 study by the RAND Corporation found that two years after adopting a whole-school model, only about half the schools studied were fully implementing the core elements of the program. Noting that brand-name packages have bagged big academic gains for some schools, Hertling sounds a note of caution. The "catch" in using external models, she says, is using them well. "The designs must be well implemented," she stresses. "That is where many schools and districts have run into problems."

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