School Restructuring and Student Achievement in Washington State: Research Findings on the Effects of House Bill 1209 and School Restructuring on Western Washington Schools.

Executive Summary

In 1993 Engrossed Substitute House Bill 1209 set in motion a series of activities throughout the State of Washington designed to change how and what students are taught and are expected to learn. The reform efforts within Washington State generally reflect the school restructuring efforts that are currently progressing at various speeds throughout the United States. The research reported here was conducted during 1997 and 1998, and focused on the nature of restructuring and specific changes that have taken place in a sample of Washington schools, and the degree to which those changes were related to increases in student learning.

Defining a restructured school. We chose to define a restructured school as one that has undergone changes that reflect second order or fundamental changes in school philosophy and practice, and where those changes are driven by a collaborative process and clearly defined goals. The School Practices and Changes Questionnaire (SPCQ) was designed specifically for this research to measure the nature and extent of changes that have taken place in the schools since 1993.

The questionnaire asks for teachers' perceptions of how state mandated school reform efforts have affected their school, their classroom, their own teaching, and their students. In addition, we considered these additional school variables in our research: ·

• School socio-economic status ·
• School ethnicity ·
• School size ·
• Specific school-wide practices ·
• Specific classroom practices ·
• Teacher perceptions of student learning ·
• Academic achievement-the school-wide results from the California Test of Basic Skills (CTBS) for 1993, 1996, and 1997.

The sixteen participating school districts were located in the Puget Sound region of Western Washington basically along the I-5 corridor both south and north of Seattle and on the Olympic Peninsula. In those analyses where the individual teacher was the unit of analysis, the sample consisted of 2,197 teachers from 111 schools. Seventy-five schools provided sufficient data for school comparisons and included 51 elementary, 14 middle/junior high, and 10 high schools.

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

RESTRUCTURING

• Most schools have gone through some degree of restructuring, but elementary schools have experienced a higher level of fundamental change than have high schools. ·
• While many schools are changing, not all schools are making progress on restructuring. The large majority of schools, about 75%, are practicing some degree of collaborative decision making, while about 10% of the schools have experienced very little collaboration. Similarly, a large majority of schools have made changes that they believe are important and long lasting, but only about 10% of the schools report that these changes are impacting their instruction significantly at this point. ·
• The degree of changes that are being made at this sample of schools is independent of an individual school's ethnic composition, but seems to be more common among schools with lower achieving and lower income students.

SCHOOL-WIDE PRACTICES ·

• Specific changes being made at the schools differ, but the most common changes at the elementary level are an emphasis on staff development activities, site-based councils and decision-making, parent volunteer in the schools, inclusion practices, formal parental involvement programs, a cooperative learning focus, outcome or performance based learning, and alternative assessment strategies. ·
• At the middle/junior high and high schools, the most common changes are an emphasis on staff development activities, site-based councils and decision-making, parent volunteer in the schools, inclusion practices, school to work transition programs, block scheduling or flexible time for courses, interdisciplinary team teaching, and formal parental involvement programs. ·
• The elementary schools with higher restructuring scores are more likely to have implemented a wide variety of school-wide practices, including alternative assessment strategies, cooperative learning, staff development activities, recognition programs for effective teaching, and community involvement. ·
• The middle/junior high and high schools with higher restructuring scores are more likely to be using block schedules or some alternative, cooperative learning, multiage grouping, and to have a school to work transition program.

CLASSROOM PRACTICES ·

• Many classroom teachers indicated that they have moderately or substantially increased specific classroom practices because of the restructuring efforts. The most common changes include an increase in the use of technology, a focus on higher order thinking skills, group projects, cooperative learning, alternative assessment procedures, team teaching, interdisciplinary curricula, heterogeneous grouping, and student portfolios, along with a closer alignment of the curriculum with the instruction. This is coupled with a decrease in the usage of text books and lectures. However, these changes in classroom practices were made by teachers independent of the restructured status of the school.

RESTRUCTURING AND ACHIEVEMENT GAINS ·

• The single best predictor of CTBS achievement gains from 1993 through 1997 for the elementary and middle/junior high schools is the degree to which a school has been restructured. The best two predictors of achievement gains are the degree of restructuring and the School-wide Practice of outcome or performance based education. These two factors appear to work independent of a school's ethnic or socio-economic status and size. ·
• The differences in gains between the most restructured and least restructured schools are the equivalent of a school at the 50th percentile prior to restructuring moving to the 61st percentile for the Total Battery of the CTBS.

CONCLUSIONS

The degree to which schools have attempted to implement the restructuring process implied by HB1209 differs from school to school. In fact, while many of the schools have or are implementing many of the same school-wide or classroom practices, there is also a wide variety of practices being used and to varying degrees. Most of these school-wide and classroom practices reflect the national trends in school reform. However, only a very few of these specific practices are related to academic achievement gains, and only one specific practice, outcome or performance based education, is related when the broader definition of restructuring is considered. Many of the classroom practices that have increased the most in use since 1993, such as the use of educational technology and group projects, have no relationship with achievement gains.

In this research we have attempted to distinguish between simply changing school or classroom practices and the broader concept of restructuring a school. The most significant finding in this study is that achievement gains have been greater in the elementary and middle/junior high schools where restructuring has taken place than in those schools where it has not. The best predictor of achievement gains is the Total Restructuring Score, and this is true regardless of the school's socio-economic status, ethnic composition, or size.

The Total Restructuring Score is a measure of the degree to which teachers, parents, and administrators have worked together to define precisely what their school will be, that is, what goals will be pursued, what beliefs will drive the decisions, what will be expected of the students, and how these ideas will be implemented. It is also a measure of the commitment to and ownership of the changes, and belief on the part of the teachers that what they are doing is important and that it will make a long-term difference in their classrooms and in the lives of their students. In the restructured schools a new ethos has emerged, and specific school-wide or classroom practices take a back seat to this important component of changing education. Where the new ethos has emerged since 1993, student achievement has increased. However, this conclusion is tempered by the need for continuing and long-term research in this area to determine the degree to which the troublesome Hawthorne effect may be at work to produce these findings.

These findings are very much supportive of the idea of "whole school" or "comprehensive school" reform programs being implemented elsewhere. Finally, these findings strongly suggest that the move toward decentralization of the schools is a positive step and should be continued. Without teacher and parental commitment, changing the school ethos or culture may be impossible.

Jeffrey T. Fouts
Professor of Education School of Education
Seattle Pacific University
Seattle, WA

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