In Improbable Scholars, David Kirp offers an example of how effective this approach can be, even when scaled up to an entire school district. His focus is on low-income Union City, New Jersey, schools where students score as well as their much better-off suburban counterparts in writing, reading, and math. No silver bullets. No off-the shelf reform package. Rather, itâs stable leadership and day-to-day, year-in, year-out commitment to doing all the big and little things that put expert-tutor wiseness into studentsâ daily lives: child-centered over staff-centered priorities, big investments in preschool, rigorous and integrated curricula, explicit and constant attention to building cultures of respect and confidence in studentsâ potential. The academic mission of these schools is unconditional. But they understand that when a focus on building trust is persistently appliedâ in curriculum decisions, disciplinary policies, rules for composing student study groups, after-school options, the examples used in presenting STEM material, the hiring of teachers and staffâ it can take a school to a tipping point of effectiveness for all students.
This is how good schoolsâ like good restaurants, as my colleague Joshua Aronson pointed out to meâ get built. Guiding principles are minutely and persistently applied. We keep track of how they work, and we refine them to better and better effect. It is the ground game of school improvement.