The Bersin Chapter :: Frederick M. Hess

In 1998, San Diego city schools launched one of the nation's most ambitious efforts at urban school reform. Superintendent Alan Bersin, former U.S. District Attorney for Southern California and President Bill Clinton's "border czar," sought to reinvent the teaching and organization of the nation's eighth largest school district. In June, Bersin's stormy tenure will draw to a close. He departs as the longest serving of the nation's big-city superintendents.

When first hired, Bersin named Tony Alvarado, former superintendent of District 2 in New York City, head of the district's instructional and curricular program. They moved aggressively to promote a strategy of coherent, uniform instruction drawn from Alvarado's work in New York. Their agenda sparked sharp conflict with the San Diego Education Association, reflected by a persistent 3-2 split on the school board.

Bersin's administration enjoyed some visible successes. Between 1999 and 2004, the percentage of San Diego elementary schools scoring at the top rung of the statewide Academic Performance Index increased by more than a third, the number of schools in the bottom category fell from 13 to one, and the racial achievement gap narrowed. However, more disappointingly, middle school and high school achievement stubbornly failed to improve and some observers questioned the rigor of the district's curriculum and Bersin's approach to the teachers union.

Bersin's departure provides an opportunity to ask what we have learned from his widely discussed and often contentious tenure. To explore that question, and with the district's full cooperation, last year I assembled a team of researchers to examine the fruits of Bersin's efforts. The collected analyses have just been published by Harvard Education Press as "Urban School Reform: Lessons from San Diego." For me, five key lessons emerged from the effort.

First, the centralized, "managed instruction" model of improvement depends critically on a solid human resources infrastructure. However, the relentless focus on Alvarado's centerpiece "Institute for Learning" and the effort to develop a core of "peer coaches" resulted in a lack of attention to both areas. The peer coaches and the Institute ran afoul of the collective bargaining agreement's language on professional development, staffing and teacher transfers. A balky human resources operation reliant on outdated technology inhibited efforts to speed up hiring or make staffing more flexible.

Second, Bersin strengthened his reformist hand by embracing the California accountability (and later No Child Left Behind) metrics. He welcomed the "imposition" of the California Academic Performance Index, seeking to use the results to identify troubled schools and target professional development and resources on these schools.

Veteran teachers cluster in more successful and comfortable school surroundings. Because districts traditionally budget without regard to where teachers teach and because veteran teachers are better paid, districts tend to fund more successful schools at higher levels than less effective schools. While perverse, this phenomenon is hard to change. By routinely identifying troubled schools and shifting resources to them, San Diego began to address this inequity.

A systematic strategy for remediating troubled schools allowed the district leadership to focus on finding effective principals, bulking up staff development, and transferring educators to where they are needed. Now, while San Diego slashed the number of low-performing schools during Bersin's tenure, these reforms never reached fruition. Moves to transfer or remove staff were stifled by work rules and a 2002 fiscal crisis sapped much of the funding intended for low-performing schools. So San Diego's efforts on this front were less a success than an example of what a focused strategy for chronically troubled schools will require.

Third, San Diego has seen how ambitious efforts to improve high schools may not link up with other reform efforts. In 2004, when the district adopted a model of high school reform that featured a "portfolio" of smaller, more personal schools, an observer could see a potential clash with the district's emphasis on centralized, managed instruction. The flexibility that allows faculty to modify curricula in accord with the mission of specialized schools, the emphasis on giving faculty in small schools a voice in curricula, and the resulting inability to standardize content, means that coaches encounter math, English, or science teachers in a dozen small schools who may teach a dozen different curricula in a dozen different ways. Coaches will likely have trouble providing uniform, pyramided expertise on instruction or content.

Fourth, relentless political leadership is part and parcel of being an effective district leader. Some thoughtful observers have questioned whether Bersin's style was unduly confrontational. What such critiques tend to downplay is that an effort to radically reimagine the way a district does business is bound to be controversial. The presence of a powerful union invested in certain ways of handling staffing, hiring, school leadership and accountability meant that Bersin's proposals would inevitably spark concerns. One could argue that Bersin would have been more likely to forge a cooperative relationship with the union had he proceeded more slowly. However, even in his unusually extended seven-year run, Bersin didn't accomplish all he had hoped. Meanwhile, the reality is that Bersin's approach threw a spotlight on board votes and helped him hold together his 3-2 board bloc for nearly seven years. Now, it's not clear that Bersin's was the optimal course, but we ought to be skeptical of suggestions he could have fared much better merely by being kinder and gentler.

Finally, perhaps the most important lesson from San Diego is how limited the possibilities are for radical improvement short of structural change to personnel systems, technology, accountability, leadership and compensation. For all their sweat and struggle, Bersin and his team found their efforts to build a 21st century work force checked by state law and contract language governing teacher hiring, school assignment, compensation and work rules. An outdated information technology system meant that the district has been scrambling to develop the tools required for serious accountability, human resources and budgeting improvements. Bersin began his tenure with considerable advantages, including his dazzling local and national contacts, personal charisma, negotiating skills, public service credentials and fund-raising touch. If the legacy of his seven-year run is in doubt, the San Diego experience illustrates, above all, the gauntlet that today awaits even the boldest school reformers.

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