Outside Reform Orgs Discussed at Askwith Forum

School districts and policymakers are not sole reformers working alone to transform education today. In the past two decades since A Nation at Risk, local and national organizations have become key players in school reform. “Schools have become everybody’s business,” said Professor Paul Reville, who moderated the Askwith Forum, “School Reform from the Outside In.”

Though the work is often challenging and contentious, the reformers working to change education from the outside in wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Districts can be so hard to change,” said Dan Challener, president of the Public Education Foundation, an independent, nonprofit, community-based organization that provides training, research, and resources to teachers, principals, and schools in the Hamilton County area of Tennessee. Challener admitted that he often feels he can effect more change working from within an outside organization than from within a district.

At the heart of their work, said the panelists, is building relationships with the communities and school districts. Still, to a district, these groups can be seen as threats, outsiders, or nuisances. For instance, Tiffany Cooper Gueye, chief executive officer of the nonprofit organization Building Educated Leaders for Life (BELL), the focus of which is expanding learning time, noted that initially it was difficult to even use school facilities to offer programming.

Challenges are often par for the course, said Barr Foundation Director of Education Wendy Puriefoy, such as when leadership in the districts change.

“The dexterity that is needed for an organization to play the role of the strategist, in that one day you are in and next day you are out [is amazing],” Puriefoy said. “This is the tightrope that these groups walk. One year there is a superintendent that’s in and another year there is a different superintendent [who asks,] ‘Who are you?’… [Groups must] know that you engage the community, that you’re a strategist, and at the same time a deliverer of the goods.”

Similar to school districts, outside organizations use a barometer of evaluations and metrics to track their success. In the case of City Year, Jeff Jablow, senior vice president of strategy and operations, said that their success came from a change in the organization’s approach.

“We found that true schoolwide improvement, and ultimately student success, comes from partnership,” Jablow said. “We made the shift from thinking about schools as place where City Year corp members are volunteering to a really a strategic transformative partner where City Year corp members were imbedded education practitioners.”

Reville asked the panelists what they considered the best way for Ed School students to make a difference: working for “inside” or “outside” organizations.

“There is no wrong answer to that question,” Jablow said. “What inspires at City Year is that despite the challenge … the kids aren’t going anywhere.”

Puriefoy encouraged Ed School students to simply “go where the work takes you,” measure whether things have changed, and ask, “Have I been part of that change?”