Taking charge of high school reform: the Breakthrough High Schools project studied 30 high schools that are raising achievement, increasing graduation rates and preparing students for college and work

Leadership, March-April, 2005 by Gerald N. Tirozzi

Increased scrutiny has brought a laser-like focus to America's schools. The rewards of good performance and the sanctions of poor performance now generate strategies and actions at all levels in the education hierarchy. The successes experienced by some schools serve as an encouraging public announcement that success for every student is possible.

However, the failure of many schools and school districts should serve as a distress call that our schools need help. The recognized distress call "SOS" has come to be known in the education world as "save our schools."

A "global economy" has heightened the urgency for reforming America's educational system, whose students must compete in an international arena. A recent study that measures the U.S. educational system's performance against that of 31 other nations ranks the United States 15th in reading, 19th in math and 14th in science.

Further, according to the Center for the Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University, for the class of 2001, there were about 1,000 high schools across the United States that promoted fewer than 50 percent of their students to the 12th grade on time.

No longer can the United States afford to have an educational system that has traditionally educated one-third of the students, schooled one-third and allowed one-third to fall through the cracks.

Reform high on policymakers' agendas

The schools crisis has received attention from policymakers for several years. But while federal and state legislation have established benchmarks intended to improve achievement for all students, only recently have high schools in particular become a serious topic of discussion in policy arenas. Former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige affirmed that high school reform is high on the Department of Education's agenda during the second term of the Bush administration. Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, current chair of the National Governors' Association, has stated that high school reform will be NGA's primary focus during his chairmanship.

For high school leaders in California and throughout the nation, this new focus on high schools presents a challenge and an opportunity: We must capitalize on the current sense of urgency surrounding the state of U.S. high schools, and make concerted effort to take a leadership role in framing the conversation and subsequent action around how to successfully re-engineer our secondary schools.

The National Association of Secondary School Principals has already undertaken a number of initiatives to take the lead in the conversation about high school reform. Through our Breakthrough High Schools project, we identify exemplary high schools that have met the challenges of high poverty/high minority student populations. These schools serve as attainable models for other schools to raise student achievement, prevent dropouts, increase graduation rates, and prepare children for postsecondary education.

The traits present in every one of these exemplary high schools include creating a safe and orderly school environment; articulating a common message on the basis of shared values and a vision focused on the high achievement of all students; holding high expectations for students and staff members; creating structures to support a personalized learning environment; collaborating for shared leadership, decision making and problem solving and using data for decision making.

Yet the most crucial and often overlooked element of successful schools --both in the Breakthrough models and elsewhere--is effective leadership. In 2003 the Mid-Continent Regional Educational Lab published its balanced leadership framework. This study was developed from a quantitative analysis of 30 years of research, an exhaustive review of theoretical research on leadership, and a research team with more than 100 years of combined professional wisdom on school leadership.

The findings from the meta-analysis found that there is a substantial relationship between leadership and student achievement. A critical finding of this study states that "just as leaders can have a positive impact on achievement, they can also have a marginal, or worse, a negative impact on achievement. When leaders concentrate on the wrong school and/or classroom practices, or miscalculate the magnitude or 'order' of the change they are attempting to implement, they can negatively impact student achievement."

Harvard scholar Richard Elmore, in a study commissioned for the National Governor's Association, reached a similar conclusion. He found that having the right focus of change is key to improving schools and increasing student achievement. In Elmore's report, "Knowing the Right Things to Do: School Improvement and Performance-Based Accountability," he states, "Knowing the right thing to do is the central problem of school improvement. Holding schools accountable for their performance depends on having people in schools with the knowledge, skills and judgment to make the improvements that will increase student achievement."