TEN YEARS AFTER: Teacher and Administrative Attrition as Fundamental Impediments to Sustainable Reform

Suggestions based on lessons learned

Need for Whole Math Departmental Change. Leaving aside the issue of administrative instability for the moment, reform programs like IMP cannot survive relatively high teacher attrition rates if the program is implemented piecemeal. Only whole departmental change has a chance of creating significant mass to withstand the tides of program erosion. Thus, our second five year phase involved the local systemic change LSC model. No longer merely an experiment, we successfully branched out into the Greater Philadelphia region supporting IMP Core-Plus and four NSF-sponsored middle school mathematics curricula. By involving approximately 1,200 secondary mathematics teachers in nearly 80,000 hours of professional development over five years, we were markedly more successful in maintaining program continuity to the end of our LSC's fifth year. Note the difference in implementation if done with the whole mathematics department as compared to a 2x2 incremental implementation scheme. Incremental NSF Curricular Reform Implementation Strategy
at the District /School Level with These Assumptions

* 20 Teachers in a Department with 20% Attrition per year
* Each Year All New Teachers Start 4 Years of Professional Development
* Professional Development is Always Available
* Administration is Stable and Supportive
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Problem with Whole Math Departmental Change. A recurring problem in most all high schools are resistant teachers who refuse to adopt new curricula despite the evidence of superior results. Math departmental faculty display a range of receptivity toward reform, from the heroic volunteers who are always eager to try new things, to the honestly skeptical to the entrenched cynics.

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Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place. As more teachers are asked to expand or initiate reform the political risk increases for a principal. Yet to not expand is to risk program erosion over time due to teacher attrition.

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This risk is particularly high under the conditions of top-level transitions and regime changes as principals can be reassigned by new administrative superiors. Under these circumstances, principals are reluctant to "rock the boat" and initiate or expand major reform programs in the face of resistant teachers and uncertain top level support.

But to overcome the resting inertia of resistant teachers requires a concerted administrative effort, expenditure of political capital and tolerance of risk. The ability to implement and sustain whole school change is in inverse proportion to the degree of administrative instability. This is the reason the pre-LSC pilot IMP initiative in Philadelphia school faded.

Ten Years After: LSC's Stabilizing Role

Like the cycle of the seasons, the reform in schools typically planned for just the upcoming year. Teachers and administrators look out on the horizon of the forthcoming year and see what is in front of them: new students, new assignments, new school improvement initiatives, and old friends and colleagues reunited. Reform plans are often designed by those in the system from the same perspective as one sees the earth upon setting out on a journey - as flat line from Sept to June. But from a distance, we see that we have been misled, the earth is actually round. To see mathematics reform from a ten year perspective is to see its curvature. Teacher and administrative attrition represent reform's curvature. This must be taken into account as a fundamental problem in designing reform.

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