The "Secrets" of High Achieving Schools

      Editor: Michael Stagliano, Ph.D.
When I was invited to contribute an article for this week's forum, I decided to tackle the timeless question on why some schools crank out high achieving students year after year despite the economic, social, racial and other cards being stacked against any reasonable expectation of the majority of students making the grade. After a careful review of the literature, I was somewhat surprised by what I learned about these schools that I had previously forgotten or more likely refused to seriously consider in depth. Schools with success stories can be found in rural, urban, suburban and inner city environments. So many critics and disbelievers question the realities of these schools that their success is almost tantamount to a well guarded secret, hence the title of this piece.

It seems like eons ago when the book In Search of Excellence (Peters and Waterman, 1982) was published that these authors listed common practices and traits of organizations that set them apart from lesser performing ones. Prominent educational researchers applied the principles outlined by this landmark book to determine if similar characteristics could be identified in high achieving public school organizations that made these schools stand out from the pack. Not surprising, researchers were able to identify a common set of behaviors or traits in the leaders and teachers of successful schools that paralleled leaders and workers of successful organizations, despite the influences of poverty and high minority enrollment. When the leaders and teachers of these schools moved on, the schools continued to achieve. Five common traits existed in high achieving schools: an uncompromising focus on student achievement, emphasis on writing in all grades and all classes, clear course choices, teachers agreeing on common grading practices by grading each other's students' work and frequent testing combined with opportunities for students to improve. It sounds simple, but in reality it took these high achieving schools an enormous amount of energy, focus, commitment from the top down and bottom up, and a never give up attitude that success would be achieved. In short, a culture of failure was reversed. And it did not happen overnight.

Too many schools and organizations in today's "want it now" environment want a quick fix. There is no silver bullet, no magic recipe, and no short cut to reversing low test scores and morale, basically hard work and persistence. Our culture seems to have forgotten that Rome was not built in a day. In an earlier piece, I portrayed the Chinese system of comprehensive standards in math and science. The full bodied report cited a long and difficult road to arrive at where the Chinese are today with yet more to achieve. I remember a Chinese colleague of mine at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign years ago tell our small group of graduate research assistants to be patient in expecting meaningful results in a study we were conducting: "A big airplane needs a long runway to take off". How trite, I thought, but it makes perfect sense now.

In the realm of academic achievement, these high performing schools did not try to accomplish an array of goals; just a handful, but meaningful goals like reading and writing: in short literacy. A wise choice, since if one lacks basic skills in these core subject areas, it makes little sense to expect good results in other areas of the curriculum. And regardless if these teachers used Reading Recovery, Success for All or another program, it was the consistency of the application of these programs that spelled results. Another interesting practice of these schools, which makes sense, although runs counter to standard practice is the emphasis on reading, writing and math to the lesser emphasis on science and social studies. The thinking here is that success in reading and math will transfer to other subjects since doing well in these subjects requires literacy in reading and mathematics.

In the area of assessment, students were not just tested one or two times and then had to live with the results until the following semester or year, which is typical of the usual practice of state testing. In the high achieving schools, students who performed below standards were not given a failing grade they had to live with until they moved on or were retained, instead they were told that they will improve next time and then given many opportunities until they gained mastery of the subject. In short, students who did not do well the first time were given immediate feedback and tested again.

Writing responses to test questions was another practice of these high performing schools. No multiple choice. The majority of the school-based assessments followed this format since writing, as opposed to choosing or speaking an answer, requires the student to exercise deeper thought processes. And students' written work reveals other areas where teachers can focus to improve upon.

Last, when all teachers can agree when grading student work on what is proficient and what is not, the student is the winner. An example of lack of agreement would be a student given high scores in reading and math in the 5th grade only to learn in the 6th grade that he or she was barely making the grade. When teachers collaborate grading standards are consistent.

The research presented here is not new. Successful organizations have been applying these effective practices for years. By the way, educators commonly refer to time-tested, long-term successes in these and other practices as "best practices". To be certain, results like those cited above have their critics. Some question the true practices of these schools, the actual student data and whatever else. Yet, time and again, what was achieved by these schools did not happen overnight. Sometimes whole cultures had to be revised. Commitment to a process of change and the implementation of fresh standards of accountability had to be total. In retrospect there was nothing to lose for these previously low performing schools. They were forced to try another way and they experimented to find the correct model that worked for their school. If I could find two words to adequately describe the process that these schools and school districts applied to their strategies they would be persistence and consistency. American Public Education has it success stories, but too infrequently the good news does not get widespread recognition. The practices of successful schools can be adapted to other low performing schools. In order for change to happen educators and communities have to be willing to push the envelope and exercise patience.


Michael Stagliano, Ph.D. is an educational consultant and writer and former superintendent of schools.

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July 16, 2006