What Happened to SIP?

In the 80's, New Hampshire sponsored a great program for communities and schools called School Improvement Program (SIP). SIP contracted with local colleges to hire facilitators to bring community members and school personnel together to find ways to improve their school.

It was a comprehensive program. SIP facilitators would find school staff and interested parents and get them together at an orientation meeting. There they would commit to spending a week during the summer at UNH to build a team to address school issues. Activities would include team building, clarification of goals, brainstorming issues, planning solutions and creation of a timetable for meetings during the school year.

By all accounts, it was a great success. Communities and school staff were very happy with the results, schools planned and implemented many large and small initiatives, and the program received national recognition as an innovation in education.

Then the Republican politicians got wind of it. They thought they could save money by putting the program out to bid. Predictably a hastily created Republican backed organization was low bidder and took over the program. Immediately, they started to gut it. No longer was there a week at UNH (lots of money saved there) and they did see the need for college facilitators when businessmen were much better at it.

Also predictably, the program quickly began to lose its effectiveness. Groups of parents and teachers who hadn't gotten to know each other or build any trust failed to accomplish much at all. The meetings began to dwindle (although the Republican-backed organization still got paid) and soon the enthusiasm and success was gone.

When the bottom line is always money saved or not spent, and in New Hampshire, to maintain our "Advantage" it always is, much of what could be successful fails. Continual, consistent underbudgeting creates a mindset of status quo and eventual failure. Yet, that failure is cheaper than spending money for a chance at improvement and success, so it is accepted, and even defined as success.

There is an old saying in schools: Change doesn't always mean improvement, but improvement always means change. In New Hampshire, in a big part because of our desire to maintain the all but mythical New Hampshire Advantage, change means money and, as the politicians always say, "We just can't afford it."