Despite well-proven principles for improving schools, educators sometimes jump on reform bandwagons to avoid the leadership effort required to implement those principles. The most recent bandwagon is comprehensive schoolwide reform models, such as Success for All (see Robert E. Slavin's "Putting the School Back in School Reform," Educational Leadership, December 2000/January 2001). But rather than jump on this bandwagon, let's review what really works in education reform.
What Works
First, some general school improvement principles apply to all schools and grade levels. Teacher and administrator quality is by far the most significant factor in student achievement. Research shows that the top one-third of teachers can produce as much as six times the improvement in student achievement as the bottom third (Haycock, 1998). Aligning curriculum to standards and assessment is essential. However, alignment to standards alone is insufficient. Educators must also increase students' time on task by using such techniques as providing extra help and mentoring and by ensuring that teachers sustain instruction until the end of each class period.
Second, schools should implement improvement principles that are specific to particular grade spans. In grades K–3, the most powerful improvement principles, especially for minority students, are teaching reading in kindergarten and substantially reducing class size for one year. The class size ratio should be 17 students for each teacher. The Tennessee STAR study found that providing small class size for more than one year offers few extra benefits and becomes counterproductive (Finn & Achilles, 2000). In California, for example, more aggressive class size reduction drained experienced teachers from the inner-city schools, which will probably increase inequity in student outcomes. In grades 4–8, the most powerful improvement principle is helping students understand abstract ideas and symbols and practicing metacognition (Pogrow, 1999b). In grades 8–12, reducing school size to provide opportunities for more individualized student mentoring is effective (Stiefel, Berne, Iatarola, & Fruchter, 2000).
Third, schools must use targeted interventions to meet students' special learning needs. For example, instruction in phonemic awareness does not work for some students because they have trouble accurately hearing sounds. Specialized interventions are now available for both enhancing the effectiveness of phonemic awareness and developing a sense of understanding for most educationally disadvantaged students.
Of course, implementing these politically challenging and technically demanding principles is easier said than done. Some districts have difficulty achieving the flexibility needed to implement both across-the-board principles and specialized principles. The biggest impediment to the substantive implementation of these and other improvement principles, however, has been the push for schools to adopt comprehensive schoolwide reform models. Having a vendor take over the curriculum and staff development for a school and provide a one-size-fits-all model is much simpler than struggling to implement these improvement principles.
Schoolwide Reform Models Don't Work
The most influential forces behind schoolwide reform models have been Robert E. Slavin, developer of Success for All, and the New American Schools corporation. Slavin and his associates have written extensively about their research on Success for All and have convinced many educators and policymakers that this research proves that their program is effective and that schoolwide reform models work—especially for low-income students.
This research, however, uses invalid methodology and comparisons. Students in the schools that the researchers deemed successful were performing terribly, and most of these schools subsequently decided to drop the program (Pogrow, 1998, 1999a, 2000a, 2000b). In Baltimore, for example, Success for All students entered the 6th grade reading three years below grade level, and the district dropped the program in all its schools (Pogrow, 2000b). A growing body of independent research, such as a study in Mississippi, concludes that Success for All is ineffective (Blendinger, 2000). An unpublished study in Houston—the district that made the largest commitment to Success for All—concluded that students in the program were doing worse than comparison students whose schools were not in the program.
Public relations and lobbying efforts have produced the unquestioned belief that a definitive body of research supports comprehensive schoolwide reform models. These efforts have been so successful that the U.S. Department of Education gave an unprecedented amount of its discretionary funds to the Success For All developers' organizations, such as the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk (CRESPAR) at Johns Hopkins University and the Success for All Foundation—even asking these organizations to conduct key national policy studies into which approaches to Title I are most effective. All funds previously earmarked for developing and implementing new innovations, approaches, and programs were redirected to help schools adopt established comprehensive schoolwide models.
The rhetoric claiming that the effectiveness of the schoolwide reform model approach has been proven is belied by the fact that during the past decade—when this approach predominated—the achievement gap widened for the first time in decades. Why would anyone think that a one-size-fits-all schoolwide reform model could work effectively for such a complex process as teaching—especially in schools dealing with an increasingly diverse student body? True leadership occurs when a school or district gets its own act together instead of looking for an outside savior to take control of its basic professional functions and provide a quick fix. A quick fix does not exist.
Implementing School Improvement Principles
Implementing validated improvement principles can be difficult. The best approach is for schools and districts to develop their own internal expertise and leadership for evaluating curriculum and instruction, with some outside help on focused, technical, and specialized needs. The funds spent on comprehensive schoolwide reform models should be reallocated to develop and recruit internal expertise and leadership and to foster the staff support necessary for implementing improvements. School leaders must also recognize that research has been unable to resolve such important issues as determining the best approach to grouping. In such cases, a balanced approach is best. Instead of mandating a universal method, educators should use a variety of techniques developed from instinct, judgment, and shared experience.
Most important, educators should not implement any improvement principles to the exclusion of individual creativity, initiative, and experimentation. Good teaching is still, at its heart, an artistic endeavor. So, in return for getting staff to buy into a coordinated approach for key program elements, schools and districts need to encourage individuality in other elements.
Amid the talk of dramatic school reform and restructuring, we must remember that the causes of students' poor academic performance are fundamental and that efforts grounded in general school improvement principles work when done well and with focus. The most important reform that states could implement, for example, would be to ensure that all students have equal access to good teachers.
Educators need to judge new reforms on whether the reforms help schools implement key improvement principles and on the extent to which such principles build on an already strong foundation of school improvements.
