A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Improving America's Schools: A Newsletter on Issues in School Reform - October 1996

What Is a Schoolwide Program?

Schoolwide programs focus on the needs of students in high-poverty schools, ensuring that every student succeeds. As the principal of a schoolwide in La Joya, Texas explains, "Highly effective schools expect high achievement from each child.... All our children are treated as if they're gifted and all our teachers are teachers of the gifted." Schoolwide programs are built on a research base indicating that students are most successful when the entire school supports the education of all.

No two schoolwide programs are alike, but the best are:

Under Title I of the 1994 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), participating schools serving 50 percent of students from low-income families can become schoolwide programs to expand the flexibility and quality of the education they offer students.

Following consultation with the school district office, and with support from distinguished educators and school support teams, interested schools initiate a year of planning to determine how to integrate fiscal resources, facilities, and materials behind high-quality teaching that is fully aligned with students' educational needs.

Researchers learned during the 1980s that improving the entire school, rather than targeting the poorest-performing students, improved the education of all students, even the most disadvantaged (Slavin, Karweit, & Madden, 1989). Shifting to a schoolwide approach gives teachers new opportunities to enrich instruction and accelerate student learning. Following the same rigorous core curriculum, students can meet the state's and district's high standards. "This is a new day for Title I schools," observes Pat Jenkins, federal program director in Cleveland (Ohio) Public Schools: "We are committed to doing things that are good for all children.... The flexibility, the distribution of resources--it's pushing us!"

The reauthorized ESEA enables schoolwide programs to use all available funding sources--federal, state, and local--to reorganize a school's education program to meet the needs of its entire student body. The law emphasizes that a schoolwide program is intended to upgrade the overall academic program with:

Schools with schoolwide programs benefit from knowing that they can rely on stable funds from multiple ESEA sources. They have the time and flexibility to build a solid foundation and then to continually adjust their program as students' needs change (Stringfield, Millsap, Scott, Herman, 1996).

Challenges of Starting Schoolwide Programs

Hoover High School in San Diego, California faced a 13 percent dropout rate and low test scores. The staff knew they had to improve. By combining funds from eligible ESEA programs with several state grants, the faculty visited other schools, participated in a professional growth program, and devised technology-based strategies that turned the whole school around. The school adopted the principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools and refocused their instruction to ensure that all students achieved the state's challenging academic standards.

This is the kind of change that path-breaking educator Ronald Edmonds inspired educators to undertake, beginning in the mid-1970s. Edmonds insisted that every student is entitled to an outstanding school and he showed how it could be done, especially in schools serving high-poverty communities: "We can, whenever and wherever we choose, successfully teach all students whose schooling is of interest to us. We already know more than we need, in order to do this" (Edmonds, 1979).

Following Edmonds' example, school leaders nationwide have demonstrated that a focus on schoolwide improvement is a powerful means of boosting student achievement in high-poverty schools. This fact has been documented most recently by Stringfield, Millsap, Scott, & Herman (1996, p. 23), who found that promising programs serving students placed at risk "used federal compensatory education funds to create or adopt, and then sustain, new programs they often could not have considered otherwise. In the hands of instructionally focused, creative educational administrators and teachers, [Title I] became the primary engine for reform in otherwise distressed schools."

Successful Schoolwide Programs

  • Identify student's needs and decide how to meet them

  • Engage and expand on students' natural gifts and talents

  • Work together to help every child achieve to the same challenging standards

  • Design educational programs that are consistent with state and local reform efforts

  • Meet the special needs of children who are at risk academically, limited English proficient, migrant, or homeless

  • Break through traditional funding limitations by combining resources from multiple funding streams to promote children's learning
  • Seek support and guidance from fellow practitioners within the district and across the state who have successfully shifted to using ESEA resources schoolwide

  • Evaluate success in terms of increased achievement by students at greatest risk of failing to meet state standards

Making the transition to schoolwide programs may require considerable adjustment for schools. The U.S. Department of Education's 1994 "Idea Book" on schoolwide programs revealed many challenges: allowing adequate time for school staff to learn new roles; developing teachers' capacity to design curriculum and assess student learning; maintaining open communication among planners and members of the school community; cultivating support and active involvement from local businesses and organizations; and coping with turnover in school leadership (Pechman & Fiester, 1994). With commitment and creative effort, however, these challenges can be met.

According to Mississippi's former federal programs director Milton Matthews, a schoolwide program requires schools to use a comprehensive approach, but not a uniform one. "The biggest challenge for schools that become schoolwide [programs] is the unlearning and relearning that educators and administrators have to [undertake] to understand a global approach to educating all children." Matthews points to an important improvement schoolwide programs make: they no longer select `Title I kids' or carve teachers' days into remedial, bilingual, or computer classes. Instead, teachers work in teams and with specialists to determine the right mix of resources that addresses each student's education needs. In some cases, students are best served with specialized, research-based programs, such as Reading Recovery, HOTS, or other intensive instruction. In other instances, schools may need to design customized services for students with special needs. The staff can offer such programs within the regular classroom, or they can pull students into special classes to accomplish specific goals. Once students achieve their goals, however, they return full-time to their regular classrooms. Both within-class and supplementary instruction are rigorous and standards-focused, designed for all to accomplish the same high standard.

Schoolwide Programs Increase Learning Opportunities For All Students

At Samuel W. Mason Elementary School in Boston, Massachusetts, an innovative team-teaching effort has combined formerly disparate programs into a schoolwide format. Each member of a three-person teaching team--consisting of the former Title I "pull-out" teacher, a Reading Recovery teacher, and a special education teacher--works in the mornings with a grade-level cluster, reducing each cluster's student-teacher ration by 50 percent. In the afternoons, the school's six kindergarten and early childhood teachers team up to create an early childhood literacy program. Through this arrangement, the schoolwide program doubles the amount of time children spend in reading instruction, offering early literacy in classrooms with an average teacher-student ratio of one to nine (Exchange, Fall 1995).

Schoolwides Rely on Strong Leadership and Effective Schoolwide Management

Typically a strong leader--the principal, a teacher, the federal programs coordinator--initiates a schoolwide program by asking planning committees to examine new structures that would foster the collaboration necessary to help students reach high standards. Collaboration often involves learning new roles and new ways of working--a challenge in itself, says Rosemary Summers, principal of a school in the Evansville-Vanderburgh (Indiana) School Corporation that became a schoolwide program under the reauthorized ESEA. In a series of day-long retreats, the staff in her schoolwide program began planning to overcome their hesitancy to work collaboratively. "It's hard to move away from 18 years of doing the same old program," Summers explained, "but we all understand that change is slow and difficult, and staff are starting to see the difference in working together."

Schoolwide programs can use Title I resources along with other Federal resources to leverage local and state funding and tailor an education program to the needs of a school's entire student body, as long as the intent and purposes of those programs are met. For example:

Although teachers are primarily responsible for linking learning and teaching to high standards, it is the principal's leadership and management that school staff report are keys to making schoolwide programs work.

Combining Program Funds Lets Schoolwides Focus on Education

Kit Carson Elementary School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, made the shift to a schoolwide orientation four years ago. The staff combined bilingual and Title I programs to meet the educational needs of both bilingual and monolingual students. The Rio Grande Writing Project, for example, formerly a bilingual program, benefits everyone in the school by teaching all teachers--not just those teaching students who speak languages other than English at home--strategies that help children develop language skills and cultural awareness. Combining federal programs also reduced the administrative burden of tracking separate sources of money so that the school can focus on designing the right education for all children--rather than determining how funds are disbursed.

Principals broker new relationships between school staff, parents, students, the surrounding community, and district administrators. They bring new voices into school-based decision making and facilitate collaboration among stakeholders with different--and sometimes conflicting--viewpoints. All stakeholders must be heard, and that is not something that can occur just once: schools establish means for communities to review and recommend changes regularly. Some principals have called schoolwides "works in progress," and they warn that viable schoolwide programs continue to shift and change well after the first years of planning and implementation (Pechman & Fiester, 1994). "The more we do, the more we see what needs to be done, and the more we place demands on ourselves to improve our school," says principal Rosemary Summers.

Although principals are integral to the schoolwide organization, they are not alone in developing or sustaining the vision for the program. Experience has proven that, by leading and managing schoolwides, teachers deepen their ownership of the schoolwide's mission and the effectiveness of the overall program. Teacher involvement is critical to starting and sustaining the reform effort, especially through shifts in school or district leadership. When teachers are involved in designing the reform, they know what needs to remain stable and what needs to change. Together, teachers and the community are instrumental in maintaining the academic focus that yields schoolwide success.

Professional Development Is a Priority in Schoolwide Programs

Schoolwide reform requires teachers to rethink their roles and responsibilities, and, as a result, to acquire new knowledge and skills. If the emphasis on standards-based reform is to succeed, teachers need to strengthen and expand their professional knowledge to reflect new content and pedagogy that reinforce states' emerging academic standards. Resources from all federal education programs, including Goals 2000, the ESEA programs, and the School-to-Work Opportunities Act, can and should be used to build that knowledge base within schoolwides.

Professional development is available to anyone in a schoolwide program, including teachers, classroom aides, and, where appropriate, principals, pupil services personnel, other school staff, and parents. Activities promoting growth should align closely with schoolwide program goals and take various forms: retreats with the entire faculty, with community planners, or with faculty and/or parent subgroups; continuing informal discussions among colleagues and across teams, often including parents; routine team planning or curriculum development meetings; participation in continuing re-education to learn research-based teaching models; or stipend support so that teachers or administrators can return to school or travel to training opportunities in other communities.

Teachers and principals in schoolwide programs have considerable leverage in selecting staff development options and in tailoring them to their schools' needs to improve student learning. The key to effective professional development is for participants to help determine the content. It takes some juggling of schedules and a willingness by administrators to cover costs--for university applications, courses, parking or registration fees, and day care arrangements--so that teachers and others can learn after school or in evenings. But by accommodating the staff's professional needs, schoolwide programs become centers of learning for adults as well as for children.

Professional Development Partnerships

For the past five years, a partnership between McNair Elementary School and the College of Charleston in North Charleston, South Carolina, has opened up several professional development opportunities for McNair teachers. Students from the college work at McNair as student teachers; in exchange, McNair teachers receive free courses at the college. The college students' supervisor also participated in McNair's schoolwide planning.

Another partnership between McNair and the Medical University of South Carolina brings students who are learning to be community health professionals into the school. Once a week medical students work in McNair's science labs and engage students in projects on such topics as hygiene and safety. Several McNair families volunteered to receive medical students into their homes to conduct a series of wellness visits.

Many schoolwide programs encourage teachers to observe their colleagues teach and to discuss curriculum issues across grades and with team members. They use federal funds to provide stipends so that the school staff can lead or participate in staff development workshops, engage in curriculum development, or learn new methods and observe new strategies in action in other classrooms or schools.

When Grand Avenue School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, became a schoolwide program, its several "schools" developed a "vision for learning" that included professional development. Their plans emphasized the heavy involvement of students' families and the entire staff in professional development activities that span the summer and the traditional school year. The staff devised professional activities to address suggestions from each school-within-the-school, focusing on curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

Schoolwides Foster New Types of Parent Partnerships

Under ESEA, schoolwide programs must specify strategies for increasing parent involvement in their children's education. Parents assume new leadership roles and serve on planning and policy-making committees; they may also participate in professional development activities. At Osceola West Elementary School in Osceola, Arkansas, a parent advisory committee regularly meets to discuss schoolwide planning activities. When parents visit the school, the staff briefs them on the school's comprehensive improvement plan and asks for their input. Also, the principal uses parent meetings to remind parents of the goals and objectives of the schoolwide program. According to the principal, soliciting parents' perspectives and keeping them informed about the schoolwide effort develops a partnership that deepens their involvement in their children's schooling.

Parent Information and Resource Centers Connect Families and Schools

Parent Resource Centers in 28 states are involving parents in the effort to increase student achievement. Center programs serve states or regions by reaching out to high concentrations of low-income, minority, and limited-English proficient parents. The Centers create programs in response to communities' needs, but they share the common objective of expanding parents' involvement in their children's learning through parent-to-parent training, hotlines, mobile training teams, resource and lending libraries, support groups, and referral networks. They also provide information and training for two popular programs, Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) and Parents as Teachers (PAT).

Many schoolwides designate a "home-school" coordinator as a liaison between the community and the school. Effective parent liaisons know that parents have much to teach schools so they cultivate two-way relationships with parents by listening and by offering guidance when asked. They develop programs that both solicit parent suggestions and reach out to those who need assistance such as special medical or social services. Parent liaisons know how to communicate appropriately with parents, especially those who do not speak English or have a disability. A liaison who can communicate effectively with parents and understands the parent's culture will be able to make the necessary connections between the school and parents. The flexibility of the schoolwide option makes it possible to weave collaborations into the schoolwide plan to link parents with neighborhood organizations, health clinics, hospitals, and social service agencies. Through these linkages the school becomes a coordinating center for family services, thus reducing the barriers that prevent many low-income parents from securing assistance for their children and families.

Because research has shown how important it is to involve parents in their children's education, ESEA increases schools' responsibilities for fully communicating with parents. The law requires schoolwides to keep parents informed of children's academic progress and to suggest ways parents can help their children advance. The law also requires schools to conduct parent-teacher conferences with the parents of students who have not met the state's standards and to provide information about available academic help at the school or elsewhere in the community. Once a state's assessment system is in place, schoolwide programs must give parents their child's assessment results, along with interpretative information explaining the meaning of the scores.

Like all Title I programs, schoolwides must work with parents to develop "compacts" that define both school and home responsibilities for improving student achievement. Compacts are a resource for strengthening school and family partnerships, promoting the coordination between school and parents that ensures students achieve the state's high standards. Through a compact, the school explains its approach to improving education quality and commits to regular communication among teachers and parents by:

Compacts suggest ways parents can promote children's learning at home, as well. The most important support parents can provide for learning is praise and encouragement for school achievement; but their support also involves monitoring attendance and scheduling daily homework time, listening to their child read, and limiting television watching.
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