Press Release

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JUNE 19, 2003

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Soterios Zoulas
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ANNENBERG STUDY SHOWS KEYS TO EFFECTIVE REFORM PARTNERSHIPS BETWEEN SCHOOL DISTRICTS AND OUTSIDE ORGANIZATIONS

Many school districts are turning to external reform partners to meet mounting pressures from federal and state agencies and from their communities to improve student results. But these partnerships will only be effective if districts establish the conditions that make them work for schools and communities, according to a new study commissioned by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Reforming Relationships: School Districts, External Organizations, and Systemic Change, by Robert A. Kronley and Claire Handley, is the first in-depth study of the relationships between "reform support organizations" (RSOs) – a range of public, quasi-public, private for-profit, and private nonprofit organizations – and the school districts they partner with in systemic reform. The study defines systemic reform as work at the district level to build capacity that will lead to sustainable improvement at many, if not all, schools in a system.

Reforming Relationships: School Districts, External Organizations, and Systemic Change PDF file [935 KB, 73 pages] A District Leader's Guide to Relationships that Support Systemic Reform PDF file [140 KB, 18 pages] Order a print copy Kronley and Associates

The report introduces the term reform support organization to describe the range of groups that work with school districts. This term is offered as a replacement for intermediary, which researchers have found inadequate to encompass the depth and breadth of external organizations that help foster education reform.

The study focuses on five partnerships between districts and external organizations in Flint, MI, Durham, NC, Kansas City, KS, Hamilton County (Chattanooga), TN, and Cleveland, OH. The organizations studied are the Busara Group, the Center for Leadership in School Reform, the Institute for Research and Reform in Education, the Public Education Foundation of Chattanooga, and the multiple RSOs that were involved in reform efforts in Cleveland. The study was conducted by Kronley & Associates, an Atlanta-based consulting firm that assists foundations, public agencies, and nonprofit organizations, for the Annenberg Institute's SCHOOL COMMUNITIES THAT WORK: A National Task Force on the Future of Urban Districts.

"Raising the achievement bar and closing performance gaps based on race, ethnicity, first language, and poverty demand fundamental changes in the way districts do business and often require expertise that goes beyond anything they've been asked to do in the past," said SCHOOL COMMUNITIES THAT WORK director Marla Ucelli. "Increasingly, district leaders are turning to outside partners – either to organizations in their own communities or to national organizations – for support in designing, implementing, and sustaining reforms aimed at large-scale teaching and learning improvements."

Reforming Relationships found that reform partnerships work best when the school superintendent's vision drives the relationship and when the superintendent involves a range of stakeholders – including the school board, teachers' unions, and the community – to support the reform goals. Superintendents also need to empower district staff to help manage the reform and to work with the reform support organization to implement changes, the report found.

Kronley and Handley showed that the characteristics of the RSO also affect the relationship. For example, locally based organizations often have closer ties to community organizations and leaders than national organizations, but the local groups often find that they need to expand their capacity to provide the assistance districts need. In addition, the ability of an RSO to adjust its strategies to meet district circumstances affects the quality of the relationship, the report found.

Reforming Relationships also identifies some issues that most district/RSO partnerships still struggle to deal with. The legacy of racial discrimination in a district, for instance, is a major part of the context in which these partnerships work but has seldom been addressed directly in the district/RSO relationship. The study points to the need for more research on this and other unresolved issues.

"Although there is increasing attention to the role reform support organizations are playing, no one has examined how the partnerships between these organizations and districts work," said Robert Kronley, the study's coauthor. "But the dynamics of these partnerships are crucial. Reform support organizations are not just tools that districts plug in. They, and the districts, are human organizations, and the interactions between the two types of groups can determine whether the reform succeeds or fails."

Warren Simmons, the executive director of the Annenberg Institute, said the report offers valuable information for all district leaders who are seeking assistance in their reform efforts. It also provides guidance for local and national foundations, which are often instrumental in bringing together districts and RSOs, Simmons said. "Many districts spend hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars annually on contracts with outside organizations," Simmons said. "Reforming Relationships is the first attempt to systematically understand these relationships, provide a framework for analyzing them, and offer guidance to district leaders in making them work."

In addition to Reforming Relationships, SCHOOL COMMUNITIES THAT WORK also released a shorter report, entitled A District Leader's Guide to Relationships that Support Systemic Change, which distills the lessons from the larger report into a practical guide for superintendents and others engaged in or considering relationships with RSOs.

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SCHOOL COMMUNITIES THAT WORK: A National Task Force on the Future of Urban Districts was convened by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University. Consistent with the Institute's mission to improve the conditions and outcomes of schooling, especially in urban communities and schools serving disadvantaged students, the ultimate goal of the Task Force's work is to improve student performance overall and decrease gaps in achievement.

Reforming Relationships and the district leader's guide were supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Annenberg Foundation.

In the fall of 2002, the Task Force, consisting of influential leaders from the education, civic, business, and nonprofit communities, called for school districts and communities to redesign their supports for education and marshal local resources to fulfill the functions of a "smart district." The group released a Portfolio for District Redesign that offers practical tools and resources for school-district reform and is now working with several districts and organizations using the tools to help create "smart districts." Additional information on SCHOOL COMMUNITIES THAT WORK is available at www.schoolcommunities.org.