Replication data for: Spinning Wheels: The Politics of Urban School Reform

Despite extensive efforts to reform urban school districts in recent decades, there has been little significant change. This is because urban school reform is more a political than an educational exercise. In fact, the problem has not been too little attempted change, but the fact that districts are swamped by too many fragmented reform efforts. Change is the status quo in urban districts. Political and professional pressures compel urban superintendents to pursue aggressive reform agendas, with support from pressed school boards. Several factors make it difficult to hold these policymakers accountable for outcomes, encouraging them to emphasize inputs--particularly reform. The limited impact of policymakers on short-term outcomes and the visibility of schools in the community accentuate these pressures. Urban superintendents are judged, by their professional and their local communities, primarily on input--on how hard they appear to be working to improve the schools. Because policymakers ha ve little short-term impact on school performance, those who do not opt for visible measures that promise to bring improvement are often weeded out in favor of more pro-active leadership. Aggressive reform efforts demonstrate commitment, reassure the community, and enhance the superintendent's professional reputation. There are few disincentives to innovate. Reform is consistent with the training of administrators as problem-solvers, and with the interests of the wider professional community of researchers, consultants, and academics who promote school reforms. Policymakers favor visible and popular reforms which produce less disruption and discomfort, but which also produce little meaningful change. The focus on initiating, rather than implementing reform, means that successive administrations enact partially implemented measures one after another. This process continually imposes the costs of transition on districts, while ensuring that few measures are ever fully implemented and refined. This a series of short-term fixes produces a long- term spinning of wheels. A reliance on proxy measures of performance causes observers to overestimate the performance of individual reforms, and system insiders evaluate reforms through rose-tinted glasses. These biased evaluations help to explain why the spotty record produced by frenetic reform has not slowed reform efforts. States and teachers' unions played a surprisingly limited role in urban school reform. The analysis is based on 325 interviews the author conducted with fixed-position respondents in 57 urban school districts during a nine-month period in 1995. The interviews focused on the fate of five "Third Wave" school reform efforts during the 1992-1995 period.

近几十年来，尽管各界为改革城市学区做出了大量努力，但却鲜有实质性进展。究其根源，城市学校改革本质上更是一项政治事务，而非教育实践。事实上，问题并非改革尝试不足，而是学区被过多零散的改革举措压得不堪重负。变革已然成为城市学区的常态。政治与职业层面的双重压力，迫使城市学区总监推行激进的改革议程，而这一举措也得到了承受重压的校董会的支持。多重因素导致难以追究这些政策制定者的改革成效责任，进而促使他们更注重改革投入——尤其是改革举措本身。政策制定者对短期教育成果的影响有限，加之学校在社区中的关注度较高，这两点进一步加剧了上述压力。无论是职业圈内还是当地社区，对学区总监的评价主要基于其投入程度——即他们为改善学校所展现出的努力程度。由于政策制定者对学校绩效的短期影响微乎其微，那些不采取有望带来改善的显性举措的领导者，往往会被更具行动力的领导者取代。激进的改革举措既能展现改革决心、安抚社区情绪，也能提升学区总监的职业声誉。对改革创新而言，鲜有抑制性因素。改革理念契合了管理者作为问题解决者的培训定位，也契合了推广学校改革的研究者、顾问与学者等广大专业群体的利益诉求。政策制定者更青睐那些显性且受欢迎的改革举措——这类改革引发的动荡与不适更少，但也难以带来实质性的变革。改革进程中，人们更关注启动而非落地，这意味着历任管理者接连推出仅部分落实的改革举措。这一过程持续让学区承担转型成本，同时也确保几乎没有任何改革举措能够得到充分落实与优化。这一系列短期权宜之计，最终只会导致长期的原地踏步。依赖绩效替代指标，会让观察者高估单项改革的成效；而系统内部人士则会带着乐观滤镜评估改革效果。这些带有偏见的评估，恰好解释了为何狂热改革所带来的参差不齐的成效记录，并未减缓改革的推进势头。州政府与教师工会在城市学校改革中所发挥的作用，出人意料地有限。本分析基于1995年的九个月期间，作者对57个城市学区的固定岗位受访者开展的325次访谈。本次访谈聚焦1992至1995年间五项“第三波学校改革（Third Wave school reform）”举措的实施成效。