A Synthesis of Validated Research on High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools

Children who live in poverty often attend the lowest performing schools. State and national assessments consistently show poor children lagging behind in performance.1 Very poor communities face many hardships, where children, families, and the schools that serve them confront a host of challenges. For schools, these challenges include children who start school without early literacy skills, high rates of absenteeism and transience, difficulty attracting experienced teachers, and much more (Stiefel et al. 2000).

It is challenging work to turn around a low performing school in an impoverished community, but there is promising research to support the notion that it can be done. What common qualities, attributes, and conditions characterize high-performing, high-poverty schools?

There are public schools in poor communities that are making substantial progress, or have excelled, in their mission of teaching children to read, do mathematics, and develop higher-order thinking skills. Researchers have looked at such schools to determine what characteristics they share. Lessons learned from high-performing, high-poverty schools could bolster efforts by school leaders and educators strengthen low-performing schools (Carter 2000). The best available research indicates that positive change and success can occur even under the most challenging conditions.

Defining high-performing schools

Definitions and standards for high-performing schools varied across and within these studies. Nonetheless, each of the schools examined showed positive growth and progress. All of the studies used standardized test results, primarily in mathematics and reading, to identify high-performing schools. For instance, a school might have been identified as high-performing if it showed improved test scores across all grades or across all subjects. A school also might have been identified as high-performing if it showed improved test scores on one subject within one or two grades.

Most of the studies reviewed here focused on results of state-mandated tests. These tests offer researchers validated instruments and the potential for comparisons across schools, although not across states. Each state bases its tests on its own academic standards, which differ in content and rigor. Despite the variations in definitions and standards for high performance in schools across and within these studies, each of the schools examined showed positive growth and progress.

Findings from the research

In the 1980s, researchers began to document the attributes of successful schools (then called "effective schools") serving high-poverty populations (see for example, Pechman & Fiester 1996). More recent research shows that many more schools in poor communities than previously believed perform well as measured by state accountability plans.

The Education Trust, for example, has documented thousands of high-poverty schools making progress in improving educational outcomes of students. In its analysis of an American Institutes for Research database that combined school-level scores on state assessments and demographic information, Education Trust identified 4,577 public schools2 nationwide whose students achieved in the top third in reading and/or mathematics assessment for their state3 and had at least 50 percent low-income and at least 50 percent African American and Latino students (Ali & Jerald 2001, Jerald 2001). These schools educated more than 2 million students, including nearly 1.3 million poor, 564,000 African American, and 660,000 Latino students.

What combination of practices, attributes, and resources produces such schools? Most of the research arrives at similar conclusions about the factors that influence school-wide performance, although they vary in their assessment of relative importance or proportion of those factors.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

The first factor is what Cawelti (2000) referred to as "a sustained focus on multiple factors." That is, schools do not achieve high performance by doing one or two things differently. They must do a number of things differently, and all at the same time, to begin to achieve the critical mass that will make a difference in student outcomes—in other words, high-poverty schools that achieve gains in student performance engage in systemic change.

When we look across the studies, 10 factors are consistently identified. In this analysis, we separate them into five building blocks and five practices: 

• A culture of high expectations and caring for students
• A safe and disciplined environment
• A principal who is a strong instructional leader
• Hard-working, committed, and able teachers
• A curriculum focused on academic achievement that emphasizes basic skills in mathematics and literacy

Practices

• Increased instructional time
• Ongoing, diagnostic assessment
• Parents as partners in learning
• Professional development to improve student achievement
• Collaboration among teachers and staff

In the sections that follow, we explore each of these characteristics.

Building blocks of high-performing, high-poverty schools

Culture of high expectations and caring 

Fundamental to high-performing schools is the culture of high expectations shared by the school’s principal, teachers, staff, and students. Central to this culture is the conviction that all children can achieve and succeed academically. Much of the research points to the presence of such a culture as "necessary" or even the "dominant theme" in making it possible for a school to succeed in a high-poverty community (see for example, Barth et al 1999, Kannapel & Clements 2005, Ragland et al 2002).
Principals establish high expectations for themselves and their staff, teachers set high expectations for themselves and their students, and students learn to have high expectations for themselves—and the adults around them. Everyone models the processes of continual learning and self-assessment that are asked of students. As one of the audit teams for the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence observed, "I strongly believe everyone there believes all can learn, and I have never found that in another school" (Kannapel & Clements 2005).

Further, the school’s leadership makes sure to root this belief system in tangible, measurable goals (Carter 2000, Ragland et al 2002). Kannapel & Clements (2005) call these "high expectations communicated in concrete ways." These goals differ from school to school—that every student will go to college, study calculus by 12th grade, or play a musical instrument, for example. What matters is the concrete, demanding but achievable goal that makes it real for students. Ultimately, the culture of high expectations becomes what Haberman (1999) calls a "common ideology" that lends the school a unity of purpose and a sense of identity (Jesse et al 2004).

The culture of high expectations is embedded in a caring and nurturing environment, where adults and young people alike treat each other with respect (see Kannapel & Clements 2005, Lauer 2001, for example). Haberman (1999) identified the ability of teachers to forge relationships with children in poverty and connect with them as the key factor in high-performing schools. In discussing what factors in the school environment produce resilience in students, Borman & Rachuba (2001) identify “strong and supportive” relationships with teachers as crucial. Cawelti (2000) points to incentives and student recognition as one expression of caring, and McGee (2004) observes the attention that high-performing schools give to health and safety, ensuring that students have nutritional meals and access to health, dental, and counseling care.