Sooo... What Makes a Good School?

Let's just look at the question in terms of how a school is run, and not in the complex cultural terms that would entail a look at the roles of tradition, alumni, mission, philosophy, and other social dynamics that are often linked with a long history.

David Tyack in his landmark work The One Best System (Harvard University, 1974) cautioned us against looking for a magic formula that would apply to all schools. His survey covered the entire history of urban education in the US, and showed both the successes and failures of the various systems that the 'US education system' really was.

Much more recently, a consortium (Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu & Easton) has come out with Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons From Chicago (University of Chicago, 2010), an interesting look at the Chicagoan educational landscape of about 500 schools from 1990 to 2005. They've identified five main points which lead to the success of urban schools (at least in Chicago):

1. Strong leadership, in the sense that principals are “strategic, focused on instruction, and inclusive of others in their work”;
2. A welcoming attitude toward parents, and formation of connections with the community;
3. Development of professional capacity, which refers to the quality of the teaching staff, teachers’ belief that schools can change, and participation in good professional development and collaborative work;
4. A learning climate that is safe, welcoming, stimulating, and nurturing to all students; and
5. Strong instructional guidance and materials.

I think my immediate response (quite apart from the 'ah, another elite US university study that the innocent will think applies to urban centres worldwide' response) was that I didn't see anything new in this piece of work. Indeed, Education Week seems to say (subscription required) that what makes this book different is the level of detail and the amount of data collected.

How disappointing. But then again, what else could be expected?

There are several things that are missing from this list. Here's an example: controlling your intake. In these days of political correctness, the idea of elitism is a no-no. But let's face it, if you had some sort of meritocratic basis for selection, you could have nothing but students who are above-average in producing results. Then you would have a successful urban school. And if you have students who are good at it, a principal can pay less attention to those aspects they are good at and develop other aspects, thus enabling his school to tack on the 'holistic education' label which I find so reprehensible.

But just like any other post-colonial output (by which I mean that which is put out after the colon does its job), your intake is the key to the fragrance of success. Control that, and you will be able to produce good regular output. It will be a programme that is breath-taking in its simplicity, smooth in its processes, consistent (also coherent and cohesive) in its product quality. Let a thousand flowers bloom!

Well, that was the gratuitous post-colonial joke out of the way. But seriously, there is nothing new at all in this latest book. It's probably an excellent piece of research that tells us a lot about Chicagoan elementary schools, but it tells us nothing that we have not already learnt about schools in general. And as usual, it leaves the special development of lead teaching staff who are also administrators to the realm of the implicit.

Almost every piece on school success talks about principals and teachers. The point is that in most schools, there are at least two extra layers: between the principal and the teachers, the senior teaching staff who are also educational leaders and who actually are directly responsible for large chunks of the five factors mentioned; and the service staff who support the physical endeavour — janitors, custodians, IT support professionals, the secretariat, PR, HR, finance staff, and so on.

As far as I know, the only paper that talks about the neglected first extra layer is here and I haven't actually found one on the neglected second extra layer. Anybody know where such things might be found?