Ten years after the San Diego school district gained national attention for its short-lived 鈥淏lueprint for Student Success,鈥� a crowd of district officials last week that is almost the opposite of its controversial predecessor.
The city鈥檚 blueprint reforms鈥攍argely dismantled after a charismatic and aggressive superintendent, Alan D. Bersin, left in 2005鈥攚ere among the most closely watched and hotly debated of the early years of the No Child Left Behind Act.
And some experts say the story of the demise of the blueprint campaign and the rise of San Diego鈥檚 new improvement effort may hold lessons for advocates of similar wholesale interventions using federal Race to the Top and School Improvement Fund grants.
鈥淥ne way to read the San Diego experience is, reforms that don鈥檛 have a local constituency and are not supported by local advocates and efforts are not likely to stick,鈥� said Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies for the American Enterprise Institute think tank. 鈥淚n many ways, Bersin was a test case for how much you can force a school district to change. That鈥檚 just an enormous cautionary note when we hear [U.S. Secretary of Education Arne] Duncan talk about how we鈥檙e going to drive reform and what these superintendents are going to be able to accomplish.鈥�
Mr. Bersin and his academic chancellor, Anthony Alvarado, were trying to standardize interventions districtwide in creating the blueprint. The plan called for intensive professional development in the district-chosen reading program, double- and triple-length reading classes, and extended learning time for struggling schools, all closely monitored by the superintendent.
In contrast to the approach then, the district will make its new plan final only after holding more than 75 comment sessions throughout the community. Each building principal will decide on interventions to implement with the school鈥檚 teachers and parents, and they will share successful programs informally, through site visits to other schools.
Gauging Impact
The unveiling of the new reform agenda came just days after the San Diego-based Public Policy Institute of California , the latest of a series of such reports, that suggests the previous reforms鈥� impact on student achievement was mixed鈥攁nd possibly more positive than critics predicted.
Julian Betts, an economics professor at the , found that the double-length 鈥渓iteracy block鈥� and triple-length 鈥渓iteracy core鈥� interventions had increased middle school students鈥� reading achievement by 1.6 percentile points and 5.5 percentile points a year, respectively. Thus, Mr. Betts argued, a student who entered 6th grade ranking in the bottom 40 percent of the class and then participated in both programs would be expected to be in the 52nd percentile by the end of middle school.
Yet that improvement was reversed for students at the high school level, where English-learners lost as much as 4.9 percentile points for every year they participated in the literacy blocks.
But the study is one among many with differing results. It remains hard to judge the blueprint鈥檚 success. Budget cuts started three years into implementation, curtailing major segments of the program.
Comparisons also were hard to make because multiple interventions rolled out districtwide at the same time.
Retired district high school teacher John de Beck, a school board member since 1990, said he had opposed the blueprint in part because he wanted it to be piloted first. 鈥淎ll I wanted was implementation in parts of the district so there would be a control group!鈥� he said in an e-mail.
The Backlash
According to Mr. Betts, though, whether the blueprint reforms ultimately proved effective would have little impact on whether the district would try similar approaches again; the backlash against the blueprint approach was extreme.
The protested relentlessly against what President Bill Freeman recalled as a system 鈥渕ore about evaluating teachers than improving student achievement.鈥�
鈥淗e literally ruined teachers,鈥� Mr. Freeman said of Mr. Bersin. 鈥淚f you have a teacher who cannot teach freely and adjust the lesson to meet the needs of students in the classroom, they cannot teach.鈥�
Teachers and parents protested what they considered Mr. Bersin鈥檚 鈥渢op-down鈥� and 鈥渃ookie-cutter鈥� approach and succeeded in getting some of the program鈥檚 budget cut in 2003. The union won the ouster of Mr. Bersin鈥檚 supporters on the school board in the 2004 election, after which Mr. Bersin resigned. What remained of the blueprint lost its last support on the board.
The controversy still reverberates in the district鈥檚 reaction to intervention grants under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the 2009 federal economic-stimulus law. The district includes four schools on California鈥檚 list of the 5 percent most persistently low-performing schools in the state, and another 77 identified for improvement or restructuring under the No Child Left Behind Act.
Yet only two schools applied for help from the federal School Improvement Fund, and the district did not sign up to take part in either of California鈥檚 two unsuccessful Race to the Top applications.
鈥淭he reason we did not apply for Race to the Top is we knew that it was going to make us do things that would not work for us,鈥� said school board member Sheila Jackson, who was elected during the backlash against the blueprint. 鈥淲e want to look for funding that will help us accelerate what we are doing here, rather than funding where people are going to tell you what you have to do.鈥�
Mr. Bersin, now the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, has not changed his opinion on what it takes to improve a school system.
鈥淐hange must be driven systematically and systemically for more satisfactory results in teacher practice and student gateway skills,鈥� Mr. Bersin wrote in an e-mail. 鈥淲e need to be open to new ideas and judge them based on results, not on ideology, or whether they threaten entrenched interests.鈥�
Some district officials say that a few of the blueprint reforms survive in 鈥渂its and pieces鈥� in schools.
鈥淚t鈥檚 not that one [approach] was better that the other; this is an evolution based on some foundational work that was done,鈥� said Nellie Meyer, San Diego鈥檚 deputy superintendent for academics.
鈥淚t really has been five years since the Bersin superintendency, and we are still working constantly to build trust,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e鈥檝e definitely recognized that trust is a component that triggers academic success.鈥�
