What Makes a School Successful? - Abdul Latif Jameel ...

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What Makes a School Successful?

BY BRIDGET ANSEL 5/2/15 AT 1:07 PM

What makes a U.S. primary or secondary school successful?

Traditionally, education policy has focused on factors such as teachers' advanced degrees and training, the class size and spending per pupil. Yet research by Harvard University economics

professor Roland G. Fryer Jr. has challenged our notions of what makes our nation's

schools most effective.

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Fryer is this year's recipient of the prestigious John Bates Clark medal, given to the

most promising American economist under 40. He is the first AfricanAmerican to win the coveted prize.

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Fryer's research is characterized by rigorous empirical testing of theoretical hypotheses such as whether smaller class size and increased spending per pupil are correlated with improved school effectiveness and better student outcomes. His research and subsequent award are part of

a larger trend of the economics world embracing empirical work as opposed to just theoretical modeling.

Fryer and his colleague, Will Dobbie of Princeton University, looked at 39 New York City charter schools. Because these schools are not subject to the uniform standards

that public schools must follow, the two researchers were able to compare a diverse range of educational strategies.

Some schools, for example, focused on immersing their students in the arts in order to inspire success. Other schools were defined by a more militant "noexcuses" environment characterized by frequent testing, long school days and harsh discipline for even the smallest

infractions--what has been called the "broken windows" educational policy.

Fryer and Dobbie's research found that a strictly controlled environment seemed to work best in fostering success among charter school students. Out of the 500 variables they studied, they found that five policies employed by "noexcuses" charter schools accounted for almost 45 percent of the variation in the school effectiveness.

Fryer wondered whether these five "tenets" of student achievement--frequent teacher feedback, the use of data to guide instruction, frequent and highquality tutoring, extended school day and year and a culture of high expectations--could be successfully scaled up and broadly adopted by public schools.

So, in 2010, he began working with Houston school superintendent Terry Geier to implement a program based on Fryer and Dobbie's five tenets. The program, deemed "Apollo 20," after Houston's historic role in the U.S. space program, targeted 20 of the city's

worst performing schools, including four that were slated to close before Fryer stepped in.

The program was controversial because it involved firing most of the principals at the selected schools and due to its high costs, which were covered mostly by public funds.

According to a followup report done by Fryer himself, the results have been mixed. While

students made significant gains in math, reading remained stagnant, highlighting the problem

of trying to replicate charter school success stories on a larger scale.

Regardless, other cities have taken note. Select schools in Denver and Chicago have since

adopted similar programs. Fryer has recently acknowledged the differences between public and charter schools and has suggested tweaks to the Apollo program that might make it more effective.

Fryer's empirical work follows in the footsteps of other recent John Bates Clark medal winners,

such as Emmanuel Saez at the University of CaliforniaBerkeley and Raj Chetty at Harvard University. They and other prominent economists, among them Amir Sufi at the University of Chicago, are more focused on the kind of datadriven research that

results in effective policy interventions rather than on theoretical models that may or may not translate into actual policy directives for the real world.

Fryer, however, has gone to greater lengths than most economists to implement the findings of his research. And, as we saw with the Apollo project, he also uses this empirically driven approach to find holes in his own research--and is open to addressing approaches that do not work.

As an expert on the racial achievement gap who himself grew up in a troubled home,

Fryer has a bootsontheground approach to combating inequality through a dual approach of research and application. In doing so, he is a role model for the ways in which the academic world can provide evidencebased solutions to make the world more efficient and prosperous.

Bridget Ansel is assistant editor for publications and development at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. This article first appeared on its site.

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Barry E. Stern ? Washington, District of Columbia Harvard Prof. Fryer guided Houston's Apollo 20 schools to employ five strategies from successful public and charter schools across the nation: ? An effective principal and effective teachers ? More instructional time ? Use of data to drive instruction ? Inschool tutoring ? Culture of high expectations These are a terrific set of strategies derived from empirical research. However, the professor admits that results have been mixed, and he is open to using data to learn the reasons and make appropriate tweaks.

For high schools I wonder if researchers are asking all the right questions. For example, are these five strategies enough to overcome the inherent weaknesses of the centuryold factory model design of comprehensive high schools that 85% of students still attend? This model has never worked for half the students, less i... See More Reply ? Like ? 22 hours ago

Bruce Smith ? Top Commenter ? UCLA This story is transparent cheerleading. Much depends on how "success" is defined, on what effects are sought: the interventions listed may have been correlated with higher test scores in two subjects in schools chartered in New York City, but what were the opportunity costs, and were they justified by the gains? Reply ? Like ? May 4 at 11:58pm

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