Seeing Complexity in Public Education

Problems, Possibilities, and Success for All

Donald Peurach

Tells the story of the Success for All Foundation in a narrative style that is accessible for a broad audience
Draws from the history of Success for All to make broader conclusions about education reform
Offers the first comprehensive analysis of Success for All's history, programs, and operations

Seeing Complexity in Public Education

Problems, Possibilities, and Success for All

Donald Peurach

Description

In a period of unprecedented pressure to reform education in the United States, two questions stand out: What is involved in the work of transforming underperforming schools into higher performing schools? And what makes this work so difficult?

Seeing Complexity in Public Education examines these questions in light of the history of the Success for All Foundation, an organization that has collaborated with thousands of elementary schools across the US to enact a common design for comprehensive school reform, all in the effort to improve the reading achievement of millions of students. This story of Success for All spans a long and turbulent period, beginning in 1987, with the strategy of improving reading achievement by improving students' cooperative learning in classrooms, and stretching through 2008, with efforts to influence federal policy to support that strategy.

There is nothing in the story of Success for All to suggest that schools can be improved through silver bullets, stump speeches, or passionate debate. Rather, the theme that emerges from the story of Success for All is that the problems and possibilities of effective, large-scale, and sustainable education reform lie in the complexity of public education - in the interactions among underperforming schools, programs of reform, the organizations that advance those programs, and the environments in which they operate.

The story of Success for All is sobering, in that it locates first order problems of education reform not in the schools that need to improve, but instead, in the many reformers so determined to improve them. By tracing Success for All's deep push into the full world of US public education, this book assists both populist and professional reformers in seeing, understanding, and ultimately confronting its complexity.

Seeing Complexity in Public Education

Problems, Possibilities, and Success for All

Donald Peurach

INTRODUCTION
I.1 Problems
I.2 Solutions
I.3 The Success for All Foundation
I.4 The Story
I.5 Analytic Framework
I.6 Complexity

1. DESIGNING
1.1 Beginnings
1.2 The Organizational Blueprint
1.3 Challenges, Redefined
1.4 Gathering Enthusiasm
1.5 Gathering Criticism
1.6 Questions

2. SUPPORTING
2.1 The Program Adoption Process
2.2 The Replication Process
2.3 Compounding Potential, Compounding Risk
2.4 Program as Classroom

3. SCALING UP
3.1 Emergence and Co-Evolution
3.2 Exploding Growth
3.3 Exploding Risk
3.4 A Perfect Storm
3.5 Recapturing the Program

4. CONTINUOUSLY IMPROVING
4.1 The Development Agenda
4.2 The Development Organization
4.3 The Development Process
4.4 Revolution via Evolution
4.5 New Problems Within, New Problems Beyond
4.6 Living on the Edge

5. SUSTAINING
5.1 Evolving to Evolve
5.2 Seeing and Interpreting
5.3 Strategizing and Adapting
5.4 The More Things ChangeEL
5.5 Time Capsule: Advice and Predictions

6. SEEING
6.1 Reprise
6.2 Reform
6.3 Renewal

Seeing Complexity in Public Education

Problems, Possibilities, and Success for All

Donald Peurach

Author Information

Donald J. Peurach is an assistant professor in the School of Education at the University of Michigan. He also served as a researcher on the Study of Instructional Improvement, conducted by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education at the University of Michigan. Previously, he served as an assistant professor at Eastern Michigan University and Michigan State University, a high school mathematics teacher, and a systems analyst.

Contributors:

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Seeing Complexity in Public Education

Problems, Possibilities, and Success for All

Donald Peurach

Reviews and Awards

"The value of this study reaches far beyond the domain of its specific and intense concern with the reform of public education. It will be an inspiration, a model, and a guide for all who seek to understand how human beings can organize to achieve real progress against the many pressing, large-scale, and complicated problems that beset their societies." -- Sidney G. Winter, Deloitte and Touche Professor of Management, Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania

"Improvement at scale is today's mantra for educational reform. Yet how to build capacity to accomplish this remains largely unknown. No more. Seeing Complexity in Public Education offers a guided tour of the extraordinary design and development efforts of the Success for All program. Great insights are afforded here about both the big ideas and the micro-details that building educational systems, committed to the academic success of all children, will actually entail." -- Anthony S. Bryk, President, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

"Essential reading for anyone interested in engaging with the real challenges of ensuring academic success for all! Firmly anchored in his data, Peurach cogently untangles the mesh of interdependent relations at the heart of educational reform, avoiding simplistic solutions while still leaving his reader with a sophisticated understanding of how and why educational reform might be designed differently. In elegant and accessible prose, he takes his reader on a journey through the complexities of everyday practice that are at the epicenter of improving American education. Read this book, and you will be convinced all over again of the power of exemplary case study research in informing our most pressing educational policy and practice challenges." -- James P. Spillane, Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Chair in Learning and Organizational Change, and Professor, School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University

"This tale truly deserves to be told, read, and understood. Donald J. Peurach's careful analysis is convincing. Success is possible in educational reform when one acknowledges the complexity of the system and builds the reform on solid evidence. Stimulating and insightful research shows that education can be reformed." -- Sakari Karjalainen, Director General, Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture

"Donald Peurach's Seeing Complexity in Public Education a welcome contribution. The work examines in-depth what may be the largest example of scaling up in evidence: development of the Success for All Foundation (SFAF) as it grew from a handful of schools in Baltimore to over 1,500 schools across 50 states and policy contexts." -- BetsAnn Smith, American Journal of Education

Seeing Complexity in Public Education

Problems, Possibilities, and Success for All

Donald Peurach

From Our Blog

Seeing complexity in U.S. public education

By Donald J. Peurach Education reform is among the great American pastimes. This is activity that plays out continuously in public discourse everywhere from corner bars to capitol buildings, as well as in the day-to-day work of government agencies, university-based project teams, and private organizations. Current wrangling over the reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Act will surely throw fuel on the fire.

Posted on December 12, 2011

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