Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago [Paperback]

Anthony S. Bryk (Author), Penny Bender Sebring (Author), Elaine Allensworth (Author), Stuart Luppescu (Author), John Q. Easton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 14, 2010 | ISBN-10: 0226078000 | ISBN-13: 978-0226078007

In 1988, the Chicago public school system decentralized, granting parents and communities significant resources and authority to reform their schools in dramatic ways. To track the effects of this bold experiment, the authors of Organizing Schools for Improvement collected a wealth of data on elementary schools in Chicago. Over a seven-year period they identified one hundred elementary schools that had substantially improved—and one hundred that had not. What did the successful schools do to accelerate student learning?

 

The authors of this illuminating book identify a comprehensive set of practices and conditions that were key factors for improvement, including school leadership, the professional capacity of the faculty and staff, and a student-centered learning climate. In addition, they analyze the impact of social dynamics, including crime, critically examining the inextricable link between schools and their communities. Putting their data onto a more human scale, they also chronicle the stories of two neighboring schools with very different trajectories. The lessons gleaned from this groundbreaking study will be invaluable for anyone involved with urban education.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Organizing Schools for Improvement has some pretty convincing conclusions on what characteristics separate successful schools from unsuccessful ones. The book offers important advice for people involved in any school, regardless of location or student background."

(Alan Borsuk Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel )

"Striking in its attention to the influence of community and educator participation in school reform, and sobering in its assessment of some of the neighborhoods where reform was most difficult to attain, the book Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago is an essential read. . . . Bryk et al. provide a rigorous and compelling empirical study of the possibility for school reform and the degrees of compromise, particularly in contexts where extreme poverty and racial and ethnic isolation prevail."

(Teachers College Record )

About the Author

Anthony S. Bryk is president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and was founding senior director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR), University of Chicago. Penny Bender Sebring is founding codirector of CCSR, the Urban Education Institute, University of Chicago. Elaine Allensworth is director for statistical analysis at CCSR. Stuart Luppescu is chief psychometrician at CCSR. John Q. Easton is director of the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, and former executive director of CCSR.

Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (January 14, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226078000
• ISBN-13: 978-0226078007
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.7 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #204,751 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Path-breaking study March 15, 2010

By Anne T. Henderson

Format:Paperback

This book and the research that went into it are first-rate. From my perspective, the significance of this work is the close attention to context -- so much writing on education reform is about the technical aspects, such as assessment, professional development, standards, curriculum. What this work does is show the vital contribution of school climate: the trusting, collaborative relationships that must be the foundation for an effective school that is a great place to work, learn and develop.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Summary of Book September 4, 2011

By Lobewiper

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

The Bryk et al. research findings are based upon a huge study of more than 400 Chicago public elementary schools, and their results have implications for every school in the country. They (p. 83) describe the key factors they identified as follows:

School Leadership

The leadership composite was defined as the degree to which teachers viewed their principal as an inclusive, facilitative leader, [who was] focused on parent and community involvement and creating a sense of community in the school. It included the following components:

Instructional leadership--degree to which teachers saw their principal as setting high standards and exercising leadership for instructional reform.

Teacher influence--the extent to which teachers were involved in school decision making.

LSC contribution--teachers' ratings of the effectiveness of the local school council.

Program coherence--teacher's judgments as to the quality of implementation and coordination of programs within the school.

SIP implementation--teachers' assessments of the school improvement plan and its centrality to the school's efforts to improve learning.

Parent-Community Ties

The parent involvement composite was assessed by:

Teacher outreach to parents and their assessment of their efforts to develop common goals and understandings with parents and to work together to strengthen student learning.

Parent involvement in the school--teachers' reports about how often parents pick up report cards, attend parent-teacher conferences, attend school events, and other activities.

Professional Capacity

This factor is also referred to by the authors as "Work Orientation." It was a composite of:

Teacher orientation toward innovation--teachers' judgments of the extent to which their colleagues are continually learning, seeking new ideas, and have a "can-do" attitude. (Alex, are you reading this?)

School commitment--teachers' reports of how loyal and committed they are to the school.

Student-Centered Learning Climate

This is also termed the "Safety and Order Composite," and measured by:

Safety--students' perceptions of personal safety inside and outside the school and traveling to and from school

Classroom disruptions--teachers' reports of disruptions due to student behavior and to administrative interruptions.

Instructional Guidance/Curriculum Alignment

This was defined by:

The pace at which new math content was introduced into the school's curriculum across the elementary grades (remember, they didn't study high schools) and how well that aligned with established grade-level skills and knowledge.

Which factors were most important?

(P 83): "...weakness in any of the five core improvement factors ([see above] substantially reduced the probability of improvement... The likelihood of improvement in both reading and mathematics was especially low among schools that were weak in school leadership, parent involvement, teacher work orientation, or curriculum alignment. Only 11% of schools weak on the school leadership indicator (remember, it is a composite of several factors--see above) improved substantially in reading, only 10% weak on the parent involvement indicator improved, and the same was true for just 9% of the schools weak on teacher work orientation. Results were comparable for math improvement... but even more pronounced."

"Schools [rated as] strong in most [factors] were at least ten times more likely than schools weak in most supports to show substantial gains in both reading and math. Half the schools strong in most supports improved substantially in reading. Not a single school weak in most of the supports showed substantial improvements in mathematics. ... As school districts think about ..,strategic planning for school improvement...our evidence [suggests] that districts are highly unlikely to succeed absent attention to all five of these organizational subsystems. We make a similar claim about the efforts of leaders at the...building level as they engage in the day-to-day work of promoting meaningful local change. School community leaders must direct attention to strengthening the ties among school professionals, parents, and the local community and to expanding the professional capacity of the school's faculty. Adults within the school community must join together to foster a student-centered learning climate that promotes pupils' engagement with more challenging academic work... Finally and most important, a coherent school-wide instructional guidance system must scaffold and integrate this collective academic activity. Strong evidence has been presented here that a sustained material weakness in any one of these [five] domains is likely to doom efforts at improving student outcomes. In this sense, each element is an essential ingredient in the overall recipe for school improvement." (P. 96 The authors conclude that the school administration is the most important of the five factors:

"School leadership sits in the first position. It acts as a driver for improvements in the other four organizational subsystems: parent-community ties, professional capacity of the faculty and staff, a student-centered learning climate, and an instructional guidance system. While it has been the practice of many districts ...to concentrate reform efforts on just one or two elements within one or two of these subsystems (for example, improving the quality of teachers or mandating a common instructional program), the evidence...attests that these systems stand in strong interaction with one another. As a consequence of this interactivity, meaningful improvement typically involves orchestrated initiatives across multiple domains." (P. 197)

"Finally, our empirical [research data] results also attest strongly to the centrality of school leadership as a catalyst for change. Efforts to strengthen school-community ties and the professional capacities within a school's faculty demand a dynamic blend of both instructional and inclusive-facilitative leadership. Principals in improving schools encouraged the broad involvement of their staff in reform as they sought to guide and coordinate this activity by means of a coherent vision that integrated the diverse and multiple changes that were co-occurring. The strength of these statistical findings is highly consistent with our own field observations--we know of not even one case of sustained school improvement in Chicago where local [school] leadership remained chronically weak. " (P. 199)

This book should be read by every educator and educational administrator in the United States and taken seriously. The current popularity of teacher-bashing is highly counterproductive. We need cooperation, coolaboration, mutual support, lower anxiety, better training and inservicing, and higher morale. (Higher pay wouldn't hurt!) We have an important job to do, so let's do it--working TOGETHER, and be honest about what is needed.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A must for anyone who really wants to reform schools September 20, 2011

By Nephilim

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have spent the last ten years teaching underpriveleged youth in Chicago. Much of "school reform" is done piecemeal and reflets only the priorities of whoever is in vogue rather than imporatant changes to the way schools do business. This book breaks down alot of data that was taken when different schools in Chicago tried a variety of interventions to improve struggling schools. They crunch the numbers and actually come up with a finite set of behaviors and situations that produce real and lasting improvements in struggling schools. Principals, teachers and parents should all check it out and think deeply about the most important characteristics of a great school.