Schools and Systems: Designing for Achievement

The Commission recognizes that calling upon the United States to bring far greater numbers of young people to much higher levels of mathematics and science learning represents a challenge higher than our educational system has ever committed to as a goal or come close to realizing as an achievement. The goal of dramatically upgrading math and science education aligns with similar calls and efforts for transforming American education to bring all students to “college readiness⁷⁷.” Mathematics is both a critical gateway subject and competence for college preparation and technical careers and a foundation of higher-order thinking. The sciences provide both methods for problem solving and core knowledge needed in our complex society for carrying out key civic responsibilities such as serving on a jury (which increasingly involves weighing science-based evidence) or voting on social issues such as stem cell research.

Daunting as this goal may be, it is essential to our national well-being. As a practical matter, therefore, we must make crucial decisions regarding changes to make, innovations to seek, public policies to craft, and investments to budget for and prioritize. We will need transformation at every level: systems, schools, and classrooms.

Objectives

• Build high expectations for student achievement in mathematics and science into school and classroom culture and operations as a pathway to college and careers
• Enhance systemic capacity to support strong schools and act strategically to turn around or replace ineffective schools
• Tap a wider array of resources to increase educational assets and expand research and development capacity

Discussion

Schools must become more powerful learning organizations, where students engage in the practice of mathematics and science to build their knowledge and skills and incorporate prowess in math and science as part of their developing identities. This is especially clear for middle and high schools, which many American students enter already significantly under-prepared for academically rigorous work. These students have traditionally been relegated to a lower-track curriculum, resulting in their earning a second-class diploma or dropping out of school. This dual track exists in some states and districts even today. For these students, math and science education typically ends before they have had a chance to study algebra and any lab science.

In the current wave of high school reform, new schools have been created, and existing schools redesigned, where students who entered under-prepared are successfully studying curricula that can effectively prepare them to succeed in college⁷⁸. A visitor to these schools will see that they have certain characteristics in common. Most immediately noticeable is an ethos of high expectations, engagement, and effort—a combination that enables teaching practices that bring students with diverse assets, needs, and competencies to high levels of science and math knowledge and skills. These schools also focus squarely on teaching and learning in all functions, including instruction, assessment, and professional development. They are personalized to engage students, motivate them to achieve, and meet their learning needs. They promote positive student culture and family engagement focused on student attainment of key goals, including college and career success⁷⁹.

Another lesson from schools that are succeeding with under-prepared students is the importance of organizing more coherently to promote professional communities of principals and teachers—communities that build internal capacity and facilitate internal accountability. It is also common to find that these schools have taken steps to increase their intellectual and social capital through partnerships with scientific and cultural institutions, businesses, higher education, and community organizations; their boundaries are more “porous,” and the entire school community benefits from stronger connections to the world outside the conventional schoolhouse walls. They are far more entrepreneurial about establishing pathways to higher education and careers and more receptive to collaboration. Their operations are transparent and accountable.

This is a high bar to set for individual schools, but such expectations are not unreasonable. Effective schools are already meeting them, at least most of the time, and working hard at doing even better. Providing an effective school for every student is a challenge we must meet, but doing so will require stronger systems—and systemic change.

School designs that produce more powerful learning environments focus the school’s assets on student learning and achieving the core mission.

At the ground level, many school districts lack the capacity to set objectives, focus disparate resources, and prioritize their efforts—necessary conditions for supporting higher school-level performance⁸⁰ Rather, a combination of inefficient policies, bureaucratic rules and practices, outdated collective bargaining rules, and multiple disjointed initiatives weaken mid-performing schools and leave low-performing schools to flounder. Improving these crucial management capacities is essential to our country’s success in developing schools that can bring large numbers of under-prepared middle and high school students to high levels of math and science achievement. Redesigned school systems would build the capacity of individual schools, protect school-level educators from distractions, and provide them with management support. More effective school systems would also close persistently failing schools and replace them with new promising models, encouraging educational entrepreneurship, innovation, and accountability. Every school would receive support in accessing the resources, tools, and incentives they need to bring all students to the higher levels of achievement defined by new, higher standards.

1. On building high expectations for student achievement in mathematics and science into school and classroom culture and operations as a pathway to college and careers

The Commission believes that we must view every element of school’s design as a potential asset that can be brought to bear flexibly to improve instruction and foster positive adult–student relationships that increase student achievement, motivation, effort, confidence, and persistence—crucial for learning math and science and aspiring to higher education⁸¹. Motivation is often cited as teachers’ biggest problem, the source of student alienation and apathy, classroom management problems, and the lack of shared commitment between teachers and students. To ensure that reform reaches those students who are now far from performing at high levels in academically rigorous courses in math and science in middle and high school, schools must be designed to incorporate lessons from research on youth engagement, motivation, and factors that promote resiliency in youth living in high-poverty, high-risk environments.

The fundamental insight driving the Commission decision to include a focus on school design is that dramatically increasing the motivation of middle and high school students toward high achievement in science and math requires attention to the two primary tasks of adolescence: building competencies and forming an identity. Increasing student motivation and effort must address both of these tasks, which research tells us are interactive. School design for higher math and science achievement must first recognize that research on engagement has identified the counterintuitive finding that students who are academically struggling and those who are disconnected from school make more progress and are motivated to make more effort and to persist when they are engaged by caring teachers in more academically challenging course work⁸². Science and math content that is presented in ways that engage students in active, often cooperative work with interesting material is essential.

Research on resiliency also makes clear that factors can be built into schools to boost the ability of students to overcome challenges associated with poverty, family stresses, or neighborhood conditions and focus on educational achievement⁸³. These include caring relationships with adults who provide them with high expectations and demonstrate investment in their success, engaging activities where they have opportunities to practice skills and recover from errors, opportunities to make contributions to a group, and continuity of the adults in their lives who are committed to their success.

Traditional high schools, and many middle schools, have organizational characteristics—in their class schedules, number of students taught by each teacher each day, use of time, tracking of students into rigid ability groups, and other structures—that thwart rather than support resiliency⁸⁴. Small schools and small learning communities, teaming, and clustering are school design elements that foster the ability of teachers and other school staff to know students well and promote a culture of trust, effort, and achievement—all of which are essential to learning math and science at high levels.

School designs that produce more powerful learning environments focus the school’s assets on student learning and achieving the core mission. These assets include money, staff, time, size and schedules, calendar, data, performance targets and accountability measures, professional development, parent and community support, and student leadership. All need to be used effectively to increase motivation, expand the repertoire of instructional pedagogies and strategies used with different students, organize the school day and year, build in supports and opportunities that increase resiliency in students who experience failure and disconnection, and provide thoughtful opportunities for learning beyond schools. In reviewing each of these assets, schools should be asking how these components can be organized and blended to support learning science and math at academically rigorous levels.

At the classroom level, innovation is needed so that math and science learning can be accelerated, made richer and more motivating, and connected more closely to students’ lives. Classrooms will have to become energetic centers of math and science learning. Students and teachers need access to math and science instructional materials that are rigorous, rich in content, motivating, and clearly connected with the demands of further education, work, and family and community life. Math and science—but science especially because of its potential high interest to students—must be infused into other aspects of curriculum and school life.

Educators need expertise and support in using instructional techniques that address the learning needs of the diversity of American students at all grade levels. Schools must be designed to enable adults to assess students’ learning needs and strengths and develop customized approaches to instruction (what activity, at what intensity and over how long, toward what end) to bring all students to high levels. This is fundamentally a new kind of teaching and learning; it challenges teachers to possess and use a larger repertoire of instructional techniques, applied in alignment with the student’s needs and the demands of the course work. Teachers need tools, including technology, that support assessment of students and development of differentiated approaches to instruction⁸⁵. Schools must get better at meeting the learning needs of individual students, using methods that are more responsive and rigorous than those commonly employed today.

School systems need increased capacity for research and development and for implementing new school models that push the limits of practice.

Teachers need access to excellent curricular materials derived from research on learning and improved mechanisms for sharing and refining resources. Teachers need the ability to form professional communities where excellence, identified by the student learning outcomes achieved, is valued and a source of professional learning for other teachers. Schools need to give science and math teachers access to formative assessments that are aligned to the standards and curriculum that are the focus of student learning, and they need access to master teachers to inform practice improvements.

Curriculum and classroom experiences must also be designed intentionally to connect with and bolster the connections for girls and for students of color to STEM opportunities and career pathways⁸⁶. The Commission’s finding from focus groups and surveys conducted by Widmeyer Communications that African-American and Latino students (8th and 10th grade) have higher than average interest in math and science but also few interesting classes and limited knowledge about the level of mastery needed for college and careers suggests an important motivational base but also a critical task for schools⁸⁷ .

Cyberlearning and associated technologies will also be essential. Students need and deserve access to Web sites and learning systems that reflect the expertise and creativity of our society. Such systems would ideally enable independent learning, thus encouraging and rewarding endless exploration by students and multiplying the value of teachers’ time and expertise⁸⁸.

2. On enhancing systemic capacity to support strong schools and act strategically to turn around or replace ineffective schools

We must simultaneously transform education at the federal, state, and local levels to become systems whose policies, funding, and regulatory practices support the development of more effective schools. To do this we will need smart, bold reform that ends failed policies and practices, manages human capital strategically toward performance objectives, and generates and fosters improvement, innovation, and invention to solve persistent problems of achievement gaps and plateaus.

Systems change would ensure that key design principles are in place in every school, and that schools orient their own operations toward managing efficiently, solving problems, and rewarding strong performance. School systems need increased capacity for research and development and for implementing new school models that push the limits of practice at both ends of the instructional spectrum: re-engaging our most disconnected students in academically rigorous science and math education and placing them on pathways to graduation and postsecondary education, and providing opportunities for the most successful students in science and math to accelerate beyond what is traditionally available in high school. Research and development efforts by states and districts can identify students in all of these situations and also identify “beat the odds” schools and programs that are demonstrating success in each of these categories.

A research and development approach to school system design means that innovation and experimentation need to be encouraged within a standards and accountability framework. There is much to learn about the most effective school designs for realizing high levels of achievement in science and math by all. Urban districts including New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles are closing their lowest performing high schools and replacing them with a mix of small schools designed and developed by charter operators, nonprofit school development organizations, higher education institutions, and scientific and cultural organizations. These schools must meet state standards and are often required to be developed according to “design specifications” based on research on the characteristics of effective schools. Many emphasize science, math, and technology both in their curriculum and in the partnerships they form with scientific and health institutions and industry.

These new urban schools are educating large numbers of high-poverty students and showing substantial gains in academic achievement and graduation rates compared to the schools they replace⁸⁹. Some models are also oriented to identifying students with strong academic skills in science and mathematics and giving them access to intensified course pathways to STEM higher education and STEM careers. These specialized schools are also important developments, for students and their families gain when a variety of models are available. School systems benefit, too, when they have opportunities to learn from a “portfolio” of different school designs. School and systems need opportunities to be thoughtful about tactics and change tactics if something isn’t working.

Redesigned systems would adopt assessments aligned to higher standards and design and deploy accountability systems that reward effective instruction. More effective school systems would make designing and maintaining well-functioning human resource management a high priority. Recruiting, developing, and retaining high-capacity principals and teachers and moving out those who do not meet those criteria are essential to the development of schools that deliver on the promise of excellence and equity. Developing and sustaining research and development capacity would also enable redesigned systems to manage the changes needed to sustain and replicate high-performing schools, improve middle-performing schools, and redesign, turn around, or replace low-performing schools.

We also need to look more systematically at opportunities for learning offered to students beyond the school building and the school day

3. On tapping resources outside the school system to increase educational assets and research capacity

The Commission believes, as well, that achieving greater effectiveness in mathematics and science education will require infusions of fresh ideas, assets, and partnerships. For example, new organizations and types of organizations have entered the field to sponsor public schools over the last several years, often bringing new ideas that overturn conventional assumptions and strengthen public schools overall⁹⁰. This is a trend that could continue to enrich the field, and the Commission would especially welcome new entrants that focus specifically on math and science learning. New partnerships between K-12 and higher education, museums, and community and cultural organizations, as sponsors of or partners to public schools, will also be essential.

System change also requires intentional engagement in new forms of partnership that are focused on raising science and math achievement⁹¹. Scientists and mathematicians, students and parents, scholars and researchers, businesspeople and employers, elected officials, and many others will be needed for a successful national push. Universities, museums and other “science-rich” institutions, after-school and summer programs, and business and professional associations all have resources to add to the endeavor⁹². We also need to look more systematically at opportunities for learning offered to students beyond the school building and the school day. We need a stronger and more accessible infrastructure for supporting out-of-school-time programs, apprenticeships, and other vehicles that increase student motivation, incentivize and reward initiative, and strengthen students’ connections with higher education and employment.

We will also need to cultivate new system functions within and across districts, states, and national networks. Education has long suffered from a lack of high-quality, dedicated research and development capacity. One response is the Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP), which is attempting to fill the gap through collaborative field clusters focusing on specific locations or research-practice priorities (currently Boston, San Francisco, and minority student achievement⁹³). SERP has begun to work with school districts to select problems in need of investigation; form interdisciplinary teams of researchers, developers, and practitioners; and conduct rigorous scientific evaluation of student achievement. SERP has adopted a set of prerequisites, or conditions that need to be “present from day 1,” that are intended to ensure that research projects are responsive to district needs and likely to gain traction in schools and classrooms:

• Commitment of top district leadership to the field site collaboration

• Focus on problems of importance to the district

• Ability to bring high-quality knowledge resources to the table

• Ability to effectively coordinate and steer the work to maintain productivity

• Ability to “flatten the field” so that all sources of expertise are held in high regard and the culture is one of mutual respect

There has also been an uptick in commitment to management-oriented education research by universities. Public Education Leadership Project, a collaboration between Harvard’s School of Education and Business School, draws on faculty from both schools to study leadership and management practices that support large-scale organizational change in urban school districts⁹⁴.

Finally—and this will be as important as anything to our long-term success—the American educational system must upgrade its own capacity to innovate. We need to get smarter about developing and testing new ideas, tapping and advancing professional knowledge, and putting best practices to use.

Recommended Actions

The Commission recommends actions in three areas toward designing schools and school systems for mathematics and science achievement:

1. Build high expectations for student achievement in mathematics and science into school and classroom culture and operations as a pathway to college and careers

By states, school districts, and charter organizations

• Foster an ethos and culture emphasizing high expectations for math and science achievement by all students within each school and assess specific indicators of that culture using methods such as School Quality Reviews

• Organize schools to focus on teaching and learning as their core mission with a strong emphasis on science and mathematics; enable schools to focus their resources (money, time, people) flexibly and accountably on increasing student performance

• Build data-driven instructional improvement and innovation into the culture and professional learning of each school
• Develop tools and technologies that enable students and families to track student progress and plan for the future with key indicators in science and math achievement linked to college-readiness

• Explore and assess technology-based learning innovations in science and math learning, including digital media and games; document and expand those that show positive results; invest in promising cyberlearning to allow all teachers to support and reinforce student learning using new educational technologies

2. Enhance systemic capacity to support strong schools and act strategically to turn around or replace ineffective schools

By the federal government, states, and school districts

• Create aligned data, accountability and knowledge management systems across K-16 education to support research and development for improvements in policy, practice, and strategy to increase student achievement, graduation, and post-secondary success; ensure that science achievement is included in the early generation models

• Develop data and accountability systems that enable schools to use data to inform instructional improvement by individual teachers and school-wide; data on science achievement, especially in middle and high schools

• Make the policy and management changes to generate and accelerate innovation, and facilitate connections to increase the talent and math and science assets available in schools

• Foster a more rigorous approach to ongoing professional learning in many more districts, focused on keeping teachers up to date with emerging science and math knowledge and on effective, differentiated pedagogical techniques

• Make policy changes and take administrative action to end policies and practices that result in persistent low achievement, and, in particular, close and replace schools that are low-performing

• Stimulate the production of ideas and products that will support school and classroom innovations to increase math and science achievement through a variety of public funding sources beyond education including economic development, energy, and environmental quality departments

• Identify school models and innovations in school design and instruction that have shown substantial achievement gains in mathematics and science, especially for under-performing middle and high school students

• Remove barriers and pro-actively grow and scale effective school models through innovative governance and management arrangements with educational entrepreneurs; integrate with strategic human capital reforms

• Call for research in areas where innovations do not exist or where there is a need for new knowledge, including basic research, implementation research, and tool development to advance math and science learning

Providing an effective school for every student is a challenge we must meet, but doing so will require stronger systems—and systemic change.

3. Tap a wider array of resources to increase educational assets and expand research and development capacity

By the federal government, states, school districts, colleges and universities, and philanthropy

• Narrow the gap between research and practice in improving science and math education by designing innovative partnerships between K-12 education and universities, cultural and scientific institutions that are accountable for joint strategies for improving student achievement

• Bring innovation and design approaches to bear on improving math and science education in the K-12 educational system by developing R&D capacity and external resources (such as consulting firms, private-sector companies, universities)