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Implementing District-Driven Instructional Reform

April 30, 2012

At the recent annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association Adam Gamoran and fellow panelists discussed models for scaling up innovations to a greater number of more diverse sites. Gamoran discussed a 5-year NSF-funded project called SCALE, an elementary science and math reform initiative implemented in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The program faced instabilities typical of large urban districts, including staff turnover and state funding cuts, and the district adopted a competing science curriculum partway through the project. Gamoran called for designing reform with such instabilities in mind.  Successful district level reform requires creating leadership at several levels within the system, and support structures outside the system. Also needed is a ‘scholarship of scale-up’ – a  research agenda with strategies and mechanisms for scaling up reform. More information is available here.