You may have read Good to Great, a classic business book by Jim Collins that examines through research why some companies “take off to greatness” after many years of mediocrity, while others lag behind. If you haven’t read it, you should, it is applicable far beyond traditional for-profit businesses. I was freshly reminded of Collin’s tenets for transformation while reading this piece in the Providence Journal “Hope High School nearly triples its reading scores”. It is the first of a three part series on how “Hopeless High”, with a historic dropout rate of above 50%, is slowly stabilizing and succeeding at its job of giving urban teens a decent environment and access to learning.

I see Good to Great’s findings woven throughout Hope’s ongoing story.

• Find a core set of principles and passionately hold to them. For Hope, that was the “Hope Order”, which spelled out a smaller school structure where adults were expected to watch over kids, through advisories, site-based decision making, and mandatory professional development.
• Get the right people on the bus, and the wrong people off the bus. The state school commissioner, Peter McWalters, decided that the school would be reconstituted, and if the teachers and staff couldn’t sign on – literally – to the Hope Order, they would have to move to another school. 50% left. Finding few teachers in the district who wanted to step into the breach, Hope went to universities across New England to find new blood who would sign onto the school’s approach.
• Promote servant leadership. McWalters, in my few interactions with him, is a high-competence, low-ego guy. Unlike more flamboyant and press-friendly (or press seeking) superintendents who are often four years and out, McWalters has been in the job of state commissioner of education for 17 years. I may not agree with all of his decisions, but I think he’s in the job for the right reasons. I believe this translated through to his choices for special master and the principals for Hope, after the state took control and reconstituted the school.

As Julia Steiny’s 3 part “Story of Hope” unfolds, I’ll revisit Good to Great’s other lessons, to see whether they hold true, and hopeful, for Hope High.

Hope High School nearly triples its reading scores (Providence Journal)

Over the summer of 2005, the three new academy principals had to hire half the faculty. But who would come to a notoriously chaotic school, except teachers other schools had rejected? After scores of interviews, their yield was small. So they sent recruitment letters to colleges all over New England. At last they managed to assemble a staff who had literally signed on to a common set of best practices.

Not until this point does the story of redemption really begin, because only at this point were all the adults at Hope committed to one vision. And since then, only 8 of the original 108 teachers have retired or moved away. The team kept growing stronger.

But staff stability, planning time, advisories and the like are merely conditions that make success possible. Not guaranteed, just possible. A 21st-century, humane school structure does not by itself produce swell test scores. In fact, many schools have plugged away at splashy educational initiatives only to find they had nothing to show for them years hence.

Not Hope.

In the most recent round of statewide NECAP test scores, the reading scores tripled in the Information Academy — from 20 percent proficient to 60. The Leadership and Arts Academies nearly tripled their reading achievement as well. Granted, they started low. But the Arts Academy’s 65 percent proficient is the highest reading score of any comparable urban high school in the state, except for two charter schools.