Capacity Building: Sustaining Urban Secondary Schools as Resilient Self-Renewing Organizations in the Face of Standardized Educational Reform

Historically, the progressive ideas of innovative schools have influenced the professional practice of North American educators since the latter part of the 19th century. Indeed, since the beginning of an industrial society, and now with the birth of globalization and a knowledge economy, there has been a need for public schools to sustain their capacity for innovative self-renewal. Yet, much of the classic literature on change in schools leans implicitly towards overcoming resistance, or the building of short-term capacity enhancements to implement specific reform mandates. Insufficient attention has been paid to understanding the internal and external conditions that are necessary for all schools, particularly those in urban areas, to build and sustain sufficient resilient capacity to self-renew as contextually specific challenges unfold and intersect over time. Building on data from the 1970’s and 1980’s, this article focuses on the resiliency of two innovative and activist urban secondary schools located in New York State and Ontario, Canada, during a decade of standardized educational reform (1990–2000). A picture of rapid capacity derogation emerges as a result of the particularly inflexible forms of contextually indifferent standardized reform imposed in the 1990’s. However, the data suggest that, although much eroded by the cumulative negative impact of socio-economic and political forces over time, the resilient self-renewing capacity of these innovative schools, when coupled with teacher activism, can delay, and even defeat, unwarranted standardization in a bid to ensure the survival of their progressive vision.     

Urban educators’ perceptions of culturally relevant pedagogy and school reform mandates

In this article, we examine urban teachers’ perceptions of school reform models (SRMs) and culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP). In particular, we examined how urban educators altered mandated reform models in the best interests of their culturally and linguistically diverse students. We discuss data from a phenomenological study, which included in-depth interviews and a focus group with seven urban African-American educators. We explore three facets of the intersection of culturally relevant pedagogy and mandated school reforms: (1) Teachers’ use of CRP to empower urban students; (2) Teachers’ beliefs that SRMs hurt African American students more than help them; (3) Teachers’ adaptations of SRMs with culturally relevant practices. Finally, this article explores the implications for practice and policy when culturally relevant teachers struggle to utilize CRP in the implementation of SRMs.