What Does Real and Sustained School Improvement Look Like?

“Real and sustained improvement – the kind that begins to close the achievement gaps in a significant way and gives urban kids access to the same opportunities as their suburban peers – depends on building bridges that allow students to grasp the reward of hard work. It must be rooted in relationships throughout the process of change and in a recalibration of expectations that students have for themselves.”

Education writer Laura Pappano nails it in this featured commentary in Education Week.

Pappano, who is author of School Turnarounds: Urgent Hopes, Unfolding Stories, reminds us that in order to make true, lasting improvements in the lives of students and families, we need to look beyond test scores and graduation rates to the relationships that exists between schools and communities, as well as the relationships that exist between students and adults, including mentors from the business community.

Pappano points to at least one school, Cincinnati’s Taft Information Technology High School (formerly Taft High School) as an example of a mentoring and community partnership success story.

The long-time troubled high school partnered with Cincinnati Bell, making the partnership a key part of the school’s extensive turnaround efforts. The partnership has lead to a number of school programs designed to help connect students with teachers, coaches, business leaders and others.

Ultimately, the goal of the program is not just to help students boost their test scores, but to have the desire and focus needed to be successful both in school and in life.

And so far, there seems to be evidence that the turnaround is working. Over the past decade, the school’s graduation rate has risen from 25 percent to 95 percent. And in 2010, the percentage of 10^th graders scoring proficient or higher in math is up from 33 percent to 96 percent, and from 68 percent to 96 percent in reading.

The dramatic turnaround – one that is almost unheard of, particularly at the high school level – happened for a number of reasons. Some of the changes were organizational, while others involved efforts to focus more on academics and to minimize chaos.

But principal Anthony G. Smith says that partnerships are at the heart of his work – and an essential part of helping students from low-income neighborhoods, where generation after generation of families has lived in poverty – to develop a long-term vision. Students learn to plan for and work hard to attend college and to move into a career that meets their economic, social and emotional needs.

The story of Taft’s turnaround – particularly the emphasis on the need for partnerships and long-term efforts at transformation of students’ lives – is powerful. The school’s story – and that of other schools like it – desperately needs to be told.