SYSTEM CHANGE 69
and a sense of community takes on added importance. New collaborative
arrangements must be established, and authority (power) redistributed.
Key stakeholders and their leadership must understand and commit to the
changes, and the commitment must be reflected in policy statements and
creation of an organizational and operational infrastructure at all levels
that ensures effective leadership and resources.
For significant systemic change to occur, policy and program commit-
ments must be demonstrated through effective allocation and redeploy-
ment of resources. That is, finances, personnel, time, space, equipment,
and other essential resources must be made available, organized, and used
in ways that adequately operationalize and sustain policy and promising
practices. As previously stressed, this includes ensuring sufficient re-
sources to develop an effective structural foundation, albeit a temporary
one, for systemic changes and related capacity building.
Reforms and major school improvements obviously require ensuring
that those who operate essential mechanisms have adequate training, re-
sources, and support, initially and over time. Moreover, there must be ap-
propriate incentives and safeguards for individuals as they become en-
meshed in the complexities of systemic change.
Positive and Negative Results
Systems are driven by what is measured for purposes of accountability.
This is particularly so when systems are the focus of major reform. Ac-
countability is a policy instrument, and under reform conditions, policy-
makers often mandate quick and direct outcome indicators. This leads to
measures aimed at holding program administrators and staff prematurely
accountable for yearly indicators that have a direct relationship to
long-term desired outcomes. The negative effects of this with respect to
achieving the desired long-term results tend to be downplayed. Moreover,
almost no attention is paid to unintended outcomes (negative or positive).
Thus, cost-benefit and cost-efficacy analyses tend to be misleading.
Current school accountability is a good example of this state of affairs.
Prevailing accountability mandates have had extraordinary power in re-
shaping schools—for good and for bad. The influence can be seen in class-
rooms everyday. With the increasing demands for academic accountabil-
ity, the only outcome measures that really count are achievement test
scores. These tests have become the be-all and end-all of what is attended
to by many decision makers. This produces a growing disconnect between
the realities of what is needed to enhance academic performance and what
is included in school improvement plans. Specifically, too little attention is
paid to addressing barriers to learning and how to accomplish desired
70 ADELMAN AND TAYLOR
school improvements. As a result, short-term and intermediate outcomes
that are critical benchmark and progress indicators related to such con-
cerns are not gathered.
As indicated already, the frameworks outlined above provide a tem-
plate for establishing subsets of benchmarks (short-term outcomes) and in-
termediate outcomes for purposes of formative evaluation in pursuing
systemic changes. In addition, there are a variety of benchmarks directly
related to school improvement efforts designed to address barriers to
learning and teaching (Adelman & Taylor, 2006a). Examples include in-
creased attendance, reduced tardiness, reduced misbehavior, less bullying
and sexual harassment, increased family involvement with child and
schooling, fewer inappropriate referrals for specialized assistance and for
special education, fewer pregnancies, and fewer suspensions and drop-
outs; additional long-term results stem from school improvement efforts to
enhance social and personal functioning (e.g., measures of social learning
and behavior, character/values, civility, healthy and safe behavior).
Clearly, it is the long-term outcomes that indicate whether systemic
changes related to school improvement are effective. Equally evident is the
need to evaluate systemic change with respect to the processes being used
to get from here to there. This means gathering data on short-term and in-
termediate outcomes that allow for formative evaluation of processes as
well as progress. Only after systemic changes have been well established
can one really determine whether the school improvements are effective in
enhancing long-term student outcomes.
PROJECTS AS CATALYSTS FOR SYSTEMIC CHANGE
With a view to sustaining valued functions, most demonstration projects
and initiatives can be a catalyst for systemic change. More to the point, it is
frequently the case that such projects must produce systemic changes or
much of what they have developed is unlikely to be sustained. Federally
funded projects, such as those established through the Safe Schools/
Healthy Students initiative (U.S. Departments of Education, Health and
Human Services, and Justice, n.d.), illustrate both the need and opportu-
nity for being a catalytic force. These projects are funded with the aim of
coalescing school and community collaboration for violence prevention.
As the first cohort of projects entered their 3rd and final year of federal sup-
port, the scramble began to find another grant to sustain threatened func-
tions. Much earlier, a few projects realized that sustainability should not be
thought about in terms of hopefully finding more grant money. Rather,
they understood the necessity of taking steps each year to move policy in
