School Coherence: Internal Accountability Instrument

The Design Team for the Boston Public Schools-SERP project consists of expertise in the areas of: instructional design, assessment design, school organization and management, administration, classroom practice, coaching, and data management and use. While the focal point of this project is on improving middle school students' reading comprehension, the collaborative expertise of the Design Team allows for the design of tools and interventions in related areas, such as school coherence.

The design group members with expertise in school organization[1] pointed out that the Word Generation program-or any other reform for that matter-can be predicted to do well in schools with high levels of internal coherence, but poorly in schools that are fractured. Indeed, this was argued to explain the observation of Superintendent Payzant that the coaching model produced good returns in some schools, but little return in others. Addressing this issue has been challenging, argued Richard Elmore, because there is ample evidence that coherence cannot be improved separately from an instructional purpose so expertise on improving coherence and on improving instruction are needed simultaneously.

The Design Group discussion led to a novel proposal: the school organization experts would design an instrument to help differentiate high and low coherence schools. Then they would work closely with low coherence schools to learn how to improve their coherence around the use of the Word Generation program. As a cross-subject area program, Word Generation lends itself well to the task, since it will highlight weaknesses in the schools as a professional community, and provide the opportunity to work toward a shared goal (of successful program implementation).

The Internal Accountability Instrument is being piloted in the schools implementing Word Generation, and in a few other schools to which SERP work is being extended. The instrument will, in its final form, be a powerful tool for use by researchers trying to understand school cultures, and for use by schools to understand their own functioning. Indeed, results from the instrument have been shared with one Boston school as part of a professional development effort designed to help the school focus on a few common problems of practice.

Substantial evidence exists about the characteristics that differentiate coherent and incoherent schools, including shared expectations, trust, internal accountability and shared responsibility within the school community, and a sense of efficacy. But how a school can move along a trajectory from low to high coherence is not well understood.

Read a description of the instrument by Richard Elmore, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

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[1] These include Richard Elmore, Tony Bryk, and Adam Gamoran, but only Richard Elmore regularly attended the meetings. Others participated in working group sessions by phone.