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One

The Two Parts of a Positive School Environment

As we established in the introduction, successful school improvement requires that educators have a combination of both will and skill to ensure that students receive a quality education and have the best opportunities for success in school and life. Educators can have the will to lead, but if they lack the skill to effectively engage students, then student learning will suffer. Conversely, individual educators might possess the skills to teach effectively but lack the will to lead students and colleagues, causing inconsistent quality in education and adverse outcomes for student learning. A balance of the two, in what we call a high-will/high-skill school, creates a positive school environment, tailored to the needs of students rather than educators, that makes success for all students a reality—especially for students who have traditionally been underserved and struggle to learn.

Will

What is will? It is the power of making a reasoned choice or having control of one's own actions. It is characterized by determination, a certain attitude, or a particular desire or choice. Do all schools have the will to improve? Do all educators have the will to lead? Do all administrators and teachers have the desire to align their goals and intentions to the stated intentions of the organization? Unfortunately, the answer is no. All educators do not share a positive attitude about organizational reform. Desire, commitment, focus, positive attitude, and leadership are qualities that have to be cultivated, not left to chance, because they have a tremendous impact on student outcomes. Researchers Goddard, Hoy, & Hoy (2000) created a twenty-one-item efficacy scale to measure the level of individual teachers' belief in student achievement and a staff's collective belief in its ability to effectively teach students. They discovered that increases in teachers' belief in student achievement and a staff's belief in itself positively correlated with improvement in student learning. As Goddard and Hoy point out in their study, will is best when it is developed collectively as opposed to individually. Students are a part of a school system—not a one-room schoolhouse.

Collective will is also referred to as school culture. Kent Peterson defines school culture as the norms, values, rituals, beliefs, symbols, and stories that make up the persona of a school (Cromwell, 2002). School cultures fit into one of two types: healthy and toxic. A healthy school culture is a place in which:

Educators have an unwavering belief in the ability of all of their students to achieve success, and they pass that belief on to others in overt or covert ways and they create policies, practices, and procedures that support their belief in the ability of every student. (Cromwell, 2002, p. 3)

Conversely, a toxic school culture is one in which educators believe that student success is based on students' level of concern, attentiveness, prior knowledge, and willingness to comply with the demands of the school, and they articulate that belief in overt and covert ways. In a toxic school culture, educators create policies and procedures and adopt practices that support their belief in the impossibility of universal achievement (Cromwell, 2002).

There is a direct link between the belief system of a staff and its behaviors and actions. A staff that aligns its intentions around student achievement develops a commitment to the essential behaviors that have been proven to boost student performance. A healthy school culture does the following:

• Fosters a commitment to staff and student learning

• Emphasizes accomplishment and collaboration

• Celebrates successes

These qualities are essential in highly impactful schools. They are the catalyst for meaningful problem solving, professional development, pedagogical experimentation, and collective goal setting (Cromwell, 2002).

Skill

Creating highly effective schools requires more than will—it requires specific action to bring vision into reality. This leads us to the next question: what is skill? Skill is a great ability or proficiency, an art or a craft. Education is an art and a science that requires the development of organizational skill—the ability of a staff to tailor its professional skills to the specific needs of the students it serves. Robert Marzano (2010) identifies the instructional skills of teachers as “the cornerstone of school effectiveness” (p. 2). He identifies effective teaching in every classroom as a critical commitment to creating meaningful school reform (Marzano, 2009b). Researcher Carol Cummings (1996) describes the challenge of effective teaching as using a web of specific skills: “Teaching is so complex! It involves classroom management, long-term planning, use of materials, human relations, and knowledge of content as well as instructional skills” (p. 12). Cultivating these diverse skill sets requires consistent and focused professional development. They are not developed by happenstance. Part III of this book addresses developing this skill set—responsive instructional practice structured around the norms, values, and culture of the student—and highlights specific strategies and activities that fit within this paradigm.

This combination of a healthy organizational will and a well-defined and refined set of professional skills will help us address the inequity of student achievement that has adversely affected millions of students. With this comprehensive strategy, we can best help those students who struggle to learn.

The Four Zones of a Positive Learning Environment

A positive learning environment is marked by the proper blend of will and skill and leads to the development of supportive structures and instruction for students. Schools can fall into one of four categories in their balance of will and skill: high will/low skill, high skill/low will, low will/low skill, and high will/high skill.

High Will/Low Skill

A school with high will and low skill is a school in which the staff⁵ s beliefs and attitudes have been aligned with the stated objective of the school—learning for all—but the skills to manifest this belief have not been developed. This staff has an optimistic attitude about student potential without the ability to cultivate that potential. An overemphasis on student feelings and relationships has overshadowed the importance of developing instructional skill and academic rigor. A typical high-will/low-skill school has the following characteristics:

• Many student celebrations and acknowledgements for nonacademic achievements

• An optimistic attitude toward students and their emotional needs, but no focus on rigorous academic tasks or higher-order thinking activities during instruction

• A staff that values relationships with students but has few expectations for student performance that stretch beyond a student's comfort zone

• Low emphasis on collecting or examining student learning data and frequent attacks on the validity of outside measures of student performance

A school that places its efforts solely on the emotional needs of learners and neglects their academic skills may make students feel good temporarily, but will leave them unprepared for the competitive environment they'll enter after graduation. This school has failed to make student learning the cornerstone of its purpose, and in the long run, students suffer.

High Skill/Low Will

A high-skill/low-will school emphasizes acquisition of knowledge only and discounts the power of motivation and relationships. In a high-skill/low-will school, a student is simply a receptacle for information. Educators in these schools believe their responsibility stops when they fill the student with information. If the student cares to learn, he or she has the opportunity to learn; if a student chooses not to learn, the student must be willing to accept the consequences for his or her choice. High-skill/low-will schools have the following characteristics:

• A very refined and complex curriculum

• Staff members with a high level of knowledge who take pride in their knowledge and experience

• Staff members with many personal achievements, but few students with achievements

• High numbers of students failing academically and little to no support system for struggling students

• Staff who do not support students' emotional and personal development

• Combative relationships between staff members, students, parents, and administrators

• An administration that protects and supports the status quo environment

These types of schools may be fertile ground for technical educational jargon and high academic standards, but high standards alone do not produce great results. The staff of a high-skill/low-will school does not see the need to cultivate its students. Customer service is not important to these educators. They view the personal qualities students need to adequately process instruction and meet high academic expectations—such as perseverance, focus, and commitment—as qualities students should develop outside of school. A staff member in a high-skill/low-will school thinks about the educational process in the following way: “It is my job to teach and the student's job to learn.” This perspective misses one simple but critical principle, however: children may not have the intellect or maturity to cultivate personal qualities on their own—they often require the guidance of a caring and qualified adult.

Low Will/Low Skill

A school characterized as low will/low skill is quite honestly the worst-case scenario for students and staff. The school does not function well on any level. There is very little belief in students either socially or academically, and educators in these schools also lack the skill to cultivate students academically. In fact, the combination of low skill and low will leads to a sense of contempt among educators and students and parents. A school categorized as low will/low skill has the following characteristics:

• Low academic standards

• Low student achievement

• High numbers of student conduct violations

• High numbers of students who are failing academically

• High turnover among teaching and administrative staff

• Adversarial relationships between staff members and students and parents

Low-will/low-skill schools are our most dysfunctional and underperforming schools and the focus of great concern since the passing of No Child Left Behind. They violate the stated purpose of public education. Policymakers have been confused on how to deal with these schools that some call “dropout factories” (Thornburgh, 2006). Some advocate for punitive measures, while others advocate support. What is obvious is that no one benefits—neither students, educators, parents, nor society as a whole—from low-will/low-skill schools.

High Will/High Skill

A high-will/high-skill school is an organization that has matched its belief systems with its practices. There is a philosophical agreement that all of its students have the capacity to become successful, and the educators spend their time and energy seeking and implementing practices that are best suited to manifest their collective goal of learning for all. A high-will/high-skill school has the following characteristics:

• Staff members with high academic expectations for all students

• Staff members who value relationships with students and use students' backgrounds and experiences as a bridge to high academic success

• Staff members who respect the culture of their students and collaborate to become responsive to students' specific needs

• A philosophy in which student support is an integral part and institutionalized in the school's policies, practices, and procedures

• Staff members with high level of skill in classroom management, academic vocabulary, academic literacy, and learning environment who pride themselves on their knowledge and experience in these areas

• Staff members who reflect on the quality and effectiveness of their instructional strategies

• Staff members who believe that learning for all is the only acceptable outcome

The Need for Philosophical Agreement

Many researchers identify this need for philosophical agreement as critical to student success. In their PLC model, DuFour et al. (2008) identify shared mission, vision, values, and goals as a critical characteristic of learning communities—the will components. This forms the foundation for their additional characteristics: collective inquiry, collaborative culture, action orientation and experimentation, continuous improvement, and a focus on results—the skill components.

A comprehensive study of effective characteristics of high-performing schools in high-poverty areas (Petrides & Nodine, 2005) found that effective schools possess a clear understanding among all staff, teachers, and administrators of the district's performance goals concerning student achievement, and the alignment of organizational processes and systems to meet those goals. Douglas Reeves's (2000) analysis of highly successful schools in Milwaukee known as 90/90/90 schools (90 percent minority, 90 percent students living in poverty, and 90 percent academic proficiency on state assessments in both math and reading) found that these schools shared common characteristics, such as a focus on academic achievement, clear curriculum choices, and frequent assessment of student progress and multiple opportunities for improvement. The research shows a common thread: effective schools align educational philosophy among staff, and they move swiftly to align professional practice with that shared philosophy. This book seeks to establish a clear and effective path to accomplishing both.

Reeves also establishes that student and school performance is multivariate. He states, “Those who claim that a change in one variable causes a change in another variable have usually not scratched the surface of the issue at hand” (Reeves, 2000, p. 8). In other words, there is no one magic solution to the complex problems of schools. School reform is both cultural and structural. Schools and districts that understand the complexity of both facets and develop them appropriately are effective in reaching their goals. Those that rely on one in the absence of the other endanger the learning of their students.

Embracing Culture and Structure

In this chapter, we have established what it means to be a school with high will and high skill and shared the characteristics of these schools to show how these environments can impact student achievement. In the next chapter, we will delve more deeply into the specifics of school will and healthy culture. Before you move on to the next chapter, take time to reflect on the questions that follow.

CHAPTER 1

Reflections

1 Rate your personal will and commitment to educate every child. Do you have personal or professional barriers to believing that every child is capable of success?

2 rate your professional skill as an educator. Are there areas of skill that you need to address? rate your colleagues' professional skill. are there areas of skill your colleagues need to address?

3 In which zone of performance is your school and/or district: high will/low skill, low will/high skill, low will/low skill, or high will/high skill? What evidence did you use to make this assessment?

4 What is your school's and/or district's greatest area of need—will or skill?