School Chief Says Changes in Education Cannot Wait

Principals and teachers in the 152 San Diego city schools were told Monday that they no longer have the luxury of deciding whether they want to make changes in the way they educate students.

Schools Supt. Tom Payzant told his administrators that change, officially known as “restructuring,” will be required in every school because the district is not doing as good a job as possible in boosting student achievement, particularly as the district’s enrollment becomes increasingly nonwhite.

“Restructuring is the process for renewal and change in educational culture,” Payzant told the annual school-year kickoff meeting Monday. “All of us should be restructuring, although we can all approach it in a different way.”

During the past two years, about 50 schools have voluntarily undertaken changes, some substantive, some less so, in curriculum and management, all with the approval of central office administrators directly under Payzant.

For example, several schools have established new curricula in English and social studies, created interdisciplinary courses with team teaching, set up parent-teacher panels to interview prospective principals and established social programs to address student and family health needs.

But Payzant has come to view the process as too slow, especially in light of national criticism. Many have argued that public schools are incapable of reforming themselves without direct competition from private schools--a plan that would allow parents to spend tax dollars at a school of their own choosing.

“Everyone can find children” in their schools who could be taught better “or can find things in their departments than can be made better,” Payzant said.

But Payzant stressed that “there is no one best way” to carry out district goals, which call for reducing the dropout rate, improving the poor achievement among blacks and Latinos and boosting the academic side of integration programs.

He confessed that he spent his first four years as district superintendent, starting in 1983, trying to find “the one best way.” He said he had to learn that diversity in carrying out change can work.

“So I make the distinction between the clarity of our goals and the permission that we will give for all kinds of ways to determine how to accomplish them.”

Much of the day was spent by administrators and principals in small discussion groups, talking about the district goals and how the central office and individual schools can work with each other, rather than being at cross-purposes.