High Performing Schools: A description from Michigan 2018 Adequacy Report

 The following description is taken from AN EVIDENCE-BASED APPROACH TO SCHOOL FINANCE ADEQUACY IN MICHIGAN: Determining the Cost for Funding Educational Achievementfor All Michigan Students (2018)  Augenblich, Palaich, Odden and Picus

High performing and improving schools have clear and specific student achievement goals, including goals to reduce achievement gaps linked to poverty and minority status. The goals are nearly always specified in terms of performance on state assessments.Compared to traditional schools where teachers work in isolated classrooms, improving schools organize instruction differently. Regardless of the context – urban, suburban, or rural, rich or poor, large or small – improving and high performing schools organize teachers into collaborative teams: grade level teams in elementary schools and subject or course teams in secondary schools. 

With the guidance and support of instructional coaches, the teacher teams work with student data – usually short-cycle or formative assessment data – to:

•  Plan standards-based curriculum units;

•  Teach those units simultaneously;

•  Debrief on how successful the units were; and

•  Make changes when student performance does not meet expectations.

This collaborative teamwork makes instruction “public” over time by identifying a set of instructional strategies that work in the teachers’ school. Over time all teachers are expected to use the instructional strategies that have been demonstrated to improve student learning and achievement. 

High performing and improving schools also provide an array of “extra help” programs for students struggling to achieve to standards. This is critical because the number of struggling students is likely to increase as more rigorous programs are implemented to prepare all students for college and careers. Individual tutoring, small group tutoring, after-school academic help and summer school focused on reading and mathematics for younger students, and courses needed for high school graduation for older students, represent the array of “extra help” strategies these improving schools deploy. Their approach is to “hold standards” constant and vary instructional time. These schools exhibit multiple forms of leadership. Teachers lead by coordinating collaborative teams and through instructional coaching. Principals lead by structuring the school to foster instructional improvement. The district leads by ensuring that schools have the resources to deploy the strategies outlined above with a focus on aggressive student performance goals, improving instructional practice and taking responsibility for student achievement results. 

High performing and improving schools seek out top talent. They know that the challenge to prepare students for the competitive and knowledge-based global economy is difficult and requires smart and capable teachers and administrators to effectively get the educational job done.

 

 

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