Table of Contents

Executive Summary

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Scaling Up

Critical Questions

Action Agenda

Appendix

In 2-plus days of discussion, participants at the Bringing to Scale Educational Innovation and School Reform conference came to many conclusions. They agreed that allowing a school to fail means acknowledging that all the children in that school are expendable. And they agreed that building in an acceptable level of casualties is too high a price for our society to pay, for both moral and economic reasons.

Congressman Sawyer clearly presented the challenge. The conference participants reaffirmed psychology's potential role as a partner in education, despite the discipline's tendency to view it as a fringe interest and to forget its history of collaborative work in schooling. Conference participants voiced a clarion call to psychology to resume its rightful place at the education table and use research, practice, and policy to improve the nation's schools.

During discussion, conference participants concurred that there need to be several paradigm shifts: from a repair mentality to a prevention one, from an individual model to a contextual one, and from a focus on deficits to one on possibility and an understanding of how to implement the idea that all children can learn. They also agreed that while the individual school has to be the unit of change, reformers need to know more about district-level change.

Based on the conference participants' hours of discussion and years of research, they generated a list of basic questions in need of research:

• What factors do effective programs share? Conference participants came to some consensus about several programs and processes worth scaling up, but they did not fully agree on the criteria for effective programs.

• Is it better to 'home-brew' programs or adopt already existing programs? Some conference participants supported a constructivist approach, with schools creating onsite programs based on empirically proven principles. Others supported the implementation of well-developed and evaluated models. They agreed that reformers need to know more about the conditions under which either of these approaches would succeed.

• How can reformers institutionalize school change? Conference participants discussed the need to know more about how to make changes at the district and state levels to support reform and how to sustain change despite the turnover of principals, superintendents, teachers, and other key staff members.

• How can reformers enhance collaboration between researchers and program developers and practitioners? Conference participants agreed that collaboration has to begin earlier in the process than it has in the past. A major stumbling block is the fact that reformers often see more reward in developing new ideas than in successfully implementing them. Psychologists, conference participants agreed, need to become more skilled in disseminating knowledge and ensuring that their research gets put to use.

• What is the best way to enhance evaluation efforts? Conference participants agreed that psychologists working in education need to develop strong program evaluation skills and that psychologists' training needs to pay more attention to the topic. They also agreed that the science of program evaluation must itself be given more attention. Diverse models of evaluation, such as 'empowerment evaluations,' need further study and debate.

• How can reformers help consumers - including educators, administrators, families, and communities - embrace more effective practices? Teachers and administrators need to increase their evaluation skills to learn what works for them and to be able to select other programs and practices that have been demonstrated to be effective. Conference participants agreed that many schools are implementing programs that haven't been empirically proven to work. Or they are unaware that there can be potential differential effects of programs on participants (for example, do the girls and boys obtain the same benefits from a particular program?). They agreed that consumers often misunderstand issues like test scores, learning, and development. And they agreed that both educators and psychologists need to learn more about diversity issues related to education. To maximize the chances that a program can be successfully scaled up, researchers and reformers must take consumers' needs into account earlier in the process of program development.

• How can psychology serve as a catalyst for bringing together various partners in reform efforts? Noting that no profession or discipline can solve serious social problems alone, conference participants wondered how psychology could assist in reform efforts when many of those involved don't even accept the idea that psychology has a role to play in the fight for better schools. Conference participants acknowledged that any attempt at change must address the concerns of critical stakeholders if it is to be successful. They were mindful that teachers and administrators worry about having 'top down' programs imposed upon them regardless of their specific needs and often lack consumer information to make wise choices of programs that work. Middle-class parents reject urban schools as inadequate and withdraw their children, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Older home-owners resent the fact that escalating property taxes are funding schools for other people's children. The general public frets about whether the movement for national standards means federalizing the schools. Psychologists themselves are concerned that they lack the training in education and evaluation skills they need to truly help schools. All of these fears underscore the importance of involving representatives from all these groups as partners in change.

Table of Contents