A Handbook for High Reliability Schools. Robert J. Marzano
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of a school: What are the rules? How do we follow them? What will happen when the rules are not followed? How do we work together to make the school run optimally?
Level 2 addresses the most commonly cited characteristic of effective schools: high-quality instruction in every classroom. Stated differently, school leaders must make sure classroom teachers are using instructional strategies in a way that reaches all students and are taking appropriate steps to improve teacher competence when this goal is not being met.
High-quality instruction is a prerequisite for level 3, a guaranteed and viable curriculum. Guaranteed means that the same curriculum is taught by all teachers so that all students have an equal opportunity to learn it. Viable means that the amount of content in the curriculum is appropriate to the amount of time teachers have available to teach it (DuFour & Marzano, 2011; Marzano, 2003b). Levels 1 through 3 are common fare among current efforts to make schools more effective.
Level 4 moves into a more rarefied level of school reform, because it involves reporting individual students’ progress on specific standards. At any point in time, the leaders of a level 4 school can identify individual students’ strengths and weaknesses relative to specific topics in each subject area.
Level 5 schools exist in the most rarefied group of all—one in which students move to the next level of content as soon as they demonstrate competence at the previous level. Matriculation, then, is not based on the amount of time a student spends in a given course, but rather on his or her demonstrated mastery of content.
Leading and Lagging Indicators
In order to know what to work on and to measure their success at each level, school leaders need ways to assess their school’s current status, gauge their progress through each level, and confirm successful achievement of each level. Leading and lagging indicators are useful to these ends. The distinction between leading and lagging indicators is this: leading indicators show what a school should work on to achieve a high reliability level (they provide direction), and lagging indicators are the evidence a school gives to validate its achievement of a high reliability level (they provide proof), particularly in areas where there is general agreement that the school is not doing well.
Leading indicators are “important conditions that are known to be associated with improvement” (Foley et al., n.d., p. 2). That is, they help school leaders decide what to work on to achieve high reliability status at a specific level. For example, at level 1, one leading indicator is “Faculty and staff perceive the school environment as safe and orderly.” School leaders can use a survey to measure the extent to which faculty and staff perceive the school environment as safe and orderly. If perceptions of safety and orderliness are very high, school leaders may not need to focus on that area. If perceptions of safety and orderliness are low, school leaders might decide to implement initiatives or programs designed to improve the safety and orderliness of the school environment. Alternatively, low average scores on particular items might indicate that an area is not important in the school. For example, at level 1, town hall meetings and community business luncheons may or may not be important considerations for a school. Essentially, leading indicators help school leaders identify areas that are important to the school in which the school is already doing well, areas that are important to the school and need to be addressed, and areas that are not important to the school. For areas that are important to the school (both those that need to be addressed and those in which the school is already doing well), lagging indicators can be designed.
Lagging indicators provide concrete evidence that a school has achieved a specific high level of performance, particularly in an area initially flagged for low performance. For example, at level 1, a school where the faculty and staff do not perceive the school environment as safe and orderly (a leading indicator) might formulate the following lagging indicator to measure their progress toward a safe and orderly environment: “Few, if any, incidents occur in which rules and procedures are not followed.” To meet this lagging indicator, school leaders would have to determine how many incidents constitute a “few.” This number is called a criterion score; it is the score a school is aiming to achieve for the lagging indicator. School leaders then track the actual number of incidents occurring in the school and compare the number of incidents to the criterion score. If the results meet the criterion score, the school considers itself to have met that lagging indicator and the evidence can be used to validate the school’s achievement of a specific high reliability level. If the results do not meet the criterion score, the school continues or adjusts its efforts until it does meet the score.
To design lagging indicators and criterion scores, school leaders can use several different approaches. The first is a percentage approach wherein school leaders create a lagging indicator that states a certain percentage of responses or data collected will meet a specific criterion. For example, a percentage lagging indicator for level 1 might be “Ninety percent of survey responses will indicate agreement that the school is safe and orderly.” School leaders can use a sentence stem such as “ ________________ percent of responses or data will “ ________________ to formulate percentage lagging indicators.
A second approach involves setting a cutoff score, below which no responses or data will fall. The following is a possible cutoff lagging indicator for level 2: “No teachers will improve less than two levels on the scale for each of their growth goals each year.” School leaders could use a sentence stem such as “No responses or data will fall below “ ________________ to compose cutoff lagging indicators.
In cases where a school has received fairly high initial survey responses but still wants to improve, school leaders can choose to set lagging indicators for specific amounts of growth. A growth lagging indicator for level 3 might say, “Survey responses regarding all students having adequate opportunity to learn will improve 10 percent.” An appropriate sentence stem for growth lagging indicators would be “Responses or data will be ________________ percent higher than original responses or data.”
Finally, lagging indicators can be designed around the creation of a concrete product as evidence of high levels of performance. A concrete product lagging indicator for level 4 might say, “Written goals are available for each student in terms of his or her performance on common assessments.” School leaders could use a sentence stem such as “A document or report stating ________________ exists” to design concrete product lagging indicators.
The following chapters list leading indicators for each level. Lagging indicators, however, must be formulated for each specific school by its leaders. Schools should identify lagging indicators and set criterion scores that are appropriate to their unique situation and needs. In each chapter, we provide a template leaders can use to formulate lagging indicators and set criterion scores for each level.
Implementing Critical Commitments
After creating lagging indicators for a level, school leaders implement specific activities or initiatives that help them meet the goals inherent in the lagging indicators. For example, if a school’s lagging indicator states that they will average no more than one incident per month in which rules or procedures are not followed, and they currently average five such incidents per month, they must implement activities or initiatives that change the current state of the school.
We refer to the suggested activities or initiatives that school leaders implement to meet their lagging indicators as critical commitments. It is important to note that these commitments are based on the cumulative experience of practitioners and researchers at Marzano Resources and the research and development work of Robert J. Marzano. Therefore, the critical commitments identified in this book should be considered as strong suggestions. Certainly a school can reach high reliability status for a given level without implementing these suggestions; however, years of experience have established these activities as very useful to achieving high reliability status for a given level. Critical commitments within each level are shown in table I.3.
| Table I.3: HRS Critical Commitments | |
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Level 5
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