Over 2 million students — many of whom are students of color or come from low-income backgrounds — attend schools that are identified as the lowest performing in their state.  Federal policy requires state education agencies (SEAs) to monitor, support, and guide these identified schools; however, greater coherence is needed in how states approach school improvement to ensure equitable outcomes for all students.

In a report published last year, RAND researchers painted a state-by-state picture of the supports that SEAs provide to struggling schools to help them adopt, select, and implement evidence-based school improvement practices. Directing schools to research-backed practices is critical for ensuring that schools’ limited resources are spent on efforts shown to improve student outcomes.

In our review, we discovered a wealth of resources: states provided school improvement frameworks that signaled areas that struggling schools should focus on (e.g., leadership, culture, and climate), lists of evidence-based school improvement practices, guidance on understanding evidence tiers and engaging in continuous improvement cycles, and state-provided trainings and direct technical assistance opportunities.

Yet, these resources can be hard for school and district leaders to navigate. In reviewing states’ school improvement resources, we found that it was sometimes difficult to understand how different school improvement, instructional, and intervention-related initiatives relate to each other, where resources were housed, how they could be accessed, or which opportunities and initiatives were current.

Crafting streamlined, coherent state policy is a longstanding challenge, but it is a worthwhile investment. Clearer policies reduce the cognitive and administrative burden on struggling schools and districts, helping them to avoid mixed messages from their SEA and better understand and utilize the supports available to them.

Based on our research, we suggest that SEAs, and the organizations that support and collaborate with them, consider the following steps:

1. Create a Unifying Vision or Framework to Anchor School Improvement Supports

We found that SEAs’ school improvement efforts were easiest to comprehend and reconcile with each other when they were grounded in a common vision for high-quality instruction. For instance, Texas developed an Effective Schools Framework to provide schools and districts with a clear, shared understanding of the practices that constitute an effective school. Then, the state used the framework to undergird its supports, including its needs assessment process, state-provided training, and directory of external professional learning vendors, helping schools and districts make sense of how the resources fit together.

Creating such a framework requires significant planning upfront, including engaging local education leaders, teachers, families, and communities to develop a vision that resonates across contexts and is rooted in research on teaching and learning. However, this upfront planning could yield significant dividends in the long term, enabling SEAs to establish a durable improvement framework. This could reduce the change fatigue that educators experience by limiting shifts in school improvement policies and priorities.

2. Strike a Balance Between Supporting Local Autonomy and Promoting State Guidance

States varied in how prescriptive they were about what struggling schools should do to improve student outcomes. While a less-prescriptive approach allows local education leaders to select strategies tailored to their specific challenges and context, a more-prescriptive approach allows state leaders to better draw throughlines between school improvement practices and implementation supports. As an example of the latter, Louisiana promotes five evidence-based practices related to instructional leadership teams and teacher collaboration, and their resources (e.g., professional learning) are designed to support those practices. SEAs should weigh these considerations when deciding when to privilege local autonomy and when to take a more directive approach.

3. Access External Expertise

In a federal policy landscape that is poised to shift greater responsibility to states, SEAs are especially likely to benefit from support from external organizations, such as other SEAs or technical assistance providers. Technical assistance providers’ outsider perspectives and experience working in different state and local contexts make them especially helpful to states seeking to improve policy coherence. These providers can help convene or connect SEAs so they can learn from each other and share resources, allowing SEAs to enhance their own supports at low cost. Additionally, technical assistance providers can help SEAs engage in the strategic planning necessary for coherent policy formation.

Supporting coherence within state school improvement work is no easy feat — but states don’t have to do the work alone. By coordinating their supports, balancing direction and flexibility, and tapping existing expertise, SEAs can make improvement easier for schools and districts, ultimately improving student outcomes.

This is the second post in EdTrust’s School Improvement blog series. This blog series features authors from EdTrust and partner organizations who explore different dimensions of school improvement and how it intersects with other core education advocacy issues. This series follows the release of a new EdTrust report, “Examining State Education Agency Perspectives on School Improvement Supports,” which draws on interviews and focus groups with state education agency (SEA) leaders across 11 states and Washington, D.C. to explore the barriers and opportunities SEAs face when designing, monitoring, and evaluating school improvement efforts.

Becki Herman is a senior researcher and chair of education policy at the RAND Corporation and Ashley Woo is an assistant researcher there.

Photo by Allison Shelley for EDUimages

Series: School Improvement