Assessing Instructional Reform in San Diego: A Theory-Based Approach

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the approach, methodology, and key findings from a theory-based evaluation of the district-led instructional reform effort in San Diego City Schools, under the leadership of Alan Bersin and Anthony Alvarado, that began in 1998. Beginning with an analysis of the achievement trends in San Diego relative to other California urban districts during this period, we then examine the theory of action that guided the San Diego effort, including the focus on instructional change as the primary means to improve student achievement and on the role of site-based instructional leadership and teacher professional development as central strategies for moving instructional practice. The article outlines the study design and introduces the set of papers in this special issue of JESPAR. Reviewing key findings and themes across the article, we conclude that although the reform demonstrated that instructional improvement at scale is possible, sustaining that reform may be more elusive.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The research for this article, and all articles in this volume, was supported through generous grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Atlantic Philanthropies. We gratefully acknowledge their generous support. The authors, however, bear sole responsibility for the content of this article. We also extend our appreciation to the SDCS district and school staff who generously shared their time, experiences and insights with members of the study team. That team included AIR staff and San Diego-based data collectors, without whose hard work and dedication none of the articles in this volume would be possible. Thanks especially to Miguel Socias for the achievement analyses used in Figure 1. Finally, we thank David Pearson for his invaluable suggestions and feedback during the research process, and Marshall Smith and Gary Sykes for their thoughtful review of earlier versions of these articles.

Notes

¹The Blueprint for Student Success in a Standards-Based System (San Diego City Schools, 2000), passed by the school board for implementation in the 2000–2001 school year, refined, expanded, and codified many of the reform strategies initiated during the prior 2 years, along with a resource allocation plan to support them. See Hightower (2002) for a more extensive history of these early years.

²California uses the term English learner (EL) to designate students who speak a language other than English and are not yet proficient in English. This designation is equivalent to English language learner (ELL) or limited English proficient (LEP) used in other jurisdictions.

³A prior evaluation conducted for the San Diego School Board (Quick et al., 2003) did collect data on early implementation of and response to the basic elements of the Blueprint and did analyze district-wide test scores, but it did not attempt to tie the reform strategies themselves either to instruction or to student outcomes. The study reported here and the Betts et al. (2005) study were initiated by the foundations fill this gap.

⁴Although the California Standards Test was not administered until 4 years after Bersin arrived, results on the norm-referenced SAT-9 test reveal a similar pattern in ELA during the initial reform period. By contrast, estimated results for mathematics, emphasized later in the Blueprint years, were initially less positive. Controlling for differences in school demographics, San Diego scored near the middle of the seven urban districts in 2002, but by 2006 it had made the largest estimated gains to nearly catch up with the leaders, Los Angeles and Long Beach.

⁵We also visited three case study middle schools during the first year of the study, but these were not included in the intensive literacy observation and PD log studies and so are not included in the articles in this issue.