Focusing Schools on Practices that Work
Are schools successful in delivering effective education to every student? For many schools across the U.S., the answer today is “no.” At these schools, students do not improve, teachers do not stay or they are ineffective, and shrinking resources are wasted. Yet there are ways to transform these schools into effective institutions designed for student success.
What’s Not Working
The fundamental problem for schools is that too many resources are tied up in outdated, industrial-age structures and practices that don’t fit new learning goals or take advantage of information-age technologies and learning patterns. This problem manifests itself in many ways. The teaching job is not structured to support, reward, and encourage best practices. Class size reductions often come at the expense of investments to improve instructional quality. Children who need extra help are often placed in Special Education automatically, instead of providing instructional interventions that might be more appropriate and less costly. For schools to do better, school systems must employ their resources in new and effective ways.
A Strategic Approach to School Design
Despite differences in student populations, instructional approaches, and funding levels, high-achieving schools share a common set of practices for organizing resources:
- A clearly defined instructional model aligned with the system’s vision for student learning. The model encompasses content focus, delivery, programs of study, and learning locale. It can range from thematic, project-based, and interdisciplinary to more traditional models, or a combination of these.
- A high-performing organizational structure that deliberately uses people, time, and money in research-proven ways that best implement the school’s vision and model. Strategic designs focus school resources to help schools accomplish three essential objectives:
- Invest to continuously improve teaching quality through hiring, professional development, job structure, and collaborative planning time.
- Use student time strategically, linking it to student learning needs in core academic areas.
- Create individual attention and personal learning environments.
- Thoughtful tradeoffs that focus investments on critical priorities. When faced with limits on the amount and use of resources, successful schools choose practices that support their most important priorities—even at the expense of traditional programs, staffing, and scheduling.
- Regular strategy assessment and adaptation. Factors impacting schools are constantly evolving. To remain successful, schools must evaluate practices and adapt to changing student needs, effectiveness of current practices, and external conditions.
