Effective Schools Movement

The effective schools movement, pioneered by Ronald Edmonds of Harvard University and others, is a field of reform that dates from the 1960s and continues to the present day. Researchers have worked diligently to determine what works best in educating all children and to then provide models of reform designed to help struggling schools improve. Common elements of the effective schools movement include: positive engagement of students, smaller class sizes, respectful behavior, high expectations, defined consequences for positive and negative behaviors, and a structured routine for all students. The link to success is centered upon caring and dedicated teachers. The effective schools movement is designed to teach the basic skills to all students.

In a general sense, the effective schools movement was an approach to education with a focused goal of simply improving education for urban students. As a result of this broad goal, best practices were sought through visiting schools that appeared to be successful. As a result of those initial efforts, schools began on the road to improvement without mandates or a model of accountability for all schools to follow. For several decades, spurred by legislation, coaxed by state departments of education, persuaded by local expectations and/or demands, and desired by parents, students, and staffs, schools have accepted the challenge of creating better results and have designed programs of school improvement. The development of improvement plans has become known as the effective schools movement. An ongoing and systematic review of a school's program with the intent to improve education for its shareholders has resulted in a movement to make schools more effective. Studies have been conducted that provide information for school personnel to help them design and implement a school improvement plan that creates a more effective school program.

Historically, the passage by Congress of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, which sought to guarantee equal rights for all citizens, including the equal education of all students in public schools, began the examination of the effectiveness of schools. The operational definition of equality included the premise that every child can master basic skills and that all children can learn. As studies to recognize effective schools were completed, common elements of successful schools that were identified included student discipline and high staff expectations for student achievement. Edmonds and others have identified traits of effective schools such as: strong leadership, a clear set of emphasized goals, staff training, and a system for monitoring student progress. These earlier studies did not include achievement data for different groups of students within a given educational setting.

Today, the emphasis of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) continues to put a spotlight on the progress, or perceived lack thereof, that schools continue to address. Those persons implementing an effective schools movement, on a school–by–school basis, must be aware of the need to address a wide range of achievement characteristics: student attendance, faculty readiness, leadership and professional growth issues, graduation rates, and student achievement, to name a few. The No Child Left Behind Act has established and emphasized the goal of academic proficiency for all public school students, regardless of race, ethnicity, or income. Local schools, striving to become more effective, include in the plan of improvement: adopting high standards, conducting regular testing, disaggregating results for student subgroups, and publicly reporting results for each school.

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