NCEE Blog

National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance

Sustaining School Improvement

By Thomas Wei, Evaluation Team Leader, NCEE

NOTE: In an effort to turn around the nation’s chronically low-performing schools, the Department of Education injected more than $6 billion into the federal School Improvement Grants (SIG) program over the past several years. SIG schools received a lot of money for a short period of time—up to $6 million over three years—to implement a number of prescribed improvement practices.

What is the prognosis for low-performing schools now that many federal School Improvement Grants (SIG) are winding down? This is an important question that the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE) addressed through its Study of School Turnaround

The second and final report from this study was released on April 14 and describes the experiences of 12 low-performing schools as they implemented SIG from 2010 to 2013 (Read a blog post on the first report). Findings are based on analyses of teacher surveys and numerous interviews with other school stakeholders, such as district administrators, principals, assistant principals, members of the school improvement team, instructional coaches, and parents.

After three years trying a diverse array of improvement activities ranging from replacing teachers to extending learning time to installing behavioral support systems, most of the 12 schools felt they had changed in primarily positive ways (see chart below from report).

The report also found that schools with lower organizational capacity in the first year of SIG appeared to boost their capacity by the final year of SIG. At the same time, schools with higher capacity appeared generally able to maintain that capacity.

Many experts believe that organizational capacity is an important indicator of whether a low-performing school can improve (see chart below showing schools with higher organizational capacity also appeared more likely to sustain improvements). Organizational capacity is indicated by for example, how strong a leader the principal is, how consistent school policies are with school goals, how much school leaders and staff share clear goals, how much collaboration and trust there is among teachers, and how safe and orderly the school climate is.

Despite these promising results, the report found that the overall prospects for sustaining any improvements appeared to be fragile in most of these 12 schools. The report identified four major risk factors, including (1) anticipated turnover or loss of staff; (2) leadership instability; (3) lack of district support, particularly with regard to retaining principals and teachers; and (4) loss of specific interventions such as professional learning or extended day programs. Most of the case study schools had at least one of these major risk factors, and a number of schools had multiple risk factors.

It is important to note that this study cannot draw any causal conclusions and that it is based on surveys and interviews at a small number of schools that do not necessarily reflect the experiences of all low-performing schools. Still, it raises interesting questions for policymakers as they consider how best to deploy limited public resources in support of future school improvement efforts that will hopefully be long-lasting.

NCEE has a larger-scale study of SIG underway that is using rigorous methods to estimate the impact of SIG on student outcomes. The findings from the case studies report released last week may yield important contextual insights for interpreting the overall impact findings. These impact findings are due out later this year, so stay tuned.

How to Help Low-performing Schools Improve

By Thomas Wei, Evaluation Team Leader

NOTE: Since 2009, the Department of Education has invested more than $6 billion in School Improvement Grants (SIG)SIG provided funds to the nation’s persistently lowest-achieving schools to implement one of four improvement models. Each model prescribed a set of practices, for example: replacing the principal, replacing at least 50 percent of teachers, increasing learning time, instituting data-driven instruction, and using “value-added” teacher evaluations.

Other than outcomes, how similar are our nation’s low-performing schools? The answers to this question could have important implications for how best to improve these, and other, schools. If schools share similar contexts, it may be more sensible to prescribe similar improvement practices than if they have very different contexts.

This is one of the central questions the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance is exploring through its Study of School Turnaround. The first report (released in May 2014) described the experiences of 25 case study schools in 2010-2011, which was their first year implementing federal School Improvement Grants (SIG).

The report found that even though the 25 SIG schools all struggled with a history of low performance, they were actually quite different in their community and fiscal contexts, their reform histories, and the root causes of their performance problems. Some schools were situated in what the study termed “traumatic” contexts, with high crime, incarceration, abuse, and severe urban poverty. Other schools were situated in comparatively “benign” contexts with high poverty but limited crime, homes in good repair, and little family instability. All schools reported facing challenges with funding and resources, but some felt it was a major barrier to improvement while others felt it was merely a nuisance. Some schools felt their problems were driven by student behavior, others by poor instruction or teacher quality, and still others by the school’s external context such as crime or poverty.

Given how diverse low-performing schools appear to be, it is worth wondering whether they need an equally diverse slate of strategies to improve. Indeed, the report found that the 25 case study schools varied in their improvement actions even with the prescriptive nature of the SIG models (see the chart above, showing school improvement actions used by sample schools).

It is important to note that this study cannot draw any causal conclusions and that it is based on a small number of schools that do not necessarily reflect the experiences of all low-performing schools. Still, policymakers may wish to keep this finding in mind as they consider how to structure future school improvement efforts.

The first report also found that all but one of the 25 case study schools felt they made improvements in at least some areas after the first year of implementing SIG. Among the issues studied in the second report, released April 14, 2016, is whether these schools were able to build on their improvements in the second and third year of the grant. Read a blog post on the second report.

UPDATED APRIL 18 to reflect release of second report.