A Context for Change

Type: Research
Author(s): Richard Clark, Janet Miller, Vicky Murray
Ordering Information

Introduction

We had come to Crossroads High School for our third visit as part of the School Change Study. On the third day the study team was at the school, it snowed. The snow blanket covered the dust, dirt, and flaws of the terrain. As the morning sun illuminated the landscape, Crossroads High School was clearly visible against the snow-covered landscape on that chilly morning. Trees stood statuesquely along the street edge and in front of the adobe houses set back from the roads.

Later that day, the snow began to melt. Cars that drove through the street turned what was once white and fluffy, dirty-brown and wet. The trees dropped snow from their limbs in clumps, and this snow, too, was soon crushed under car tires or otherwise turned into slush and then pools of dirty water. Nature's appearance had significantly altered. By the end of our visit, our views of the school's progress in its struggle to change had also undergone a change.

The five-day visit which serves as the primary source for this snapshot occurred in November 1992, in the second year of our study. As we do each time we visit a school as part of the School Change Study, we produced a "snapshot" of our third visit to Crossroads. The snapshot includes "close-ups" of classroom visits as well as conversations with people in the school community--teachers, students, administrators, and parents. Additional data were obtained from a review of local newspaper articles, journals written by students and teachers at Crossroads, and documents concerning the school provided by staff at Crossroads and the school district. Judy Bray of the Education Commission of the States provided additional information concerning the state and district context for the school, as a result of her interviews and document reviews conducted during November and December 1992.

Before we share the impressions gathered during this visit to Crossroads, we need to remind you of why we selected Crossroads as the pseudonym for this high school.

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Poised at a Crossroads

Created four years ago to be an innovative school, Crossroads has some unique features. One of these is its Pathways program, which was designed to focus on themes or essential questions. Pathways features a heterogeneously grouped language arts-social studies block for all ninth- through eleventh-graders. Another innovative feature of Crossroads is its Governing Council. Led by a teacher-chair, the Council members, which include students, teachers, a parent, and administrators, share in making certain critical decisions for the school.

In addition, since its creation Crossroads has been involved in Re:Learning, a partnership between the Coalition of Essential Schools and the Education Commission for the States. Through Re:Learning, Crossroads has received funding and support for school change. As an Essential school, Crossroads has committed itself to change using the nine Common Principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools. (See Appendix B for a list of the Principles.) In its first years, Crossroads and its innovations were being discussed widely throughout the state by enthusiastic members of the faculty.

In its short history, however, Crossroads has faced many difficult challenges. One of these has been the many changes that have buffeted the central and local administration. The superintendent, whose vision was reflected in the new school, died, and the district has since had two other superintendents. During the first year of our study, a new principal took over and changes continued in the assistant principalship. Leadership in the faculty changed as well. Conflicts between groups within the faculty reflected the stress associated with the effort to assemble an innovative school.

At the conclusion of our first visit, we suggested that the school appeared to be poised at a crossroads, ready to continue toward realizing its initial vision as an innovative school or to fall back into the pattern common to most of the nation's comprehensive high schools. After our second visit, we reported a coalescing of faculty and administration around a new tardy policy, but commented on the lack of information-driven inquiry into the curriculum and instructional practices of the school. We questioned whether the road chosen was going to lead the school to accomplish its own written philosophy, one which paraphrased the nine Common Principles.

When we arrived for our third visit, students and teachers with whom we had become acquainted during earlier visits greeted us with their customary warmth. As we began our next round of inquiry, we found a few changes which, like the new snow's effect on the landscape, had altered the school. Immediately we were aware of the thirteen new faculty members. We were assured that during the hiring process, these new teachers had been asked to assess whether their beliefs were consistent with the nine Common Principles reflected in the school's philosophy. (Later, new teachers suggested that this question was not asked or only asked in passing, but that gets ahead of our story.) Additional optimism was evident as teachers told us about the construction of a new wing at the school which would provide science teachers as well as other teachers with facilities that would engage students as workers.

In our continuing effort to understand the whole school, we were determined to concentrate on the students and on what happens to them in their classrooms. Toward that end, each of the three members of our team observed a minimum of thirteen classroom sessions in the five days we were there. From these observations and the interviews we had with individuals and groups of teachers and students, we have constructed the descriptions which follow.

After we share a day of real classes through the eyes of two fictional students, we will listen to a conversation between a group of students about their school week. Then, we will turn our attention to the events in the school, district, and state, which reveal the difficulties the school is experiencing in obtaining the supportive context needed to strengthen it on its road to becoming an Essential school.

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Classroom Close-ups

Danny Rodriguez and Mary Espinoza meet at the foot of the stairs leading up to the media resource center (MRC). Danny laughingly warns Mary that she better hurry or she will get caught up in the hall sweep that had been initiated the previous spring to catch students who are tardy. Mary smiles and says, "That's no big deal; they'll just send you to Choices [the student disciplinary management program] and everyone knows you have a ball there."

"But," Danny protests, "I hear they are going to make us clean up trash if we are sent there."

"No," Mary replies, "the Governing Council is just talking about it; they will never decide what they are going to do."

Danny nods and says, "Well, I've got to run. Ms. Knorr is my Pathways teacher first period and she insists that we get to class on time."

As Mary turns away she says, "Yeah, and I have to get to my math class, but Ms. Donald doesn't really make a fuss if we come in late."

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Danny's Pathways Class

Danny moves rapidly through the maze of students toward his classroom. The noise coming from the room is more than the usual Monday morning chatter of students sharing their weekend experiences. Immediately next to his room, construction workers are busily hammering away as they rush to close in the addition they are putting on the school before winter sets in.

There are seventeen students in the room--eleven girls and six boys--as the class begins. The classroom is arranged in an unusual fashion, with a wide aisle down the middle of the room and students facing each other in three rows of desks on each side of that aisle.

As Danny enters the classroom, Ms. Knorr hands him his report card, and the usual process of comparing notes begins among the students.

"What'd ya get?"

"4.0."

"Yeah, sure you did."

"I got a 3.0 and my parents are really going to be mad."

"My parents wouldn't believe it if I got a 3.0."

The students' conversation is interrupted by the public address system's direction to stand for the salute. A few students heed the PA announcement and mutter the Pledge of Allegiance. When that is over, few pay any attention as a student reads the morning bulletin that announces visits of college representatives and tells them about upcoming testing.

Danny looks at the chalkboard at the front of the room where, as usual, the week's and day's assignments are listed. "Read pages 37-50. Do sections 1-4. Do main ideas at the end of each section. Continue conference on essays." He goes with other students to get his history textbook from the bookcase at one end of the room. Ms. Knorr asks, "Does everyone have a textbook now? Does anyone have questions on what they are supposed to be doing?" When Luiz says, "Yeah," Ms. Knorr reads the assignment from the board.

Danny asks, "Are we supposed to do others?" Correctly guessing that he is asking about other chapter-end activities, Ms. Knorr replies, "Just the main ideas. At the end of the day I will check to see if you have the work done."

About this time a student arrives late. Ms. Knorr asks, "Were you helping her?" The student says, "Yeah." Apparently satisfied enough with this brief answer that she doesn't need to send the student to Choices, Ms. Knorr nods, turns, and writes on the board, "Kind of work, who is doing it, what things make a difference with work?" She then says, "These are the issues we will be discussing tomorrow. When you are done with that, you may continue to work on your essay rewrites."

Since there are not enough books, Danny goes to the adjacent classroom and picks up some extra ones for the class to use. As the students settle down and begin to read from The Americans, their history text copyrighted in 1992, Ms. Knorr calls one of the students to a table in the back of the classroom to begin conferring about his essay. At this point, all of the students except two are working industriously. Hank, one of these two, picks up his book and begins reading as Ms. Knorr reminds him what the assignment is.

As Danny looks at the questions at the end of the assignment and begins reading for information to answer them, words from Ms. Knorr's conference filter through. "That's the thesis statement. . . .Show us what you are talking about. . . .Talk specifically."

Danny smiles as he notices that Hank has a book in front of his face to hide the fact he is talking to the girl behind him.

The conference continues. "See how you need to use evidence? . . . I don't know what you mean. . . .I like your spelling and sentence structure." As Ms. Knorr finishes the conference with this student, she smiles at him and calls on the next one, saying, "What I want you to do is read this to me."

Again she asks the question, "Is that your thesis statement?" "The boy responds, "Yeah," and continues to read until Ms. Knorr stops him and says, "This isn't a complete statement." At this point the teacher next door enters the room to check with Ms. Knorr about what the students in her class should be doing. Ms. Knorr reminds Ms. Nueva that the rewrites of the student essays will be due on Wednesday. Ms. Nueva nods and returns to her room.

Ms. Knorr continues the conference by discussing the content of the boy's theme in relation to the way it is organized. "If you could capture that in the introduction and make the conclusion stronger--it just kind of ended." Paraphrasing some of what he says, she asks him, "Is that what you were trying to say? Could you use this [she points to a spot in the theme] as part of the prejudice thing?" She then says, "Watch the capitals and commas."

He smiles and says, "OK."

Before she calls another student to the conference table, Ms. Knorr moves around the classroom observing their work. Danny and the others are busy reading about the settling of Virginia and the bringing of slaves to this country. Ms. Knorr notes that one boy appears to be reading his text but has written nothing. One girl is on page 43; one boy is on 38. Most of the questions the students are writing about call for them to find information rather than to draw conclusions.

As she calls another student to a conference, she warns Hank, who has sharpened his pencil for the third time, that he is going to have trouble finishing. She moves another boy to a different seat and responds to a question a girl has asked her.

Now, fifteen minutes into the class, she begins the conference with the third student. Again, Danny hears her ask a student to show the thesis statement. As Danny moves rapidly ahead with his work, he notices that Hank is entertaining a girl with his pencil. A couple of girls in the corner are whispering. Ms. Knorr leaves her conference and moves to these girls. As she does so, one of them asks a question. Then Ms. Knorr is interrupted as the telephone rings. She answers and says, "I don't have any. I've used mine all up."

Returning to the conference, Ms. Knorr says, "You are getting too many metaphors here." She then asks, "When the Irish first came, they were discriminated against because of what?" The boy answers, "Religion." As Ms. Knorr works with the boy on the paper, she smiles as she draws out an idea from him and says, "That's fine; you just need to be clear about it."

As the bell rings, indicating the end of the first half of this Pathway class, Danny has read all the way to page 48. As Ms. Knorr looks at the open books, she notes that some are on pages 41 and 44. She then returns and continues her conference as the other students leave with their books open at the desks, where they will return to them when the next period starts. She concludes her conference with the boy, telling him, "You really did a fabulous job. Take a break and come back." During the second period, Danny and his fellow students will continue working on the questions in their history text and conferring with Ms. Knorr.

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Mary's Math Class

While Danny is in Pathways, Mary is in her math class with Ms. Donald. As Mary enters the portable classroom across the parking lot from the main building, students are sitting at their desks, which are in groups of four or five. Mary joins her group, laughing and joking with the two other girls and boys in it. There are sixteen students in Ms. Donald's class today. As usual, the atmosphere is relaxed (Mary has heard some teachers say that Ms. Donald classrooms are too relaxed).

As the class begins, Ms. Donald asks for volunteers to do homework problems on the chalkboard. Volunteering, Mary works at the board, talking out loud to herself. Two of the members of her group coach her from their seats. Ms. Donald circulates around the portable room, with its orange indoor-outdoor carpeting and orange window blinds, checking with students on their homework. There are students from each group working on the problems at the board. As Ms. Donald approaches a boy in the room who is having trouble reducing a fraction to its lowest common denominator, she patiently spends time with him by coaching him at the board, walking him through the calculations step-by-step. Mary is still working on her problem, and in the corner of the room, two boys are playing chess.

Going over to Mary, Ms. Donald sits on a desk nearby and watches Mary talk herself through the problem. When a girl calls Ms. Donald over from the other side of the room, she immediately goes to answer the question, then, returning to Mary, she jokes with her about how much space her writing is taking on the board. Mary smiles, apparently pleased at the attention. Another student at another board calls for Ms. Donald to check his problem, and Ms. Donald immediately goes over to him.

While all this is occurring, Mary's friend is sitting at Ms. Donald's desk, working at the computer. Other students are talking quietly or are working on problems at their desks. A girl asks Ms. Donald if problem number eighteen on the board looks right. Ms. Donald sits on her desk in front of the board to look it over. Meanwhile, Mary is still working on her problem. One of the boys in her group is coaching her intensely now. Mary seems to be working with increased concentration on the problem.

Mary turns to the others in her group and says, "We have a test tomorrow, right?" She then says, "I guess we need to keep practicing." One of the girls in her group continues to coach her, explaining why she should do certain steps in the problem. Finally, with considerable assistance from the other students and from the teacher, she has the right answer. Meanwhile, Ms. Donald continues to banter with Shawn. When Ms. Donald asks Shawn about drama activities, she responds that they are about to produce Into the Woods.

At this point, another girl asks Ms. Donald about a particular part of Mary's problem. Ms. Donald helps her see how to do that particular calculation and then stops and looks over her homework. When this process is finished, Mary turns to the girl and says, "I really never believed that everybody in the class would do the homework the way we are all doing it. Ms. Donald sure gets us to do it without making a big fuss about it."

After helping another boy with a problem, Ms. Donald returns to Mary and asks who helped her solve the problem. She then takes out her grade book, giving credit to the girls and the boy who assisted Mary. She moves around the room, making similar contacts with other groups and writing her findings in her grade book. As the students work, most are using calculators and many exchange social comments, creating a background of chatter. Two boys who had been playing chess end their game and join Mary's friend at the computer.

Ms. Donald reminds the students of their quiz tomorrow, which is to be three problems of the kind they have worked on today. Mary turns and asks, "How can I do three of these problems when one has taken most of us at least half an hour to do today?" There is no response from Ms. Donald.

As the class period ends, Mary turns to her friend and says, "I love that class. It is so much fun!" One speculates that her enthusiasm stems from her active engagement in the work of learning math.

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Mary's Science Class

Walking through the hallways, Mary stops to purchase a chocolate-covered doughnut from the card table outside the MRC and then, eating and talking, goes to the science wing at the back of the building. As she enters the room, she notices the week's activities outlined on the front board:

Monday--conceptual models, What's matter? Tuesday--What is matter? Wednesday--Videos--Elements in periodic chart Thursday--Conceptual models, Matter Friday--Edit essay, "What is science?" Today there are about seventeen other students present. Most of the students in the class are ninth-and tenth-graders who are taking the class for physical science credit. The room is decorated with mobiles hanging from the ceiling, one of which is a model of a bone cell. There are also a number of student-made mobiles relating to various aspects of science.

Since this is the day students have received their report cards, Ms. Hansler begins by talking about what went into the grades she gave them. She uses a large computer sheet as a reference point as she talks about the grades. During this conversation, the boy at the back lab table jumps up to talk with other boys at the next table. A girl at the front of the room, looking into her little purse mirror, is putting on make-up, and another boy is leaning his head on the table.

Ms. Hansler proceeds to talk about conceptual models. She reminds the students that they have been working on concrete models and points out that now they are moving into conceptual models and will concentrate on models in the universe. She also announces that she will not be in class on Wednesday because of a science meeting concerning district curriculum.

Next, Ms. Hansler asks the students to get out their notebooks. Mary and the others go to the shelf at the side of the room and get standard composition notebooks, which are stored there between class sessions.

The students begin to write their own definition in response to the question, "What is matter?" Ms. Hansler reminds them that the purpose of this is "so they can go back in nine weeks and see how much they have learned about matter from this initial point."

Mary and most of the other students write busily in their journals. After a while, Ms. Hansler stops them and begins the discussion of conceptual models:

It's more of an idea, not a model that you can hold in your hand like a model of a car. We saw Newton's model--we put different play people into a car and saw what happened when big and little people were in the car in terms of how far the people went when the car stopped. The bigger the car you have, the bigger the force you need to get it moving and keep it going.

We have concepts that we live with every day. Big cars have big engines because of mass--conceptual models of motion affect this. The periodic chart is another conceptual model. The continental drift is another conceptual model that has been accepted--we can't see the plates move, but we can understand the San Andreas fault because of this model. They can measure the movement, but we can't actually see it happening beneath the earth. So we have conceptual models to explain things we can't see or that are too big for us to see.

As Ms. Hansler concludes her remarks, Mary and the students in her small group slowly begin the next phase of the class. Ms. Hansler tells them that while working in small groups for about twenty minutes, they are to list everything they can observe about the periodic chart. She asks them to pick recorders who will report to the class at large:

One person make an observation about the chart and everyone writes it down. I will go around the group and give everyone a chance to say one observation that their group has made. So, this will be easy in the beginning. It's when you go around the group more and more times that it gets hard to see another thing to add to the list.

While Mary and her fellow students work, Ms. Hansler circulates among the groups, encouraging students and answering questions. Students are busily looking at the chart and making observations.

As the students begin to run out of observations, Ms. Hansler moves to the front of the room and says, "All right, we are just about ready." She then tells each recorder to speak slowly. Waiting a minute to make sure she has everyone's attention, Ms. Hansler reminds students to jot down observations from other groups which they have not recorded themselves. A boy at Mary's table reports several items, including naming the number of elements, atomic number, and atomic weight. From the next group, a boy gives a more extensive report. Most of the students in the class listen, but some make gestures and faces at each other as they listen to the report.

When Ms. Hansler asks, "Do you now have a better understanding of what matter is?" most answer, "No." But then, when Ms. Hansler begins to question them about what they have just reported, they are able to give her information about the periodic chart. "So," she says, "you are beginning to gather information about this chart, even though you might not have a total idea of the conceptual model that frames all this."

Class ends as the bell sounds. Students gather their belongings and exit, talking quietly with each other.

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Mary's Computer Class

Following science, Mary heads to her computer class. It is totally individualized, and there are ten things going on at once. At least two students work cooperatively at a computer station on each task, and kids ask each other for help. As Mary works, Ms. Eisley encourages her, saying, "Good job!" and pats her on the shoulder.

The students encourage each other with "I appreciate that" and "Thank you very much."

When one student utters an expletive, Ms. Eisley says, "I don't want to hear that." He believes he has lost his data. The teacher says quickly, "Don't touch the computer; you might be able to get it back," and she goes over to help him.

When a new student comes into the classroom, Ms. Eisley says, "What are we going to do, Austin?"

He says, "I don't know."

"Come on up here and let's make a plan. What do you know about word processing?"

Austin mutters something under his breath.

Ms. Eisley smiles and says,

Is that all you know? Would you like to do more? Let's give you a practice one. I just received this letter in the mail, and I want you to type this, and I want it to look as close to this as possible. Let's see how you do with this. That will give you a starting point.

The bell rings. About twelve of the twenty-one students in the class are still working, including Mary, who is sorting and typing comments from a teacher workshop held the previous Friday. Finally, the machines are turned off and the students head out of the room.

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Danny's Geometry class

While Mary has been learning about computers, Danny has been hard at work in his geometry class. The week's assignments are posted on the board as he enters the room.

Monday: page 176-7 #1-13 Tuesday: page 182 #1-7 Wednesday: page 186 #1-31, Thursday: review Friday: test Mr. Holden uses a variety of techniques to engage Danny and the twenty-four others present. They follow him closely and respond as he calls on them to learn the definitions necessary to work with parallel lines and angles associated with them. Making his usual effort to engage as many of the students as he can, Mr. Holden calls on more girls than boys. As the class comes to a close, Mr. Holden reminds the students to keep in mind the difference between a postulate and a theorem as they do the homework for the day.

Danny leaves his class and catches up with Mary. They head out to the nearby shopping center for lunch, joining the parade of 4X4's and other vehicles that move slowly past the campus security guard onto the main road, away from campus.

Returning from lunch, they again wheel past the security guard, park in the lot, and head off for the remainder of their classes. Mary remarks, "More students seem to get sent to Choices for being tardy to the class right after lunch than any at any other time during the day."

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Danny's Drama Class

Danny bounces into the auditorium, where he and others will soon be working on the scenery for the next student show. As Mr. Parks takes attendance, he calls students to assemble in the front rows. There he chats with them about the production of The Glass Menagerie, which many of the students attended at the local repertory theater that afternoon.

Mr. Parks comments that he is very unhappy because while he had reserved sixty-five tickets, only forty students showed up: "I had ordered two buses when I only needed one. Not only am I disappointed with those who didn't attend, but I am embarrassed because this could strain my relationship with the theater company."

He then describes a little of what the students who missed the play would have seen and asks the students for suggestions as to how he can alleviate this continuing problem of students' promising to attend but not bringing in the parent permission slips or not showing up at the last minute.

Danny suggests that he could hold tight to his permission slip deadline. Another student seconds Danny's proposal, saying, "You know you never enforce what you say you are going to do."

This makes the teacher a little defensive. He explains the many details that go into the planning of a field trip such as this one, including the commitment he makes to the theater and the professional obligation that he feels to support its work. Another student suggests that he set a limit on how many can go and then make it first-come-first-serve according to who turns in their permission slips before the cut-off. Responding positively to this suggestion, Mr. Parks comments that this may be a strategy he will try in the near future.

While this conversation is going on, the rest of the students, relaxed but paying careful attention to the teacher, are lounging against the stage stairs and sitting in various rows throughout the auditorium.

Finishing his conversation about the play, Mr. Parks begins assigning students to various tasks related to the upcoming student production, including ticket and program design, practicing of lines, and organizing advertising materials for the program.

He directs the remainder of the students, including Danny, to help him construct the sets. Because a dance company will be using the auditorium during the weekend, the students must complete the sets before the dancers arrive and prevent their continued working.

With the other students, Danny ascends the stage to begin the construction effort. He chats with those with whom he is working and with Mr. Parks throughout the remainder of the class. He enjoys his work in drama and the opportunities it provides him to engage in activities that are creative and for which he is given considerable responsibility by his teacher.

Clearly, the students have a great deal of respect for Mr. Parks. Perhaps this respect is generated in part by the real give-and-take of conversations, like the preceding one, which students believe they can have with him.

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Mary's Choral Class

While Danny has been in drama, Mary has also been in a fine arts class. She has joined twenty-seven other girls in chorus, a class that is all girls this year because no boys signed up for it.

While Mr. Duke calls roll, he asks one of the girls how her ill mother is doing. He passes out music to several of the girls who had been absent the previous day and asks, "How many need 'Sound the Trumpet'?" This question elicits a number of hands. Mr. Duke says, "Ladies, we are going to do this on the Christmas program. I know you don't like it."

A girl sitting next to Mary asks, "What does the 'Scarborough Fair' have to do with Christmas?"

Mr. Duke responds, "Nothing, but we are not limiting our Christmas program to just Christmas. I know you don't like it. Okay, let's warm up. Altos, a low G today. Stop your yapping and let's get started."

Mr. Duke has the students stand as they warm-up. He reminds them to stand up straight. As they continue their warm-ups, he warns them that they are losing the "ahhh" quality and says, "I don't care if it hurts you; open your mouth. Control that upper note." Then he asks them to change to the o vowel sound.

As the girls go flat on a high note, Duke stops the warm-ups. He goes to the piano and tells the girls that they did two-and-a-third octaves--"not two-and-a-half, but pretty good."

Going over to the piano, he asks the girls, "When does the accompanist play and when not?"

After talking through the words to "Scarborough Fair," he asks the altos if they have any questions. He adds, "What gives you the hardest time?"

Mary says, "Right where it says 'between the salt waters.'"

Picking up on that comment, Duke rehearses the altos on that section and warns them, "Don't forget to break after the word water." He then gives each section its opening note and says, "Can we all sing? Sit up straight."

The session continues. As the girls sing, Mr. Duke alternatively cajoles, praises, and criticizes. When they lose the beat, he stops them and starts over. He warns, "Some of the bad notes can be hidden by the piano, but we shouldn't count on it." He stops them and asks, "How do you spell work? What is the last letter?"

He stops them again as they move to an a cappella part, saying, "There is no spirit here. You're better than that." He keeps pushing the students. Sally asks, "Why are you pushing me?" Mr. Duke responds, "You are in [Music] Theory. We are working on the same thing there: sight-reading." Sally nods her acceptance of this explanation.

As they finish a section of a song, Mr. Duke goes to the piano to show how far off key they have become. Mary asks, "How did we get so far off key?" Mr. Duke responds, "Probably because of posture and breathing. Altos are the ones getting off. How many of you read notes? What does chromatic mean?"

To this latest query Sally responds, "Goes up in half steps."

Mr. Duke brings the altos to the piano. He has each student play the section in turn. He assures them that they will be able to sing this because they can play it. "Everyone gets a free piano lesson here today." With the piano lesson over, he says, "Now sing it." This time when they are finished they are all on key.

And so the class goes. He picks up the music from one song and passes out another one. He asks Terri if she needs to lie down. Earlier he had asked her if she had a problem standing up during the warm-up session. She is recovering from an injury and obviously is having a problem keeping up with the activity in the class.

They turn their rehearsal to more traditional Christmas music. As they come to the end of one of the songs, he smiles and tells them to remember that when they first got that particular piece, it took them three days to learn one page. The chorus responds with obvious pleasure at themselves and the way they are handling this complex piece of music.

The class ends with Mr. Duke's chatting informally with several of the girls. As the bell rings, Mary and several of her friends from the alto section head off to the next class.

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Mary's Pathways Class

In Mary's Pathways class with Mr. Allen, the desks are arranged in groups of four or five. Today, fourteen of the nineteen students in the class are present. Included in the class is a hearing-impaired student who has an interpreter with her. Starting class on time, Mr. Allen begins by taking attendance and presenting an overview of the coming week's work.

Look at the schedule and write this down. Why do I ask you to write this down? In case you are absent. We will be doing The Scarlet Letter but not the whole book. We will discuss what it is about, and you will read three crucial chapters and you will view a wonderful adaptation on video. At least we will learn about it and discuss it. Today, we are working on the American dream, also tomorrow and then next week, big time. On your new syllabus, you will see that the essential question is "Work: The Key to the American Dream?"

You are already in your cooperative groups. You've been there for Indian tribes and dances, immigrant families, and now you will be workers in these groups. Tomorrow we will go over the vocabulary from The Scarlet Letter. Each of you will take a part of the words and then put them together.

Wednesday and Thursday we will go sideways and have a guest speaker from the Newberry Library in Chicago who will discuss, for those who volunteered [to attend], a lesson on Native American literature. Those of you who opted not to, will be with Ms. Berry. Part of you will have a sub because I am coordinator for a workshop. On that day you will have the video of The Scarlet Letter.

Following these opening remarks, Mary and the others in her group take out paper, pens, and pencils, and begin "to write a few things down," as Mr. Allen puts it. As the students work, Mr. Allen asks a variety of questions such as, "Do you remember Ben Franklin and that he saw people being tried for witchcraft?" "What were they doing at the river?" "Do you remember the huge Bible?" "What did they do with the Bible and scale?"

While Mr. Allen asks these questions and fills in information, the students answer just one question he poses. Then Mr. Allen says, "On the board are seven pictures. Line up and look carefully at the pictures. By tomorrow, I want you to have decided on one picture and then make a one-paragraph description of one of these pictures. I want you to do this like the shell game." He pauses and then says, "What did we do?"

The girl sitting next to Mary says, "We had seashells and we looked at them and described them the best way we could in a variety of ways."

Mr. Allen nods and says, "Yes. Was it light or heavy, smooth or rough? We turned it around in all different ways. What was the objective?"

Again the student next to Mary responds, "Descriptive writing."

Mr. Allen says, "That's what I want you to do with these worker pictures. The one that looks the easiest may be the hardest because you will have to figure out what he is doing."

Once these directions have been given, Mary and the other students go to look at the pictures. While they are looking, Mr. Allen continues to talk about how they might choose their favorite.

As all of this is taking place, Joshua has been busy talking to his neighbors, but whenever Mr. Allen speaks, Joshua interrupts to add his own observations or to ask a question. Sometimes Mr. Allen responds to what Joshua says and draws relevance from it. Other times he asks Joshua to be quiet by saying, for example, "Joshua, sit down and pay attention and then you won't have quite so many questions."

Mr. Allen reminds the students, "You will have another chance to look tomorrow at the pictures. Everybody sit down now." At this point, all the students return to their chairs. He then looks at the syllabus and talks about the weighted credit side of it: "What is a syllabus? Anybody, what's a syllabus? Look at what you have in front of you and tell me what it is."

After a few moments without a response, he continues, "It's a map telling us where we are going to go. We have five sub-questions of the essential question. Please read. What does agrarian mean? We started out as agrarian and what does this mean? And this is the Puritan ethic."

Having made this comment, Mr. Allen turns to Jackie and asks her to read number two, which she does. Then Mr. Allen asks, "When we left the agriculture and became industrial, where did people go?"

Mary volunteers, "To the cities."

Mr. Allen says, "Yes, because all of a sudden there is industry. Instead of trade and barter with neighbors we had to trade for money." He continues, "Mary, please read number three."

The process of a student's reading an item and Mr. Allen's explaining the item after it has been read continues. Finally, Mr. Allen says, "We are going to read "Ragged Dick" to give us a sense of his time. Joshua, follow along with us. Any questions?" There are no questions. Mr. Allen then says, "Write this down. A is a symbol that holds the story together. Guilt, sin, love, revenge, redemption. This story is full of symbols. This story is a parable, a short story that draws a moral lesson or illustrates a religious truth."

Looking at the chalkboard, Mary notices that the same statement is written on the board at the front of the room. The class is interrupted as the phone rings. Mr. Allen asks a student to answer it. The student does and calls him to the phone. He asks the class to look at the list while he talks on the phone. With the phone call finished, Mr. Allen returns and says, "Let me whip through the story," and proceeds to tell them the story of Esther in The Scarlet Letter. At the conclusion, he asks if there are any questions. Joshua has one. Mr. Allen says,

Joshua, I'll answer you later. That's basically the story and you should take notes as you go through this. In our groups for the American dream, make a note of what it is for you. You will write later on "How do you personally achieve it and how do you sustain it?

Mary's friend asks, "What do you mean?"

Mr. Allen replies, "Hold it."

The bell rings and he says, "This is a big week. Any comments about where you are headed and where you are going? Take the last few minutes to look at the syllabus."

Joshua says, "May I ask my question now?"

"Yes, at my desk."

The students leave.

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Danny's AP Biology Class

Ms. Hansler, who teaches Mary's physical science class, also teaches Danny's last class of the day, where he hurries now. There are six other students, all girls, in the class with Danny. As he enters the class, he reminds Ms. Hansler that he has been thinking of dropping the class. She gives him a pass to go to the counselor to check out this possibility.

Talking quietly, Ms. Hansler tells the girls about photosynthesis. She questions each student about current work in notebooks while making notes of her own concerning their progress and needs. She then asks whether there are any questions about yesterday's lab. At this point, Danny returns, carrying a folder the counselor gave him to bring to one of the girls.

Ms. Hansler mentions a lab that they might do together on Saturday. "It's not a required lab, but it could really help us with our work." They decide they will make final plans for this soon. The conversation about photosynthesis resumes. Ms. Hansler asks, "What is this equation exactly the reverse of?"

The students respond in a chorus and then write in their notebooks. As the conversation regarding the equation and process continues, Ms. Hansler observes that "scientists have never been able to make this in the ways that plants can."

As Ms. Hansler continues talking, the students take notes. Their books are open, with sections of many of the pages highlighted. Ms. Hansler stops and reviews a bit of physics in order to explain the process they are starting. She notes that this whole process is going against the second law of thermodynamics. She says, "The light process is all part of what we call the electromagnetic spectrum." Gesturing with her arms, she explains this further. She also makes numerous notes on the chalkboard as she talks, highlighting the major concepts she is discussing.

Danny watches intently and writes in his notebook, occasionally asking a question. Sometimes he asks questions that trigger ones from other students. They say to one another, "Isn't the role of the electrons amazing?" The students discuss the flow of electrons and the creation of life on the planet.

A boy comes to the room and calls Danny out. After about thirty seconds, Danny returns and another boy comes into the classroom, asking Ms. Hansler to sign a form. The discussion turns to issues about how the sun burns and about what cumulative damage it does to the skin. Danny asks, "The stronger the pigment, the more it absorbs?" Ms. Hansler continues to explain.

One of the girls comments on how amazing the properties of our eyes are that allow it to see color. This leads Ms. Hansler to explain that color-blind eyes have a structural problem with rods. This point triggers Danny to ask about black holes. "Is there such a thing as a white hole?"

Ms. Hansler admits that conceptually she understands black holes but that it is hard to understand that possibility on the earthly plane. The class continues discussing chlorophyll, holes in the ozone layer, and the effect of these holes on humans, plants, and the earth.

Regarding the ozone layer, Danny asks, "Is there anything we can do to repair the hole?"

Ms. Hansler responds, "No." Using diagrams and equations on the board, she then goes on to explain why. As the class draws to a close, Ms. Hansler summarizes the lesson of the day by reviewing photosynthesis as a process that triggers chemical reactions, Then she diagrams the structure of a leaf on the board, enlarges one leaf cell, and describes the processes going on within it. The bell rings, but no one has packed up early.

Mary and Danny have come to the end of this November day, the start of another marking period. As they head for the parking lot, they engage in animated conversation with their fellow students, as they did when their day at school began.

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Conversations

In addition to visiting classrooms, we spoke with the students, faculty, administrators, and parents to find out their feelings and ideas about Crossroads.

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Talking with the Students about classes

Skip ahead with us, if you will, to Friday of the same week. Sitting in a comfortable lounge area at one end of the MRC, Mary and Danny are talking with each other and with several other students about their classes.

Danny opens the conversation with comments about his Pathways class taught by Ms. Knorr.

I really looked forward to going outside on Wednesday and trying to find out how the pioneers were able to live off the land. Unfortunately, that was the day it snowed and the twelve of us that came to class spent our time reviewing the notes we made from the history book on Tuesday afternoon. During the last part of the period students had taken turns reading from the diary of William Bradford about the Plymouth Plantation.

During class on Thursday, Ms. Nueva had taken over from Ms. Knorr and talked with us about symbolism. She did one really interesting activity. She asked, "Can any of you think of a symbol? I'm looking at one now." She had been looking at the jacket that Mark had on. Then she asked him to model the shirt. She said, "What color is it?" It was a black shirt, and she asked, "What is the meaning of black?" I told her that black means death. Somebody else in the class said it means sadness. Ms. Nueva said. "Maybe even evil." Meanwhile, Mark was standing and displaying his T-shirt. Ms. Nueva said, "What are other symbols that are here?"

One of the kids in class said, "There are skulls and a head and a snake." Ms. Nueva asked "What do you think a skull head means? You have to be in one condition," she hinted. A student in the back of the room said, "Dead. " Ms. Nueva then asked, "What does a snake mean?" and Luke responded, "Evil."

Then Ms. Nueva asked what an example was of an early story in which a snake stood for evil, and I told her it was about Adam and Eve. Ms. Nueva asked us then if a snake is evil in all cultures. I said no. She asked, '"How about when snakes come from a basket?" And Luke said, "That's India." "What about the Aztec god?" she asked; and I couldn't believe it, but Mark actually knew the name of the Aztec god that was in the shape of a snake. "So," Ms. Nueva said, "We have two cultures where snakes are seen as wisdom."

Then she went ahead and talked about how snakes can mean wisdom because they understand what goes on below the earth, and she asked us to write this down on our notes about how Goodman Brown was going to ask three questions in this story, which were also going to be answered by symbols like the ones we had been talking about.

Mary:

I guess that's a little like what we were starting in our Pathways class when Mr. Allen had a guest lecturer. We spent an entire class with the lecturer reading a passage which had what she called "word pictures" in them and she would tell us, "Go back over the paragraph and pick out any set of words that give you the picture of his grandmother or something like that." She said that the reason she was doing this was to have us pay attention to the language being used by the Native American authors to describe and create images. I guess those are sort of like symbols. Of course the only ones of us that engaged in that conversation were the ones that decided to take part in talking with this guest lecturer. I don't know where Joshua went for that session.

Bradley:

In our Pathways class we learned that John Hancock was a smuggler, and our teacher Mr. Griffith told us that our Constitution was based on smugglers, liars, cheats, etc. He's really cool because he knows a lot.

Perry:

In Pathways we are studying the romantics and reading Greek myths. This week we got to write our own myths. Mine was about how a nerd came to be. The way I write has to do with the way I'm feeling. I included the laugh and how they dress. Now we are reading parts of the Odyssey. It's hard to understand at first, and we help each other figure it out. Now it's becoming clearer. This is a whole different experience.

Ronnie:

We didn't do too much in Pathways this week, but we sure had an interesting time around the election. I was voted by the class to be the Republican leader and we had all kinds of speech making.

The teachers were not involved. We made the decisions. We had to support how we felt. The teachers were just there if we had questions. They said to tell us to stop if they tried to get involved. The teachers made up the syllabus so they had it planned. It wasn't a class decision to have the debates or elect the leaders; we had to follow guidelines. But once we were elected we were in charge.

Our side won. It was good to hear all the sides about the issues. We were representatives of the parties and explained what the party stood for on urban policy, health care, abortion, and some other topics. I didn't do any research at all. I introduced all the groups. I researched our groups and their groups so that I could be knowledgeable about what everyone was going to say. We wanted to watch the elections very closely. I went to my friend's house because my parents were for Clinton.

Several others in the group nodded that they had really enjoyed the debate involving the Democrat, Republican, and Independent parties at election time. One student commented, "My mother couldn't get over how I would argue with her about politics. She wasn't used to me being interested in those kind of things."

Greg:

I want to tell you about my Pathways class with Ms. Geyer this week. She started by asking us to help her design how we were going to work with the research paper. When we started, she reminded us of how we had defined "a memorable learning experience." Then she told us how we were going to be working on a bunch of skills.

She had us write down the names of three heroes. Our group before included Stockdale, Magic Johnson, Bill Clinton, JFK, Madonna, and Harriet Tubman. My friend got in trouble when he told the teacher that there weren't more women on our list because "women aren't worth it--women didn't do anything ever." But I pointed out that it's because most history is written by men. We spent quite a bit of time getting our groups organized so that there were both boys and girls in the group. Then we decided that each group would pick five names per person as a starting point to developing our project on heroes. The next day, Ms. Geyer went over different ways of organizing information and covered a twelve-page handout about research papers. She told us that we would negotiate aspects of the final grade, but the rough drafts of our research papers will be read by her and one other adult, probably a parent, maybe another teacher. Then she will give us time for a revision.

We're using an evaluation sheet with ten categories, each of which gets a number of points. The main categories on which we will be graded are, "importance, accuracy, to the point, well organized, and comprehensive."

We worked in the MRC on our heroes paper on Wednesday and then spent more time on it in class on Thursday. I decided to do Patrick Henry. I don't know who he is but I'm going to do him. I'm not sure why Ms. Geyer wouldn't let my friend do Magic Johnson.

Anyway, the last day of the week we focused on grammar. Ms. Geyer started out the lesson writing a sentence on the board: "In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World with three ships." Then she asked for prepositional phrases and diagrammed the sentence.

She kept this up for some time, doing four sentences before she moved to the new stuff we were to do on Friday. She taught us all about predicate adjectives and predicate nominatives.

For example, she would read a sentence that we would copy for our folders like, "Her judgment was correct," and then diagram the sentences for us. After a while, she would call on students to diagram sentences. Once she threw in a sentence with a direct object but that didn't fool any of us.

Some of the older kids in class say this is boring but I think it's important for us, so that we learn how to write and get ready for college. When we had all ten of the new sentences for the day in our folders, then we were finished and put them away.

Mary:

It sounds like you had a busy week in Pathways. We had some problems in science. Ms. Hansler had to go to the district office for two days, and we had a substitute. The first day we watched a video and were supposed to make notes. The second day he gave us a quiz. Most of the kids kept talking all the time they were taking the quiz and a lot of them were looking on each others papers.

When we were through, Mr. Black, the sub, went over the quiz with us and then told us we could work on a late current event, a timeline assessment, or our essay, "What is Science?" Not many of the students did much work though.

I don't really like the focus of this class because the focus is on biology and chemistry and I've had some of the material in other classes. This was billed as physical science credit and I was told that I had to take this first before going into advanced classes in chemistry, and so on. So I am bored. When I was at St. Jude's, they called the class "biology" but it was really like a general science so I feel like I'm repeating. There was more variety in what we did at St. Jude's.

Greg:

I don't agree with you, Mary. That's my best class. I think that most of the kids like that class, and they want to learn what Ms. Hansler is teaching. She really helps us.

Mary:

Well, I really like my computer class because we do things that are really useful.

Danny:

What do you mean?

Mary:

Well, for example, last week I had to get some tickets ready for a dance our club was sponsoring, and Ms. Eisley helped me develop a way of keeping a record of them using the computer. Another girl in the class figured out how to use the computer to track the result of the voting on which flag is best.

Danny:

What do you mean, which flag is best?

Mary:

You know, the ones that are in the showcases in the hallway that we are voting on to decide which one will represent the school and be flown from one of the towers like the United States flag and the state flag.

Bradley:

What I don't get is all of the group work that we do. In Mr. Allen's class he was telling us about the paper that we have to write, and it was to be about our dreams, and he reminded us that it was to be like our birthday essays. He told us, "When you write, you need to define your dream and explain your dream. Why is it your dream? It does not have to be outrageous. It should be something that will give us satisfaction. So think about the best, not the most expensive." What I don't understand is why we have to have a group help us write about our own individual dream. When I asked Mr. Allen, all he said was it would help us with ideas.

John:

The best thing about our Pathways class is that the teachers have agreed that five of us can read more higher up [sic] literature like the classics. We will be independent. The gifted teacher will help us. We will read Julius Caesar this nine weeks because in history we are studying the Roman Empire, with the theme being human rights. After we read Julius Caesar, we will meet and start a new one that has to do with what we are doing. We'll read it together and write critiques.

Actually, I like the direction things are going this year. In drama I'm doing more directing instead of acting. In Pathways we've been allowed to do independent study. And some of the classes like chemistry, French 2, and trigonometry are more difficult than what I had last year.

Danny:

The reason I like my math class with Mr. Holden is that he uses so many different approaches. Listen to some of the things he did this week to help us learn:

He had individual conferences with several of us who were having trouble with certain problems.

He would put a problem on the board and have each of us do it in our notebooks, then we would discuss it.

He had us working in groups to help each other with our pre-tests--some groups had as many as six, others as few as two students. Also, when we were trying to get help from him as we worked on problems, he encouraged us to help each other and then come to him only if we couldn't figure it out.

He has us keep a sheet with all the theorems on it which we have proved in class. It helps us know which ones we can use to help solve new problems. At first he wouldn't let us add the one we worked with this week; then when we showed him we really knew it, he said it was OK to use it from now on.

Once during class he had me make a physical model to show the class what he meant by lines being in different planes.

He had us keep our homework in notebooks and then checked it while we were taking our test on Friday.

He led a class discussion of a problem by saying he was a secretary and would only write on the board what someone in the class would tell him to write. We all had to watch and make sure he did the problem correctly because he would write anything a class member said.

Several times he asked how many of us agreed with an answer and then challenged those who agreed or those who disagreed to prove they were right.

He encouraged us to get involved in the university math competition so we could learn how to work more challenging problems and to help us with our records for college admissions.

He gave us strategies that we can use to solve certain kinds of problems. For example, he helped us understand the order of importance in asking questions about one kind of problem having to do with parallel lines. Another time he said we should begin by looking for true vertical angles, then look for linear pairs, then look for linear triples, quadruples, and finally, we should turn to angles from parallel lines.

He always had roll taken by the time the bell rang so we didn't waste time at the beginning of class.

Sometimes he worked problems at the chalkboards, and sometimes he had us work problems and explain them to the class.

He told stories to help us understand what he was talking about. Like, when he was trying to get us to understand the need to have a strategy for attacking problems, he compared it to having a way of dealing with a problem such as a flat tire in the desert. You know," he said, "you could call AAA, stand by the road and look pretty, get out your jack," but we had to have something in mind as a way to approach our flat-tire problem . . . we couldn't just stand there looking at it.

He assigned us problems in the book for the whole week at the first of the week, then gave us a practice test over the material before the real test at the end of the week.

As the PA system does rather frequently, it interrupted the students' discussion to remind them of some plans for the coming week.

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Talking with the adults about Change

In addition to observing and inquiring about classroom instruction, we were interested in learning more about how the leaders at the school, district, and state levels support the school in its stated desire to become an Essential school. Our understanding of the internal and external supports for school change, or the lack of these supports, comes from individual and group interviews of teachers, parents, principals, central administrators, and state officials. Our observations of a faculty meeting during our visit also gave us important information about the context for school change at Crossroads.

Internal Supports for Change
Leaders within the school, whether teachers or administrators, struggle to agree on a direction and on workable processes for pursuing it. Two settings in which one can observe this struggle are meetings of the school's Governing Council and staff development and administrative meetings of the entire faculty. Consider the following examples of such meetings.

The Governing Council
While at the school, we heard numerous descriptions of the Council's meeting the week prior to our visit. Drawing on those descriptions as well as the minutes from the meeting, we reconstruct it as follows. Although we were not actually present, we present the meeting as if we were in order to make the description more immediate.

When we arrived, we were met by a teacher who begged us to visit a Council meeting to learn of their problems. We did so, joining them for one of their meetings held, as usual, during lunchtime. The meeting began by the chair's saying it was an unofficial meeting, which led a member to challenge her as to why. The chair then changed her terminology and called it a "special meeting."

A Council member:

We have accomplished little. Last summer we worked for a week, modified the attendance policy. Anything we get done hits a roadblock. Why isn't the principal here?

The chair (defending herself):

I sent out notices.

A teacher:

I hate to do this, but I second everything that has been said. There is so little chance of anything taking place, I feel like this is the last resort. [The PA system interrupted the meeting with an announcement that the meeting was being held.]

Another teacher:

There are too many personalities involved. We bring up something which needs to be dealt with, and everyone says it is impossible. There is no building taking place in this group.

Another Council member:

I am confused. You mentioned that this is a special meeting, but the reason for the meeting is not clear to me. Why should we meet with Dick Clark and air our dirty linens?

As the discussion continued, one of the school's assistant principals arrived. The conversation shifted back to the value of work done by the Council during the previous summer and from there to the role of parents. When a parent representative indicated the parents wanted to be more involved, she was asked what kind of involvement they wanted. As the parent responded, one teacher suggested that questions such as the teacher was raising should be addressed to the administration, not to the teachers, while another assured the parents that they had the requested information and could give it to the parents.

In response to these comments, the parent emphasized, "It is not information we want; we want to be part of the decision making at the school, and we want to be there to help you in whatever way we can."

Displaying annoyance at this parent's comment, a teacher explained, "It boils down to not having time."

Another teacher complained that they had been told a group was going to follow up on the previous week's in-service. He asked when the group was going to meet. "When are we going to do something about it?"

A third teacher suggested that he and his wife understood the complaints of parents because they could never get teachers to respond to their concerns about why their kid never has homework. "We can't even reach teachers to talk about it. We have given up. We teach her what she is not learning here."

After a few more comments another teacher said, "It comes down to the fact that the Governing Council has no power or authority. We come up with new things and it does not go anywhere. We go through all the old hoops. We get 85 percent of the faculty to agree to block scheduling. The administration vetoes it, so it makes no difference."

The discussion continued with comments about the district's lack of support for their efforts at site-based decision making. The chair reminded them that in the past they had succeeded in disbursing more than $200,000 in grants to the faculty.

As the discussion returned to the earlier rejection of block scheduling, the assistant principal joined the conversation. She said the principal was sorry he had not been able to join them. She then said that she wanted to emphasize, "[As an administration] we want to work with you." She said one of the problems was that as soon as the Council acted, others on the faculty would run to the principal to assure him that the Council did not reflect their thinking.

As this conversation progressed, the bell rang and teachers began to leave. The assistant principal continued, trying to explain why the administration had rejected the faculty's proposed block scheduling. High on the list of reasons was one that others had mentioned:

We have teachers who can't hold the students fifty-five minutes. How can we expect to hold them for two hours? We are trying to crack down on those who can't, but until we can work with those teachers and get them on track, we can't go to the longer schedule.

As members of the Council continued to drift out of the room, a teacher observed, "When they have kids for two periods, they'll learn how to handle them for two periods." Thus the meeting ended. The assistant principal returned to the office area and conferred with the principal. The parent remained to talk with one of the teachers. The other teachers and the student representative hurried off to the class that met immediately following this lunchtime session.

All in all, twenty minutes of the Council's time was spent on problems with garbage on the campus, and twenty minutes was spent in complaints about interruptions by the PA system. When the issue of the interruptions came up, a teacher was not happy with a comment from the principal and walked out. A student then said, "If you want to talk about interruptions, my teachers spend the first twenty minutes getting ready for class." [Actually we noticed less of this kind of teacher behavior during our visit this fall than during the visit a year earlier.]

However, between the principal's request that the complainers suggest solutions, a teacher's walking out, and a student's complaints about time wasted in class, the meeting deteriorated rapidly.

Information from several sources subsequent to this meeting suggested that follow-up sessions have proceeded much like the meeting reported here, as well as like the faculty meeting described below. Seeing the Governing Council operate in this fashion, we were curious about how faculty meetings are used to provide leadership for change.

A Look at a Faculty Meeting
While we were at Crossroads, a general faculty meeting was called. The meeting was held in the auditorium on the day following our visiting team's feedback dinner with a group of faculty. A number of teachers were not present because they had chosen to prepare for class sessions or to tend to supervisory duties.

Pacing back and forth on the stage, the principal began the 7:30 a.m. meeting (which began at 7:44) by explaining the agenda to the group, which was seated in chairs scattered throughout the room. It was cold, and the lights above them flickered as the meeting progressed.

The principal said that the Xerox Corporation had a representative who would tell them about a study which would help provide better copy service for each of the district's schools. He emphasized, "We will have to put up with counting how often we use the machines. I am not looking for abuse here. You will not be asked to rationalize your particular needs."

The principal then noted he had one more thing to talk about:

Last night when we had dinner with the Coalition representatives, we had reflections of how we are incorporating some of the nine Common Principles in the school. It is happening in various departments. One of the most positive things is that in meeting with you all during the last five days, they are spreading the word of the positive things that you are doing with students. You are teaching students, not just content. The frustration that I have felt, behind closed doors, is with social workers, police, juvenile courts. I have to change my focus to something more positive. I think that part of the tone that I have set, personally, is negative and that has to change.

The principal continued, still pacing as he spoke,

One thing that is crucial is that we are talking about change. The Governing Council and I will be making an effort of how to hear your views, how to have talk among us all about change. We will be meeting very shortly to figure out how we can integrate interests, to see how we can share our concerns, how we can talk about these things, how we can have more communication. I want you to begin talking with these members, so we can hear your concerns.

The principal then mentioned the upcoming visit from the state department and encouraged teachers to speak their minds. He spoke of the need to communicate to people in the central office what was really happening at the school.

With these opening remarks concluded, the principal noted that the Xerox representative was there, introduced her, and left the stage and room with no opportunity for questions or comments. As the Xerox spokesperson began her comments, she was interrupted by a teacher who asked, "Will this mean a new big machine for this building?" The rep said, "No." The teacher walked out of the meeting, saying, "This is where we need that machine."

Although there was another speaker to follow (it was about 7:51, with classes slated to begin at 8:00), other teachers began to leave. A teacher asked when they could leave Crossroads to do the copying at the central office. The rep answered "Anytime."

"Great! We can leave anytime," the teacher said wryly and left.

"We are talking about morale!" yelled a teacher.

Another said, "We need machines here, not at the warehouse and not at the central office."

Of the approximately fifty teachers present at the beginning of the meeting, about thirty-five remained as the Xerox presentation came to a close.

A faculty member on stage then announced that six people from support services had gone to training sessions to use support groups:

Thanks for staying five minutes. We have guests. The principal is going to hold the bells for us. We want to get started, and we need your input in terms of which students might need support-group help.

One women talked about what can happen with these support groups. She passed out an information sheet. Another women spoke about how they would like to set up the process. By now most faculty had left the auditorium, and the woman was talking to just a few people. There was no formal conclusion to the meeting.

Teachers told us that this was a typical meeting. Information was usually presented rather than processed. Little forethought appeared to have gone into planning the processes used in the meeting. Time was limited. The setting detracted from thoughtful discussion. Participants displayed a lack of respect for each other and for presenters. Many simply did not attend. Of those who did, many left early.

The seventh of the nine Common Principles begins, "The tone of the school should explicitly and self-consciously stress values of unanxious expectation ("I won't threaten you but I expect much of you"), of trust (until abused), and of decency (the values of fairness, generosity, and tolerance)."

The fourth Common Principle says in part, "Decisions about the details of the course of study, the use of students' and teachers' time, and the choice of teaching materials and specific pedagogies must be unreservedly placed in the hands of the principal and staff." Neither Governing Council nor faculty meetings revealed a climate or process consistent with these Principles.

Staff Development as a Support for Change
Opportunities for faculty work sessions include pre-school-year in-service times, regular faculty meetings, and school days when students are dismissed so the faculty can work together. The faculty used several days prior to the start of school to help each member of the faculty become familiar with various school procedures and services offered by various departments at the school. Faculty reported mixed reactions to these days. Some saw them as a valuable chance to learn about practical matters; others saw them as time wasted on trivia.

When we visited, several teachers shared their enthusiasm for the workshop on portfolios and other Exhibitions of student learning which had occurred on a student-release day, the Friday prior to our visit.1 The session had been planned by a teacher-leader. The principal who spoke at the beginning emphasized the importance of developing assessment processes consistent with the approaches of the Coalition of Essential Schools. While many faculty members had missed the meeting, those in attendance developed a number of specific suggestions which were being typed up and categorized by students in a computer class. The follow-up committee mentioned by the principal in the Governing Council meeting was to plan the next steps.

The Challenge of Transitions
Transitions within the staff, as well as the problem of finding time to pursue the dialogue on school reform, may have contributed to some of the unevenness we observed in classroom instruction. Faculty members we interviewed told us that other than the conversation with Yale professor, Seymour Sarason, when he visited the school the previous year as part of this study, and the discussion of portfolios on the previous Friday, there had been no serious consideration of the nine Common Principles in recent years. Expressing his frustration at sustaining dialogue on reform, the principal noted that two or three teacher-leaders, in whom he had invested by sending them to other Re:Learning sites to learn about Exhibitions last spring, had then left the school, leaving him with the task of starting over to recruit leaders.

In fact, the pervasive change already present in the school is itself a serious challenge that Crossroads faces in its attempts to sustain whole-school reform.

We first noticed the changes in the students. Our field notes are full of comments such as the following:

Mary arrives. She is a little heavier than last year and has that "look" that says she is an upper classperson.

While Sara wiggles less this year (after all, she's a junior), she still seems as if she has energy that she is barely containing.

I can see that Roger is clearly in the prime of his adolescence. He is more interested in things outside of school and has developed interests in his car and motorcycle that are taking some of his time.

Boy, have they grown up! One student comments, "We have a vested interest in paying attention because we are seniors. We need to take our time, think about things more, and don't use the first thing that comes in your head. My teacher is having us apply the things we know." All of them are still a group, with the exception of the girl who left last year--the one who had a baby and difficulty with child care, but who was "brighter than bright," according to Frankie.

Rose is articulate and very involved in school as well as sports activities. She seems older to me, more mature, and she seems to have clear directions for her life as a student right now. She wants to do well so that she can play in varsity athletics, and she seems involved in her learning as well as in her sports.

Cindy told me about a teacher who shows concern. She said, "Ms. Abbott really listens to me. She can tell when something is bothering me, and she asks if she can help. My parents are divorced, and I don't know how to decide which one to live with, and she is helping me think this over." Cindy has two younger siblings who live with their mom, and she has lived there also for the past ten years. But as she said, "Times change."

Besides these changes in students themselves, one example of continuous change that is the norm in a high school, the arrival and departure of new students, is another example of change. When one thinks of new students, freshmen are the people who come to mind. This year's seniors describe them in the disparaging tone only seniors can use: "The 'frosh' think they are gangsters. They think that they are all bad. Their hair is boring. They wear red lipstick--redder than anything. They even wear fake beepers!" They are a new group for teachers and administrators to become acquainted with--a group that will have stamped its own image on the school by the end of its stay.

Students of all ages come and go as well. Parents told us of students who had dropped out or had transferred to another school. Board members and the local media expressed concern about these changes.

Adults at the school also come and go. One science teacher was the second new teacher teaching a class since the beginning of the year, three months earlier. Beginning in November, another teacher's departure for a job with the state Re:Learning initiative generated a domino effect on several classes. In addition to the new crop of teachers, support persons working in discipline and Chapter I changed. The central office person assigned to supervise Crossroads also changed while we were there. As noted earlier, contractors were at work on a new classroom wing. Even the spaces available for students and teachers to park their cars changed as a result of the construction project and a decision not to reserve parking spaces.

External Leadership and Support
Besides changes in staff, there have been changes in the larger context. While we were visiting, the state began experimenting with a new process of program review which included visitations to the district and school. A new state collective-bargaining law provided opportunities for union contracts between the district and the teachers and raised questions of altered relationships.

During the second week of November 1992, some of the problems with tone and decision making at Crossroads could be traced to financial difficulties in the broader community. Consider the following excerpt from an editorial in the local newspaper:

Yogi Berra might describe it as "deja vu all over again." Members of the [city] Board of Education must have been too benumbed by administrative folderol even to utter Yogi-isms Wednesday night when they discovered that the superintendent . . . had pulled another fast one.

In this bad budget year, one during which [city] teachers got no pay raises, [the superintendent] has managed to squeeze out some extra money for front office staff.

First, there was $4,000 for assistant superintendents, raises that escaped School Board attention.

Then there was $5,000 for some principals. The Board did know about those raises; in fact, it's members approved them in an illegal, clandestine session. . . .

The pay raises should be embarrassing enough for the Board. While the $13,000 in administrative pay increases wouldn't amount to much if it were spread out among our teachers, it would buy plenty of school supplies, supplies our more dedicated teachers buy out of their own pockets.

More important is the principle: when the Board is forced to declare "no pay raises," that's what it should mean.

Like the snow melting on the second day of our visit, signs of support by teachers for administrative leadership were fast vanishing. In fact, they were turning downright ugly.

The central administration expressed frustration at diatribes like the preceding editorial. They told us that it contained some false and some misleading information. Whether it is accurate or not about the facts, it accurately reveals the anger and general resentment felt by faculty at Crossroads as they viewed the lack of support for schools in their community.

Central administrators expressed concerns about progress at the school. "Families" of school and central administrators have been structured to help the school-based leaders with issues such as how to deal with at-risk students and how to organize for annual evaluations of principals. 0With the board, the administration is also developing new policies related to school-based management and goals for educational programs. The school board is also engaged in satisfying various ethnic constituencies, sometimes, in the view of school-based staff, without regard to the needs of the school. Board members and central administrators said they want to be supportive of the leadership at Crossroads, but they acknowledged there are problems.

The following statement is representative of what we heard in our talks with several of the central staff:

Principals feel disenfranchised with all these changes and they don't believe the board is behind them. One minute they feel they have support and the next minute they feel they don't.

We're dealing with human beings [on the school board], and one day [they] may say yes to them on a project, and the next day [they'll] say no. . . .p;

The Problem of Inadequate Financial Support
Next to the lack of administrative support, the teachers most often mentioned decline in monetary support as the greatest impediment to their efforts. One teacher suggested that the instructional budget had been cut by 50 percent, and all teachers we talked with complained about their lack of a raise and the impropriety of the administrators' receiving one under the circumstances. (That administrative salaries are ridiculously low for all positions demonstrates that such concerns are based on circumstances facing people at the moment rather than on some absolute set of standards.)

Teachers read about budget cuts and raises for administrators in the local paper and then experience sessions such as the faculty meeting described above, where they perceive they are being asked to help justify copy machines for the administration building. They talk of leaving for places where pay is decent, where they will be appreciated--and good teachers have left.

The local community includes people of wealth and people who exist with minimal income. Generally, the people in the school do not believe the wealthy are being called on to pay taxes that are adequate for supporting the schools. They complain about property tax rates which were lowered during earlier boom times, but not restored when the state tax base was no longer artificially inflated by mineral values.

Because the state maintains its stranglehold on the fiscal support mechanism, it prevents the local community from raising more funds even if it chooses to. The state has recently introduced a "density" factor to help offset the problems faced in the five largest districts. It has increased funding for schools in each of recent years. However, the urban districts believe that the density factors are not sufficient to meet their urban problems, and the increase in state funds has not equaled the combined effects of the increased student population and the larger numbers of students needing special education assistance.

Another problem facing the people at Crossroads is accessing assistance. Rumors persist that state Re:Learning assistance can only be obtained if the school is willing to pay per diem and travel costs to Re:Learning staff. Foundations offer support, but the school has trouble finalizing arrangements. State and district officials speak of a willingness to provide assistance, but seem to have trouble actually providing it. State initiatives have been taken to coordinate policy making concerning various children's services, but we see no effects of that yet at Crossroads.

The Need for Informed Decision Making
There is little evidence of the use of hard data concerning Crossroads or any other school as a basis for decision making at either the board or central administration level. The state engages in collecting masses of information regarding various aspects of school operations, but legislators and other decision makers seem more influenced by consultants' descriptions of current trends, by personal experiences, and by input from various interest groups than by any hard data concerning what is happening in schools.

Since the school follows this central example, the lack of information-based decision making continues to be evident at Crossroads. One state contact expressed frustration about lack of specific information on the progress students are making.

With Re:Learning in particular . . . one of the issues I have difficulty with when it comes up is showing the progress. We see progress in terms of how many schools are involved, what's going on with trekking,2 what's going on with the actual school itself, and what they are doing in terms of assessment and so on, but we never see any results. It takes long, I know, to get results, but what do we have to show that these kids are really performing better? Unfortunately, that is one of the areas the legislature always wants to know about: . . . what the bottom line is. Using progress in terms of who is involved and all that is really exciting . . . , but you also need the quantitative. Are these students really performing better? Every time we ask we are told, "Well, they are really involved, we're doing assessment, we're doing all this stuff," but it's all very loose out there. You know how it goes when you're looking for factual information.

Stories about the ability of Crossroads to obtain waivers from state regulations that restrict them from making desired changes leave us confused. On the one hand, we are told that such waivers can be obtained and that schools are not taking advantage of them. On the other hand, state people tell us they are trying to get permission to waive the regulations and laws that serve as significant barriers to local schools' progress.

People at the school are not the only ones who expressed concern about support from the state. Even people from the state level expressed concerns about the role some of their colleagues play in supporting reform. Speaking to the difficulties of changing entire systems, one state official said,

The more significant the progress you're making, the greater the resistance is. Let me give you some specific examples in our own agency, because not everyone is as supportive of the direction we're taking as some of the rest of us are. So when you think you are just on the breakthrough of having everyone understand what you're trying to do in terms of the accreditation process, and being a facilitator, and building capacity at the local level, you have people even within the agency who enjoy the power and the control role. They're undermining what the board's and the superintendent's direction is. You know, making deliberate steps to undermine the efforts with the local school districts themselves.

On the other hand, another person said,

The state barriers are in people's minds--there have been so many changes made already to allow schools more flexibility. The way people interpret those changes is to see them as more of the same. They don't recognize that so many people involved in change processes have some say in what they'll do.

Still, perhaps most telling, was a comment by one person from the state level: "If we ever just lay our turf issues aside and work together toward a common vision, that would be a miracle, I guess."

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Reflections on the Snapshot

By following Mary and Danny through a day's schedule and listening in on students talking about their classes, we have tried to give a flavor of what has been happening instructionally at Crossroads High School.

In the classrooms we visited, some students were using their minds well, some teachers were requiring the students to be workers, and some teachers were attempting to get students to focus on essential questions. Teachers we interviewed shared with us their increasing desire to pay attention to authentic means of assessing student progress.

In balance, we saw some classrooms in which teachers were using a variety of instructional techniques and other classrooms where the instruction was progressing in an encouraging fashion, given the conditions surrounding the classroom environment at the school.

However, we also saw students mired in routine activities, teachers doing most of the thinking in the classroom, teachers using perfunctory assessment, and teachers attempting to cover material rather than focusing on essential items. Classrooms were frequently interrupted, either by the public address system, by students coming to the door for other students, or by students arriving late to class.

There was a lack of consistency between teachers in Pathways, as different members of the same team appeared to interpret essential questions differently. But there were signs of collaboration, as in Ms. Nueva's teaching Ms. Knorr's students and the team of four teachers' showing the Scarlet Letter video on the same day, using the school's distribution system, which allows multiple-classroom viewing of a single video tape.

However, as Mary and Danny had observed, the agreement which had existed on the tardy policy in the spring appeared to be breaking down. Since some teachers did not perform their sweeps and others did not insist that students arrive on time, the students saw the consequences of tardiness as insignificant, while the teachers complained that it was the administration's job to see that students be in class on time. One consequence of this breakdown was lost instructional time in several classrooms we visited.

Just as there is little sense of community, family, or team, at the school, there is little sign of community support and leadership for the school. By contributing actively to the instability of the school and tensions within it, the community and school district make it difficult for the school-based personnel to sustain reform.

Lack of informed decision making, as seen in the difficulty of obtaining solid assessment information for Re:Learning, also hinders Crossroads' attempts to improve education for its students.

The Problem of Ever-present Change
Finally, the thing which is most constant at Crossroads (and at most high schools) is change. Critics complain that people in our high schools are unwilling to change, when, in truth, they are always in the midst of change. (In fact, one teacher suggested, it is chaos rather than change.)

A school such as Crossroads, with its ever-shifting population of students and teachers and the changing demands from the district and state, may be more a river than a road. The image of the students flowing through the halls, bumping into each other, pausing and turning as the water in rapids bounces off boulders, more adequately connotes life in a school than a picture of asphalt stretching motionless into the distance.

Those who promote school change need to keep this continuous change in mind. Instead of criticizing people in schools as being "unwilling to change," reformers should ask how more change can be added. Rather than suggesting that a school is apathetic because the people in it have not taken up the latest "movement," reformers need to examine the capacity to add more change to that which is occurring.

It may be that in the midst of massive changes in student body, faculty, facilities, and support systems, change has to be built on strength and stability. Strength and stability come from clear vision and effective processes for building consensus around this vision. They require strong support from internal and external forces. These are ingredients that the are absent in the environment surrounding the renewal efforts at Crossroads.

In spite of such problems, individuals are making heroic efforts at all levels. To the extent that real progress depends on family effort, rather than on individual efforts, however, the dysfunctions of leadership and support systems in and surrounding the school make such collaboration unlikely.

As we finish our reflections on this third visit to Crossroads, we continue to be warmed by the smiles and enthusiasm of the students. We feel invigorated by having looked in on some really good teaching and on classes where students appear to be actively engaged in activities; even if occasionally these activities are only moderately challenging.

However, we are angered by the lack of financial support that leaves good teachers looking for work elsewhere and poisons the attitudes of those who remain.

Also, we are saddened by the internal conflicts and failure to provide the support required to develop the administrative and teacher leadership needed to manage the conflicts in the school in a coherent process for improvement.

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Notes

The term Exhibitions, described in the sixth Common Principle, refers to a kind of assessment used for high school graduation. An Exhibition is a culminating, public demonstration of what a high school student knows and can do.
A Trek is a year-long school-change effort in which Essential schools can decide to participate in order to facilitate change efforts within the school. In the spring, an interested school chooses a Trek team, including both faculty and administrators. The team attends a week-long summer workshop in school change, sponsored by the Coalition. During the school year, the Trek teams, grouped in triads with "critical friends" in other teams, visit each otherÃs schools to critique and support their schoolsÃ progress over the year.

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The Crossroads research team was headed by Richard W. Clark, senior associate at the University of Washington Center for Educational Renewal and the former deputy superintendent of the Bellevue (WA) School District. The other members of the Crossroads team were Janet Miller, professor at National-Louis University (formerly National Teachers College) at the Beloit (WI) Academic Center and author of Creating Spaces and Finding Voices: Teachers Collaborating for Empowerment (1990); and Vicky Murray, who has worked as a teacher and administrator in Seattle and has done extensive work across the country on school renewal for the Panasonic Foundation.

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This resource last updated: June 11, 2002

Database Information:

Publication Year: 1993
Publisher: CES National
School Level: High
Focus Area: Leadership
STRAND: Leadership: the change process

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A Context for Change

Table of Contents:

Introduction

Poised at a Crossroads

Classroom Close-ups

Danny's Pathways Class

Mary's Math Class

Mary's Science Class

Mary's Computer Class

Danny's Geometry class

Danny's Drama Class

Mary's Choral Class

Mary's Pathways Class

Danny's AP Biology Class

Conversations

Talking with the Students about classes

Talking with the adults about Change

Reflections on the Snapshot

Notes