A good school, it turns out, is a lot like a cake. Put in sugar, eggs and oil, but forget the flour, and all you end up with is a sweet, sloppy mess. Without all the right ingredients, success will continually evade you.

That’s the message of Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago, a new book published by the University of Chicago Press.

The book examines research on 200 Chicago elementary schools between 1988 and 1995 — 100 that improved and 100 that floundered.

It all starts with the chef. Without a good principal, says the research, most improvement efforts are wasted. But the principal has to have good material to work with — quality teachers — and an eye for academic and professional improvement. The teachers and leadership should be connected to the parents and to the wider community. All three groups must focus on making the school a safe, academically rigorous environment for the children they serve.

Remove any of these five “essential supports,” the authors’ research shows, and the likelihood that a school will improve plummets.

The research also reveals some surprising connections in school performance. School safety, they found, was a prime factor in attendance. A school could have strong leadership, engaging teachers and caring parents, but if it wasn’t safe, kids wouldn’t come regularly.

In addition, substantial change takes a few years to go into effect. Even schools that went from the bottom of the list in 1988 to the top in 1995 didn’t show improvement right away. Rebuilding a school culture takes time and resources, a task that involves long-term commitment.

In addition, the researchers found that the shift in the late 1980s and early 1990s toward democratic localism – the idea that parents and community members are the best people to determine what should happen in their school – works well.

Except when it doesn’t.

For many schools, local power created a lot of positive change, but the research uncovered an underclass of schools that serve incredibly impoverished, intensely segregated communities with very high-needs populations where there was no local power to draw upon.

Even small improvements didn’t do much for the students in these troubled schools. The book both challenges and underscores recent moves to strip local school councils of their power. In some cases, such a move could reverse years of building up local strength. In other cases, it might be what is needed in order for change to happen.

The message of “Organizing Schools for Improvement” is clear: turning schools from bad to good is serious work for dedicated professionals.

The book is dense and, at times, tedious, but its tone underscores the painstaking research it contains.

Instead of dreamy accolades to tremendous urban teachers, these researchers understand a school is a complex, multi-faceted organism capable of creating great good or compounding the status quo. Our students are depending on us to rise above the din of school reform and listen to what’s been proven to be effective.

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By John Whitfield from McKJinley Park
Posted: 03/14/2010 5:44 PM

Rigor-the conditions of being stiff, or rigid 2. stiffness of opinion or temper; harshness 3. exactness without allowance or indulgence; inflexibility; strictness, severity rigorous-1. marked by acting with rigor uncomprom ising, severe you must be talking about the ROTC schools, the Naval Academy that took over a portion of Senn HS, and other militarized CPS schools (I am a 30 yr. CPS instructor and parent of three CPS graduates. A former Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica, 1976-78)