A positive deviance failure in Boston: Timilty Middle School

An article in the Boston Globe, "Once a crown jewel of BPS, Roxbury’s Timilty Middle School will close in June. Will its history of transformation be remembered?," discusses how Timilty Middle School is closing, as a result of the current approach to have K-8 schools, based on the research conclusion that with each transition in K-12 (from elementary to middle, from middle to high school) there are increased problems, so reduce the number of transitions.

Positive deviance theory.  The story is a good illustration of "positive deviance theory," but in how PD was created, rather than preexisting.  But the school system was resistant to applying and replicating the lessons to other schools.  Instead, the majority of the unexceptional were able to crush the outlier of exceptional quality. 

The idea behind positive deviance is that even in poor performing places and organizations there are pockets of excellence, and these practices can't be rejected because they were "not invented here."

I was first introduced to the concept in a Harvard Business Review article, "Your Company's Secret Change Agents."  It's a subtle and challenging approach.  I had to read the article a couple times to really understand.  

One of the examples was from Brazil, and a high performing cluster of schools in one state, that otherwise shared all the same operational characteristics of the underperforming schools.  The example is fully relevant to low income school settings in the US.

Past blog entries:

-- "Positive deviance in New York City schools goes unrecognized," 2009
-- "No wonder (DC) school systems are underperforming," 2016  
-- "Schools #2: Successful school programs in low income communities and the failure of DC to respond similarly," 2019  [the innovation discussed in entry #2 was reversed as discussed in entry #3]

Timilty had been an underperforming school, but a new superintendent created a program, "Project Promise," adding two hours to the school day and a half day on Saturdays, based on the Japanese model, along with a focus on reading, writing, and mathematics across the curriculum, a collaborative model for school administrators, teachers and staff, room for experimentation and flexibility, and a rich set of extracurricular activities.

The school became regionally and nationally, even internationally, acclaimed.  But the superintendent was pushed out, and while the school continued its success afterwards, over time, rather than transfer the best practices from Timilty to other schools, the school was targeted because "it cost more," and there wasn't a belief that the school had much to teach others.  And eventually, the resources and programs were eliminated and the school's outcomes declined to the mean.  

It's definitely an illustration of the need for strong leadership at the administrative and board levels of a school system, to retain and support the commitment to success (there is a more recent similar problem in Seattle with Rainer High School and the school system's unwillingness to pay the extra costs of IB practice, despite the transformation of the school, see "International Baccalaureate program at an impoverished high school in Seattle as a way to improve academic outcomes").

K-8 schools: one less transition, but at the loss of quality outcomes for older students?  Another problem that the article doesn't address is the concept of K-8 schools.  DC is mentioned as one of the places that has developed such schools, out of the idea of reducing transitions, but also "that parents liked their elementary school but not the middle/junior high school" so keep the students at the elementary school.

From the Globe article:

Boston’s decision to eliminate its middle schools dates back to 2018, when then-Superintendent Tommy Chang made the case that students and families needed fewer transitions to new schools. Since then, declining city enrollments and deteriorating facilities have given the district more reasons to close aging buildings and consolidate students at fewer campuses. ...

Amy Ellen Schwartz is among the researchers who see a real cost to school transitions, one that may outweigh the benefits of separate middle schools. “Kids in a new school are dislocated, with new rules and peers and different levels of preparation,” said Schwartz, economics chair at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. “There’s robust research showing that transition has a cost in academics. … I like the K-8 model, and I do think moving kids around can be a problem.”

 Many urban districts, including those in Newark, N.J., Baltimore, and Philadelphia, have dismantled middle schools in the last two decades. In Cambridge, though, administrators went the other way, consolidating middle grades to address an enrollment drop-off in sixth grade. The change allowed more sports and clubs for grades 6-8 than otherwise would have been viable, at a time in their development when such pursuits take on new importance. 

 Educators agree that what matters most, for students and for school success, is meeting the needs of students in the middle grades, regardless of which buildings they are placed in. It’s clear that was the strength of the Timilty, which sparkled well into the 1990s in a structure built before World War II began, fueled by an ingenious blend of daring and compassion, uncompromising expectations and high-octane school spirit.

But for the upper grades in a K-8 school, there are no economies of scale such as at a junior high, where there are sports programs and other extracurricular activities offered that are age appropriate.  In the K-8 schools, the critical mass of students and programs is for the lower grades, and the upper grades are stinted.

DC reversing K-8: creating middle schools.  Ironically, the Globe article doesn't mention that the DC Public School system, partly because of the competition between charter schools and traditional schools for students, has been re-creating middle and junior high schools for the past ten years.

DCPS found that "speaking of transitions," after the elementary grades, because DCPS didn't have middle schools, students were leaving for charter schools, and then at the "transition" from 8th grade to high school, DCPS was not getting those students back, because the students who left after 6th grade remained ensconced in the charter school network.

-- "D.C. to add middle school, shake up Ward 5 education," Washington Post, 2012
-- "Can gentrifying Ward 4 support two new middle schools? D.C. will soon find out.," 2017
-- "Bowser proposes money for stand-alone middle school for Shaw students," 2022

This may be more of an issue when school systems have to compete with students with charter schools.  

But as the article discussed, I believe that the issue of "transition" between elementary and middle school is less about "the transition" and more about whether or not the middle school is organized to address the issues that come with transition, let alone excellence across the curriculum, the provision of an array of extracurriculars, etc.

There is a "happy medium" between the ideas of James Conant in The Comprehensive High School and Roger Barker and Paul Gump in Big School, Small School. ("“Big School, Small School” Revisited," Handbook of Japan-United States Environment-Behavior Research).

The former argued for large high schools able to offer a wide range of curricular options.  Gump argued that larger schools have costs in terms of student participation in class and extracurriculars, that in larger schools fewer students participate, but in more activities, while the majority of students do not participate.

OTOH, not having middle schools means for the most part, the K-8 schools are likely to inadequately serve the upper grades.