Education & Human Development

Center for Research & Development in Dual Language & Literacy Acquisition

Component 5: School Enhancement Program

The focus of Component 5: School Enhancement is to build administrative teams’ leadership capacity to support sustainable school enhancement.

Our Approach

We focus on interventions with the leadership team of the school, including the principal, the assistant principals, and the instructional skills specialists on the campuses. The College of Education and Human Development at Texas A&M University and the Education Leadership Research Center provide weekly visits from a leadership coach to the campuses, professional development in mentoring/coaching for the skills specialists as they improve instruction in classrooms, virtual professional development, Summer Leadership Institutes on critical dialogues, an interventionist on the most in-need treatment campus, and campus improvement analysis and planning based on external Root Cause Analyses.

Our Methods
University Partnership School Enhancement Model
University Focus 1 (Essential) University Focus 2 (Expected) School Focus (Essential)
  • A personal coach for the principal
  • A leadership team coach (at least one)
  • Engage in an external root cause analysis
  • Focus on data analyses, strategic planning
  • A focus by the principal (no letting go—build a team, share leadership, keep the focus on the work of creating instructional capacity)
  • Professional learning communities changes in structure and focus
  • An instructional interventionist to work with struggling learners
  • Focus on instructional capacity building
  • Instructional skills specialists (build their coaching capacity for pedagogical improvement)
  • A supportive district curriculum team engaged often on the campus
  • Area Superintendent focused on monitoring and providing feedback and professional growth opportunities
Our Results

The schools with which we have tested via a randomized control trial study, which is the gold standard for research, have provided a rigorous proof of concept of the model. Results are shown as follows.

School Enhancement Treatment and Control

Overall treatment schools scored 51 points higher than overall control schools after one-year of APLUS school enhancement.

Treatment (Overall +58) 2019 Rating Overall Score 2018-19 Overall Score 2017-18
School A C 76 (+4) 72
School C B 86 (+18) 68
School D C 74 (+15) 59
School E C 78 (+21) 57

 

Control (Overall +7) 2019 Rating Overall Score
2018-19		 Overall Score
2017-18
School B C 77 (+10) 67
School F C 75 (-1) 76
School G C 75 (-1) 76
School H D 66 (-1) 67

 

Contact

Donna Druery

Donna Druery

Component 5 Coordinator