Capacity Building: Sustaining Urban Secondary Schools as Resilient Self-Renewing Organizations in the Face of Standardized Educational Reform |
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| Authors: | Corrie Giles |
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| Institution: | (1) Department of Educational Leadership and Policy, Graduate School of Education, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, 473, Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260-1000, USA |
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| Abstract: | Historically, the progressive ideas of innovative schools have influenced the professional practice of North American educators
since the latter part of the 19th century. Indeed, since the beginning of an industrial society, and now with the birth of
globalization and a knowledge economy, there has been a need for public schools to sustain their capacity for innovative self-renewal.
Yet, much of the classic literature on change in schools leans implicitly towards overcoming resistance, or the building of
short-term capacity enhancements to implement specific reform mandates. Insufficient attention has been paid to understanding
the internal and external conditions that are necessary for all schools, particularly those in urban areas, to build and sustain
sufficient resilient capacity to self-renew as contextually specific challenges unfold and intersect over time. Building on
data from the 1970’s and 1980’s, this article focuses on the resiliency of two innovative and activist urban secondary schools
located in New York State and Ontario, Canada, during a decade of standardized educational reform (1990–2000). A picture of
rapid capacity derogation emerges as a result of the particularly inflexible forms of contextually indifferent standardized
reform imposed in the 1990’s. However, the data suggest that, although much eroded by the cumulative negative impact of socio-economic
and political forces over time, the resilient self-renewing capacity of these innovative schools, when coupled with teacher
activism, can delay, and even defeat, unwarranted standardization in a bid to ensure the survival of their progressive vision. |
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| Keywords: | Accountability Capacity-building Innovative schools Resilience Self-renewal Sustainability |
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