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

School-Based Reform--Lessons From A National Study-1995

Section I - Introduction

Increasingly, over the past decade, educational reformers have called for fundamental shifts in what takes place in classrooms and schools. These arguments follow from the now common conclusion that our nation's schools are failing to provide many students with the high-quality education needed to become responsible citizens and productive workers. To address this problem, reformers urge reconsideration of traditional notions of schools as institutions with isolated classrooms where students spend fixed periods of time studying rigidly differentiated subjects. Instead, new institutions need to be designed, from the bottom up, limited by neither previous practice nor burdensome regulations. Doing so, the argument continues, entails deregulating the educational system and transferring authority from the federal, state, and even district levels to schools--in return for accountability for student results.

These arguments are reflected in nearly every current reform effort. At the local level, there are numerous experiments with school-based management strategies (e.g., Dade County, Fla., and Santa Fe, N.M.). At the state level, strategies as diverse as Kentucky's sweeping educational reform act (KERA) and South Dakota's targeted reforms share this common focus on school-based change. Nationally, there are a series of coordinated efforts--the Comer Schools, Accelerated Schools, and the Coalition of Essential Schools--that focus on the development of school-level and school-specific improvement strategies.

Federal Legislation

Support for school-level improvement has long been a mainstay of the federal education agenda. Title I of the newly enacted Improving America's Schools Act (IASA), which amends Chapter 1 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), strongly encourages the use of its funds for schoolwide improvement efforts in schools with high concentrations of disadvantaged children. Other programs authorized in the new legislation (e.g., the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professional Development Program) emphasize schoolwide reform and provide school staff with flexibility to design and implement school-specific improvement strategies. Goals 2000: Educate America Act, the federally supported framework for education reform also enacted in 1994, encourages and supports school-level change and directs professional development resources to school-level educators. Both pieces of legislation recognize that individual schools are the necessary targets of successful reform efforts and that educators closest to the classroom are vital to sustaining these efforts.

The Chapter 2 program, as reauthorized by the 1988 amendments to ESEA (P.L. 100-297) and again in IASA (P.L. 103-382) in 1994, is another example of federal support for school-based reform. The 1988 legislation required that states use at least 20 percent of their Chapter 2 allocations to support Effective Schools Programs. This provision reflected lessons from the research on unusually effective schools that identified a set of school-level correlates or characteristics associated with higher-than-expected student achievement. The federal goal was to encourage states to support school-based reform efforts consistent with this research. The Chapter 2 program was modified and renamed in IASA. Title VI (Innovative Education Program Strategies) maintains the school-level focus of the earlier Chapter 2 program but eliminates the Effective Schools Programs requirement.

These are exciting experiments and innovative public policies that create new opportunities for local educators to influence the course of change in their own schools. At the same time, they place a great deal of pressure on school staff to undertake reform efforts for which they often have neither the preparation nor the resources. As with all change efforts, new opportunities and pressures need to be accompanied with appropriate assistance and support.

Purpose of This Guide

This guide is meant to be a resource for teachers and school administrators interested in undertaking school-based reforms. It provides examples of promising reform strategies and lessons learned from a national study of school-based reform. The remainder of this introduction reviews how the study was conducted and provides an overview of the major themes that run through the rest of the document. It is important to note that the research that informs this guide predates IASA and Goals 2000. In fact, the original study was commissioned in order to learn lessons about how to improve federal support for elementary and secondary education. The lessons from this study should be useful in planning and carrying out the reforms envisioned in the recent federal education legislation and ongoing state and local school reform efforts.

The Study of Effective Schools Programs: The Basis for the Guide

The examples, ideas, and recommendations contained in this guide reflect lessons from a congressionally mandated national study of Effective Schools Programs and other school-based reforms carried out by SRI International under contract to the U. S. Department of Education. The study resulted from the federal Chapter 2 legislation, which, as noted above, supported Effective Schools Programs. Data for the study were collected during the 1991-92 school year and included:

A mail survey of a nationally representative sample of 1,550 school districts, in which district administrators were asked to respond to questions about district support for school-based reform efforts and about their most comprehensive school-level improvement efforts.
Mail and telephone surveys of all state education agencies, in which state-level administrators were asked to describe reform efforts in their states.
Case studies of reform efforts in five states, 16 school districts, and 32 schools. These involved on-site visits of approximately one week, which included interviews with administrators and teachers, observation of classrooms and team meetings, and review of relevant documents. These case studies form the basis for the vignettes described in the second section of this guide.

The states visited were California, Connecticut, Kentucky, South Dakota, and Washington. These states were selected because they covered the range of state school reform strategies from traditional Effective Schools Programs (e.g., South Dakota's Effective Schools Program) to change efforts promoting more fundamental reorganization of schooling (e.g., KERA in Kentucky). State roles and involvement in schools also varied across these states. The 16 school districts and 32 schools were located in these states and were selected because they, like the sample states, encompassed the full breadth of different reforms and demographics. Moreover, states, districts, and schools were selected with an eye toward the lessons they could teach others about successful reforms. By agreement with the local educators who gave so freely of their time and ideas, it was agreed not to publish the names of any individuals, schools, or districts involved in the study; therefore, the names used in this document are fictitious. A list of the teachers and administrators who reviewed this report appears in the acknowledgments at the beginning of the guide. The research findings and a detailed description of the methods used can be found in the formal technical report (Shields et al., 1995).

Key Features of Promising Reforms

The national study showed that districts and schools throughout the country were paying a great deal of attention to school-based reform. In fact, depending on how one defines reform, somewhere between a fifth and two-thirds of the districts reported having school-based reforms under way. For example, 40 percent of districts reported having reforms that focused on increasing student learning, improving teachers, and developing schoolwide problem-solving and planning capacity.

Yet, when the researchers actually visited schools in the case studies, the amount of meaningful change taking place was often much less than advertised--suggesting that these national incidence figures may overestimate the amount of reform that was actually occurring. In some schools, reform translated into nothing more than changes in teacher routines and meeting times. In many, however, school reform meant something: a reorganization of school routines to support learning, new attitudes among teachers toward student ability, more challenging classroom practices, and exciting learning experiences for students. The case study data suggest that the successful examples of school-based reform shared a set of core characteristics:

A clear focus on creating more challenging learning experiences for all students.
A school culture in which teachers worked collaboratively and had a voice in decisions that directly affected their ability to improve classroom practice.
Opportunities for teachers and administrators to gain knowledge and build their professional capacity in subject areas, classroom pedagogy, and decision-making strategies.

These three characteristics are used to structure much of the practical advice offered in the second section of the guide.

How to Use This Guide

This guide is divided into four sections, followed by an annotated bibliography. The second section describes the basic lessons learned from the case studies in 32 schools across the nation, lessons that reform-minded school staff should consider as they seek to improve their own schools. This section is organized by the three characteristics of promising reforms listed above. The third section provides fuller examples of schools involved in promising reforms. These portraits are meant to help the reader understand how the various characteristics of reform work together to propel a school forward. The fourth section discusses what district staff can do to support school-based reform. Finally, an appendix provides an extensive annotated list of published resources for practitioners and researchers alike.
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[Acknowledgments]

[Key Features of Successful Reform Strategies]