What Makes a School Successful?

There is little doubt that high performing, effective schools have committed leadership, strong curriculum and instruction and a committed staff. However, there is also a need for high levels of collaboration and communication between schools and families.

Common Characteristics of High Performing Schools
Becoming a high-performing school takes many years of hard work. There is no silver bullet - no single thing a school can do to ensure high student performance. Research has found that high-performing schools have a number of common characteristics. A school may be doing well in some areas but need help in others.

These nine common characteristics are:

1. Clear and Shared Focus
2. High Standards and Expectations
3. Effective School Leadership
4. High Levels of Collaboration and Communication
5. Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Aligned with Standards
6. Frequent Monitoring of Teaching and Learning
7. Focused Professional Development
8. Supportive Learning Environment
9. High Levels of Community and Parent Involvement

Effective Schools Correlates
Years of research on what makes schools effective have produced seven correlates of effective schools. Similar to the nine characteristics, the correlates focus on what is truly needed to make schools successful.

1. Safe and orderly environment
2. Climate of high expectations for success
3. Instructional leadership
4. Clear and focused mission
5. Opportunity to learn and student time on task
6. Frequent monitoring of student progress
7. Home-school relations

Larry Lezotte wrote about the first and second generation of effective schools research. The need to build relationships with all families has never been more critical to student achievement1:

The First Generation: In the effective school parents understand and support the school's basic mission and are given the opportunity to play an important role in helping the school to achieve this mission.

The Second Generation: During the first generation, the role of parents in the education of their children was always somewhat unclear. Schools often gave “lip service” to having parents more actively involved in the schooling of their children. Unfortunately, when pressed, many educators were willing to admit that they really did not know how to deal effectively with increased levels of parent involvement in the schools.

In the second generation, the relationship between parents and the school must be an authentic partnership between the school and home. In the past when teachers said they wanted more parent involvement, more often than not they were looking for unqualified support from parents. Many teachers believed that parents, if they truly valued education, knew how to get their children to behave in the ways that the school desired. It is now clear to both teachers and parents that the parent involvement issue is not that simple. Parents are often as perplexed as the teachers about the best way to inspire students to learn what the school teaches. The best hope for effectively confronting the problem—and not each other—is to build enough trust and enough communication to realize that both teachers and parents have the same goal—an effective school and home for all children!

1  Lezotte, Lawrence W. Correlates of Effective Schools: The First and Second Generation. Effective Schools Products, Ltd., Okemos, MI, 1991.