Despite efforts to match equity and excellence schools in other low-income schools across North America, it is certainly true that no external sample of schools will precisely mirror the characteristics of the school or district in which you work. Every sample, whether from a few schools the researcher chooses as a sample of convenience or a larger sample that closely mirrors the characteristics of students in the original research, is limited because practitioners contend, “That sample did not include my students and my school.” Indeed, even when the sample does address this challenge by including “my students in my schools,” skeptics could contend the sample used last year’s students and this year’s students are different.
The only response to this challenge is not to argue over the representative nature of samples, but to shift the research focus from external to internal. In Reframing Teacher Leadership to Improve Your School (Reeves, 2008b), I offer a method for teachers to conduct and assess action research that has, in my experience, been transformative for promoting effective and sustainable change. This method is colloquially referred to as the science fair approach, as the method mirrors the three-panel cardboard displays fourth graders often use for their science fair projects. Although the research topics vary widely based on the individual needs of each teacher and school, the format of these three-panel cardboard displays is consistent.
1. Left panel: Challenge
2. Middle panel: Professional practices
3. Right panel: Results
Here are some examples from schools I observed.
• Challenge: High school failures due to missing work (more than 90 percent of D and F grades were due to missing work, not attendance or behavior).
• Professional practices: Teachers implemented a daily required intervention immediately before lunch. All students used the same agenda, and all teachers agreed to use a stamp system to indicate when students completed the work. When students were missing a stamp, they were directed to the appropriate room to complete the work.
• Results: D and F grades declined by 67 percent in one semester.
• Challenge: Middle school behavior was out of control and suspensions at an all-time high.
• Professional practices: Teachers implemented restorative justice schoolwide and agreed on a chart of responses for what is required for in-class, in-office, and out-of-school discipline.
• Results: Suspensions decreased by 55 percent in one year.
• Challenge: Chronic absenteeism in elementary through high school.
• Professional practices: Teachers implemented the sixty-second report—all students not seated in the classroom within one minute of the tardy bell were added to a list in the principal’s office and called within the first twenty minutes of school. All staff members who were not in front of students attended a stand-up meeting in the principal’s office.
• Results: Absenteeism decreased by more than 80 percent in one year.
• Challenge: Excessive middle and high school failures due to missing work and student disengagement. Students who accumulated zeros on the one-hundred-point scale quit trying because they knew no matter how hard they worked, they would fail the class.
• Professional practices: Teachers changed from the one-hundred-point scale to a simple A–F grading system, where A = 4, B = 3, C = 2, D = 1, and F = 0. Teachers also switched from calculating the final semester grade based on the average of all work to giving a final grade based on the teacher’s judgment of student proficiency from the latest and best evidence of student learning.
• Results: D and F grades decreased 38 percent in social studies, 45 percent in English, and 62 percent in mathematics.
The consistent element of the science fair approach is that it uses local research with local students in local schools—your students in your school or district. Instead of considering a different sample of students from a different school, no matter how representative, the science fair approach allows teachers to compare the same students from the same neighborhoods with the same demographics with the same teachers within the same year. This compelling before-and-after approach allows teachers to conclude that all the other factors influencing student achievement are consistent—the only change is the teachers’ changes in professional practices.
Argument 2: “Anecdotes Are Not Evidence”
The assertion, “Anecdotes do not equal evidence,” is a very fair criticism, as many articles and books in education are best described as journey stories—the experience of a single teacher or administrator. However informative these experiences may be, they are anecdotes, not research. This is why we must all be critical consumers of educational research when a speaker or writer blithely claims, “Studies show …” or “Research says …,” when the studies or research may only be a sample size of one. This does not eliminate the value of case studies, but it is much more helpful to draw inferences when researchers accumulate a large number of cases. Certain educational researchers are leading the way in studying the successful practices of multiple school districts and condensing the results into a format educational leaders and teachers can implement in their schools. For example, Heather Zavadsky (2009), director of research and implementation at the Texas High School Project, analyzes the workings of several well-run school districts in her book Bringing School Reform to Scale: Five Award-Winning Urban Districts. Reflection on a single high-performing urban system is not nearly as helpful as Zavadsky’s (2009) synthesis of a variety of school systems and her ability to find common elements despite differences in geography, governance systems, funding, and student populations.
Using the science fair approach discussed previously, teachers may think their own work is “just an anecdote” and therefore not worthy of being shared with colleagues. But when that individual experience is grouped with dozens or hundreds of colleagues’ experiences, then patterns can emerge that no longer rely on anecdotal evidence. Moreover, a focus on teaching practices allows educators to distinguish between programs and practices. Vendors would like to claim a particular program, curriculum, or technology application leads to gains in student achievement, but programs alone accomplish nothing. The overwhelming conclusion of our review of more than two thousand school plans (Reeves, 2011a) is that it is practices, not programs, that hold the key for improvement in student results. In addition, a focus on practices turns the analytical lens where it belongs—on practices that are replicable rather than the mystical qualities of the individual teacher. Kim Marshall (personal communication, September 16, 2019), educational researcher and author of The Marshall Memo website (https://marshallmemo.com), thoughtfully distinguishes between teachers and teaching by noting that when the focus is on the teacher, great practice is relegated to the ethereal realm (“She’s just a gifted teacher!”) or calumny (“He’s just a terrible teacher!”). Neither of those observations is particularly insightful guidance for any professional beyond the superficial “Be good and don’t be bad.” But, as Marshall suggests, when we focus on teaching—the actual practices in which teachers engage—then we can address specific practices in discipline, feedback, curriculum, lesson planning, and professional responsibilities to perform effectively. The guidance is not, “Be more like Ms. Smith,” but rather like the following.
• “It’s important that you
