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Chapter 1

High Reliability Organizations and School Leadership

Rick DuFour’s introduction provides the context for schools that seek high reliability status using the PLC process as a foundation. Without a doubt, the PLC process, particularly as articulated by Rick and his colleagues, brings the vision of a true high reliability school within our grasp.

It is important to remember that the PLC process and the HRS model developed independently of one another. The PLC process has its roots in the literature on professional collaboration (Rosenholtz, 1991) as well as reflective practice (Schön, 1983; Stenhouse, 1975). The term professional learning community became popular in education in the 1990s (Cuban, 1992; Hord, 1997; Louis, Marks, & Kruse, 1996; McLaughlin, 1993). These early discussions noted it was the work of Rick DuFour and his colleagues that solidified the nature and importance of the PLC process in K–12 education (DuFour, DuFour, & Eaker, 2008; DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Many, 2010; DuFour & Eaker, 1998).

The concept of a high reliability organization (HRO) has its roots in the study of highly volatile situations. G. Thomas Bellamy and his colleagues (Bellamy, Crawford, Marshall, & Coulter, 2005) explain:

The study of HROs has evolved through empirical investigation of catastrophic accidents, near misses, and organizations that succeed despite very trying and dangerous circumstances. Launched by Perrow’s (1984) analysis of the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, the literature evolved through discussions of whether such accidents are inevitable, as Perrow suggested, or might be avoided through strategies used by organizations that operate successfully in high-risk conditions (Bierly & Spender, 1995; Roberts, 1990). Although there are some similarities between this literature and research on organizational effectiveness and quality improvement, HROs “have been treated as exotic outliers in mainstream organizational theory because of their unique potentials for catastrophic consequences and interactively complex technology” (Weick et al., 1999, p. 81). (p. 385)

Bellamy and his colleagues popularized the notion of applying the concept of HROs to K–12 education.

It is the confluence of these two distinct lines of theory and development that forms the basis of this book. As the title indicates, this book discusses that intersection of the PLC process and the HRS framework from the perspective of leadership.

A central tenet of this book is that effective leadership should occur within an HRO context. This would necessitate a specific process of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting certain types of data regarding what occurs in schools on a day-to-day basis. When those data indicate that something has gone awry or will soon go awry, schools must take immediate corrective action. When those data indicate that all is well, schools offer appropriate acknowledgments and celebrations. This information loop’s defining feature is that it operates with extreme efficiency and attention to detail, so much so that a school might consider itself highly reliable as to its continuous improvement.

This approach minimizes the importance of a school leader’s personal characteristics and maximizes critical, data-informed actions a leader takes. Effective leadership is not a function of having a specific personality type or a certain demeanor; it is a function of informed action aimed at continuous improvement.

Before covering the specifics of this leadership approach in depth, we find it useful to briefly summarize some past research on school leadership.

Early Days of School Leadership and Effective Schools

The importance of school leadership in a high-performing school began to emerge during the Effective Schools movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1979, Ronald Edmonds first identified effective schools’ correlates in a seminal article titled “Effective Schools for the Urban Poor.” At the time, his list included six variables, one of which was strong administrative leadership. By 1982, Edmonds whittled down the variables to the five well-known effective schools’ correlates in a paper titled Programs of School Improvement: An Overview. In that paper, Edmonds (1982) notes that characteristics of an effective school include the following:

1. The leadership of the principal notable for substantial attention to the quality of instruction,

2. A pervasive and broadly understood instructional focus,

3. An orderly, safe climate conducive to teaching and learning,

4. Teacher behaviors that convey the expectation that all students are expected to obtain at least minimum mastery, and

5. The use of measures of pupil achievement as the basis for program evaluation. (p. 8)

Edmonds was certainly not the only researcher who recognized the importance of school leadership for student achievement during this era. Many others identified school leadership as an important variable as well, including George Weber (1971), Beverly Caffee Glenn and Taylor McLean (1981), and Wilbur B. Brookover (1979). Although a well-articulated definition of instructional leadership did not exist during the early days of the Effective Schools movement, effective schools researchers knew that it was a crucial ingredient. So, what goes into building effective school leaders? It turns out that they share many of the same characteristics.

Characteristics of Effective School Leaders

Since the initial work of Edmonds in 1979, the research community has continued to generate lists of effective school leaders’ characteristics. Remarkably, each update to the research base seems to reach the same conclusions on which school leadership factors (albeit named and described differently) impact student learning. In other words, as the research on school leadership expands, the same variables seem to rise to the top as most influential.

Robert Marzano, Timothy Waters, and Brian McNulty (2005) completed one of the early meta-analyses on school leadership. Following this came the largest and most comprehensive study on leadership practices, which influences student achievement to date: Investigating the Links to Improved Student Learning: Final Report of Research Findings (Louis, Leithwood, Wahlstrom, & Anderson, 2010). The Wallace Foundation commissioned this multiyear study, and researchers from the University of Minnesota and the University of Toronto ran the study. The findings suggest four general categories of leadership functions and sixteen leadership practices that influence student achievement (Louis et al., 2010). They include:

1. Setting directions

a. Building a shared vision

b. Fostering the acceptance of group goals

c. Creating high performance expectations

d. Communicating the direction

2. Developing people

a. Providing individualized support and consideration

b. Offering intellectual stimulation

c. Modeling appropriate values and practices

3. Redesigning the organization

a. Building collaborative cultures

b. Restructuring the organization to support collaboration

c. Building productive relationships with families and communities

d. Connecting the school to the wider community

4. Managing the instructional program

a. Staffing the program

b. Providing instructional support

c. Monitoring school activity

d. Buffering staff from distractions to their work

e. Aligning resources

In 2016, Dallas Hambrick Hitt and Pamela D. Tucker (2016) synthesized the research on leadership characteristics that impact student learning. Unlike some school leadership syntheses, Hitt and Tucker’s (2016) synthesis focuses only on peer-reviewed, empirical research. They identify three broad leadership frameworks that meet their criteria for inclusion and combine them into a new blended framework. The three frameworks are the Orlando Leadership Framework, the Learning Centered Leadership Framework, and the Essential Supports Framework. Through their synthesis, Hitt and Tucker (2016) have generated the following five domains that impact student achievement:

1. Establishing and conveying the vision

2. Facilitating a high-quality learning experience for students

3. Building professional capacity

4. Creating a supportive organization for learning

5. Connecting with external partners (p. 542)

In addition, they identify twenty-eight practices embedded in the five domains. These five domains and twenty-eight leadership practices further demonstrate the similarities in multiple researchers’ findings over many years (Brookover & Lezotte, 1979; Cotton, 2003; Deal & Kennedy, 1983; Donmoyer, 1985; Duke, 1982; Elmore, 2003; Fullan, 2001; Heifetz, 1994; Heifetz & Laurie, 2001; Leithwood, 1994; Sergiovanni, 2004; Youngs & King, 2002).

As mentioned previously, one striking thing about the history of research on school leadership is its relative consistency. One might say that as a profession, educators have developed a robust understanding of leadership factors in the research literature. Unfortunately, this enhanced knowledge has not turned into a coherent theory of action that enhances student achievement. We believe that to turn what we know about leadership into actionable knowledge, one must take a high reliability perspective.

A High Reliability Perspective

The concept of high reliability organizations has come up in the general literature for quite some time. For example, in the mid-1980s, the University of California, Berkeley launched a project known as the High Reliability Organizations Project. The Berkeley group set out to study high-hazard organizations that avoided failures and maintained success over time better than their peers in the same industries. In a paper titled The Legacy of the Theory of High Reliability Organizations: An Ethnographic Endeavor, Mathilde Bourrier (2011), among a number of inferences, concludes that high reliability organizations have a laser focus on using data to make decisions that themselves focus on continuous improvement. Another critical characteristic of high reliability organizations is awareness of the highly interdependent systems that characterize the daily operations of the organization. Bourrier (2011) states:

The HRS literature substantiated that safety and reliability are not only the result of great technology in combination with great culture. They are also the result of organization design: choices and allocations are made which greatly influence the potential to be safe and reliable. These decisions have to be questioned and reflected upon constantly. (p. 4)

Karl E. Weick and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe (2007) report similar findings from analyzing the literature on high reliability organizations.

While the initial literature and research on high reliability organizations focused on high-hazard industries, the concept of high reliability organizations has continued to evolve and now has visibility in the literature of professional industries such as health care, oil and gas, transportation, and international commerce. In 2014, worldwide consulting group North Highland produced a paper on the concept, reporting that “organizations that conduct consistent, sustainable, and low-error operations [are] based on informed, high-quality decision making and controls” (p. 2). North Highland (2014) identifies five aspects of operation that a high reliability organization practices:

• Organize its efforts to increase the amount and quality of attention to failure and data analysis.

• Engage every member and level of the organization in the problem-resolution and prevention process.

• Increase alertness to detail so all people can detect subtle differences in context by examining data and looking for predictions.

• Focus on what the organization needs to do to reach the performance target on a continuous basis.

• Act as a ‘mindful’ organization; thinking and learning constantly by empowering individuals to interact continuously with others in the organization as they develop in their roles. (p. 3)

Although several examples of high reliability organizations appear in various industries, schools have not typically operated as such. However, some educators have called for schools to begin taking a high reliability perspective. Sam Stringfield (1995) first made the case, indicating that schools should use high reliability implementation methods for school reform. Sam Stringfield and Amanda Datnow (2002) maintain that any school-based reform should increase reliability through the use of high reliability strategies. Since 1995, the pressure for schools to begin taking a high reliability perspective has continued to mount. As G. Thomas Bellamy, Lindy Crawford, Laura Huber Marshall, and Gail A. Coulter (2005) state:

The stakes for failure have been raised so high—both for schools and for students—that high reliability has become an important aspect of school success. Schools are now challenged to prevent practically all failures and to close achievement gaps among student groups—in short, to ensure highly reliable learning for all students. (p. 384)

This pressure has grown with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which, according to the U.S. Department of Education (2017), “requires—for the first time—that all students in America be taught to high academic standards that will prepare them to succeed in college and careers.” Ensuring that all students learn at high levels requires schools and their staff to take a high reliability perspective.

In their analyses of high reliability organizations, Bellamy et al. (2005) identify three functions related to high reliability:

1. Improving normal operations

2. Detecting potential problems

3. Recovering from those problems (p. 390)

These three functions serve as the foundation of their fail-safe schools framework. The HRS model builds on this work with its leading and lagging indicators.

Leading and Lagging Indicators

At its core, a high reliability perspective involves monitoring the relationship between actions an organization takes to enhance its effectiveness and the extent to which these actions do, in fact, produce the desired effects. The literature on high reliability organizations refers to what an organization does to ensure it succeeds as leading indicators, and it refers to the concrete results produced from monitoring the effects of the leading indicators as lagging indicators. Leading and lagging indicators are the operational cornerstones of the high reliability organization process.

From this perspective, most research literature on school leadership tends to state research findings in terms of leading indicators. To illustrate, consider the five variables Edmonds originally identified. Stating that effective leaders should foster a “pervasive and broadly understood instructional focus” certainly provides direction and even implies specific actions, but it does not provide much clarity as to the desired effects of such actions (Edmonds, 1982, p. 8). The Wallace Foundation also mostly phrases the variables it offers as leading indicators (see page 25). “Building a shared vision,” for example, implies specific actions leaders can take (Louis et al., 2010). But leaders cannot monitor how people follow this mandate to build a vision without clearly articulated outcomes. Likewise, “offering intellectual stimulation” implies specific actions; but without a description of intended outcomes, such actions are difficult to monitor (Louis et al., 2010).

We do not intend to demean the previous efforts to describe effective leadership. Indeed, leading indicators provide specific guidance on possible actions and interventions that can occur in a school. Lagging indicators complement such actions by articulating desired effects in concrete terms.

To a great extent, then, schools wishing to become HRSs must translate the research literature’s recommended actions into those actions’ desired effects. This is the essence of lagging indicators. To illustrate, consider the following leading indicator from the Wallace Foundation study: “building a shared vision” (Louis et al., 2010). Although this certainly seems like an intuitively obvious action a school should engage in, translating this into a corresponding lagging indicator involves articulating that shared vision’s desired effect or effects. For example, the lagging indicator could say this: “Staff members perceive that they are part of a concerted effort to improve the lives of the school’s students.”

Lagging indicators prove most useful when they describe concrete or quantitative evidence that the school’s actions have produced specific desired effects. For example, this lagging indicator for the leading indicator of building a shared vision contains a more concrete description: “A survey indicates that at least 85 percent of the staff perceive they are part of a concerted effort to improve the lives of the school’s students.” Consequently, we define lagging indicators as concrete and, in some cases, quantifiable outcomes for which schools can establish minimum acceptable criteria.

So, where does one start in implementing the leading indicators that build a high reliability school? It begins with doing the right work.

The Right Work

To start building an HRS, a school must identify leading indicators critical to the school’s success. This is foundational to what Elmore (2003) refers to as “doing the right work.” He contends that doing the right work is the primary factor in school improvement. He further notes that in the United States, a perception persists that “schools fail because the people in them—administrators, teachers, and students—don’t work hard enough; and that they are lazy, unmotivated, and self-serving” (Elmore, 2003, p. 9). However, the truth of the matter is that hard-working, highly motivated administrators, teachers, and students frequently populate failing schools. They do not have a problem with working hard; their problem lies in selecting the right work.

In this book, we offer twenty-five leading indicators that we believe represent the right work in schools. Chapters 2–6 cover these leading indicators in depth. We draw this list of leading indicators directly from previously cited research that we have vetted over a number of years (Carbaugh, Marzano, & Toth, 2015; Marzano, 2001, 2003; Marzano & Waters, 2009; Marzano, Waters, & McNulty, 2005).

Specifically, we can trace our HRS model back to school effectiveness work done at the turn of the 21st century (for a full, detailed discussion of the research supporting this model, see Marzano, in press). We have also vetted this model in the context of principal evaluation (Carbaugh, Marzano, & Toth, 2015; Herman et al., 2016; Marzano, Waters, & McNulty, 2005). Finally, this model contains many of the highest-ranking variables from Hattie’s 195 variables related to achievement (see Hattie, 2009, 2012, 2015).

Table 1.1 presents the twenty-five leading indicators in the HRS model, organized into five levels. This hierarchical structure has some intuitive appeal.

Table 1.1: HRS Model

Level	Leading Indicators
Level 1: Safe, Supportive, and Collaborative Culture	1.1—The faculty and staff perceive the school environment as safe, supportive, and orderly. 1.2—Students, parents, and the community perceive the school environment as safe, supportive, and orderly. 1.3—Teachers have formal roles in the decision-making process regarding school initiatives. 1.4—Collaborative teams regularly interact to address common issues regarding curriculum, assessment, instruction, and the achievement of all students. 1.5—Teachers and staff have formal ways to provide input regarding the optimal functioning of the school. 1.6—Students, parents, and the community have formal ways to provide input regarding the optimal functioning of the school. 1.7—The school acknowledges the success of the whole school as well as individuals within the school. 1.8—The school manages its fiscal, operational, and technological resources in a way that directly supports teachers.
Level 2: Effective Teaching in Every Classroom	2.1—The school communicates a clear vision as to how teachers should address instruction. 2.2—The school supports teachers to continually enhance their pedagogical skills through reflection and professional growth plans. 2.3—The school is aware of and monitors predominant instructional practices. 2.4—The school provides teachers with clear, ongoing evaluations of their pedagogical strengths and weaknesses that are based on multiple sources of data and are consistent with student achievement data. 2.5—The school provides teachers with job-embedded professional development that is directly related to their instructional growth goals. 2.6—Teachers have opportunities to observe and discuss effective teaching.
Level 3: Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum	3.1—The school curriculum and accompanying assessments adhere to state and district standards. 3.2—The school curriculum is focused enough that teachers can adequately address it in the time they have available. 3.3—All students have the opportunity to learn the critical content of the curriculum. 3.4—The school establishes clear and measurable goals that are focused on critical needs regarding improving overall student achievement at the school level. 3.5—The school analyzes, interprets, and uses data to regularly monitor progress toward school achievement goals. 3.6—The school establishes appropriate school- and classroom-level programs and practices to help students meet individual achievement goals when data indicate interventions are needed.
Level 4: Standards-Referenced Reporting	4.1—The school establishes clear and measurable goals focused on critical needs regarding improving achievement of individual students. 4.2—The school analyzes, interprets, and uses data to regularly monitor progress toward achievement goals for individual students.
Level 5: Competency-Based Education	5.1—Students move on to the next level of the curriculum for any subject area only after they have demonstrated competence at the previous level. 5.2—The school schedule accommodates students moving at a pace appropriate to their situation and needs. 5.3—The school affords students who have demonstrated competency levels greater than those articulated in the system immediate opportunities to begin work on advanced content or career paths of interest.

Level 1 of the HRS hierarchy is foundational because it addresses foundational human needs. If students, teachers, and parents do not perceive the school as safe, supportive, and collaborative, they will focus their attention on getting these needs met, as opposed to on the content addressed in school.

Level 2 deals with effective teaching. It appears second in the hierarchy because it is one of the hierarchy’s most influential and alterable variables. Research has consistently supported the notion that the quality of teaching a student receives has a profound effect on his or her academic achievement (Nye, Konstantopoulos, & Hedges, 2004). Additionally, deliberate practice can enhance teachers’ pedagogical skill (Ericsson & Charness, 1994; Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer, 1993).

Level 3 deals with a curriculum that is both guaranteed and viable. Guaranteed means that no matter who teaches a given course or grade level, students in that course or grade will receive the same content. Viable means that the content has enough focus that teachers have adequate time and resources to teach it. Some educators have asked why a guaranteed and viable curriculum does not appear second in the hierarchy. Placing a guaranteed and viable curriculum before teaching would imply that it is more important to student learning than teaching. However, we assert that an effective teacher can overcome a weak curriculum, whereas a strong curriculum cannot overcome a weak teacher.

The first three levels of the hierarchy represent work in which all schools must engage at all times. Culture, teaching, and curriculum are the bedrocks of schooling. Then, levels 4 and 5 in the hierarchy represent systems change. Level 4 identifies a form of recordkeeping and reporting that allows schools to monitor individual students’ status and growth in specific topics. This represents a major shift in the way a school is run. Level 5 goes even further. It not only allows educators to monitor individual students but also allows students to move through the curriculum at their own pace.

Once a school has established the right work, it can follow four steps that lead to HRS status. As we discuss in subsequent chapters, these four steps become integrated into the PLC process. For a particular indicator, one collaborative team might take the lead for some or all steps. For another indicator, all collaborative teams might share equal responsibility.

The Four Steps

We have developed the following four steps in our work with more than six hundred schools relative to the HRS process. In effect, if a school engages in the actions described in these steps, it will attain high reliability status, leading indicator by leading indicator.

The four steps include:

1. Create lagging indicators and establish criteria for success.

2. Collect data on school status regarding lagging indicators.

3. If the school hasn’t met lagging indicator minimum requirements, refocus on actions inherent in associated leading indicators.

4. Continually collect data on lagging indicators and respond accordingly.

Create Lagging Indicators and Establish Criteria for Success