School Effectiveness and School Improvement: Voices from the Field

ABSTRACT

In 1986, the Halton Board of Education in Ontario, Canada initiated an Effective Schools Project. In previous papers we have described the evolution of this project in detail (Stoll and Fink, 1988, 1989a, 1989b, Fink and Stoll, 1992). Our intent in this paper is to provide a retrospective of the past few years to provide some helpful insights into the change process in school systems.

To develop this article, we went back to our original work (Stoll and Fink, 1988). This was probably a mistake. If not a mistake, at least it was humbling. What seemed so crystal clear when we started has changed remarkably by 1993. Our work has been somewhat of an odyssey. In the years since we began, we have altered directions, shifted ground, abandoned ‘brilliant’, but unworkable models, and learned an incredible amount about school effectiveness and school improvement.

In this article we will review the project briefly, outline some key results, describe what we have learned about school effectiveness and improvement in the past five years, outline what we think we know about the topic, and finally suggest areas where we, who work for and with school districts, require the assistance of the research community.