Across the country from Stanford to Harvard, education researchers are saying that the reforms underway in San Diego City Schools are among the most important ever undertaken in American education. Based on this testimony, national foundations are giving tens of millions of dollars to help the reforms succeed. They see the efforts here as the last great hope to show that a major urban school district can be turned around. Yet, in San Diego what we mostly know about the reforms is the ugly passions they have unleashed. The teachers’ union president and the school superintendent seem always to be fighting. The pro- and anti-superintendent factions on the school board can’t be civil to one another. Teachers responding to a union survey say overwhelmingly that they lack confidence in the District’s leadership and reforms.

Exec. Dir. Chuck Nathanson

I have suspected for some time that the enthusiasm of the researchers and the anger within the District are due to the same cause. The researchers are excited because they know that piecemeal reform has consistently failed to improve student achievement in large urban districts, and San Diego’s is definitely not a piecemeal reform.

Instead, San Diego has undertaken comprehensive, systemic change, which is being orchestrated meticulously by the central office. Using a theory of learning that Chancellor of Instruction Tony Alvarado first tried out with some success in Manhattan, the central office has reorganized the curriculum and the school day. It has taken charge of what teachers teach, and when and how they teach it. Moreover, teacher performance is now regularly subject to scrutiny by peers and superiors.

Understandably, many teachers are out of sorts about this. They have lost autonomy, privacy and influence. Many feel that their expertise and professional skills have been called into question. This is unfortunate, and some of the sense of insult may have been avoidable. But it may also be too much to expect that a major systemic reform such as this can be carried out by sweet consensus.

In any case, the real test of the reforms is not whether the teachers are upset. It is whether they are becoming better teachers and their students better learners. This issue of San Diego Dialogue Report is the first in a series that will be dedicated to answering that question.

In the midst of all the highly publicized turmoil, the public could be excused for tuning out or dismissing the conflicts around the reforms as the result of nothing more than petty jealousies and political infighting. But the stakes are so much higher than a few bruised egos. The reforms require calm, dispassionate consideration from an attentive public. The focus of this work should be data-driven.