The Essential Components in Action: Identifying Practices of High Schools That Have Demonstrated Effectiveness With Traditionally Underperforming Students

• In Event: Effective High Schools: Insight From the National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools

Abstract

There is growing consensus among practitioners and researchers around what we call “the essential components” of successful schooling (see first paper in this symposium). But, what do these components look like in high schools whose success is defined by value-added to student achievement and what are the ways in which educators integrate and sustain them? To answer these questions, we conducted in-depth case studies of four high schools in one urban district that vary in terms of their effectiveness at improving student achievement among low-income and minority students and English Language Learners (ELLs). To identify partner districts in Florida, we used a simple value-added achievement model (VAM) to estimate the relative performance of the state’s high schools. The estimated fixed effect for each high school in the state was put in rank order and classified by deciles of value-added. These analyses indicated only one Florida district with multiple high and low-performing schools serving our target student subgroups.

Four high schools in the district were selected for case study on the basis of findings from the VAM analysis. Fieldwork consisted of semi-structured interviews, focus groups, document collection, and observations during three week-long visits to each of the four schools. In all, 175 interviews, 24 focus groups, and 20 observations were conducted in two schools that had made gains with our target subgroups (“higher VA schools”) and two schools for which improving subgroup scores has proven difficult (“lower VA schools”). We coded these data using directed content analysis (Patton, 2002), enabling us to start with the eight essential components of our framework while allowing themes to emerge from the data inductively (Miles and Huberman, 1994). We also engaged in summative content analysis (Hseih & Shannon, 2005) wherein we counted instances of a phenomenon as well as the intensity of participants’ responses.

We find that the ways in which three of the essential components are enacted explain effectiveness in our case study schools. Higher VA schools seem to differ from lower VA schools in terms of Learning Centered Leadership, Culture of Learning and Professional Behavior, and Personalized Learning Connections. Higher VA schools have leaders who focus educators and students on a vision that included high expectations for student learning. Administrators, teachers and support personnel in the two higher VA schools also develop numerous structures for collaboration across the organization such as learning communities and instructional coaching teams. Higher VA schools also work deliberately to build students’ sense of belonging and promoted student-adult connections through practices like looping and small learning communities. Additionally, two new components seem to distinguish higher and lower VA schools in our sample. First, higher VA schools appear to compress variability in the schooling experiences of higher and lower performing students by assigning effective teachers to teach across academic tracks, targeting lower-performers for pull-out and Saturday programming, and increasing access to higher rigor courses. Second, the higher VA schools seemed to organize the learning environment such that power was dispersed broadly across a network of support teams.

Authors

• Lora A. Cohen-Vogel, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Stacey A. Rutledge, Florida State University

• LaTara D. Osborne-Lampkin, Florida State University- Regional Educational Laboratory-Southeast

• Christopher Harrison, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill