What We Know and Don't Know about Improving Low-Performing Schools

Abstract

EDUCATORS have long sought to understand the dynamics of turning around low-performing schools, but interest in the subject has clearly intensified in the past decade, largely because of state and federal accountability initiatives and the prospect of serious consequences for schools that continue to exhibit low academic achievement. A number of states have taken steps to provide direct assistance to low-performing schools. These steps range from dispatching assessment teams to identify sources of low performance to assigning veteran educators to work in tandem with the principals of low-performing schools. Indeed, Arizona recently launched a school program that calls for replacing principals of low-performing schools with highly experienced educational leaders. Virginia has probably done as much as any other state to implement interventions aimed at improving low-performing schools. Under the leadership of Gov. Mark Warner and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jo Lynne DeMary, Virginia has created an academic review process to ascertain the causes of low performance and has established the Partnership for Achieving Successful Schools (PASS) program to provide ongoing instructional assistance to low-performing schools. Assessment tests, such as the Phonological Awareness and Literacy Screening (PALS) test and the Algebra Readiness Diagnostic Test, have been endorsed by the state as useful tools for identifying students who require special assistance. Most recently, the state has launched the Virginia School Turnaround Specialist Program, a joint venture between the Virginia Department of Education and the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education and Darden Graduate School of Business Administration. Begun in 2004, this program annually trains 10 turnaround to take over schools that have not achieved state accreditation or have failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) as required by the No Child Left Behind Act. The specialists are experienced administrators who already have demonstrated their ability to promote school improvement and who receive a summer of advanced graduate training before they are sent to tackle a struggling school. If they succeed in turning around their schools, the specialists receive a credential and a bonus. A common feature of many of the efforts to turn around low-performing schools across the nation is their reliance on the experience of veteran educators. No one can dispute the value of firsthand experience when it comes to arresting the downward spiral of academic decline. Relying on experience alone, however, can be risky. Each veteran's experience is usually limited to a small number of school settings. Educators often claim that each school and community is characterized by idiosyncratic features that influence any effort to introduce change. Understanding the differences, as well as the similarities, across settings is the job of educational researchers. Combining experienced educators' in-depth knowledge of particular settings with the global perspective of educational researchers probably holds the greatest promise for effecting successful school turnarounds. That point brings me to my role as research director for the Darden-Curry Partnership for Leaders in Education, the umbrella organization that runs the Virginia School Turnaround Specialist Program. My colleagues and I are expected to identify what we know and what we don't know about the process of improving low-performing schools. (1) As we combed the literature during the development of the training program for specialists, we came to appreciate how far the education profession has come in its awareness of key components of the school improvement process. Below, I focus first on a brief overview of this knowledge. But we also realized how much we still do not know, and in the remainder of this article I focus on some of the aspects of the school process for which more research is needed if we are to fulfill the promise of No Child Left Behind. …