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Leadership > The Change Process
On the Road to Renewal
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Marshall High School's five stories rise above the city streets of Jefferson. Constructed in 1927, with entrances framed by imposing turrets, the school gives a first impression of being a cross between a factory and a castle. Yew trees, twisted and gnarled but still growing, cling to life along the thin strips of remaining earth surrounding the school. Approaching the school, we are greeted by steel bars and wire mesh on the windows. Massive, steel-reinforced doors are scraped and battered.
As we pass the security guard and climb one of the two grand staircases leading from the entry to the main floor, we are struck by the dark beauty of the massive woodwork, plaster walls, worn wooden floors, and a mural depicting black leaders.
This paper is not about the building, however, but about life within this imposing structure. In November 1992 we came to Marshall for our first visit, as part of the School Change Study. Our purpose was to chronicle life in the school, in order to gain understanding of whole-school change and, simultaneously, in order to provide a mirror to the people of the Marshall community that would help them in their efforts to better serve the young men and women who attend their school.
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A Brief Description of Marshall
Marshall is a large, urban high school with a faculty of 150 people. Since the district has hired few new high school teachers in the past decade, the faculty consists of very senior people. About 45 percent of the staff are African-American, a statistic that becomes more significant as one looks at the student body, which is roughly 99 percent black. In November 1992, there were 2,057 students on the rolls. With an average attendance rate of slightly more than 60 percent, there are between one thousand and fifteen hundred students present on any given day.
Located in a dominantly African-American neigh borhood in the large, eastern city of Jefferson, Marshall is considered to be a comprehensive, neighborhood high school, even though it serves students from other geographical areas in the city. Marshall serves the students who remain after others have chosen to enroll in magnet programs created by the district as a means of integrating schools. As one student described it,
This [school] is for the neighborhood kids....You know, Marshall is, like, if you get thrown out of one school, you're going to come to Marshall. If you get thrown out of jail, you come to Marshall! [at which point the group of students around him agreed and laughed]
...because this is for, you know, people that are not doing well.
But not everyone sees the school the same way. For instance, one student observed, "When I first came here, I thought, 'I'm not going to like this school.' But this school has a lot of opportunities, and it's going to take a lot for me to leave this school!" One of the parents we interviewed told us,
Out in the community there is a bad reputation for this school. Lots of people don't realize what's going on here that's good, but the kids have to learn to use the skills that they are teaching them here to spread the word.
Since back in the late '60s, this school has had a bad reputation; but when you can see your own kids doing better, you know something good is happening. A lot of the bad reputation comes from kids who hang out here but who don't even go here. A lot of the kids have the desire to achieve, but there are a lot who don't want to do anything.
Along with the usual features of a com prehensive high school, Marshall has some that are less common. The principal, who was on leave during our fall 1992 visit, successfully lobbied to create a nursery for infants and toddlers--one of the most promising efforts by Marshall to serve its students. Young mothers, who otherwise would be at home caring for their babies, can bring them to school, where two large rooms, formerly lab oratories, have been converted into childcare facilities.
Another success story at Marshall High School is its basketball team. For several years it has been among the high school teams in the country given high rankings by USA Today. It is easy to spot the members of this squad moving among--but above--the students flowing through the busy hallways.
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Focusing the Snapshot
As we do each time we visit a school as part of the School Change Study, we produced a "snapshot" based on the two intensive days of observing classrooms and interviewing teachers, students, admin istrators, and parents by the two researchers.
The snapshot also draws on observations and inter views by the author during four visits, beginning in the 1988-89 through the 1992-93 school years.
We decided to focus this first snapshot of Marshall on the evidence of change in the high school. The first part examines the changes that Marshall has experienced as a result of district-wide restructuring efforts in recent years. The second part describes positive examples of instruction as well as changes--and accompanying challenges--in other aspects of life at the high school. The snapshot concludes with questions that this first visit raises regarding the future of Marshall High School.
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The Context of Marshall High School
Understanding the context in which Marshall operates, particularly the recent history of restructuring, as well as the ongoing issue of violence affecting the school, is central for understanding what it is like to learn and to teach at the high school.
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Early Stages of Restructuring
Marshall was identified four years ago as one of the schools to receive intensive attention by the foundation-funded Metropolitan School Restruc turing Collaborative (MSRC). In examining the school's evolution during the course of this initiative, one first needs to recognize that the school has a life which precedes this time. Marshall alumni include well-known political leaders, educators, athletes, and entertainers. Teachers have toiled mightily for more than sixty-five years to educate a continually changing clientele.
The fact that we pick up the story with the present efforts should not be taken to suggest a lack of effort and success by earlier educators. Nevertheless, by the time Marshall joined with the MSRC, attendance and graduation rates were at an all-time low, morale was bad, course completions were low, and the school's reputation in the community was much closer to the first student's description, quoted above (a place "for people who are not doing well"), than the second ("This school has a lot of opportunities and it's going to take a lot for me to leave . . .").
The main thrust of the MSRC has been to break down Marshall and the other schools like it in the city into smaller units called "charters," which enable the teachers to know students better than before. The MSRC has also focused on improving instructional practices in schools by offering numerous seminars, frequently in connection with the district and local universities. The MSRC has also made efforts to enhance the role of teachers and to promote site-based management with the district and the local American Federation of Teachers (AFT) unit in order to improve the quality of the schools. In addition, the MSRC has given attention to student transitions from the eighth grade into Marshall and from Marshall into the worlds of work and higher education.
One teacher-leader described the start of this restructuring effort at Marshall as follows:
Four years ago, when they started this idea of restructuring comprehensive high schools, when they got the [foundation]
grant, the impetus was put out so they could get some teacher-driven charters. The whole idea was to come in and break these huge high schools down, so that you could get a better relationship with the students and with the teachers and get some of the isolation removed.
At Marshall, the first venture in personalizing education through restructuring was the creation of the ninth-grade Institute. Marshall shared this approach with a number of other schools who were faced for the first time with a large ninth-grade class, when the district eliminated the ninth grade from middle and junior high schools. In the Institute, teams of teachers concentrated on devel oping personal relationships with the ninth-graders as a means of easing the transition.
The following year, the renewal team began charter development. Three teachers, who had all worked in earlier reform projects in the school and district, responded to the offer by the MSRC to "get ideas and share what you think you would like to do to form these new units." The teachers who were involved told us that as they brainstormed their ideas during the Thanksgiving vacation of that year, they realized that much of what they were considering was closely patterned after Coalition of Essential Schools philosophy.
We didn't start out saying we wanted Coalition philosophy; it was kind of the other way around. We did that and we looked and we saw it matched very closely. [Three of us had] read Horace's Compromise
...and more by Ted Sizer....
When the three of us sat down and actually started talking about the different types of things we were trying to do in our classrooms, the patterns
really became much clearer. We started to see the recurring things, and that's when it sort of became clear it was a match to the Coalition.
As a result of these conversations, the school's renewal team recommended, in addition to the ninth-grade Institute, the formation of two charters that became known as the Overland Charter and the Business Institute, modeled after the school district's highly successful academies. (These academies are school-based, externally funded, career-oriented programs that draw stu dents from various parts of the city.) The Overland Charter was designed to provide the entire educational program for a heterogeneous group of tenth- through twelfth-graders who would participate in classes organized around integrated, thematic units. Similarly, the Business Institute would provide the entire educational program for students interested in business careers. The Business Institute, however, lacked the external support and resources of the business-supported academies. The renewal team's recommendation was affirmed by a faculty vote to make Marshall eventually into a fully charterized school.
In subsequent years prior to 1992-93, an exter nally created charter, the Auto Academy, was added, in addition to the locally developed Over land and Business charters. Also, a third compre hensive charter focusing on communications was created. During our visit, conversations were under way regarding the creation of additional charters.
One of the problems the school has faced is what to do with special education students. The MSRC specifications call for charters to be inclusive entities, yet the traditional pattern of dealing with special education students at Marshall and elsewhere separates these students.
During the third year of the MSRC initiative, Marshall's faculty voted to become a letter-of-intent school.1 As such, the faculty would follow a planning process designed to culminate in a faculty vote authorizing the establishment of the council and site-based management as an official, district- and union-approved leadership structure for the school. At this point, the renewal team evolved into a school-based management council. During our fall 1992 visit, the acting principal told us the faculty had rejected its council's site-based management plan, since only 73 percent, rather than the requisite 75 percent, had voted for it. A second vote was pending.
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Violence: A Challenge for Revitalization
An episode a few months before our visit symbolizes the status of the revitalization effort. On a warm spring day in 1992, television crews from NBC were at Marshall filming activities in the Overland Charter for a broadcast that was to be presented at the start of the 1992-93 school year. The crew was highly impressed with what it saw, and eventually offered their footage as evidence that successful education could take place in one of the nation's urban high schools.
While they were gathering their film footage in one section of the building, the principal was dealing with a different kind of a scene. Following an assembly, fourteen girls had engaged in a rumble. The assistant principal for discipline, the school security office, and a local police officer joined the parade of students entering and leaving the principal's office as she dealt with this latest crisis. As calm finally seemed restored, she turned to us and said, "I should have known better than to schedule an assembly on a beautiful spring day like today." She then went on to explain that the girl who appeared to have started the fracas by attacking another girl with a knife was the only one still at school; the others had all been suspended. She had to keep the instigator in school until this young woman's child returned with the other toddlers in the nursery from a field trip.
This spring scene is not offered to suggest that the Overland Charter is faultless and the rest of the school is a sea of violence. As our visit revealed, the crew could have found outstanding instruction in classrooms in several of the charters. The scene is presented to show the simultaneous presence of exemplary and problematic conditions that characterize the school. It is this set of contrasting conditions which must be kept in mind by the people of the Marshall community as they continue their struggle for revitalization.
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Evidence of Change at Marshall
In November 1992, it was clear that Marshall was undergoing change in several respects. Observations in classrooms revealed examples of innovative instruction in the charters, and our interviews brought to light the changes that the school is undergoing and the challenges it is facing in terms of its leadership and structure.
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Instruction in the Charters
The following "close-ups," which are based on the researchers' observations in classrooms, portray classes in the Overland Charter as well as in other charters.
English
The nineteen students, who have read
Antigone, are about to present modern versions of it. The teacher tells them to get in their groups
(boys and girls have formed separate groups) and practice their presentations. These presentations culminate four weeks of reading, discussing, and writing about the play.
The students range from ninth-graders, repeating their first year of high school, to seniors. Some of the kids are on the school's honor role. The arrival of one boy is a surprise to the teacher, who says she hasn't seen him in three weeks. Two boys are mixing their music, which is very loud, and the teacher asks them to turn it down. As the preparation continues, some typical student silliness breaks out: a girl, stuffing a beach ball into her T-shirt, acts as if she is pregnant, to the amusement of others in her group. A couple of boys stop by the classroom and indicate they want to join the fun, but the teacher shoos them on their way.
Having given a five-minute warning, the teacher starts to arrange the room for the performances. She creates a stage area in the front of the room, then calls the first group, all boys, to begin performing.
As the boys move to the front, the teacher tells the class to keep in mind how well the performance follows the themes of power in Antigone. The issue of power is tied to the essential question being pursued this year by the Overland Charter: "What is the relationship between power and inquiry?"
A boy begins by setting the scene in Jefferson, in gang terms (with overtones of West Side Story). The explanation is clear, but the audience is distracted by some of the members of the group who are muttering to each other while the narrator speaks. Finally he tells them to "shut up," and the performance begins. They begin the first scene by attempting to show how revenge will be enacted. They move slowly, ponderously, through their scene, controlled by the narrator, who cues the others through their lines. Following the performance, the teacher questions the group about the changing of the play's ending that their script entails.
This discussion is followed by a four-minute performance by one of the students in this group. He performs a popular rap about a high school boy who becomes a drug runner and gets his whole family involved, just so he can get money for his mother, brother, and sister. It is a remarkable, nearly professional act.
After the teacher reminds the students that she is listening to their scripts for parallels to power themes in
Antigone and for cooperation in the performances, the second group performs. There are moments of wonderful humor in their story--mostly having to do with language and culture, and these students end with a rap also--their equivalent of a Greek chorus.
The final group appears the most organized. They have a number of props, including plastic guns. Their performance brings loud clapping from the other kids, who seem to appreciate the extra work the group did in preparing the script.
Quickly, the teacher yells at them to put the room back in order and take out a pencil or pen. She passes out a paper on which they write their names and then respond to three questions: "What role did you play in today's performance? What stood out today for you? Which group was best and why?" She makes it clear that she wants them to work individually and that she is looking for detail and thoughtful reflection. All the students begin to write.
When they finish their work, the teacher asks them to share from their writing. As they read, the teacher responds, probes, and asks for clari fication. Students listen quietly to one another, and then, when the bell rings, discuss one another's performances as they exit the room. Everyone has participated. They seem to understand the issues of power contained in the play they were adapting.
Is this a typical class for the school? Maybe not. But it represents a level of intense involvement of students in active learning about difficult materials--the kind of involvement which this author has seen in the same teacher's room on two other occasions.
Biology
In a different charter's classroom, we find eighteen students sitting quietly at their desks as they prepare to take a test. The class starts, soon after the period begins, with a student passing out the tests and the teacher talking the class through the various segments of the test and answering scat tered questions about it.
For this biology test the students are allowed to use one set of notes. Most work intently, although one boy in the back of the room is still reading his textbook. As the students work on their test, the teacher writes assignments on the chalkboard for upcoming science and technology classes. They will be investigating endangered species and animals. For pre-class work they will be expected to apply the terms threatened, extinct, and endangered
to a list of animals that includes the white rhinoceros, black rhinoceros, African elephant, American bald eagle, dinosaur, vulture, alligator, baboon, and California condor. This class will also be writing a research paper using three different sources from their bibliography. They are to select one animal from the pre-class work list and explain its status as either threatened, extinct, or endangered.
As the biology students complete and turn in their tests, the teacher tells them that they are going to finish dissecting their worms, then learn about hookworms, and end with earthworms. After having a brief conversation with them about legal cases that limit the extent to which they can do live dissections, she talks about an upcoming assignment. For that assignment, they will spend two periods in the library, where she will help them use the new computer setup to get books from any library in the city.
Other Classes
In one class we saw, a teacher developed an elaborate and sophisticated system of individual folders to help students work on individual pro jects. A social studies teacher described in detail how she used the concept of "less is more" by focusing on the Constitution to help students learn about government. Reading from the textbook about the court system, the teacher in another social studies class drilled the students on vocabulary and paused to help students understand the terms and write them in their notebooks.
A parent, who talked with pleasure about the thematic focus of the Overland Charter, com mented on her daughter's interest in the previous year's theme of change and the of the interviews the daughter had conducted to learn more about this year's theme of power. In a junior ROTC class, we watched students learn about the chain of command, consider management theories, and discuss current events. Students alternated between acting like young air force cadets and acting like typical teenagers. One member of our study team summarized her overall conclusions about instruction at Marshall by saying,
I saw evidence of sustained, collaborative student work, with students serving as peer teachers as well as enacting the Principle, "student-as-worker." As I sat through a non-Overland, two-hour class, I saw evidence of students working, of students engaged with their teachers and the learning process.
Students shared numerous examples of their projects with us and talked about essential questions guiding their study. Students also spoke positively about the value of group learning and suggested it is unusually well integrated into the routine of their daily academic lives. In Overland Charter and other charter classes, we saw students working actively and engaging with their teachers in creative learning processes.
Data compiled by independent evaluators exam ining MSRC grants have revealed improve ment in attendance, course completion, and grades for students, particularly for those involved in Overland.
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Changes in Leadership
When we visited, Martha Brown, who had been chosen with support from the faculty, was serving as an acting principal at Marshall. Martha explained to us that the change process had been initiated by Andrew Lincoln, the principal who was on leave. Speaking about Lincoln, she said, "Lincoln had come to the school with a reputation for creating and building new structures. He had come from a middle school background, and he opened up the first middle school, I guess, in Jefferson back in the 70s." Brown said she thought the principal "was possibly placed here to begin this effort of change--because of his background as a mover and a shaker, a man of action, a man of movement."
Opinions vary, however, as to what the early sources of leadership were at the school. One person told us that it was a vice principal, who has since left, who "really spearheaded, in terms of the administration, the renewal process. She knew a lot about the Coalition." After going to Brown University for a summer workshop, "she came back here and really carved a lot of places to help . . . Overland starting
[sic] up." This administrator is credited with having had a "strong affinity" to moving towards engaging the whole school in the Coalition. But, as one person put it, "The first few years the person we had as our restructuring assistant principal was gung-ho, but now she is gone."
Whether early leadership came from the woman serving as assistant principal or from the male principal makes little difference; both have left Marshall.
As noted earlier, teacher leadership emerged early in the restructuring process. Department heads, union leaders, and other teachers were cultivated by the MSRC; yet, according to several of the teachers, the MSRC erred in not engaging the full administrative team in their work.
Organizational consultants were brought in to work with leaders and to help with group process, but there still have been clashes between people in old and new roles. The most evident form of such clashes is between department heads and charter coordinators. One teacher in the school described the situation as follows:
Department heads in the city system teach only one class.2 Therefore, you have a lot of older people who are just entrenched. They work very hard to get away from kids. They are protected by union contract--they have a nice setup.
So Overland comes in, and they start looking to spread the wealth. Those are real battle lines, and they haven't been handled well here or in the MSRC. ...Another problem is that the administration hasn't handled it very well. You don't want to wipe out your heads if you don't know what will be in place. ...So we have chaos.
Specifically, as leadership roles evolve, the battle lines appear to be between the coordinators of the new charters and the heads of the established departments. Who has authority? Who will assign people to courses? Who will determine curriculum? Who will receive extra compensation?
Charters received extra financial support while they were being developed and coordinator roles were being created. As the soft foundation money began to disappear and union concerns accelerated, the conflict between the new coordinator roles and those of longtime department heads seemed to expand.
The evolution of site-based management councils presents additional conflicts. At Marshall, the council chairs believe they are trying to engage all people in the school in decisions. Other people see the chairs and some council members as favoring selected programs.
Still others are not sure what the role of the council should be, and point to confusion between the roles of the principal, the union's building committee, department heads, and the new Governing Council. Some at the school suggest that the Governing Council simply discusses matters, but that real decisions are made by a vote of the entire faculty; others suggest that decisions are made less democratically.
The role of parents in the new Governing Council continues to introduce its own ambiguity into the scene. Some parents speak positively about the opportunities the Council presents them, and others indicate, by their lack of participation, that they doubt its efficacy.
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Conflict Among the Charters
During our visit, we saw progress in several of the charters deliberately created to personalize education for students and to be an environment in which instructional programs could be invigorated. At the same time, we saw indicators of conflict and jealousy among the new sub-units--indicators that suggested the progress was in danger of being overwhelmed by differences among the adults in the school community.
A teacher-leader viewed this conflict in terms of interactions between Overland faculty and others concerning involvement in Coalition of Essential Schools activities:
It was almost to the point where I wouldn't talk about it. If something had to be presented, somebody else had to do it, so it didn't look like it was coming from Overland. I mean we had to really maneuver so that even if there was a good message to be passed, the right person had to stand up or it was just wrapped up in all this other baggage....
They think Overland took the best teachers. They think that Overland takes the best stu dents.3 They think that we are elitist. They think we have all the favors done to us. They think we get all the attention. They think we have favors done for us that nobody else gets.
Our interviews suggested that this Overland teacher had an accurate understanding of his peers' views. We witnessed a discussion among represen tatives from various elements of the faculty and administration at Marshall which also revealed these feelings. In the discussion, teachers traded charges and countercharges about which charter received the most favors, the most outside money, the most attention, and the best students.
By the time of our visit, this conflict seemed to be accelerating. Some Overland teachers were seeking (or at least advocating) autonomy as a school separate from Marshall, even if it meant that they would become part of a middle school campus. Unless this conflict is managed better than it appears to be, it will be difficult for the entire student body of Marshall to receive the enhanced education some of Marshall's teachers and the MSRC are seeking.
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Reflections on the Future of Marshall
As intensive as our examination was, two days and a few other short sessions provided much too brief an examination of the school to predict what will happen at Marshall. Rather than predict the future, we close this first snapshot by raising some questions which we hope the Marshall school community will address as they consider their future.
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Questions for the Future
1. Coalition of Essential Schools and the Nine Common Principles
Recognizing that the Overland Charter is the only portion of the school which has officially embraced the nine Common Principles, we still believe the school can benefit from considering questions such as the following: In what ways do faculty members use the nine Common Principles? To what extent do the Principles define what the teachers of all the charters, and all the students at Marshall, are trying to achieve?
2. Instruction
Whether or not teachers pursue the Coalition's Principles, our visit leaves us with some questions concerning instruction, which we believe the people at Marshall should consider. In what ways must pedagogy change for there to be real reform in the school? How can all charters address the needs of the full range of students?
3. Support and Leadership
In light of the seemingly intractable problems facing Marshall's students, how do the central administration, union, department chairs, princi pal, charter coordinators, teachers, and parents negotiate supportive processes and roles on behalf of these students? How can leadership roles best be clarified--whether those roles are individual, as with department heads, charter coordinators, or school administrators, or whether they are related to efforts to develop group decisions through involvement of teachers, parents, and adminis trators? How can conflicts between old and new structures be resolved?
4. Management of Competition Among Charters
Given existing circumstances in the school, it seems quite possible that competition among the charters will destroy them. The hoped-for gains of personalization and better instruction may be lost in the fighting over personal power and scarce resources. How can such competition among charters and among individuals within the school be managed so that the energy involved is used as a constructive force toward the betterment of education for all students? Finally, this competition raises the issue of how differing visions of educating young people can exist constructively in the same school.
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Concluding Thoughts
Marshall is a school with tremendously difficult challenges. There are many people doing heroic jobs. Our visit revealed glimpses of instruction that were inspiring and individual visions of exciting futures. We hope that during our return visits we will see progress in the difficult issues that are holding up the achievement of these visions.
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Notes
- "Letter-of-intent" schools are those schools that responded to invitations from the joint committee of district and union officials responsible for developing site-based management in the district. If the plans they develop are approved by a 75 percent vote of the faculty, they can ask the joint council for waivers of policies and contract provisions which give them greater independence in their day-to-day operations.
- Another teacher-leader told us that department heads are now supposed to teach two classes, but that so far most of them in the district seem to have found ways to avoid this mandate.
- This charge is the most common leveled against Overland and other sub-schools implementing Coalition Principles. In this case the data suggest that Overland students represent a cross-section of the school, but the effects of a group of students who choose to be together in what is perceived as an academic program as a variable is probably greater than sheer demographic data can indicate.
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The Marshall 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 Marshall team were Janet Miller, professor at the 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 Neill Wenger, a cognitive psychologist who has taught in elementary school, consulted for the Pew Foundation, and is currently co-authoring a multimedia textbook.
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This resource last updated: June 11, 2002
Database Information:
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Publication Year: 1992
Publisher: CES National
School Level: All
Focus Area: Leadership
STRAND: Leadership: the change process
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