Sustained, Long Lasting Improvement In Our Schools

By Daniel T. Herrera, Jr.

With today's reforms in education as a whole, we see a lot of "top-down" reforms, or "more-of-the-same," type of reforms. Thus far, we've seen class size reductions, requirements for increased instructional minutes, increased graduation requirements, the high school exit exam, mandates for standardized instruction, stiffer requirements for teacher credentialing, while simultaneously seeing loopholes to get more teachers into the field, and more. However, what we have not seen is a requirement to improve the curriculum and instruction, or any type of requirements to directly involve teachers in these reform efforts. In fact, this has been left to the individual school districts, where the result has been pockets of excellence, and pockets of "program improvement schools."

My belief is that the only school reform effort that will work, will be that of "bottom-up," teacher facilitated "professional learning communities," where each grade level team / department is the basic unit of school improvement. By placing the authority for school improvement in the laps of school site personnel, and with the correct leadership, we have the potential to create:

1. A high level of teacher engagement in learning improved strategies that are proven to work in this community, with our children. Just because we have standards, does not mean that we need to narrow our approach to teaching, by delivering a dry curriculum. Teachers are the experts in this field, and they need to be provided with the opportunity to share and learn from each other, with the guiding principle of improving instruction.
2. A well-structured curriculum that flows from one grade level to another, by ensuring that each successive level of teachers work cooperatively with earlier grade teachers. Vertical alignment of curriculum, as it's called, is a necessary and important aspect of improving instruction, and we can not afford to leave this area unattended.

If we want to truly empower teachers, we need to provide them with the opportunity to set them-selves apart from almost everyone in society, by allowing them to become absolute experts in our schools. Teachers who collaborate regularly and effectively, such as in professional learning communities, develop a sophisticated knowledge-base, which gives them the common basis for professional dialogue, to allow them to ride a fast learning curve to improve instruction.