Building Capacity for Education Reform. O’Day, J., Goertz, M.E., Floden, R.E. Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE), RB-18, December 1995.

This policy brief reports findings of a three-year study of the progress of systemic reform for 12 schools in six school districts in California, Michigan, and Vermont. The authors define "capacity" as the ability of the education system to help all students meet more challenging standards, and they note that capacity can be increased in a number of ways: 1) by improving the performance of individual workers (teachers); 2) by adding resources such as personnel or technology to the system; and 3) by restructuring how work is organized or services are delivered. Most capacity-building strategies today tend to focus on improving the performance of individual teachers. According to the authors, the traditional methods for doing so are very limited and ignore the effects that other parts of the education system have on teachers’ ability to teach.

Three themes emerge from their research:

1. Teacher capacity has several interdependent dimensions: teachers’ knowledge, skill, attitude, and views of their roles in the classroom and of themselves as learners.

2. Teacher capacity interacts with that of the larger organization, be it the department, school, or district. Dimensions of organizational capacity include vision and leadership, commitment to students, collective knowledge, and organizational structure and resources.

3. Schools need exposure to outside ideas to move beyond their current practices.

Many strategies aimed at increasing student learning can also help to build teacher and organizational capacity, depending on how policies around these strategies are designed, the authors found. Vermont, for example, had established a portfolio assessment that reflected its outcomes-oriented vision for education reform. The use of this assessment appeared also to increase teacher knowledge and teacher support for the state’s reform efforts. However, teachers did not receive enough technical assistance to enable them to use the outcomes to effectively improve instruction, somewhat undermining the effectiveness of the portfolio assessments.

The authors conclude by identifying some continuing challenges for states, districts, and schools as they attempt to use standards-based reform to build teacher and organizational capacity:

1. To place learning—for students and the education system as a whole—at the center of all reform efforts;

2. To rethink the way current resources are used to improve efficiency and effectiveness;

3. To link the multiple influences on teachers—subject-area workshops, professional networks, district-sponsored staff development, school restructuring—into a coherent whole in the classroom and at the school site;

4. To include and educate the public in reform efforts.

To obtain a copy of the full brief, go to: www.gse.upenn.edu/cpre/Publications/Publications_Policy_Briefs.htm