Study Identifies Strategies for Success in Urban Districts

"Foundations for Success," a new report from the Council of the Great City Schools, looks at urban school districts that have improved academically and finds three common preconditions for enhancing academic performance: instructional coherence; data-driven decision-making; and a shared vision for improvement. The study examined three urban school districts that have accomplished generally improved overall student achievement faster than other districts in their states, and that have narrowed the achievement gap between whites and minorities. These three districts, the Houston Independent School District, the Charlotte-Mecklenberg Schools, and the Sacramento City Unified School District (as well as a portion of a fourth, New York City's Chancellor's District), were then compared to three districts that have not demonstrated similar improvement.

The report identifies common elements in the improving districts' approaches to reform. These include: setting and enforcing specific achievement goals; focusing on the lowest-performing schools and then providing them with resources to improve; aligning curricula with state standards, adopting district-wide, rather than school-wide, curricula, and supporting district-wide reforms through central-office-directed guidance and professional development for individual schools. The control districts lacked comparable consensus on how to proceed, centralization, and accountability.

Prepared September 10, 2002