Successful schools create a shared vision for high academic achievement and student success that reflects the vision of the community and is supported by the entire school staff. Schoolwide efforts to increase student attendance, promote positive behaviors, and increase student effort allow students to take full advantage of classroom instruction.
Overview of School Climate, Culture, and Partnerships
Principle 1: Create a can do school culture marked by a shared mission among the staff members that centers on academic achievement and a shared belief that they can collectively enable students to succeed.
- Practice 1: Organize the school around teams of teachers working collectively with a common set of students that is stable and of a manageable number.
- Practice 2: Establish a distributive leadership structure so that all key stakeholders are involved in school decision making and committed to do what it takes to raise student achievement, with time and effort invested in mission building among the staff.
Principle 2: Create a school environment in which mutually supportive relationships between students, teachers, and parents can develop.
- Practice 1: Use surveys to gather information on school climate and culture.
- Practice 2: Use teams of parents, teachers, administrators, and students to analyze survey data and to create and implement action plans based on the needs the survey identified.
Principle 3: Engage in schoolwide efforts to increase student attendance, promote positive behaviors, and increase student effort (where needed).
- Practice 1: Measure and analyze data on chronic absenteeism, suspensions, and sustained mild misbehavior.
- Practice 2: When chronic absenteeism and student misbehavior are at significant levels, implement evidence-based, whole-school strategies to prevent and reduce these behaviors.
Principle 4: Focus the school-family partnership on communicating to students the importance of high academic and educational aspirations and showing the steps that need to be taken to actualize these aspirations.
- Practice 1: Provide parents, supportive adults, and students with information on the important role the middle grades play in high school readiness, high school graduation, and postsecondary success.
- Practice 2: Create and provide parents and students with ready access to high school readiness benchmarks.
- Practice 3: Make adult participation a critical part of your process.
Principle 5: Conduct student-need and asset analyses and select community partners and supports based on student need. Design and manage a plan to link community supports to success in school and use common metrics to gauge their impact.
- Practice 1: Create and maintain on-site, in-school coordination and monitoring of community support programs.