ABQJOURNAL OPINION/GUEST_COLUMNS: School Reforms Won't Work

Monday, February 28, 2011

School Reforms Won't Work

By David F. Bower
UNM College of Education
          The Feb. 20 op-ed page, "Education Reform is a Lightning Rod," provided an interesting range of opinions on New Mexico school reform. I believe there are deeper issues with education reform proposals in New Mexico and that most of these proposals are doomed to fail.
        I based this opinion on what complexity theory can tell us about how organizations work. Complexity theory, also known as chaos theory, explains that organizations are more than complicated — they are complex and do not improve from "command and control" styles of either reform or management. Complex systems have so many variables that results are usually unpredictable.
        I see three areas of reform that are likely to produce minimal, if any, results from the command and control reform initiatives currently being proposed in New Mexico.
        The first area concerns the labeling of schools with letter grades of A-F. As schools move toward standards-based curriculum and assessment, they often find that current A-F report cards do little to provide good information for parents and families. Many schools are moving toward standards-based report cards which are intended to communicate both academic success and to provide more detailed information about student growth needs.
        While the current terminology labeling schools based on test scores is not useful, using A-F grades presents a reductionist approach to this complex issue. If the purpose of such labels is to get parents and community more involved, then we need to provide rich information. Reducing a complex school to a label (such as a 'C') does nothing to provide useful information. Worse, it suggests to the public that a complex school can be reduced to a letter grade.
        Second, education reform must address sustainability which is a key element of complexity theory. Eric Abrahamson, in his book "Change without Pain," cites two aspects of unsustainability. One is "initiative overload," which is the tendency of organizations to launch more initiatives than anyone can make sense of. Many of these initiatives arrive through mandates and political agendas that have nothing to do with education. Abrahamson also describes "change-related chaos," which is continuous upheaval when so many initiatives have worked through an organization that the central purpose of the organization is lost.
        Education resources are minimal and teachers and principals are overworked, and this is not the time to launch any unsustainable initiative. Every politician who wants to be "the education — fill in the blank here — governor, mayor, president" must bear some responsibility for adding to initiative overload and change-related chaos.
        Finally, complexity theory helps us to understand "sensitivity to initial conditions," which has been popularized as "the butterfly effect." The butterfly effect uses a metaphor of a butterfly flapping its wings in China which results in windstorms in New York. In math, changing one small number early in an equation can result in huge differences at the end. The lesson here is that organizations, like schools, are never at the same starting point when an initiative or reform model is launched. There are so many variations from school to school that no schools are the same. There is no way to mandate change and have the same results in all schools. Nor is it possible to transplant reform initiatives from another state, like Florida, and have the same results in New Mexico. The results will be wildly different and will not achieve the intended results.
        Educators are challenged to use "scientific based reforms" to improve schools. Complexity theory offers new research from science to give a sophisticated understanding of how schools, as organizations, really operate. Perhaps it's time to use this science to figure out why most education reforms from the last two decades have failed, and why most of the current reforms proposed in New Mexico will fail also.
        David F. Bower is a former middle school principal. His dissertation studied leadership, sustainability and complexity theory. Bower coordinates field-based administrative internships in the Education Leadership Program in the UNM College of Education.

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