strive to improve student achievement. Her passion for education, combined with extensive knowledge of curriculum, instruction, and assessment, provides credible support for teachers, leaders, schools, and districts. A primary training focus for Ms. Hoegh is high-quality classroom assessment and grading practices. She is coauthor of Collaborative Teams That Transform Schools and A School Leader’s Guide to Standards-Based Grading, as well as other publications.
Jan holds a bachelor of arts in elementary education and a master of arts in educational administration, both from the University of Nebraska at Kearney. She also earned a specialization in assessment from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Anthony J. “Sonny” Magaña, EdD, works with teams of teachers and leaders to support, enhance, and expand powerful instructional strategies with technology. Sonny has served in the field of education for thirty years as a classroom teacher, building principal, district administrator, state technology project director, speaker, and trainer. He coauthored Enhancing the Art and Science of Teaching With Technology. Sonny created and served as director of Washington’s first CyberSchool, a successful blended learning program that continues to meet the needs of at-risk students in Washington State. He received the Milken National Educator Award in 1997 and the Governor’s Commendation for Distinguished Achievement in Education in 1998. Sonny received a bachelor of science degree in biology from Stockton College in New Jersey, a master’s degree in educational technology from City University of Seattle, and a doctor of education in educational leadership from Seattle University.
Introduction
Ushering in the New Era of School Reform
In industries where mistakes and errors lead to significant and far-reaching consequences—such as nuclear power plants, air traffic control towers, and electrical power grids—organizations must adjust their operations to proactively prevent failure. G. Thomas Bellamy, Lindy Crawford, Laura Marshall, and Gail Coulter (2005) reviewed the literature on these high reliability organizations (HROs) and explained that “what distinguishes HROs is not the absence of errors but the ability to contain their effects so they do not escalate into significant failures” (p. 385). Bellamy and his colleagues further commented,
The literature on HROs describes how organizations operate when accidents or failures are simply too significant to be tolerated, where failures make headlines …. 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). (p. 385)
Karl Weick, Kathleen Sutcliffe, and David Obstfeld (1999) described HROs as organizations that “take a variety of extraordinary steps in pursuit of error-free performance” (p. 84). More recently, Weick and Sutcliffe (2007) observed that “HROs work hard to anticipate and specify significant mistakes that they don’t want to make. Ongoing attention to these potentially significant failures is built into their practices” (p. 53). These organizations have instituted systems, procedures, and processes that allow them to minimize failures and quickly address or remedy them if they do occur. In other words, the public can rely on these organizations not to make mistakes and to resolve them quickly when they do occur.
Schools are not typically thought of as high reliability organizations. However, nothing prevents a school from becoming an organization that takes proactive steps to prevent failure and ensure success.
Creating High Reliability Schools
A high reliability school, by definition, monitors the effectiveness of critical factors within the system and immediately takes action to contain the negative effects of any errors that occur. As early as 1995, Sam Stringfield called for the development of high reliability schools. He and his colleagues later described schools that operate as high reliability organizations (Stringfield, Reynolds, & Schaffer, 2008, 2012). These schools have several things in common, including high, clear, shared goals; real-time, understandable, comprehensive data systems; collaborative environments; flexibility; formalized operating procedures; a focus on best practices and expertise over seniority; rigorous teacher performance evaluations; and clean, well-functioning campuses.
To implement this type of a high reliability perspective in schools, two elements are necessary: (1) a hierarchy of school factors and (2) leading and lagging indicators.
A Hierarchy of School Factors
From the 1950s to the 1980s, public education in the United States experienced a wave of pessimism regarding its potential to positively impact student achievement (Coleman et al., 1966; Jencks et al., 1972; National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983; Rickover, 1959). Many condemned schools, saying they “bring little influence to bear on a child’s achievement that is independent of his background and general social context” (Coleman et al., 1966, p. 325). Although this criticism shed light on areas of weakness in the U.S. public education system, the conclusion that schools have no effect on student achievement is not valid for at least three reasons.
First, much of the research used to support the perspective that schools fail to impact students positively can be interpreted in alternative ways, some of which indicate that schools can cultivate high levels of student achievement. Second, there are many examples of highly effective schools that have successfully overcome the effects of students’ backgrounds. Third, and perhaps most importantly, school effectiveness research paints an optimistic picture of schools’ ability to impact student achievement. In fact, the aggregated research (including the following studies) indicates that there are clear, specific, and concrete actions that schools can take to dramatically increase their effectiveness.
Bosker, 1992
Bosker & Witziers, 1995, 1996
Brookover, Beady, Flood, Schweitzer, & Wisenbaker, 1979
Brookover et al., 1978
Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992
Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth,
Luppescu, & Easton, 2010
Creemers, 1994
Eberts & Stone, 1988
Edmonds, 1979a, 1979b, 1979c, 1981a, 1981b
Goldstein, 1997
Good & Brophy, 1986
Levine & Lezotte, 1990
Luyten, 1994
Madaus, Kellaghan, Rakow, & King, 1979
Mortimore, Sammons, Stoll, Lewis, & Ecob, 1988
Purkey & Smith, 1983
Raudenbush & Bryk, 1988
Raudenbush
