UDERSTANDING HIGH PERFORMING AND HIGH IMPROVING HIGH POVERTY URBAN SCHOOL COMMUNITIES -
Initial Research Study - Brief Description

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A serious gap in the educational leadership and school improvement research literature exists in the knowledge base of how urban education leaders successfully lead a transformation from a low performing to a high performing school. The Center for Developing Urban Educational Leaders (CDUEL), in its work centered on building the capacity of developing urban school leaders by providing opportunities for learning the very best practices, is initiating research that will address this gap.

The first research study for the Center for Developing Urban Educational Leaders (CDUEL) is an examination of the school-level improvement work occurring in both high performing and high improving public schools in Pennsylvania’s large and mid-sized urban communities.

• The first stage, already underway, involves identifying schools that are either high performing or showing strong improvement and also identified as urban. Drawing on state and federal databases we identified schools that fit the following criteria: large or mid-size urban locales as defined by the National Center for Education Statistics (additional information: ies National Center For Education Statistics ), high poverty as defined by having more than 40% of the student body receiving free and reduced lunch, and student performance and improvement indexes at least one standard deviation above the state mean.
  
  
• The second stage of the research will involve the construction of in-depth case studies that explore the influence of leadership, school, family, and community variables on the schools’ emergence as high performing or high achieving.

The study will draw on both qualitative and quantitative methodologies and use an interdisciplinary approach that utilizes the expertise of sociologists and economists, as well as scholars throughout the College of Education.

This research addresses critically important questions in our field –

What distinguishes these high performers and high improvers from the lowest performing schools?

How can we build the capacity of such schools and the communities in which they reside in order to yield similar results?

The results from this cutting edge study will be a significant contribution to the field, serving to inform the Center’s school leadership development program and contribute to the improvement of urban schools.