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The impact of programs, practices, and strategies on student academic performance: a case study
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Content
THE IMPACT OF PROGRAMS, PRACTICES AND STRATEGIES ON
STUDENT ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE: A CASE STUDY
by
Karen Anne Kaiser
____________________________________________________________________
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION
May 2009
Copyright 2009 Karen Anne Kaiser
ii
DEDICATION
I dedicate this dissertation work to my faithful and loving husband and soul
mate. Without his tenacious encouragement, late night pep talks and undying
interest in my completion of this degree, this work may have never come to an end.
Thank you, Greg for your steadiness. You are the rock that helps me to stand and
also the blanket of comfort that provides such a safe place for my soul.
I also dedicate this work and give special thanks to my four children
Timothy, Matthew, Carolyn, and Christopher, for bearing with me on Sunday
afternoons on the patio as we each completed reading and writing assignments.
Timothy, may you always find your way and lead others toward the light. Matthew,
may you bring pleasure to all who are lucky enough to stand in your presence.
Carolyn, my mirror reflection, may you always have the courage that you posses
right now to be who you are and to bless those around you. Christopher, may you
grace others with your very special talent and gift and realize that the gift is from
God and intended to be used for His glory. May all of you set goals for yourselves
and work toward attaining those goals, no matter how great the reach.
I also dedicate this work to my mother, Billie, and brother, David for
teaching me as a child that I could do anything that I set my mind to. You have been
the bright and vibrant colors in my life and I love you deeply.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank my committee members who were more than generous with
their expertise and precious time. A special thank you to Dr. Stuart Gothold, whose
passion for children, teaching and learning served as a guiding light guiding our
thematic group toward our “true north”. Thank you, Dr. Cathy Stowe, Dr. Michael
Escalante, and Dr. Dennis Hocevar, for agreeing to serve on my committee.
I would like to acknowledge and thank my colleagues and friends for their
input and encouragement throughout the process. I would like to give special
recognition to Dr. Ron Hockwalt, Dr. Barbara Nakaoka, Dennis Parker, Cindy
Harrison, Doreen Nelson and Bonnie Wilson for challenging my professional
thinking in ways that only you can. You have helped me to see my work in the light
of the minds of the many children that I serve, enlightening and enlivening
professional practice for me and the many other educators that you touch every day
in your work.
I wish to thank the members of the Giano community for providing a model
of schooling that promotes excellence for all children regardless of race or wealth.
Truly, you have proven that the theme “no excuses” can prompt us into action and
cause us to provide what is great for all children.
Finally, I would like to thank the entire staff at Sierra Vista Middle School
for allowing us to mirror the journey found through this research. May we always
strive to do what is best for our children knowing that there is a great reward for the
sacrifice we give.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION ……………………………………………………………….. ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS …………………………………………………… iii
LIST OF TABLES …………………………………………………………… v
ABSTRACT …………………………………………………………………. vi
CHAPTER I: THE PROBLEM ……………………………………………... 1
CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE …………………………. 16
CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY …………………………………………. 40
Figure 1. Conceptual Framework Used for the Case Study …………………. 46
CHAPTER IV: THE FINDINGS ……………………………………………. 57
CHAPTER V: SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS …… 103
REFERENCES ………………………………………………………………. 116
APPENDICES ……………………………………………………………….. 127
v
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1. Academic Progress for the Research Study School …………… 48
Table 2. Teacher Credentials ……………………………………………. 49
Table 3. Certificated Staff Stability at the Case Study School ………….. 49
vi
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this case study was to examine an urban middle school
demonstrating significant student academic achievement gains, seeking to identify
key programs, practices, and instructional strategies that have made a positive impact
on student academic performance serving to close the achievement gap between this
school’s low socioeconomic Latino students compared to more affluent white and
Asian middle school students. Furthermore, this study sought to uncover themes
emerging from the examination the programs, practices and instructional strategies
identified at the case study school associated with raising student achievement.
An urban high performing school in southern California was selected for this
study as an excellent exemplar of a high performing urban middle school for several
reasons. Being a part of the relatively large urban district, the school is located in a
primarily Hispanic, low socioeconomic neighborhood. The school has met or
exceeded the criteria set for this study defining it as a high performing school for the
last three academic years, having made steady academic performance improvement
over the past several years as measured by the California Standardized Testing and
Reporting Program.
The inquiry method employed for this study was the case study approach.
Documents were reviewed, observational field notes of site visits were taken, and
structured, open-ended interview questions were utilized to uncover factors
positively affecting student achievement. A total of six teachers, two administrators
and two counselors participated in the interview process. To ensure effective
vii
triangulation of the research data, a quantitative survey was used to support the
principals’ and teachers’ interview responses. A total of 35 teachers at the case study
school completed the questionnaire surveys.
Data analysis uncovered three major themes associated with increasing
student achievement, including a culture of support for students, the setting of high
academic expectations for students, and the establishment of school-wide systems
and structures. Use of Bolman and Deal’s four frames paradigm provided the
theoretical support for the analysis, interpretation of the data gathered at the case
study school, and identification of implications for further study.
1
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM
Introduction
Over the past several decades, school systems have faced increasing public
pressure for improved student achievement and the closing of what has come to be
commonly known as “the achievement gap” (Trimble, 2008). From Capital Hill in
Washington D.C. to local schools, the term achievement gap has become a common,
frequently uttered description of a general discontent with public education’s
performance (Anderson, Medrich, Fowler, 2007). The pressure for accountability
perhaps reached its zenith with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (U.S.
Department of Education, 2008) in 2002, holding local school districts responsible
for having every student attain educational success labeled “proficient.”
There is strong research evidence accrued over the past 40 years suggesting
that the achievement gap between black and Hispanic and the more affluent white
and Asian students can be reduced (American Educational Research Association,
2004; Slavin & Madden, 2006). Beginning in 1966, after the Coleman Report
concluded that family background and not the school was the major determiner of
student academic success, many educators reacted by conducting research studies
seeking to identify school related variables associated with student mastery of core
curriculum (Lezotte, 2008). Collectively, this research began what has been termed
the “Effective Schools Movement.” Early researchers of the Effective Schools
Movement began by identifying those schools that were successfully educating all
2
students regardless of family background or socioeconomic status. A 1982 seminal
paper by Ron Edmonds (Brandt, 1982) entitled “Programs of School Improvement:
An Overview” identified what became know as the “Correlates of Effective
Schools” including principal instructional leadership, an instructional focus, an
orderly and safe climate, high teacher expectations, and program evaluation based
upon measures of student achievement.
From 1970 to 1988, the same timeframe the Effective Schools Movement
was identifying schooling factors strongly impacting student academic achievement,
the achievement gap in reading and math between Black and White students was
reduced by one-half, and by one-third between Hispanic and White students. High
school graduation rates for African American students rose from 50% to more that
75% between 1950 and the early 1980’s, while White graduation rates remained
relatively unchanged between 1969 and 2004 (Darling-Hammond, 2007). A number
of causal factors for this academic improvement (Lee, 2003) have been proposed,
including school desegregation (Glenn, 2006), increased funding from President
Johnson’s Great Society program (Viadero, 2006), the Head Start Program (Haskins,
2004).
Since the beginning of the 1990’s, the performance of African American and
Latino students on standardized tests has steadily fallen (National Center for
Educational Statistics, 2001). Today, African American and Latino 17-year-olds
typically read at the same level as 13-year-old white students (National Association
of State Boards of Education, 2002). Less than one-fourth of Latinos and one-fifth
3
of African American students can read complicated texts that more than half of white
students are able to read by the end of high school (National Association of State
Boards of Education). In mathematics as well, the performance gap between 13-
year-old African Americans and white students steadily narrowed until 1990 and the
gap has been dramatically widening to the present (Haycock, 2007). According to
the U.S. Department of Education 1998 statistical data, 62 percent of white, African
American and Hispanic students each enrolled in Algebra 1 in high school, 64
percent of white students went on to Algebra 2 compared to 55 percent of African
American and 48 percent of the Hispanic students.
With the widening of the achievement gap, a growing number of educators
and researchers have identified this performance disparity as the most important
educational problem in the United States today (Slavin & Madden, 2006). This gap
first appears in the early elementary grades and ultimately results in significant
differences in high school graduation rates, college attendance and finally in income
and socioeconomic status differences (Rothstein, 2006). Darling-Hammond (2007)
identified the Unites States as ranking poorly among other nations in terms of a
growing decline in educational performance between white and black and Latino
school population due in large part to a great inequality in educational inputs such as
access to quality curriculum and an absence of highly trained teachers in lower
socioeconomic schools.
Attempting to correct these educational disparities, current research not only
continues to study educational inequalities but continues to identify and examine
4
factors associated with improving student academic performance (Carpenter,
Ramirez, & Severn, 2008). A plethora of variables have been identified including
principal instructional leadership, teacher expertise and relationships with students,
curriculum and instruction, community and parent involvement, opportunity to learn
and student time on task, school climate, student assessment, and the list continues
(Lezotte, 2001; Davis & Pokorny, 2005). As in the Effective Schools Movement,
much of today’s research is attempting to first identify high performing schools,
particularly in low socioeconomic minority neighborhoods. A wide variety of
research data is being collected and examined including standardized achievement
results, focus group interviews, questionnaires, school site observations, and
documents attempting to isolate variables that may be positively impacting student
achievement.
Statement of the Problem
Researchers have been examining the “achievement gap” between minority
and nonminority students for the past several decades (Bainbridge & Lasley, 2002).
Attempting to describe the nature of this gap and ways to close it is perhaps not as
simple and straightforward as it may at first appear (Anderson, Medrich, Fowler,
2007). Student achievement is a complex phenomenon with many variables
potentially having an impact. For illustrative purposes, Anderson, Medrich and
Fowler described a research study examining comprehensive high schools across the
country that are succeeding in closing the achievement gap between white students
and African American and Hispanic students. Immediately questions arise with
5
regard to the type or types of assessment instruments and the time frame being
examined. These questions highlight the difficulties in using achievement data that
may not be comparable and vary from state to state. Time frame challenges may
arise due to the nature of school improvement that varies from year to year. Test
scores may improve one year, decline, then improve again. A sufficient time frame
must be provided before legitimate improvement can be identified.
Researching the achievement gap between minority and nonminority students
has tended to treat ethnicity, race, and social class as fixed static categories rather
than multifaceted and situational and often examines a single level of analysis rather
than taking into account the complexity of the environment (Orellana & Bowman,
2003). For example, a research study may label the subjects “working class Hispanic
boys” without adequately describing the complexity of the families and
neighborhoods these boys live in. As Orellana and Bowman pointed out, “many
researchers appeared to assume factors contributing to the achievement gap are the
same or sufficiently similar for all minority groups” (p. 113). Much of the literature
addressing race and ethnicity in school has focused on differences between African
American and white students (Bowman, 2001). Latino populations have been under-
represented in the research literature (Carpenter, Ramirez, & Severn, 2006).
Significant cultural differences between minority groups warrants research
methodologies that account for these differences (Lee, 2003).
The topic of the school transitions has become a frequent topic in the research
and practice literature examining the challenges students face as they move from
6
middle school into high school (Akos & Galassi, 2004). Eccles and Wigfield (1997)
identified middle school age as perhaps the most challenging time for students,
noting that this developmental period is a time of rapid hormonal and physical
change and intensifying peer-related pressure. Wiles and Bondi (2001), describing
the middle school years noted that “[a]t no other time in development is a student
likely to encounter such a diverse number of problems simultaneously” (p. 35).
Increased attention given to the middle to high school transition has also been due to
fact that ninth graders overall have the highest course failures and dropout rates
compared to other high school grade levels (Hertzog & Moran, 1998; Roderick &
Camburn, 1999). Graber and Brooks-Gunn (1996) found that suspensions and
expulsions increase significantly early in the ninth grade year explained by a “life
transition model” of development suggesting that some adolescents fail to cope with
the major changes and new responsibilities experienced between childhood and
young adulthood.
Clearly, middle school has been recognized by practitioners and researchers
as a time of great change, challenge and potential (Cooney & Bottoms, 2002;
Cushman, 2006; Mizelle, 2005; Smith, 2007). Interest in middle level education has
increased over the past 20 years (Beane, 2008). From 1991 through 2003, over
3,700 research studies examining middle schools were conducted and published
(Hough, 2003). The Carnegie Council’s 1989 report entitled Turning Points:
Preparing American Youth for the 21
st
Century and a landmark position paper
published by the National Middle School Association entitled This We Believe:
7
Successful Schools for Young Adolescents were the vanguard document offering
guidelines for creating high performing middle schools. Topics addressed included
improved academic achievement for all students, a challenging and engaging
curriculum, a supportive and safe learning environment, improved teacher
preparation to teach at the middle school level, and improved relationships with
families and the community. These reports and others research studies continue to
advance the notion that students of middle school age have their own unique needs
and challenges different from the elementary school and high school timeframe.
Research on the achievement gap between middle school students of color
from low socioeconomic neighborhoods and white and Asian students from
wealthier homes continues to confront the complexity of the phenomenon,
compounded by the lack of research on Latino middle school students. With the
exponential growth the Hispanic population, especially in California, more research
is needed to identify achievement gap related variables endemic to this minority
student population.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this case study was to examine an urban intermediate school
that is successfully closing the achievement gap, seeking to identify key practices
that have made a positive impact on student academic performance serving to close
the achievement gap between this particular population of students and more affluent
white and Asian middle school students. For this study, the concept of “achievement
gap” was defined as the persistent disparity in academic performance between
8
groups of students, particularly between white or Asian affluent students and
students of color, minority students and second language learners.
The research study also set out to identify achievement gap closing programs,
practices and instructional strategies with the goal of extrapolating its finding to
comparable socio-economic status schools, providing the promise of significant
student academic performance improvement to similar schools that have yet to close
the achievement gap.
Importance of the Study
Much of the educational literature and a majority of research studies
addressing the achievement gap have focused on African American students and
white students, leaving Hispanic student populations under-researched. This case
study’s results, in concert with the other dissertation team’s research findings from
other schools located in primarily Latino neighborhoods, may triangulate adding to
the knowledge of factors shown to successfully reduce the achievement gap between
white and Asian students and the Hispanic students studied. Clearly there is a need
for more research within schools with predominately Hispanic student populations.
This study was conducted to address this research need.
As pointed out by Orellana and Bowman (2003), much of the research
linking cultural diversity and learning has suffered from two methodological
limitations: (a) treating race, ethnicity and culture as simple, fixed categories rather
than as dynamic and multifaceted variables and (b) analyzing single variables
without reference to the larger institutional, and the ideological and communal world
9
individuals live in. This current research, examining in some detail a number of
variables associated with student success among Hispanic students at one middle
school, may provide a richer contextual tapestry for interpreting the value of each of
the variables studied.
This case study examined one middle school in some detail to tease out those
factors that contributed to the academic success of its young adolescent students.
Middle school has been identified both in the human development and research
literature as a time of great physical, emotional and social change for young
adolescents. Considering the unique challenges faced by students of middle school
age, this research limited its focus to this time frame so as to capture the subtle
contextual milieu of middle school. The positive associations found in this study
between school related variables and student academic success may serve as a road
map guiding other middle schools to close their achievement gaps.
Research Questions
The study was guided by the following three research questions:
1. What school-wide programs promote student achievement?
2. What school-wide practices promote student achievement?
3. What instructional strategies were implemented to target the closing of the
achievement gap?
Assumptions
1. An individual school can be illustrative of other schools within a similar school
category.
10
2. Study participants have adequate knowledge of school processes and background
information salient to this study.
Limitations
1. The use of a single school as a case study limits the generalizabilty of the
findings and conclusions to only those schools that are uniquely similar.
2. The findings resulting from the participant pool being selected from a single
school limits the generalizability of the study’s findings and conclusions to only
those schools that are uniquely similar.
3. The number of participants surveyed and interviewed is limited to those from a
single school, thus limiting the generalizability of the study’s findings and
conclusions to those schools that are uniquely similar.
4. The level of truthfulness with which participants conveyed their perceptions may
reduce confidence placed in the study’s findings.
Definitions
API (Academic Performance Index): Per the California Department of
Education, “the Academic Performance Index is the cornerstone of California's
Public Schools Accountability Act of 1999 (PSAA). The purpose of the API is to
measure the academic performance and growth of schools. It is a numeric index (or
scale) that ranges from a low of 200 to a high of 1000. A school's score on the API is
an indicator of a school's performance level. The statewide API performance target
for all schools is 800. A school's growth is measured by how well it is moving
11
toward or past that goal. A school's API Base is subtracted from its API Growth to
determine how much the school improved in a year” (CDE Website).
Growth Targets: Per the California Department of Education, “Schools must
meet their annual school wide API growth target as well as API growth targets for
each numerically significant ethnic/racial, socioeconomically disadvantaged, English
learner, and students with disabilities subgroup at the school. If the school's (or
subgroup's) Base API is between 200 and 690, the growth target is 5 percent of the
difference between the school's (or subgroup's) Base API and the statewide
performance target of 800. If the school's (or subgroup's) Base API is between 691
and 795, the growth target is a gain of five points. If the school's (or subgroup's)
Base API is between 796 and 799, the growth target is the following:
API of 796 - a gain of four points
API of 797 - a gain of three points
API of 798 - a gain of two points
API of 799 - a gain of one point
If the school's (or subgroup's) Base API is 800 or more, the school (or subgroup)
must maintain an API of at least 800” (CDE Website).
AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress): Per the California Department of
Education, “The federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 requires that
California determine whether or not each public school and local educational agency
(LEA) is making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). (An LEA is a school district or
county office of education.) AYP criteria encompass four areas: participation rate,
12
percent proficient (also referred to as Annual Measurable Objectives or AMOs), API
as an additional indicator for AYP, and graduation rate. Each of these four areas has
specific requirements. Participation rate and percent proficient criteria must be met
in both English-language arts (ELA) and in mathematics” (CDE Website).
Four Frames: Bolman and Deal (2003) research focuses on the four aspects
or traits that a leader may or may not encompass; structural, human resource,
symbolic or political.
High Performing School: A study conducted by Washington State
University (2008), identified the following characteristics of high performing
schools: (a) a clear and shared focus, (b) high standards and expectations for all
students, (c) effective school leadership, (d) high levels of collaboration and
communication, (e) curriculum, instruction and assessments aligned with state
standards, (f) frequent monitoring of learning and teaching, (g) focused professional
development, (h) a supportive learning environment, and (i) high levels of parent and
community involvement.
Outperforming School: After a review of related websites discussing
outperforming schools, outperforming schools: (a) achieve higher levels of student
proficiency compared to similar schools, (b) perform at a level that significantly
exceeds statistical expectations, and (c) consistently outperform comparable schools.
Similar Schools Ranking: Per the California Department of Education, “The
similar schools rank compares a school to 100 other schools of the same type and
similar demographic characteristics” (CDE Website).
13
Urban School: After a review of related websites on urban schools, urban
schools may be defined as schools: (a) located in a urban area rather than a rural,
small town, or suburban area, (b) having a relatively high rate of poverty (as
measured by Free and Reduced Lunch), (c) having a relatively high proportion of
students of color, (d) having a relatively high proportion of students who are Limited
English Proficient.
National School Lunch Program: According to the U. S. Department of
Agriculture (2008), “(t)he National School Lunch Program (NSLP) is a federally
assisted meal program operating in public and nonprofit private schools and
residential child care institutions. It provides nutritionally balanced, low-cost or free
lunches to children each school day. The program was established under the National
School Lunch Act, signed by President Harry Truman in 1946.”
Achievement Gap: According to the University of Southern California’s
thematic dissertation group, the achievement gap is the persistent disparity in
academic performance between groups of students, particularly between White and
or Asian and affluent students and students of color, minority, poverty and second
language learners.
SARC (School Accountability Report Card): Per the California Department
of Education, “In November 1988, California voters passed Prop. 98, also known as
The Classroom Instructional Improvement and Accountability Act. This ballot
initiative provides California's public schools with a stable source of funding. In
return, all public schools in California are required annually to prepare SARCs and
14
disseminate them to the public. SARCs are intended to provide the public with
important information about each public school and to communicate a school's
progress in achieving its goals” (CDE website).
CST (California Standards Test): Per the California Department of
Education, “The California Standards Tests in English-language arts, mathematics,
science, and history-social science are administered only to students in California
public schools. Except for a writing component that is administered as part of the
grade 4 and 7 English-language arts tests, all questions are multiple choice. These
tests were developed specifically to assess students' performance on California's
Academic Content Standards. The State Board of Education adopted these standards
that specify what all California children are expected to know and be able to do in
each grade or course” (CDE STAR website).
ELL (English Language Learners): Per the California Department of
Education, "English learner" is defined as an English learner or as a reclassified-
fluent-English-proficient (RFEP) student who has not scored at the proficient level or
above on the CST in ELA for three years after being reclassified” (CDE website).
SES (Socio-economic Status): Per the California Department of Education,
“Socioeconomically disadvantaged" is defined as a student whose parents both have
not received a high school diploma OR a student who participates in the free or
reduced-price lunch program (also known as the National School Lunch Program)”
(CDE Website).
15
Organization of the Remainder of the Study
Chapter Two provides a review of salient literature on the achievement gap
defined as the persistent disparity in academic performance between groups of
students, particularly between white or Asian affluent students and students of color,
minority students and second language learners. A wide range of variables showing
promise in reducing the achievement gap are presented and discussed.
Chapter Three presents the theoretical foundation for the study’s
methodology and research design. The study’s sample, conceptual model,
instrumentation used, data collection processes and data analysis are presented.
Chapter Four presents the findings of the study, discussing answers for each
of the guiding research questions, followed by the identification of the major themes
major deduced from findings.
Chapter Five summarizes the findings, makes conclusions and discusses the
implications of the study for further study. The study concludes with references and
appendices.
16
CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
Introduction
The term “achievement gap” has been generally defined as the difference in
academic performance between children from low-socioeconomic families compared
to children from wealthier families and between minority and non-minority students
(McCall, Hauser, Cronin, Kingsbury, & Ronald, 2006). State and national
standardized achievement test results are used to quantify this gap (Jencks &
Phillips, 1998). Such measures show, for example, that by fourth grade, almost two-
thirds of African American and Hispanic students are reading below a basic level of
achievement compared to one in three Asian students and one in four White students
(Haycock & Jerald, 2002).
The achievement gap has been a long-standing concern among educators and
was the impetus behind the development and implementation of the No Child Left
Behind (NCLB) legislation (Anderson, Medrich, & Fowler, 2007). NCLB’s
Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) system is intended to expose the achievement gap
between student sub-groups and provides a time frame when all student are to reach
proficiency in reading and math. Whether one accepts NCLB as a viable solution for
closing the achievement gap or not, its passage and implementation acknowledged
that a gap between student groups does exist, and systematic action must be taken to
reduce these achievement gaps.
17
Achievement Gap Historical Background
Educational inequality in the United States, as pointed out by Darling-
Hammond (2007), has is roots in a century or more of slavery, court-sanctioned
discrimination and inequitable access to education based upon race, class and
language. The resulting achievement gap was first measured by tests given by the
U.S. Army in World War I, revealing a distinct difference between black and white
recruits (Gardner, 2007). The landmark United States Supreme Court decision
upholding the constitutionality of racial segregation under the doctrine of “separate
but equal” allowed state governments to segregate schools (Darling-Hammond,
2007). The “separate by equal” doctrine most often resulted in unequal school
funding. Scott Nearing, in 1929 (cited in Gardner, 2007), was the first author to
document the disparity in educational funding in the South between White and
African American schools, citing for example, South Carolina spending $2.74 per
Black student and $27.88 per White student.
Throughout the first half of the 20
th
Century, academic achievement among
students of color continued to lag behind that of White students until the early 1970’s
(Haycock, 2007). From 1970 to 1988, the achievement gap in reading and math
between Black and White students was reduced by one-half, and by one-third
between Hispanic and White students. High school graduation rates for African
American students rose from 50% to more that 75% between 1950 and the early
1980’s, while White graduation rates remained relatively unchanged between 1969
and 2004 (Darling-Hammond, 2007). A number of causal factors for this academic
18
improvement (Lee, 2002) have been proposed, including school desegregation
(Glenn, W., 2006), increased funding from President Johnson’s Great Society
program (Viadero, 2006), the Head Start Program (Haskins, 2004).
This positive achievement trend began to reverse and the achievement gap
began to widen since the late 1980’s (Lee, 2002). Lee, examining National
Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results found academic improvement
among White students and few gains among Black students. Haycock (2002) cited a
similar trend between White and Latino students, with the achievement gap
substantially shrinking through the 1970’s and 1980’s and widening again during the
1990’s with increased White achievement and lowering achievement among Latino
students. According to Haycock, the Black/White gap reached its narrowest point in
1990 and the Latino/White gap narrowed until 1992, with both gaps widening
thereafter.
NCLB and the Achievement Gap
With the passage of NCLB and the implementation of its AYP accountability
system, student academic performance can be measured at subgroup and individual
student levels. The intent of this measurement is subgroup and individual student
academic improvement leading to proficiency in language arts and math for all
students. Essentially, NCLB has shifted academic assessment from individual
student performance on nationally norm-referenced tests such as the Scholastic
Achievement Test or the National Assessment of Educational Progress and evaluates
how well all students, including racial and linguistic subgroups of students in a given
19
school are performing compared to a state determined level of proficiency
(Anderson, Medrich, and Fowler, 2007). This assessment is meant to ultimately lead
to the identification and implementation of promising educational reform measures
associated with improved academic achievement for all students.
Academic Achievement and Educational Reform
The educational reform movement had its catalyst with the issuance of the
Coleman report in 1966 (Lezotte, 2001). The Coleman Report concluded that family
background, not school, was the major determinant of student achievement
(Coleman, 1966). During the 1960’s and 1970’s, social scientists and researchers
believed that family factors such as parental educational levels and poverty were the
primary inhibitors of children’s learning (Mace-Matluck, 1987). In a seminal paper
of this era entitled Programs of School Improvement: An Overview, Edmonds
(1982) acknowledged that a primary responsibility of schools is to facilitate student
learning, yet he contended that the family is the most crucial factor in helping
students succeed academically. Improving school factors such as the instruction of
innovative teaching methods or increased teacher training were thought to be much
less influential compared to family conditions (Barth, Haycock, Jackson, Mora, Ruiz,
et al., 1999). During the 1980’s, reacting to the Coleman Report and Edmond’s 1982
paper, educational researchers began identifying and studying schools that were
successfully educating all students regardless of their socioeconomic status or family
background (Lezotte, 2001). From the 1980’s to the present time, an increasing
20
body of literature has accumulated collectively evaluating and describing the
practices of these successful schools popularly labeled “effective schools.”
In their extensive analysis of 50 years of research on factors that effect
student learning, Wang, Haertel, and Walberg (1994) compiled 11,000 statistical
findings from 179 handbook chapters and 91 research syntheses and identified 28
factors that most directly affect student learning. These factors were grouped into a
six-category conceptual framework including student aptitude, classroom instruction
and climate, context, program design, school organization, and state and district
characteristics. The various forms of classroom instruction and climate factors were
found to have nearly as much impact upon student learning as student aptitude and
together these two categories showed the most promise of improving student
achievement. Parent involvement and community influences and student
demographics had a comparatively moderate affect. State and district characteristics
including school and district demographics, school and state-level policies had the
least influence on improving student learning, being somewhat removed from day-
to-day life in the classroom.
In another review of the literature on effective schools, Jesse, Davis, and
Pokorny (2004) organized characteristics of effective schools into the following
categories: school leadership, teacher expertise and relationships, curriculum and
instruction, community and parent involvement, and attention to culture and second
language acquisition. Each of these will be addressed in turn below.
21
Principal Leadership Effectiveness
School effectiveness research has consistently identified educational
leadership, particularly from school-site principals, as positively related to student
achievement (Witziers, Bosker, and Kruger, 2003). Waters, Marzano, and McNulty
(2003), examined more than 5,000 school effectiveness studies conducted over a 30-
year period, narrowed these studies down to 70, and completed a meta-analysis
examining the relationship between 21 leadership responsibilities in relation to
student achievement. Data from this meta-analysis showed a significant relationship
between principal leadership and student achievement, with an average correlation
effect size between these two variables of .25. According to Gentilucci and Muto
(2007), all but two studies they reviewed examining principal behavior and student
academic achievement have been correlational in nature rather than finding evidence
of causal linkage. Cotton (2003), for example, examined 81 studies conducted
between 1979 and 2000, and found positive correlations between 26 leader behaviors
and student achievement, including a student learning focus, establishing and
maintaining quality relationships, molding school culture, serving as an instructional
leader, and maintaining accountability. Although few studies have found a direct
linkage between principal supervision of classroom instruction and student
achievement (Hallinger & Bickman, 1996), principal instructional leadership appears
to influence student achievement indirectly through such intentional actions as
aligning school curriculum to academic standards and clearly and consistently
articulating the school’s mission (Hallinger & Bickman). Principals as instructional
22
leaders are said to encourage teachers to assume instructional leadership (Printy &
Marks, 2004). By providing opportunities for teachers to regularly discuss and plan
their teaching work, principals encourage teachers to share their expertise and
assume instructional leadership responsibilities, leading to improved instructional
quality (Printy & Marks).
Teacher Expertise
Numerous studies have found that teacher quality directly effects student
achievement (Darling-Hammond, 2007). Full teacher certification has been linked to
student performance on standardized tests. Hawk, Coble and Swanson (1985) found
that students taught by teachers fully certified in mathematics performed better than
students taught by teachers certified in other subject areas. Rudner (1999) found that
home schooled children who had at least one parent with a state teaching license
performed better on standardized achievement test compared to children whose
parents were not state certified. Boyd, Grossman, Lankford, Loeb, & Wyckoff
(2005), examining various routes to teacher certification in New York concluded that
students taught by teachers whose pre-service training required significant hours
spent in classrooms outperformed students whose teachers spent little time in
classroom during their pre-service preparation. Ferguson (1991), analyzing 900
Texas school districts examining teacher expertise measured by teacher performance
on a state certification exam found that 40% of the measured variance in student test
scores was accounted for with this variable. Teachers’ expectations have also been
found to have a positive effect on student achievement (Ferguson, 1998a; Landson-
23
Billings, 1994; Goodlad, 1984). Rubie-Davies, 2007 found that teachers with high
expectations for their students spend more time structuring their learning, provided
more feedback, used more high-order questions and more positively managed their
students compared to low-expectation teachers.
While research shows that fully credentialed, better trained experienced
teachers generally produce higher standardized test score results among their
students, there is also a distinct lack of these highly qualified teachers working in
minority, low performing schools and inner city schools (Darling-Hammond, 2007).
A majority of experienced teachers either choose to leave these schools, or choose
not to transfer to one (Mayer, Mullins, & Moore, 2000). An Educational Testing
Service study entitled Parsing the Achievement Gap Baselines for Tracking Progress
(Barton, 2003) was conducted to examine 14 factors and their correlation with
academic achievement and examine differences between various student subgroups
to provide baseline data for tracking future performance gains. The study found that
experienced teachers were not evenly distributed within the districts examined and
that teachers with three or fewer years of teaching experience were twice a likely to
be teaching in schools with high minority enrollments. Other studies reveal that
students in minority schools are more likely to be taught by teachers teaching outside
of their academic subject area. An Education Trust study (Jerald, 2002) found that
generally 24% of secondary teachers studied had not even completed a college minor
in the subject being taught, jumping to 34% of teachers teaching children of color
from low socioeconomic households.
24
Attention to Culture and Second Language Acquisition
The lowering of teachers’ academic expectations for students of color and
particularly for second language learners, generally reducing the quality of instructor
these students receive, has been well-documented (Ferguson, 1998b; Good &
Brophy, 1994, Goodwin, 2002). With minority student populations expected to
grow, accounting for 30% to 40% of the student population in the United States by
2010, the quality of classroom instruction received by minority students will
continue to be problematic into the foreseeable future (Adler, 2000). At the same
time the minority student population continues to increase exponentially, the
American teaching force will continue to be dominated by white, middle class
teachers (Grant and Secada, 1990). There continues to be a pervasive assumption on
the part of many teachers that economically disadvantaged children of color are best
served by receiving remedial skills based teaching first, leading to the ability to
perform higher order learning. Bennett (2000) writes:
Children of color usually attend schools with large concentrations of students
who are economically disadvantaged or lower achieving, or both. These are
schools where teachers often deemphasize higher-order thinking skills and
higher levels of teacher questions because of the misconceptions that low-
achieving students must master basic skills before they develop higher-level
skills (p. 206).
Identifying English-language learners (ELLs) as the fastest growing student
population in the nation, Harper and de Jong (2004) noted that most ELLs spend
their entire instructional day in mainstream classrooms taught in English. In an
effort to assist the majority of teachers who are primarily white and from the middle
25
class, Harper and de Jong addressed four misconceptions about teaching ELLs in an
effort to provide ideas for effective instruction and the creation of inclusive
classrooms. These misconceptions include: (a) exposure and interaction will result
in English-language learning; (b) all ELLs learn English in the same way and at the
same rate; (c) good teaching for native speakers is good teaching for ELLs; (d)
effective instruction means nonverbal support. The fundamental admonition of these
four misconceptions is the need for mainstream teachers to evaluate and understand
the linguistic demands of the content areas and carefully structure lessons and
learning tasks according to the academic needs of English-language learners.
Curriculum and Instruction
Research on curriculum and instruction (C & I) has focused on numerous
aspects of C and I such as interdisciplinary instruction (Lezotte, 2008), hands-on
learning (Menkin & Look, 2000), thematic instruction (Lewis, 2000), peer tutoring
(Britz, Dixon, & McLaughin, 1989), and cooperative learning (Johnson, Johnson, &
Stanne, 2000). One generalized trend among studies examining learning processes,
especially among adolescents, has been the identification of strong associations
between cognition and social-emotional processes, motivation and engagement in
school (Jesse, Davis, & Pokorny, 2004). Responding to increasing academic
achievement levels imposed by the No Child Left Behind legislation and resulting
implementation of more rigorous state content standards, the Southern Regional
Education Board (Reynolds, 2008), created a “Site Development Guide” entitled Ten
Strategies for Creating a Classroom Culture of High Expectations designed to
26
encourage teachers and administrators to establish and maintain learning
environments that support and motivate students to perform at their personal best.
Research on instruction and curriculum use strongly suggests that effective
teachers successfully encourage students to engage in classroom activities and make
the optimum use of instructional time (Wang, Haertel, & Walberg, 1994). Effective
instruction increases what has been termed students’ opportunity to learn by creating
classroom environments characterized by collaboration, trust and acceptance of
rigorous achievement standards (Jesse & Pokorny, 2004). A recent study entitled
Closing the Achievement Gap: Lessons from Successful Schools (Billig, Jaime,
Abrams, Fitzpatrick, & Kendrick, 2005) recounted how four large comprehensive
high schools narrowed the achievement gap in reading and mathematics over a four
year period by using engaging teaching techniques such as individualized instruction
and hands-on teaching techniques and curriculum aligned with rigorous state and
district academic content standards.
Anderson and Krathwohl (2001), in presenting their “Taxonomy Learning,
Teaching, and Assessing,” argued that a complete and effective learning framework
identifies and employs a range of cognitive levels. Factual knowledge consists of
discrete and isolated bits of information. Procedural knowledge, as the term
implies, involves the ability to successfully learn and implement a series of steps in a
sequence. Conceptual knowledge includes one’s mental models or schema and
provides globalized information about how phenomena are organized. This involves
the weaving together of numerous isolated pieces of information into an organized,
27
understandable framework. Metacognitive thinking includes knowledge of
generalized strategies needed to accomplish different tasks as well as the monitoring
of one’s thinking during the completion of a task in a self-regulatory fashion.
Metacognitive thinking could lead to changes in the manner a task is being
accomplished.
According to Anderson and Krathwohl, successful schools, rather than only
requiring rote memorization of discrete factual or procedural information, encourage
learners to make sense of the information and experiences provided in the classroom.
This meaning making leads to a deeper understanding of how individual information
fits within a particular subject matter are organized and structured. Expanding one’s
understanding of this interconnectedness produces what Andersen and Krathwohl
have termed “meaningful learning” resulting in improved problem solving ability,
longer lasting retention of what is learned, and increased transfer to other subject
areas. Langer (2007) supports the importance of transfer to meaningful learning,
noting that teachers in high performing schools consciously make connections
between lesson content and previous lessons, other curricular areas and aspects of
life outside of the school context. Langer contends that teachers in more typical
schools “experience little interweaving across lessons; few overt connections . . .
among the content, knowledge, and skill being taught” (p. 8).
The effective schools literature, cited earlier, supports the use of curriculum
and instruction that is comprehensible to students and grade-level appropriate, and at
the same time aligned to rigorous grade-level academic standards (Reeves, 2001).
28
Kirst, et al. (2005) after reviewing the effective schools literature, developed and
field tested principal and teacher surveys designed to gather information on school
qualities, policies and practices related to student academic success. Regression
analysis is used to determine the effectiveness of activities and practices more often
found at high-performing schools compared to low-performing schools using API
scores as the measure. Teachers at higher performing schools compared with
teachers at low-performing schools were more likely to report classroom instruction
guided by state academic standards, math and language arts curriculum aligned with
the state’s standards, and the addressing of the instructional needs of English
learners. A study by Hilberg, Harp, and DeGeest (2000) examining the use of
mathematics standards in a Native American middle school resulted in improved
student attitudes toward mathematics and improved learning evidenced by higher
scores on posttests administered after the standards use intervention.
Parent and Community Support
Research has shown that students who have emotional and social support
from parent and family members are more likely to achieve better academically than
their peers who do not enjoy such support (Becker & Luthar, 2002). Parental
involvement has been shown to have a positive effect on learning across diverse
student populations (Ma, 1999). Barnard (2004), using data from a longitudinal
study examined the relationship of parental involvement during their children’s
elementary school years and student success in high school. After controlling for
background and social characteristics, parent involvement was significantly
29
associated with lower high school dropout rates, increased on-time high school
graduation and higher class grades. Edwards and Young (1992), noting increasing
negative pressures on families resulting from poverty, deteriorating neighborhoods
especially in the inner-cities, and other factors, recommended that home/school
interactions focus on the strength of families and preventative strategies and that
community resources be identified and utilized to help reduce families’ stress caused
by social, emotional, psychological and economic factors. A longitudinal study by
Morrison, Rimm-Kauffman, and Pianta (2003) assessing mother-child interactions
during school entry found that positive interactions accounted for a significant
variance in middle school academic success. In a review of research studies on
parental involvement in children’s homework, Hoover-Demsey, et al (2001) found a
number of positive contributions to student learning including increased ability to
break learning tasks into manageable parts, employ problem-solving and self-
monitoring strategies, and more positive regulation of emotional responses to
homework resulting in increased overall academic performance.
The protective quality of supportive and attentive adults, particularly in the
lives of students at risk of academic failure, has been affirmed by a growing body of
research (Scales & Gibbons, 1996; Wentzel, 1999; Wooley & Bowen, 2007).
Wooley and Bowen, examining the impact of positive adult relationships with at-risk
middle school students on school engagement utilized two theoretical models to
explain the positive effects of supportive adult relationships on middle school
children. Bronfenbrenner’s (2005) bioecological theory of human development
30
proposes “proximal processes” created by the interaction of the actively developing
child and his or her interactions with others, objects and symbols in the immediate
environment. These processes may pose a risk to or positively contribute to the
child’s development. A second human development model proposed by Richmond,
Bowen and Wooley (2005) characterizes interactions between environment factors
and the individual as having two effects. A compensatory effect occurs when a
factor has a direct positive additive outcome. Contrasted with the compensatory
phenomenon, the interactive effect occurs when an injurious factor is present, but the
factor acts as an immunizing agent against its negative effect for the individual. This
positive outcome in interaction is referred to as “resilience.” Wooley and Bowen’s
study examining the relationship between the number of supportive and caring adults
and school success found that students, who reported these positive relationships,
were in a sense immunized from a variety of negative environmental factors and
reported higher levels of psychological and behavioral engagement in school.
School Engagement
Using Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory of human development, Becker
and Luthar (2002) noted that environmental factors at the “microsystem” level (i.e.,
school level) have been shown to sharply reduce the motivation and achievement of
children during the middle school years. Lowered teacher expectations (Eccles,
Lord, & Buchanan, 1996), decreasing student self-esteem and academic interest
(Battistich, Solomon, Kim, Watson, & Schaps, 1995), nonacademic norms reinforced
by peers (Murdock, 1999) are some of the factors linked to reduced student
31
motivation and school engagement. DiPerna, Volpe, & Elliott (2002) proposed the
concept of “engagement” in the learning process is a key factor in student academic
success. Academic engagement, refers to the collection of student behaviors such as
asking and answering questions, participating in classroom learning tasks, writing,
and talking about academic concepts and have been labeled as “academic enablers”
(Greenwood, Horton, & Utley, 2002). Wang , Haertel, & Walberg (1993) identified
academic enablers such as the propensity toward engagement in school as having the
most significant effect on academic achievement. DiPerna and Elliott (2002) added
the category of academic skills that also contribute to academic competence.
Academic skills are defined as the basic through advanced skills and knowledge that
is the focus of instruction in reading, mathematics and critical thinking at all levels of
schooling. Contrasted with the academic skills domain, academic enablers are
attitudes and behaviors that allow students to participate in academic instruction and
include students’ interpersonal skills, motivation, study skills, and engagement. In
their learning model, DiPerna and Elliott contended that the combination academic
skills and academic enablers result in academic competence.
Disengagement from School
A number of researchers concluded that the process of disengagement from
school is predictable and begins years before high school (Christianson, Sinclair,
Lehr, & Godber, 2001; Morse, Anderson, Christianson, & Lehr, 2004). Researchers
examining the notion that dropping out of school is the final stage in a cumulative
process of disengagement have studied such factors as family background (Astone &
32
McLanahan, 1991), peer influence (Hallinan & Williams, 1990), neighborhood and
community conditions (Garner & Raudenbush, 1991), school related experiences
(Rumberger, 1995), and the structural characteristics of schools (Coleman & Hoffer,
1987). A longitudinal study by Balfanz, Herzog, and MacIver followed more than
12,000 Philadelphia sixth grade students from 1996 to 2004 affirmed the positive
benefits of school engagement, especially with regard to high school graduation.
Two research questions guided their study: 1). Do many students in high-poverty
schools become disengaged at the start of the middle grades? and 2). Does this
disengagement reduce the likelihood that they will eventually graduate from high
school? The four factors of attending school less than 80% of the time, receiving
poor final behavior grades, failing math and failing English had high predictive value
in relation to high school graduation. Balfanz, Herzog, and MacIver summarized
their studies findings: “[i]t has become clear that the vast majority of dropouts, at
least in large cities, are highly identifiable and predictable before they have entered
or spent much time in high school” (p. 29).
Transition to High School
The topic of the school transitions has become a frequent topic in the research
and practice literature examining the challenges students face as they move from
middle school into high school (Akos, P., & Galassi, J. P., 2004). Eccles and
Wigfield (1997) identified middle school age as perhaps the most challenging time
for students, noting that this developmental period is a time of rapid hormonal and
physical change and intensifying peer-related pressure. Wiles and Bondi (2001),
33
describing the middle school years noted that “[a]t no other time in development is a
student likely to encounter such a diverse number of problems simultaneously” (p.
35). Increased attention given to the middle to high school transition has also been
due to the fact that ninth graders overall have the highest course failures and dropout
rates compared to other high school grade levels (Hertzog & Moran, 1998; Roderick
& Camburn, 1999). Graber and Brooks-Gunn (1996) found that suspensions and
expulsions increase significantly early in the ninth grade year explained by a “life
transition model” of development suggesting that some adolescents fail to cope with
the major changes and new responsibilities experienced between childhood and
young adulthood. Clearly, middle school has been recognized by practitioners and
researchers as a time of great change, challenge and potential, encouraging many
educators to call for increased funding at the middle school level (Cooney &
Bottoms, 2002; Cushman, 2006; Mizelle, 2005; Smith, 2007).
High School Graduation
Earning a high school diploma has long been recognized as an educational
achievement bringing the promise of economic well-being for individual graduates
and economic stability for the nation (Swanson, 2004). Increased educational
attainment has been positively associated with rising income levels and greater
employment stability and negatively associated with healthcare, incarceration and
other costs born by American taxpayers (National Center on Secondary Education
and Transition, 2007). In the light of the negative economic consequences of
dropping out of school for the individual and society, facilitating school completion
34
for all students has become a major priority for educators and policy makers
nationwide.
Since the passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation in 2002,
high school graduation rates have taken on increasing importance among policy
makers and state and local educational agencies (Swanson, 2004). NCLB requires
annual statewide summary reports of high school graduation rates (U.S. Department
of Education, 2004). For the first time, local educational agencies are held
accountable by the federal government to improve, over time, the graduation rates of
their high school students. All states must now utilize a standardized calculation of
high school graduation that reads “the percentage of students who graduate from
secondary school with a regular diploma in the standard number of years” (p. 1)
(Alliance for Excellent Education, 2007). The plethora of educational articles,
websites, research studies, etc. devoted to the nation’s high school dropout rate also
shows that this continues to be an issue of national concern.
Even with this added attention given to the challenge of keeping students in
school and the billions of dollars spent on a wide range of programs, the high school
completion rate has consistently fallen each year from a peak of 77.1 percent in 1969
to 69.9 percent in 2000 (Barton, 2005). Conversely, the dropout rate continues to
stubbornly increase. According to the U.S. Department of Education (2004), five out
of every 100 high school students enrolled in 2000 left school before 2001 and did
not successfully complete a high school program. Between 1990 and 2001, 347,000
and 544,000 students in grades 10 through 12 respectively, left school without
35
graduating. The National Center for Education Statistics (2007) reported that in
October 2001, five percent of students ages 15-24 had left school since the previous
October. The Institute of Education Sciences (2007) cited the average high school
dropout rate at 11 percent, with a rate as high as 28 percent among particular
segments of the population.
The concern over graduation rates is well-justified, as dropping out of school
has been linked empirically to a host of negative consequences such as reduced job
prospects and financial well-being, increased public financial assistance, and higher
rates of incarceration (The Institute of Education Sciences, 2007). Each of these
negative consequences associated with failure to complete high school will be
discussed below.
There is solid research evidence that dropping out of school is associated
with reduced job prospects and financial security. For example, Gottlob (2006)
estimated that, in the state of Indiana alone, high school dropouts earn $4.4 billion
dollars less per year than high school graduates. Research by Gouskova and Stafford
(2005) showed that on average, families headed by high school graduates
accumulated ten times more wealth compared with households headed by high
school dropouts. Based upon these research findings, the Alliance for Excellent
Education (2007) estimated that $74 billion dollars of accumulated wealth would be
added to U.S. families if every household were headed by a high school graduate.
When compared to high school graduates, dropouts are twice as likely to live
in poverty and take advantage of public assistance (Bridgeland, DiIulio, & Morison,
36
2006). Based upon their statistical analysis, Bridgeland, DiIulio and Morison
estimated that state and federal government would reap $45 billion in cost savings
due to reduced costs in public health and welfare payments if the number of 20-year
old high school dropouts totaling 700,000 were reduced by half. In an exhaustive
empirical review of the link between education levels and 30 separate measures of
health, Cutler and Lleras-Muney (2006) found that increases in education level is
strongly negatively associated with almost all conditions of poor health examined.
Grossman’s (2006) literature review found higher educational levels to be associated
with healthier behavior. As argued by Belfield and Levin (2007), more educated
people living a healthier life-style tend to take advantage of public health care
assistance and have the financial means to pay for the care they need.
Failure to complete a high school program has been linked to higher rates of
incarceration and a negative impact on state and national economies. Research by
Harlow (2003) found that approximately 75% of the state prisons and nearly 59% of
federal inmates did not complete high school. According to the National Center for
Education Statistics (2006), average educational spending in the U.S. per student is
$9,644 per year, while the average cost per state prison inmate is $22,600 (Stephen,
2004). Overall, incarceration costs in the U.S. for 2004 was nearly $50 billion
(Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2005).
Why students choose to drop out of school is personal, directly related to
individual student’s life circumstances (Bridgeland, DiIulio, & Morison, 2006).
There is no single reason why students decide to leave school, however, Bridgeland,
37
DiIulio, & Morison identified five top reasons for dropping out of high school.
These reasons include uninteresting classes (47%), inability to catch up on
attendance (43%), spending time with others not interested in school (42%), too
much freedom and lack of rules (38%), and school failure (35%).
With the high cost to society incurred from the increasing high school
dropout rate, numerous dropout prevention programs have been developed (The
Institute of Education Sciences, 2007), each with an overriding goal of increasing
student engagement in school (Morse, Anderson, Christenson and Lehr, 2004). For
example, California’s Dropout Prevention and Recovery Programs (SB 65) provides
assistance with early identification and intervention, encouraging the development of
a nurturing school climate through the use of Student Success Teams, positive
attendance and discipline programs and resilience-creating strategies to help students
at high risk of school failure (California Department of Education, 2007a). After
reviewing elements of specific successful dropout prevention programs, Woods
(2007) concluded that school dropouts have dissimilar characteristics and therefore
need a program or programs tailored to meet their individual needs and
circumstances. Woods concluded his program review with 42 program
recommendations to be carried out at the national down to the school levels.
Among Woods’s recommendations is the need to identify at-risk children at a
young age, even as early as preschool age. There is strong empirical evidence in
support of this recommendation (Shore, 2003). The National Education
Association’s (2007) recent “Twelve Dropout Action Steps” plan contends that at-
38
risk children must be identified in the elementary and middle school grades to help
youth overcome their sense of disconnectedness from school. A longitudinal study
by Balfanz, Herzog, and MacIver followed more than 12,000 Philadelphia sixth
grade students from 1996 to 2004 affirmed the positive benefits of school
engagement, especially with regard to high school graduation. Two research
questions guided their study: 1). Do many students in high-poverty schools become
disengaged at the start of the middle grades? and 2). Does this disengagement reduce
the likelihood that they will eventually graduate from high school? The four factors
of attending school less than 80% of the time, receiving poor final behavior grades,
failing math and failing English had high predictive value in relation to high school
graduation. Balfanz, Herzog, and MacIver summarized their studies findings as
follows: “[i]t has become clear that the vast majority of dropouts, at least in large
cities, are highly identifiable and predictable before they have entered or spent much
time in high school” (p. 29).
Conclusion
For this study, the concept of “achievement gap” was defined as the
persistent disparity in academic performance between groups of students,
particularly between white or Asian affluent students and students of color, minority
students and second language learners. A review of current literature on the
achievement gap revealed that a wide range of factors have been identified, proposed
and studied for their effect on lowering the achievement gap. Chapter three presents
the school-related variables selectively gleaned from the literature, and the
39
conceptual model and methodology employed to identify those school-wide
practices, programs and instructional practices associated with reducing of the
achievement gap among the study’s middle school Hispanic students.
40
CHAPTER III
METHODOLOGY
Introduction
Closing the achievement gap between students of color, minority and second
language learners and more affluent white and Asian students has long eluded most
urban schools. Research has often quantified and described poor academic
performance among impoverished and minority students, while other empirical and
anecdotal evidence exists showing that the achievement gap for minority children
can be narrowed. Increased demand for educational accountability from the public,
politicians and parents for improved student academic performance and a basic
moral obligation to provide what is best for students necessitates the continued quest
for the identification of promising school factors. This study examined an urban
intermediate school that has successfully closed the achievement gap, seeking to
identify key practices that have made a positive impact on student academic
performance serving to close the achievement gap between this particular population
of students and more affluent white and Asian middle school students. For this
study, the concept of “achievement gap” was defined as the persistent disparity in
academic performance between groups of students, particularly between white or
Asian affluent students and students of color, minority students and second language
learners.
41
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to identify factors associated with significant
improvement in student academic performance over the past several years at a high
performing middle school. Three distinct variables, including school-wide
programs, school-wide practices, and specific instructional strategies implemented
by teachers and administrators to improve the academic performance of all students
were examined. The research study also set out to identify achievement gap closing
programs, practices and instructional strategies with the goal of extrapolating its
finding to comparable socio-economic status schools, providing the promise of
significant student academic performance improvement to similar schools that have
yet to close the achievement gap.
Research Questions
Three research questions were developed by the nine dissertation team
members that met over the course of one year. During that time, the team located,
gathered and examined research on factors shown to be positively associated with
student academic achievement. The group narrowed their focus of study to three key
factors associated with student academic success, including school-wide programs,
school-wide practices and instructional practices. The study was guided by the
following research questions:
1. What school-wide programs promote student achievement?
2. What school-wide practices promote student achievement?
42
3. What instructional strategies were implemented to target the closing of
the achievement gap?
Research Design Summary
The research design was mixed methods approach case study of a high
academic performing urban middle school involving the collection and analysis of
both quantitative and qualitative data. A high performing urban school for this study
was defined as having outperformed its Academic Performance Index growth target
expectation for at least two consecutive years, having a statewide ranking of at least
Decile 5, and a similar schools rank of at least seven based upon student results from
the State Testing and Reporting Program. Finally, a qualifying Title I school was
chosen, having 40% or more of the student population receiving free and reduced
lunch. This high performing, Title I qualifying, low socio-economic status school
was selected with the goal of extrapolating the study’s findings to other similar
schools that have not as yet begun to close a persistent achievement gap, identifying
programs, practices and instructional strategies that hold the promise of improving
student achievement.
The mixed methods approach utilized in this study employed both
quantitative and qualitative research approaches for the purpose of reducing the
limitations and biases of these distinctly different research methodologies (Creswell,
2003). The mixed methods approach allows for the “triangulation” of data sources,
the convergence of data from the quantitative and qualitative approaches. Data
results from one method can help guide the collection and/or interpretation data
43
gathered from the other method and vice versa. This collection of data from multiple
approaches provides corroborating evidence enhancing the validity of a study’s
conclusions (Bazeley, 2004). The triangulation of data research design provided
comprehensive information from a variety of sources associated with the
achievement gap phenomenon, increasing the reliability of the study’s conclusions.
An instrumentation matrix was constructed by the dissertation group to ensure a
comprehensive triangulation of data sources (Appendix F).
The validity and reliability of this mixed methods case study of one high
performing urban public school was further strengthened by the thematic dissertation
approach with five researchers simultaneously investigating high performing urban
schools using an identical methodology. The thematic dissertation researchers
collaboratively developed the data collection instruments and identified existing data
sources to determine factors associated with closing the achievement gap. Two sets
of interview questions were developed, one set for administrators and another set of
questions for teachers. These questions gathered information from study participants
on school-wide programs, practices and instructional strategies perceived to promote
student achievement. Numerous documents and records were also identified and
examined covering school background and profile, student achievement results,
parent and community involvement and fiscal information. Collectively, these
artifacts and interview and questionnaire data provided a wealth of information
addressing the three research questions.
44
Bolman and Deal’s (1997) four frames organizational theory provided the
conceptual framework for the examination of the school’s programs, practices and
instructional practices associated with closing the achievement gap. A standardized
observation form was used for the examination and comprehensive recording data on
the structural, political, human resources and symbolic frames during the school
observation visits.
Conceptual Framework and Data Analysis
A conceptual model (Figure 1) was developed to guide the investigation of
school-wide factors associate with improved student achievement and the closing the
achievement gap. Research variables repeatedly identified in the literature as
potentially having a significant impact on student achievement assisted the team in
the formation of the model. The three research questions narrowed the focus of the
investigation to school-wide programs, school-wide practices and instructional
strategies reported by teachers and administrators as having a positive impact on
student achievement. The conceptual framework identified six variables for the
investigation, including personnel practices, school culture, administrator leadership
practices, teacher instructional practices, professional development training, and
school-wide programs. Research question #1, “What school-wide programs have
been shown to increase student achievement?” directly addressed the impact of
school programs on student academic performance. Research question #2, “What
school-wide practices have been shown to increase student achievement?” was
investigated through the conceptual framework variables of personnel practices,
45
administrator leadership practices, school culture, and professional development
training. Finally, the conceptual model’s “teacher instructional practice” variable
was addressed by research question #3, “What instructional strategies were
implemented to target the closing of the achievement gap.” Additionally included in
the conceptual model are those factors identified in the literature as potentially
reducing achievement gaps between various subgroups, including parent
communication, collaboration and data analysis, early intervention programs, and
improved teacher quality. Finally, although not directly investigated by the three
research questions, the research team anticipated that the variables of school
population characteristics, community/family expectations and barriers, No Child
Left Behind requirements, school accountability, state testing and globalization
pressures would be found to influence the areas of school programs, school practices
and instructional strategies utilized in the classroom.
46
Figure 1
Conceptual Framework Used for the Case Study
47
Analysis and interpretation of data related to the three research questions
involved the triangulation of comprehensive information from a variety of sources,
following the procedural steps suggested by Creswell (2003). Relevant data related
to the three research questions were gathered through questionnaires, interviews,
school observations, and examination of a variety of documents and records. After
the data gathering phase was completed, the researcher first read and examined all
the information to make an overall general sense of the many diverse pieces of
information. Next, the data were aggregated into logically related thematic units or
conceptual categories. These thematic units provided the structure for the
subsequent detailed descriptive narrative summarizing the factors teachers and
administrators believed responsible for improved student academic performance.
Other data in the form of existing documents (e.g., School Accountability Report
Card) also contributed to the richness of the summary narrative. Finally, possible
extrapolations from this study’s data were suggested and areas for further research
were also suggested.
Sample and Population
The school selected for this case study was an excellent exemplar of a high
performing urban middle school for several reasons. Being a part of the relatively
large urban district, the school is located in a primarily Hispanic, low socioeconomic
neighborhood. The school has met or exceeded the criteria set for this study defining
it as a high performing school for the last three academic years. As shown in Table 1
below, the school met the API statewide ranking criteria of at least five and exceeded
48
its Academic Performance Index growth target each year, earning a total of 51 points
over the last three years. When compared to 100 schools in California with similar
demographics and characteristics, this school’s ranking was consistently in the top
10.
Table 1
Academic Progress for the Research Study School
School
Year
API
Growth
Target
API
Actual
Growth
API
Base
Score
API
Statewide
Ranking
Similar
Schools
Ranking
2004-2005 6 16 681 5 10
2005-2006 5 28 697 5 10
2006-2007 5 7 725 6 10
This school made steady academic performance improvement over the past
several years as measured by the California Standardized Testing and Reporting
Program. The percentage of seventh and eighth grade students testing proficient and
advanced has risen from 19% in 2002 to 40% in 2006 in English language arts
(ELA) and from 25% to 49% in mathematics. In 2004, 25% of the seventh graders
and 24% of eighth grade students scored proficient or advanced on the English
California Standards Test. By 2007, the percentage of proficient and advanced
students in seventh grade had risen to 38% and 34% for eighth grade students. The
percentage of seventh grade students scoring proficient or advanced on the California
Standards Test (CST) in mathematics rose from 35% in 2004 to 39% in 2007. From
49
2004 to 2007, the percentage of eighth grade students scoring proficient or advanced
on the Algebra I CST increased from 18% in 2004 to 83% in 2007.
Meeting the study’s high academic performance criterion, other student,
school, family, and neighborhood characteristics qualified the school for this study.
The approximate 800 member student body represents the needs and challenges
faced by students in other schools located in primarily Hispanic, low socio-economic
neighborhoods. The school has been classified as a Title I school, having eighty-six
percent of the students on free or reduced lunch. Fifty-eight percent of the students
are English learners as identified by No Child Left Behind criteria. For forty-eight of
the students, neither parent has completed high school. Only 5% of the students’
parents are college graduates.
Table 2
Teacher Credentials
Teachers 2003-04 2004-05 2005-06
With Full Credential 32 36 31
Without Full Credential 8 4 6
Table 3
Certificated Staff Stability at the Case Study School
Years of Service at
School Site
Number of Certificated
Staff
1
2-5
6-10
11 or more
50
Instrumentation and Data Collection
Collection of a wide range of both quantitative and qualitative data was
completed at the school site over an eight week period for this case study.
Quantitative data included such information as questionnaire responses, achievement
test results, student demographic data, and school profile information. Qualitative
data came from sources such as interviewee responses, school background
information, the School Accountability Report Card, the Single School Plan and
researcher observations. To ensure a systematic and comprehensive approach to data
collection, a documents and records matrix was constructed (Appendix F).
A paper and pencil quantitative survey was developed by the dissertation
group using information found in Marzano’s work and completed by the two
administrators and 37 teachers to gather personal background information and
administrator and teacher perceptions related to the three research questions
(Appendices A and B). Questions one through six gathered data on the first research
question: “What school-wide programs promote student achievement?” Questions
seven through 25 addressed research question 2: “What school-wide practices
promote student achievement?” Questions 26 through 40 gathered information on
the third research question: “What instructional strategies were implemented to
target the closing of the achievement gap?”
The questionnaire employed a four-point Likert scale asking participants to
rate each survey question using the following statements: strongly disagree,
disagree, agree, and strongly agree. The four-point scale was chosen to prevent
51
participants from choosing a neutral position on any given statement. The
questionnaire was divided into three parts, each section containing questions related
to one of the three research questions.
Interviews were conducted with four teachers and the principal and assistant
principal. The teachers were strategically selected to insure that a sample of
beginning, mid-career and veteran teachers completed the questionnaire. Teachers at
varying levels of teaching experience were chosen to determine whether years of
experience influenced teacher perceptions related to the three research questions.
Two interview protocols were developed by the dissertation group, a question
set for teachers (Appendix C) and a set for the administrators (Appendix D). The
interviewers took detailed and structured notes following a prescribed protocol
during each interview as well as audio recording each session. These interview
recordings insured the accuracy of direct quotes written into the text of the
dissertation document and the subtleties of participants’ responses could be more
accurately reported and integrated into the data analysis compared with written notes
alone. Both interview protocols asked for information relevant to the three research
questions, including the identification of school-wide programs, school-wide
practices and instructional strategies that have promoted student achievement and the
narrowing of the achievement gap between these students and their more affluent
White and Asian counterparts. In addition to information specifically related to the
three research questions, respondents were asked to provide information related to
promoting rigorous courses, administrator team support for the school-wide
52
programs and practices and the nature of teacher collaboration related to student
achievement. Every effort was made on the researchers’ part to put the interviewees
at ease, assuring them of complete anonymity in the reporting of the study’s results
in the dissertation document in keeping with the ethical guidelines prescribed by the
Institutional Review Board. Researchers were free to ask appropriate follow-up and
clarifying questions, moving beyond the question protocol to further enhance the
thick, rich description of school phenomena associated with high student academic
achievement.
In an effort to capitalize on the benefits of data triangulation to strengthen
data interpretation conclusions, the research group developed interview questions
that mirrored questionnaire items. Although similar information was asked both in
the interview and on the questionnaire, the interview provided a forum for
participants to expand on their perceptions of school-wide programs, practices and
classroom instructional practices.
Five full days for school observations were selected by the school principal to
minimize disruptions to school routines. A standardized observation protocol
(Appendix E) was developed by the dissertation group using Bolman and Deal’s
(1997) four organizational frames paradigm. These frames include structural,
political, human resource and symbolic organizational factors. Information gathered
from this protocol allowed the researchers to systematically gather and interpret
school events and processes related to school-wide programs and practices. The four
frames also provided a structure for gathering data on the school’s culture and
53
leadership characteristics. This qualitative data provided rich, thick and detailed
descriptions of teacher-to-teacher, teacher-to-administrator, and administrator-to-
teacher interaction and the relating of school-wide programs and practices and
instructional strategies to student achievement.
A document review was conducted to gather information on the school’s
background and profile (Appendix F). The School Accountability Report Card and
The Single School Plan for Student Achievement provided information on class
sizes, number of suspensions and expulsions, instructional minutes, population
breakdown (i.e., ethnicity, SES, EL’s), special programs, enrichment opportunities,
electives , and extra-curricular clubs. Also examined were minutes of school groups’
meetings (e.g., leadership team, principal advisory group, and School Site Council),
vision and mission statements, professional development plans, Safe Schools Plan,
English Learner Master Plan, and the Healthy Kids Survey.
Student achievement results on the California Subject Tests for the past three
years was gathered and analyzed. Specifically, statistical data from the Annual
Performance Index (API) and Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) accountability
systems were secured from the California Department of Education’s website and
district benchmark achievement results were provided by the district office. Student
district purchased curriculum benchmark achievement test data supplied by the
district office was also collated and analyzed.
Parent and community involvement information was gathered from the
School Accountability Report Card, the school’s parent handbook, parent surveys,
54
the school’s website, The Single School Plan, parent club documents, parent and
community newsletters, and parent programs and educational outreach documents.
Ethical Considerations
This case study followed the research guidelines articulated in The National
Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral
Research’s The Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the
Protection of Human Subjects of Research (The National Commission for the
Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1978). The
National Research Act passed by Congress in 1974 establishing this national
commission that wrote The Belmont Report as it has come to be known, identified
three fundamental and essential research principles to be followed by all research
involving human subjects: respect for persons, beneficence and justice
(Zimmerman, 1997). Respect for persons recognizes the right of individuals for self-
determination and autonomy. Respect is given when individuals are allowed the
right to make informed decisions. Secondly, respect for persons mandates protection
for those who are incapacitated by mental disability, physical illness, immaturity, or
circumstances that limit the individual’s freedom (e.g. the imposition of a prison
term). The principle of beneficence requires the practice of making every effort to
improve the individual’s well-being and is grounded in the ethical tradition of the
Hippocratic Oath espousing the helping of others and doing the least harm to the
individual. Justice, the third principle advocated in The Belmont Report, requires
that each person receive fair, equitable treatment. Benefits and unavoidable burdens
55
are to be shared equitably among individuals, with no one person singled out for an
unfair imposition of either condition. The 1974 National Research Act also
mandated the establishment of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) to review and
approve all federally funded research. Prior to the establishment of these IRBs,
institutional review of federally funded research was voluntary, informal and lacked
standardized guidelines.
This research study, following The Belmont Report and University of
Southern California’s IRB guidelines was conducted so that no individual was placed
at risk of harm, each individual was fully informed of the purpose and intent of the
study, participation was made completely voluntary, and confidentiality of
participant responses was assured to maintain the anonymity of all who participated
in the study. All participants were treated respectfully and ethically to maximize the
benefits to those involved in the study. All data collection instruments and the
research methodology employed in this study received full USC IRB approval before
the research began. Use of all existing public records, test data, written observations
of public behavior, and surveys, although exempt from IRB approval (Heatherington,
Friedlander, & Johnson, 1989), has been done with the utmost ethical care.
The data analysis and conclusions drawn in this mixed qualitative and
quantitative study of a high performing urban school in a low socioeconomic
Hispanic neighborhood utilized what Creswell (2003) termed “data transformation.”
The qualitative data were “quantified” through the creation of codes to identify
reoccurring themes. The quantitative results from the questionnaires were
56
transformed into qualitative data through the identification of major themes gleaned
from the numerical data. The identification of themes from both the quantitative and
qualitative data allowed the researcher to compare the two types of data, providing
greater certainty for the studies conclusions and recommendations for further study.
57
CHAPTER IV
THE FINDINGS
Introduction
This chapter presents the case study findings and provides an analysis of
these results framed by the research questions presented in Chapter One. Qualitative
results from the focus group interviews, field observations, document review and
quantitative teacher survey results are organized, analyzed and interpreted with
reference to the research questions. The research questions are addressed using the
triangulation of each of the above mentioned research data.
The Research Questions
This case study examined an urban intermediate school that has successfully
closed the achievement gap, seeking to identify key factors that have made a positive
impact on student academic performance. Three distinct variables, including school
wide-programs, school-wide practices, and instructional strategies implemented by
teachers and administrators to improve the academic performance of all students
were examined. The study was thus guided by the following three research
questions:
1. What school-wide programs promote student achievement?
2. What school-wide practices promote student achievement?
3. What instructional strategies were implemented to target the closing of the
achievement gap?
58
Description of the Case Study School
The school selected for this case study was an excellent exemplar of a high
performing urban middle school possessing numerous characteristics of high quality
schools identified in the literature. A courteous greeting from the Campus Safety
person authorizing the researcher’s entry to the school grounds through the front gate
was followed by the viewing of large, prominently displayed banner reading “Giano,
We Are Family.” The clean and orderly physical plant, with well-maintained
grounds, freshly painted buildings and no trash in sight, further enhanced this
inviting welcome to the school. The bell rang and students were observed
transitioning between classes in a calm, orderly manner, with an obvious intent to
arrive to their next class on time. After the tardy bell rang, teachers immediately
began their instruction and appeared well prepared for the day’s lesson. When
homework was collected, all students turned in the required work in an efficient
manner. Teachers spoke to their students in friendly, yet business-like tones,
positively encouraging student participation. Teachers were observed teaching and
involving students in activities the entire instructional period, with homework
assigned at the end of the period just before the ending bell rang.
Description of Data Collection Methods
This case study employed a mixed methods approach, employing the
collection of both qualitative and quantitative data, allowing for the triangulation of
data sources. A 37-item paper and pencil questionnaire (Appendix A), organized by
the three research questions was developed and completed by 35 Giano teachers,
59
supplying the quantitative data. Interviews were conducted with 5 teachers, the
former principal and the current principal. To gather rich, detailed qualitative
information, interviews, school observations and a documents review were
conducted. Two interview protocols were developed by the dissertation research
group, consisting of a question set for teachers (Appendix C) and a set for the
administrators (Appendix D). The teachers were strategically selected to insure that
a sampling of beginning, mid-career and veteran teachers completed the interview.
The researcher completed detailed notes following a prescribed protocol during each
interview and an audio recording was made of each session to more accurately report
and analyze, as compared to a reliance on written notes alone. The audio recordings
were subsequently transcribed for ease of analysis. Five full days of school
observations were completed. A standardized observation protocol (Appendix E)
was developed by the dissertation research group using Bolman and Deal’s (1997)
four organizational frames paradigm. A document review was conducted to gather
information on the school’s profile and currently employed practices, programs and
instructional strategies.
Addressing the Research Questions
In this section, the key quantitative and qualitative data discovered during the
course of the investigation are categorized into their respective research question
presented in Chapter One.
60
QUESTION 1: What school-wide programs promote student achievement?
The case study school’s instructional program primarily rests upon the
district-adopted core curriculum, but have over the past 10 years, been encouraged
by the principal to utilize other materials to increase student achievement. The
school’s 2007 Distinguished Middle School Application described the rigorous
district-level adoption process in the following terms:
Textbook selection is a lengthy district-level process that includes input from
teachers, students, administrators and parents. Using a 20-section rubric,
texts are evaluated in the areas of readability, clarity, and accuracy of
information, sensitivity to student diversity, appropriateness and usability of
supplemental materials, and connection to real world and career awareness
experiences.
Even with this thorough adoption process, the teachers with principal encouragement
continually looked for supplemental materials, especially in the area of English and
language arts. As one teacher reported during the focus interview,
The principal said to us, “Let’s find the material, use it for a year, and we’ll
see what the scores look like”. Literally, there was no money. We had come
across this program called Accelerated Reader at the school. So we used that
program and we dug some other materials out of the closet, old Barnell Loft
stuff that was for reading comprehension and we literally raised scores for 90
percent of the kids in the program.
The principal described his desire to find the most effective instructional program
materials possible in the following terms:
My philosophy with our staff was, as we would implement a variety of
curricular programs, I would always say to them, we would always talk about
a commitment to try to make this work to the best of our ability. But as we
reflected on those programs, if we were finding that certain things weren’t
working, that they understood and that they had the professional freedom and
obligation to learn and make things work better. I’ll give you a really good
example of this, and I took some risks on this, a good example of this is the
61
language program. We put language units in the first couple of years we saw
some efficacy from it. But the teacher began, probably in the middle of the
second year coming into the third year, that they began to see some real
limitations of the language program. And even though our district wanted,
they used the word “fidelity” for implementation, they were saying “You
know Steve, this part of the language program isn’t working, and this part
isn’t working.”
The principal commented further on his resisting district pressure for district-wide
curriculum program uniformity:
I was giving the teachers freedom and to not hold them to the line so much
that they didn’t have that ability to go beyond and bring in other materials
that would work better. And so we would use the pieces of language that we
thought were effective. I ran interference for the teachers. The “boss” came
out and said “I notice you’re not doing this.” And I would say, “You know,
we found out that this wasn’t working, but this is working and see, our scores
are going up.” So the “proofs in the pudding.” And fortunately I worked in a
district where that was ok. I think in our district, we had the ability, that
flexibility to where if we could show where if something else could work
better that is was ok to take a risk and to try some other things and not
necessarily be held absolutely to a particular implementation.
With 38 percent of the student population identified as English learners and
many other students challenged by the district’s core curriculum, the case study
school’s teachers and administrators created a Saturday school program named “The
GAP Program” providing additional assistance to students scoring far below basic
and below basic on the California Subject Test in math and English/language arts.
The GAP Program targets EL levels 1 through 5 students and reclassified fluent
English proficient students (R-FEPS) not yet proficient for three years. Students
scoring basic in ELA are enrolled in the GOAL program providing additional ELA
classes in addition to the core academic program during the school day. According
to the 2007 Distinguished Middle School Application, “Funding has been reallocated
62
using Title I and Title II funds to support these classes and the master schedule has
been adjusted so that these classes average 25:1, providing increased interaction
between teacher and students.” GOAL teachers collaborate with the ELA teachers
with the explicitly identified goal of closing knowledge and skill gaps found through
standards based diagnostic tests and district benchmark tests. GOAL teachers focus
on vocabulary development, word analysis, reading comprehension, and writing and
reading with a purpose. An emphasis is also placed on the need to be prepared for
college prep classes in high school.
An Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program further
prepares middle school students for high school and eventually college. The
principal reported that its first year of 2000, they began with a few students and
began to rapidly expand program enrollment. The AVID program is designed to
assist students who would be the first in their families to attend college. AVID is an
elective class meeting during the regular school day. To prepare for college prep
curriculum in the high school, AVID students are encouraged to enroll in rigorous
courses, such as Algebra I and foreign language classes. The AVID class provides
instruction in academic “survival skills” such as how to study, take notes of teachers’
lesson presentations, read for content, take notes, and effectively manage time. In
2006, after the completion and submission of the AVID Demonstration School
Packet and a site visit by an AVID validation team, the school was awarded National
Demonstration Site status. The AVID team recognized the strengths of the program
and its positive impact on the entire school citing in their summative report the
63
“varied and highly engaging instructional practices observed in all academic classes,
reflecting strong professional development” associated with the AVID program. For
example, through the AVID program, all teachers and students have been trained in
use of Cornell Notes to quickly take clearly organized notes and “Write Path”
strategies such as use of graphic organizers, questioning techniques, and essay
organization; both AVID strategies are designed to increase student comprehension
and conceptual understanding in all subject areas. The principal reported that
students in AVID classes typically score higher that their non-AVID peers on CST
and district benchmark tests. In 2006, AVID students’ average GPA was 3.2 on a
four-point scale.
A well-developed academic counseling program provides further academic
support to all case study school students. The principal, from his early days at the
school, clearly identified the academic focus the counselor was to have as described
by the principal in the research interview:
We have a full-time guidance counselor and a six-hour guidance assistant. It
was really having a conversation early on many years ago about the academic
focus and placing kids properly in classes, do we really understand the whole
picture of how it all fits together and the interventions that are necessary for
kids and making sure that we’re fine tuning where the kids are accurately
placed and that they are going to get the academic rigor and if we’re
beginning to see them having academic difficulties, the guidance role of
following up with the kids and doing progress reports and doing counseling,
really working with kids, not more administrative work.
The 2007 Distinguished Middle School Application described their counseling
program as “ . . . a strong and proactive counseling program resulting from our focus
on both the National Standards for School Counseling Programs and the American
64
School Counselor Association’s Framework for School Counseling.” The
application further validates the program citing State Superintendent Jack
O’Connell’s recognition of the school “as one of eight California middle schools to
win the 2005 “Best in the West” award for ‘providing an exemplary counseling and
student support program.’” Earning this prestigious award meant that the counseling
program had exceeded national counseling standards for three consecutive years.
Further validating the effectively proactive nature of this support program, a math
teacher stated, “If a math support student in my algebra class is still not having
success, we would bring in the counseling department and see if there are other
issues the student is struggling with.”
In 2002, the case study school’s district piloted the integration of the
Houghton Mifflin reading program with the Edusoft computer assessment system.
The Edusoft system allows teachers to aggregate, disaggregate and analyze data by
student, class, grade, subject area, educational program or other demographic
information. Prior to the utilization of the Edusoft system, teachers at the case study
school computed and analyzed test results data manually using paper and pencil as
described by a teacher during a focus interview group session: “So even before the
wonderful things you can do now, we would sit in the summer time we would pull
numbers by hand and make focus groups by hand and it would take a month in the
summer.” This summer test data analysis work gave these teachers a powerful tool
for designing more effective instruction through the identification of student gaps in
65
academic knowledge and skills. According to the Director of Curriculum and Staff
Development for the district,
We had already used Edusoft in other instructional areas for benchmark
testing, so we were familiar with its ability to give our teachers immediate,
detailed views of performance by student, class, program, and demographic
group. The integration with our reading curriculum gave us the power to link
assessment and instruction as part of daily classroom practice. I think of it as
actually realizing the strategy of data-driven instruction.
The Edusoft system now provides teachers the means to quickly identify struggling
students by academic content standard, allowing for the grouping of students for
remediation or enrichment and prescribe specific instructional interventions. On a
district level, the Edusoft efficiently administers, scores and reports district-wide
benchmark exams. Teacher are able to receive these student assessment information
within days, rather that the weeks it took to organize student data by hand using
paper and pencil. The district’s director of student assessment expressed the time
saving nature of the Edusoft system in the following terms: “The ability for teachers
to quickly get a list of resources within our adopted program allows them to spend
more time on instruction. We can better differentiate instruction in each classroom,
while giving our teachers more time to teach.” The system also allows teachers to
scan and score teacher made classroom tests. Teachers affirmed the effectiveness in
ease of use of this system as indicated in the focus interview and their positive
responses to related questionnaire items. Eighty-three percent indicated “agree” or
“strongly agree” to the statement “My school has a school-wide program or
programs that provide effective, timely assistance for students who experience
66
difficulty in attaining the proficient or advanced level of the academic content
standards” and 80 percent marked “agree” or “strongly agree” to the statement “My
school has a school-wide program or programs to assist teachers in the use of
academic assessments to provide information on, and to improve, the achievement of
individual students and the overall instructional program.”
To provide after school assistance to students, the principal and teachers
applied for and secured grant funding from the California State “Before and After
School Learning and Safe Neighborhoods Partnership Program.” This program
provides competitive grants for public middle schools to provide tutoring, homework
assistance and educational enrichment before and after regular school hours. The
principal described the securing of the grant and how the school spent the funds in
the following terms:
We wrote and got a grant when it first came out called the After School
Academic and Safe Neighborhood Partnership. We were the first middle
school in the district to connect with agency called Options. They were in
elementary schools doing after school support kinds of programs. And so I
met the director and explained what we had in mind, asked if he would work
with us, he co-sponsored a grant and got a grant from the state to run an after
school program. And they brought in a bungalow, a double wide portable
classroom and we ended up calling it “Teens ‘R Us.” We ran that program; I
think its still going on. It helped to make up for the loss of electives during
the day because we had a lot of recreational programs, field trips, a lot of
things going on after school, hard kinds of experiences, computers and things
like that. I think we ended up with about a hundred and fifty active students in
that program.
Looking for other ways to support student achievement, the principal
identified increased parent involvement as a high priority objective seven years ago.
As reported in the districts information website, an on campus parent center was
67
established offering 12-week parenting classes provided by the Parent Institute of
Quality Education, a non-profit parent group. These classes, attended by 160 - 180
parents annually, offer specific strategies for parents to better support their child's
success in school. During the research interview, the principal stated
We would do two institutes a year and we would graduate 80 to 90 each
institute. What a wonderful thing [for] that program in terms of bringing
parents in and being connected, and having that vision of their child go to
college. And I think that was a real positive for the students.
The teacher, also, strongly recognized the school’s commitment to encouraging
parent involvement as indicated by the almost 90 percent “agree” and “strongly
agree” responses to the research questionnaire item reading “My school has a
school-wide program or programs to increase parent involvement through means
such as family literacy services”.
QUESTION 2: What school-wide practices promote student achievement?
Both the principal and the teachers emphatically identified the use of
California Academic Content Standards in ELA, math, science and social studies as
perhaps one of the single most important school-wide practice advancing student
achievement at their school. During the school visits, teachers were observed
referring often to these standards when teaching and the standards were seen
prominently posted in every classroom observed. According to the principal, since
the adoption of the standards, he has consistently communicated his expectation to
the staff that all lessons are to be based upon an appropriate academic standard or
standards in every lesson. The teachers affirmed this standards-based teaching
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emphasis, describing the planning that takes place in their bimonthly department
planning meetings. Standards selected for lesson coverage are identified during
these regular meetings to insure that the most prominent on the CST’s are thoroughly
taught and re-taught as needed throughout the school year. With the principal’s
encouragement, the teachers began to use the adopted textbooks and other materials
as a tool for teaching the standard’s content, selectively choosing and utilizing only
relevant portions. This selectivity was reflected in the words of a science teacher
during a focus interview session: “Well, for science, one of the key factors is that the
principal gave us the professional freedom to be able to teach as we thought best, not
just from the book. The book was only a resource.” The Edusoft assessment system
has also given the teachers more freedom and flexibility in using the state standards
when assessing student learning using the adopted curriculum and other instructional
materials. The Edusoft system not only scores the district’s benchmark tests, it
allows for the timely scoring and reporting of other curricular and teacher made
quizzes and tests, identifying how well students have mastered related content
standards and allowing teachers to more accurately adjust their teaching. The
district’s Director of Student Assessment commented on this Edusoft feature in the
following manner:
A critical part of our improvement initiatives was to become more
prescriptive in our teaching, in every classroom, every day. Early in our
Edusoft experience, we began using the system to score and report on
assessments such as regular chapter tests, quizzes, and other teacher-
developed tests. Our goal was to help teachers make data- and performance-
driven ‘on the spot‘ decisions to personalize and differentiate instruction.
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Three times each school year, the case study school utilizes the district’s
Benchmark tests to monitor and evaluate student performance in English/language
arts, math, science, and social studies. Using the Edusoft’s web-based assessment
system assesses student performance on benchmark tests integrated with the
district’s adopted core academic curriculum divided into GATE/Honors, “Regular”
and SDAIE subgroups. Printed reports identify those California Academic Standards
least mastered by the students in each of the subgroups. Based upon those data,
English/language arts, math, science and social studies teachers within their
respective departments, identify re-teaching strategies collated and included in the
school’s Single Plan for School Achievement. For example the English/language
arts Benchmark 1 Test showed that 7
th
grade students had not mastered content
standard Reading 1.3 Clarifying word meanings through the use of definition,
example, restatement, or contrast. The English/language art department stated in
their section of the Single Plan for School Achievement that teachers would
“continue the use of the Holt Literature series to teach spelling, vocabulary, root
words, prefixes, suffixes, and words in context.”
To promote the utilization of best practices in the classroom, the principal as
well as the district, spends significant resources on staff development. Teachers
newly hired by the district attend six days of district-sponsored training in elements
of lesson design and instruction called “The Essential Elements of Instruction.” This
is to ensure that all teachers have a good understanding of what the district considers
sound instructional practice, as described by the principal in this interview response:
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We’ve had a system where every teacher that would come into new to the
school district, and even veteran teachers were expected to go through what
we called “The Essential Elements of Instruction.” It was basically a
Madeline Hunter approach with some modifications to it. So everybody had
an expectation of lesson design, what effective lesson design was.
After this training, many staff development opportunities are available for teachers
as described by a science teacher at the case study school in the following response:
We’ve had staff development and going to conferences and catch any kind of
“tricks of the trade” to implement to our class. Also, too, another factor was
we began to implement school-wide instructional strategies like thinking
maps and Cornell Notes to promote organizational factors in their thinking
and in their work. We’ve had training.
A Leadership Council, comprised of teacher leaders, department chairs, guidance
counseling staff, and administrators meets monthly to plan and coordinate a
continuous program improvement and professional development planning processes.
The Leadership Council solicits input from all teachers, classified staff, and the
School Site Council to help determine staff training needs that are then incorporated
into the schools Single School Plan and a long-range professional development plan.
A wide-range of trainings have been incorporated into these plans over the recent
past, including sessions on differentiated instruction, brain-based teaching strategies,
the characteristics of adolescent learners, the needs of gifted and talented students,
Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English (SDAIE) strategies, Guided
Language Acquisition Design strategies (GLAD). The Los Angeles County Office
of Education has provided training in reading and writing in the content areas.
Content knowledge is supported by attendance at subject-specific conferences such
as the California Science Education Conference.
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Collaboration among the teachers has been an increasing phenomenon at the
case study school. When asked about collaboration in focus group interviews, the
teachers consistently framed their responses around the concept of building trust
among themselves and committed acceptance of the principal’s leadership. During a
focus group interview, the researcher offered some observations about teacher
collaboration, and then asked how this was done at their school:
You have spent a lot of time talking to each other; I could tell that from the
way that you’re answering the questions. Do you have a structured time
when you have collaboration? Do you make your own meetings? How does
collaboration work here?
The first teacher to respond, one of the veteran teachers who had taught at the school
for over 10 years, replied:
I’ve seen the change over the last 10 years that I’ve been here with our
administrator […] and his willingness to begin to trust. Initially, he came
over from a different situation, and I think it took him awhile to develop that
trust of the teachers and staff. And as soon as he started to develop that sense
of trust, you noticed he started empowering the teachers, and with that came
the teachers’ gratitude back for this administrator, saying “We’re going to do
everything for this administrator.” Working together, we all wanted to do it.
A second teacher added to the discussion by saying “Well, and it did take him years
to get there. We had the benefit of having him over an extended period of time. His
first years weren’t like that. But as he grew, he was more able to let that (i.e., the
collaboration among teachers) out.” Because of the positive professional
relationship the principal was able to establish over the course of several years,
teachers were willingly drawn into what has come to be called a “Professional
Learning Community” (PLC) in which teachers and principals share common values
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and vision for the school, collective learning and application of learning and the free
sharing of newly learned personal teaching practice. The school’s Distinguished
Middle School Application described the principal’s part in creating this PLC in the
following terms: “Our principal supports collegial dealings with teachers and shares
power and decision making through leadership meetings with team leaders,
department chairpersons and coordinators”. The principal described this journey
toward the building of a Professional Learning Community as professional
empowerment build upon an eagerness to work together and the free sharing of
teaching expertise among the teachers:
I think that people built upon that empowerment where people felt they were
on the right track. We didn’t have all the answers, but we would figure it out
as we went along. I think it was that idea that we could convince and make
this thing work. We have the abilities and expertise amongst our staff to
figure out the strategies. Now we call that a “Professional Learning
Community.” But that’s what we felt intuitively what we needed to do.
Answering the researcher’s question “Have you had some training in Professional
Learning Communities?” a teacher gave the following example of collaboratively
monitoring the academic progress students who may be doing well in one teacher’s
classroom, but failing in another classroom:
But what was possible here is that people (i.e., the teachers) looked together,
so ok, how come in this class with this teacher, they’re likely to get an “F”,
but in this class their likely to get an “A” when it’s the same subject. It just
like their randomly placed in the class and you’d say, “Well, the odds are and
the odds are here that they’re going to get that.” How can we say that the
child goes into any math, any English, any science class, the odds are that
their grades will be more standardized in the sense that what tests are you
using, what homework policy do you have, what approaches do you have,
what’s working for you, what’s not working for you, how can we utilize that
to give the kids a more even playing field?
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Teacher responses like the above revealed the collaboration taking place among the
teachers when monitoring the progress of the students and the sense of responsibility
they feel collectively for the well-being of all the school’s children.
In addition to this generalized monitoring of student’s progress through
informal teacher collaboration, a number of specific accountability and assistance
practices have been implemented at the case study school to facilitate student
success. Students are required to write down each day’s homework for the four core
subject areas in their student notebooks called “Binder Reminders” to insure they
have a clear description of their homework when at home. A homework hotline has
been established for students to call in case further clarification is needed in the
evening. Students are required to identify one or more “study buddies” for ELA,
math, science and social studies to call for help as needed, writing down their names
and phone numbers in their Binder Reminder.
Several years ago, the principal in collaboration with key teacher leaders,
established the GOAL program providing an additional ELA class for the Re-
designated Fluent English Proficient (R-FEP) students. The principal, realizing the
fragile nature of the R-FEP’s newly acquired academic achievement label, knew that
these students scored proficient on the ELA CST for less than three years.
Concerned that these students would regress, the GOAL program provides these R-
FEP students with what the principal termed a “double dose” of ELA instruction.
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QUESTION 3: What instructional strategies were implemented to target the
closing of the achievement gap?
To better understand the developmental characteristics of middle school
students and their intellectual needs, the principal required the teachers to read and
discuss two signature California Department of Education publications titled Caught
in the Middle and Taking Center Stage. Caught in the Middle has provided the
teachers with information addressing middle school students’ unique learning needs,
character development, social and emotional development, physical development,
followed by recommendations for creating specifically effective middle schools that
address a wide range of concerns such as equal access, student diversity, school
culture, extracurricular and intramural activities, and school structure, scheduling
and assessment. Taking Center Stage, the sequel to Caught in the Middle, extended
their discussions of effectively working with middle school age children through a
student-centered approach, to include the need to develop a rigorous, standards based
educational program. The teachers at the case study school reported that they have
spend significant time in meetings discussing the contents of these two documents
and that they continually refer to them when planning lessons and identifying long-
range instructional goals. A comment made in the 2007 Distinguished School
Middle School Application about Taking Center Stage typifies the importance of this
document in terms of providing insights into the characteristics of their students:
“Taking Center Stage shows us that our students are inquisitive, desire to be
successful, and want the approval of those around them.” The 97 percent selection
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of “agree” and “strongly agree” on the questionnaire item reading “When developing
my lessons, I consciously select instructional materials based upon my knowledge of
my students’ developmental needs and learning styles” further validated their
interview responses in this area.
Having read and analyzed the contents of Caught in the Middle and the
sequel Taking Center Stage, the principal during the interview, enthusiastically
expressed his desire to apply the recommendations from these two documents
several years ago through the restructuring of the master schedule. With the
recommendation to increase the rigor of the academic program taken to heart, the
principal began to strategize how restructuring the school day might accomplish this
objective. The school just had secured several hundreds of dollars in grant funding,
and the principal and staff began to discuss whether to spend the money using the
same six period day with four core classes and two electives structure, or restructure
the day, dropping the electives to be replaced by supplemental reading and math
classes to provide more standards-based academic core instruction per day
recommended by the Taking Center Stage document. After much discussion and
debate with his staff, the principal with teacher approval, dropped the electives for
those students who were low performing in math and reading. Regarding reading,
and the same could have been said of math, the principal stated: “We began to say,
‘If we’re going to make the gains we’re going to need to make, particularly with our
low readers, we’re going to have to have a double dose of reading instruction and
they’re going to have to miss out on some things.’” The principal and staff
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considered a seven period day to try to keep the electives for all students and follow
the report recommendations, but they quickly concluded that the community would
not accept the additional period per day as reported by the principal in the following
terms:
Here was the trade off, because Caught in the Middle and On Center Stage
were the major documents and middle school reform was right in the
forefront and all these experiences for kids and exploratory wheels and what
not. Here we sat. We had tried to go for the concept of the seven period day.
It just wouldn’t fly; we couldn’t get support on it. We knew we were going
to have to deal with our existing structure.
Ultimately, for those students scoring far below basic and below basic on the math
and reading CSTs, the master schedule was change to include a fixed period home
room with the five flexible periods to accommodate electives for proficient and
advanced students and additional remedial classes for academically struggling
students.
With 38 percent of the student body identified as English learners, a
deliberate effort has been made to utilize Specially Designed Academic Instruction
in English (SDAIE) in all core content classes. The teachers reported using SDAIE
strategies, including modifying their speech patterns, using contextual clues,
multisensory experiences, comprehensible input devices, clearly developed lessons.
Above all, the teachers stressed the need for these strategies to be in support of
learning content and providing opportunities for all students to have access to the
rigorous core curriculum. Finally, in keeping with the student centered approach
discussed above, teachers mentioned the need to utilize the SDAIE strategy of
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lowering the “affective filter” to reduce student anxiety when mastering this rigorous
curriculum.
Recognizing the wide-range of academic abilities at the case study school,
teachers have for the past 10 years, been encouraged by the principal to read and
implement research based strategies found in such texts as Marzano’s Classroom
Instruction That Works and A Handbook for Classroom Instruction That Works.
Numerous information organizing devices, suggested by the research on the brain
and learning are utilized throughout the school. During the observational visits,
graphic organizers were prominently displayed in most classrooms and number of
classes had K-W-L charts written on the board or on chart paper. As reported by all
of the teachers, Cornell notes are used in every core class to organize teacher lecture
information. Real world experiences are often incorporated into lessons such as
math students studying various cell phone rate plans to identify the best plan based
upon student generated evaluation rubrics and science classes using globes,
skeletons, solar system models, and models of the human heart. The teachers also
reported making frequent use of collaborative groups, as affirmed by 83 percent of
the teachers indicating “agree” or “strongly agree” to the questionnaire item reading
“When developing my lessons, I consciously consider how to create cooperative
learning experiences for my students.” The teachers also emphatically stated that
challenging students to higher order levels of thinking is essential for improving
student achievement and was validated by the 97 percent “agree” and “strongly
agree” chosen for the questionnaire item reading “When teaching, I consciously
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employ teaching strategies and instructional materials that stimulate higher-order
thinking skills.” Finally, validating teachers interview responses indicating an
understanding of the active, inquisitive nature of middle school students, over 97
percent chose the “agree” and “strongly agree” response options for the
questionnaire item “When developing my lessons, I consciously consider how to
create active learning experiences for my students to facilitate engagement,” a well
established theme found in the brain-compatible learning research.
In keeping with the student-centered approach recommended by Caught in
the Middle, the teachers described the need for constant monitoring of student
understanding during the teaching and learning process. The teachers clearly cited
adjusting one’s teaching through formative assessment as an essential instructional
strategy. Ninety-four percent of the teachers selected “agree” and “strongly agree”
to the questionnaire item “When teaching, I monitor students’ understanding of the
content and make adjustments accordingly,” and 86 percent chose “agree” and
“strongly agree” for the question “When a student is having difficulty with an
activity or assignment, I am usually able to adjust it to his/her level.”
Another instructional strategy, the use of technology, is a common
occurrence in the classrooms of the case study school to support the instructional
program and reflects the district plan for the integration of technology across the
curriculum. Smart Boards and school pad interactive technology allows math,
history, and science teachers to visually illustrate curriculum content to reinforce
English vocabulary and explain and organize major concepts, access and display
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websites, run educational software, and deliver PowerPoint presentations.
Reporting on the use of technology, a math teacher stated,
I know for math, we implemented a lot of technology. About six years ago, I
started a math support class and I was able to bring in all the technology
which is your instructional practices in a non-traditional format, have
students come up to the board and work things out. For Algebra 1 I think it’s
a very effective program.
Students use the Microsoft Word program to complete major research projects in all
classes, create history PowerPoint presentations and use the Excel program in math
class. Supervised Internet access is available before, during, and after school. Each
classroom has a presentation station with a television, and VCR connected to a
school-wide network used for instructional videos, in-house produced informational
presentations, and career-based broadcasts.
Discussion of the Findings
This section analyzes the findings of the study discovered during the course
of the investigation, providing insights into the possible applications to other schools
and suggestions for further study found in Chapter Five. Analysis of the qualitative
data utilized a constant-comparison method (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). With the
major themes identified in the review of the literature found in Chapter Two in mind,
the transcription of the interview responses and documents were analyzed for key
issues, recurrent events, etc. that were initially placed into relationship categories.
Constant comparison among the individual data pieces within each category and with
the major themes identified in the literature assisted with the refinement of each
category. In the end, three major themes were identified because of their consistent
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recurrence at the case study school: 1. A culture of support for students, 2. The
setting of high academic expectations for students, and 3. The establishment of
school-wide systems and structures. Each of these themes is elaborated upon in the
following section using Bolman and Deals’ Four Frames model providing the
theoretical framework for an in-depth analysis of each theme.
A Culture of Support for All Students
Structural Frame
Beginning in 2001, the principal, assistant principal, and counselors, with
input from the teachers, made significant structural changes in the school’s
counseling program to better meet the students’ academic, social, and emotional
needs, creating what they termed the “Student Support Personnel Team” (SSPT).
This newly named SSPT counseling department was restructured around the
National Standards for School Counseling Programs, and in 2002, the American
School Counseling Association’s (ASCA) National Model: A Framework for
School Counseling Programs further restructured the activities of the school’s
counseling program. A statement found in the school’s 2008 Support Personnel
Accountability Report Card describes the outcome of this program restructuring:
“The SSPT, in collaboration with staff, parents, and community agencies, supports
all students in developing responsibility, resolving conflicts, improving academic
skills, meeting state and academic standards and preparing students for high school
and beyond.” Prior to this restructuring, the primary function of the counseling
department was to insure that students completed required courses to promote to
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high school and related work on the master class schedule to assist with the student
promotion. The adoption of the National Standards for School Counseling Programs
expanded the traditional role of the school counselors away from the narrow focus on
middle school program requirements and working with only the most needy students
to the supporting all of students’ academic, personal and social development and
career awareness. The counselors were also expected to systemically collaborate
with teachers and parents, viewing support for student development as a team effort.
Utilizing ASCA’s National Model: A Framework for School Counseling Programs,
they identified specific guidelines for creating the model, award winning program it
became, including the articulation of beliefs and mission, a delivery system
describing the activities, interactions and methods used, and a management system
consisting of an advisory council and data management structure. With the adoption
of these national guidelines, the school’s Student Support Personnel Team program
was poised to earn the distinguished “Best in the West” school counseling award.
Human Resource Frame
Early on in the teacher focus group interviews, the human resource frame
theme of “empowerment” emerged. Bolman and Deal describe “progressive
organizations” as those that empower and invest in the development of their
employees in at least three ways, including providing information and support,
encouraging autonomy and participation, and fostering team building. Each of these
methods of empowerment is discussed below as they relate to supporting all
students.
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Supporting the teachers’ efforts to provide the best possible instructional
program, the principal encouraged them to find additional resources to supplement
the district’s adopted curriculum. After district office approval was secured, the
teachers began to search for available materials. Some materials were found at the
school site, but they soon discovered that funding purchases was problematic, as
exemplified by one teacher’s frustrated interview reply, “And literally, there was no
money!” But, she quickly complimented the principal for his resourcefulness with
the following words: “He (i.e., the principal) was really creative with money,
because where in the world will you get money to do this kind of stuff? But he was
always able to finagle the money.” The principal, then, not only encouraged
initiative and creativity among the teachers in securing additional instructional
resources, he was most instrumental in empowering them and the instructional
program, and ultimately student performance to new heights of achievement through
his own efforts in this human resource frame area.
The principal, commenting upon the teachers’ efforts to improve student
achievement, described a “tipping point” leading to a significant jump in
collaboration and teamwork that occurred several years into his efforts to motivate
and empower the teachers. Since his arrival at the school, he had been encouraging
teachers to believe that collaborative, positive efforts would boost student
achievement. To quote the principal during the interview: “There was a ‘tipping
point’ in getting people to just believe, and it was a real key following years of
struggle of figuring it out, and figuring it out for ourselves what was working.” The
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principal went on to describe the recognition the school began to receive from their
positive, collaborative approach to their work, when he said, “As momentum came,
and as people would start to come on campus to see what we were doing, word
started to get out to the point that teachers would call up and ask if I had an opening
on my staff.” The principal then reflectively reminisced that the end result of this
positive teamwork synergy was increased student achievement when he commented:
“It was empowering that we were doing a lot and that we continued to do
more. So, I think in the second or third of API, we were a four out of 10 and
then, for years we always maintained a 10 on the similar schools ranking.
We kept ahead of the curve. We kept moving up.”
Finally, he concluded this part of the interview by recognizing that collaboration had
lead to teacher empowerment, which in turn, created what the literature terms a
“Professional Learning Community.” He summarized his final thought on the matter
as follows:
But I think that people built upon that empowerment where people felt they
were on the right track. We didn’t have all the answers, but we would figure
it out as we went along. I think it was that idea that we could convince and
make this thing work. That [belief] that we have the abilities and expertise
amongst our staff to figure out the strategies. Now we call that “Professional
Learning Community.” But that’s what we felt intuitively what we needed to
do.
A third aspect of empowerment within the human resource frame, according
to Bolman and Deal, is the encouragement of autonomy and participation. One
teacher described the principal’s invitation to participate in the school’s mission of
student success as a powerful force in the following terms: “We didn’t realize the
power that the principal has and how that principal impacted us deeply which made
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us impact the kids deeply. If you take away that positive, powerful force at the top,
it’s [a] huge [loss].” Another teacher described the principal’s invitation to
participate in the journey toward improved student achievement as beginning with
increasing trust between the teachers and the principal, leading to synergistic
empowerment:
And as soon as he started to develop that sense of trust, you noticed he started
empowering the teachers, and with that came the teachers’ gratitude back for
this administrator, saying “We’re going to do everything for this
administrator.” And so the change, like [teacher’s name] said, it progressed
each year and each year we brought more people in. My sister brought me in.
And more and more of our friends came to work because we realized what a
powerful place this was. And so soon as he began to develop that sense of
trust within his staff, and empowering us because he did trust us, he kind of
turned it over to us. And we were like, “Wow, we can do this, we can do
this!” Working together, we all wanted to do it. It was like a winning
program. I think that’s where the power came in and it’s a very hard thing to
just innately give somebody, but if you have that.
The principal described this process of trust building and empowerment as beginning
with the granting of professional freedom to experiment with new teaching strategies
and curriculum materials and being committed to continually refining them to find
what is most effective. The principal described this process in the following terms:
My philosophy with our staff was, as we would implement a variety of
curricular programs or instructional strategies, I would always say to them,
we would always talk about a commitment to try to make this work to the
best of our ability. But as we reflected on those practices, if we were finding
that certain things weren’t working, that they understood and that they had
the professional freedom and obligation to learn and make things work better.
In the end, a teacher noting the principal’s enthusiastic call to experiment and
commitment to best practices and materials, summarized the positive outcome on the
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school: “There’s nothing superficial about the changes at [school name]; there’s no
quick turn around.”
Symbolic Frame
From Bolman and Deal’s perspective, the Symbolic Frame views
organizational life as involving “culture.” Citing Schein (1992, p. 12),
organizational culture is defined as
… a pattern of shared basic assumptions that a group learned as it solved its
problems of external adaptation and integration, that has worked well enough
to be considered valid and therefore to be taught to new members as the
correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.
The shared vision among the principal and school staff has been articulated in a
number of documents. The 2007 Distinguished Middle School Application,
collaboratively prepared by representatives from all of the school’s stakeholder
groups, answered the prompt question “How does the culture of the school actively
promote the school-wide vision of academic success for all students?” with the
following written response found on page 31:
The symbiotic relationship between the school and surrounding community is
unique. Our motto, “We are Family,” is derived from the underlying belief
that everyone involved in any facet of the school is committed to providing
every student equal access to life’s possibilities through a standard-based
educational program. The staff models the values of caring, responsibility,
respect, trust and family on a daily basis in our interactions with students and
community embracing our multicultural student body.
The district’s website features a web page dedicated to the case study school that
describes the school as “dedicated to a student-centered program of academic
excellence. The students, staff, and community are working together in a partnership
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to develop and support capable, responsible, and productive members of society.”
The 2007 Single Plan for Student Achievement summarized the school’s efforts to
improve teaching and learning with the following written response:
We believe that appropriate educational services should be provided to all
children within its jurisdictions including the recognition and implementation
of differentiated educational experiences that meet the special needs of
children that are effective, research-based, strengthen core academics,
address under-served populations, and focus on low performing students.
These written documents suggest a school culture that encourages its members to
approach their work with a determination to meet the educational needs of every
student, to partner with parents and the larger community, to provide equal access
career opportunities for all students, to deliver a standards-based instructional
program that holds students to the highest possible levels of achievement, and to
teach and model caring, responsibility, and respect for others.
Political Frame
As reported by the principal, the district expected what he termed “fidelity”
to the district-adopted curriculum, especially with regard to the English/language arts
program. In discussions with the district’s central office personnel charged with
curriculum and instruction, the principal emphatically presented his case to allow his
teachers to supplement the adopted curriculum with combinations of other curricular
resources. Having been in the district for many years, the principal had developed a
positive working relationship with the central office. Bolman and Deal’s citing of
power sources would suggest that the principal, at this juncture, was relying on the
alliances and networks he had developed over the years to secure approval to deviate
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from the district’s mandate for fidelity to assigned curriculum. Furthermore, the
principal had carefully researched teacher’s’ proposed curriculum supplements and
their benefits before making his “case” to the district, calling upon the persuasive
power of information and expertise.
The Setting of High Academic Expectations for All Students
Structural Frame
Weick (1976), first introduced the concept of “loosely coupled systems” and
applied it to educational organizations. In his seminal piece entitled “Educational
Organizations as Loosely Coupled Systems,” as described by a website developed by
Current Content (1989) Weick had presented the provocative notion that “[i]n place
of the image that organizations are coupled through tight, dense linkages, it is
proposed that elements are often tied together infrequently and loosely in the interest
of self-determination, localized adaptation, sensing and innovation” (p. 14). This
loose coupling notion was frequently presented in the literature during the years
leading up to the passage of the No Child Left Behind legislation and the
development of the states’ academic content standards as part of the federal
governments mandate to demonstrate ever increasing student achievement. Since the
late 1990’s, local and state educational systems have been increasingly faced with
the need to account to the federal government for student achievement gains and
have responded by “tightening up the linkages” between the various organizational
levels. School districts provide reports verifying increasing student achievement on
state mandated tests. Principals are held accountable to district level managers for
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test results at their school sites, and teachers in turn, are held accountable by site
principals.
From the structural frame perspective, Bolman and Deal would identify two
reasons for this reframing of educational organizations since the days Weick was
writing about loose coupling. First, there has been a dramatic change in the
environmental forces affecting education. Even though federal funding accounts for
a relatively small percentage of the state’s educational budgets, almost all states have
chosen to comply with the NCLB regulations rather than lose this additional
resource. Secondly, there has been a significant technological change since the late
1990’s in terms of the ability to monitor student achievement. With the development
of NCLB mandated state academic content area tests and increased capacity of
computerized systems to process large amounts of standardized test results, local
educational agencies can now be held accountable for quantified student
achievement results.
The principal, having been in the field of education for over thirty years, has
been an eyewitness to the environmental, technological and organizational changes
and has effectively responded to them as shown by continuous student achievement
gains and improved services provided to the students at his school. The principal,
beginning in the late 1990’s began to make the significant changes needed to meet
the educational demands, describing in the following interview response his initially
disorganized efforts to improve student achievement:
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It was really at the beginning kind of a potpourri because at that point in the
late 90’s you might remember, particularly for middle schools, there really
wasn’t a lot of highly developed stuff that we began like Highpoint in
language and these other programs. And so I just pulled staff in paid them
workshop time and pulled the best we could at that time.
Realizing the need to involve teachers in this restructuring process, the
principal formed a teacher leadership team to articulate the school’s assessment
system. Assessment data from these three levels were identified, providing a
systematic framework for re-teaching to close student achievement gaps. The first
tier involves the No Child Left Behind’s Adequate Yearly Progress system,
California State Annual Performance Index system utilizing the California Subject
Test data and California English Language Development Test (CELDT) data to
determine the proficiency level of students by ethnic group and socioeconomic level.
These data are analyzed for gaps in student learning and are incorporated directly to
the Single School Plan (SSP) to guide the school’s efforts to improve the academic
achievement for all students. This first tier data is directly correlated to classroom
instruction through the development of the SSP action plans for student learning in
ELA, math, science and history. Tier two data consists of the district-level
Benchmark data generated by the Edusoft, a web-based computer assessment service
for ELA, math, science and social studies/history. The Edusoft system generates
reports by standards, subject area, grade level, and instructional program. Teachers
may also generate their own assessment instruments. The Edusoft lesson bank
provides teachers with standards-aligned instructional materials for re-teaching to
close performance gaps. The third tier consists of data gathered at the site level.
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Teachers in all four content areas evaluate student performance using a variety of
assessments including quizzes, projects, models, oral and written reports, essays, and
lab practicums, etc. Data from all three assessment levels identifies individual
performance levels from which to determine which strategies, materials, etc. to use
to close achievement gaps. The action plans developed and placed in the Single
School Plan identify specific academic standards that become the focus of the
instructional action plan for all students.
Human Resource Frame
Bolman and Deal’s human resource frame suggest that managers must be
selective when hiring employees to ensure that these new hires clearly match the
organization’s values and mission. Once the “right people” have been selected and
assimilated into the organization, the effective manager takes action to encourage
employees to stay. A number of employment incentive are available to organizations
according Bolman and Deal, including “promoting from within.” The authors
suggest that this practice provides a powerful performance incentive, fosters trust
and loyalty, and capitalizes on employee knowledge and skills.
Responding to the researcher inquiry into the effect of restructuring staff
teaching assignments and additionally assigned duties has had upon teacher
productivity, the principal indicated he has given significant attention to this human
resource dimension:
I spent time thinking about my staff members. What their strengths and areas
of weakness were. As we would look at other programs and other areas we
were interested in taking on and responsibilities and encouraging them to go
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beyond their regular day, it was looking at everybody on the staff and seeing
what people like to do and having those conversations, encouraging them to
come in (to my office). It was a way of just bringing people in and
understanding what their needs were and meeting their needs and then have
them identify some things they could do to help the school.
The principal further described how he always graciously accepted the level of
participation each teacher was willing to give to the school above and beyond the
school day in the following response:
I would take from people what they could give. For example, when we first
started our after school program, we were going three or four days after
school. But if a person came to me and said “I can make a two-day after
school program,” we’ll make it a two-day a week after school program. So
we took what people could give and not turn them away. And Saturday
Program, too, was another type of thing going. It would have been best to
have everybody on the Saturday Program. We had about six or eight teachers
doing it. It would have been nice to have all at the same time. We have to
have teams because everybody didn’t want to give up a Saturday or a half-
day basically on Saturday. So a person would come to me and say, “Ok, two
of us teachers, this person will do this month and I will that month or I’ll do
the first semester and he’ll do the second semester.”
Responding to the principal’s sincere, open invitation to participate in the school’s
efforts to improve student achievement, the teachers responded with a wholehearted
willingness to collaborate with each other and commitment to providing the best
possible instructional program for their students. One teacher interviewee,
responding to the effect the principal’s ongoing, positive invitation to support the
school’s mission program rigor and student achievement, stated
And so soon as Mr. ___________ [the principal] began to develop that sense
of trust within his staff, and empowering us because he did trust us, he kind
of turned it over to us. And we were like, “Wow, we can do this, we can do
this!” Working together, we all wanted to do it. It was like a winning
program. I think that’s where the power came in and it’s a very hard thing to
just innately give somebody, but if you have that.
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Symbolic Frame
According to Bolman and Deal, from the symbolic frame perspective,
“[a]ctivity and meaning are loosely coupled; events have multiple meanings because
people interpret experience differently” (p. 242). Use of symbols is said to make this
loose coupling more manageable by uniting people together around shared values
and beliefs. One important means of encouraging mutual understanding and
commitment to organizational values, beliefs and mission is through “ritual.”
Humans are described as having the propensity to both personal and communal
rituals to create order and predictability. A good example of this ritualizing of an
educational process, in this case of data tracking and analysis leading to profound
student achievement, is described below.
To emphasize the importance of California Subject Test data, the principal
mandated tracking of student data using the California API system categories of far
below basic, below basic, basic, proficient and advanced. District Benchmark tests
assessing students’ mastery of district-adopted curriculum using the Edusoft web-
based computer system identify specific academic content standards needing to be
re-taught. The principal also encouraged teachers to utilize the Edusoft to assess
student performance on teacher made assessments of supplemental materials used.
The principal described this assessment process as follows:
We heavily used the Bench Mark system. Our district would give three
benchmarks throughout the year, but we felt we needed more with this group
of students. So we really used a lot of the state adopted materials and
dumped them into the Edusoft system and really got a lot of data analysis in
depth.
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The principal enthusiastically followed up this description of data analysis with its
effect upon student performance on the CSTs with this report:
I think we broke into the seven hundreds at that point. You know what?
That was the year we jumped up to 732. We finally jumped over the state
average and then qualified for Distinguished School. When I shared with the
staff that year that we were the only secondary school in the district, a school
that had 10 years of poor, very low achievement, that we were the only
secondary school to qualify for Distinguished School, it made them cry.
They were so amazed!
The principal had established the ritualized school-wide practice of tracking and
organizing of student performance test data, leading to profound gains in the school’s
API score and qualification for the Distinguished School award.
Political Frame
The political frame, according to Bolman and Deal, assumes that
organizational “goals and decisions emerge from bargaining, negotiation, and
jockeying for position among competing stakeholders . . . not by fiat at the top but
through an ongoing process of negotiation and interaction among key players” (p.
186). Furthermore, the political frame suggests that organizations are comprised of
coalitions of diverse individuals and interest groups. In the political frame example
found at the case study school, the principal successfully negotiated with district
level curriculum and instruction leaders to achieve a more rigorous instructional
program.
The principal, in his own words below, described his quest to assemble a
variety of effective curriculum materials and the commitment he expected of
teachers to join him in this effort:
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My philosophy with our staff was, as we would implement a variety of
curricular programs, I would always say to them, we would always talk about
a commitment to try to make this work to the best of our ability. But as we
reflected on those programs, if we were finding that certain things weren’t
working, that they understood and that they had the professional freedom and
obligation to learn and make things work better. I’ll give you a really good
example of this, and I took some risks on this, a good example of this is the
language program. We put language units in the first couple of years we saw
some efficacy from it. But the teacher began, probably in the middle of the
second year coming into the third year, that they began to see some real
limitations of the language program. And even though our district wanted,
they used the word “fidelity” for implementation, they were saying “You
know Steve, this part of the language program isn’t working, and this part
isn’t working.”
The principal commented further on his resisting district pressure for district-wide
curriculum program uniformity:
I was giving the teachers freedom and to not hold them to the line so much
that they didn’t have that ability to go beyond and bring in other materials
that would work better. And so we would use the pieces of language that we
thought were effective. I ran interference for the teachers. The “boss” came
out and said “I notice you’re not doing this.” And I would say, “You know,
we found out that this wasn’t working, but this is working and see, our scores
are going up.” So the “proofs in the pudding.” And fortunately I worked in a
district where that was ok. I think in our district, we had the ability, that
flexibility to where if we could show where if something else could work
better that is was ok to take a risk and to try some other things and not
necessarily be held absolutely to a particular implementation.
The principal, a long-time employee in the district, had developed positive
professional relationships with key district leaders over the years and he called upon
these friendships when asking for permission to experiment with various
supplemental materials and time to assess their effectiveness.
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The Establishment of School-Wide Systems and Structures
Structural Frame
With regard to the Structural Frame, Bolman and Deal would describe the
case study school’s organizational structure as simple in nature. A simple
organizational structure is described as having only two levels, the “strategic apex”
defined as the supervisor, and the “operating level” consisting of those charged with
carrying out the daily organizational operations. The coordination of these
operations is done through the direct supervision of the manager, or by the principal
at a school site. At the school site level, this simple structure allows the principal to
efficiently guide the organization, working directly with his staff to communicate
directives and provide performance feedback. Because of this two-tiered structure,
an organization’s structural components can be efficiently restructured under the
guidance of an expert leader as described in the case study school example below.
Beginning with the 2001-2002 school year, the principal began his efforts to
restructure the counseling department to more effectively meet all students’
academic, social and emotional needs. Working with the assistant principal,
counselors, teachers, and soliciting input from parents, the principal successfully
redesigned the counseling program around the National Standards for School
Counseling Program within one academic year. During the next year, the principal
incorporated The American School Counselor Association’s national model into the
program. The restructuring involved coordinating the participation of counselors,
teachers, instructional aides, and parents and was successfully completed within two
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years. The principal, expertly operating within a simple organizational structure as
described by Bolman and Deal, was able to effectively coordinate this restructuring
work within a relatively short time frame.
Bolman and Deal’s Structural Frame paradigm would further describe the
school site as a “professional bureaucracy,” simple in structure with two
organizational layers: leadership and the workers, but further defines the
characteristics of those workers. The professional nature of those carrying out the
daily organizational activities within a professional bureaucracy defines them as
possessing a high level of professional knowledge and skills. This expertise gives
these professionals a certain degree of autonomy. The greater one’s expertise, the
more one earns greater autonomy and the more one expects to be given this freedom
when carrying out daily activities. It was this expertise among the teachers and
counselors that the principal called upon when asking his staff to articulate and
implement a school-wide structure of academic accountability for students early in
his leadership at the case study school.
Having been charged with developing and implementing a plan for the
academic accountability and support for students, teachers identified a three-tiered
assessment and instructional framework. Assessment data from these three levels
provides a systematic framework for re-teaching to close student achievement gaps.
The first tier involves the No Child Left Behind’s Adequate Yearly Progress system,
California State Annual Performance Index system utilizing the California Subject
Test data and California English Language Development Test (CELDT) data to
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determine the proficiency level of students by ethnic group and socioeconomic level.
These data are analyzed for gaps in student learning and are incorporated directly to
the Single School Plan (SSP) to guide the school’s efforts to improve the academic
achievement for all students. This first tier data is directly correlated to classroom
instruction through the development of the SSP action plans for student learning in
ELA, math, science and history. Tier two data consists of the district-level
Benchmark data generated by the Edusoft, a web-based computer assessment service
for ELA, math, science and social studies/history. The Edusoft system generates
reports by standards, subject area, grade level, and instructional program. Teachers
may also generate their own assessment instruments. The Edusoft lesson bank
provides teachers with standards-aligned instructional materials for re-teaching to
close performance gaps. The third tier consists of data gathered at the site level.
Teachers in all four content areas evaluate student performance using a variety of
assessments including quizzes, projects, models, oral and written reports, essays, and
lab practicums, etc. Data from all three tier assessment levels identify individual
performance levels from which to determine which strategies, materials, etc. to use
to close achievement gaps. The action plans developed and placed in the Single
School Plan identifies specific academic standards that become the focus of the
instructional action plan for all students.
Human Resource Frame
The Human Resources Frame, according to Bolman and Deal, involves
motivating one’s followers for optimal performance within the organizational system
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through the concept of “empowerment.” Empowering one’s followers involves
encouraging both autonomy and interdependent participation. Bolman and Deal
assert that knowing what to do on the job is not enough, “[t]he work itself needs to
offer opportunities for autonomy, influence, and intrinsic rewards” (p. 144). From a
Structural Frame perspective, the organization-wide systems must value one’s
expertise leading to autonomy, as well as recognition of the interdependence of
organizational members to effectively accomplish the daily work. The principal,
when working to improve the school’s structural systems such as the redesigning of
the counseling program or the development and systematic implementation of a
student accountability system as described above, effectively utilized Bolman and
Deal’s Human Resource Frame’s autonomy and participation paradigm. One teacher
described an increased sense of control over her instructional program that resulted
from the implementation of the principal’s new organizational structures and
charismatic encouragement in the following terms:
It changed the thinking in that we could do anything, we could everything.
You know, there were no excuses. We have our kids for this amount of time.
We can control our environment. We can control our instructional
(program). We can control everything that’s onsite. And that’s what we do.
You know, and that has been basically our motto.
The systemic changes combined with the principal’s contagious optimistic assertion
that these new programmatic changes would be effective, motivated the teachers to
confidently employ their expertise and enthusiastically collaborate with fellow
teachers.
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Symbolic Frame
As described by Bolman and Deal, “the symbolic frame sees life as more
serendipitous than linear [with] organizations function[ing] like complex, constantly
changing, organic pinball machines” (p. 243). The use of symbols increases the
effectiveness of an organization by imposing order and structure upon this
complexity and chaos, providing predictable patterns of beliefs, values and practices.
Two examples of this symbolic frame found at the case study school are presented
below.
When the principal arrived at the school, he immediately noticed that
students frequently came to class unprepared, disorganized, with unfinished or
missing homework assignments. Responding this lack of organizational
accountability, he created what was called the student “Binder Reminder.” Within
this three-ring binder was placed dividers for each academic core class to keep class
papers organized. Also, a “Student Agenda” booklet was developed containing the
school’s bell schedule and classroom map, district and school policy information, an
information page for “study buddy” contact information, a Cornell Notes example
page, commonly used academic information pages (e.g. the multiplication chart), and
most importantly, daily pages to record the core classes’ homework assignments.
The principal, once the Binder Reminder was developed and implemented,
frequently mentioned the use of the Binder Reminder when interacting with students
and teachers. To insure consistent use of the notebooks by the students and teachers,
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he systematically check every students Binder Reminder once a quarter as described
in the following interview response:
I would go around check their planners every quarter. I would check every
student in the school. It would take me six weeks, just an hour a day and get
around maybe two or three classes, just a minute or two a child. Just open up
their binder reminders and look at look at the last four or five weeks with the
teacher following me around and give the kid a reward if he had the binder up
to date and if they didn’t’ I’d say, “Well, maybe next time . . . “, it was like a
little personal attention from the principal. It wasn’t just about me; it was
about the role that I played.
This “personal attention” given to the students can be viewed as a symbolic gesture,
reflecting the importance the principal, as the instructional leader of the school,
placed upon maintaining order in the instructional program.
Another symbolic act, also incorporated into the yearly routine of the
principal’s schedule, was the systematic visitation to parents’ homes. Taking along
the school counselor and a teacher on rotating basis, these triads would meet with the
parents whose children had scored far below basic or below basic on the ELA and
math CSTs. During the research interview, the principal gave the following account
of this symbolic mission to parents:
I decided that I needed to somehow figure out a way to get that sense of
urgency and shared vision with not only all the staff but also all the students.
We developed these student leader forms and usually starting in October, I
would go around to all the homes and it would take me six weeks and spend a
whole hour with my counselor and we would talk about state standards and
bring in their test scores from the previous year so they could see them,
sometimes the first time they saw them and what does it mean to be
“proficient” and what is “far below basic,” what are the intervention
programs we have, and my belief that their education is so important to them
and why its important. Just sharing that passion that I had with students and
the belief that they can rise to whatever they wanted to be and I believed that
and that our job and our mission was to help them get there and just so they
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could hear it. But it was not only the kids were hearing it, but also there was
this teacher sitting in the back and listening to the same spiel and they were
getting that same sense of urgency as well.
This yearly, systematic approach to educating the parents about their child’s
academic performance served not only to inform the parents, but was a forum for
communicating to his staff the urgency of helping all students succeed, a shared
vision he deliberately worked to create and maintain.
Political Frame
In Bolman and Deal’s political frame dimension, the most important
organizational decisions involve the allocation of scarce resources. This allocations
of resources necessarily creates conflict among group members as decisions and
goals are made through a bargaining and negotiating process defining who receives
which resources and how much. The role of the organizational leader is to manage
the available resources to optimize the well being of the organization. Described
below are two examples of the political frame with regard to the creation of a school-
wide system for resource allocation at the case study school.
Understanding the political nature of resource allocation, the principal
immediately offered to assist with the securing of instructional resources to any
teacher asking for them. One veteran teacher, who began working at the case study
school the same year the principal started, provided the following account during a
focus group interview:
When I came to (the case study school), I was a reading specialist, and he
(the principal) said, “What do you need?” I had requested the same materials
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I had used in another district because I knew the stuff worked. He said, “Ok,
we’ll get the stuff, use it for a year and we’ll see what the scores look like.”
The principal confirmed the fact that he always made a concerted effort to provide
extra instructional resources to any teacher who submitted a proposal clearly
articulating what they wanted and how the materials would be utilized to improve
student achievement.
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CHAPTER V
SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
Introduction
Over the past several decades, school systems have faced increasing public
pressure for improved student achievement and the closing of what has come to be
commonly known as “the achievement gap” (Trimble, 2008). From Capital Hill in
Washington D.C. to local schools, the term achievement gap has become a common,
frequently uttered description of a general discontent with public education’s
performance (Anderson, Medrich, Fowler, 2007). The pressure for accountability
perhaps reached its zenith with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (U.S.
Department of Education, 2008) in 2002, holding local school districts responsible
having every student attain educational success labeled “proficient.”
Attempting to correct these educational disparities, current research not only
continues to study educational inequalities but also continues to identify and examine
factors associated with improving student academic performance (Carpenter,
Ramirez, & Severn, 2008). A plethora of variables have been identified including
principal instructional leadership, teacher expertise and relationships with students,
curriculum and instruction, community and parent involvement, opportunity to learn
and student time on task, school climate, student assessment, and the list continues
(Lezotte, 2001; Davis & Pokorny, 2005). As in the Effective Schools Movement,
much of today’s research is attempting to first identify high performing schools,
particularly in low socioeconomic minority neighborhoods. A wide variety of
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research data is being collected and examined including standardized achievement
results, focus group interviews, questionnaires, school site observations, and
documents attempting to isolate variables that may be positively impacting student
achievement.
The Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this case study was to examine an urban intermediate school
that has successfully closed the achievement gap, seeking to identify key programs,
practices and strategies that have made a positive impact on student academic
performance serving to close the achievement gap between this particular population
of students and more affluent white and Asian middle school students. For this
study, the concept of “achievement gap” was defined as the persistent disparity in
academic performance between groups of students, particularly between white or
Asian affluent students and students of color, minority students and second language
learners.
The research study also set out to identify achievement gap closing programs,
practices and instructional strategies with the goal of extrapolating its finding to
comparable socio-economic status schools, providing the promise of significant
student academic performance improvement to similar schools that have yet to close
the achievement gap.
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Summary of Findings
QUESTION 1: What school-wide programs promote student achievement?
Responding to the particular needs of the students at the case study school,
the principal took the initiative to encourage the teachers to supplement the district
adopted curriculum. He described this willingness to experiment with materials that
might prove effective with his particular students as “taking a risk.” Over a period of
10 years, the staff assembled a wide-variety of materials they believe to be
associated with the significant student achievement gains as measured by the CSTs.
With 38 percent of the student population identified as English learners and
many other students challenged by the district’s core curriculum, the case study
school’s teachers and administrators created a Saturday school program named “The
GAP Program” providing additional assistance to students scoring far below basic
and below basic on the California Subject Test in math and English/language arts.
The GAP Program targets EL levels 1 through 5 students and reclassified fluent
English proficient students (R-FEPS) not yet proficient for three years. Students
scoring basic in ELA are enrolled in the GOAL program providing additional ELA
classes in addition to the core academic program during the school day.
Using the Edusoft web-based assessment system, the teachers at the case
study school have been able to secure comprehensive and timely student assessment
reports. This system provides the district benchmark assessments given three times a
year as well as summary reports for teacher made quizzes and tests. In 2002, the
district piloted the integration of the Houghton Mifflin reading program with the
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Edusoft computer assessment system. The Edusoft system allows teachers to
aggregate, disaggregate and analyze data by student, class, grade, subject area,
educational program or other demographic information.
Beginning in 2001, the principal, assistant principal, and counselors, with
input from the teachers, made significant structural changes in the school’s
counseling program to better meet the students’ academic, social, and emotional
needs, creating what they termed the “Student Support Personnel Team” (SSPT).
This newly named SSPT counseling department was restructured around the
National Standards for School Counseling Programs, and in 2002, the American
School Counseling Association’s (ASCA) National Model: A Framework for
School Counseling Programs further restructured the activities of the school’s
counseling program.
Early in his years at the case study school, the principal identified increased
parent involvement as a high priority goal. A parents’ institute was established,
graduating two groups of approximately 90 students each. Parent education provides
information on how they may assist their children to succeed academically and
provides career awareness information.
QUESTION 2: What school-wide practices promote student achievement?
Three times each school year, the case study school utilizes the district’s
Benchmark tests to monitor and evaluate student performance in English/language
arts, math, science, and social studies. Using the Edusoft web-based assessment
system assesses student performance on benchmark tests integrated with the
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district’s adopted core academic curriculum divided into GATE/Honors, “Regular”
and SDAIE subgroups. Printed reports identify those California Academic Standards
least mastered by the students in each of the subgroups. Based upon those data,
English/language arts, math, science and social studies teachers within their
respective departments, identify re-teaching strategies collated and included in the
school’s Single Plan for School Achievement.
The case study school utilizes the California academic content standards in
ELA, math, science and social studies. This standard-based practice provides
essential information to students covered on the California Subject Tests (CSTs), as
mandated by the state’s Annual Performance Index assessment system, used in
California. Standards selected for lesson coverage are identified during these regular
meetings to insure that the most prominent standards on the CST’s are thoroughly
taught and re-taught as needed throughout the school year. With the principal’s
encouragement, the teachers began to use the adopted textbooks and other materials
as a tool for teaching the standards’ content, selectively choosing and utilizing only
relevant portions. The Edusoft assessment system has also given the teachers more
freedom and flexibility in using the state standards when assessing student learning
using the adopted curriculum and other instructional materials. The Edusoft system
not only scores the district’s benchmark tests, it allows for the timely scoring and
reporting of other curricular and teacher made quizzes and tests, identifying how
well students have mastered related content standards, thus allowing teachers to
more accurately adjust their teaching.
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To promote the utilization of best practices in the classroom, the principal as
well as the district, spends significant resources on staff development. A Leadership
Council, comprised of teacher leaders, department chairs, guidance counseling staff,
and administrators meets monthly to plan and coordinate a continuous program
improvement and professional development planning processes. The Leadership
Council solicits input from all teachers, classified staff, and the School Site Council
to help determine staff training needs that are then incorporated into the schools
Single School Plan and a long-range professional development plan.
Collaboration among the teachers has been an increasing phenomenon at the
case study school. Because of the positive professional relationship the principal
was able to establish over the course of several years, teachers were willingly drawn
into what has come to be called a “Professional Learning Community” (PLC) in
which teachers and principals share common values and vision for the school,
collective learning and application of learning and the free sharing of newly learned
personal teaching practice.
In addition to this generalized monitoring of student’s progress through
informal teacher collaboration, a number of specific accountability and assistance
practices have been implemented at the case study school to facilitate student
success. Students are required to write down each day’s homework for the four core
subject areas in their student notebooks called “Binder Reminders” to insure they
have a clear description of their homework when at home. A homework hotline has
been established for students to call in case further clarification is needed in the
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evening. Students are required to identify one or more “study buddies” for ELA,
math, science and social studies to call for help as needed, writing down their names
and phone numbers in their Binder Reminder.
QUESTION 3: What instructional strategies were implemented to target the
closing of the achievement gap?
To better understand the developmental characteristics of middle school
students and their intellectual needs, the principal required the teachers to read and
discuss two signature California Department of Education publications titled Caught
in the Middle and Taking Center Stage. Caught in the Middle has provided the
teachers with information addressing middle school students’ unique learning needs,
character development, social and emotional development, physical development,
followed by recommendations for creating schools that specifically effective middle
schools that addressing a wide range of concerns such as equal access, student
diversity, school culture, extracurricular and intramural activities, and school
structure, scheduling and assessment. Taking Center Stage, the sequel to Caught in
the Middle, extended their discussions of effectively working with middle school age
children through a student-centered approach, to include the need to develop a
rigorous, standards based educational program.
With 38 percent of the student body identified as English learners, a
deliberate effort has been made to utilize Specially Designed Academic Instruction
in English (SDAIE) in all core content classes. The SDAIE strategies used include
modifying their speech patterns, using contextual clues, multisensory experiences,
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comprehensible input devices, clearly developed lessons. The need for these
strategies to be in support of learning content and providing opportunities for all
students to have access to the rigorous core curriculum is stressed. Finally, in
keeping with the student centered approach, an emphasis is placed on utilizing the
SDAIE strategy of lowering the “affective filter” to reduce student anxiety when
mastering this rigorous curriculum.
Recognizing the wide-range of academic abilities at the case study school,
research based strategies found in such texts as Marzano’s Classroom Instruction
That Works and A Handbook for Classroom Instruction That Works have been
implemented. Numerous information organizing devices, suggested by the research
on the brain and learning are utilized throughout the school, including graphic
organizers, K-W-L charts, Cornell notes and “real world” experiences are often
incorporated into lessons.
The teachers often use technology to support their instructional program, an
instructional strategy in keeping with the district plan for the integration of
technology across the curriculum. Smart Boards and school pad interactive
technology allows math, history, and science teachers to visually illustrate
curriculum content to reinforce English vocabulary and explain and organize major
concepts, access and display websites, run educational software, and deliver
PowerPoint presentations. Students use the Microsoft Word program to complete
major research projects in all classes, create history PowerPoint presentations and
use the Excel program in math class. Supervised Internet access is available before,
111
during, and after school. Each classroom has a presentation station with a television,
and VCR connected to a school-wide network used for instructional videos, in-house
produced informational presentations, and career-based broadcasts.
Conclusions
The students at the case study school have made significant academic gains
in their performance on the California Subject Tests as reflected in the school’s
Academic Performance Index increase from 552 during the 1998-1999 school year to
732 for the 2006-2007 school year. Throughout this research, the teachers and
principal consistently attributed this profound increase in student achievement to the
programs, practices and instructional strategies implemented over the past 12 years.
While the relationship between these instructional changes and the significant
student achievement gains must be viewed as correlational rather than causational,
the theoretical support provided by Bolman and Deal’s four frame paradigm
provided an articulate theoretical framework for the findings analysis suggesting
robust correlations. Furthermore, the interview data, documents and site visit
information readily falling into a relevant frame or frames within Bolman and Deal’s
model during the analysis phase, strongly suggests comprehensive and wide-ranging
organizational improvement.
As the research data were analyzed for the identification of themes, and then
placed into relevant Bolman and Deal frame categories, it was readily apparent that
the most important catalyst for change at the case study school has been the
principal. His single-minded commitment to comprehensive program improvement,
112
resourcefulness in securing instructional materials, ability to inspire intense
commitment to student achievement among the teachers, his ability to collaborate
and positively involve all stake holders in the mission of the school, and much more,
have created profound, school-wide improvement.
Instructional and student performance improvement was also associated with
the teachers’ use of supplemental instructional materials combined with the district-
adopted curriculum. The teachers described how the principal first gave
“permission” to their requests to find and incorporate supplements in their daily
instruction, followed by direct principal encouragement to do so as student
achievement improved, ending with the principal’s ongoing defense of the use of
supplements to district officials. The teachers’ initiative to experiment with various
curriculum supplements, supported by the principal, lead to significant student gains
in the opinion of the teachers.
The tracking and analyzing of student achievement test data was viewed by
the teachers and principal as another profound catalyst for student academic gains.
This process has given the teachers and principal a systematic means for identifying
specific California Content Standard information not yet mastered by student groups
and individuals. California’s CST assessment data and reporting system and the
district’s benchmark tests collated by the Edusoft web-based assessment system
provide organized, user-friendly data to effectively design new lessons and target
concepts for re-teaching as needed.
113
Participation and collaboration among the various stakeholders was readily
apparent at the case study school. The principal reported his intentional and
enthusiastic efforts over the years to encourage teacher collaboration in lesson
planning, student assessment and curriculum use. Increasing parent participation has
been major focus over the past 10 years through home visits by the principal and
teachers and the establishment of an on-going biannual parent institute.
A number of accountability structures have been put into place to improve
student performance. Students’ Binder Reminders provides an organizational tool to
organize class work and record homework assignments and other important
information. Regularly scheduled meetings with students and parents provide the
time to share student achievement data and encouragement to students to improve
performance. A restructured counseling department based upon national standards
provides students assistance with their academic, emotional and social needs as well
as stressing the importance of doing well in school.
Implications for Further Research
For the past 30 years, there has been growing pressure for the improvement
of student achievement in public school systems. This pressure toward
accountability reached a crescendo with the passage of the No Child Left Behind
federal legislation requiring state and local educational agencies to demonstrate on-
going and continuous student achievement. This quest for student academic
improvement has also been a strong theme in the research literature with a plethora
of variables having been identified including such factors as principal instructional
114
leadership, teacher expertise and relationships with students, curriculum and
instruction, community and parent involvement, opportunity to learn and student
time on task, school climate, student assessment, and the list continues (Lezotte,
2001; Davis & Pokorny, 2005).
This study searched variables associated with the programs, practices and
instructional strategies at one case study school that may be associated with
increasing student achievement. To the extent that the findings can be generalized to
other high urban schools, there are clear implications for educational leaders and
classroom teachers. Although the data reported are exploratory and warrant further
investigation, they suggest clear suggestions for school site and classroom practice.
Principals may benefit from an examination and analysis of their own
leadership behavior and practices to determine their effect upon teacher and student
motivation, school-wide direction setting, curriculum and student achievement data
use, and other factors identified in this study. This study found the principal’s
charismatic, contagiously positive demeanor perhaps the most powerful force
encouraging teachers, parents and students to enthusiastically commit to achieving
student academic gains. A study of other principals leading schools to significant
student academic improvement would perhaps validate this studies findings and
uncover other effective principal leadership traits and behaviors.
Perhaps a second most influential force associated with student achievement
in this study was teacher collaboration. The teachers consistently reported the
powerful impact of what is popularly termed the “Professional Learning
115
Community” (PLC). This study did uncover some of the characteristic attitudes
(e.g., willingness to share new ideas) and teacher behaviors (e.g. systematically
meeting with other teachers) of teachers functioning in a PLC, but further study may
uncover richer descriptions. Furthermore, the study did not seek to find out how
PLCs develop and thrive over time. Further study in this area might provide a more
comprehensive picture concerning the nature of PLCs and how they come to support
student achievement.
Finally, completing comparable research at other similar high performing
urban schools and examining similarities among these schools may further
corroborate this study’s findings. The identification of unique school characteristics
may contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of how to improve student
achievement among this particular student population, warranting further
corroborative further study of more like schools. Combining these case studies, then,
may offer an in-depth exploration as well as comparative analysis between the cases
providing a greater understanding of the innovative changes made by high
performing urban schools leading to greater student achievement.
116
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APPENDIX A
TEACHER SURVEY
Research Question 1: What school wide programs promote student
achievement?
1. My school has a school-wide professional development program or programs for
teachers to enable all children in the school to meet the state academic content
standards.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
2. My school has a school-wide program or programs to increase parental
involvement through means such as family literacy services.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
3. My school has a school-wide program or programs providing training to teachers
in effective instructional methods and strategies.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
4. My school has a school-wide program or programs that provide effective, timely
assistance for students who experience difficulty in attaining the proficient or
advanced level of the academic content standards.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
5. My school has a school-wide program or programs to assist teachers in the use of
academic assessments to provide information on, and to improve, the
achievement of individual students and the overall instructional program.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
6. My school has a school-wide program or programs that provide teachers training
in effective classroom management and discipline strategies.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
128
Research Question 2: What school wide practices promote student
achievement?
7. Teachers are encouraged to collaborate with other teachers on instructional
matters on a regular basis.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
8. Teachers have an active role in identifying and implementing professional
development goals and objectives for the school.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
9. I regularly discuss my teaching with my administrator(s).
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
10. The evaluation feedback I receive from my administrator(s) assists me to
improve my teaching effectiveness.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
11. I am aware of specific areas of interest that my administrator(s) looks at when
visiting my classroom.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
12. Assessment of student learning is accomplished to improving, rather than just
monitor, student performance.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
13. The assessment of student learning is based on specific, clearly identified
academic standards for student performance.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
14. Teachers seek feedback from other teachers to improve their teaching.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
129
15. Decisions about school improvement are always based upon our school
improvement plan.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
16. Teachers at this school have comparable expectations regarding student academic
performance.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
17. Professional development training over the past year has provided useful
information helping me increase my teaching effectiveness.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
18. Teachers at this school are encouraged to use the same or similar instructional
strategies.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
19. There is an intentional effort to improving home-school relations and parent
participation.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
20. Academic content you expect your students to learn is dictated by district’s
adopted curriculum.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
21. Academic content you expect your students to learn do you (or you and your
colleagues) select.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
22. Academic content you expect your students to learn is selected by your students.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
130
Research Question 3: What instructional strategies were implemented to target
the closing of the achievement gap?
23. When developing my lessons, I consciously select content that meets the
district’s student competencies and performance standards.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
24. When developing my lessons, I consciously select instructional materials based
upon my knowledge of my students’ developmental needs and learning styles.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
25. When developing my lessons, I consciously select teaching methods and
strategies that accommodate individual student needs and interests.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
26. When developing my lessons, I consciously prepare lessons with high
expectations designed to challenge and stimulate all students.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
27. When developing my lessons, I consciously build upon my students’ existing
knowledge and experiences.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
28. When developing my lessons, I consciously consider how to create active
learning experiences for my students to facilitate engagement.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
29. When developing my lessons, I consciously consider how to create cooperative
learning experiences for my students.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
131
30. When developing my lessons, I consciously create lessons that require
integration of content from more than one content area.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
31. When teaching, I monitor students’ understanding of the content and make
adjustments accordingly.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
32. When teaching, I move among the students, engaging individually and
collectively with them during the learning experience.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
33. When teaching, I consciously employ teaching strategies and instructional
materials that stimulate higher-order thinking skills.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
34. When teaching, I create social interaction among students by requiring students
to work as a team with both individual and group responsibilities.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
35. When teaching, I vary the size and composition of learning groups.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
36. When a student is having difficulty with an activity or assignment, I am usually
able to adjust it to his/her level.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
37. At your school, peer tutoring is often used to assist struggling students.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
132
APPENDIX B
ADMINISTRATOR SURVEY
Research Question 1: What school wide programs promote student
achievement?
1. My school has a school-wide professional development program or programs for
teachers to enable all children in the school to meet the state academic content
standards.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
2. My school has a school-wide program or programs to increase parental
involvement through means such as family literacy services.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
3. My school has a school-wide program or programs providing training to teachers
in effective instructional methods and strategies.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
4. My school has a school-wide program or programs that provide effective, timely
assistance for students who experience difficulty in attaining the proficient or
advanced level of the
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
5. My school has a school-wide program or programs to assist teachers in the use of
academic assessments to provide information on, and to improve, the
achievement of individual students and the overall instructional program.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
6. My school has a school-wide program or programs that provide teachers training
in effective classroom management and discipline strategies.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
133
Research Question 2: What school wide practices promote student
achievement?
7. Teachers are encouraged to collaborate with other teachers on instructional
matters on a regular basis.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
8. Teachers have an active role in identifying and implementing professional
development goals and objectives for the school.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
9. I have regular discussions with my teachers regarding their teaching.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
10. The evaluation feedback I give to teachers assists them to improve their teaching
effectiveness.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
11. The teachers are aware of specific areas of interest I look at when visiting their
classrooms.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
12. Assessment of student learning is directed to improving, rather than just
monitoring, student performance.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
13. The assessment of student learning is based on specific, clearly identified
academic standards for student performance.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
14. Teachers seek feedback from other teachers to improve their teaching.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
134
15. Decisions about school improvement are always based upon our school
improvement plan.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
16. Teachers at this school have comparable expectations regarding student academic
performance.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
17. Professional development training over the past year has provided useful
information helping teachers increase their teaching effectiveness.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
18. Teachers at this school are encouraged to use the same or similar instructional
strategies.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
19. There is an intentional effort to improving home-school relations and parent
participation.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
20. Academic content students are expected to learn is dictated by district’s adopted
curriculum.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
21. Academic content students are expected to learn do teachers select.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
22. Academic content students are expected to learn is selected by the students.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
135
Research Question 3: What instructional strategies were implemented to target
the closing of the achievement gap?
23. When teachers develop lessons, they consciously select content that meets the
district’s student competencies and performance standards.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
24. When teachers develop lessons, they consciously select instructional materials
based upon their knowledge of their students’ developmental needs and learning
styles.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
25. When teachers develop lessons, they consciously select teaching methods and
strategies that accommodate individual student needs and interests.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
26. When teachers develop lessons, they consciously prepare lessons with high
expectations designed to challenge and stimulate all students.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
27. When teachers develop lessons, they consciously consider how to build upon
their students’ existing knowledge and experiences.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
28. When teachers design lessons, they consciously consider how to create active
learning experiences for their student to facilitate engagement.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
29. When teachers develop lessons, they consciously consider how to create
cooperative learning experiences for their students.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
136
30. When teachers develop lessons, they consciously design lessons that require
integration of content from more than one content area.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
31. When teaching, teachers monitor students’ understanding of the content and
make adjustments accordingly.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
32. When teaching, teachers move among the students, engaging individually and
collectively with them during the learning experience.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
33. When teaching, teachers consciously implement a teaching strategy and
instructional materials that stimulates higher-order thinking skills.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
34. When teaching, teachers create social interaction among students by requiring
students to work as a team with both individual and group responsibilities.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
35. When teaching, teachers vary the size and composition of learning groups.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
36. When a student is having difficulty with an activity or assignment, the teachers
are usually able to adjust it to his/her level.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
37. At my school, peer tutoring is often used to assist struggling students.
Strongly Strongly
Disagree Disagree Agree Agree
1 2 3 4
137
APPENDIX C
TEACHER INTERVIEW
HS, MS -Core Dept. Chairs (English, math, science, social science, ELD)
ES –One representative per grade level
1. What is your position and role in the school and how many years have
you been a faculty member of the school itself and in education overall?
2. What programs do you have in your department/grade level that promotes
student achievement?
3. How does the program work?
a. Does it target a specific population?
b. Does it require any additional funding? – source?
c. How do you measure its success?
d. Has it been successful?
4. Do you have any specific instructional practices that your
department/grade level uses to promote student achievement?
a. What kind of professional development have you received in
those practices?
b. How do you measure the effectiveness of the instructional
practices?
5. Does your department/grade level have specific strategies that target the
closing of the achievement gap for all students and what are they?
6. How do you promote enrollment in your most rigorous courses?
7. How does the school’s leadership team support your efforts in these
programs and practices?
a. Who is on your leadership team and what role do they play?
8. What does collaboration look like at your school?
9. What specific aspects of your schools culture support student
achievement?
10. How much parent participation do you receive?
138
APPENDIX D
ADMINISTRATION INTERVIEW
Principal and Assistant Principal(s)
1. What is your position and role in the school and how many years have
you been a faculty member of the school itself and in education overall?
2. What programs does your school have that promotes student
achievement?
3. How does the program work?
a. Does it target a specific population?
b. Does it require any additional funding? – source?
c. How do you measure its success?
d. Has it been successful?
4. Does your school have any specific instructional practices that promote
student achievement?
a. What kind of professional development do you offer your staff?
b. How do you measure the effectiveness of the instructional
practices?
5. Does your school have specific strategies that target the closing of the
achievement gap for all students and what are they?
6. How do you promote enrollment in your most rigorous courses?
7. How do you support your teachers’ efforts in these programs and
practices?
8. What does collaboration look like at your school site?
9. How do you feel the teachers support these school wide practices and
implementation?
10. What specific aspects of your schools culture support student
achievement?
11. How much parent participation do you receive
139
APPENDIX E
OBSERVATION TOOLS
Trigger Words: Welcoming Environment
Engagement Rigor
Focus Standards
Programs Practices
Strategies Stakeholders
Four Frames:
Structural – Goals and information are clear, cause and effect understood
Human Resources - Employee morale, resources, and creativity
Political - Power, Conflict, Competition, Organizational Policies
Symbolic – Culture, meaningful, ritual, ceremony, stories
What is Happening? What do I think is Happening?
140
APPENDIX F
DATA COLLECTION
Document Questions the document answers Question
addressed
School background and profile
SARC
Single School Plan
• Class Size
• Number of Suspensions/Expulsions
• California Healthy Kid Survey Results
• Population breakdown (ethnicity, SES,
EL’s)
• Supplemental Programs
• Vision and Mission Statements
• Teacher Groups (leadership, advisory, SSC,
etc.)
1, 2, 3
List of teachers and Support Staff • Experience
• Credentials
• Grade Levels
• Years at current site
1
Professional Development Plan • Collaboration Plan, Schedule 1, 2, 3
Daily and Instructional Schedule • Number of instructional Minutes 3
English Leaner’s Master, technology
and Safe Schools Plan
• Plan for ELL and safe campus
3
Achievement Results
CST and Local Assessments Data for
over a 2 year period.
Local Benchmarks
SARC
Website: CDE
• CST data
• API, AYP, disaggregated data by
demographics, subgroups, etc.
2, 3
Parent/Community Involvement
SARC
School/Parent handbook
Parent surveys from school or district
School Website
Single School Plan
• Parent community/outreach education
• Community Partnerships
• Parent Survey results
• Volunteer Hours
• Parent Club
• Parent/Community Communications
(newsletters, websites)
1, 2, 3
Fiscal Information
Single School Plan
CPM Report
• Categorical Documents & Resources /
Compliance Findings
3
Other Information
WASC Action Plan/Self-Study/Visiting
Team Report
• Referral process for Special Ed.
• Distinguished School Information
• RtI Strategies
• Teacher Evaluation
• WASC
Abstract (if available)
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Kaiser, Karen Anne
(author)
Core Title
The impact of programs, practices, and strategies on student academic performance: a case study
School
Rossier School of Education
Degree
Doctor of Education
Degree Program
Education (Leadership)
Degree Conferral Date
2009-05
Publication Date
04/07/2009
Defense Date
02/11/2009
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
case study,closing the academic perfomance gap,middle school achievement,OAI-PMH Harvest
Language
English
Contributor
Electronically uploaded by the author
(provenance)
Advisor
Gothold, Stuart E. (
committee chair
), Escalante, Michael F. (
committee member
), Stowe, Kathy Huisong (
committee member
)
Creator Email
kakaiser@usc.edu,skaiser@hlpusd.k12.ca.us
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m2063
Unique identifier
UC1433305
Identifier
etd-Kaiser-2816 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-215274 (legacy record id),usctheses-m2063 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
etd-Kaiser-2816.pdf
Dmrecord
215274
Document Type
Dissertation
Rights
Kaiser, Karen Anne
Type
texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Repository Name
Libraries, University of Southern California
Repository Location
Los Angeles, California
Repository Email
cisadmin@lib.usc.edu
Tags
case study
closing the academic perfomance gap
middle school achievement