DOCUMENT RESUME ED 387 925 EA 027 122 AUTHOR

INFRVIIW1. Student Learning. Planning, implementation, and evaluation mustfocus on how current practice and innovation enhance the intellectual qualityof student learning. Teachers in schools need to agree on a vision of highquality intellectual work. Goals for high quality learning need to becommunicated to students and parents. Curriculum, instruction, assessment,scheduling, staff development, hiring, student advisingall the core activitiesof the schoolmust be oriented toward the vision of student learning. TheCenter on Organization and Restructuring of Schools (CORS) developed aparticular vision of high quality student learning called authentic studentachievement. We found that when schools restructure around this kind ofvision, it worksstudents learn more.2. Authentic Pedagogy. A vision for high quality student learning is anecessary guide, but not sufficient. Teachers must teach according to thevision. What kind of teaching promotes high quality learning? To address thisquestion, CORS developed teaching standards, not to prescribe techniquessuch as cooperative learning or portfolios, but to gauge the intellectual qualityof the pedagogy we observed; that is, the mix of activities and interaction thatteachers use to instruct and assess students.Our standards emphasize teaching that requires students to think, to developin-depth understanding, and to apply academic learning to important, realisticproblems. We call this "authentic pedagogy," and we found that authenticpedagogy boosted student achievement equitably for students of all socialbackgrounds.3. School Organizational Capacity. Learning of high intellectual qualityis difficult work for students, and authentic pedagogy places complex,demanding challenges on teachers. How can schools be organized to helpthem meet these challenges? The solution here is not only to hire or traincompetent staff, but to build the capacity of the school to work well as a unitthat strives for continuous improvement. The most successful schools werethose that used restructuring tools to help them function as professionalcommunities. That is, they found a way to channel staff and student effortstoward a clear, commonly shared purpose for student learning; they createdopportunities for teachers to collaborate and help one another achieve thepurpose; and teachers in these schools took collectivenot just individualresponsibility for student learning. Schools with strong professionalcommunities were better able to offer authentic pedagogy and were moreeffective in promoting student achievement.4. External Support. Schools are nested in a complex environment ofexpectations, regulations, and professional stimulation from external sourcesincluding districts, state and fcderal agencies, independent reform projects,parents and other citizens. Schools need critical financial, technical, andA. U3

SUCC}.SsflA SCUM RISTRLCTURINGpolitical support from these external sources. We found that external agencieshelped schools to focus on student learning and to enhance organizationalcapacity through three strategies: setting standards for learning of highintellectual quality; providing sustained, schoolw;de staff development; andusing th.regulation to increase school autonomy. But sometimes externalinfluences pulled schools in different directions, imposed unreasonableregulations, and instigated rapid shifts in policy and leadership, all of whichcan undermine organizational capacity.In brief, we found that restructuring offered no panacea, hut that itadvanced student learning when it concentrated on the intellectual quality ofstudent work, when it built schoolwide organizational capacity to deliverauthentic pedagogy, and when it received support from the externalenvironment that was consistent with these challenges. This report isorganized around these circles of support, since they are what makes restructuring work for students, rather than around specific restructuring initiativessuch as site-based management or flexible scheduling.The ResearchWhat kinds of schools did we study as examples of k.cstnicturing? Assuggested above, we used "restructuring" to iepresent no singlechange or set of changes, but we considered each of the followingto be important examples:site-based management and shared decision-making, with the schoolhaving meaningful authority over staffing, school program, andbudget;students and teachers organized into teams responsible for most ofstudents' instruction, with frequent common planning time forxachers;students participating in multiyear instructional or advisory groups;students grouped heterogeneously for instruction in the core subjects;enrollment based on student and parent choice rathcr than residentiallocation.With these multiple factors, it is morc useful to think of schools as restructuring to a greater or lesser extent, rather than as categorically restructured orconventional. And restructuring occurs both when existing schools makemajor changes and when ncw schools are established to implement factorslike these.114

OvidwavBox 1SOURCES OF EVIDENCESchool Restructuring Study (SRS). This study included 24 significantly restructuredpublic schools, evenly divided among elementary, middle, and high schools, located in 16states and 22 districts, mostly in urban settings. There was a large range of enrollment, withan average of 777 students; 21 percent African American; 22 percent Hispanic; 37 percentreceiving free or reduced lunch. From 1991 through 1994 each school was studiedintensively for one year during two weeks of on-site research. Narrative reports weresupplemented by surveys of students and staff, conventioaal lusts of student achievement,and the scoring of student achievement on two teacher-assigned assessments according tostandards of authentic performance. Researchers also made intensive study of mathematicsand social studies instruction in about 130 classrooms, with complete data on about 2,000students. This study allowed intensive examination of authentic pedagogy and studentperformance in a carefully selected group of schools that had made significant progress inrestructuring.'National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88). This study included anationally representative sample.of over 10,000 students, followed from grade 8 (1988)through grade 12 (1992) in dbout 800 high schools nationwide. The schools include public,Catholic, and independent schools and represent a wide range of school enrollment,geographic settings, school social composition, as well as various levels of restructuringactivity. Student test data in mathematics, science, reading and history for grades 8, 10, and12 were drawn from items from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.Researchers also studied survey data from teachers and students, and the school principal'sreport on curriculum, instruction, school climate, and the extent of school restructuring.Complementing the more intensive study of school restructuring in the SRS, this studypermitted examination of factors that influence student learning on conventionalachievement tests over four years of high school in a large representative national -ample ofsecondary schools and students.2Study of hicago School Reform. This study included survey data from 8,000 teachers andprincipals in 400 elementary and 40 high schools from 1990 to 1994. Surveys reported oninstruction, school climate and organizational features, professional activities, relations withparents, and reform activities. The study also included three-year case studies of 12elementary schools, including six schools actively involved in restructuring. Case studyschools represent the full range of elementary schools in Chicago, which vary substantiallyin social composition, but most have a majority of poor and minority children. The study,focusing on local school politics and school organizational change, offered both in-depthcase analysis and extensive quantitative information on the nation's most ambitious effort inschool decentralization.3Longitudinal Study of School Restructuring. This study included four-year case studiesof eight schools that had embarked on different forms of restructuring in fourcommunities. Representing a variety of school social composition and enrollment, theschools inrluded two urban elementary schools, two urban middle schools, two urban highschools, and a rural middle school and high school. From 1991 through 1994, researchersspent about 15 person-dar per year in observations and interviews at each school,studying teachers' work, interactions in groups, participation in decision-making and organizational learning. The study offered in-depth analysk of how professional community,politics and organizational learning evolved in a diverse set of restructured schools.4512

SuccEssi LI. SC11001. R,STRUCTURINGThis report synthesizes findings of research conducted by CORS staff from1990 through 1995. Research on educational reform poses complex problems,which call for diverse research designs and methodolog:cs. Our conclusionsare drawn primarily from four prcjects described in Box IThese studies provided a rich combination of in-depth case studies, alongwith survey data that pomay general trends. They included schools at differentstages of restructu:ing that participated in a variety of district and state reformstrategies, including public school choice, radical decentralization, and statelevel systemic reform.136

I.STUDENT LEARNINGThe central goal of school is student learning, and the purpose of icarningis to promote students' cognitive development. A strong intellectualfocus for student learning is critical to meet modem society's demandsfor more complex cognidve functioning in order to prepare students for furtherschooling or for work. But keen use of the mind is also important forcompetent participation in democratic civic life, for emotional development,and for efficient management ef personal affairs.We would expec: school restructuring to focus educators' attention on theknowledge and intellectual skills they want students to master. Observing staffmeetings and daily lessons, we would expect to hear sustained dialogue aboutwhat .:ontent, 31:ills, and dispositions are most important to teach. We wouldhopc to hear teachers explain how knowledge from different disciplines can beused to ernich the meaning of students' daily experience. In classrooms, wewould hopc tc hear students supporting their statements with reason and withthe best available knowledge from a relevant discipline. When concerns of thissort permeate dialogue among staff and students, we recognize that a centralpriority for the school is high quality student learning.But how do we know when students have learned to use their minds wellrigorously and creatively?In a high school interdisciplinary mathematics and science class that weobserved, students designed rides for an amusement park, after visiting anearby park and taking several rides.5 The assignment required students tocalculate dimensions of their rides, the size of the carriers, the number ofpeople who could reasonably go on the ride at the :qtrne time, the means oflocomotion, and the materials that were needed. If a ride moved passengers athigh speed, the velocity had to be calculated to determine practicality andsafety. Does having students produce this kind of performance demonstratelearning of high intellectual quality? If so, what criteria can bc used to judgehow proficient a particular student's performance might be?To answer these questions, CORS developed standards for studentperformance and for teaching that facilitates student performance of highintellectual quality. The specific standards, explained later, come from ageneral vision of high quality achievement.6714

SUCCLSSFUI SCHOOL RESTRLCTLRINGAuthentic Adult Achievement: A Foundation for StandardsHow do we recognize significant human accomplishments that involveskilled intellectual work? Consider the task of designing a bridge.Successful completion of this task illustrates some of the essentialintellectual qualities of authentic achievement. Typically, the work requiresusing both new and well-established knowledge in thc fields of design andconstruction. New knowledge is produced as special conditions are addressedinvolving the bridge's particular length, height, peak points of stress and load,and also the impact of possible environmental conditions involving weatherextremes of temperature, wind, ice, snow, and floods, as well as the possibilityof earthquakes. Disciplines of engineering, architecture, various naturalsciences, and mathematics have accumulated bodies of reliable knowledge andprocedures for solving the more routine problems of bridge design. However,problems unique to each setting will require new conceptions of design andconstruction. When completed, the bridge will be safe and useful to travelers.It may also make a significant aesthetic statement, and it will likely beconsidered a personally satisfying accomplishment to those who designed it.Significant adult accomplishments, such as designing a bridge, reflect threecriteria that can be used to assess the intellectual quality of studentachievement as well: construction of knowledge, disciplined inquiry, andvalue beyond school. Adults in diverse fields face the primary challenge ofconstructing or producing meaning or knowledge. They construct knowledgethrough disciplined inquiry that uses knowledge, skills, and technology. Theyexpress the results of this disciplined inquiry in written, symbolic, and oraldiscourse, by making things (products such as furniture, bridges, videos, orsculpture), and in performances for audiences (musical, dramatic, or athletic).These expressions and products have value beyond success in school; that is,they have aesthetic, utilitarian, or personal value to the persons constructingthem and to others in thc society.Construction of KnowledgeWhen students construct knowledge. they organize, synthesize, interpret,explain, or evaluate information. To do this well, they must build on priorknowledge that others have produced. As they assimilate prior knowledge,they should hone their skills through guided practice in producing originalconversation and writing, through building physical objects, or through artisticand musical performances.However, conventional curriculum excessively emphasizes reproducingknowledge: memorizing algorithms to solve routine mathematics problems,for example, or naming the different functions of parts of speech, or matching1r84-

STI. DI NT LEARN.D.Gauthors with titles and explorers with their feats. The mere reproduction ofprior knowledge does not constitute authentic academic achievement, becauseit does not involve the thoughtful use or application of knowledge found inauthentic adult accomplishment.Disciplined InquiryA second defining feature of authentic achievement is its reliance ondisciplined inquiry. Disciplined inquiry is complex cognitive work, because itintegrates at least three important intellectual activities.First, disciplined inquiry uses an established knowledge base; that is, itemploys the facts, concepts, and theories that other inquirers have provided.Second, disciplined inquiry strives for an in-depth understanding of problems;superficial acquaintance with knowledge is inadequate to solve problems. Incontrast, conventional schoolwork dwells mainly on transmitting priorknowledgethe first part of disciplined inquiry. Schoolwork rarely helpsstudents develop in-depth understanding through which they can explore issues,relationships, and complexities within focused, limited topics.Third, scientists, jurists, artists, journalists, designers, engineers, and otherinquirers working within disciplines elaborate on thcir ideas and findings bothorally and in writing. The language they useverbal, symbolic, and visualincludes qualifications, nuances, elaborations, details, and analogues woveninto extended expositions, narratives, explanations, justifications, anddialogue. But much of the communication demanded in school asks only forbrief responses: choosing true or false, selecting from multiple choices, fillingin blanks, or writing short sentences (e.g., "Prices increase when demandexceeds supply.")In-depth understanding and elaborated communication may appear toosophisticated for children to grasp. But we take the position, supported by manyeducators and psychologists and evidenced by thc success.of several teacherswe obse rved, that all students are capable of engaging :n these forms ofcognitive work whcn the work is adapted to students' levels of development.Value Beyond SchoolFinall,,, authentic human achievements have aesthetic, utilitarian, or personalvalue apart from documenting the competence of the learner. When adults writeletters, nc ws articles, scientific papers, or poems, design buildings, createpaintings :)r music or build furniturc, they are trying to communicate ideas,produce products, or have an impact on others beyond simply demonstrating thatthey arc competent. Achievements of this sort have a value that is missing intasks contrived only for the purpose of assessing knowledge (such as quizzes,916

SLICCI-SSFIA SC11001 RISTRueltRIVIBox 2STANDARDS FOR AUTHENTIC STUDENT PERFORMANCEConstruction of KnowledgeStandard 1: AnalysisMathematics: Student performance demonstrates thinking with mathematical contentby organizing, synthesizing, interpreting, hypothesizing, describing patterns, makingmodels or simulations, constructing mathematical arguments, or inventing procedures.Social Studies: Student performance demonstrates higher order thinking with socialstudies content by organizing, synthesizing, interpreting, evaluating, and hypothesizing toproduce comparisons, contrasts, arguments, application of information to new contexts,and consideration of different ideas or points of view.Disciplined InquiryStandard 2: Disciplinary ConceptsMathematics: Student performance demonstrates an understanding of impor

DOCUMENT RESUME. EA 027 122. Newmann, Fred M.; Wehlage, Gary G. Successful School Restructuring: A Report to the Public and Educators. Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools, Madison, WI. Office of Educational Research and Improvement (ED), Washington, DC. 95. R117Q00005-95. 72p. American Federation of Teachers, Attn: AFT/Successful