Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago

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.

History

Bryk, Anthony S.

Sebring, Penny Bender

Allensworth, Elaine

Luppescu, Stuart

Easton, John Q.

Americas

University of Chicago Press

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.

Popular in the First Edition for its rich, illustrative examples and lucid explanations of the theory and use of hierarchical linear models (HLM), the book has been reorganized into four parts with four completely new chapters. The first two parts, Part I on "The Logic of Hierarchical Linear Modeling" and Part II on "Basic Applications" closely parallel the first nine chapters of the previous edition with significant expansions and technical clarifications, such as: * An intuitive introductory summary of the basic procedures for estimation and inference used with HLM models that only requires a minimal level of mathematical sophistication in Chapter 3 * New section on multivariate growth models in Chapter 6 * A discussion of research synthesis or meta-analysis applications in Chapter 7 * Data analytic advice on centering of level-1 predictors and new material on plausible value intervals and robust standard estimators

Hierarchical Linear Models: Applications and Data Analysis Methods (Advanced Quantitative Techniques in the Social Sciences)

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Raudenbush, Stephen W.

Psychology & Counseling

Sage Publications, Inc.

Much social and behavioral research involves hierarchical data structures. The effects of school characteristics on students, how differences in government policies from country to country influence demographic relations within them, and how individuals exposed to different environmental conditions develop over time are a few examples. This introductory text explicates the theory and use of hierarchical linear models through rich illustrative examples and lucid explanations.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

HLM: Hierarchical linear and nonlinear modeling with the HLM/2L and HLM/3L programs

Scientific Software International

This book describes version 6 of the HLM computer program for multilevel analysis by Raudenbush, Bryk, &amp; Congdon. It includes chapters on the conceptual and statistical background as well as chapters on how to work with the program.

HLM 6: Hierarchical Linear and Nonlinear Modeling

Cheong, Yuk Fai

Jr., Richard T. Congdon

Scientific Software International, Inc.

HLM7 Hierarchical Linear and Nonlinear Modeling User Manual: User Guide for Scientific Software International's (S.S.I.) Program

Congdon Jr., Richard T.

du Toit, Mathilda

Scientific Software International, Incorporated

Learning to Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better

As a field, education has largely failed to learn from experience. Time after time, promising education reforms fall short of their goals and are abandoned as other promising ideas take their place. In Learning to Improve, the authors argue for a new approach. Rather than “implementing fast and learning slow,” they believe educators should adopt a more rigorous approach to improvement that allows the field to “learn fast to implement well.” Using ideas borrowed from improvement science, the authors show how a process of disciplined inquiry can be combined with the use of networks to identify, adapt, and successfully scale up promising interventions in education. Organized around six core principles, the book shows how “networked improvement communities” can bring together researchers and practitioners to accelerate learning in key areas of education. Examples include efforts to address the high rates of failure among students in community college remedial math courses and strategies for improving feedback to novice teachers. Learning to Improve offers a new paradigm for research and development in education that promises to be a powerful driver of improvement for the nation’s schools and colleges.

Education & Teaching

Gomez, Louis M.

Grunow, Alicia

LeMahieu, Paul G.

Schools & Teaching

Harvard Education Press

Improvement in Action, Anthony S. Bryk's sequel to Learning to Improve, illustrates how educators have effectively applied the six core principles of continuous improvement in practice. The book highlights relevant examples of rigorous, high-quality improvement work in districts, schools, and professional development networks across the country. The organizations featured in the book have addressed, with remarkable results, long-standing inequitable educational outcomes in high school graduation rates, college readiness, and absenteeism. The cases emphasize the measures the educators took and the thinking that motivated their actions. Bryk describes how improvers, working in different contexts and confronting different problems, used select principles, tools, and methods to make improvement come to life. Brief analytic reflections are embedded throughout the narratives, and each chapter concludes with an analysis of a set of larger lessons illuminated by the organization's story. Taken as a set, these examples offer readers valuable insights about the actual dynamics of doing improvement work. Improvement in Action, paired with Learning to Improve, provides readers with a comprehensive understanding of the practice, method, and theory of large-scale continuous improvement in education.

Improvement in Action: Advancing Quality in America’s Schools (Continuous Improvement in Education Series)

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Books by Bryk, Anthony S.