McCallister (2001): From ideal to real: Unlocking the doors of school reform.

McCallister, C. (2001). From ideal to real: Unlocking the doors of school reform. In Frances O’Connell Rust & Helen Freidus (Eds.), Guiding School Change: The Role and Work of Change Agents (pp. 37-56). New York: Teachers College Press.

McCallister is an Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education at NYU. Around 1996, she received a 5-year foundation grant to work as a staff developer at a NYC public school for an innovative and student centered literacy and language program. Initially, teachers were excited by the program and expressed committment. But only a few teachers actually stuck to the program. A few experienced teachers learned to become "experts" on advanced methods of literacy instruction and became "exemplars." But other teachers at the school were not able to tap into their expertise.

Issues:

• uneven commitment of teachers
• no incentive structure to support the expectation that every teacher use the program
• school culture was one where teachers had a lot of personal autonomy - administration didn't want to "force" teachers to implement the program; tension between accountability and autonomy
• principal did not fully support the program during implementation; replaced by an interim principal who was liked by parents by disliked by the superintendent; there was conflict between parents & the superintendent.
• school had many inexperienced teachers who were struggling with other issues like classroom management
• lack of district support; they gave this school 75% less money for books for the reading program because they were not using the approved literacy program's basal reader
• instability caused by faculty turnover

"In most schools and classrooms, core practices don't change on a large scale because reform efforts don't sufficiently account for the complexity of how institutions are organized, and what incentive structures govern practice (Darling-Hammond, 1997; Elmore, 1996)." (p55)