Researchers: Schools can 'double' performance

Thursday, June 04, 2009 -

In the push to boost K-12 student achievement, researchers at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research want school districts to think big – and act big. Without qualification, they use the phrase “doubling student performance” to describe what they insist are attainable targets.

“We need to get away from thinking that we can just keep tinkering around the edges,” says Sarah Archibald, a school finance researcher formerly with the Consortium on Policy and Research in Education (CPRE) and now with the Value-Added Research Center (VARC), both projects based at WCER.

Archibald and others are trumpeting their studies of schools in several states — Wisconsin, Washington, North Dakota and Illinois — that have effectively doubled student performance.

“As we did the research, we kept finding the same story,” she says. From these findings, the researchers developed a list of 10 steps schools can take to dramatically improve student performance.

Archibald outlined those steps in a presentation in February to staff from several of Wisconsin’s Comprehensive Educational Service Agencies (CESAs). She and Allan Odden, director of CPRE and professor of educational leadership and policy analysis, described the steps in their new book, Doubling Student Performance  . . . And Finding the Resources to Do It (Corwin Press, 2009).

The steps are:

1. Analyze data to understand performance problems
2. Set ambitious goals and raise expectations
3. Articulate an instructional vision and implement research-based curricula
4. Use formative and summative assessments for data-based decision-making
5. Provide ongoing, intensive professional development linked to instruction
6. Use instructional time efficiently and effectively
7. Extend learning time for struggling students
8. Facilitate a collaborative, professional culture
9. Provide consistent, distributed instructional leadership
10. Consult experts and research to learn from best practices

Archibald says these steps aren’t necessarily sequential, and that schools and districts can address multiple ones simultaneously.

She emphasizes the importance of schools and districts raising expectations:  “The ones that got the biggest gains in our studies had the highest goals. You can only hit as high as you aim.”

She also stresses the need for “the kind of professional development that can change practice,” not “more of the same.”

Coaching and modeling can have a significant impact, Archibald says, and professional development needs to include aides, paraeducators, and support staff, in addition to teachers.

Extending the learning time for struggling students “is a huge area of need in this day and age,” she says.

Citing research that shows the value of summer school, she says, “We know how important it is and we tend not to provide enough of it in the core subjects.”

Educators mustn’t be afraid to admit what they don’t know, she says. That’s when they should seek outside expertise.

While his most recent studies recommend increasing the investment in Wisconsin’s public schools, Odden says, “The resources to deploy these strategies already are in Wisconsin schools.”

Odden, a widely recognized authority on school finance, spoke to the CESA group on the “Strategic Management of Human Capital” – the people side of reform.

He stresses the importance of maintaining a strong talent pool, by effectively recruiting, equipping, rewarding and retaining top-notch people.

He favors the development of alternative pathways to teaching, saying that teaching shouldn’t be limited to individuals who decided at age 18 they want to go into education.

-- by Kerry G. Hill

To learn more, go online to the project websites of CPRE (http://cpre.wceruw.org/) and the Strategic Management of Human Capital (http://www.smhc-cpre.org/).

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