Superintendents’ Part in Narrowing Opportunity, Achievement Gaps

A study identifies the common interventions used by leaders in 13 school districts in a national network

Superintendents committed to removing the power of race, ethnicity, dominant language and family income to predict student learning have touted interventions resulting in promising results.

We identified the particular interventions and their impact in the findings of our study of 13 superintendents, all of whom served as governing board members of the Minority Student Achievement Network, or MSAN. This organization was founded in 1999 with the leadership of Allan Alson, then superintendent of the Evanston Township, Ill., High School District, and the assistance of AASA. The initial MSAN members were by design inner-ring suburban, diverse and well-resourced small to moderate-sized school systems.

We interviewed the 13 superintendents in 2011 and 2012. To ensure we included only superintendents who had at least minimal experience in working on learning gaps, we talked only with those who had been in their current positions and members of the MSAN Governing Board for at least two years. Thirteen of the 14 Governing Board members who met the criteria agreed to participate.

Adaptable Ideas

Our analysis of the interview transcripts resulted in a study that is the basis of a newly released book Striving for Equity: District Leadership for Narrowing Opportunity and Achievement Gaps (Harvard Education Press). The stories these school leaders told deserve greater notice. Each could point to major accomplishments in narrowing learning gaps. Their progress departs from the generally accepted national finding that gap closing is, at best, slow and halting. The superintendents’ actions provided examples suitable for adaptation by other school leaders.

Among the results reported by the superintendents:

 Rising achievement, greater participation in advanced classes, increasing graduation rates and higher college matriculation among students in all subgroups.

 Narrowed gaps in each of the measured categories between white students and students of color, between students speaking English as a first language and those speaking English as a second language, and between students whose parents are poor and those whose parents are not.

 Greater participation of minority students in co-curricular activities that enhance learning and school community experiences.

Prominent among the interventions credited with generating these results are expansion of early childhood education; unified, articulated and demanding curriculum; professional development designed to deliver the curriculum; open access to challenging academic experiences; augmented emphasis on college matriculation; and conversations about race.

Favorable Conditions

In addition to identifying the superintendents’ successful interventions, we wanted to uncover the nature of the personal and organizational conditions that allowed their use.

Almost all of the superintendents shared a background of devotion to social justice, and they wished to work in school districts with like-minded boards and community leaders. Betty Feser in Windsor, Conn., Jere Hochman in Bedford, N.Y., Judy Wilson in Princeton, N.J., Brian Osborne in South Orange and Maplewood, N.J., Hardy Murphy in Evanston-Skokie, Ill., Morton Sherman in Alexandria, Va., and Bill Lupini in Brookline, Mass., referenced their experiences with civil rights and/or alluded specifically to seeking positions in communities and with boards that shared their interest in working toward narrowing learning gaps.

Several communities in which these superintendents worked took pride in their history of engaging issues of social justice, such as leading in the struggle for fair housing (Shaker Heights, Ohio) or school integration (Arlington, Va.). When the board and superintendent agreed on the priority of narrowing gaps, this work was more likely to succeed.

We also found that longer superintendent tenures (at the time of the study, tenures ranged from 23 years for Shaker Heights’ Mark Freeman to two years for Arlington’s Patrick Murphy) and less turnover in board membership were associated with positive results. Apparently, this kind of work requires both persistence and sustained attention under conditions of organizational and political stability.

Consistent Applications

The interventions we identified occurred to varying degrees across the 13 districts. The expansion of pre-K education was a feature of the work Dan Nerad of Madison, Wis., and Wilson of Princeton, N.J., discussed. Osborne and Feser worked to expand full-day kindergarten in their communities. Most of the leaders saw intervening in early education as necessary for narrowing gaps.

Creating a unified curriculum and providing the training to ensure its consistent and skillful implementation was a major issue for Sue Zurvalec of Farmington, Mich., Hardy Murphy of Evanston, Ill., Jim Lee of Paradise Valley, Ariz., and others.

Each expressed consternation that they had entered a “system of schools” as opposed to “a school system” as Feser put it. Murphy expanded on the point: “It was a district of schools and within the schools, the classrooms were pretty much going … their own way.”

Their concern, shared by most of the superintendents, was that they needed a consistent curriculum and approach to instruction if they were to make measurable progress. In several districts, professional development focused on instructional practices and a number of superintendents used professional learning communities to forge greater consistency of implementation.

Creating that kind of consistency required sustained professional development. “In order for some of these practices or philosophies to permeate the system, it takes a number of years. In some cases, we’re still at it 10 years later,” said Neil Pederson of Chapel Hill-Carrboro, N.C. “It probably shouldn’t take that long, but the reality is, some of that training just never goes away when you have 10–15 percent turnover and you’re a growing school system.”

A common theme among the superintendents was the need to create access to rigorous academic experiences for all students by removing barriers represented in rules governing who could gain admittance to those experiences. The common path involved eliminating such barriers (sometimes through policy deliberations, sometimes by edict) without concomitant declines in performance measures, such as the percentage of students earning a qualifying score on Advanced Placement tests.

A natural extension of the drive to increase access to advanced courses and experiences was the push to increase college-going behaviors among students of color through a variety of interventions, such as concurrent enrollment in college classes and booster classes during special summer programs in cooperation with local colleges and universities. Four of the superintendents described their participation in such efforts.

Cultural Responsiveness

Finally, many of the superintendents, most prominently Pederson, attempted to create culturally responsive teaching through what the consultant and author Glenn Singleton calls “courageous conversations about race,” which include frank discussions of white privilege.

As we talked with the superintendents, we were struck by the similarity of the kind of interventions in which they engaged and by the diversity of their approaches. Clearly, these were school system leaders who were certain they needed to adapt approaches to interventions to their own local conditions. What mattered to them were the principles behind the interventions rather than the procedures prescribed by any particular program.

The principles at the basis of their work included consistency in expectations regarding what is taught, how it is taught and how it is measured; rigorous academic experiences available and promoted to all students; teacher collaboration directed toward increased student performance; implementation of equitable curriculum and instruction through vehicles such as professional learning communities; a drive for high expectations and directly confronting issues of race and privilege.