Breakthrough Schools: What Works in High School Reform
Richard A. Flanary, Director, NASSP's Office of Professional Development Services

The National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) endeavors to speak as both a voice and a system of supports for high school and middle-level leaders. Through our efforts, we work to uncover the specific strategies that lead to successful high schools.

A premiere example of this is the release of Breaking Ranks II: Strategies for Leading High School Reform (February 2004). This publication serves as a field guide for school improvement for principals and leadership teams to use regardless of their size, geographical location, or where they are on the school improvement continuum.

Breaking Ranks II argues that there is a moral imperative for changing the way our high schools operate for the benefit of each student, and it calls on high school principals to take responsibility for increasing the academic achievement of each student. It also makes two critical points regarding the leadership process required to improve high schools. First, all principals, not just a few early reformers, must accept responsibility and take steps to make successful change happen; second, relying exclusively on principals, no matter what their commitment or their capacity for change, will lead to the creation of just a few high-performing high schools within systems that allow and even perpetuate mediocrity.

Breaking Ranks II does not just shine a spotlight on the urgency of improving the nation's high schools, it provides principals and school leadership teams with a template for beginning and sustaining their efforts. One key way it accomplishes this is by helping principals move from the language of complaint to the language of cooperation.

Another of NASSP's major efforts is the Breakthrough High Schools project initiated in 2002 with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The goal of the project is to identify Breakthrough High Schools, those successfully serving high minority/high poverty student populations, and determine how they have been successful. Breakthrough High Schools have student populations that are at least 50% minority, with at least 50% of their students qualifying for free or reduced-price meals, and graduate at least 90% of their students, sending at least 90% of their students on to postsecondary education.

During 2004 and 2005, a total of 21 Breakthrough High Schools were identified that have grappled with and overcome low expectations, student underperformance, and high poverty. These schools, selected from across the country in rural, suburban and urban areas and ranging in size from 270 to 4,500 students, have demonstrated multiple years of improved student attendance, achievement and graduation rates. Each identified school created a "road map," which led their students to high achievement, graduation, and on to postsecondary education.

The Breakthrough High Schools serve as practical models for other schools - regardless of their student populations -- to explore ways to help raise student achievement, create plans to decrease or prevent dropouts, see significant increases in graduation rates, and prepare students for postsecondary education. While each school's path to success has been a bit different, commonalities clustered around four prevailing themes: Personalized environment; rigorous curriculum; collaboration; and effective leadership.

In embodying the first theme, these schools strive to make the school environment physically and intellectually safe by ensuring that certain community problems are stopped at the schoolhouse door and that the culture and environment of the school makes it acceptable for students. Connecting adults and students in a variety of personal ways helps to ensure a productive environment.

Delivering a rigorous curriculum that engages students, often by relating the content to practical life, is the second central theme of each of the schools. These schools devote considerable resources to providing literacy and numeracy foundations to their students. Most schools offer extensive tutoring and mentoring programs to prepare students for a college preparatory program with a variety of challenging regular, honors, Advanced Placement and, in several cases, International Baccalaureate courses and programs. This emphasis on rigorous coursework has the effect of raising the bar for all of the students.

All of the Breakthrough High Schools also focus on the third theme of collaboration among students, staff, parents, and community through a variety of extended learning opportunities, including dual enrollment with local community colleges and universities and numerous business or academic internships. Many schools make volunteer opportunities available for community members to come into the schools. Each has developed extensive professional learning communities with ongoing opportunities for all staff to work and learn from one another. By using a continuous improvement model based on data analysis, consensus building, implementation of appropriate strategies, and constant monitoring of the effects of each change, these schools translate the research on school reform into concrete actions.

Finally, one of the most crucial themes of Breakthrough High Schols is effective leadership. For schools to raise student achievement, they must have strong leadership working toward change in a targeted way. According to the Mid-Continent Regional Educational Lab (McREL), effective leaders not only know what to do, but when, how and why to do it. This is the essence of what McREL calls balanced leadership — knowing not only which school changes are most likely to improve student achievement, but also understanding staff and community members' dispositions to change and tailoring leadership practices accordingly.

During the first year of the project, some specialty schools and selective magnet schools with rigorous admissions criteria were included into the project. However, during the second year, the focus shifted to typical comprehensive high schools. Any specialty or magnet school included was required to have an open enrollment/admissions policy with students randomly selected from a lottery system, if necessary. During the second year of the project, nine high schools from rural, urban, and suburban communities were selected and featured in the June 2005 special edition of NASSP's Principal Leadership magazine.

Entering into the third year of this project, attention is directed to a new set of schools known as "Emerging Schools." Emerging Schools are high-poverty, high-minority high schools making significant, documented improvement toward the 90% graduation rate and 90% postsecondary education rate, but have not quite reached their targets in some areas. While examining and studying the successful elements of these schools and maintaining its work with all of the Breakthrough High Schools, the NASSP research team will continue to concentrate on uncovering the common themes and ideas that have transformed successful schools and share what we learn with the broader education community.

In our evaluations, NASSP has consistently found both with the Breaking Ranks II reforms and the Breakthrough High Schools project that when the school environment fosters the degree of personalization that connects every student to each other and to the adults in the building, when the leadership and staff are collaboratively engaged to provide direction, when the curriculum is meaningful to all students, when the instruction is challenging and when the assessments provide ongoing data-analysis and interventions, student achievement improves significantly.