Fellowship Paper

Disseminating the Work of Essential Schools through School Partnerships

by Frank Honts

Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School

Massachusetts Charter School Fellowship Program

2005

Since the enactment of education reform legislation in Massachusetts during the early 1990s, charter schools have attempted to provide viable alternatives to students’ district educational choices. Because charters are free from some of the constraints traditional districts face, many people believe that charters can serve as incubators of innovative educational practices. In addition, some proponents (applying free-market theory) hold that the innovations of charter schools can be easily replicated, that a program—or even an entire school model—can be transferred from one place to another and that this transfer can be sustained. In practice, this theory has meant too much reliance on copying schools’ best work, and not enough emphasis on creating programs responsive to local contexts and building professionals’ capacity to meet the needs of their local populations.

Over two decades after the publication of A Nation at Risk (1983), evidence strongly suggests that cookie-cutter approaches to school reform typically fail. Even school-reform efforts that have devoted substantial resources to helping schools implement broad sets of principles and ideas (across the ideological spectrum—from the Coalition of Essential Schools, Big Picture Schools, and Expeditionary Learning/Outward Bound, to Core Knowledge and KIPP schools), have struggled to identify sure-fire replicable practices, as well as easy-to-follow road maps of how to proceed with adopting a school-reform initiative. The lesson? School reform, especially as new or existing schools attempt to align with organizations’ larger ideas, is difficult work—work that cannot rely on a simple set of steps or strategies to be used in every “member” school.

The schools that have most successfully partnered with national school-reform organizations are those that have typically devoted substantial time and money to:

• articulating shared norms and values within a community;
• choosing carefully the structures and programs that connect to those core beliefs;
• and devising a thoughtful professional development effort to help teachers understand the ways to enact these practices in the daily life of the school.

Indeed, one lesson from the Coalition of Essential Schools (one of the oldest and far-reaching of these school reform efforts), is that capacity building (that is, providing teachers the support they need to do their best work) is an essential element of any successful reform. Since its founding in the mid-1990s, the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School (Parker) has grappled with how to provide support for other schools committed to its ideas without simply marketing Parker as a model of the “right” way to keep a good school.

As a member of the first group of charter schools that emerged during state education reform in the mid-1990s, Parker is a public charter school in north central Massachusetts that serves 370 students from over forty towns and strives to “move the child to the center of the educational process and to interrelate the several subjects of the curriculum so as to enhance their meaning for the child” (Francis W. Parker Charter Essential Schools Charter Application 1994, 8). In keeping with the state’s requirement that charter schools act as disseminators of best practices, Parker has from its beginning attempted to develop programs that first and foremost help people understand how the school enacts the Ten Common Principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools (see Appendix A).

The brainchild of Ted Sizer (founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools), and a project of Parker, the Teachers Center opened along with the school. Initially, and assisted by federal funds, the Teachers Center was part of the principal’s office, and the staff of the center were responsible for coordinating visits to the school and generally carrying out the “dissemination” of Parker practices. As a result, three distinct types of programs emerged:

• daylong “Parker 101” visitation days provided a space for people to visit classes, talk with teachers and administrators, and observe first-hand Parker’s program in action;
• workshops gave visitors a chance to learn from Parker about the school’s most successful programs (like advisory, senior projects, and authentic assessment);
• and custom visits allowed teachers to develop a program inspired by their own questions about the work.

Although an original goal of the Teachers Center was to involve local schools in its work, for years resentment from many communities about the effects of the charter movement on local districts kept schools away.

Several years of visitor feedback data suggest that Teachers Center programs have generally been successful at getting the word out about Parker and its implementation of the Ten Common Principles. Feedback also shows that the Teachers Center has had some success at creating informal networks of interested colleagues from local communities—around the state of Massachusetts and nationally. In written reflections completed at the end of their visits, individuals have noted that the structures of visitation days, workshops, and custom programs—all intentionally modeled after the personalized, interactive teaching practices valued at Parker—have resulted in informative, useful, and provocative experiences. Educators who have visited Parker have shared their respect and admiration for the school, as summarized by one teacher from New York City in 1999: “What struck me was the dialogue and relationships between the students and faculty. The learners felt free to challenge ideas, assignments, and each other, but still retained enough respect for their teachers and peers to allow a very successful learning environment” (Parker School Annual Report 1998-1999, 64). Over the years, visitors have seen that Parker is living out its mission, and some have wondered if they could take elements of the Parker program back into their own practices. One teacher, for example, expressed a common sentiment among visitors—wishing that in her own school there were more time and “fewer students so we could give as much narrative feedback [as teachers at Parker give]” (Parker School Annual Report 1999-2000, 76). The evidence has consistently demonstrated that visits to Parker reaffirm or sharpen people’s resolve to advocate for restructuring in their own schools.

But how to support educators in those restructuring efforts? In recent years, the principal of Parker and the Teachers Center director have begun to re-think the theory of action behind Parker’s outreach efforts. They examined data that suggested that participants in a visit or workshop left the school enthusiastic about what they learned, but that even the most in-depth programs were generally insufficient to bring about meaningful change in the schools where attendees taught. (In response to these frequent reflections, a member of the Parker community once speculated that the peak level of interest from visitors most often happened on their car ride back to school.) By 2003, conversations with visitors, as well as multiple visits from specific individuals (whose basic questions often remained the same from one visit to the next), provided a reminder of the limited effects of Parker’s dissemination efforts and suggested that changes in the Teachers Center program needed to be made in order to help educators enact permanent, effective changes in their schools.

Informal data collected from past visitors through phone calls, e-mail, and encounters at conferences suggested that Parker programs needed to include a wider range of strategies and tools for program implementation, offer more and better structured time to puzzle out how programs might look in participants’ own schools, and convey a clearer message about how the school moved from program design to implementation—as opposed to simply sharing the effective programs as they already operated.

Clearly, the needs expressed could not be met through Parker’s existing programs, all of which took place at Parker—during the school year, and for no more than a day. Through the Teachers Center, Parker set about examining other ways to disseminate its work, asking the question: How could the Teachers Center at Parker provide a meaningful space for committed educators from other schools to go beyond thinking and learning about restructuring and actually begin designing and implementing programs in their own schools?

Moving Beyond the Car Ride Home

As early as 1999, Parker faculty speculated on how they could develop a business plan to “provide school design teams with the support needed to design and to open a new secondary school based on proven principles [Essential Schools-like practices] and which will be dramatically different from the traditional model of the American high school” (Lane 1999, Tab 1-1). In 1999, a business-school graduate student wrote a prospective plan for an “incubator project,” but because of funding limitations, Parker’s relative infancy as a school, and a lull in the level of interest and activity in the national Essential Schools movement at the time, the project’s viability was limited to the plan on paper.

By 2003, circumstances at Parker—most notably a greater level of institutional stability—enabled the Teachers Center to refocus its efforts on dissemination and place the idea of long-term support of schools at the center of its future plans. Organizational support was strong (including the principal’s stated commitment to this direction of the work, the hiring of a full-time director, and the formation of a Teachers Center advisory group; this and the fact that on a national level, the Coalition of Essential Schools recognized Parker as a “mentor school,” helping to provide the school with a sound financial base for several years). There was also increased national and regional focus on the burgeoning “small schools” movement, as well as a surge in the education reform movement. In addition, data mounted on student isolation and gaps in achievement between White students and students of color, and the call to action became more pronounced. All of this, coupled with visitors’ continued desire to more deeply engage with Essential Schools work, offered the right moment for the Teachers Center to embark on a series of deliberate steps designed to ramp up the intensity and focus of the work that Parker did—and continues to do—with like-minded neighbors.

In the past two years, the Teachers Center has come to focus on a wide range of professional development, especially that centered assisting schools with the challenge of long-term implementation of the Ten Common Principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools. The school still hosts visitors (up to 200 a year), and Parker teachers remain essential to the functioning of the Teachers Center—acting as facilitators, serving as advisors for the future direction of the work, and continuing to welcome guests into their classrooms. But in its efforts develop formal partnerships, more and more of the center’s work takes place outside of the walls of Parker.

Parker’s model begins with the assumption that successful professional development is best facilitated by school practitioners (facilitators) with a track record of planning and implementing the work and who are currently engaged in “doing” the work. These individuals can bring their experiences to help like-minded colleagues (participants) “personalize” the work to their own contexts. When these individuals develop meaningful relationships over time, the design of professional development can be well-tailored to a school’s particular needs. Parker, with its programs in place, can best support other schools when it offers effective examples of Essential Schools work in practice, facilitates conversations around the most difficult dilemmas associated with program growth and implementation, and steers clear of the idea of “force fitting” program models and processes onto other schools

As the model began to coalesce and inform the direction of the Teachers Center informally, two new initiatives were launched. The hope was that these efforts could help promote the kinds of outreach work that to this point had mostly been defined in theory. In 2004, the Teachers Center began to offer a program of summer institutes—extended versions of the best and most popular one-day workshops—giving teachers time to come and work on the development of a specific program. One year prior, in the summer of 2003, Parker initiated a much more involved project, one that required deep investment of the school’s time and financial resources—helping an entire high school shift course and adopt the Ten Common Principles in a wholesale fashion. Parker began a formal school partnership with Leominster High School, a large, comprehensive school (and the only public high school) in Leominster, Massachusetts.

Forging the Unthinkable: A District-Charter School Partnership

Those familiar with the charter school movement in Massachusetts are aware by now of the tension (and sometimes outright hostility) between district schools and charters. Because of a funding formula that rolled back state aid to districts as charter schools became more common, and because of inflammatory language by some charter school advocates that challenged the well-ordered (if sometimes ineffective) district practices, districts and charter schools have frequently lived a tenuous, uneasy coexistence. In 2003, in spite of such tensions in the wider educational landscape, Leominster High School and Parker School set out to establish a relationship based on a set of common ideas and a commitment to providing high-quality teaching for all students.

Just as Parker had begun to think through the idea of what it might mean to collaborate deeply and over time with colleagues from other schools, Leominster High School had initiated a comprehensive school reform effort. Over the three years before Leominster and Parker began a formal partnership, Leominster had engaged in a handful of reform initiatives—creating ninth-grade academies, offering training to its faculty in the use of Paideia seminars, and undergoing a yearlong examination of a dozen national school reform movements. The research around reform initiatives culminated in a faculty vote to move toward implementation of the Ten Common Principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools. The school came to realize that their goal of implementation of the common principles could only happen in a more decentralized school than the one in which they operated. As a result, in 2003, Leominster began to study and craft a plan to convert their large high school into multiple, semi-autonomous small schools under the same roof. (A complete timeline of Leominster’s process of change can be found in Appendix B.)

By summer 2003, several teachers from Leominster High School had visited Parker, and by coincidence, teachers from Parker had facilitated a workshop on advisory programs offered by the Center for Collaborative Education (a regional Essential Schools center located in Boston), which faculty from Leominster attended. Interested in and inspired by the work done during these meetings, the principal from Leominster enlisted Parker teachers to help train his whole faculty in the creation of an advisory program; that training took place during a summer professional development day in August 2003. The invitation signaled the beginning of a substantial relationship between Parker and Leominster, which led to several other collaborative ventures, including the facilitation of further work on the creation of an advisory program, facilitation around the decision to convert from one large high school to several small schools, formation of a teacher exchange network, and a significant partnership (beginning in spring 2004) toward the creation of a pilot small school (a single version of the five small-school model).

By all measures—evaluation reports, the vote by Leominster faculty to approve a move to small schools, positive press, the absence of a formal resistance—at this (early) stage in the process, the work of restructuring at Leominster High School has provided emerging evidence of success. Despite a few setbacks during 2003-2004, Leominster has moved forward with a plan to convert its whole school into several small schools. The Leominster School Committee, at one time ambivalent observers of the work, has fallen squarely behind the initiative. And external evaluation reports (being completed for Leominster by the Commonwealth Corporation, which acts as the formal evaluator for Leominster’s federal small learning communities grant, as well as the paid evaluator for the overall process of conversion to small high schools) provide evidence of substantial support for the program, commitment to change on the part of most faculty members, and the beginning of actual changes in teacher practice, especially among teachers in the pilot school.

Ultimately, the final success of Leominster’s work resides in the power of its faculty to initiate the kinds of changes they hope will result in effective learning experiences for all students. Parker has worked closely with Leominster High School throughout this process, and several lessons have emerged that can help inform Parker’s approach to creating partnerships with other schools. These lessons are especially important in the current education climate because a recent series of reforms has increasingly called for the modeling of schools’ “best practices” to help new and existing schools initiate sensible reforms, and because on the national level (unlike when Parker began this work), school-reform organizations are coming to recognize the potential of school-to-school relationships as a means of creating effective and meaningful changes.

Lesson #1: Meaningful collegial relationships—built intentionally and over time—are essential to the Parker-Leominster partnership and are necessary to ensure the success of implementing Leominster High School’s goals.

Throughout the two years of the partnership between Leominster and Parker, a central component of the work has been the deliberate creation of relationships with teachers from both schools. Recognizing that teachers from two very different schools need time and support to get to know each other, many of the initial interactions were meant to help create safe places for teachers to do just that. In the partnership’s first year, for example, the two schools launched a “teacher exchange” program in which faculty from each school visited partners from the other school in order to learn more about the kinds of successes and challenges each group of teachers was having. In another instance of building friendship, teachers from Parker presented a letter of support to the Leominster small school pilot faculty as they opened their doors for the first time. These experiences—though largely ceremonial—have helped to carefully grow the two schools’ relationship in its initial stages.

Other initiatives have fostered substantive relationships, relationships centered around the specific programs Leominster High School hopes to implement. From the beginning of the partnership, teachers from Parker assumed formal roles as facilitators of several professional development days, mostly around advisory. While the “one shot,” daylong meetings couldn’t effectively contribute to the formation of long-term relationships between teachers from both schools, the sharing of the work (Leominster teachers openly reflected on their anticipation and anxiety about being advisors, and Parker teachers shared examples of their own experiences as advisors) began to create a substantial bond between teachers from both schools. For months after the meetings, teachers from Parker asked about how the work was going at Leominster, and teachers at Leominster asked about Parker faculty—both expressing a desire to re-connect and continue the relationship.

In summer 2004, a “Summer Academy” facilitated by Parker teachers and attended by Leominster teachers (in two strands—one for the pilot small school faculty and one for a volunteer group of Leominster High School teachers interested in working on their classroom practice) provided teachers from both schools a chance to work together on developing new approaches to curriculum planning and design. These sessions, because they were several days in length, allowed Leominster faculty to learn new strategies, apply and practice these approaches to planning (with guidance and feedback from Parker teachers), and keep questions about classroom practice at the core of the work. Given the length of time teachers spent in the Summer Academies (up to a week), and given the intense focus on pedagogy, the relationships between Parker and Leominster teachers immediately became more complex and intense. When teachers volunteered to participate in this institute, they were also committing (consciously or not) to bringing their own work to the table. This immediately ratcheted up the expectations of the relationship, and the nature of sharing work publicly produced a situation in which teachers from both schools grew together. At times the anxiety about sharing one’s own practice was apparent. For example, some teachers in the pilot school group asked to work on tasks such as room assignments or planning for a barbecue instead of focusing on how to create overarching learning goals for a class. But the trust that Parker teachers (as facilitators) had developed with Leominster faculty members helped participants put aside their pressing concerns in order to focus on the difficult issues related to teachers’ classroom practices.

This approach to professional development provided benefits that “deliverables” from outside consultants could never produce. Because the work was carried out by practitioners (both Parker and Leominster teachers), all in attendance were invested in improving their teaching. As a result of the Summer Academy, teachers from both schools reported growth in their own work. One Leominster history teacher remarked (Internal Feedback Form, 30 June 2004), “I was able to team with another teacher and develop a unit of US History II on the Civil Rights Era. This gave me the opportunity to ask myself, “Why teach this unit anyway?” In other words, what do I really want students to be familiar with, to know and do and to understand ten years from now?” Another teacher suggested the experience was among the best she’d ever had: “The LHS students are so fortunate to have had this teacher opportunity. It will directly impact the students. Thank you so much for a wonderful experience. I consider that this was the most beneficial academic workshop I have attended and learned from.” For Parker teachers, the opportunity to share their curriculum planning processes with colleagues from another school enabled them step back and reexamine choices they had made with their own students and reflect on how they might revise their work when they taught the material the next time around. Benefits, then, extended to both participants and facilitators.

As the work began to develop, one concern emerged: What sort of power dynamic might develop as teachers from one school serve as facilitators while teachers from the other school act as participants in a series of trainings? From the beginning, Parker teachers thought carefully about how to avoid the perception that faculty from Leominster were “students” and Parker teachers were “instructional deliverers”—the hierarchical mentality associated with “expert” professional development. They deliberately created and cultivated a stance toward the work, viewing themselves as learners alongside Leominster faculty, and they devised experiences that aimed at leveling the playing field. First and foremost, everyone in the Summer Academies participated as learners: Leominster teachers brought their own practices to the table, and so did Parker teachers. Through activities, conversations, and formal sharing of work, Leominster teachers participated in engaging and sometimes difficult public learning experiences. By putting their own teaching practices (and the theory underlying their work) at the heart of the Summer Academy, Parker teachers made their own practice just as public, opening it to the scrutiny of experienced teachers. Their willingness to share their own work so openly—and not just a prescribed method or package of curriculum from the organization they represented—helped foster a spirit of cooperation and ultimately led everyone to be reflective about their work.

Certainly it was, and is, a challenge to ensure that truly collegial relationships are developed and maintained between the two schools. But when Parker’s strengths coincide with Leominster’s agenda, the connections can be authentic.

Lesson #2: Leominster’s goals were implemented most effectively when the two schools played an equal role in collaborating on a strategy for implementation.

Although research on the standards and accountability movement has often focused more on results than on the process of implementation, Parker’s efforts to help Leominster High School design an advisory program demonstrate the necessity of a thoughtful plan in order to produce the desired “results”—in this case, increased personalization for students. In the early stages of the Leominster-Parker partnership (2003), Leominster High School pursued an overly ambitious path, implementing a full-scale advisory program in which each faculty member would work with a small group of students. The goals were to deepen personal relationships, create a connection between academic and personal success for students, and help re-engage students who did not feel they were known very well in the school. In order to help with this effort, Parker teachers acted as facilitators of professional development around advisory—they planned the agendas for two full-day faculty meetings, and they sent several teachers to work in facilitation teams to help prepare all 150 teachers at Leominster to become advisors. Everyone (teachers and administrators from Leominster and Parker) invested substantial energy and good will to make sure that advisories got off the ground effectively, and just a few months after the meetings, Leominster launched an advisory program.

Despite everyone’s best intentions, however, insurmountable problems occurred. Leominster’s plans regarding how many teachers would advise, and how soon the program would begin were made before Parker became involved, and ultimately the established structures came apart. Several weeks into the program, the Leominster teachers union filed a grievance against advisories, arguing that they constituted an additional prep for teachers. In order to avoid larger challenges to the restructuring plans, the advisory program was abandoned only a few weeks after it started. Had the original effort to develop an advisory program been planned more collectively, the two schools’ efforts might have resulted in a decision to slow down the speed of implementation, to provide more opportunities for Leominster teachers to better articulate what they needed from professional development on advisories, or to map out a strategy that offered a more inclusive role for union leaders. Because many teachers at Leominster had been exposed to a range of facilitation experiences in the summer prior to these workshops, a Leominster-Parker facilitation team could have been put in place, raising the credibility of the advisories for reluctant Leominster teachers, helping people understand that the program was not being imposed from the outside, and giving Leominster facilitators a chance to practice some newly acquired skills. In addition, early collective planning might have resulted in more collaborative leadership in the trainings.

In the end, Leominster High School did not re-institute a school-wide advisory program. But as this paper is being finalized (fall 2005), five small schools are supplanting the larger Leominster High School structure, and each new school is required to have an advisory program, a program each school will autonomously develop.

Since the initial work on advisories, both Parker and Leominster have maximized the benefit of the partnership by working closely together on other programs, especially during the planning stages. The decision about how to convert to small schools, for example, was made after an extensive process of consultation with constituencies from both schools. As part of that conversation, the Parker principal and director of the Teachers Center sat with the Leominster principal at length and helped him revise and improve his plan before presenting it to the school community and school committee. Similarly, Parker determined that it would no longer provide piecemeal facilitation: all parties now understand that an integral part of the partnership is articulating goals together at the beginning a change process; co-planning agendas; and giving teachers and administrators from Leominster plenty of chances to clarify their goals and get feedback on plans for the work, thereby maximizing Leominster’s internal capacity to facilitate the work. As this happens, the partnership looks more like a collegial exchange of ideas and less like hierarchical professional development.

Lesson #3: Parker and Leominster must clearly define who will be “in charge” of different parts of the work and ensure that each maintains appropriate levels of responsibility for carrying out the work.

One of the most difficult elements of any reform initiative is ensuring that good work can be sustained beyond the initial stages of implementation. Many school reform efforts have failed because schools ended up altering the reforms irreparably, while the reforms do little to change the schools (Tyack and Cuban 1995). As Leominster and Parker undertook a partnership (referring to each other as “partners,” a word that intentionally implied a significant degree of equality between the two schools, and distinct from terms such as “coach,” “critical friend,” “consultant,” or “mentor” often used in school-to-school relationships) the question of who would assume responsibility for making sure the work was successful has proven to be a complex one. For Parker, the boundaries between where to “push back” and where to “step back” require careful consideration of what constitutes the responsible role of a school partner.

One example of where the Leominster-Parker partnership has been well-balanced is in collaborative efforts around the creation of an advisory program for the “pilot” small school (as noted earlier, the one-school version of the five small schools model), nearly a year after the original school-wide program had to be abandoned. When the pilot school faculty came together to plan the advisory project, they agreed that they wanted to avoid the mistakes that had complicated the program’s school-wide implementation earlier in the year. Throughout this conversation, assigning each other roles was crucial: Parker agreed to be involved in training a small group of pilot school faculty in how to implement an advisory program effectively, but Parker faculty insisted that the success of the program would rely on having well-trained people within the pilot program provide the leadership of the program. As a result of this decision, teachers from Parker played in integral role in supporting pilot school teachers as they thought about how to create and launch an advisory program. But when it came time to making decisions about program design, creating curriculum materials for the program, and facilitating the pilot school faculty in how to be effective advisors, the work was carried out by a team of three teachers from the Leominster pilot school.

This successful second attempt to create an advisory program at Leominster helps underscore how important it is for each school to be clear about its role in the process of designing and implementing a program. For Parker, it has helped to clarify the principle that while the Teachers Center can support the work of a school, it cannot—in fact, it must not—assume responsibility for the program’s success. For Leominster, it serves as a reminder that while there may be a range of partners at the table, Parker among them, the ultimate responsibility for the successful implementation of the work rests with the Leominster High School faculty.

Pursuing Future Relationships

The Teachers Center at Parker has only just begun to explore with others the successes and limitations of partnering relationships. As the work progresses at Leominster High School, questions about long-term sustainability of the restructuring continue to surface, suggesting that the course ahead remains challenging and that there will be ample and substantive dilemmas to guide future conversations. Recently, Parker has also undertaken more limited school partnerships with two other high schools. These efforts will help reveal how Parker can influence the implementation of limited programmatic changes in schools where there is less explicit commitment to Essential Schools membership and whole-school reform than there is in Leominster. As Parker continues to develop relationships with other schools, the creation of new initiatives by like-minded colleagues will ideally foster the growth of a collegial network of many schools committed to the success of each others’ work. The hope is that over time, schools themselves will help spark a new type of school-reform network, one that is organic, mutually beneficial, and most important, in the best interest of students.

Postscript: In 2005, the Teachers Center was renamed in honor of Theodore R. Sizer, a prominent education reform advocate and the founding trustee of Parker who originally conceived of the idea of a “teachers center.”

About the Author

Frank Honts is the Director of the Teachers Center, now the Theodore R. Sizer Teachers Center, at the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School. He can be contacted at:

Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School
Theodore R. Sizer Teachers Center
49 Antietam Street
Devens, MA 01434
(978) 772-2687
frank_honts@yahoo.com

Appendix A

The Ten Common Principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools

1. The school should focus on helping young people learn to use their minds well. Schools should not be comprehensive if such a claim is made at the expense of the school’s central intellectual purpose.
2. The school’s goals should be simple: that each student master a limited number of essential skills and areas of knowledge. While these skills and areas will, to varying degrees, reflect the traditional academic disciplines, the program’s design should be shaped by the intellectual and imaginative powers and competencies that the students need, rather than by “subjects” as conventionally defined. The aphorism “less is more” should dominate: curricular decisions should be guided by the aim of thorough student mastery and achievement rather than by an effort to merely cover content.
3. The school’s goals should apply to all students, while the means to these goals will vary as those students themselves vary. School practice should be tailor-made to meet the needs of every group or class of students.
4. Teaching and learning should be personalized to the maximum feasible extent. Efforts should be directed toward a goal that no teacher have direct responsibility for more than 80 students in the high school and middle school and no more than 20 in the elementary school. To capitalize on this personalization, decisions about the details of the course of study, the use of students’ and teachers’ time and the choice of teaching materials and specific pedagogies must be unreservedly placed in the hands of the principal and staff.
5. The governing practical metaphor of the school should be student-as-worker, rather than the more familiar metaphor of teacher-as-deliverer-of-instructional-services. Accordingly, a prominent pedagogy will be coaching, to provoke students to learn how to learn and thus to teach themselves.
6. Teaching and learning should be documented and assessed with tools based on student performance of real tasks. Students not yet at appropriate levels of competence should be provided intensive support and resources to assist them quickly to meet those standards.
   Multiple forms of evidence, ranging from ongoing observation of the learner to completion of specific projects, should be used to better understand the learner’s strengths and needs, and to plan for further assistance. Students should have opportunities to exhibit their expertise before family and community. The diploma should be awarded upon a successful final demonstration of mastery for graduation - an “Exhibition.” As the diploma is awarded when earned, the school’s program proceeds with no strict age grading and with no system of credits earned by “time spent” in class. The emphasis is on the students’ demonstration that they can do important things.
7. The tone of the school should explicitly and self-consciously stress values of unanxious expectation (“I won’t threaten you but I expect much of you”), of trust (until abused) and of decency (the values of fairness, generosity and tolerance). Incentives appropriate to the school’s particular students and teachers should be emphasized. Parents should be key collaborators and vital members of the school community.
8. The principal and teachers should perceive themselves as generalists first (teachers and scholars in general education) and specialists second (experts in but one particular discipline). Staff should expect multiple obligations (teacher-counselor-manager) and a sense of commitment to the entire school.
9. Ultimate administrative and budget targets should include, in addition to total student loads per teacher of 80 or fewer pupils on the high school and middle school levels and 20 or fewer on the elementary level, substantial time for collective planning by teachers, competitive salaries for staff, and an ultimate per pupil cost not to exceed that at traditional schools by more than 10 percent. To accomplish this, administrative plans may have to show the phased reduction or elimination of some services now provided students in many traditional schools.
10. school should demonstrate non-discriminatory and inclusive policies, practices, and pedagogies. It should model democratic practices that involve all who are directly affected by the school. The school should honor diversity and build on the strength of its communities, deliberately and explicitly challenging all forms of inequity.

(Retrieved 24 July 2005 from the Coalition of Essential Schools Web site: www.essentialschools.org.)

Appendix B

Chronology of CES and Small School Adoption

Implementation at LHS

July 2000

• Leadership Team spends two days at Outward Bound

Fall 2000

• Faculty invited to serve on a committee to decide on a decision-making model for LHS
• School Council was tasked with the development of a 3-5 year Strategic Plan
• Freshman Academy began its second pilot year
• Dr. Hart & Jane Maguire made site visits to schools with Freshman and Sophomore Academies

June 2001

• 3-5 Year Strategic Plan is completed and accepted
• Goal B includes objective #1 - Create small learning environments
• Indicator of Success: Development of several small learning communities

January 2002

• LHS School Improvement Plan accepted: Goal #1, Action Step #5 - “Create small learning environments”
• Visit to North Carolina regarding Paedeia program
• Committee formed to investigate and design Sophomore Academy
• First submission of Small Learning communities grant

September 2002

• Full Freshman Academy is implemented
• Leadership team sub committee formed on Comprehensive School Reform models
• Distribution of compile results of study of various school reform models

December 2002

• Survey of effectiveness to date of Freshman Academy

January 2003

• LHS School Improvement Plan, Goal 3-“Create small learning Communities”

February 2003

• Leadership team begins looking at small learning communities and reviewed “Small Learning Community” grant application

Spring and Fall 2002

site visits and report outs from:

• CES, Parker, Cambridge Rindge and Latin
• High Schools That work
• Atlas
• Paedeia

February 2003

• Adoption of Coalition of Essential Schools as school reform model for LHS

March 2003

• Faculty invited to volunteer for Coalition Implementation Team

April 2003

• First Coalition Implementation Team Meeting
• CES Benchmarks Surveys administered
• Newsletter to parents with article of “Small Schools”

July 2003

• Design Team week in Killington VT
• Summer Academies are held

August 2003

• CFG Coaches training at Jiminy Peak

September 2003

• Professional development on advisory program
• Leadership Team sets goal ”to develop small schools”
• Faculty invited to attend informational session on joining a Leadership institute for small schools

Fall 2003

• Administration provided information about small schools to PTO
• Leadership Team discussed and planned for small school development including a possible “roll-out” plan
• Site visits to Mission Hill, Parker, Fenway, Boston Arts Academy
• Ten faculty members go on site visits to the Bronx for small school study
• Faculty members and administrators attend CES National Fall Forum in Kansas City
• Full day professional development on small school proposal and schedule

January 2004

• Application made for CES National Grant (Gates foundation)

March 2004

• Faculty vote to delay full implementation of small schools
• Announcement of pilot small school for 2005/2005

Summer 2004

• CES Nation grant is awarded (Gates money)
• Design team week at Killington VT
• Summer Academies held
• Critical Friends Coaches training

August 2004

• Pilot small school is implemented

Fall 2004

• Faculty members begin meeting in small schools groups for team building , professional development, and Critical Friends work

November 2004

• Staff, students, central and school administrators and school committee members attend National CES Fall Forum in San Francisco

December 2004

• Presentation by Commonwealth Corporation on results of efficacy survey for pilot school
• Decision to move forward on full implementation of small schools in 2005

January 2005

February 2005

• Headmaster Interviews
• Begin Headmaster hiring process

March 2005

• Headmasters run March professional development day
• Headmasters recruit Design Team
• Building space allocation is completed

April 2005

• Design Teams start meeting each week
• Master scheduling process begins
• Design Teams begins off site day long planning sessions

May 2005

• Student school assignment process begins
• Day long Design Team planning meeting
• Design Team weekly meetings continue

June 2005

• Day long Design Team planning meeting
• Students are informed of Small School assignment
• Headmasters send welcome letters to families
• Leominster runs a Summer Design Week

July 2005

• Design Teams attend CCE Summer Design Week
• Leominster attends CES Summer Workshop

References

Coalition of Essential Schools (CES). The Ten Common Principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools. Oakland, CA: Coalition of Essential Schools. Retrieved 24 July 2005 from the CES Web site: www.essentialschools.org.

Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School (Parker). 1999. Annual Report of the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School, 1998-1999. Devens, MA

Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School. 2000. Annual Report of the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School, 1999-2000. Devens, MA

Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School. 1994. Application for Charter.

Keefe, James W. and Robert B. Amenta. March 2005. “Whatever Happened to the Model Schools Project?” Phi Delta Kappan 86 (7): 536-544.

Lane, Julie R. 1999. Unpublished report. The Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School Incubator Project: Strategies for the Future. 6 April.

National Commission on Excellence in Education. 1983. A Nation at Risk: The Imperative of Educational Reform. Washington, D.C.: National Commission on Excellence in Education.

Tyack, David and Larry Cuban. 1995. Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Winger, Abigail. 2004. Incubators for New Schools. In Making School Reform Work: New Partnerships for Real Change, edited by Paul T. Hill and James Harvey. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.