School Change & Improvement

School Improvement, School Reform, School Restructuring, School Renewal, Systemic Reform, School Transformation are all terms that refer to efforts in recent decades to significantly change how schools work: how teachers teach, how students learn, how results are measured, and how educators and school systems may be held accountable for those results.

Categories of Research/Thought on School Improvement: This entry discusses each of the following conceptions of school improvement:

1. Gradual change focused on capacity building
2. Whole school reform (Comprehensive instructional reform)
3. Turnaround model
4. Intensive human capital management
5. External accountability

These categories, however, are far from definitive or exhaustive. The knowledge base on school improvement is vast and has many complex pathways and perspectives.

1. Gradual Change Focused on Capacity Building:

The conceptual frameworks for school improvement that are the basis for UVEI programs draw on a substantial literature indicating that managed, iterative change focused on improving teacher capacity is the most promising road to school improvement.

UVEI Framework for How Schools Improve

Knowledge Base:

School/System Improvement:

• Bryk, A. (2010). Organizing schools for improvement. Phi Delta Kappan, 91(7).
• Bryk, A., & Schneider, B. (2003). Trust in schools: A core resource for school reform. Educational Leadership, 60(6).
• Bryk, A., & Schneider, B. (2003). Trust in schools: A core resource for school reform. Educational Leadership, 60(6).
• Bryk, A. S., Sebring, P. B., Allensworth, E., Luppescu, S., & Easton, J. Q. (2010). Organizing schools for improvement: Lessons from Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning. (2011). School leadership: A key to teaching quality. A policy brief on the role of principals in strengthening instructions. Retrieved from Santa Cruz, CA:
• Elmore, R. (2004). School reform from the inside out: Policy, practice, and performance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
• Fullan, M. (2011). Choosing the wrong drivers for whole system reform. East Melbourne, Australia: Centre for Strategic Education.
• Fullan, M., & Quinn, J. (2016). Coherence: The right drivers in action for schools, districts, and systems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
• McLaughlin, M., & Talbert, J. (2006). Building school-based teacher learning communities: Professional strategies to improve student achievement. New York: Teachers College Press.
• Mintrop, H. (2004). Schools on probation: How accountability works (and doesn't work). New York: Teachers College Press.
• Schein, E. (2004). Chapter 16: A conceptual model for managed culture change Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd Edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Spillane, J. P., Halverson, R., & Diamond, J. B. (2001). Investigating School Leadership Practice: A Distributed Perspective. Educational Researcher, 30(3), 23-28. doi:10.3102/0013189x030003023

UVEI Framework for Improvement Initiatives Based on Teacher Learning

Teacher Learning:

• Ball, S. (1987). Resources and relationships The micropolitics of the school: Towards a theory of school organization (pp. 212-246). London: Methuen & Co.
• Bransford, J., Brown, A., & Cocking, R. (Eds.). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington DC: National Academies Press.
• Cohen, D., Raudenbush, S., & Ball, D. L. (2003). Resources, instruction, and research. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 25(119).
• Cohen, D., & Ball, D. (2001). Making change: Instruction and its improvement. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(1), 73 - 77.
• Hawley, W. D., & Valli, L. (1999). The essentials of effective professional development: A new consensus. In L. Darling-Hammond & G. Sykes (Eds.), Teaching as the learning profession: Handbook of policy and practice. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
• Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Little, J. W. (2006). Professional community and professional development in the learning-centered school Best Practices: NEA Research. Washington, DC: National Education Association.
• National Research Council. (2000). Teacher learning. In J. Bransford, A. Brown & R. Cocking (Eds.), How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
• Pearson, P. D., Taylor, B. M., & Tam, A. (2003). Epilogue: Effective Professional Development for Improving Literacy Instruction. In R. Indrisano & J. R. Paratore (Eds.), Learning to Write, Writing to Learn: Theory and Research in Practice: International Reading Association.
• Richardson, V. (2003). The dilemmas of professional development. Phi Delta Kappan, 84(05), 401-406.
• Stein, M. K., Silver, E., & Smith, M. S. (1998). Mathematics reform and teacher development: A community of practice perspective. In J. Greeno & S. Goldman (Eds.), Thinking Practices in Mathematics and Science Learning. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Leadership:

• Fullan, M. (2014). The principal: Three keys to maximizing impact. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Glickman, C. (2002). Leadership for learning: How to help teachers succeed. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
• Lambert, L. (2002). Chapter 3: Leading the conversations. In L. Lambert, D. Walker, D. Zimmerman, J. Cooper, M. D. Lambert, M. Gardner & M. Szabo (Eds.), The Constructivist Leader. New York: Teachers College Press.
• Lambert, L. (2007). Lasting leadership: A study of high leadership capacity schools The Jossey-Bass reader on educational leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Leithwood, K., Louis, K. S., Anderson, S., & Wahlstrom, K. (2004). How leadership influences student learning. Review of research. Minnesota: The Wallace Foundation.
• Leithwood, K., Louis, K. S., Wahlstrom, K., Anderson, S., Mascall, B., & Gordon, M. (2010). How successful leadership influences student learning: The second installment of a longer study. In A. Hargreaves, A. Lieberman, M. Fullan & D. Hopkins (Eds.), Second International Handbook of Educational Change. New York: Springer.
• National Policy Board for Educational Administration. (2015). Professional standards for educational leaders 2015. Retrieved from Reston, VA:
• Spillane, J., & Diamond, J. (2007). Taking a distributed perspective. In J. Spillane & J. Diamond (Eds.), Distributed Leadership in Practice. New York: Teachers College Press.

Iterative Change:

• Argyris, C., & Schon, D. (1978). Organizational learning: A theory of action and perspective: Addison-Wesley.
• Bryk, A., Gomez, L., Grunow, A., & LeMahieu, P. (2015). Learning to improve: How America's schools can get better at getting better. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Publishing.
• Mintrop, R. (2016). Design-based school improvement: A practical guide for education leaders. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

2. Comprehensive Instructional Reform (Whole-School Reform):

This approach to school improvement (upon which aspects of the "School Improvement Grant" approach under No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top were based) suggest that schools should select research validated school models and instructional programs and then implement those models with fidelity (using a combination of normative pressures, persuasion, and bureaucratic controls):

Knowledge Base:

• Protheroe, N. (2008). The impact of fidelity of implementation in effective standards-based instruction. Principal, 88(1).
• Hertling, E. (2000). Evaluating the results of whole-school reform. ERIC Digest Number 140

Evidence challenging this perspective includes:

• Gross, B. B., T Kevin; Goldhaber, DanAuthor Information. (2009). Boosting student achievement: The effect of comprehensive school reform on student achievement. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 31(2).
• Dragoset, L., Thomas, J., Herrman, M., Deke, J., James-Burdumy, S., Graczwski, C., . . . Giffin, J. (2017). School improvement grants: Implementation and effectiveness. Washington DC: Institute of Education Sciences: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance.

3. Turnaround Model:

There is another school of thought, drawing from the business management literature (upon which aspects of the "School Improvement Grant" approach under No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top were based), that argues more radical change is necessary, particularly in the case of failing schools, chronically low-performing schools, or organizations in crisis, in the form of:

• Rapid, dramatic changes in staffing and management (reconstitution, new principal, replacing teachers)
• Use of external support providers

This was one of the improvement pathways under the School Improvement Grant program that was a feature of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. In those programs, the model required schools to replace the principal, replace at least 50 percent of the school staff. The research base on this approach in the school context is thin (and evidence from the school turnaround efforts under No Child Left Behind does not support this as an effective method) (Drafoset, et. al, 2017).

Knowledge Base:

• Murphy, J., & V. Meyers, C. (2010). Turning around failing schools: Leadership lessons from the organizational sciences.
• Schein, E. (2017). Chapter 11: The culture dynamics of organizational growth, maturity, and decline. Organizational Culture and Leadership, 5th Edition. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley.

Arguments against this approach and its limited effects are summed up in:

• Trujillo, T. (2012). The paradoxical logic of school turnarounds: A catch-22. Teachers College Record. Retrieved from http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?contentid=16797
• Dragoset, L., Thomas, J., Herrman, M., Deke, J., James-Burdumy, S., Graczwski, C., . . . Giffin, J. (2017). School improvement grants: Implementation and effectiveness. Washington DC: Institute of Education Sciences: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance.

4. Intensive Human Capital Management:

Identifying and rewarding effective teachers and principals and removing ineffective ones, and implementing strategies to recruit, place, and retain effective staff is another approach to school improvement. Based on this conception of school improvement, efforts to improve teacher evaluation and to incentivize improved performance was a key feature of the Race to the Top school reform approach during the Obama era.

Knowledge Base:

• Ballou, D., & Springer, M. G. (2015). Using Student Test Scores to Measure Teacher Performance: Some Problems in the Design and Implementation of Evaluation Systems. Educational Researcher, 44(2), 77-86. doi:10.3102/0013189x15574904
• Kane, T., Kerr, K., & Pianta, R. (Eds.). (2014). Designing teacher evaluation systems: New guidance from the Measuring of Effective Teaching project. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Dwyer, C. A., & Stufflebeam, D. (1996). Teacher evaluation. In D. Berliner & R. Calfee (Eds.), Handbook of Educational Psychology. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Mathers, C., & Olivia, M. (2008). Improving instruction through effective teacher evaluation: Options for states and districts. Washington, DC.
• Sanders, W., & Horn, S. (1998). Research Findings from the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS) Database: Implications for Educational Evaluation and Research. Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education, 12(3), 247-256. doi:10.1023/A:1008067210518
• Staiger, D. (2014). MET Project: Teacher evaluation and performance measurement. Paper presented at the Tuck Graduate School of Management Educational Leadership Program, Dartmouth College.

Scholarly critiques of this approach are many, including:

• Darling-Hammond, L. (2015). Can Value Added Add Value to Teacher Evaluation? Educational Researcher, 44(2), 132-137. doi:10.3102/0013189x15575346
• Mintrop, R., Ordenes, M., Coghlan, E., Pryor, L., & Madero, C. (2017). Teacher evaluation, pay for performance, and learning around instruction: Between dissonant incentives and resonant procedures. Educational Administration Quarterly, 1(47).

And many scholars have sought to reframe evaluation so that it emphasizes feedback and growth rather than serving to reward or sanction teachers:

• Darling-Hammond, L., Amrein-Beardsley, A., Haertel, E., & Rothstein, J. (2012). Evaluating teacher evaluation. Phi Delta Kappan, 93(6).
• National Board Resource Center. (2010). A quality teacher in every classroom: Creating a teacher evaluation system that works for California. Washington DC: Author

5. Accountability:

The accountability approach (which was the core of No Child Left Behind and its successors) rests on the supposition that through measuring student performance, centralized goal setting, and rewards and sanctions on schools or teachers to reach results, a new performance dynamic in schools will replace the traditional performance culture. These systems are intended to force schools to focus on student learning and instruction and push them onto a continuous improvement trajectory.

Knowledge Base:

• Kane, T. J., & Staiger, D. O. (2002). The Promise and Pitfalls of Using Imprecise School Accountability Measures. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 16(4), 91-114. doi:10.1257/089533002320950993
• Linn, R. (2000). Assessments and accountability. Educational Researcher, 29(2), 4-16.
• O'Day, J. (2009). Complexity, accountability, and school improvement. Harvard Education Review, 72(3).
• Reeves, D. (2005). Accountability in action: A blueprint for learning organizations. Englewood, CO: Advanced Learning Press.
• Smith, M. S., & O'Day, J. (1990). Systemic school reform. Journal of Education Policy, 5(5), 233-267. doi:10.1080/02680939008549074

The federal and state systems, with the introduction of ESSA, seem to be gradually moving away from centrally planned accountability systems. The critiques and counter evidence is much to lengthy to include here, but one good summary is:

• Mintrop, H., & Sunderman, G. L. (2009). Predictable failure of federal sanctions-driven accountability for school improvement‚ And why we may retain it anyway. Educational Researcher, 38(5), 353-364. doi:10.3102/0013189x09339055