A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Strengthening Schools

Priority: Strengthening schools, particularly middle and high schools, as institutions capable of engaging young people as active and responsible learners.

The bell rings at the end of third period and the mass migration through hallways and up and down staircases begins again as it does every 45 minutes throughout the day. To a visitor, the scene appears to be chaotic, but the students know where to go and what to do. This is their world, and by November they know its rhythms intimately. They know the rituals of the classroom, the corridors, and the cafeteria line. They have come to expect that in some classrooms, with some teachers, they will feel special and important; and in others they will feel like names on a seating chart. And they have their own clear sense of who they are and where they fit in the school's unofficial but widely understood hierarchy of achievement and social prowess.

All of these factors, and many more, impinge on students' day-to-day learning. Today's reform efforts are taking into account not only a school's organization and governance, but also its culture, the values and assumptions shared by the people who learn and work there, and the atmosphere that pervades its corridors and classrooms. We need to strengthen schools not only to make them more efficient, but also to make them more engaging; we need to strengthen schools not only to produce better academic records for students, but also to develop capacity for thinking, working, and spending free time in ways that will make students' lives more productive, rewarding, and interesting.

Strengthening schools means being willing to test some of our most firmly held beliefs and assumptions about schools. For example, does every child need 12 years of schooling? How would educational results be affected if some students were allowed to complete high school in 2 years and others were permitted to take far longer? We spend more on the education of high school students than we spend on children in their early years.³³ What could research tell us about the consequences of eliminating the 12th grade and reallocating some of those resources to quality early care and education programs?

Strengthening schools also means exploring new solutions to persistent problems. In some communities, particularly in our cities, radical changes are taking place in the way schools are governed. Several states are experimenting with charter schools which provide opportunities for local grassroots school reform. Charter schools operate with public funds and are accountable to the public, but have fewer constraints than traditional public schools. Still other states and communities are experimenting with providing public support for nonpublic schools. All of these initiatives offer opportunities for research that could help us gain a better understanding of how to strengthen schools.

A strong school means better results. To improve achievement, schools need to motivate students and foster a willingness to work hard in order to achieve academic goals. Toward this end, many communities are creating smaller schools where students are known by their teachers, where teachers can work collaboratively, and where there can be more agreement on the school's mission. The aim is to create a setting that can support and sustain a culture that cherishes learners and teachers as individuals, respects the diverse experiences and perspectives they bring to school from their homes and communities, supports collaboration, and expects and rewards hard work and achievement.

Children learn better in secure settings. Surveys show that Americans want before all else, safe and orderly schools for their children.³⁴ Schools have responded with many initiatives, ranging from metal detectors to conflict resolution training. But we need to know more about how to create settings where every student has the security and sense of well being needed to learn, and every teacher has the focus and peace of mind needed to teach.

Unless you change the quality of middle schools and high schools, they'll undo all the good work being done in early childhood education.

James E. Bottom
Member
OERI National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board

In short, communities, parents, and educators can work together in many ways to strengthen schools. But no matter which path they choose, the key to strengthening schools is ensuring that schools have the capacity to tackle their own problems. A strong school is a school that is capable of continuous improvement. A strong school can sustain efforts to correct problems and spread success. Building a strong school requires attention to the role that students themselves, as well as teachers and parents, can play in raising their achievement. But if schools are to address their own problems, they need strong, imaginative leadership and effective mechanisms for decision making.

They also need an adequate resource base. In recent years, Americans have shown a willingness to dig into their pockets to support public education. Nationwide, expenditures per pupil rose by more than a third between 1980 and 1993, from $4,085 to $5,526.³⁵ But the level of per pupil spending varies dramatically from district to district, depending on the local tax base and the level of students' educational needs.³⁶

Funding imbalances have resulted in complicated state formulas to assist poor school districts and have led to court challenges to state education financing systems. In fact, the supreme courts of several states have declared the state education financing systems unconstitutional due to funding inequities, and cases are pending in half of the states. Some states, such as Michigan and Kentucky, are experimenting with new financing and accountability plans. But these plans are experimental and are not widespread.

We need research that can help states and districts in their efforts to move toward more equitable funding systems and to make more effective use of existing funds. We must also define resources more broadly than dollars, and we must find ways to use these resources more creatively and more productively. Many approaches are possible, but an effective school accountability system supports each school's right to receive from the district and the state the resources and assistance it needs to ensure that its students can meet appropriate standards.³⁷ We need research that can help states and districts design or adapt such systems to their needs.

Scaling Up School Reform Thousands of scattered initiatives are underway today across the nation aimed at strengthening teaching and learning. When one of these experiments proves to be successful in 1 or 5 or 50 classrooms or communities, how can other places use these results? If it is successful in a larger number of sites, how can it be disseminated even more widely? And how can the best practices that emerge from educational research reach all 85,000 public schools and 26,000 private schools across the nation? In other words, how can we harness the knowledge we have gained from decades of research and practice to bring about broad, effective school improvement? We know that innovative educational practices can make a difference for large numbers of students; but innovative practices seldom spread to more than a handful of classrooms or schools. Even those with the widest application and most solid results fail to reach three-quarters (or more) of the nation's classrooms. "Scaling up" our most effective reform efforts means discovering how to get educational strategies that prove effective in one setting to produce comparable results in other settings. If school reform lent itself to cookbook solutions, and recipes could simply be shared with principals and teachers at other sites, this would be a simple matter. But in fact, successful reform hinges on a complex combination of factors--the mix of people who make up a school community; the political context in which reform is taking place; and the nexus of social, economic, and cultural factors that affect a community's educational needs and strengths. As a result, effective strategies cannot simply be adopted; they must be adapted to local conditions, resources, and needs. Tailoring a program or strategy based on those factors requires well-focused research and development efforts, drawing on the knowledge and experience of many local constituencies. And taking the next step, putting the reinvented program into practice requires intensive, ongoing professional development. Effective efforts to go to scale require local capacity to develop and adapt solutions to local circumstances. Teachers are crucial to this process, which requires strong incentives for teachers and administrators; frequent opportunities for teachers, administrators, and program directors to share and try out effective practices; and opportunities for policy makers to learn about how to bring about deep and sustained organizational change. Efforts are now under way to scale up a number of exemplary programs that involve intensive schoolwide change, but these efforts are gradual and require substantial investments of resources. It took 7 years of local implementation efforts for Success for All, a well-tested comprehensive restructuring program for at-risk children in the primary grades, to be adapted to 200 schools--less than one half of one percent of all Title I schools. Plans are now under way to bring Success for All to 3,000 schools by the year 2002. Other schoolwide reform projects, such as the Coalition of Essential Schools, the Accelerated Schools Project, the School Development Program, and the Annenberg initiatives, are also trying to take their improvement efforts to scale. Indeed, if all of these and similar efforts prove to be successful it is possible that by the year 2000, 10 percent or more of all public schools could be involved in intensive, focused school improvement efforts. The challenge in coming decades will be to bring school reform, based on well-tested, effective strategies, to the other 90 percent.

Strengthening schools means testing new ideas about what schools are and what they can do to foster student learning. For example, educational technology, with its "interactivity" and "connectivity" and its capacity to allow "anytime-anywhere" learning, has opened up new ways of thinking about how learning takes place, and when and where it can occur. Furthermore, software applications can support the administration and management of schools, as well as local assessments, allowing educational leaders to use existing resources more efficiently.

Strengthening schools is a massive undertaking that requires a reconsideration of policy and practice in many areas. In all of these areas, decision making needs to be grounded in solid, up-to-date research. To build on what we know, the nation needs research that addresses such questions as:

How can the schools become better integrated into the communities they serve, and how can communities mobilize to take more responsibility for their schools?

How can school buildings be used to provide better support for children and their families? How can communities take active part in shaping educational policy and practice at their local schools?

What are the processes by which school communities can develop a focused vision, clear standards, a more coherent organization, and a climate more conducive to learning?

How can school communities composed of students, parents, teachers, administrators, and community members, develop a greater capacity to define and solve their own problems? How can we create schools large enough to span diverse communities, but small enough to give individuals the warmth and support they need to learn and teach effectively?

What new approaches to dividing resources among the various levels of schooling might improve results for learners?

Given the proven power of early learning, should we consider shifting resources from older to younger students? Should some students be allowed to progress more quickly through school while others take more time? What are the effects of alternative grade structures?

What do we know about the benefits of different approaches to making schools safe and orderly?

What factors make some schools more safe and orderly than others operating in similar circumstances with similar enrollments? How can parents and communities be involved in efforts to improve discipline?

How can new technologies be brought to bear on reforming how schools are organized, how instruction is delivered and supported, and how results are documented and communicated?

How can new technologies be infused into the mission of the school? What kinds of partnerships with local employers and postsecondary institutions can help schools integrate technology into their operation? How does introducing technology into a school affect curriculum, instruction, professional development, and other aspects of its functioning?

Which new models of schools are likely to improve results?

Which innovative school financing models hold promise for improving equity? How can schools redirect existing funds to activities and programs that have been shown to boost achievement? How can communities allow school choice while assuring equity? What lessons can be learned from charter schools? Which communities are likely to benefit most, and least, from contracts with private companies to manage public schools?
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