Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago » (New Edition)

Anthony S. Bryk is president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and was founding senior director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR), University of Chicago. Penny Bender Sebring is founding codirector of CCSR, the Urban Education Institute, University of Chicago. Elaine Allensworth is director for statistical analysis at CCSR. Stuart Luppescu is chief psychometrician at CCSR. John Q. Easton is director of the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, and former executive director of CCSR.

In 1988, the Chicago public school system decentralized, granting parents and communities significant resources and authority to reform their schools in dramatic ways. To track the effects of this bold experiment, the authors of Organizing Schools for Improvement collected a wealth of data on elementary schools in Chicago. Over a seven-year period they identified one hundred elementary schools that had substantially improved—and one hundred that had not. What did the successful schools do to accelerate student learning?

The authors of this illuminating book identify a comprehensive set of practices and conditions that were key factors for improvement, including school leadership, the professional capacity of the faculty and staff, and a student-centered learning climate. In addition, they analyze the impact of social dynamics, including crime, critically examining the inextricable link between schools and their communities. Putting their data onto a more human scale, they also chronicle the stories of two neighboring schools with very different trajectories. The lessons gleaned from this groundbreaking study will be invaluable for anyone involved with urban education.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

"Organizing Schools for Improvement has some pretty convincing conclusions on what characteristics separate successful schools from unsuccessful ones. The book offers important advice for people involved in any school, regardless of location or student background."--Alan Borsuk, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

Acknowledgments vii

Prologue: A Tale of Two Schools l

Introduction: A Rare Opportunity to Learn about School Improvement 12

1 Developing appropriate outcome indicators 29

2 A framework of essential supports 42

3 Testing the framework of the essential supports 79

4 Probing deeper: organizational mechanisms 97

5 Trust, size, and stability: key enablers 137

6 The influences of community context 158

Summary and Conclusions 197

Appendix A Socioeconomic Status Factor 223

Appendix B A Value-Added Indicator: A School's Academic Productivity Profile 225

Appendix C Overview of the Fourteen Indicators for the Five Essential Supports 231

Appendix D Probability Experiment to Evaluate Results Presented in Figure 3.3 242

Appendix E Interview Questions from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods 245

Appendix F Coefficients from Analyses of Leadership in Chapter 4 246

Appendix G Value-Added Replication Results for 1997 through 2005 250

Appendix H Efforts of the Consortium on Chicago School Research to Build More Productive Ties between Research, Practice, and Policy to Improve Practice 252

Notes 257

References 285

Index 297