School Improvement Models

History

While the history of education in the United States displays a series of attempts at reform, the contemporary era has seen a degree of political intensity brought to bear upon the reform agenda. The beginning of this period was marked by the rebuke to the educational system delivered in the 1983 report A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, and it continued with the National Governor's Summit in 1988 and with federal educational initiatives under the Bush and Clinton administrations. The amplified federal interest in primary and secondary schooling coincided with a growing private sector involvement in education, resulting in a host of school [Page 905]reform models that were developed independent of specific schools and adopted by a limited number of schools.

The beginning of the twenty-first century has seen a particular increase in the number of schools engaged in improvement efforts, through both externally and internally developed reform models, in response to the enactment of No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), in January of 2002. Specifically, NCLB has increased schools' accountability for results, focusing considerable attention on student achievement by establishing the expectation that schools demonstrate yearly progress with all students and disaggregated subgroups of students. These expectations are linked to logistical, financial, and public relational consequences that intensify the need for school improvement. Increases in the use of externally developed improvement models may in part be linked to the availability of federal funding for the purchase and operation of comprehensive, research-based reform models. Such an inducement can be seen in the Comprehensive School Reform Program.

Description

Most external school improvement models are comprehensive in nature, connect the school to external support structures, and require substantial financial commitments by the local schools for the purchase of the improvement design, materials, and assistance. Comprehensive designs offer a coherent improvement approach by changing a constellation of factors related to student learning, such as curriculum, instruction, assessment practices, leadership and governance, resource allocation, student grouping and scheduling, and professional development. While specific design elements vary by model, the use of design teams to provide ongoing external assistance is a relatively consistent practice across models. Over time, reform models may become increasingly reliant on local expertise and funding.

Numerous issues have been associated with the implementation of external reform models and their effectiveness. Faculty resistance related to reform implementation is well documented in the literature and points to teacher participation in the selection and approval of reform models as a critical factor for success. Implementing multiple facets of comprehensive reform models simultaneously has also proven a challenge in many schools. Local adaptation of models can impact the coherence of the original design, lessening its effectiveness. Overall, a synthesis of extant research studies offers a mixed conclusion as to the success of external reform models.

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