Dive Brief:
- The J. Sterling Morton High School District, in a predominantly Latino community southwest of Chicago, has increased its graduation rate as well as student test scores while also getting more students to take Advanced Placement classes.
- District Administration reports current superintendent Michael Kuzniewski took over the district — which also had a gang problem — in 2008, and, with a new school board behind him, he reduced the number of daily class periods from six to five and mandated a district-wide focus on AP participation.
- The district also switched to standards-based grading, welcomed a student representative to the school board and, from the 2007-08 to the 2015-16 school years, increased the number of AP exams taken from 200 to 4,200 while growing the portion of students passing them.
Dive Insight:
School turnaround stories do not exist without the presence of strong leadership. Districts need strong leaders at the top and in each of their schools. The best principals figure out how to engage teachers and give them a voice in school decisions. Unifying behind a vision everyone believes in can serve to re-energize teachers who otherwise might become burned out by the challenges they and their students face every day. This can improve teacher satisfaction and, in turn, retention, providing improved stability for schools.
The shift from No Child Left Behind to the Every Student Succeeds Act, in requiring states to create more holistic school accountability systems than simply looking at test scores, could put an important focus on school climate. Teachers and schools that make great strides in addressing the challenges their students arrive with may soon get more credit for it. There is sure to be significant variation across the states, however, and new accountability systems do not have to be in place until next year.