Applying “High-Reliability Organization” Theory to a Failing School

From the Marshall Memo #428

In this meaty article in JESPAR, Eugene Schaffer (University of Maryland/ Baltimore County), David Reynolds (University of Southampton), and Sam Stringfield (University of Louisville) describe the turnaround of a comprehensive secondary school in southern Wales (UK) – a multi-year process in which they were participant/observers. 

The school, located in a public housing project rife with unemployment, poverty, and drug and alcohol abuse, was informed in the summer of 1996 that if students’ scores on national GCSE exams didn’t improve, it would be closed. “One of the most depressing challenges facing the school,” say the authors, “was the choice of many parents not to send their children to the school because they had attended it themselves and believed that the school was neither socially nor academically supportive of young people.” Teacher morale was rock-bottom and many staff members felt they were doing all that could be done and the situation was hopeless.

The school’s principal decided to invite David Reynolds (one of the authors) to talk to the staff about what has been learned from “high-reliability organizations” – those that must adopt measures to prevent and/or reduce catastrophic failures – for example, air traffic control towers and electric power grids. Teachers listened in stony silence, skeptical that the ideas could apply to a struggling school. For one thing, where did Reynolds suggest they begin? “Looking around the ill-kempt room and out dirty windows to grounds littered with trash and graffiti, Reynolds offered that a good place to start would be with an all-out clean-up campaign,” say the authors. After a lively debate, the staff agreed – as a first step to figuring out whether other high-reliability principles might make a difference in their school.

Schaffer, Reynolds, and Stringfield step back to give the broader rationale of this approach. “[S]ince the final quarter of the 20^th century,” they write, “the consequences in all developed nations of a student not succeeding in school have become increasingly grim. The practical import of this shift in the labor market is that failure to succeed in secondary education, which once bore only modest individual and societal costs, now results in unacceptable costs for both individuals and larger societies. Anything less than educational success for virtually all citizens has become so expensive that neither individuals nor societies can afford failure.”

This is what drew the authors to the research on high-reliability organizations – places like nuclear power plants that must work right the first time, every time, where one set of errors can cascade and produce disastrous results for people inside and outside. The authors believe there are twelve principles from the research that are applicable to struggling schools:

• Failure is considered unacceptable by those inside and outside the organization.
• A few clear goals are shared at all levels.
• Data are used to avoid surprises and lapses and prevent them from snowballing.
• The organization builds and constantly uses powerful databases.
• Effective practices are institutionalized as standard operating procedures. 
• Everyone is empowered to identify system flaws.
• The organization actively and continuously recruits new staff at all levels.
• There is constant, targeted training and retraining.
• There is rigorous performance evaluation without loss of autonomy and confidence.
• Everyone helps to keep the equipment and the facility in tip-top shape.
• There is a hierarchy, but also collegial decision-making and interdependence.
• Short-term efficiency takes a back seat to very high reliability.

The effect of these characteristics is multiplicative, not additive, say the authors: “The total absence of any one can nullify great efforts to obtain others.” And all twelve constantly evolve: “Last year’s teacher recruiting effort, however successful, becomes the baseline for measuring this year’s effort… In human organizations, reliability is a socially constructed, evolving phenomenon.” 

Schaffer, Reynolds, and Stringfield describe how the Welsh school applied the twelve principles:

• Failure is unacceptable – It was very clear to staff and the community that the school was in crisis – it wasn’t serving its students well and would be shut down if major improvement didn’t occur. It was do or die.

• Clear, shared goals - Shortly after the improvement effort began, the school’s long-time principal retired and a young assistant principal took the helm. He decided on three goals: 

• Improved appearance – This was essential to change the reputation of the school in the community and attract more students. It was also linked to student attendance and respect for their work. “Addressing the most surface aspects of appearance also held promise for providing a quick win,” say the authors.
• Improved attendance – Historically, student attendance was below 80 percent, which created constant problems in classrooms. “Teachers struggled to present lessons that related to all students in a given class period,” say Schaffer, Reynolds, and Stringfield. “Some students needed a review because of absence; other students were, in effect, being punished for having been present on previous days.” The school set an initial goal of getting attendance over 80 percent.
• Improved achievement – This was clearly the most important of the three, since the school’s survival depended on improved GCSE scores. The staff debated whether to set a low bar – anything above a 20 percent passing rate would keep the school alive – or a “Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal” – for example, 90 percent of students scoring at high levels. In the end, the school didn’t set a specific goal, but clearing 20 percent was the unspoken target – even though some teachers thought it was out of reach. 

The new principal relentlessly promoted these goals as the school’s “Triple A Challenge.” On appearance, the school was successful in dramatically cleaning up the campus and followed up with a student uniform dress code. On attendance, the school hired a social worker and instituted improved teacher reporting of attendance, immediate communication with parents (including home visits), and aggressive follow-up when students were absent. On achievement, the school gathered and analyzed performance data, began literacy interventions and mentoring, and focused on teacher effectiveness, including getting teachers observing each others’ classes. The principal insisted that high-quality instruction occur from the first hour to the last hour of every semester – a push that was resisted by some teachers at first (when were they supposed to clean up?) but soon became the norm.

• Data use – The school began to give diagnostic tests to all incoming 11-year-olds and targeted an additional 50-minute weekly literacy-block program to those who needed it most. Students were given their scores and asked to set goals for success on the GCSEs – and then encouraged to work hard and surpass their goals. “This had the benefit of (at least partially) changing the students’ perceptions of teachers from being critics to being coaches for students’ long-term success,” say the authors. Data on each student’s achievement were maintained year to year and during each year, and teachers examined interim assessment results to identify effective and ineffective practices. A Pupil Achievement Team led by an administrator discussed struggling students and decided whether they needed to be in different classes. Teachers and students became “data rich”, monitoring attendance and ongoing achievement gains and areas of need and setting and surpassing goals. “I didn’t think he/she was capable of that,” was a common refrain in staff meetings, which focused mostly on teaching and learning. “Virtuous spirals” were created and students’ efforts were respected and encouraged, and lapses were analyzed to prevent students from sliding into failure.

• Powerful databases – Information on attendance and academic achievement drove decisions in classrooms, departments, and the overall school.

• Effective practices – The school focused on developing “standard operating procedures” that worked well. These became the way the school did things, versus the way individuals did things. Administrators visited other schools looking for ideas, especially ways of preventing staff from taking shortcuts on discipline and behavior problems – a chronic problem in the past. The result was that students encountered the same expectations and procedures in all classrooms – it was no longer possible to get away with certain behaviors with certain teachers. Teachers met regularly as teams to plan curriculum, look at student work, and discuss effective practices. 

• Critical scrutiny of practices – The principal was aware that his emphasis on standard operating procedures ran the risk of ossification and needless and arbitrary rules. His solution was to institutionalize flaw-finding and publicly honor and reward those who pointed out ways that procedures could be improved. 

• Recruitment – In the 14 years of this improvement effort, the school had three principals. After the departure of the first and second, the district carefully selected replacements who were on board with the improvement philosophy and full of energy and enthusiasm. School leaders constantly sought out new, energetic teachers and empowered department heads to do recruiting and selection.

• Training and retraining – The school conducted ongoing training in the high-reliability organization principles, and also devoted time to a program called Investors in People. The principal organized PD on teacher effectiveness and required that teachers follow up on training in their classrooms. He also promoted several new, vibrant staff as department heads.

• Rigorous performance evaluation – The school developed a system in which teachers observed each others’ classrooms using a lean set of criteria. Teachers took on specific responsibilities as they dropped into other classrooms – for example, monitoring homework or monitoring whether students were bringing necessary material and equipment to class. The principal made unannounced visits to classrooms every day. “Because this happened regularly,” say the authors, “teachers no longer felt threatened or worried to change their teaching at the entry of the Head.” Supervision was constant, but it didn’t impinge on teachers’ autonomy and sense of confidence.

• Upkeep – At the beginning of the turnaround, the principal asked staff and parents to come in on a weekend and paint the outside of the school, pick up trash, and weed the garden. Afterward, the school had zero tolerance for graffiti and fostered pride in the campus. This helped raise funds to plant trees and beautify the whole facility. Student uniforms were also part of changing the feel of the school to one in which serious learning was taking place. 

• Hierarchy with collegiality – At first, the high-reliability organizations theme came from the top down, but the principal gradually shifted responsibilities to assistant principals and teachers, including recruitment and selection and ongoing analysis of student learning and effective teaching practices. 

• Support from outside – The local governmental agency supported the school from the start, and the four original schools in the high-reliability organizations initiative constantly shared ideas and helped each other out – including on the “little things that mattered” in improving schools. 

• Short-term efficiency taking a back seat to very high reliability – The school kept its focus on the ultimate goal, constantly weeding out ineffective practices and building capacity to meet its big goal.

What were the results of this turnaround effort? Over the initial four-year period, the school’s GCSE test scores rose substantially and have continued to rise in the decade since. In 1994-6, before the intervention, 14 percent of the school’s students scored at high levels. This rose to 35 percent in 2000 and 47 percent in 2010 – more than two and a half times the national improvement rate. “This means that one of the most disadvantaged districts in the nation had risen from being 7.4 percentage points below the national average to a stature fully 10 percentage points above the national average,” say the authors. In 2011, a team of visiting inspectors gave the school the highest rating possible – Excellent - for its current performance and prospects for further improvement. The reason: dramatic improvements in the quality of teaching, counseling, community engagement, school cleanliness, and other desirable outcomes. 

In short, the school met the test of long-term impact laid out by Hargreaves and Fink (2006): “The first challenge of change is to ensure that it’s desirable and the second challenge is to make it doable; then the biggest challenge of all is to make it durable and sustainable.” 

“Sustaining Turnaround at the School and District Levels: The High Reliability Schools Project at Sandfields Secondary School” by Eugene Schaffer, David Reynolds, and Sam Stringfield in Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR), January-June 2012 (Vol. 17, #1-2, p. 108-127), http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10824669.2012.637188#pre...