Working Together for Reliable School Reform

Viewing Response-to-Intervention through an Educational Change Paradigm: What Can We Learn?

“…For example, Datnow and Stringfield (2000) found a positive relationship between strong district-level support and degree of change implementation among 13 schools implementing educational change programs. Additionally, in an analysis of the barriers of systemic change within urban schools, McDermott (2000) demonstrated an inverse relationship between the tenure of leadership (e.g., superintendents) and the likelihood of implementing and sustaining school reform efforts.…”

“…Datnow and Stringfield (2000) found that only one of 13 schools was continuing to implement their chosen reform by the third year of the change program. Even among those schools that do progress to Phase III, there has been minimal research on the factors that may support sustainability over time due to the time and resource intensive nature of such investigations.…”

“…Phase II, referred to as implementation, involves the first experiences at attempting to implement educational change. The implementation phase, typically the first two or three years of a new program, is critical to a change program's success, in part, because level of implementation has been linked to degree of improvement in student outcomes (Datnow & Stringfield, 2000). Finally, Phase III, institutionalization, involves sustaining and continuing to build the program over time.…”

“…These factors include teacher advocacy, existence of quality innovations, legislative or policy changes, and recommendations from external change agents (Fullan, 2007). In a testament to the importance of decision-making at Phase I as a unified process, Datnow and Stringfield (2000) found that schools that never achieved strong implementation of their chosen educational change initiative had initiated reform for opportunistic reasons (e.g., funding was provided, to gain favor from a district-level administrator), rather than in response to a clear need for reform. Additionally, in an extensive analysis of 12 educational change efforts in 10 states, Huberman and Miles (1984) discovered that staff and administrative motives for adopting educational change were varied and multiple.…”

Examining the dissemination of innovations in the sporting goods industry.

“…Because of the many members existing within the system, the introduction of changes may have varied and unpredictable outcomes for other system members and the system itself (Bawden, 2007;Reynolds, 2007;Tanner & Fiore, 2004). Researchers have examined systems and the effects of changes within them in a variety of fields, including agriculture (Bawden, 2007;Meter, 2007), transportation (Tay, Bobby, & Lim, 2007), education (Berman & McLaughlin, 1973;Datnow & Stringfield, 2000;Lasky, 2010), business (Knoke, 2001;Pfeffer & Salancik, 2003;Senge, 2006), and politics (Knoke, 2001). They have also applied systems theory to sport (Chelladurai, 2005;Thibault & Harvey, 1997).…”