Identifying and understanding effective high school practices 

 

A comparison of strong and weak high schools in the same district reveals that success comes from creating a culture that personalizes academic achievement, social-emotional learning, and student ownership.  

 

What policies, programs, and practices make some high schools in the same district and with similar student populations more effective than others? Answering this question has been the focus of substantial educational research — often with the goal of identifying specific practices to replicate and spread to other schools. 

At the National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools, we have taken a different approach. Our goal is to enhance district capacity to identify, develop, implement, and scale effective systems of practices. We recognize that effective practices in high schools occur within a larger organizational system and are context-specific because they must address local needs and align with local priorities and initiatives. Through work with two large, urban districts — Broward County, Fla., and Fort Worth, Texas — and through an intensive, yearlong study, we identified systems of practices that differentiated higher- and lower-performing high schools in the same district in order to work with district and school stakeholders to adapt, implement, and scale these effective practices in other district high schools.  

In addition to sharing similar demographics, the schools in our study had the same financial resources, programmatic initiatives, and bureaucratic structures. We identified four high schools in Broward County and four high schools in Fort Worth using value-added methodology (Sass, 2012; Value-Added Research Center, 2014). We chose schools that had either higher or lower levels of academic student growth on state assessments for three consecutive years as well as higher or lower graduation rates with low-income and minority/English language learners. We visited each school three times, conducting extensive interviews at each school, observing classes, and shadowing students for a full day (Cannata, Haynes, & Smith, 2014; Rutledge et al., 2015).  

The story that emerged of what differentiated higher- and lower-performing high schools was one of multiple pathways with common landmarks. These school-specific pathways coalesced into patterns within each district. In Broward County, we found that the higher-performing schools engaged in an intentional set of systemic practices we call Personalization for Academic and Social Learning (PASL). In Fort Worth, we found that the higher-performing schools established integrated structures of academic press and support that scaffolded the development of Student Ownership and Responsibility (SOAR) for their learning.  

Higher-performing schools engaged in intentional efforts to personalize learning for students. 

Despite these somewhat different findings in each district, we also identified similarities between PASL and SOAR. These fell into three main categories. First, both PASL and SOAR place their emphasis on students rather than only adults as key agents in the school. Second, both PASL and SOAR emphasize the integration of social and academic elements of schooling. Third, the higher-performing schools in both districts enacted PASL and SOAR through intentional structures and school culture.   

Our findings and the research 

In Broward County, we found that the higher-performing schools engaged in an intentional set of organizational practices around personalizing the learning experience for students. While each higher-performing school enacted this differently, administrators, teachers, guidance counselors, and other adults in the school had standard operating procedures that fostered adult-student interaction and focused on increasing students’ sense of belonging in the school. Adults promoted a culture in which students described feeling safe and cared for. As one teacher at a higher-performing school explained, “The whole personalization is what matters in this job, the key component to having success.” 

Research in organizational theory and psychology support this focus on personalization. Effective schools are successful in mobilizing both the academic core of schools — teaching and learning — as well as practices such as guidance counseling, teacher teams, and extracurricular activities, which encourage affective relationships between adults and students (Dornbusch, Glasgow, & Lin, 1996; Ingersoll, 2003; Lee, Bryk, & Smith, 1993). Social cognitive theory also supports personalization, specifically the concepts of social modeling and human agency. Social modeling occurs in schools when adults engage in behavior that facilitates high academic and social outcomes (Bandura, 2001). Human agency refers to the process by which adults and students in schools take responsibility for influencing student behavior and future life circumstances (Bandura, 1989; Zimmerman, 2000). Schools that provide academic and social opportunities for students to explore and identify areas of interest, in turn, are likely to motivate students to perform (Bandura, 2000). Research also confirms our findings on the specific organizational strategies used by the higher-performing schools: looping (Burke, 1997), strong behavior management systems (Akey, 2006; Gottfredson, Payne, & Gottfredson,  2005), and data-rich environments (Anderson, Leithwood, & Strauss, 2010; Firestone & Gonzalez, 2007), which we discuss in more detail below. Taken together, these theories and studies provide evidence for PASL and the centrality of placing an emphasis on students, integrating social and academic elements of schooling through organizational structures, and attending to the school culture.  

Intentional focus on students. Adults at both higher-performing schools described personalization as paying attention to students’ needs. They articulated an expectation that adults know students’ names, cultural and academic backgrounds, and aspirations. Administrators, teachers, and guidance counselors described greeting students in hallways and when they entered classrooms. They also reported inquiring about students’ weekends and afterschool activities, and, in the case of some teachers, linking students’ interests with academic content. Students described the adults as caring because they had a visible presence, and “they talk to us.” Adult and student participants described high expectations for students’ academics and behavior, including efforts to encourage students to participate in school activities.  

Integration of social and academic organizational structures and routines. In addition to explicit efforts to place student-adult interactions as a central activity, the higher-performing schools relied on three organizational structures to enable personalization: 

Targeted looping. Both schools assigned an assistant principal and guidance counselor to the same students over multiple years. At one school, this grouping went from 9th grade to graduation. At the other school, 10th- through 12th-grade students looped with the same assistant principal and guidance counselor for three years. Adult participants praised looping as a way to address academic and social-emotional issues together — inquiring about academics, for example, if a student ended up in their office for a disciplinary infraction. An assistant principal explained, “I wear the hat of the guidance counselor many times . . . you find that the discipline is not the sole reason to meet with a child. I address the academic needs and then go into the disciplinary, which are always interrelated.”  

Comprehensive and consistently enforced behavior management structures. The higher-performing schools also enacted disciplinary systems that facilitated personalization among students and teachers and engendered a sense of caring and trust. Administrators at both schools were present during lunch periods in the cafeteria, interacting daily with students. Teachers explained that knowing that behavior problems would be addressed quickly and fairly led to trust in their administration. Students disliked the rules but acknowledged that they were consistently applied to all students. Overall, participants at the higher-performing schools identified the behavior management systems as a foundation for personalization.  

Data-rich environments. Another organizational system that enabled PASL was the use of data by administrators, teachers, and guidance counselors to monitor student progress and provide feedback to students. Adults used student data in their daily practices, their problem-solving meetings, and course scheduling. Higher-performing schools had access to data that informed both the academic and social, including grades and test scores and also attendance and discipline.  

Culture of personalization. Adults at both higher-performing schools identified these organizational routines and practices aimed at personalization as helping create a general culture of caring. A guidance counselor described personalization as, “We try to take a big school and break it down to a small school.”  Another said,  “we personalize education” so “there is a sense of community that is palpable. You can feel it.” Stakeholders said the culture of personalization was integral to their success since it allowed for personal knowledge of students and the promotion of both formal and informal connections between adults and students.  

Student ownership and responsibility.  In Fort Worth, higher- and lower-performing schools were differentiated by practices that scaffolded students’ learning of academic and social behaviors to guide them in assuming ownership and responsibility for their own learning.  

The schools also developed an integrated system of academic press — the encouragement of students to achieve — and support resources to foster academic success. Together, these practices helped build student ownership by promoting self-efficacy and giving students skills to help them engage in challenging academic work. Although they did so differently, higher-performing schools emphasized two activities important in increasing student ownership of and responsibility for their academic success:  

• Changing beliefs and mindsets of students to increase self-efficacy — an individual’s beliefs about his or her ability to perform behaviors that should lead to expected outcomes (Bandura, 1997); and
• Engaging students to do challenging academic work.

These findings are consistent with broader research on noncognitive characteristics associated with student success. Research shows that students who have strong, positive mindsets and a high degree of self-efficacy exhibit more positive academic behaviors, choose more difficult tasks, have higher engagement with academic work, demonstrate more persistence despite setbacks, and have higher achievement across academic areas (Farrington et al.,  2012). Such students also demonstrate behavioral and academic engagement (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004). Behavioral engagement involves the basic behaviors expected in school — coming to class prepared and completing assigned tasks — that are important predictors of student achievement and, thus, predictors of whether students will graduate or drop out (Farrington et al., 2012). 

Higher-performing schools developed students’ sense of self-efficacy and engaged them in doing challenging academic work. 

The teachers, administrators, and support personnel in the higher-performing schools saw their role as providing academic supports and high-quality instruction to students. Yet they also found ways to maintain academic press and hold students accountable for meeting challenging expectations. Indeed, one of the higher-performing schools, reacting to student achievement data that suggested the school had reached a plateau and was no longer improving, intentionally developed processes to move the locus of responsibility from adults in the school to students. As one participant explained, “We decided [the achievement plateau] was because of adults, that we had created systems and trained students to be — consciously or unconsciously — very dependent on us for their learning and that as long as that was the program, there was a ceiling to that. It has been an evolution of slowly getting teachers off the stage.” 

Teaching noncognitive skills. Student ownership and responsibility recognizes that success in school and in life requires not only academic skills but also noncognitive skills and traits. The higher-performing schools in Fort Worth exemplified this principle by integrating academic and nonacademic aspects of schooling. For example, one higher-performing school outlined expectations for student conduct, focusing on academic and instructional behaviors rather than discipline. While these were academically oriented behaviors, the standards focused on noncognitive behaviors that the school believed were key to helping students achieve: coming to class on time with all materials needed, going to tutoring if they needed help, making up missed work when they were absent, keeping track of their own grades through assignment logs, and being ready to ask questions when they didn’t understand what was happening in class. Through these expectations, the school taught students noncognitive skills that provide the foundation for academic success. These behaviors were at the heart of the student and teacher accountability mechanisms and carried consequences where students failed to meet the standards. Similarly, teachers rewarded students when they met  these noncognitive behavioral standards.  

Strategies to develop student ownership and responsibility. While student ownership and responsibility are measured by student outcomes,  our research indicates that student ownership and responsibility resulted from concerted school efforts. Higher-performing schools in Fort Worth succeeded not only because of efforts to improve teachers’ instructional quality but also because the schools created systemic organizational practices that scaffolded student learning of the behaviors that allowed students to assume ownership and responsibility of their academic success.  

In short, increasing student ownership and responsibility requires a commitment by teachers and the school as a whole to a scaffolded approach. Educators need to establish an environment of academic press and support to help students take ownership of their learning. Our data suggest that both higher-performing schools in Fort Worth had stronger and more systemic practices, policies, and resources to establish an academically rigorous and socially supportive school environment. Indeed, one higher value-added school focused explicitly on increasing student ownership and responsibility for their learning.  

The vision shared by adults of student ownership and responsibility entails changing the cultural climate and instruction, including a focus on moving away from traditional modes of instruction to more meaningful, student-centered, and cooperative learning activities that require students to be actively engaged in their learning. The efforts to increase student ownership and responsibility focused on building a culture in which students are held accountable for their learning and supported through systematic but personalized interventions.  

Conclusion 

Taken together, these schools remind us that the academic and social-emotional systems in schools work in the service of each other and are not independent as policy makers and reformers often cast them. All students — not just the highest- and lowest-performing kids — benefit from attention to the interconnection of these systems. Reform efforts that attend just to the instructional systems may miss important elements of what makes schools successful.   

References 

Akey, T.M. (2006). School context, student attitudes and behavior, and academic achievement: An exploratory analysis. New York, NY: MDRC.  

Anderson, S., Leithwood, K., & Strauss, T. (2010). Leading data use in schools: Organizational conditions and practices at the school and district levels. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 9 (3), 292-327.  

Bandura, A. (1989). Human agency in social cognitive theory. American Psychologist, 44 (9), 1175-1184. 

Bandura, A. (1997) Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY: W.H. Freeman. 

Bandura, A. (2000). Exercise of human agency through collective efficacy. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9 (3), 75-78. 

Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 1-26.  

Burke, D.L. (1997). Looping: Adding time, strengthening relationships (ERIC Digest No. 12). Retrieved from ERIC Database. (ED414098) 

Cannata, M., Haynes, K.T., & Smith, T.M. (2014). Reaching for rigor by increasing student ownership and responsibility. Presentation at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Philadelphia, Pa. 

Dornbusch, S.M., Glasgow, K.L., & Lin, I. (1996). The social structure of schooling. Annual Review of Psychology, 47, 401-429. 

Farrington, C., Roderick, M., Allensworth, E., Nagaoka, J., Keyes, T.S., Johnson, D.W., & Beechum, N.O. (2012). Teaching adolescents to become learners: The role of noncognitive factors in shaping school performance: A critical literature review. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, Consortium on Chicago School Research. 

Firestone. W. & González, R. (2007). Culture and processes affecting data use in school districts. Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, 106 (1), 132-154. 

Fredricks, J.A., Blumenfeld, P.C., & Paris, A.H. (2004). School engagement: Potential of the concept, state of the evidence. Review of Educational Research, 74 (1), 59-109. 

Gottfredson, D.C., Payne, A.A., & Gottfredson, N.C. (2005). School climate predictors of school disorder: Results from a national study of delinquency prevention in schools. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 42 (4), 412-444. 

Ingersoll, R.M. (2003). Who controls teachers’ work? Power and accountability in America’s Schools. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 

Lee, V.E., Bryk, A.S., & Smith, J.B. (1993). The organization of effective secondary schools. Review of Research in Education, 19, 171-269.  

Rutledge, S.A., Cohen-Vogel, L., Osborne-Lampkin, L., & Roberts, R.  (2015.)  Understanding effective high schools:  Evidence for personalization for academic and social emotional learning.  American Educational Research Journal, 52 (6), 1060-1092. 

Sass, T. (2012). Selecting high- and low-performing high schools in Broward County, Florida, for analysis and treatment (Technical report). Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University, National Center for Scaling Up Effective Schools.  

Value-Added Research Center. (2014). Measuring school effectiveness: Technical report on the 2011 value-added model. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University, National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools. 

Zimmerman, B. (2000). Self-efficacy: An essential motive to learn. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 82-91. 

 

Citation: Rutledge, S.A. & Cannata, M. (2016). Identifying and understanding effective high school practices. Phi Delta Kappan, 97 (6), 60-64.