Continuous Improvement in High Schools Helping More Students Succeed

Martha Abele Mac Iver and Robert Balfanz, national experts in dropout prevention, apply the Carnegie Foundation's continuous improvement framework to the issue of student success in high school, starting with the critical ninth-grade year. A proven tool for organizational change, the framework provides a systematic structure for examining the root causes of problems and testing possible solutions.

Mac Iver and Balfanz draw on their decades of experience working with educators and their deep knowledge of challenges faced by high schools to customize the framework to the high school context. They model the use of improvement science principles such as establishing practical measures, conducting disciplined inquiry, and accelerating learning through networked communities. With real-world examples and ideas for change, the authors show how attention to five key areas can enrich student educational experience and improve high school outcomes. These areas are early warning and intervention systems; family engagement; students' sense of connectedness to school; social, emotional, and academic development; and teacher instructional practices.

The guidance offered in this useful work will enable educators and their collaborating partners to create their own powerful solutions for student success.

Martha Abele Mac Iver is an associate research professor in the School of Education at the Johns Hopkins University and affiliated with the Center for Social Organization of Schools and the Everyone Graduates Center. She is author (with Elizabeth Farley-Ripple) of Bringing the District Back In and of numerous journal articles. Since the mid-1990s she has conducted research and evaluation studies at all levels of the K-12 educational system, spending hundreds of hours observing classroom instruction and interviewing teachers, students, and administrators. She was one of the founding researchers of the Baltimore Education Research Consortium and held a senior urban research fellowship from the Council of the Great City Schools from 2009 to 2011 to study dropout predictors in Baltimore. Recent studies she has conducted include a randomized control trial evaluation of an early warning system intervention, development and evaluation of a professional development series for high school teachers, and a continuous improvement initiative around increasing schools' family engagement efforts during the transition to high school. She also serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk. Prior to her education research career, she conducted public opinion research in Europe for the US government and taught political science at Occidental College. She holds a BA in European studies from Michigan State University and a PhD in political science from the University of Michigan.

Robert Balfanz is a research professor at the Center for Social Organization of Schools, Johns Hopkins University School of Education, and director of the Everyone Graduates Center. His work focuses on translating research findings into effective school improvement strategies and educational reforms. He publishes, conducts research, and leads technical assistance efforts on secondary school reform, improving high school graduation and college readiness rates, early warning systems, chronic absenteeism, social-emotional learning, and instructional improvements in high poverty schools. Currently he isleading the Cross State High School Redesign Collaborative with five states and seventy high schools, and the Pathways to Adult Success initiative with over 150 school districts, state departments of education, higher education institutions, and nonprofits. He was codirector of the National Student Attendance, Engagement, and Success Center and codeveloper of the Talent Development Secondary and Diplomas Now whole-school improvement models. His work was featured in PBS Frontline's "The Education of Omarina," and he was awarded the Alliance for Excellent Education's Everyone a Graduate Award and the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform Joan Lipsitz Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2013 the Obama White House recognized him as a Champion for Change for African American education, and he has served as an education fellow for the G. W. Bush Institute. He has a BA from Johns Hopkins University and a PhD from the University of Chicago.