When something bad happens at school in Amherst or in the district, everyone wants a clear response. Unfortunately, the central office has a predictable and ultimately ineffective response to each crisis. They start a new initiative.
The result is a district that is inefficiently spending time and money while placing an ever-shifting and expanding set of demands on teachers. As a teacher in the district for 13 years I experienced this first-hand. Since leaving, I hear from former colleagues that it has only gotten worse.
In recent years the Amherst Regional superintendent’s office has mandated the schools to take on a dizzying array of initiatives ranging from co-teaching, to a workshop model in the classroom, to new student behavior management paradigms. The authors of “Staying the Course, Sustaining Improvement in Urban Schools” warn about the consequences of implementing multiple initiatives simultaneously. “If educators are frequently implementing new initiatives, attention and capacity — necessary for ensuring full implementation — may be sacrificed.”
Initiatives should be thoughtfully considered and carefully introduced. The Harvard Educational Review states that school leaders should “begin with very-small-scale experiments before gradually testing their improvement on a larger scale as a means of building capacity, refining the intervention, and garnering buy-in.”
That is not how the district has been implementing initiatives. Their approach fails to build interest and capacity from the bottom up. It has created a difficult and stressful work environment for teachers. It has also wasted a great deal of time and money. Our district has bought software, hired consultants or permanent employees for initiatives that languish or go away.
We deserve a school district that follows well established best practices for creating change. Our teachers should be relieved from the burden of trying to implement many new initiatives that interfere with their teaching. Good teachers are leaving. Many teachers are feeling overwhelmed. The end result: our students suffer. I urge you to talk to the teachers you know and find out what they think. Then speak up and speak out.
Alfie Alschuler
Amherst