Executive Summary

As we approach the 21st century, American public education is rising to meet a new challenge -- high expectations and achievement for all students in every school. States and school districts are raising academic standards and making efforts to align curriculum, assessments, teacher training, and instruction with these challenging standards. The U.S. Department of Education is supporting these efforts with programs and resources to help improve teaching and learning in schools across the nation.

Expecting more from schools and students demands that state and district leaders face the important task of improving low-performing schools. In some of our schools, student achievement is dismal. Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that the academic performance of students in our nation's highest-poverty schools is often several grade levels behind that of students in low-poverty schools. In low-performing schools, teachers sometimes have low expectations of students and feel that they can do little to improve student performance. Often the environment is not conducive to learning -- teachers are burnt out, school safety is a problem, and students and the community are disengaged. Many low-performing schools are located in impoverished communities where family distress, crime, and violence are prevalent. Limited financial, human, and program resources can leave these schools without the support they need to deliver high-quality instruction.

Fixing Low-Performing Schools: Pathways to Progress Set high expectations for students. Hold schools accountable for performance. Provide a safe learning environment. Create leaders at school and district levels. Let leaders lead. Recruit and retain the best teachers. Train teachers in instruction and curriculum. Support students with extra help and time. Involve the community in schooling. Create smaller schools. Close or reconstitute bad schools. -Adapted from Education Week, January 8, 1998

Turning around low-performing schools is not easy. It involves making strategic decisions about instructional practices and focusing all school staff on aligning every aspect of school operations, from professional development to parent and community involvement, in order to support and sustain efforts to improve student achievement.

Low-performing schools rarely have the capacity to make these kinds of changes on their own. While much of what it takes to turn around a low-performing school can occur only within the school itself and with the cooperation and commitment of school staff, states and school districts must provide the critical impetus and support for the process of change.

By setting high academic standards, holding all schools accountable for performance, and identifying schools that do not meet those standards, states and districts are taking important steps to raise expectations for all students. For schools that do not meet expectations, states and districts can do much to provide the support necessary to help them focus on improving teaching and learning. In schools where student achievement remains persistently low, many states and districts are actively intervening with resources and technical assistance to further the school improvement process. This guide describes some of the strategies that states and districts are pursuing to help turn around low-performing schools. It also suggests concrete actions that state, district, and school leaders, as well as parents and community members, can take. The guide concludes with an inventory of federal resources that can support efforts to turn around low-performing schools.

Raising the Stakes: Setting High Standards for Performance

States and districts also are sending strong signals to students about their own accountability for academic performance. Chicago, for example, has committed to eliminating social promotion -- the automatic passing of students from grade to grade regardless of whether they have mastered necessary skills. Districtwide, students who perform below minimum standards at key grades are required to participate in a seven-week summer school program.

Holding schools and students more accountable for performance is forcing states and districts to face the issue of low-performing schools head-on. Once these schools have been identified, how can states and districts help them do what it takes to improve student achievement?

Focus on Learning: Promising Strategies for Improving Student Achievement

• Helping schools gain control of the learning environment. This is a prerequisite to focusing on learning. Schools cannot effectively implement instructional changes if they do not first address student discipline, safety, and high absenteeism. Districts can help school leaders by instituting a "zero tolerance" policy for violence and drugs and by consistently and fairly enforcing such policies. School uniforms and effective classroom management strategies also can help create an environment conducive to learning. Gaining control of the school environment means more than just implementing get-tough discipline policies; it also involves showing respect for students and giving them responsibilities, as members of the school community, for maintaining a safe environment for learning.

• Concentrating resources and efforts on providing students with challenging curriculum and high-quality instruction. If students are to be held accountable for reaching high standards of performance, then they must be offered the kinds of curriculum and instruction that will help them meet that challenge. Districts must demand that all schools offer challenging coursework to all students. To help ensure that every student reaches high standards, states and districts can use resources to increase instructional time, extend the school day or the school year, and offer after-school assistance to students who need it.

• Providing services so that young children come to school ready to learn. A child's early environment is critical to intellectual development and school success. In recognition of this fact, states and school districts can help ensure that more children benefit from early childhood services. In addition to providing pre-kindergarten for children, many local education agencies are partnering with community organizations to implement family literacy programs, such as Even Start, that support early childhood education, school readiness, and parent involvement in learning activities.

• Creating a professional development program aligned with the content of curriculum and focused on improving instruction. Professional development is an often neglected element of the academic program in low-performing schools. To be effective, professional development activities must center on the classroom. Community School District #2 in New York City, for example, concentrates its professional development resources and time on engaging teachers in learning about the materials they teach and skills they need to improve classroom instruction. The district works to identify teachers that need assistance and helps to counsel teachers out of the profession if they do not improve.

• Helping schools implement comprehensive school reform programs. Creating coherent educational programs in low-performing schools usually requires changes in all aspects of a school, including its curriculum and academic standards, school governance, community-school relationships, staff development, technology, parent involvement, and services to meet children's needs. For this reason, Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act emphasizes the need for schoolwide programs in high-poverty, low-performing schools. There are a number of research-based models and designs available to help schools address these multiple aspects of school effectiveness, and many provide technical assistance to help schools implement the designs. Districts such as San Antonio, Memphis, and Cincinnati are implementing a number of these models in a large proportion of their schools.

Building School Capacity: Systemic Support for the Process of Change

District support for these practices is key for building the capacity of schools to improve student achievement. Yet, low-performing schools are sometimes embedded in troubled school systems that cannot support the school improvement process. Individual school efforts can be thwarted by districts that fail to provide leadership and that lack the focus and long-term commitment necessary for turning around low-performing schools.

Therefore, part of the process of building the capacity of low-performing schools involves setting priorities on the district level, such as:

• Ensuring strong leadership at the school. Districts must recruit principals who will serve as instructional leaders.

• Promoting policies that encourage teacher commitment to reform. Districts should hire teachers enthusiastic about change and willing to work in low-performing schools. Districts also can be flexible, allowing teachers the chance to leave a school if they do not want to participate in the school reform process. Teacher and staff commitment to improving schools can be fostered by efforts to create smaller schools, which generally have better communication and collaboration among staff -- two ingredients that are essential for creating a shared purpose and collective responsibility for school improvement.

• Using resources strategically. Schools must make tough choices about the ways they allocate their resources if they are to focus on improving teaching and learning. Low-performing schools and school districts often have multiple competing priorities. While districts and schools may implement separate programs intended to address specific needs, the programs can be unfocused, disjointed, or work at cross-purposes. Pieced together, these multiple efforts often do not add up to a coherent whole. Districts must help schools coordinate and concentrate their resources on classroom instruction.

  Districts also can do much to streamline their administrative operations and help redirect resources into the classroom. For example, part of Philadelphia's education reform plan "Children Achieving" involves implementing cost-cutting administrative reforms. Over the past two years, Philadelphia has been able to save more than $29 million. To the extent that such resources can be targeted toward low-performing schools that work to develop coherent school improvement plans, streamlining district budgets can boost low-performing schools and help raise public and community confidence in local public school systems.

• Helping schools use performance data to drive improvement. Using data is important for identifying patterns of failure, diagnosing problems, and matching concrete solutions to educational needs. States such as Maryland and districts such as Minneapolis are disaggregating test scores to help identify causes for low performance, develop appropriate improvement strategies, and monitor progress as a strategy for continuous improvement.

• Working in partnership with the community. Schools cannot do their jobs alone. Low-performing schools, in particular, need the assistance of community stakeholders to raise student performance. Parent involvement is essential. Local businesses, colleges, and universities are invaluable sources of support. Teacher unions can be cooperative allies in the process of change if they are invited to work in partnership to improve low-performing schools.

• Providing incentives for change and support for innovation. Districts can help support school-level change by following the lessons of high-performance organizations. In many states, local educators, parents, community members, and school board members can create public charter schools that operate under performance contracts that provide greater autonomy along with accountability for results. Public school choice and open enrollment policies also can provide incentives for school improvement. Boston, for instance, allows parents to choose from an array of neighborhood schools, magnet schools, and public charter schools. Districts also can provide incentives for school improvement by rewarding success. Charlotte-Mecklenburg's Benchmark Goals program, for example, gives cash awards to teachers whose students meet a range of goals that reflect improvements over previous performance.

Intervening in Chronically Low-Performing Schools

In many cases, intervention has been a collaborative experience. For example, New York State has developed a process to help redesign low-performing schools. Teams of teachers, board of education members, union representatives, parents, and curriculum experts led by district superintendents conduct four-day visits to low-performing schools to examine all aspects of school operations. Based on the recommendations of review teams, schools and districts develop corrective action plans. In New York City, the process includes assigning low-performing schools to the "Chancellor's District." A school assigned to the special district receives extra resources and technical assistance until the district determines that the school has the capacity and commitment to support its redesign plan.

Districts such as Chicago and San Francisco have employed reconstitution measures in attempting to turn around chronically low-performing schools. While the strategy encompasses a number of practices, it generally represents the extreme along a continuum of intervention strategies. In its basic form, reconstitution involves closing a school and reopening it with new school leaders and usually with new teachers and staff. Reconstitution policies are controversial and there is no conclusive data about whether reconstitution is an effective strategy for school improvement. Some believe that the threat of reconstitution has been an important force for leveraging change in chronically low-performing schools. Opponents believe reconstitution policies unfairly place the blame for poor student achievement on teachers and damage fledgling school communities.

Regardless of the individual policy, state and district intervention in low-performing schools cannot succeed without the cooperation and commitment of those who actually work in the school. Turning around low-performing schools is difficult work. It requires high expectations, a focus on learning, a commitment to students, strong leadership, trust among school staff, and collective responsibility for student achievement. States and districts cannot dictate that schools have these characteristics, but they do have a critical leadership role in setting the context for change and raising the capacity of schools to acquire these attributes.

U.S. Department of Education Support

President Clinton has also proposed several initiatives to help increase student achievement, particularly in high-poverty schools, including:

• Educational Opportunity Zones to help high-poverty urban and rural districts implement some of the kinds of policies highlighted in this guide that support school accountability and improvements in student performance;

• Reducing class size to a national average of 18 students per class in the early grades, a policy that research shows would especially benefit students in high-poverty schools;

• America Reads Challenge, an initiative that encourages school and community partnerships to provide quality reading instruction through linking in-school and out-of-school reading programs. The goal is to ensure that all children learn to read well and independently by the end of third grade;

• 21st Century Community Learning Centers to fund school-community partnerships to build or expand after-school, extended learning programs for school-age children; and

• School Construction Initiative to help modernize school buildings through interest-free bonds to support a high-quality teaching and learning environment and to alleviate classroom overcrowding.

As we face a new century, it is time for America to renew its commitment to future generations. There is a role for each and every member of the school community in raising our expectations for all students, providing a safe learning environment, aligning educational resources and instruction with high academic standards, and choosing long-term improvement strategies. This guide provides examples of promising state, district, and school practices for helping children to learn, and suggests concrete steps that state and local policy makers, school leaders, parents, and community stakeholders can take to fix low-performing schools. Through these efforts, we can work together to make all schools places where students strive toward high levels of learning and achievement.

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