Effective Schools Research Research Articles

Türkiye’de Etkili Okul Araştırmaları: 2000-2020 Dönemi Makalelerin İçerik Analizi

In this study, it was aimed to reveal the descriptive characteristics, methodical dimensions and general trends of the research articles on Effective School in Turkey published between 2000-2020. These studies have been systematically evaluated through content analysis. For this purpose, 23 articles scanned with the keyword ‘effective school’ and ‘school effectiveness’ were examined in the Journal Park and Google academic databases published between 2000 and 2020. The article classification form developed by Sözbilir, Kutu and Yaşar (2012) was adapted and used for effective school research to examine the articles. The data obtained from the studies examined by content analysis were analyzed using percentage and frequency values. In these studies, it was observed that (I) the concept of an effective school is most often associated with the leadership styles of school administrators, (II) quantitative research method was often used, (III) survey was preferred as data collection tool, (IV)random sampling method was widely used and (V)teachers were chosen most as sample.

School Culture in High-Performance Title One Schools in South Texas

A research study was designed and conducted to identify effective school characteristics of four high-performing, high-poverty schools in South Texas. An eleven effective school characteristics model, including school processes, was developed based on a synthesis of effective school research and served as the theoretical framework for the study. The characteristics include Culture, Leadership, Instruction, Improvement, Home and Community Relations, Curriculum, Environment, Professional Development, Vision/Mission, Resources, and Staff. The mixed-research study collected and analyzed data from professional school staff, principals, and parents related to the schools' eleven effective characteristics and their processes. Results of the study supported the essentiality of the eleven school characteristics and identified Culture as an area of improvement. School staff perceived Culture’s essentiality for school effectiveness and its application in the schools relatively low. The schools’ cultural processes perceived by school staff and parents were very positive and consistent with past studies of effective schools. Caution is provided that high-performing schools may lose focus on Culture due to academic success.

Effective School Practices in Title I Schools Exceeding Educational Expectations (E3)

A research study was designed and conducted to identify effective school characteristics and strategies of high-performing, high-poverty schools. Four High-Performing Reward schools in South Texas that demonstrated longitudinal academic success were selected to study. We developed an 11 effective school characteristics model including school processes from the effective school research literature as the framework for the study. A mixed-research study was designed to collect data from professional school staff, and principals related to the 11 effective characteristics, their processes, and strategies used by the schools. An area of improvement identified among these already high-performing schools was parental engagement.

学校目標と学力アウトプットとの関連の分析 : 「効果的な学校研究」の検討を通じて

学校目標と学力アウトプットとの関連の分析 : 「効果的な学校研究」の検討を通じて

Effective Charter and Traditional School Characteristics: Aligning Findings for Informed Policy Making

This literature review compares the current knowledge about the characteristics of effective charter schools to findings from the broader body of effective school research. We find that lists of effectiveness characteristics from the charter and traditional literatures are well aligned: good schools seem to look the same, regardless of governance model. This finding has meaningful implications. Charter authorizers, district portfolio managers, and funders should look for these critical elements in new school applications, grant applications, or school improvement plans, as well as a well thought-out theory of how they will work together coherently. In addition, knowing that effective school characteristics are consistent across sectors, scholars should now direct their attention to examining how to implement, sustain, and replicate these conditions through actions at the school and systems levels.

Challenges Beginning Teachers Face in Hong Kong

By conducting in-depth interviews with new teachers who are about to become full-time teachers and then reinterviewing them two years later, the author of this article presents how beginning teachers think and feel about teaching and describes the challenges they face as beginning teachers in the context of Hong Kong. The stories of the teachers, as revealed by the interviews, suggest that changing educational ideals, school leaders’ management style, and workload issues are some of the important challenges faced by beginning teachers. A short review of work on effective school research and school leadership suggests how school leaders can create an environment that is conducive to teachers’ professional development.

The reincarnation of the effective schools research: rethinking the literature on district effectiveness

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyze the district effectiveness literature. It begins by summarizing the school effectiveness research, the correlates of effective schools, and the conceptual and methodological characteristics of this field. It then describes the findings from a review of 50 studies of district effectiveness, the most frequently identified correlates of effective districts, and the conceptual and methodological features of this research. From there, it compares and contrasts the two fields, paying attention to the ways in which they frame notions of success, purposes of education, the contextualized nature of school performance, and theoretical explanations for student success.Design/methodology/approachData sources for this literature review included 50 primary documents on district effectiveness. The studies were bound to those that presented the original results from investigations of the relationship between district‐level policies, routines, behaviors, or other characteristics and classroom‐level outcomes.FindingsSeveral themes run through the literature on district effectiveness. These include findings that standards‐aligned curricula, coherent organizational structures, strong instructional leadership, frequent monitoring and evaluation, and focused professional learning lead to higher test scores. Most of these investigations are framed from technical perspectives that explore the relationship between organizational regulations and improved test performance. Less common are inquiries about the socio‐political and normative forces that shape districts’ improvement experiences. One consequence of this technical focus is that the field of district effectiveness has come to share several of the conceptual and methodological properties that characterized the former school‐level research.Research limitations/implicationsThe article concludes by discussing the implications for the growing volume of district‐level research on educational leadership, district improvement, and educational equity.Originality/valueThis article details the ways in which a sharp focus on questions of what works in the district effectiveness literature has deepened researchers’ and practitioners’ knowledge of the specific mechanisms that may produce more desirable results in test performance, yet these questions alone, decoupled from corresponding inquiries about the complex, highly contextualized character of higher or lower scoring districts, leave researchers and practitioners vulnerable to the same scholarly and practical pitfalls of their predecessors.

Not Quite “Deja Vu All Over Again”: No Child Left Behind Meets Effective Schools Research

This article examines the connections between No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the Effective Schools Research Movement. Using historical methodology, the authors argue that although both were premised on building capacity, over time the reform that became NCLB evolved to focus on accountability. This shift disconnected the reform from its research base, resulting in its failure to bring about equity. To save NCLB, policymakers and scholars should reconnect reform efforts with research and adopt policies that favor inspection.

Is My School an Effective School ? Headmaster and Teacher Views

While effective school research became popular in 1960 s it was neglected in Turkey until 1990 s. The importance of school management and the role of school in development of the student individuals has been drawing more interest since 1990. The purpose of the current study is to find out whether primary schools are efficient with respect to the opinions of school masters and teachers or not. Case study approach was used in this study. Semi-structured interview were used as data collection instruments . Descriptive analysis was used to analyze data. The research was conducted with a volunteer manager and teacher who are primary school manager and teacher in Adana, Turkey. Effective school variables were determined by literature review within this concept. Common variables in an effective school were examined under the titles of manager and communication, teacher–student relations, physical conditions, social life and relation with the environment. The results of the study has shown that, the headmaster of the school has good communication skills with his staff. Scarcely, lacking number of teachers, deficient physical conditions of the school and low educational background of the parents have negative impact on the development of the school.

Troubling the discourse of teacher centrality: a comparative perspective

The belief in the central role of the teacher has a long and comparative history. This article aims to critically analyse the discourse of the centrality of the teacher by both historicising and problematising the ideas and practices associated with this discourse. First, the article describes the discourse as it was taken up during the twenty‐first century when the teacher was viewed as the linchpin to building universal education systems. The idea that the ‘master makes the school’ is examined and the policies that stemmed from this thinking (e.g., the establishment of formal teacher training, teacher testing and certification) are outlined. The contemporary manifestations of this discourse are then described to show how the pervasive belief in the central role of the teacher has influenced education policy reforms, which like teacher policy reforms in the nineteenth century operate to shape and regulate the profession. Further discursive effects are analysed including the de‐contextualisation of educational reform and the de‐professionalisation and de‐politicisation of teachers and their work. The relationship between effective schools research and the centrality of the teacher discourse is also considered within the contemporary moment. This comparative study refers to the discourse of the centrality of the teacher in Australasia, Europe, Great Britain and North America, and suggests that our collective focus on the teacher has had some serious, unexpected effects on teachers and the work they do.

Reorganizing Leaders’ Time: Does It Create Better Schools for Students?

Effective schools research gave birth to a new role for principals: instructional leader. Recent studies have suggested the relationship between strong school instructional leadership and higher student achievement. Skeptics question whether the principal’s job is realistic and reasonable, with its emphasis on instructional leadership, multiple managerial responsibilities, and conflicting time demands. A more crucial question is, can the job allow the principal more time for instructional pursuits to provide greater impact on student learning? The answer to which this article explores.

Ramping Up to Meet NCLB Mandates by Creating an ESL Program Reflecting Effective Schools Research

This case study describes how a high school in a mid-sized interior city of the United States with a rapidly growing population of English Language Learners (ELLs) ramped up its English as a Second Language (ESL) program to better meet the educational needs of its students, as well as to prepare them to meet the accountability requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001. This school's ESL program, which reflects the findings of effective schools research (e.g., Reynolds & Teddlie, 2000a), provides a model for high schools with similar populations.

Handbook of research on multicultural education

Introduction. Contributors. Reviewers. HISTORY, GOALS, STATUS, AND ISSUES. Multicultural Education: Historical Development, Dimensions, and Practice (J. Banks). Curriculum Theory and Multicultural Education (G. Gay). National and State Initiatives for Multicultural Education (D. Gollnick). Gender and Race as Factors in Educational Leadership and Administration (C. McGee Banks). An Analysis of the Critiques of Multicultural Education (C. Sleeter). RESEARCH AND RESEARCH ISSUES. Quantitative Educational Research with Ethnic Minorities (A. Padilla & K. Lindholm). Ethnography in Communities: Learning the Everyday Life of America's Subordinated Youth (S. Heath). Ethnographic Studies of Multicultural Education in Classrooms and Schools (H. Mehan, et al.). Multicultural Education Through the Lens of the Multicultural Education Research Literature (C. Grant & W. Tate). KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTION. Knowledge Construction and Popular Culture: The Media as Multicultural Educator (C. Cortes). Knowledge Construction, Competing Critical Theories, and Education (B. Gordon). ETHNIC GROUPS IN HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH. Historical and Social Science Research on Mexican Americans (R. Gutierrez). Puerto Ricans in Historical and Social Science Research (C. Rodriguez). American Indian Studies (C. Snipp). Asian American Studies (W. Liu & E. Yu). Culture-Centered Knowledge: Black Studies, Curriculum and Transformation, and Social Action (J. King). IMMIGRATION POLICY AND THE EDUCATION OF IMMIGRANTS. The American Civic Culture and an Inclusivist Immigration Policy (L. Fuchs). Immigrants and Education (M. Olneck). THE EDUCATION OF ETHNIC GROUPS. Educating Native Americans (K. Lomawaima). Historical and Sociocultural Influences on African American Education (C. Lee & D. Slaughter-Defoe). Educating Mexican American Students: Past Treatment and Recent Developments in Theory, Research, Policy, and Practice (E. Garcia). A History of the Education of Puerto Rican Students in U.S. Mainland Schools: Losers, Outsiders, or Leaders? (S. Nieto). Asian Pacific American Students: A Diverse and Complex Population (V. Pang). LANGUAGE ISSUES. Language Issues in Multicultural Contexts (M. Minami & C. Ovando). Bilingual Education: Broadening Research Perspectives (C. Moran & K. Hakuta). ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT: APPROACHES, THEORIES, AND RESEARCH. Inequality and Access to Knowledge (L. Darling-Hammond). Learning Styles and Culturally Diverse Students: A Literature Review (J. Irvine & D. York). Research on Families, Schools, and Communities: A Multicultural Perspective (N. Hidalgo, et al.). Effective Schools Research (D. Levine & L. Lezotte). Social Class and Schooling (M. Knapp & S. Woolverton). African American Teachers and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (M. Foster). Understanding Cultural Diversity and Learning (J. Oghu). INTERGROUP EDUCATION APPROACHES TO SCHOOL REFORM. Review of Research on School Desegregation's Impact on Elementary and Secondary School Students (J. Schofield). Multicultural Education: Its Effects on Students' Racial and Gender Role Attitudes (J. Banks). Cooperative Learning and Intergroup Relations (R. Slavin). Improving Intergroup Relations Among Students (J. Shofield). Toward a Theory of Multicultural Counseling and Therapy (D. Sue). HIGHER EDUCATION. Research on Racial Issues in American Higher Education (C. Bennett). Asian Pacific Americans and Colleges and Universities (D. Nakanishi. Ethnic Studies in U.S. Higher Education: History, Development, and Goals (E. Hu-DeHart). Women's Studies and Curriculum Transformation (B. Schmitz, et al.). Multiculturalism and Core Curricula (A. Fitzgerald & P. Lauter). Multicultural Teacher Education: Research, Practice, and Policy (G. Ladson-Billings). INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION. Multicultural Education in Australia: Historical Development and Current Status (R. Allan & B. Hill). Multicultural Education in the United Kingdom: Historical Development and Current Status (P. Figueroa). Multicultural Education in Canda: Historical Development and Current Status (K. Moodley). Multicultural Education in Germany: Historical Development and Current Status (G. Hoff). Name Index. Subject Index.

The Effective Schools Process: Alive and Well

The Effective Schools Process is a tried and true process of school change that can create schools in which all children make progress and are ready for study at the next grade level, Ms. Taylor maintains. IN THE MAY 2001 issue of the Kappan and in the March 2001 issue of School Administrator, articles written by M. Donald Thomas and William Bainbridge presented and so-called facts that the authors felt reflected the status of the Effective Schools movement today. The material that appeared in these articles was originally written as a brief for the plaintiffs in the case Abbeville vs. State of South Carolina. The plaintiffs sued the state for equitable funding of schools in South Carolina, particularly exceptionally underfunded schools in low-income districts that served large numbers of minority and disadvantaged children. The case went to the state supreme court, which held that the remedy was to be handled by the South Carolina legislature. The court ruled that this legislation must be in place by June 2002. Thomas and Bainbridge wrote the brief as consultants acquainted with comprehensive school reform processes, especially the school improvement process begun decades ago that became the Effective Schools movement, in which Thomas had played an important part. Thomas was ombudsman in South Carolina during the tenure of Gov. Richard Riley, who oversaw, with his wife, Anne Riley, the first statewide implementation of Effective Schools reforms. Gov. Riley, of course, went on to become secretary of education in the Clinton Administration. These two articles constitute arguments in favor of the type of comprehensive school reform that the early Effective Schools movement intended to achieve. The authors did not check with the National Center for Effective Schools Research and Development - now called the National Alliance for Effective Schools (NAES) - and thus their brief was decidedly dated. Indeed, the so-called they attribute to the present movement never existed in the conceptual evolution of the Effective Schools Process. This article and the two that follow - by Judy March and by Janet Chrispeels - address the current status of the Effective Schools Process and the Effective Schools Research and offer some examples from the field. The National Alliance for Effective Schools and those who have developed the Effective Schools Process and conducted decades of Effective Schools Research have never subscribed to the five fallacies that Thomas and Bainbridge list. The extensive body of work that has descended directly from the research of Ronald Edmonds, Wilbur Brookover, Larry Lezotte, John Frederickson, George Weber, Matthew Miles, Daniel Levine and Eugene Eubanks, and many others is now referred to as Effective Schools Research and is the applied research currently used by trainers and consultants who are members of the NAES. The NAES, now headquartered at the Gevirtz School of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara, is the successor to the National Center for Effective Schools Research and Development, which was affiliated with Phi Delta Kappa in Bloomington, Indiana. Why the upper-case designations? When the National Center was founded in 1986, its purpose was to disseminate and maintain the consistency of the Effective Schools Process, a school improvement process that was evolving from the collective experiences of educators nationwide who were using the correlates of Effective Schools as organizational and programmatic dimensions of their strategy for school improvement. In truth, the center was formed in an attempt to keep to a minimum the contradictions and misrepresentations of the process, such as those Bainbridge and Thomas mentioned. In general, the National Center was successful in achieving this goal. School reform programs and processes that were advocated and advanced by the chief trainers and consultants of the center - known as the Cadre of Fellows - were held consistent through the 1980s. …

The California Center for Effective Schools: The Oxnard School District Partnership

The Effective Schools Process began in Oxnard only a little more than a year ago, and three to five years of strenuous work will probably be required before the full benefits for students become apparent. But important changes have already taken place, as Ms. Chrispeels points out. IN THE LATE 1970s Ron Edmonds, one of the pioneers of research on effective schools, asserted that children can learn the intended and that what prevents us from reaching this goal is lack of political will.1 Charles Teddlie and Sam Stringfield, in their longitudinal study of Louisiana schools, found that to become effective requires the mustering of political will as well as new knowledge and skills.2 Outside help and support are often needed to build the political will for change and to enable a district to gain insights into its existing practices and cultural traditions. In the past 20 years we have learned much about what makes schools effective,3 but translating research into action remains a daunting task. The California Center for Effective Schools, which is housed at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is part of the National Alliance for Effective Schools, is helping schools to become more effective by building on the firm foundation laid by national and international effective schools research of the last two decades.4 From my early work with the Effective Schools Process in the 1980s,5 I learned the critical importance of working simultaneously at the district, school, grade (or department), and classroom levels. Without support from the top and system coherence, individual school change efforts can be quickly undermined. The Partnership with the Oxnard School District (K-8) In this article, I tell the beginning of the story of how the Effective Schools Process works by focusing on our center's partnership with the Oxnard (California) School District (K-8). In 1999 the district adopted a strategic plan for school improvement, which included reaching out for assistance to such local resources as community colleges and universities. In the spring of 2000, the Oxnard School District and the University of California, Santa Barbara, formed a partnership to implement the Effective Schools Process as one way to help the district achieve the goals of its newly adopted strategic plan. The overarching purpose of our partnership is to increase the number of students who meet the California K-8 curriculum content standards and are prepared for college-prep classes in high school. The work has involved all organizational levels: the board of education and administrative staff, the union, school principals, school leadership teams, and classroom teachers. The Oxnard School District (K-8) is a rapidly growing district of 15 elementary schools, three intermediate schools, and one alternative school. It enrolls a total of 16,000 students. Two-thirds of the students are from low-income families, and 52% of the district's Spanish-speaking students need ESL (English as a second language) instruction. The four-track year-round schools are filled to capacity (700 to 1,100 students each). The district spends $5,900 per pupil, which is about average for the state. On the SAT 9 (Stanford Achievement Test), Oxnard students received among the lowest scores in the region, making the district an important test case for the Effective Schools Process. The Effective Schools Process Taking stock. The Effective Schools Process begins with a district profile. Reviewing current district demographic, organizational, and achievement data as well as information about existing instructional or intervention programs is a logical place to begin. Multiple measures of student achievement, including norm-referenced test data and data from other district assessments, are collected and prepared for analysis by teachers and administrators. Effective Schools surveys are administered to teachers, support staff members, parents, and students in order to determine their perceptions regarding the presence of the Effective Schools correlates (e. …

The leeway of qualitative educational research: A case study

This article presents a case study into the question of how research-internal and research-external factors influence the leeway of qualitative research, and ultimately determine which questions can and cannot be addressed in research. First an overview is presented of the position of qualiative research in the field of education in The Netherlands. This position is then analysed by situating educational research in the particular research political context. In the second part of the article the authors focus on effective schools research, one of the strongest research programmes in Dutch educational studies, in order to show the consequences of the lack of a qualitative tradition.

Academic Emphasis of Urban Elementary Schools and Student Achievement in Reading and Mathematics: A Multilevel Analysis

This research examines the importance of a school climate characterized by high levels of academic emphasis. Effective schools research is reviewed to develop a conceptual model undergirding the measurement of academic emphasis. In addition, social cognitive theory is employed as a theoretical framework explaining the development and effect of academic emphasis on student achievement. With the use of hierarchical linear modeling, the authors show that academic emphasis is important to differences among urban elementary schools in student mathematics and reading achievement. The relationship between current academic achievement and students’ prior achievement and demo- graphic characteristics is also modeled in this study.

Leadership Comes around Again

A GREAT deal of research on effective schools has told us that principal as is one of the most important ingredients of a school that works. Such a principal keeps the school's focus on instruction, sets a constructive tone and high expectations, works to ensure a common curriculum, and provides leadership for teachers. Since the heyday of the effective schools research in the 1980s, however, very little has been done to evaluate whether or not principals are being prepared to be instructional or whether much of their time on the job is spent in this capacity. Layer atop this, then, the concern about the declining pool of building-level leaders and the need for stronger leadership in an age of strict accountability, and one can understand why the national discussion has focused on recruiting strong candidates and setting standards for training and evaluation. The hard part, of course, will be getting beyond the rhetoric of need and quality, so that in another 20 years someone else is not writing about the need for the principal to serve as the leader of a school. The Push and Pull Of Accountability In its new publication, In Pursuit of Quality Teaching: Five Strategies for Policymakers, the Education Commission of the States takes on this issue of leadership. The authors, Robert Palaich and Michael Allen of ECS, note that the conflicting demands of school leadership - coupled with the pressure of high-stakes assessment, shortened average job tenure, and the increasingly small difference in pay between teachers and principals - have led to a growing shortage of school and district leaders, especially principals. The media, too, have frequently reported on the issue over the past year. Moreover, administrators quoted in a Washington Post story in June pointed out that principals are frequently held accountable for test scores but don't have the power to hire and fire teachers. The Public Education & Business Coalition, a Colorado-based partnership of leaders from education, business, and the community, recently put together some Key Learnings from its school-based projects. Here are a few that deal with the matter of leadership: * Leadership development must extend far beyond the principal's office. Teachers and others with a vested interest in the success of the school should participate in leadership development opportunities. * There is a clear distinction between leadership skills and management skills. Leadership training for principals must focus on the former. * Leadership development activities are most effective when they occur concurrently with curriculum, instruction, and assessment reform in a school. * Lasting change in schools is most likely to occur when a complacent staff becomes inspired by a leader or a new pedagogy. An outside party can contribute to this change by providing resources and nurturing relationships within the school. * Barriers to reform are more perceived than real. Finding Good Leaders A survey of 151 students enrolled in principal preparation programs at four universities, published in the spring 2000 issue of ERS Spectrum, found that the top three motivators for becoming a principal were: the chance to make a positive impact (nearly 60%), the chance to make a difference (more than 45%), and the chance to take on a personal challenge (more than 40%). Salary was the fifth reason for becoming a principal (less than 35%). When asked about inhibitors to becoming a principal, the number-one response was and bureaucracy (nearly 50%). Nearly 35% listed the increased time commitment, followed by possible litigation, discipline problems, and standardized tests (all less than 25%). Salary ranked sixth among inhibitors (a bit more than 20%). Considering their findings, the researchers' recommendations for school boards and communities were to increase salaries, reduce paperwork and/or provide assistance, consider ways to shrink the school bureaucracy, support principals through improved legal training, provide greater support for principals on disciplinary issues on their campuses, balance the emphasis on standardized test scores with emphasis on other forms of assessment, and provide for administrative assistants with broader responsibilities in order to decrease the time pressures on principals. …

National Urban Alliance Professional Development Model for Improving Achievement in the Context of Effective Schools Research

The National Urban Alliance for Effective Education (NUA) has engaged in a wide variety of activities, such as instructional audits and advocating for change, to help school districts improve their policies and practices with respect to enhancing student performance. The central activity in most collaborations with districts has been to implement the NUA's Professional Development Model for improving students' comprehension, content performance, and thinking skills. Implementation of the model involves workshops and institutes that emphasize instructional strategies to improve students' comprehension and literacy, consultant visits to and demonstrations conducted at participating schools, and leadership training. This paper describes implementation and results in several locations, and discusses NUA activities and approaches in the context of research on schools that have been effective in the education of disadvantaged students. There are numerous reasons cited in the literature as to why an achievement gap exists between African American children and other children of color, and White children. The most prevalent are: (a) the lack of political will by stakeholders to close the gap (Hilliard, 1991); (b) a lack of belief in the capacity of children to learn (Delpit, 1995; Kohn, 1998); (c) a belief that intelligence is innate and fixed and a conclusion that the educational disparity is a fact of nature (Singham, 1998); (d) the gap is a result of economic disparity (Singham, 1998); and (e) the existence of a cultural gap between teachers and children of color which causes missed opportunities for learning (Delpit, 1995). All but one of the reasons for the achievement gap makes some sense and by the nature of the problem cited, in turn, suggests courses of action. Sadly, however, the courses of action often proposed to address the achievement gap for African American children take students out of the mainstream and onto dead-end educational pathways. Hilliard (1998) reflects on the following: The educational and socialization strategies being proposed for African children in the United States reveal a system ... [which supports a] ... widespread use of bootcamps for the delinquent and violence-prone; direct instruction for low-achieving students; special education for those who act out and who were not nurtured during their early schooling; compensatory education and minimum competency schools to help the masses meet the basics; vouchers and choice in order to give the affluent a way to take care of their own and to ignore other people's children. (p. 17) The position taken by the authors in this article is that there are many success stories about dramatic achievement for children of color cited in individual schools throughout this country (Hughes, 1995; Sanders & Rivers, 1996; Sizemore, Brossard, & Harrigan, 1982). The simple matter is this, many schools always have and continue to reach traditional low-performing students, and raise their performance to levels beyond average and even to excellence (Haycock, 1998; Joyce, Showers, Scanlon, & Schnaublet, 1998; Schmoker, 1999). They do this without mysterious methods, programs or equipment. They do it mainly by exposing the poor and ethnic minorities to the same quality of instruction usually reserved for the more affluent and/or the dominant groups in the society (Kozol, 1991). Why does the puzzle persist in the face of the fact that there is evidence of dramatic school achievement for poor children? believe that an often-cited quote of Ronald Edmonds (1982) provides the answer, We can whenever and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children, whose education is of importance to us [italics added]. also believe it is a matter of will. The challenge is how we as a nation support not only success in the individual schools reported above, but success in entire school districts (Butler & Kahle, 1997; Resnick & Hall, 1998). …

Effective Schools and Home‐School‐Community Partnership Roles: A Framework for Parent Involvement

ABSTRACT The increased interest in parent involvement as a strategy for school reform stems from two bodies of parent involvement research. One set of studies examined family learning environments; the other investigated the impact on student learning of school‐initiated parent involvement programs. This article reviews these two bodies of research, which have influenced current discussions about home‐school partnerships, shows the relationship between practices of successful home‐learning environments and effective schools research, and uses this relationship to propose a typology of home‐school‐community partnership roles and activities. When the research on effective family practices is combined with effective schools research and placed within a typology of partnership roles, schools have a framework for examining current parent involvement practices and exploring strategies that will enhance student learning both at home and at school. *This article is adapted, with permission, from an Occasional Pap...