• OUR IDEA
• IF IT'S ABOUT LEARNING, WHAT DID WE LEARN?
• CONCLUSION

      When all is said and done, after five years of hard steady work as the Urban Schools Network, what have we learned about how schools transform themselves? What do we know about how schools evolve to the point where they can articulate stable progress--or forward movement--or can describe their schools as new and different places for staff and students? A few core ideas about what it takes to transform schoolhouses into places that bring together the worlds of academic and vocational teachers, the school and the community, and secondary and postsecondary institutions, clearly drift toward the top of the list.

      From the perspective of the National Center for Research in Vocational Education (NCRVE), we think it's fundamentally about learning. While school reform is traditionally associated with terms such as implementation and buy-in to the ideas of a few key planners, our work as a network has left us thinking about reform in a different way:

Buy-in and implementation imply adherence to another's idea, whereas learning and creating, and ultimately ownership (or "our program" as the teacher quoted above said), imply the whole staff learning together to transform their school into a different, and better place.

      Thus, while the Network participants were initially full of questions about securing buy-in to a vision created by few, in the final analysis, the strategies utilized to make progress were about revisioning, and had more to do with learning and owning than implementing and buy-in.

OUR IDEA

      We began the Urban Schools Network back in 1992. We asked school teams to join NCRVE in thinking about the implementation of Tech Prep programs and integrated curriculum. Essentially their task was to think about how to do two things simultaneously:

• to run their schools, and

• to try and change them drastically.

      NCRVE designed its strategy around these two goals. NCRVE's task was to figure out how to help schools best learn and implement new strategies embodied in federal policy. The core ideas behind the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act of 1990 (Perkins II) first, later followed by the federal School-to-Work Opportunities Act (1994), are namely the connections between the worlds of academic and vocational education instruction, schools and communities, and high schools and postsecondary institutions. At the nexus of these connections is an engaging and rigorous curriculum--engaging to help students understand the relevance and meaning of schooling and knowledge, and rigorous to ensure students reach high standards that will best prepare them for future destinations. This vision also demands intense collaboration among teachers, business, and community in new ways to bring these ideas to life.

      Given the nature of this vision and the task facing schools--to keep their schools open and running while simultaneously redesigning them--our strategy was simple:

• Bring school teams together at residential off-site summer institutes in Berkeley to forge a vision of integration and tech prep;

• Pair school teams with Urban Network Fellows (expert practitioners serving as consultants) who could both facilitate the team planning process and offer technical assistance; and

• Provide time for school teams to learn from one another.

      We recommended that schools send teams to Berkeley that broadly reflected their institutions and thus were best positioned to create a vision for their schools and institutions. These teams were comprised of academic and vocational teachers from high schools and postsecondary institutions, business partners, administrators, counselors, and state representatives. The key activity and product of the summer institutes was a school plan that teams forged together. Initially, the summer institutes were the key strategy developed by NCRVE to assist schools. After the summer institutes, it became apparent that the school teams wanted ways to reconvene in order to learn from one another. NCRVE agreed to bring school teams back together to learn from each other over the next several years. Hence our strategy evolved into three parts: summer institutes and team plan, followup assistance, and network gatherings.

      Our strategy was built on a fundamental assumption about how schools change. As Beckhard and Pritchard (1992) describe, our strategy was one of vision-driven change, where we assumed schools change by:

• creating and setting the vision;

• communicating the vision;

• building commitment to the vision; and

• organizing people and what they do so that they are aligned to the vision.

      After five years as the Urban Schools Network we learned how this seemingly linear strategy from vision to implementation was much less linear in practice than on paper. The teams' experiences throughout the years tell us more about learning than implementing a vision. Conceptualizing the challenge of reform as learning casts a very different image of the reform process--one that is cyclical and chaotic rather than linear or step by step. Given the nature of the vision for school-to-work, the metaphor of learning together rather than implementing a vision is quite apropos.

      Here is why: while Tech Prep, integrated curriculum, and school-to-work are described as a series of components (such as academy-type structures or connecting school and work-based activities) they represent, more importantly, a set of ideas. As we learned with the network sites, it is difficult to come to agreement, or design a school vision around ideas alone. Ideas are abstract and seem to be best understood through experience or concrete example. In essence, forming a common vision early on at the summer institute was premature. School teams needed time to learn first, and engage in a visioning process later. Integration, Tech Prep and school-to-work are much more than models to be simply implemented as a step-by-step recipe. Network sites were faced with needing to:

• Learn to work across historical dividing lines, or disciplines, to collaboratively envision a new school place that joined learning and doing, head and hand.

• Learn new, complex ideas about curriculum and instruction and implement them within and across multiple institutions involving various players from different vantage points.

• Learn new strategies while working within existing systems bounded and defined by history and tradition, politics and incentives, roles and current activity.

• Learn and try out complex ideas like school-to-work amidst the evolving urban context where instability is the norm and an unwavering dynamic of presentism and reaction leave little time for thinking--let alone acquiring, trying out, and refining new skills or new conceptions of schooling.

      Thus, our chief lessons about the Network are about how schools learn about and become new places for students and adults while they simultaneously manage a full-time schedule running their schools. While the previous chapters of this book portray Network sites' activities within particular components of school-to-work programs from integrated curriculum, work-based learning, whole school change, professional development, alternative scheduling, evaluation, and postsecondary partners to guidance and counseling, this chapter synthesizes our core lessons about school change learned as outsiders working with teams. These lessons are not necessarily specific to school-to-work, Tech Prep, or integration; instead they are broad lessons about how schools change, applicable to those working from within the school, and those in organizations helping from the outside. In this final chapter, we reflect on what we learned about schools' learning processes relative to the three areas of our strategy (which are common features of many school reform strategies): planning, teaming, and providing opportunities to learn.

IF IT'S ABOUT LEARNING,
WHAT DID WE LEARN?

LESSON #1: VISIONS, PLANS, AND REVISIONS

      When schools first came to the 1992 summer institutes, we asked them to create a plan--a written vision--for their implementation work back at home. Within this plan we articulated several necessary components for implementing what was initially called integration or Tech Prep, and in later years of the Network, school-to-work. These components included integrated curriculum, articulation agreements, staff development plans, involvement with business and industry, Tech Prep recruitment and retention strategies, guidance and counseling, and evaluation.

      Within this framework, the scope of the Urban Schools Network sites' work varied from small pilot efforts within vocational or comprehensive high schools, to whole school efforts, to multi-institutional consortia. What happened to the scope of these visions over the years also varied. Some Network sites purposely stayed focused on small efforts, while others moved from initial pilots to whole school efforts. At the consortia level, the Doña Ana Tech Prep Consortium in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Oklahoma City's Consortium to Restructure Education through Academic and Technological Excellence (CREATE) moved from a focus on system-building issues consortia wide to multiple whole school change efforts.

      Beyond the scope of the original plan, what is most significant is what happened with the use of a vision or plan once teams headed home from the Berkeley summer institutes. Teams' plans or visions were met with very different reactions across the network sites. In many ways the reaction was linked to the scope of the vision. Predictably, plans of smaller scope were met with less resistance and protest than those that set forth a vision that affected many within and across institutions. Because there were instances where teams were met with resistance, our most fundamental assumption about school change--that it is vision-driven--was challenged. Schools were resitant to the fact that a small group carried out the role of "creating and setting the vision" that impacted the entire school. One school, however, was able to capitalize on the energy generated from resistance and funnel it in to productive use and begin a more organic schoolwide effort.

      In addition, most plans went through some sort of adjustment or revisioning process throughout the years due to turnover in the team membership, policy changes at the school or district level, or the introduction of new initiatives (for more about this topic see Chapter Five on Whole School Change). For a handful of teams, the plan created in 1992 still serves as an important touchstone to assess progress toward the vision. For most, however, the original vision remains on paper only, and a new one continues to evolve as team members change, face new contextual constraints and opportunities, and learn from their earlier implementation efforts.

      The written school plan, as originally designed by NCRVE, has had limited power as a visioning tool for implementation. This is not to suggest that an initial plan or vision is insignificant. In part, a plan of action is only as good as the process from which it was conceived. Many of the Network sites preferred a much more inclusive process than the ones used in summer institutes. In fact "buy-in" to a vision implies a vision exists that needs to be discovered and adhered to by all.

      Furthermore, it seems that the more complicated the vision, the more difficult it is to define without a lot of discussion and experiments. The vision embodied in the Perkins Act and School-to-Work legislation confronts assumptions and beliefs about schooling, beliefs and assumptions that play out in program design, structure and content. For example:

• Is school-to-work for all students? Who is school-to-work for? What "problem" is it designed to solve? Although high schools have been charged with many purposes, the goal of preparing students for their future role in the economy has been loosely embraced as important for all students. How do we serve all students-- with identical offerings for all, or programmatic differentiation to meet unique needs?

• How do we collaborate across disciplines? How is integration defined? How do we retain the rigor and integrity of the disciplines? How are they blended and to what extent? Are we integrating existing subject matter, or is this about a new type of knowledge, for example SCANS skills? What is it essential for students to know, and how much can you let go in the curriculum?

      While the plans school teams developed at the 1992 institutes proved a less powerful tool "to build commitment to change, and to organize people in line with the vision" than hoped for, many sites learned from this experience and planned for related school reform initiatives differently. To illuminate an alternative planning and visioning process, consider, for example, the structural reconfiguration to block scheduling at several network sites. This change was necessary at several Network sites to allow time for work-based learning, integrated curriculum, and teacher planning time. (For more detail, see Chapter Four). For this particular transformation, sites made time for staff to study together the range of possibilities for block scheduling. Teachers, representing their colleagues, were sent to other schools to learn about the possibilities-- from different scheduling configurations to the challenges and other important tricks of the trade. As ambassadors from their schools, they arrived seeking examples, suggestions, and answers to their colleagues' questions. Upon returning home they were able to share their knowledge and work with the staff in thinking through the benefits and tradeoffs of block scheduling, and the possible alternatives best suited to their school context.

      This planning and collective visioning process was met with great enthusiasm across all sites that attempted block scheduling. Quite simply, sites made time in the school day to learn together. And they took their time, too. In all cases, sites studied block scheduling for a full year or more before making a decision. And in one case, a site kept the focus on this single initiative well into the second year when implementation began. In this way the faculty could focus in depth on only one issue (block scheduling) and have time to troubleshoot as their implementation work deepened.

      This particular example of a more effective planning process--one that focuses on staff learning together--demonstrates the power of a plan when the planning process is better suited to the complexity of the reform. It also demonstrates the power of an approach to change (planning lead by a representative set of ambassadors) when it is better matched to the culture of the institution. What we learned from the small team-based planning process at the summer institutes, versus what the sites learned from block scheduling experiments, is that it makes more sense to learn together first, rather than plan and set firm visions with little information. Imagine the resistance had small groups of staff made decisions about block scheduling without thorough research and without discussion about the tradeoffs with all who would be affected.

      This is not to suggest that creating a plan and initial vision is a wasted exercise. For most sites it provided a framework from which to focus a conversation about reform. A plan is not a static document. It is evolutionary; it undergoes revision as lessons are learned or when new legislation nudges schools to think about their vision in different ways. For example, schools formerly focusing on the "middle majority" of students in Tech Prep programs, were nudged by the school-to-work legislation to think about including all students in school-to-work programs. Louis and Miles (1990) say it best.

The evolutionary perspective [about change] rests on the assumption that the environment both inside and outside organizations is often chaotic. No specific plan can last for very long, because it will either become outmoded due to changing external pressures or because disagreement over priorities arises within the organization. Yet, there is no reason to assume that the best response is to plan passively, relying on incremental decisions. Instead, the organization can cycle back and forth between efforts to gain normative consensus about what it may become, to plan strategies for getting there, and to carry out decentralized incremental experimentation that harnesses the creativity of all members to the change effort. . . Strategy is viewed as a flexible tool, rather than a semi-permanent expansion of the mission (p.193).

      Due to the complexity of the ideas and the depth of change which the ideas of school-to-work (and many other current reforms) represent, schools can get only so far in the vision process without a lot of research and experience. Furthermore, it matters a great deal who is seated at the table when a vision is discussed. And if the staff approach to change focuses on learning together versus encouraging buy-in from colleagues--is the vision "owned" and determined by a select few, or does the staff know that it has permission to figure it out together?

LESSON #2: IT TAKES TEAMWORK

      A second part of NCRVE's strategy to help Network sites simultaneously run and redesign their schools (and a strategy of many other reform initiatives), was the use of teams representing school sites to conceive of and implement the plan. After five years' experience with the team strategy, Urban Schools Network sites gathered many insights about the power of teams to change schools and the implications for future work.

      First, from the vantage point of Urban Schools Network sites, teams were the "right" strategy for this particular reform. Teams provided a structure for the different constituents involved to become acquainted, forge a relationship, and get down to the business of working together. A related point is that in an education system filled with hierarchies and divisions ingrained by tradition, teams provided an important vehicle for working together despite these existing divisions and temporarily created an equal playing field.

      However, coming together to work as a team in the construction of such a complicated vision was a daunting task. Precisely because team members represented different constituents and interest groups, the groundwork was laid for many challenges. Urban Schools Network sites shared many reflections in the past five years about the challenge of simply understanding each other's perspective in working as a united front toward a common goal. A recurring difficulty common among network sites was the battle between academic and vocational teachers. Because academic and vocational education are separated worlds on many campuses, and teachers from these worlds are collaborating for the first time, this surfaced a gulf in approaches to schooling and the words and language used to describe school visions. This is not surprising given how separate vocational and academic education have been from one another. As one team member said, "it took all of our years with the Network just to get comfortable and understand what `they' do." Or as another teacher said, "it took forever just to agree on how we were usingparticular words. Imagine that, a ten day institute and all we agreed to were definitions!"

      To be sure, word choice and language were symptomatic of a deeper issue. One team member said that the gulf between academic and vocational teachers was reminiscent of racial segregation. Despite the large gulf that separated teachers, however, he was confident that if academic and vocational teachers were forced to work and learn together they would eventually grow comfortable with one another. Beyond pointing out the lack of a common language, teaming also uncovered existing hierarchies, and revealed the priorities embedded within the current system. For example, the process of defining and constructing integrated curriculum raised a number of lurking questions, such as which is the "core" knowledge? Who needs to integrate with whom? What is the goal for students--the demonstration of core knowledge and/or the demonstration of competencies necessary for the workplace?

      As a consequence, teaming created unavoidable conflict (see Chapter Two on the Integration of Academic and Vocational Education). Teams needed time to sort through these issues and language differences, as well as the questions about purpose and appropriate policy. Another equally difficult lesson learned about the strategy of using teams to spearhead the vision and planning process focused on the composition of the teams themselves. We suggested that each team represent the various parties of interest, from teachers to administrators, postsecondary instructors, and counselors. In our own understanding, we thought this was the "right" team given the task they were charged with. Through the years the teams themselves have learned a bit about what the "right" team means to them.

      When teams were formed, they brought together members that matched the vision of Tech Prep or integrated curriculum. While all teams were represented by academic and vocational teachers and instructors, administrators, counselors, business partners, and district and state personnel, team composition did vary depending upon the goal. For example, teams with visions of developing a larger consortium to serve multiple institutions and districts had personnel representing potential consortium players. Teams who began with pilot efforts in a single school or department had members more closely representing those who would participate in the actual implementation of the effort. But some teams were composed of a much more random mix of members.

      These examples of varied team composition provide us with the opportunity to think about the purpose and potential of the team strategy. In a vision-driven change strategy, or vision-to-implementation model, the purpose of the team is to write the plan and lead the school. But as we learned, this strategy and the assumptions that this strategy is built upon--that a few can create a vision for many--can be problematic. In addition, this strategy can be perceived as top-down, and therefore suspect. As teams grappled with the purpose of the team strategy and reflected about their five years with the Urban Schools Network, some questions remain about how the most effective team is composed:

• Should teams be comprised of the "movers" of the building, who may or may not represent a cross-section of the school population, and who are positioned as ambassadors to help lead the school through a consentually developed change process? If this is true, when can the mover team be selected?

• Or, does the entire staff first need to reach consensus on the direction of the school and then pick a team (comprised of the movers) to lead the effort?

      We have learned that the answer depends on how sites understand and envision how they can change--through vision and implementation or learning and creating together. Across the Network sites, teams were and continue to be a powerful learning and change strategy. The power of teams stems from their purpose as determined by sites. Sites need to decide whether the purpose of the team is to lead or to tell--to create opportunity to learn together or to communicate a strong vision. For the sake of argument these two types are presented here as a dichotomy, but the truth is surely somewhere in the middle. Schools across the Network (and quite possibly the nation) unanimously agree that to create meaningful change, strong, sustained leadership is a must. Usually strong leadership is expressed as the need for a strong principal. But according to the Network sites, team-based leadership is also vital. It just needs to be the "right" team.

      Even when it is the "right" team, a challenge that emerged across several sites is team turnover and the continuous problem of finding time to bring new members up to speed. Interestingly, during focus group conversations with Network sites after five years of work, many sites articulated a positive angle on the dilemma of "unstable" team membership. In NCRVE's vision of the team strategy, team stability was vital. From the perspective of some Network sites however, instability was less problematic. Metaphorically speaking, if team members represented seeds to be planted, then turnover represented a sprinkling of seeds throughout the system. In this way, seeds sprouted all over the city would ultimately yield more than if the seeds remained concentrated in a particular garden.

LESSON #3: LEARNING TOGETHER

      Ultimately what the teams' experiences showed us at NCRVE is that relying on the power of a plan created by few to help schools move forward is problematic. Due to the differences among us--the different roles and vantage points we represent in this collaboration--our work together is about forging common cause and not necessarily securing buy-in to a vision defined by a few. To focus on buy-in draws attention to our differences. Creating a vision together makes room for new ground and understanding as we invent a new school world defined by collaboration. For a vision to become shared it needs to emerge from interaction together. As Fullan (1993) has suggested--collaborative visions come later in the change process as it takes time to merge personal visions with shared visions. Or as Senge (1990) suggests:

Most visions are one person's (or one group's) vision imposed on an organization. Such visions at best, command compliance---not commitment. A shared vision is a vision that many people are truly committed to, because it reflects their own personal vision (p. 211).

      Moreover, ownership of a shared vision cannot be achieved in advance of learning something new. Given this, how does a school get started in creating a shared vision around which school staffs can create ownership and commitment? How did Urban Schools Network sites provide opportunities for their staffs to learn together and forge meaning? Through Network activities, such as regional meetings and summer institutes, NCRVE provided opportunities to learn from one another, within and across sites. Yet we underestimated the multifaceted learning needs of these sites. As the sites taught us, with a (school-to-work) vision of this complexity, opportunities for learning together on many levels are vital. For example, sites needed time to learn how to work together as teams; how to integrate curriculum; how to problem solve around key issues, such as creating school-to-work opportunities for all students; and how to work with business partners to develop work-based learning experiences. A look at the many ways sites say they needed to learn, both together and from each other across the Network, and the many forums in which this occurred, provides significant insight into the learning demands schools face in the creation of school-to-work systems. Within this context, three key recurring themes surfaced from the Network--the need for learning by creating shared experiences, the need for both pressure and support, and the need to create time for meaningful adult learning.

      NCRVE's strategy focused on team building as well as on providing information about models of integrated curriculum, articulation agreements, and evaluation design. According to the teams, while these strategies of team building and technical assistance were helpful to their efforts, they were not enough. The Network sites were clear that they needed information and assistance (these needs are illuminated in Chapter Six on Professional Development). They also needed the opportunity to learn new ideas, time to discuss and create the vision, and time to problem solve about thorny implementation problems. Additionally, they needed support and pressure in their endeavors. To the sites, support meant knowing who to turn to for advice and validation, and pressure meant knowing they were accountable for their efforts and progress. But not just any opportunity would suffice. Sites were clear that opportunities needed to be both personally meaningful and coherent with their overall efforts. Here is a sampling of strategies that enabled sites to grow a vision through new experiences and to talk with each other together, with both the pressure and support of an outsider, NCRVE.

SHARED EXPERIENCES: GROWING
A VISION, EXPANDING OUR THINKING

      Network site staffs experienced learning together as a way to build shared knowledge. Most sites spoke about shared experience as opportunities to expand their thinking about what was possible for their schools. A popular way for staff to learn new things through experience was the teacher internship or industry site visit. In one example from Chapter Six on professional development, teachers, administrators, and counselors toured an auto manufacturing plant in Detroit. They were surprised together that their preconceived images of the plant were way off. They experienced the technology of the highly automated plant together, and took employment tests. It was an eye-opening visit for all, and provided site staff with a basis of common understanding from which to rethink their school programs.

      Site visits to other schools were also popular (as described previously in this chapter in an illustration of how schools researched block scheduling). Much less logistically complicated, but equally powerful was the idea of teachers visiting other classrooms in their building to gain an understanding of the content and curriculum for each others' subject matter. This way teachers learned from each other firsthand the possible linkages for integrating the curriculum. But this strategy had important implications beyond learning about each others' subject matter. What this strategy also provided was an opportunity to increase collegiality within the school and to build a sense of trust and confidence--two conditions that Saphier and King (1985) have argued are important cultural norms that affect a school's ability to improve itself. A related strategy that built both collegiality and trust--key ingredients for collaborative strategies like integrated curriculum--was to learn something together, such as how to use the Internet. What is key about this activity is that it was neutral. Trust, collegiality, and new knowledge were built from the midpoint of the different perspectives--academic and vocational--creating an important team-building opportunity and precursor to writing curriculum together.

      A second important, albeit less frequent, way sites created shared meaning was through NCRVE events. The structure of the NCRVE institutes--working as teams facilitated by an NCRVE fellow, with plenty of time for cross-team networking--proved to be a powerful combination for learning. The institutes and regional meetings provided the opportunity to acquire knowledge and time to share thoughts and problems. As one team member said, "part of the institute was very applied, very interactive, and very integrated. You sit down and write things, and see whether it holds water." In some ways, the institute served as a mock trial for ideas before taking them home. The cross-team interaction that took place at the institutes served a similar purpose to site visits to other schools, allowing teams the opportunity to learn about the benefits, tradeoffs, and realities of a particular strategy.

      In addition, Network members spoke persuasively about the value of time allotted every year, in retreat fashion at institutes and regional meetings, to revisit ideas and plans, to assess progress and plan again. As one team member remarked, "there are very few times where people in schools sit down and spend eight hours on an issue." Faculty also spoke convincingly about the reenergizing nature of the institutes because they were surrounded by like-minded colleagues without the pressures and reminders of their daily work. In short, what the network provided was a vehicle to learn new ideas from one another; take a break from the daily grind of school to think, learn new things, and problem solve; and provide validity about their reform ideas.

PAUSING FOR PROGRESS

      NCRVE staff and fellows also played an important role in nudging schools to keep going despite all the inevitable set backs. In this way NCRVE served a dual role--provider of both pressure, in the form of accountability, and support, in the form of institutes and information. The pressure came in the form of site visits to provide assistance and resources, as well as to assess progress. Network sites spoke frequently about the power of an outside influence, (in this case, NCRVE). At a more basic level, sites told us that, "sometimes NCRVE was the only constant in a sea of turnover." In this way NCRVE provided an ounce of motivation to keep going when circumstances provided every reason not to. On a deeper level, NCRVE's presence provided a sense of accountability missing in sites' daily work. Sites stated quite simply that they "wanted something to show" when NCRVE arrived on campus. The site visit from NCRVE itself provided a reason to keep going. And NCRVE's presence also provided an important source of support and legitimacy to colleagues reticent to understand and embrace an evolving vision of their school. In this way, NCRVE was a validating voice to the thoughts and ideas of forward-thinking staff members as they faced nay-saying colleagues who thought little of their ideas. And finally, given the usual dynamic in schools--political and vulnerable to a short-cycled swinging pendulum of reform efforts--a national organization provided a presence and face for integration, Tech Prep, and school-to-work, grounding these ideas in concrete evidence and national recognition.

TIME TO TALK

      Back in the daily routine of keeping school, as important as having new experiences as a team and as a staff, is making time to talk as a staff. Network sites engaged in running their schools and simultaneously changing them fundamentally, had several clever suggestions about this core dilemma--how to find more time in the day to think, learn, and network as colleagues. One such strategy was to hire a reform coordinator to help keep up the momentum of reform. On the other hand, some teams commented that a full-time coordinator can sometimes be problematic. It seems that within teacher culture, a reform coordinator who is no longer teaching may have less credibility. For this reason some sites suggested that reform coordinators need to have a split assignment between teaching and coordinating.

      In all cases, with or without coordinators, sites stated that it is important to keep the reform discussion in the forefront of people's minds. Many also suggested using teacher prep periods as a way to keep the schoolwide conversation going. For example, when Bryan High School in Omaha, Nebraska, made the transition to a new block schedule, they held prep period meetings called "block parties" throughout the year to help staff work together and address implementation challenges during the transition to a new schedule.

      Another helpful approach comes from Lansdowne High School in Baltimore County, Maryland. As mentioned earlier, in preparation for changing to a block schedule, and during the first year of implementation, they focused their energies on just this innovation. This way during teacher prep time (which in the block schedule model actually provides teachers with longer chunks of time to prepare their lessons), teachers could devote all of this time to learning how to teach with extended periods of time. By focusing their energies on one innovation at a time, they felt they were able to make the change successfully.

LESSON #4: CONSIDER THE ENTIRE SYSTEM

      A key finding for NCRVE about working with schools engaged in two overwhelming simultaneous endeavors--running a school and significantly restructuring at the same time--is that the degree of change required by school-to-work reform sends ripples up and down the system. And it isn't possible to work on one piece of the system at a time, fitting one piece to another, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. For example, even when a school begins its school-to-work efforts with integrated curriculum or work-based learning, (as described in Chapters Two and Three) these take enormous effort and new understanding, and it isn't long before other aspects of the school system are pinpointed for change. Both integrated curriculum and work-based learning demand longer stretches of time for both teachers and students than are usually allotted within a traditional high school schedule. So while school staffs may be on overload while figuring out and implementing integrated curriculum, demands for a new schedule can be so pressing that they find themselves taking on this piece of the system as well. So the work spirals around to other aspects of the system. In a very short time, a manageable amount of reform work can become overwhelming. As a Network this means several things: find ways to assist schools on systems issues, and think even smarter about time. How can we best support schools as they work on specific pieces of the system and on all of them at once?

      The Network strategy also lacked consistency and sustained assistance with principals, superintendents, and school boards. In most cases these members were not part of the Network site teams and for this reason were often out of the loop. At the very least we needed to provide regular updating to principals and school boards through semiannual reports and evaluations. This information might have helped them better support and protect teams' emerging efforts from the instability that is so detrimental to burgeoning efforts. NCRVE needs to apply the strategy of both pressure and support to more layers of the system. For Network sites, having a national voice in NCRVE proved vital for legitimizing the sites' efforts to colleagues and community, yet this influence was somewhat limited. NCRVE is located on the West Coast whereas a high concentration of Network sites are located either on the East Coast or in the Midwest. For that reason, NCRVE had limited capacity to affect institutions and individuals that enabled or hindered sites' activities.

      In future Network efforts, we need to direct more attention and assistance to the evaluation of sites' efforts. While evaluation strategies were a component within the original plans for Tech Prep and integration, for a variety of reasons they failed to take shape in most sites. Chapters Five and Seven, Whole School Change and Postsecondary Partners, illuminate many reasons why this was so. Of primary significance was the evolving definition of the target population for Tech Prep first, and eventually school-to-work. With an evolving definition of the student clientele it was difficult to pinpoint who to assess over time. While this presents problems for evaluation design, some Network sites can also point to promising evaluation activities that helped them assess progress, talk with their communities and school boards, and identify areas that needed improvement (for some site examples, see Chapter Nine, Evaluation for Program Improvement). Evaluation can provide that stake in the ground in a climate of instability, and can help sites know how to continuously reshape their vision as grounded in evidence from their students' progress. Next time it will be important to provide more assistance with evaluation efforts.

CONCLUSION

      From our experiences as the Urban Schools Network we have collected many pearls of wisdom about school change. Taken together, they richly illuminate the inner world of school reform. While there is never any shortage of "good" ideas for what schools might become, our understanding of what it takes to realize these visions is less clear. We hope, in this final chapter about the Urban Schools Network, our collective reflections will push us a bit closer to understanding how schools change, and ultimately how this knowledge can inform the work of educators and policy makers.

REFERENCES

Beckard, R., & Pritchard, W. (1992). Changing the essence. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass.

Fullan, M. (1993). Change forces: Probing the depths of educational reform. London: Falmer Press.

Louis, K., & Miles, M. (1990). Improving the urban high school: What works and why. New York: Teachers College Press.

Saphier, J., & King, M. (1985, March). Good seeds grow in strong cultures. Educational Leadership 43, 67-74.

Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline. New York: Doubleday.