The Needed Infrastructure for Cognitively Ambitious Instruction in High Schools

• In Event: Innovative System and School Redesign: Improving Leadership Practice to Support Instructional Reform

Abstract

There has been considerable discussion about the need to focus secondary instruction around higher-order thinking skills, yet there has been limited research on the institutional models seeking to achieve those ends. This paper addresses this gap by drawing on an ethnographic study of non-élite high schools designed to support cognitively ambitious instruction.

What we observe in schools is circumscribed within the context of a massive “infrastructure gap” in American education. Specifically, we cite the limited impact of training (Lortie, 1975) and the absence of core technology guiding the workings of practice (Cohen, 2011, Cohen & Moffitt, 2009, Mehta, Gomez, & Bryk, 2012). Given that the longstanding pattern in American education has involved teacher-centered instruction with low levels of cognitive demand (Cohen, 1988, Powell et al., 1985, MET Project, 2012), we theorize that unless schools are able to coherently build missing infrastructures, they are likely to replicate this pattern.

This is an ethnographic study of high schools seeking to produce cognitively ambitious instruction. This paper draws on research at two very different charter high schools: High Tech High, a project-based school that serves socio-economically diverse students; and North Star Academy, a “no excuses” school that serves 90 percent high-poverty students. We spent more than 100 hours at each school, interviewing administrators, teachers, students, and parents (25 or more per school), observing classes, and taking deeper dives on distinctive aspects of each school’s strategy.

We find that these two schools differ from the ten less successful schools that we visited in the following ways: the clarity and conviction of their visions about what constitutes ambitious instruction, the intensity and intentionality of the mechanisms used to achieve these visions, and the way in which their cultures and structures are aligned towards those ends. North Star’s vision of instruction—developed by leaders and teachers—is one of students mastering discrete pieces of disciplinary knowledge, with intense micromanagement of time and frequent checks for understanding. The model of instruction is clearly defined, materials are created by more experienced teachers, and new teachers are given intensive, directive feedback on all aspects of their practice. In all of these respects, North Star leaders design their school to provide the infrastructure missing from the sector. High Tech High has a very different vision: students as creators of knowledge, long group projects, interdisciplinary learning, and frequent public displays of work. But school leaders also intentionally designed a number of systems and structures to realize these ends: displays of work serve as models of what success looks like, teachers work in teams which enables coaching and mentoring, and the techniques for scaffolding project-based learning are frequently shared.

Our provisional conclusion is that whether schools are traditional or progressive matters less than the intentionality of the design; the degree to which the school and its leaders have been able to layer together a variety of needed elements. In conclusion, we suggest that success at scale requires that the sector assume many of the functions currently supplied by these exceptional schools.

Authors

• Jal David Mehta, Harvard University

• Sarah Melanie Fine, Harvard University