The key to renewal is an emphasis on results, and on the conditions that favor them. More specifically, regular, even short-term results are the key to long-term renewal. Though schools have traditionally overlooked it, a focus on results, based on a few simple principles, all but ensures significant school improvement.
Our sense that short-term results were pivotal to improvement efforts began with a visit to a Toyota automobile plant in 1991. Amphitheater School District was two tiring years into site-based management, but we had little to show for it. Massive site-based efforts in Florida, Chicago, and elsewhere reveal this same unsettling syndrome: unprecedented levels of activity and involvement but virtually no progress in student learning and satisfaction, even after several years.
At this Toyota plant in Georgetown, Kentucky, results are a way of life, from short-term, measurable, process improvement results to long-term economic growth and progress. The company achieves these results, we were informed, by applying the principles taught by W. Edwards Deming. His teachings, known now as Total Quality Management, emphasize the importance of an unthreatening, purpose-driven, improvement-obsessed climate. Toyota taught us that one of the essential principles of this approach is that key processes must be monitored: if you can measure the impact of a process, or some aspect of it, you can improve it.
This seldom occurs in schools. We adopt innovations and then train teachers in the latest method. But we don't gather short-term, local data that will guide us in achieving long-term results with each innovation. Instead, we assess results yearly— it's like only looking at yearly car sales: important, but not as crucial as keeping track of the daily efforts that produce short-term results.
Schools That Get Better
Our study of Toyota coincided with a study of several schools that seemed, implicitly or explicitly, to be using Deming's general principles. These schools were obsessed with improving every aspect of the system to achieve better results, with creating a working climate that inspired both students and employees to make strides.
For example, at La Cima Middle School in our school district, with a mixed socioeconomic population (40 percent on free and reduced lunch), a team of teachers developed high-interest activities and assessments to help prepare students for the state writing exam. Teachers assessed student work to determine which areas needed to be addressed in class and had students write and analyze their own and one another's rough drafts. The result? In one year, the students' scores rose dramatically and tied those of the most affluent school district in Arizona, whose writing program has always been a model of excellence.
Early intervention programs like Reading Recovery and Success for All are making an enormous impact—and are proving that innovation can be replicated. Reading improvement at a host of inner-city locations like the Key School in Philadelphia, when compared to control schools, has been almost immediate. At virtually every school where Success for All has been implemented, it has resulted in significant growth by the end of one year as measured by a number of assessments.
At George Westinghouse Vocational and Technical School in Brooklyn, New York, the staff identified class failure and students' ditching classes as their chief problems. They brainstormed for ways to turn this around, surveyed students to help them determine root causes, and then implemented an improvement plan. The result? In six weeks, ditching went down by 39 percent. In one semester, the number of students failing every class went from 151 to 11.
Fort Pitt Elementary School in urban Pittsburgh had serious concerns about students' low writing scores on the Metropolitan Achievement Test: only 1 percent of 4th graders and 3 percent of 5th graders scored at or above the national norm. The school decided to introduce a high-engagement method of teaching writing known as “guided inquiry,” an approach that research has shown to be extremely successful (Joyce et al. 1992, Hillocks 1987). In one year, student writing levels rose dramatically: to 30 percent in 4th grade and 50 percent in 5th grade. Moreover, during this period of high-engagement learning activities, discipline referrals plummeted by 71 percent (Hartman et al. 1994).
At Centennial Elementary School in Evans, Colorado, teams of grade-level teachers began to meet on a monthly basis to analyze data from rubric-scored writing assessments. Based on their analysis, they adjusted their methods of teaching writing and set a goal for 90 percent of their students to be writing on grade level. This school moved from last to fourth place in writing assessment among the 16 schools in their district—again, in just one year.
Frederick County Schools in Maryland is a remarkable district success story. By making time for regular dialogue at every level and by using new, more frequent assessments—both during and at the end of the year—they began to see improvement immediately. After only a few years, student achievement for the entire district advanced from 12th among Maryland's 24 districts to second; in math and writing they rank number one. The percentage of Chapter 1 students on grade level rose from 2 percent to over 70 percent in three years (Bullard and Taylor 1993).
This year, at Amphitheater High School, two teams of English and social studies teachers have been focusing on ways to improve student writing and oral presentation skills. Both teams met regularly, shared practical ideas, and devised their own rubrics. The writing team met their first improvement goal: the number of students who could write effective introductions increased from 34 to 52 percent. Between October and December, the oral presentation team saw a 33 percent increase in the number of students who could perform at or above the quality standard.
Principles for Getting Results
- regular collaboration focused on well-defined, measurable student performance goals; and
- frequent monitoring of progress that enables teams to share concrete insights and adjust processes toward better results.
This kind of productive teamwork, common to all these schools, is more than casual or informal. It is focused and results-oriented.
We already have the means to assess the impact of our practices on student learning. We can measure by the number of students—count them—who can do something like write an arresting introduction to an expository essay. How many can deliver an effective oral presentation? Design and conduct a rigorous science experiment? Teachers can effectively assess any of these outcomes by creating their own rubrics or by adapting those found in Assessing Student Outcomes (Marzano et al. 1993).
As Bruce Joyce and his colleagues tell us, we haven't begun to tap into the rich array of methods and processes that could—would— produce measurable improvements in every area (1993, p. 38). Their book, The Self-Renewing School, which emphasizes some of the compelling features of Deming's teachings, is filled with inspiring accounts of schools choosing to implement research-based methods and then tracking the impact of these methods on student learning.
For instance, Sharon and Sachar's study reveals how students instructed in a group investigation model achieved average gains nearly two and one-half times that of their whole-class counterparts. This model enabled the socially disadvantaged students to outperform the socially advantaged students “immediately” (pp. 65–67). The book also cites George Hillock's studies (pp. 67–68) that reveal the most powerful practices for promoting effective writing—which, however well-substantiated, are still relatively ignored in the majority of our schools (Rothman 1992).
Such an emphasis flies in the face of 90 percent of what goes on in the name of school improvement. The sooner we confront and address this, the sooner we will see better schools, better results, and more capable kids.
Beyond Promising Practices
The Total Quality community is waking up to the fact that in the name of “process improvement” we have unfortunately become “activity-based”—more absorbed with how much we're doing than whether or not we're making a difference. Numerous independent studies now explain how the minority of TQ efforts succeed, and why the majority fail: without an emphasis on short-term, measurable goals and results, organizations become mired in an activity-centered spiral of failure and expense (Schaffer and Thomson 1992, Brigham 1993). Only a balanced concern between long-term change and short-term results forces teams to stretch and innovate toward big results.... Author upon consultant upon report urge us to avoid spending precious organizational energy on activities that don't impact quality, productivity, or customer satisfaction (Brigham 1993, p. 46).
In a profession currently marked by an absence of goals (Rosenholtz 1989, Glickman 1993), we must become goal-oriented and results-driven. Just implementing promising practices like site-based management, cooperative learning, or interdisciplinary teaching is not enough. Carl Glickman has observed that what we often call a “goal” is only a plan to implement something—rather than to obtain “solid, purposeful, enduring results” (1993, pp. 48–59). We must learn that a goal without some means of measuring progress toward it is meaningless—a “delusional goal.” For every process, there is a result—a “process result” if you will. This does not mean we must measure everything. Nor should we swing back toward a sole concern with standardized tests and dropout rates; these must be only two among a panoply of results we regularly analyze and improve relative to processes.
Results for All Students
For us, a concern with results means looking not only at overall achievement, but also at our lowest-achieving populations as well. How are our schools—even our best—really doing? And what can we do, at the school and classroom level, to incrementally increase the percentage of our students who receive a quality education?
We are on the threshold of what could be the most exciting epoch in American education. We are surrounded by solid, useful knowledge and the as yet untapped means to put that knowledge to work. Would we like students, one year from now, to be better, more engaged writers, readers, and problem solvers? The evidence is everywhere that we could accomplish this. Do we wish to see greater numbers of students who truly enjoy and understand science, music, and math? The means by which to do this are at our disposal.
It is time to focus on results and on the processes and conditions that affect them. The moment we begin not only to implement more enlightened processes, but also to regularly monitor the results they give us, we will see improvement break out all over. To paraphrase Ron Edmonds: If we need more proof than we have, then the problem is not “the system”; it is us.
