Breaking
Through: Transforming Urban School Districts.
John Simmons. New York: Teachers
College Press, 2006. Pp. 264. $25.95, paper. ISBN: 0-8077-4658-4. TEL: 800-575-6566
However a particular individual might feel with regard to the subject of whether
or not America’s schools are doing a good job, it will probably be universally
agreed upon that our large, urban school systems are in trouble. Simmons holds
the view that these large school systems can be made dramatically better than
they are, provided the right conditions are met.
As he says in the introduction to this book, “Dramatically better schools,
we believe, are not possible without transformation of the school systems
themselves. Without it, improvements will be incremental and piecemeal, confined
only to a group of classrooms or a group of schools, not systemwide. The changes
will not be sustained.
“Large-district transformation, although it has not been achieved yet,
is possible. Smaller school districts are already applying the lessons and
practices that have successfully transformed large corporate organizations
in the past century—and, more recently, several small school districts.
This book provides powerful examples of those processes and suggests how these
could be applied to large school districts.”
In order to be able to describe these processes, he divides the book into
three parts. In Part One of the book he sets out three organizing principles,
along with four strategies for rethinking how school systems work:
(1) “Create more effective leaders at every level of the district and
improve schools’ capacity for leading change through better delegation,
training, and communication”; (2) “Transform the structure and
culture of the district office and its schools to accelerate both adult and
student learning while improving system coherence and alignment”; (3)
“Focus on improving the quality of instruction”; and (4) “Build
effective support for improvement by both engaging parents and providing more
adequate and equitable funding.”
Part Two of the book focuses on the school reform effort in Chicago over the
period running from the years 1988 to 2005. Some of Chicago’s schools
have improved dramatically, and Simmons explores how it is possible for other
school systems to learn from Chicago’s successes and mistakes.
Finally, in Part Three of the book, “we explore a process for redesigning
systems that has worked successfully in high-performing corporate organizations—and
now, in several small school districts. We tell the story of how this model—the
Z Process—has been implemented with significant success in the school
district of Brazosport, Texas, improving classroom results.”
