Districts That Succeed: Breaking the Correlation Between Race, Poverty, and Achievement

by Karin Chenoweth

In Districts That Succeed , long-time education writer Karin Chenoweth turns her attention from effective schools to effective districts. Leveraging new, cutting-edge national research on district performance as well as in-depth reporting, Chenoweth profiles five districts that have successfully broken the correlation between race, poverty, and achievement.

Focusing on high performing or rapidly improving districts that serve children of color and children from low-income backgrounds, the book explores the common elements that have led to the districts’ successes, including leadership, processes, and systems. Districts That Succeed reveals that helping more students achieve is not a matter of adopting a program or practice. Rather, it requires developing a district-wide culture where all adults feel responsible for the academic well-being of students and adopt systems and processes that support that culture.

Chenoweth explores how districts, from urban Chicago, Illinois to rural Seaford, Delaware, have organized themselves to look at data to guide improvement. Her research highlights the essential role of districts in closing achievement gaps and illustrates how successful outliers can serve as resources for other districts.

With important lessons for district leaders and policy makers alike, Chenoweth offers the hard-won wisdom of educators who understand the power of schools to, as one superintendent says, “change the path of poverty.”

Genres: Education, Nonfiction

192 pages, Paperback

Published May 25, 2021

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was a fascinating look at what some successful districts have done. Well written with a great deal of insight -- her concept of an aligned school led by an effective principal being crucial to success really resonated with me, and I liked reading the case studies of how district districts have created systems to support these aligned schools. The Chicago chapter was particularly fascinating to me.
Really good stuff.

[Anne Swanson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent research driven evaluation of education with pragmatic solutions for school distrcts.

[North Landesman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book destroys the lie on both the left and the right that "A great proportion of the American people believe that family background and home environment are the principal causes of pupil performance ... Such a belief has the effect of absolving educators of their professional responsibility to be instructionally effective." The Left lies because they say the fault of this poor performance is a lack of money in schools due to local property tax disparities, and performance can't be changed until the tax system is changed. Even further on the left, people such as Kendi argue that using testing at all to measure student outcomes is racist and wrong. On the right, Chenoweth points out correctly that people are trying to use these poor results to "fund students instead of systems" and dismantle the public school system.
Chenoweth proves there are districts such as Chicago, Ill, Stubenville, Ohio, Cottonwood, Oklahoma, Seaford, Delaware, Valley Steam, NY that have shown steady progress in raising the achievement of all students, including students of color.
The book provides both hope and a blueprint for all schools to follow.
* First, the easier part: all schools must have leaders committed to instructional improvement. They must believe that all students can succeed. This means making time for all teachers to collaborate and forcing them to do so. Finding evidence-based Professional Development and making sure it is implemented. Making sure teachers have time in their schedules to work on both instruction and talk about the students in the bottom 25% and what interventions they are doing to help those students. Then ... crucially, seeing of those interventions work. Implementing curriculum that there is strong evidence for working. Then following through to make sure that curriculum is being followed and implemented. In both It's Being Done and Districts that succeed, these seem to be common threads.
* The harder part is finding strong leaders. Chenoweth found in her first book that after an excellent school leader had been replaced, the new leader tried to "put their stamp on the school" and dismantle the systems set up by the effective leader, bringing the school back to zero. How can schools pick good leaders? It seems they need to have had experience successfully leading adults in a school setting and experience raising student achievement. The Chicago school for principals was the most fascinating part. A school for leaders with evidenced based instructions and an "internship" where they go into other schools and try to solve a problem. This seems to show some progress. In both schools, history, and the National Football League, succession is a huge problem. Predicting who will be a great leader is a huge problem. Often the people who work for great leaders do not become great leaders themselves. If anyone has research on how to predict who will be an effective instructional leader, I would love to read it.

Chenoweth is an outstanding writer who tells the stories in a clear, vivid way. This is one of the most profound, best written books on education I have read in years. All teachers should read this book.

[Will · Rating 2 out of 5]

Anecdote followed by anecdote followed by anecdote does not make data. That being said, there's a good point to be made about the importance of continuity and how fragile school systems are when bad leadership takes over.

More in depth, the book focuses on outlier districts that have done better than their demographic makeup would predict. Without data to compare what's happening in these districts to what happens in successful schools that *aren't* outliers, one can basically predict that many of these districts are a small step away from regressing to the mean, or else have such a unique set of circumstances (e.g. Steubenville) that they can't be replicated. Chenoweth admits early in the book that her past books about schools that succeed have often fallen short in this same regard: the schools don't often stay successful long after she's written about them. It's a telling and humanizing admission, and I applaud her for having the courage to be open and honest about it, and to try and discuss it. But rather than change methods, she's just applying the same method of study to the larger system of a district rather than a school. Insert the definition of insanity here.

Add in a few references to problematic sources (e.g. Marzano, much of whose work is pure poison) and general hand-wavey nods to old canards like "the importance of rigor," and this book is pretty skippable.

[Paul Schneider · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book highlights school districts that provide proof points for successfully educating students from diverse backgrounds. It’s a must read for all educators and those interested in education policy.