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JJHouse
JJHouse
Creating Sustainable Math Reform
Sep 10 2008, 2:02 PM EDT | Post edited: Sep 10 2008, 2:02 PM EDT
A TMP Phase III effort beginning 2009, IF approved and funded, will focus on disseminating, implementing, supporting those most effective/promising elements of the TMP work to date on a broad(er) scale. As we wrap up Phase II, and consider a Phase III, we need to look harder and harder at how our efforts to date are moving toward being sustainable -- after TMP -- in schools and districts and colleges. I reminded myself of the dictionary definition of 'to sustain' which is 'To keep in existence; maintain; to support from below; prolong.' Despite this straightforward definition, we recognize that indicators of sustainability can and will take many forms, and is in general a longer-term process, but the question now is what progress have we begun to see?

The literature talks about district and state policy, school culture, leadership (administrators and teachers), and teaching/classroom factors as main factors impacting sustainability. So...within your local TMP work, where are you seeing movement towards some level of sustainability for select aspects of or all of your TMP-funded initiatives and newly created resources? Some examples may flow from:

-New or increased district /school funding support,
-Broadening, formalizing, or perhaps better targeting aspects of your work,
-Using data to improve and continue TMP-supported efforts,
-Increased levels of teacher and leader buy-in and commitment,
-Adoption of new practices, behaviors,
-Changes to PD,
-and more.

Please share your examples, thoughts and opinions on this important sustainability question. 1  out of 1 found this valuable. Do you?    
JJHouse
JJHouse
1. RE: Creating Sustainable Math Reform
Sep 15 2008, 6:23 PM EDT | Post edited: Sep 15 2008, 6:23 PM EDT
I just read an interesting paper commissioned by The Annie E. Casey Foundation called 'End Games: The Challenge of Sustainability" (April, 2002) (http://www.aecf.org/upload/PublicationFiles/end%20games.pdf). You may want to check it out, although it's not math reform specific. It captures the feedback of some major foundations and the communities they serve. What caught my eye right off the bat was this: "Ensuring that change is sustainable means many things: that the values, ideas, and processes of the effort are widely shared and deeply felt; that important relationships are nurtured and remain strong; that policy and practice innovations are institutionalized and become the norm; and that needed financial and human resources are secured for the long term."

I like this description of sustainability. It sometimes feels as if only the latter part of this description (financial and human resources are secured) gets attention but clearly the TMP has made progress in all these areas so far. I also like this definition because it takes this sometimes vague notion of sustainability and reminds us to ask: what it is we hope to sustain? Thinking about sustainability in this light forces us to think beyond just the survival of the organization, program or project.

This thread and the meetings the TMP's initiating around sustainability are helping us to further unpack how we've progressed on the sustainability continuum and what elements of our work hold the most promise for expansion (breadth and/or depth). Other thoughts?
Do you find this valuable?    
BillM
BillM
2. RE: Creating Sustainable Math Reform
Sep 18 2008, 3:37 PM EDT | Post edited: Sep 18 2008, 3:37 PM EDT
Another very interesting and related piece, from a very different perspective, is available on the web at http://www-gse.berkeley.edu/faculty/CECoburn/coburnscale.pdf . I think it's critical for us to think in different terms about what we mean by "sustainability" and "getting to scale," to use Richard Elmore's phrase (from 1996 article in Harvard Educational Review that doesn't seem to be available for free on the web--you can see a brief summary at http://www.children.smartlibrary.org/newinterface/segment.cfm?segment=2112). For a more recent perspective from Elmore on these issues and challenges, see http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/01/30/21elmore.h27.html. I was struck in particular by the concerns he raises about the proprietary nature of many, if not most, innovations conflicting in a serious way with the need to "go public" if reforms are going to be able to go to scale--that's definitely one of the tensions we're trying to negotiate in our TMP work... Do you find this valuable?