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Colleen Capper

When a new principal arrives at a school she brings fresh insight into ways to improve student achievement. Successful principals work with staff to implement those changes and eventually show evidence that their initiatives are working.

UW–Madison education professor Colleen Capper’s current WCER research documents successful school leadership practices that help students who struggle. Capper recently conducted case studies of principals who have raised academic achievement in their schools.

One of Capper’s four case studies follows the successful initiatives of Deb Manson (a pseudonym), principal of a K-2 school serving about 400 students from both high-income and low income families. When Manson assumed her first principalship at Frederick Elementary School (a pseudonym) she learned that the school’s pull-out programs were hindering students as well as helping them progress. Many students of color were leaving the regular education classroom to attend remedial reading instruction; many students for whom English was a second language left their classrooms to receive ESL tutoring; still other students left the classroom to receive Reading Recovery tutoring or to participate in gifted and talented activities. These pull-out programs left mostly middle- to upper-class European American students in the general education classroom, and these students then further benefited from the small class size.

A student who attended all the pull-out programs for which he or she qualified would spend very little time in the general education classroom. Thus, school staff had agreed that students would be pulled out from classes only once a day. For example, an ESL student qualifying for Title I services would not attend Title 1 tutoring because doing so would mean the student would be pulled out of the general education classroom twice each day. Despite this policy, Manson and the teachers at Frederick identified six problems with Frederick’s pull-out programs:

1. Students in the pull-out programs became fringe members of their classrooms. Thus, the students who most needed to feel part of the school community were exactly the students who were being pulled out.
2. The students who needed the most routine, structure, and consistency in their day had the most disruptions.
3. Students in pull-out programs missed out on classroom instruction and were sometimes unable to complete assigned tasks.
4. General education teachers did not have time to communicate with all the specialist teachers about the students in pull-out programs.
5. No adult felt fully accountable to the students in pull-out programs.
6. Pull-out programs segregated students of color and lower income students, undermining the school’s commitment to desegregation.

Manson wanted to change the de facto segregation that resulted from Frederick’s pull-out programs. Her goal for reform at Frederick was to increase achievement in reading, language arts, and mathematics for every student, especially students with limited English proficiency and Title 1 students. Manson and the Frederick teachers sought to accomplish this goal by focusing highly effective teaching strategies on fewer students and building the capacity of classroom teachers to meet the unique needs of all students.

(Schools with more than 50 percent of their population receiving free and reduced price lunches could use their Title I funds to support whole school reform, yet Frederick’s population was below that 50 %. In that case, under federal law, schools were required to hire a Title I teacher to deliver reading and math instruction outside of their regular classroom. Hence Manson applied for a Title I waiver, becoming one of the first schools in the country to do so. This waiver freed her to use her Title I money to support whole-school efforts, rather than funding a reading teacher to pull students out for reading.)

Other factors pushed the educators at Frederick School to change their practices. First, of the 29 elementary schools in the district, Frederick consistently scored in the lowest quartile, raising concern among district administrators. Second, shortly before Manson arrived at the school, the district required all schools to complete a needs assessment; Frederick’s assessment pointed to areas for change.

Restructuring support staff

When Manson first assumed the Frederick principalship, she was completing coursework for her principal’s license at the local university, where she researched school reform efforts. Manson had learned in her university program that one way to reduce class size was to restructure support staff. These teachers could be moved from pull-out programs to general education teaching positions, or they could assist general education teachers by supporting students in the general education classroom; either approach would reduce the student/teacher ratio.

Manson used her knowledge about whole-school reform to address student achievement. She applied for and received a federal grant to support her efforts. Her three reform strategies, all supported by research, were reallocating staff to reduce class size; eliminating pull-outs; and implementing a developmentally appropriate, child-centered curriculum that emphasized high expectations for every student in all academic areas.

Manson insisted that students spend as much time as possible in the general education classroom with teachers who were prepared to teach a diverse range of learners. Manson’s data revealed that pull-out programs had reduced student instructional time by one-half year over 3 years. The data also showed that one 5-minute classroom transition per day equals 15 hours of instruction in one school year. Because Manson emphasized the importance of reducing pull-outs and gained back time lost from transitions to and from classrooms, students received an additional year of reading instruction over a 3-year period. Manson was able to increase the number of classes from 20 to 25, and reduce the student/teacher ratio from 23.5:1 to 16:1.

The school’s instructional design team solicited input from teachers at the end of each year as part of their evaluation. The design team’s goal for spring 1999 was that “100% of students will experience more continuity in their curriculum and school day as measured by teacher perceptions on a school-based climate survey.” Evaluations showed that Frederick had met its goal of reducing class size and had reduced the number of pull-out programs (a 91% decrease). Students experienced more continuity in their curriculum and school day, and student reading and math scores increased. (Initially, the African American students from her school did worse, on average, than other African American students in the district, based on the tests given at her school).

Prior to the reform, Frederick School had no baseline achievement data for the most needy students or for students with disabilities because these students were not assessed. With the whole-school reform, these students are no longer routinely or categorically excused from assessments, regardless of the severity of their disabilities. Teachers adjust their assessments based on students’ disability needs. Teachers also consider language needs so that students are not penalized on assessments just because English is not their first language.

As a principal who wanted to make a difference for all students—regardless of social class, race or ethnicity, or disability—Manson reiterated that it was important for the school restructuring to be comprehensive. Short-term, Band-Aid programs rarely address the root of student academic failure, Manson pointed out. The principal must be able to maintain a vision for school change and must be able to manage many complex elements and details of change at one time.

In sum, Manson took on the challenge of reallocating resources to efficiently and effectively meet the needs of low-income students and students of color at her school. Many forces and factors had to come into play for Manson to be able to support her staff in accomplishing these goals, and she had to be able to stand up to the public pressures and resistance that were mounted against her. As circumstances continue to change at Frederick Elementary, Manson does not waver from her goal of heterogeneous classrooms where all students learn with each other and are challenged to their highest academic potential. She and the district continue to monitor the longitudinal outcomes of her efforts.

Capper is now creating multimedia case studies of Manson and other principals and is integrating them into a leadership preparation program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For more information contact Capper at capper@education.wisc.edu

Funding for Capper’s study is provided by the Wallace Reader’s Digest Foundation
Ventures in Leadership Program. Some material in this story is taken from a chapter
in the forthcoming book, Educational Leaders for Social Justice, Teachers College Press.