COALITION OF ESSENTIAL SCHOOLS

The Bedford Central School District

The Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) is a national network of schools and Centers engaged in restructuring and redesigning schools to promote better student learning and achievement. The schools share a common set of ideas known as the nine Common Principles which guide their whole-school reform efforts. CES's power as a school reform movement derives from its focus on classroom practice, the simple authenticity of its principles, and its determination to measure the long-term impact of school reform on the lives of students. While the Coalition began as a secondary school reform effort, it has broadened its scope to include elementary and middle schools.

Background

The Coalition of Essential Schools was born out of A Study of High Schools, an inquiry into American secondary education, conducted from 1979 to 1984 under tine sponsorship of the National Association of Secondary School Principals and the National Association of Independent Schools. Theodore R. Sizer distilled the findings of the Study in his book Horace's Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School (Houghton Mifflin, 1984). In 1984, the Coalition was established at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and twelve schools took up the challenge of putting Sizer's nine Common Principles into practice to become the first "Essential schools." Initially, Sizer and a small staff worked closely and directly in a mentoring relationship with Coalition member schools to help them navigate the redesign process. As interest in CES ideas spread and more schools joined the effort, CES restructured and decentralized its support for schools.

 

In 1988, the Coalition formed a strategic partnership with the Education Commission of the States (ECS), a Denver-based educational policy advisory and research organization. Through a joint initiative dubbed "Re:Learning" the two organizations enlisted the support of governors and chief state school officers for Essential school networks in their state and provided a vehicle for school-based professionals to influence district and state policy reform.

 

In November 1994, at the end of its first decade, CES Chair Theodore R. Sizer convened a national committee of practitioners to assess the work of CES and help chart its future. The Futures Committee recommended that the next phase of the Coalition's work should be characterized as a "Decade of Demonstration" and that CES must sharpen the obligations of membership. It highlighted the need to pay more attention to the total context of schooling. Other insights suggested that collaboration and critical friendship should be central to all levels of CES work, and that CES should model democratic practices. The Committee recog­nized that the Coalition could no longer rely exclusively on a single charismatic leader or a national center to guide and support its work. Rather, the focus must be on the development of widely distributed, visionary leadership and the creation of strong Centers of collaboration around the country, linked by a national office and governance structure.

Current Programs and Principles

Today, the Coalition of Essential Schools is a federation of more than 1,000 schools K-12, public and private, supported by approximately 50 Centers and networks spanning 37 states and extending abroad.

 

Theodore R. Sizer is founder and chairman of the Coalition. He is University Professor Emeritus at Brown University where he served as chair of the Education Department from 1984 to 1989. Before coming to Brown, Sizer was professor and dean at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (1964–72) and headmaster of Phillips (Andover) Academy (1972–81). Sizer earned a B.A. at Yale and an M.A.T. and Ph.D. in History at Harvard. Three of his books, Horace's Compromise (1985), Horace's School (1992) and Horace's Hope (1996), published by Houghton Mifflin, explore the motivation and the ideas of the Essential school reform effort.

Amy Gerstein assumed the position of Executive Director for the Coalition in June 1997. Gerstein previously served as associate director of the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative in San Francisco (1995–97) and the Bay Area Coalition of Essential Schools (1992–95). She also worked for several years at the CES national office as associate director for schools (1988–90). GCtstein holds a Ph.D. in Education from Stanford University where she co-directed the Stanford Teacher Education Program, and a B.A. in Geology-Biology from Brown University.

 

The CES/National staff, based at Brown University, consists of about a dozen education professionals and support staff. The national staff provides technical assistance to Centers, convenes gatherings of CES leaders in the United States and abroad to ensure thoughtful networking, and provides the following resources for schools in the CES network:

 

Fall Forum — The Coalition hosts an annual gathering of people who are active or

interested in Essential school reform. Workshops, school seminars and special presentations offer both introductory and in-depth experiences in Essential school ideas and practices.

Research and Development — The national office coordinates research and development efforts to support the work of the Coalition. Research projects have focused on topics of school change, teacher change, "exhibitions" and other performance-based assessments.

Communications/Publications — The national office publishes a journal, HORACE, five times a year, as well as occasional newsletters, various articles and a series of studies growing out of its research and work. The Coalition maintains a resource library of publications and videos as well as a Web site which facilitates electronic communication and networking.

ATLAS Communities — The Coalition of Essential Schools, in collaboration with the School Development Program, Harvard Project Zero and Education Development Center, developed ATLAS Communities in response to the America 2000 call for "break-the-mold" school designs. ATLAS Communities believe that successful schools provide rigorous intellectual challenge, a caring and personalized environment for learning, and developmentally appropriate education from kindergarten to graduation.

 

The nine Common Principles which guide the work of the Coalition and its member schools call broadly for schools to set clear and simple goals about the intellectual skills and knowledge to be mastered by all the school's students; to lower teacher/student loads, personalize teaching and curriculum, and make student work the center of classroom activity; to award diplomas based on students' "exhibition" of their mastery of the school's program; to create an atmosphere of trust and respect for the school, faculty, students and parents; and to accomplish such changes with no more than a 10 percent increase in the school's budget (See back page).

 

Eight Organizational Principles serve as tenets of organizational practice to help deepen the work of schools. First and foremost is the notion that CES should be a learning community, modeling the practices it expects of schools. The work at all levels should be of a size and scale to allow for personalization. The principles stress the importance of valuing the local wisdom of the schools and Centers and recognize the whole school as the fundamental unit of change. The current priorities of the national organization are reflected in the principles — a commitment to demonstration and documentation, an emphasis on collaboration and critical friendship at all levels of the work, and attention to issues of equity and democ­racy. The principles also assert that CES should maintain a voice in the national discourse about educational reform and seek alliances with like-minded organizations.

Member schools in the Coalition are diverse in size, population, program, and geographic loca­tion and represent both the public and private sector. The Coalition offers no specific "model" or program for schools to adopt. What Essential schools hold common is the nine principles which focus each school's effort to rethink its priorities and redesign it structures and practiced Each school develops its own programs, suited to its particular students, faculty and community — hence, no two Essential schools are alike. Members enjoy the commitments and benefits of a network which provides access to tools and resources, thereby helping schools make progress on whole school change. These schools demonstrate evidence of school-wide commitment to the nine Common Principles and agree to share their learning with other schools and communities. In addition to member or "Essential" schools, the Coalition recognizes schools in the "planning/networking" stage and "exploring" stage.

Schools applying to the Coalition must present a plan for change consistent with the nine Common Principles and must demonstrate faculty and governing board support for extending the plan to the entire school. While membership has traditionally been handled through the national office, schools now affiliate through a Center. There is no fee to join the Coalition; however, most schools require at least $50,000 a year for three to five years during the initial study and redesign phases for release time, travel and professional development activities. Schools are responsible for securing their own funds.

 

CES Centers are not regional outposts of CES/National but, rather, are gatherings of schools which work in concert, supporting each other and presenting a shared set of common principles to their adjoining communities. Centers are responsible for carrying out the substantive programmatic work of the Coalition while also building support for reform among broader constituencies to strengthen their own bases of operation.

Governance

To achieve its mission, CES has chosen to evolve from an informal, centrally run organization to an intentionally decentralized association relying on the local wisdom and guidance of those closest to school change. work. CES promotes ownership, commitment, and leadership through its Congress and Executive Board which provide .direction, establish priorities, and give a national voice to member schools and Centers. The Executive Director and national staff are responsible for leading CES in the directions established by the Congress and Executive Board, and for the efficient and democratic operation of CES.

 

The CES Congress, formed in November 1996, is the main governing body of the Coalition. It is comprised of delegates from Coalition schools and Centers, the Executive Board, and the CES Chair or his designee. The Congress meets twice a year, once at the Fall Forum and again in the Spring. It serves as a vehicle for developing leadership and sharing learnings and ideas within CES by bringing the collective experience, perspective, judgment and wisdom of its members to bear on those issues which face CES and school reform generally in the United States. Primary responsibility for determining matters of policy, long-term directions, and key national strategies for CES is vested in the Congress, which is also responsible for reviewing the appropriateness of the CES organizational structure and making changes (as needed) in its own structure and operations.

 

The CES Executive Board supports the work of the Congress and national staff, provides counsel and leadership to CES, and appoints and works closely with the Executive Director. The Board also takes primary responsibility for identifying and addressing long-term organiza­tional and financial needs and provides direction in assuring CES a strong and confident national voice. The Board consists of 12 members, nine of whom are nominated by Centers and schools. The other three members are CES "allies" neither directly affiliated with a member school or Center, nor part of the national staff. In addition, the Executive Director, CES Chair and Vice Chair serve ex officio as members of the Board.

THE COMMON PRINCIPLES

1.            The school should focus on helping ado­lescents learn to use their minds well. Schools should not attemptgto be "comprehensive" if such a claim is made at the expense of the school's central intellectual purpose.

2.            The school's goals should be simple: that each student master a limited number of essential skills and areas of knowledge. While these skills and areas will, to varying degrees, reflect the traditional academic disciplines, the program's design should be shaped by the intellectual and imaginative powers and competencies that students need, rather than necessarily by "sub­jects" as conventionally defined. The aphorism "Less Is More" should dominate: curricular decisions should be guided by the aim of thorough student mastery and achievement rather than by an effort merely to cover content.

3.            The school's goals should apply to all students, while the means to these goals will vary as those students themselves vary. School practice should be tailor-made to meet the needs of every group or class of adolescents.

4.            Teaching and learning should be personal­ized to the maximum feasible extent. Efforts should be directed toward a goal that no teacher have direct responsibility for more than 80 students. To capitalize on this personalization, decisions about the details of the course of study, the use of students' and teachers' time and the choice of teaching materials and specific peda­gogies must be unreservedly placed in the hands of the principal and staff.

5.            The governing practical metaphor of the school should be student-as-worker rather than the more familiar metaphor of teacher-as­deliverer-of-instructional-services. Accordingly, a prominent pedagogy will be coaching, to provoke students to learn how to learn and thus to teach themselves.

6.            Students entering secondary school studies are those who can show competence in language

 

and elementary mathematics. Students of tradi­tional high school age but not yet at appropriate levels of competence to enter secondary school studies will be provided intensive remedial work to assist them quickly to meet these standards. The diploma should be awarded upon a suc­cessful final demonstration of mastery for graduation — an "Exhibition." This Exhibition by the student of his or her grasp of the central skills and knowledge of the school's program may be jointly administered by the faculty and by higher authorities. As the diploma is awarded when earned, the school's program proceeds with no strict age grading and with no system of "credits earned" by "time spent" in class. The emphasis is on the students' demonstration that they can do important things.

 

7.            The tone of the school should explicitly and self-consciously stress values of unanxious expec­tation ("I won't threaten you but I expect much of you"), of trust (until abused) and of decency (the values of fairness, generosity and tolerance). Incentives appropriate to the school's particular students and teachers should be emphasized, and parents should be treated as essential col­laborators.

 

8.            The principal and teachers should perceive themselves as generalists first (teachers and scholars in general education) and specialists second (experts in but one particular discipline). Staff should expect multiple obligations (teacher­counselor-manager) and a sense of commitment to the entire school.

 

9.            Ultimate administrative and budget targets should include, in addition to total student loads per teacher of eighty or fewer pupils, substantial time for collective planning by teachers, competi­tive salaries for staff and an ultimate per pupil cost not to exceed that at traditional schools by more than 10 percent. To accomplish this, administrative plans may have to show the phased reduction or elimination of some services now provided students in many traditional comprehensive secondary schools.