Final Seeds
January 15, 2015Seeds, Bricks, and Sand: Stages of School-Reform Readiness
An opinion piece by Robert Slavin, Director of the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University, examines issues of school turnaround. In this article Slavin offers a metaphor for three types of school readiness for reform, seeds, bricks, and sand. He describes seed schools as those schools with the quality staff, willing to change, eager for development opportunities, and aware of the strategies and research needed to guide change. He describes brick schools as those schools with staff willing to participate in change, but who currently do not have the time or knowledge of what and how to reform. The final category, sands schools are those institutions not remotely prepared for reform. Such schools do not have the leadership, personnel, training, and cohesion to bring about meaningful reform.
According to Slavin, current reform initiatives such as School Improvement Grants (SIG) have been offering solutions not always matched well to the needs of these three types of schools. “Until now, schools receiving substantial funding under the current School Improvement Grants (SIG) have been routinely given consultants to help them work out their own school-wide reform designs, rather than being helped to adopt proven programs. There are schools that can benefit from such strategies, but they are rarely the ones that are persistently low achieving, as all SIG schools are.”
Slavin’s analysis appears to be accurate, but unfortunately, it flies in the face of one of American education’s cherished beliefs, local choice is better than solutions provided from afar. This is especially important when we consider that failed attempts at reform are expensive and have serious consequences for students who must attend these schools. As Slavin proposes, it seems logical that we begin to more effectively match solutions to the needs and potentiality of struggling schools.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-e-slavin/seeds-bricks-and-sand-sta_b_6477740.html