| In 1998, San Diego City Schools embarked on a bold agenda of district-wide reform. Newly-appointed Superintendent Alan Bersin hired Anthony Alvarado as his reform architect, charged with improving the quality of teaching and learning across the system and reducing persistent gaps in student achievement. Yet by 2000, district leaders realized that the reform-as-implemented had limited traction in high schools. In early 2001, SDCS launched a high school-specific reform initiative to improve principal leadership, academic rigor, and personalization.;Reform leaders operated from a theory that changed outcomes for students would require massive investments in adult learning. Using a conceptual framework that examines this learning as it takes place interorganizationally across the central office and the schools as well as intraorganizationally within schools, this dissertation addresses the following questions. (1) How does a school district "teach" high school reform? (2) What does adult learning within high schools look like in this reform environment? (3) What accounts for variation in reform implementation within high schools? Using mixed methods to examine multiple levels of a system, this dissertation shows how district leaders, principals, and teachers learn, change their roles, and adapt the reform to improve the quality of teaching and learning at the high school level. Key findings include: (1) Different levels of the system require different types support. District leaders' work with principals is distinct from the efforts led by principals inside schools. (2) Creating meaningful opportunities to learn requires significant investments of district resources. However, such opportunities are essential to the implementation of teaching-and-learning based reforms. (3) Systemwide, leader and teacher beliefs about learning and learners matter to the success of a reform. High school principal survey data indicate that the reform was increasingly tailored to their needs, and qualitative data from many levels of the system provide evidence of implementation. Further, using California's accountability index, the overall performance of San Diego's comprehensive high schools increased at a greater pace than high schools statewide. Together, these findings suggest that San Diego's reform strategy as adapted to the high school context holds promise for improving student achievement. |
