Education Week - November 27, 2019 - 11

reading proficiently, and Gustafson
herself describes the atmosphere
there at that time as "toxic," with 35
percent teacher turnover.
One year after making a series of
significant changes, reading proficiency climbed to 73 percent; by year
five it was at 96 percent. Eighteen
years after initiating change, the
675-student school still exceeds district and state averages.
"The idea that you could have
good institutions, and make them
better, intrigued me," said Gustafson, who read Collins' original
"Good to Great" book, which is also
among the most popular cited by
district leaders in Education Week
surveys. "For some reason, the
whole flywheel concept resonated
with me."
Now the executive director of student services in the Geary County,
Kan. school district., Gustafson
fields calls from practitioners who
want her advice about tackling their
own challenges.
Education Week interviewed Collins and Gustafson independently, to

learn their insights from research and
practice. Their observations are aggregated here.

who are eligible for admissions.
Long Beach Unified is one. About
70 percent of the district's students
are low-income, and 69 percent are
black or Latino. After adopting an
additional math requirement six
years ago, Long Beach's seniors who
met the minimum entry standards
rose from 37 percent in 2011-12 to
60 percent in 2018-19. Those gains
were across all racial and ethnic
groups, though eligibility for black
students and Latino students in 201819 was still lower than the overall
rate, at 49 percent and 53 percent,
respectively.
"When students were not engaged
in math reasoning and skill-building
for all four years, that was putting
them at a deficit when they entered
college and enrolled in a math class,"
Pamela Seki, an assistant superintendent in Long Beach, told the news organization EdSource earlier this year.

to move this policy forward without
data on the disproportionate impact
this will have," said Elisha Smith Arrillaga, the executive director of Education Trust-West, a research and advocacy group.
She would like to see the university
system partner with the state education department to help districts increase math offerings and provide
more access to students who are currently underrepresented in math and
math-heavy courses. And postponing
the vote by a couple of months won't
help either, she said.
"What we're not convinced about is
that delaying until January will give a
long enough runway to do that work,"
she said.
The Los Angeles school board
earlier this year voted to oppose the
CSU measure. It said the proposal
was drafted without consulting local
districts and that funding was inadequate to support it. The proposal
will "disproportionately [harm] students of color in under-resourced high
schools that do not offer a fourth year
of math," the resolution said.
Los Angeles requires three years of
math for graduation. The 74, an education news website, found that less than
a quarter of the district's seniors took a
fourth math or quantitative reasoning
course during 2018-19.
If it moves ahead, CSU needs to keep
equity top of mind, said Pamela Burdman, the executive director of Just
Equations, a California-based think
tank that focuses on strengthening
math pathways to college.
"It's only fair to provide the assistance and scaffolding high schools
need to ensure equitable math opportunity," Burdman wrote in a September blog post. "Students shouldn't
have to pay the cost for the gap between the idealized use of admissions
requirements to boost high school
preparation and the messier reality on
the ground."

Making Math More Useful?
Robert Q. Berry, the president of the
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, said the proposal could create opportunities for students to study
math in ways that puts the topic in a
real-life context. There could be opportunities for creative solutions, and
co-teaching between math teachers
and teachers in career and technical
education courses.
Students often ask why some math
classes are useful, he said.
"As educators, we can no longer ignore them. We need to answer to those
questions," he said. The additional requirement "might serve as a motivator
for students to continue their study of
mathematics."
But advocates for black, Latino, and
low-income students say the architects
of the proposal haven't taken a hard
enough look at how it will negatively
impact those students.
"We still feel like they're still trying

How did you know where to
begin when you were asked to
lead the school?
GUSTAFSON: My number 1 goal was

to make it a good building for teachers to teach in and for students to
learn in. My primary concern was
climate. The kids weren't happy because they weren't doing well, and
the teachers weren't happy. There
was a pervasive lack of trust. Establishing trust and building relationships was my goal before raising test
scores.

who else is going to do it?" It's a matter of not being a bystander.

have to do something. We're in statesanctioned improvement."

intervened faster when we weren't
getting those successes.

Deb, how do you go about
changing the culture of a
school?

Jim, what do you see as a key
ingredient to make the flywheel turn?

The catalyst that created the change-the big piece-was
the relationships. Getting teachers
to build relationships with one another, with their kids, and to collaborate. We started with 4th grade,
where I gave teachers 60 minutes
a day to plan and work with each
other. It was also a matter of finding
passionate people to teach, then providing them with significant professional development.

COLLINS: There's

Jim, in studying great organizations-business or otherwise-
what would be most helpful for
educators to hear?

GUSTAFSON:

Jim, in your research, what
sets educational leaders like
Deb apart?

Was there a lot of pushback
when you started that work?

Deb doesn't wait for everything to be fixed in the overall
system around her. She says, "I have
a responsibility for these kids, and if
I don't take responsibility and create
the culture here that's going to get
these kids off to a great start in life,

in about the amount of work we were
requiring. When we expanded the
new expectations and changes that
worked to the whole school, some
people left. It was a lot harder work,
and there was a lot more accountability. I set the stage for urgency: "We

COLLINS:

GUSTAFSON: There was a lack of buy-

this critical relationship between the collaborative
improvement teams that she built
and assessing student progress,
which involved a lot of data. It was
using that information to ask, "How
are we doing today? This week? And
the week after that? And what can we
do, learning from each other, to address what the data would show?"
Deb, how did you get educators
to make a shift in their use of
data?

It was difficult to get
them to look at data, because it was
not good. When I showed them classroom data by teacher, it was rough.
I said, "We've got to be transparent.
We can only fix what we know." We
celebrated small successes along the
way, instead of waiting and hoping
you got the big success at the end, and
GUSTAFSON:

If I could impart one big
message to education, it would be:
"Stop looking for the perfect answer."
Build the flywheel that you can stay
with for long enough to turn good
results into great results. And let that
accumulated effect work. There is no
perfect answer.
COLLINS:

What's an example of Deb's
ability to work the flywheel?
COLLINS: Instead of every three
years looking for the next perfect reform or the next perfect thing that's
going to change everything overnight, pick something good and then
accumulate results with it with great
consistency and discipline over time.
Deb's flywheel has now been turning for years. It's the compounding
effect of that that produces the great
results over time.

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Education Week - November 27, 2019

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