By Carol S. Young, Ph.D., Director, Accountability and School Improvement
Summer is the time of year that school leaders review performance for the previous year to prepare for the year ahead. Leaders approach this task in two separate ways: as a post-mortem or as a window of opportunity. Contrasting questions illustrate how the tone differs for each approach: How did THAT happen? Or how might we ELEVATE outcomes?
One of my responsibilities at BCHF is to notify schools annually of their level of academic performance compared with contractual (charter) performance metrics through a tier of support designation. Tier 0 schools are in their first two years of start-up. Tier 1 schools meet performance standards. Tier 2 schools meet some, not all, performance standards. Tier 3 schools do not meet academic performance standards or are trending down.
Notifying Tier 3 schools is an especially challenging task. As a person who prefers windows to post-mortems, I want so much to support the school in seeing, and seizing, the opportunity to turn the school around, close achievement gaps, and improve outcomes for their students. But the truth is, leaders are often not bold enough to do what needs to be done.
What needs to be done? Today, as educators, we know more about what works in education than ever before. There are strategies that, if followed with fidelity, will improve outcomes for students. Are leaders bold enough to enact them? Strategies listed below may not be easy to implement, but they will make a positive difference. Established high-impact strategies include the following:
- Effective, Responsive Leadership. The school leader must be skilled enough to analyze lead and lag data measures and maintain a positive school climate. The effective school leader cannot compromise on improvement goals and protocols, even under pressure from staff or community. The most important determiner of student learning is teacher efficacy. The most crucial factor in teacher efficacy is leadership direction. If leadership is not effective, school organizations may need to make a change.
- Skilled Teachers. – In this era of shortage, school staffing is a challenge. However, studies consistently show that “teacher quality is one of the most critical factors influencing student achievement. Unskilled teachers, who may lack subject knowledge or effective teaching methods, often fail to deliver lessons in a way that resonates with students” (Jan, 2025). Schools seeking turnaround must consider accelerated in-house training programs or incentives to hire the best teachers for their students.
- Supportive Enrollment, Attendance, and Engagement Policies – An effective charter school worries more about instructional quality than enrollment targets. In fact, many high performing charter schools cut off new enrollments at the beginning of the second semester. Student achievement is closely tied to levels of attendance and meaningful engagement. Effective charter schools build student attendance and engagement through collaboration, high expectations, and activities that encourage belonging. (Helzberg, 2016)
- Effective Core Instruction. If most students are in “limited” or “basic” ranges of achievement, core instruction is the problem. The most effective form of core instruction is explicit instruction. Using parallel teaching or co-teaching, all students should be taught fundamental skills and understanding of priority standards by a teacher. Research shows that digital tools provide practice opportunities but do not teach new concepts or understanding well (Rolf & Slocum, 2021).
- Data-informed Interventions – An effective school uses data continuously to measure the achievement and progress of each individual student. Paired with Multi-tiered Systems of Support (MTSS), targeted interventions are provided to classes, small groups, and individual students. Lead measures, such as progress monitoring and curriculum-based assessments, ensure that students receive intervention as soon as they need it.
- Reading and Writing Across the Curriculum. Effective schools are rich in literacy and emphasize literacy across the curriculum. Students engage in close, repeated, and critical reading of challenging text daily, and they write extended responses to their reading. Explicit learning activities cut across all literacies – reading, writing, speaking, and listening with vocabulary acquisition at the forefront of all content learning. (Croix et al., 2024).
- Math and Reasoning – Instruction builds a reasoned approach to problem solving that will boost achievement in mathematics as well as generalized reasoning skills. Effective instruction encourages conceptual understanding, problem study, productive struggle, and discourse.
As a supportive sponsor, BCHF is willing to assist all schools to improve academic outcomes on a continuous basis. From one year to the next, our schools are getting better results. Many are the best schools in their region. However, when results decline, we ask school leaders to open the windows and consider bold action. High impact improvement strategies are more than just extra practice or schoolwide intervention periods with adaptive digital programs. High impact strategies are the tools and tough decisions a good leadership team enacts to make educational excellence a reality for their students.
References
Croix, L., Austin, K., Schull, C., Miller, S., & Kidd, J. (2024, Winter). Leveraging the environment to ignite children’s literacy learning, NAEYC, Vol. 17(2).
Helzberg, B. (2016). Charter schools work: America’s failing urban districts can be transformed. Independently published.
Jan, M. (2025). The impact of unskilled teachers on school education. Retrieved from The Impact of Unskilled Teachers on School Education – Teachers Guide
Lee, L. (2026). The power of a literacy-rich secondary classroom, Language Teacher, Retrieved from The Power of a Literacy-Rich Secondary Classroom – Language Arts Classroom
Slocum & Rolf (2021). Features of Direct Instruction Content Analysis 2. Behavior Analysis in Practice (2021) 14:775–784