The Missing Focus of High School Restructuring.

Research Studies Find a Glaring Need: Connecting Reforms to Instruction

Students attending high school in Louisville, Ky., have experienced some recent changes: they attend longer class periods and take fewer subjects each term, they must demonstrate performance on new curriculum standards, and they have easy access in school to health and other social services.

In Kansas City, Mo., high school students can select from an extensive array of magnet schools to pursue their special interests. They enjoy modern facilities rarely found in other U.S. cities as part of a court-ordered desegregation overhaul.

And in a few communities, superintendents are basing their pay levels or continued employment on the conviction that curriculum and personnel changes in the schools will produce better student learning.

Enter a slight problem. In each case the intervention did not result initially in improved student achievement--at least not to the extent that had been anticipated. These are but isolated examples of significant efforts to alter the way the school and school system interact that failed to bring marked student gains.

What we can learn from these experiences, along with recent research on restructuring schools, is that multiple changes directly affecting classroom instruction for all students must be sustained if significantly higher achievement is to be accomplished. First one needs to consider what changes are being made in high schools.

Clear Definition

Restructuring simply means changing substantially the way important properties of the high school and its supporting district interact to improve learning. The term tends to mean all things to all people, rendering it useless to the point where many reformers now avoid using the word.

But some researchers have come to interpret restructuring in well-defined ways. The Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools at the University of Wisconsin uses four criteria to study the effects of school restructuring: student experiences, the professional life of teachers, management and governance changes, and community services.

The Coalition of Essential Schools at Brown University has worked for a decade with high schools interested in making students more active learners by requiring them to demonstrate mastery of their subjects and enabling teachers to help their students develop "habits of the mind."

My own national study of high school restructuring in 1994 contends that the critical elements of restructuring, such as self-directed teacher teams, block schedules, technology, and community involvement, are being changed to focus instruction on curriculum standards, performance assessment, and approaches for individualized learning styles.

A crucial idea is being tested by the National Center on Education and the Economy in some 17 states where a certificate of initial mastery is being used to make the diploma more meaningful. Begun in Oregon in 1991, this plan requires considerable work to develop reliable measures of academic and workplace skills that will withstand litigation and afford reliable information to prospective employers or universities.

According to Bruce Weitzel, principal of Beaverton High School, the largest in Oregon, this plan involves extensive staff work to develop performance assessments for initial and advanced certificates and "compels students to make choices about their future at the 10th grade."

Although the plan has undergone revisions in the state legislature to deal with parental concerns about academic rigor, Weitzel expects the certificate of initial mastery will prepare students to be part of a better 21st century work force.

Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, carries this idea further. He argues for policies requiring high-stakes examinations to determine admission to college or the workplace. A recent AFT report comparing achievement levels of teen-agers in France, Germany, Scotland, and the United States credits higher student achievement in the European countries due to national tests. Shanker contends the European students are motivated to study harder knowing they must pass these tests.

Some state education agencies have begun to make such policy shifts, but local school leaders in the meantime must forge ahead with restructuring their school and district to improve student performance.

The best of these restructuring plans are the toughest o undertake because they involve helping a faculty sustain several change over an extended period. They focus on classroom activities and expectations that enhance learning. School leaders can take advantage of research and experience to fashion changes that hold promise of improvement at a particular high school.

No single pattern of changes will work in every high school, owing to differing traditions, culture, community expectations, and capacity for renewal at any given point Using a variety of approaches car be equally effective. As teachers have begun to play a more significant role in planning and sustaining the multiple changes needed to affect achievement, the days of tightly controlled management and centralized planning have receded.

Research Impact

While much has been said about the need for change in the American high school, much less has been reported about empirical results. Yet research findings today are of sufficient quantity and integrity to offer meaning and direction for future restructuring plans. A review of the most significant research studies on high school restructuring supports four key findings.

* Changes to restructure the high school produce significantly higher achievement on conventional measures when the focus is on multiple practices directly affecting instruction in the classroom.

One of the more comprehensive and sustained efforts at high school restructuring was in Jefferson County, Ky., Public Schools. There students attending high schools that experienced sustained work on staff development, corporate involvement, participatory management, and interdisciplinary teaching showed significantly higher achievement on the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills compared to students from other high schools with limited or no restructuring. The restructured schools also reported better attendance and graduation rates and higher parent and student satisfaction.

Using self-reports from the schools and data from the 1988 National Educational Longitudinal Study, the University of Wisconsin studies showed superior results in student achievement in math, reading, history, and science when students had been in schools using mixed-ability classes, interdisciplinary teaching, extensive team problem-solving among staff, and volunteer parents.

Better student performance and attitudes also resulted in smaller schools that had replaced bureaucratic operating methods with more communal models of organization. This large-scale analysis of data involved students from 820 high schools.

Many high schools in recent years have sought to decrease class size and the number of teacher preparations and provide greater variety and depth in classroom learning activities by adopting the block schedule, usually consisting of four periods of 80 to 90 minutes.

My 1994 restructuring study reported 11 percent of the nation's high schools had adopted this change with an equal number planning to undertake the change in 1994-95. Block scheduling pioneer Joseph Carroll, in an evaluation of eight high schools using his Copernican Plan, found that schools where students took fewer classes and where teachers had fewer preparations reported significantly better student achievement gains and school ratings compared with previous achievement patterns in the same schools.

These important studies show that the extra work and risks involved in fundamentally changing the way the system works does pay off in the end when multiple changes are made and instruction is the focus.

* Remotely imposed mandates or isolated organizational changes do not result in improved achievement.

A 1991 study by the Government Accounting Office examined the progress of 61,000 at-risk 8th graders who were mostly African American or Hispanic in four urban systems as they passed through high school in the late 1980s.

Among the state mandates studied were exit tests for graduation, increased academic course requirements, more stringent attendance rules, athletic eligibility requirements, and remedial classes. In most cases, these mandates did not produce more favorable results for disadvantaged students.

Similar studies on the efficacy of state mandates in the '80s were reported by Denis Doyle and others showing that more testing, greater financial incentives, and decentralized governance produced limited or no improvements.

Many districts have attempted to decentralize by adopting site-based management, and several analyses of research results on the topic have been reported, including one by Anita Summers and Amy Johnson in 1995 that concluded: "The results of SBM studies, then, appear to be some increased sense of empowerment and involvement of the stakeholders (though not uniformly so) and virtually no evidence that SBM translates into improved student performance."

Other studies of well-known decentralization plans in Edmonton, Prince William County, Va., and Dade County, Fla., have come to similar conclusions. Such studies report that instructional improvement is indeed usually not the focus of school-based teams as might be expected. In many instances, improving achievement was not even mentioned as the primary goal of the decentralization.

Mike Strembitsky, who spent 22 years as superintendent in Edmonton, Alberta, trying to perfect site-based management, says, "The biggest problem facing leaders seeking improved achievement through decentralization is defining clearly what students are expected to achieve and then developing assessment tools showing results in which the staff and public can have confidence."

He believes much of the standardized test results used today fail to reflect newer curriculum trends and that assessment techniques being developed by the National Center on Education and the Economy's New Standards Project will prove valuable for this.

An old management axiom contends that just as soon as any organization fully decentralizes, it will begin to centralize. Change theorist Michael Fullan has wisely pointed out, "Neither top-down nor bottom-up strategies for reform work. Both levels of the system have contributions to make in accomplishing changes.

The limited success of decentralization can be seen in other single organizational changes that rarely produce the anticipated results.

* Even when research on restructuring results in statistically significant improvement in achievement, results are typically modest.

The limited number of positive effects reported in the research on restructuring is typical of the small gains observed in much experimental research in education. An example is available in the 1993 evaluation of the Jefferson County, Ky., high schools, reported by Regina Kyle in a 1993 study for the district's Gheens Professional Academy. She found the rate of growth in achievement was 6.8 percent for the restructure high schools compared to 4.6 percent for the more traditional schools.

While any sign of improvement is encouraging, these are indeed very small gains, particularly if achievement levels are quite low to begin with. Often these modest results reflect the tinkering nature of the changes made--small changes for short durations that can be predicted to have limited effects.

The lesson here ought to be clear. The changes reported in the research are not sufficiently rob st to expect bold results.

In high schools with large numbers of low-achieving students, better results can be anticipated from multiple changes involving the schedule, establishing standards, smaller schools, teaching strategies that motivate students, and massive use of technology to buttress the curriculum sustained over longer periods.

* High schools with smaller enrollments, either as separate schools or as self-contained units within larger schools, are better able to create a sense of belonging for students and more opportunities for teachers to collaborate in planning instructional improvements.

Students from smaller schools tend to achieve better, have more positive attitudes about school, and participate more in activities both while in high school and later in college. When graduating classes exceed 100 students, the advantage larger schools have of offering more advanced classes is often offset by students losing a sense of belonging.

This finding is supported by the success of New York City's Central Park East High School and by the University of Wisconsin research and William Fowler's excellent 1992 summary on school size effects. Many high schools, such as Reynolds High School in Troutdale, Ore., have adopted house plans to offset their large size, and the block schedule itself serves to facilitate the kind of learning communities that better serve their students. Smallness is better for students and teachers seeking to work together toward school goals.

Emerging Signs

The positive results from high school restructuring are just now beginning to accumulate, and although the results may be modest, a school that is improving is a good school. By concentrating on changes that most directly affect the classroom experiences of all students and sustaining the changes over several years, this improvement in student achievement can become even more significant.

More research is badly needed to show the effects of installing high curriculum standards, extensive use of technology, parental involvement, and providing more incentives to teachers.

The complexities of changing the typical high school must not be underestimated. Such issues are well documented in a 1993 analysis by Donna Muncey and Patrick McQuillan of the problems encountered as the eight charter high schools in the Coalition of Essential Schools moved beyond the easy tasks into more fundamental changes such as demonstrating performance and developing "habits of the mind." Frequently, they found, few teachers were fully committed to the coalition's principles as they faced skeptical colleagues and differing opinions about what a comprehensive high school ought to be.

While a number of analyses of achievement trends in American schools suggest student achievement may not be as alarming as harsher critics suggest, few would disagree that this remains the No. 1 problem facing most communities.

Will the substantial restructuring work in Kansas City to capitalize on student interests pay off in the long run? According to the now-departed school superintendent Walter Marks, "More time is needed for the impact on achievement to be felt." But perhaps other properties of the school system also need attention.

Last spring the Swanton, Ohio, board of education refused to accept Superintendent Roger Barnes' promised resignation letter after receiving test results showing the percentage of students passing all four proficiency tests failed to increase despite gains in three of the four areas. But Barnes is undaunted and will continue to work toward increased accountability and better instruction through teaming and individualizing the curriculum.

Perhaps what needs to be done is best summarized by veteran restructuring leader Don Ingwerson, the former Jefferson County, Ky., superintendent now heading the Los Angeles County Office of Education. He says: "Low-achieving schools will demonstrate greater student achievement when the school and total community organize themselves as if each student was the only student in town."

Gordon Cawelti is the author of Handbook of Research on Improving Student Achievement, published recently by the Alliance for Curriculum Reform.

Further Reading on High School Restructuring

Those interested in further reading on the link between high school restructuring and better student outcomes may consider the following, suggested by Gordon Cawelti:

The Copernican Plan Revisited, by Joseph M. Carroll, published by Copernican Associates, Topsfield, Mass.

"High School Restructuring: A National Study," by Gordon Cawelti, published by Educational Research Service, Arlington, Va.

"Coordinating Top-Down and Bottom-Up Strategies for Educational Reform," by Michael Fullan in Systemic Reform, published by the U.S. Department of Education.

"The Effects of Education Reform on Student Achievement," a study by the General Accounting Office, published in Urban Education, July 1991.

"Transforming Our Schools," by Regina Kyle, published by the Jefferson County, Ky., Public Schools.

"Preliminary Findings from a Five-Year Study of the Coalition of Essential Schools," by Donna Muncey and Patrick McQuillan, published in Phi Delta Kappan, February 1992.

"What Is a Restructured School? A Framework to Clarify Means and Ends," by Fred Newmann, published by the Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools, Madison, Wis.

"Doubts About Decentralized Decisions," by Anita Summers and Amy Johnson, published in The School Administrator, March 1995.