The Grit and the Grind: Book Talk Featuring Dr. Joshua L. Glazer

Room 404. The Grit and the Grind: Building High-Performing Education Systems in an Era of Polarization Book Talk featuring Dr. Joshua L. Glazer, Author and GW Professor of Education Policy While school improvement depends in part on choosing strong curricula, recruiting talented leaders, and adopting effective organizational models, it also requires organizations to learn from experience, build professional capacity, and gradually develop coherent systems for teaching and learning. This work unfolds within political, historical, and social contexts that can either provide or undermine the trust, stability, and time that organizational learning and sustained improvement require. The Grit and the Grind argues that politics, history, and system improvement are therefore inseparable. Political conditions shape whether reforms acquire legitimacy, while legitimacy, in turn, influences whether organizations have the opportunity to acknowledge mistakes, revise strategies, build professional knowledge, and develop increasingly effective instructional systems. Drawing on nearly a decade of research in Memphis, the authors develop this argument through a comparison of two ambitious efforts to transform some of Tennessee's lowest-performing schools: the state-run Achievement School District (ASD) and Shelby County Schools' Innovation Zone (iZone). The Grit and the Grind thus offers a reciprocal view of reform in which politics shapes the conditions for system improvement, while the work and outcomes of system improvement, in turn, reshape the political environment in which reform transpires. About Dr. Joshua L. Glazer: Dr. Joshua L. Glazer’s research and teaching examine multiple approaches to improving under-performing schools in high-poverty, urban environments. He is currently directing two multi-year studies into school turnaround. The first examines the Tennessee Achievement School District, in which the state removes underperforming schools from local control and then authorizes charter schools to develop and implement designs for improvement. The second study, also in Tennessee, investigates the efforts of Shelby County Schools, which includes Memphis, to devise and direct its own improvement initiative by using the resources and capacity of the district to improve over twenty schools that rank near the bottom of the state in academic performance. In addition, Dr. Glazer is the principal investigator for program of research looking at research-practice partnerships in Baltimore and New York City. Learn more→