School Reform Behind the Scenes

Journal of Negro Education, The, Winter 2001 by Richardson, Ernescia M Torbert

School Reform Behind the Scenes, by Joseph P. McDonald, Thomas Hatch, Edward Kirby, Nancy Ames, Norris M. Haynes, & Edward T. Joyner. New York: Teacher College Press, 1999. 151 pp. $21.95, paper.

Reviewed by Ernescia M. Torbert Richardson, Cleveland State University.

Over the past several decades, scholarly examinations, articles, and dissertations have engaged in discourse and research about the processes and procedures involved in the reformation of educational practices. Moreover, within these decades, several intellectuals have approached this issue searching for effective methods, which address the needs of all stakeholders, including teachers, children, and their families. In the 1970s, for example, Wright (1970) noted that a revolutionized restructuring addressing the concerns of educational policy relating to teachers, children, and their families, needs direction from Black educators towards a social change in educating Black children. This change will affect persons within schools as well as in the Black communities. Also during this period, Silberman (1970) commissioned by the Carnegie Foundation, revealed problems that plague the American schools and recommended the improvements and transformations needed to rethink public education.

In School Reform Behind the Scenes, the authors give detailed accounts of the leadership, collaboration, and efforts that continue with the implementation of various reform models. The book, which is a report of a collective research effort in the direction of creating a strong reform initiative, received support and funding from significant foundations and sponsors committed to equitable education. From a historical perspective, motivation for the development of these models in the "second to the last decade of the twentieth century" springs from the hopes of a "work force educated well enough" (p. 1) to compete with European and Asian pecuniary forces. The authors aim to present a chronological set of connections and address the attempt towards equitable opportunities for "all" Americans as related to school reform. Yet, the authors are not explicit in terms of how the restructuring efforts gave novel experiences to "all" groups of people, particularly to the underrepresented groups who are usually the targets -of such programs and reform endeavors.

The first chapter introduces summarized prefatory information to the in-depth descriptions of the same programs in the following sections. In Chapter One: One Hundred Years of School Reform, the authors cite the past standards for educational policy on school reform and the dramatic steps taken by former presidents of the United States. The author's historical commentary also includes the various independent school reform organizations that resulted from long-established habits of schooling and century-old power arrangements-none of which were notably effective. Furthermore, Chapter One assesses and describes the programs of five independent school reform organizations, their philosophies and practices. Four of the five programs-James Comer's School Development Program at Yale University, Theodore Sizer's Coalition of Essential Schools, Janet Whitla's Education Development Center, and Howard Gardner's and David Perkins' Project Zero at Harvard University-are spearheaded by pioneers in the area of school reform. Building on similar efforts of programs developed in the previous century and on work of these four programs, a fifth reform effort culminated into the Authentic Teaching and Learning for All Students (ATLAS).

One of the most pragmatic approaches to school reform is described in Chapter Two: Inside the School Development Program (SDP), the program founded and developed by James P. Comer, M.D. Explanations were given of how Comer's "espoused theory of action" (p. 29) grew out of his therapeutic training, skills, and his emphasis on family orientation. The authors claim Comer believes that "child development should be the basic science of education" as "anatomy and physiology ... are the basic sciences of medicine" (p. 29). The basic understanding is that child development can assist in every level of education and systematic issues-bridging children's links to the "social mainstream" (p. 31). Schools should provide teams, principles, and operations to put the desired design into action. While the authors argue that combining a sound scientific base with a realistic approach towards schools may be paradoxical, they also maintain that SDP has the most practical and supportive perspective which makes it "the most accepting, among the ATLAS partners, of schools" (p. 30).

Chapter Three: The Coalition of Essential Schools in Its Second Decade provides an in-depth description of the program Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) from its formation to its current operation. From the authors' point of view, the program describes itself as a "traditional structure of outsiders working to implement changes on the inside of associated schools"(p. 47) while engaging in multiple school efforts. The authors further explain the concept of CES is focused on 10 Common Principles, a product of a study conducted on secondary education by its first director, Ted Sizer.