Teachers might, for example, organize instruction around interdisciplinary teams, and then rely mainly on collaboration to decide what works and what needs revision. The school might also create formal mechanisms for giving teachers more power in the decision-making process. The rhetoric of organic school reform is plentiful, but real change remains rare. High schools that implement reforms often make only incremental changes in how the school operates. Many reform efforts begin on the drawing board as serious undertakings aimed at fundamental change, but end up being modified or watered down in order to avoid threatening the school's existing hierarchy.
Some schools do, however, operate under more organic organizational models.
We found that schools with higher levels of these qualities are more effective and more equitable. In other words, students in those schools learn more, and the gaps in learning between students of different social backgrounds are narrower. We examined the academic progress made, and levels of student engagement with school, for about 9,000 students in almost 800 secondary schools across the country. We measured their academic progress from 8th grade to 10th grade, and from 10th grade to 12th grade. We also looked at the types of school reform taking place in, or absent from, those schools.