| Unlocking the 11 Components - Supportive Staff Members |
In the definition provided in the introduction, CSR is described as a product of the long-term, collaborative efforts of school staff, parents and district staff. Individuals — teachers, counselors, administrators, parents and other school and district staff members — accomplish CSR by working together. Because of CSR's reliance on motivation and collaboration, its implementation and success are directly related to the amount of support it has among parents, school faculty and staff, and district staff.
Gaining support for CSR should be a matter of demonstrating that CSR can help increase academic achievement and engaging staff in an improvement planning process that gives them ownership over their school's comprehensive reform. How to Build Support for Comprehensive School Reform
(http://www.naschools.org/uploadedfiles/How to Build Support for Comprehensive School Reform pdf.pdf),
a New American Schools (NAS) publication, emphasizes the necessity of creating a sense of urgency among school and community stakeholders and encouraging them to agree on the need for improvement. NAS suggests establishing a district leadership team that presents data such as test scores, attendance and graduation rates to school staff and community members to make a case for engaging in CSR. Data continue to be used throughout the CSR process to gauge progress, identify successes during implementation and isolate issues that require extra attention. NAS also emphasizes the importance of engaging stakeholders in significant ways. "As a condition of their support for change, parents, teachers, and community leaders want to be consulted about issues such as standards, assessments, professional development, and school safety. They want direct access to information. And they want a say in important decisions affecting their children, students, and community" (p.14).
Having implemented CSR in hundreds of schools, the developers of most nationally available models recognize the importance of supportive staff members and have developed procedures to ensure that they only work in schools where the reform effort is voluntarily chosen by the faculty and administration. For example, Success For All requires that at least 80 percent of teachers vote in favor of the program in a secret ballot. Similarly, the Accelerated Schools web site states, "While a unanimous vote/consensus is optimal, a school will not be accepted without at least 90 percent of full-time staff and school community representatives willing to transform their school into an accelerated school."
Yet making a free choice is only part of the answer when it comes to maintaining support for several years. School staff must also make an informed choice. Successful states like Oregon and experienced model developers ensure that schools are making a choice they will continue to support by encouraging teachers to make site visits, read program materials and watch videotapes of the program in action.
Key Concerns
In almost all schools that consider CSR, or any other significant change, there is some resistance.
This can have many underlying causes — from a feeling that this is just one of many reform
ideas that will come and go to a belief that the wrong program or strategy has been selected.
Many schools have been successful at turning around resistant staff. In a case study of the Clover Park School District in Washington, principals attempted to overcome the resistance to CSR by inviting, but not forcing, critics to be more involved with the process, allowing time and peer pressure to bring resistant staff around and even allowing highly resistant staff to transfer. The full report, Implementing School Reform Models: The Clover Park Experience is available at http://www.nwrel.org/csrdp/clover.html.
Resources
The following resource offers valuable guidance:
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Question From The Field: "Our elementary school has been involved in what is considered in some circles as a highly effective educational reform implementation. As the external facilitator component has been faded out during our seventh year, I see a little deterioration of the integrity of some of the instructional delivery intensity that was so important during the project. The roadblock to sustaining this effectiveness appears to me to be our lack of institutionalization of the basic underpinnings of the philosophy of the project. How do we see this coming and what do we do about it?"
This question highlights the depth of support that is necessary for a change to not only be implemented, but to become institutionalized as part of the staff's guiding philosophy. NCCSR recommends the following resources:
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