90-90-90 Schools

“The central challenge for educational systems around the world is the substitution of effectiveness for popularity.”

― Douglas B. Reeves, Transforming Professional Development Into Student Results

How High Poverty, High Minority, and High Achieving Schools Succeed

The “90/90/90 Schools” research includes four years of test data (1995 through 1998) with students in a variety of school settings, from elementary through high school. The analysis considered data from more than 130,000 students in 228 buildings. The school locations included inner-city urban schools, suburban schools, and rural schools. The student populations ranged from schools whose populations were overwhelmingly poor and/or minority to schools that were largely Anglo and/or economically advantaged. One reason that the research in these schools was so productive is that the districts maintained careful records on actual instructional practices and strategies. This allowed researchers to investigate associations between instructional strategies and academic achievement results. It is important to acknowledge, however, that these results are only associative in nature. No claim is made that a single instructional intervention can be said to “cause” a particular achievement result. What we can say with a high degree of confidence, however, is that there are some consistent associations between some classroom strategies (for example, performance assessments that require writing) and student achievement in a wide variety of tests and subjects.

Common Characteristics of High Achievement Schools

Research on the 90/90/90 Schools included both site visits and analyses of accountability data. The site visits allowed us to conduct a categorical analysis of instructional practices. In the same manner that the authors of In Search Of Excellence (Peters and Waterman, 1982) identified the common practices of excellent organizations, the researchers sought to identify the extent to which there was a common set of behaviors exhibited by the leaders and teachers in schools with high achievement, high minority enrollment, and high poverty levels. As a result, they found five characteristics that were common to all 90/90/90 Schools. These characteristics were:

• A focus on academic achievement

• Clear curriculum choices

• Frequent assessment of student progress and multiple opportunities for improvement

• An emphasis on nonfiction writing

• Collaborative scoring of student work

After the original accountability report documenting the 90/90/90 Schools, Milwaukee Public Schools has issued subsequent accountability reports. The findings from these reports are striking. In brief, these findings include the following:

1. Techniques used by the 90/90/90 Schools are persistent. The students are still poor and their economic opportunities have not improved. Nevertheless, more 192 / Chapter 19 Accountability in Action than 90 percent of the students in these schools continue to meet or exceed state standards.

2. Techniques used by the 90/90/90 Schools are replicable. The first time the district tracked these schools, only seven 90/90/90 Schools were identified. In the most recent report, 13 schools meet the criteria for this distinguished label.

3. Techniques used by the 90/90/90 Schools are consistent. These schools are not lurching from one fad to another. While they differ in some respects with regard to implementation, they are consistent with regard to the following areas of emphasis:

• Writing—students write frequently in a variety of subjects.

• Performance Assessment—the predominant method of assessment is performance assessment. This does not mean that these schools never use multiple-choice items. However, it is performance assessment in several different disciplines that local observers have associated with student progress.

• Collaboration—teachers routinely collaborate, using real student work as the focus of their discussion. • Focus—teachers in these schools do not try to “do it all” but are highly focused on learning.

“Sustainable change, after all, depends not upon compliance with external mandates or blind adherence to regulation, but rather upon the pursuit of the greater good.”

― Douglas B. Reeves, Leading Change in Your School: How to Conquer Myths, Build Commitment, and Get Results