Configurations alone don't breed success - President's Corner - school grade-level configuration and effects on academic achievement - Brief Article

School Administrator, March, 2002 by Don W. Hooper

Many different configurations exist for grade-level offerings. Each school can cite research to support its chosen configuration. Educators will argue long and hard that their configuration is the best. Often school facilities or the lack thereof will make a particular configuration seem superior. For example, campuses built with an open concept in mind will facilitate different elementary school curriculum and scheduling decisions than a self-contained building will allow.

In addition, as a district grows, buildings that may have housed a full slate of grade levels when district enrollment was smaller now may only house one grade. Older buildings once used as middle schools now may be used as intermediate grade-level campuses.

Sometimes an older middle school building or smaller high school building may house a single grade as a distinct campus. It is also becoming common to build new facilities with a particular philosophy in mind to support a single grade, typically kindergarten, 6th or 9th. Under ideal conditions, schools would be built for particular programs and philosophies rather than letting size and configuration of buildings dictate the program to be used.

Exemplary schools exist in each of the aforementioned configurations. What this suggests, perhaps, is that student performance can be attributed less to the building shape or grade-level configuration than simply to effective teaching and leadership.

The truth is almost any building or grade configuration can be used to create success for students. More important than the physical or structural setup is the appropriate selection and sequencing of curriculum, effective teaching practices and alignment of the written, taught and tested curriculum. Meeting students' needs can be complex and may indeed call for building and grade-level configurations that vary, even from campus to campus within a district.

While there is growing interest in new configurations for early childhood education and for grades 5 through 9, no research that I've seen offers hard data indicating more than a preference to reconfigure the delivery of instruction. I rather like this age-old axiom: "What you believe can work will work for you, and what you believe cannot work will not work for you." Or as Earl Nightingale, co-founder of the human resource firm Nightingale-Conant Corp., once said, "As thou hast believed, so be it unto you."

Effective school leaders who design systems to meet the needs of their students are breakthrough thinkers who are creators of circumstances rather than creatures of circumstances. They are the ones who take the initiative to systematically make it happen for children on a day-to-day basis as they involve all stakeholders in an accountable learning process.

I sincerely hope that your school district will be able to have the facilities to accommodate your desired configuration of grade levels. While it would be rewarding to have a facility and grade-level configuration that matches your personal philosophy, more times than not you will have to compensate for the lack of those items with your own ingenuity and the creative synergy created by a dedicated team of educators who will get the job done one way or the other.

It is also worth noting that some who have exactly what they wish for in facilities and grade-level configurations still do not produce the success in their students that others do. Why is that? What is truly important? Again, what matters most are effective leaders designing successful systems for student learning.

Be effective--we are all counting on you.