Effective Schools for all requires that we understand what works.

The EFFECTIVE SCHOOLS RESEARCH, first credited to Ron Edmonds, identified schools:

• where students mastered the curriculum at a higher rate and to a higher level than would be predicted based on demographics.
• where students showed a steady increase in achievement over time, and the achievement gap narrowed between students from low socioeconomic and high socioeconomic backgrounds.
• where researchers originally found a set of five common characteristics, called “correlates.”

The original work by Ron Edmonds and others stated the correlates as,

1. the principal’s leadership and attention to the quality of instruction;
2. a pervasive and broadly understood instructional focus;
3. an orderly, safe climate conducive to teaching and learning;
4. teacher behaviors that convey the expectation that all students are expected to obtain at least minimal mastery; and
5. the use of measures of pupil achievement as the basis for program evaluation.”

And the common characteristics of the school improvement “programs” that were used to effectively improve schools were that they all;

• saw the local school as the focus of analysis and intervention,
• assumed all children to be educable, and
• focused their design on more efficient use of existing resources.

Lead researcher of Effective Schools asked the crucial question; how do we feel about the fact that we have not provided effective schools for all children?