Running head: FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION SCHOOL ANALYSIS 1

Failure is Not an Option School Analysis

Craig Rizzi

Oakland University

Author Note

Craig Rizzi, Department of Organizational Leadership, Oakland University

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Craig Rizzi,

Department of Organizational Leadership, Oakland University, Rochester, MI 48309

Contact: cbrizzi2@oakland.edu
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Abstract

The research presented in this analysis examines the current practices of Stoney

Creek High School and suggests ways to advanced student achievement. I found that

Stoney Creek shares a common vision for student learning, though the vision may

need more detail in order to be carried out with fidelity throughout the building.

However, the student values identified by the staff of Stoney Creek are specific and

succinct enough to help improve the school culture. The intervention systems

provided for students reflect the student-centered vision of the school, though

teacher collaboration needs to happen at a deeper level in order to benefit all

students. The school uses data to effectively make many decisions and engages

parents and the community in many instances. In all, minor adjustments should be

made to the professional learning process in order to improve student achievement.

Keywords: failure, school analysis, school improvement, principles

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Failure is Not an Option School Analysis

Demographic Introduction

Stoney Creek High School is one of four high schools in the Rochester

Community School District. The other high schools served by Rochester Community

Schools are Rochester High School, Adams High School, and ACE High School. It is

interesting to note that each high school has its own culture and identity, which

makes collaboration between the schools a unique, insightful, and sometimes

difficult experience.

In the 2015-16 school year, approximately 1650 students attended Stoney

Creek. In terms of ethnic diversity, Stoney Creek is not incredibly diverse.

Caucasians make up 85% of the student body, while 8% of students are of Asian

descent, and African-American and Hispanic students each make up 3% of the total

student population. In addition to the small amount of racial diversity at our school,

we also have a small amount of socioeconomic diversity. Ten percent of our student

population is on free or reduced lunch. However, many of our students also come

from very wealthy families. At times, we lose some ability to truly explore the

beauty of diversity because of the lack of ethnic and socioeconomic diversity.

Stoney Creek High School is home to the district’s Cognitively Impaired (CI)

program. This program offers general education students an opportunity to take

classes with students in the CI program (such as art and theatre). In addition,

students can serve as a peer mentor in a program in which they work individually

with students in the CI program throughout the day. These experiences can be life-
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changing for some of our general education students, but also provide a positive

connection to the general student body for our CI students.

In terms of test scores and overall student performance, Stoney Creek High

School is successful. Our students are generally motivated to perform well

academically because most intend on going to a four-year university. The

graduation rate is 97%, with many of these students moving on to universities

around the state and country. U.S. News and World Report ranked Stoney Creek

High School as the #14 public high school in Michigan, while Newsweek ranked

Stoney Creek as the #4 public high school in Michigan. These rankings, though the

methodology may not be perfect, reflect the expertise of the staff at Stoney Creek,

the support of the parents, and the motivation of the student body.

At Stoney Creek, many students are involved in clubs, music programs, and

sports. Strong parent booster organizations support all of these activities, including

athletic boosters, music boosters, and the PTSA. Our school culture is one that

encourages students to seek opportunities for learning and growth outside of the

classroom, of which many students take advantage. Many parents attend curriculum

nights and conferences, even when their students are finding success in class.

In terms of student discipline, our African-American students with learning

disabilities are suspended at a higher rate than the general student population. Our

school administration is working on ways to implement some practices similar to

restorative justice in order to make changes to this pattern. They are working with

the special education department at the building and district level to insure that this

does not continue to happen, as it is an issue in social justice and educational equity.
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In all, our school teaching staff is on board with our school’s mission: “a

student-centered, caring community with high expectations, successfully preparing

students for the future.” We have recently begun discussion about how to foster and

recognize soft skills in our student body, such as compassion, teamwork, resilience,

and respect. This is an important part of the educational process, in our opinion, and

is the piece that we have chosen to focus on in order to truly successfully prepare

our students for the future.

Blankstein’s Failure is Not an Option provides a clear, reflective lens through

which we can evaluate and advance student achievement in our schools. In an effort

to find ways to improve the culture, climate, and achievement of the students and

staff at Stoney Creek High School, I have chosen to take the opportunity to examine

our practices through Blankstein’s six principles for advancing student achievement.

Principle 1: Common Mission, Vision, Values, and Goals

Over the past few years, our teaching and administrative staff has been trying

to narrow down our focus and vision for the future of Stoney Creek High School.

Stoney Creek is relatively new school, built in 2002, that has experienced a

significant amount of change in its short lifetime. When it was first opened, Stoney

Creek had a small teaching staff who developed a concrete vision of a student-

centered school very quickly. Since the staff was so small, everyone embraced the

vision and felt ownership in carrying out the mission on a daily basis.

As the staff has grown significantly larger, however, it seems that it has

become increasingly difficult to continue to share the same vision of the direction of
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our school. We all agree upon the mission and purpose statement of Stoney Creek

High School, “a student-centered, caring community with high expectations,

successfully preparing students for the future,” which was developed when the

school opened. However, our large staff has differing visions about what this

mission statement might look like in the day-to-day operations of the school.

According to Blankstein (2013), a good vision statement is one that is

realistic, has broad buy in, describes intended change, and guides action. As I read

our mission statement, I am noticing that it reads more like a vague vision

statement. We state characteristics of an ideal learning community without

describing specific details of what that student-centered learning community would

look like. Because of the lack of clarity about the details of a student-centered

community, teachers and support staff are left to interpret the meaning of this

statement however they see fit. It is important for us, then, to come together as a

staff and agree upon specific characteristics that make up a “student-centered,

caring community.” This would also help to increase the broad buy-in of the vision

statement that Blankstein talked about.

Perhaps more interesting is the discussion of values that we promote at

Stoney Creek High School. At the end of last year, our faculty advisory committee

identified a need to define specific character traits that we value in students and

staff members, in order to begin to develop ways to foster these behaviors

throughout the student body. At the beginning of this school year, our entire staff

brainstormed a long list of valuable character traits and distilled that list to five that

we felt were most valuable.

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Blankstein (2013) suggested that effective values should be “few in number,

simply stated, and focused on behaviors” (p. 103). In examining our process for

distilling and defining our values, I am encouraged to see that we have followed this

advice. We made an effort to ensure that our values were easy to define and

recognize, in order to make it easier to explain these behaviors to our students.

Throughout the year, we plan to expand on these five values, defining exactly what

each one looks like as modeled by staff and students. I look forward to seeing how

this process evolves throughout the year.

After examining our school’s mission, vision, values, and goals, I am

encouraged to see that we are on the right track. I would recommend that we take

some time as a staff to agree upon and expand our mission statement to include

specific details. If we can do this, then we can let our mission statement begin to

truly guide the way we do business at Stoney Creek. The beginning stages of our

efforts to define and foster specific values and behaviors in our student body follow

Blankstein’s advice. I hope to help guide the continuation of this process so that our

values begin to connect directly to our vision of the future of Stoney Creek High

School.

Principle 2: Ensuring Achievement for All Students – Systems for Intervention

Blankstein’s second principle is one of the most important for truly raising

achievement in a school. As educators, our job is to ensure that all students receive

proper support in the quest to reach their full potential. There are times that we get

caught up in helping one subgroup or another, losing sight of the bigger picture of
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the purpose of our schools. Teachers often talk about the fact that students at the

top and bottom of the class receive a fair amount of attention, but the students in the

middle are the ones who get lost. As I examined our multi-tiered support system at

Stoney Creek, I am proud to say that we offer many support opportunities for all

learners. This is not to say, of course, that our system is perfect.

At our school, many staff members truly believe that all students can

succeed. This is such an important foundational element in ensuring the success of

all students. Many staff members have embraced the work of O’Connor, Marzano,

and others in implementing standards-based grading into their classrooms. This

practice is almost an intervention in itself, as it ensures students on their mastery of

the content alone. Part of this process involves re-assessment for those students

who may not have learned the material as quickly as others. By administering re-

assessments, teachers are sending the message that learning is a process that can

take time, effort, and adjustment. With the practice of mastery learning, students

begin to see that they have more control over their own learning and reach out for

help from adults more often.

In addition to classroom interventions such as standards-based grading,

Stoney Creek High School has an academic center that services all students in the

school. Any student – whether they are a freshmen in algebra 1 or a senior in AP

calculus – can go to the academic center for help from certified adults in study

techniques, homework assistance, organizational techniques, and more. Students

can elect to go to the academic center for help on their own time or during class

time, with the permission of a teacher. This tier 2 intervention is a huge help in
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make sure the students in the middle do not become ignored. It is another way that

we, as a Stoney Creek community, show that we believe that all students can learn.

Finally, we offer many intervention courses, including math lab, co-taught

courses, and extended courses in order to ensure that we are meeting the learning

needs of all students. Our learning consultant and building administration team uses

a significant amount of data – including standardized test scores, homework

completion, course grades, and more – to place the right students in these courses.

Some of our best teachers are assigned to our intervention courses to ensure that

the students in them receive the best experiences possible.

As a whole, I believe that we are meeting the needs of many learners at

Stoney Creek High School. However, one area of concern that I see is that some

students lack a trusted adult mentor in the building. With over 1600 students in the

school, some students are unfortunately bound to feel lost in a sea of kids. If we

were to develop a program that ensured all struggling students had an adult mentor

that knew them personally and could help them over an extended period of time, I

think we would find that even more of our students would find academic success at

Stoney Creek.

Principle 3: Collaborative Teaming Focused on Teaching for Learning

Stoney Creek High School has an interesting mixture of school cultures that

vary depending on the grade level and department in question. As educators, we

hear often of the importance of true, deep collaboration. In our school, we are

allotted some time during professional development once every few months to
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collaborate with our department. Though most departments are cordial with each

other, I suspect that deep collaboration does not usually occur. Many teachers like to

have the independence to make decisions for their own classroom, which can

certainly be beneficial when individualizing instruction for students. However,

certain aspects of the curriculum need to standardized in order to ensure that all

students receive the same level of instruction.

According to Blankstein (2013), there are four types of collaboration in

school cultures: individualistic, balkanized, contrived collegiality, and collaborative.

Most of the departments at Stoney Creek High School are in the contrived

collegiality stage. They are very friendly with one another and may share resources

on occasion, but are not often inclined to have the deeper conversations that center

around lesson design and developing true student understanding.

In the case of Stoney Creek, most teachers work to engage students on a daily

basis and make use a variety of formative assessment techniques to ensure students

are learning the intended material. I recommend implementing a teacher

instructional rounds program, similar to the program described by Roegman, Hatch,

Hill, and Kniewel (2015), that allows teachers to observe each other, discuss

effective teaching strategies, and truly learn from one another. Though teachers may

feel threatened by outside observers at first, many teachers would embrace the

process over time and use it as a learning opportunity. The power of the

instructional rounds program would come from the fact that teachers would get a

chance to see effective instructional techniques in action, giving them the

opportunity to enhance the teaching and learning in their own classroom.

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Principle 4: Data-Based Decision Making for Continuous Improvement

In certain instances, Stoney Creek High School does an effective job of

leveraging data to make important decisions. As mentioned earlier, the learning

consultant collects a significant amount of qualitative and quantitative data from a

variety of sources – classroom teacher recommendations, standardized test scores,

chapter test and final exam performance, family background, and more – in order to

make decisions about student placement in intervention and support courses. This

rigorous process prevents the intervention courses from being used as a placement

for students with traditional behavior issues. Students in these courses are

hardworking students who simply need a bit more academic support to find

success.

As a teaching staff, however, we are not well-versed in having conversations

regarding data. We give common assessments for our final exams at the end of each

semester, as a way to maintain consistency across the building and district. Teacher

leaders for each course occasionally examine the results of these assessments, but

we never take time to collaboratively examine our final exam results. This

collaboration might be a great venue for a teacher to share teaching techniques on a

particular topic with which his students found success. However, teachers have

become so averse to re-writing and discussing final exams that they have no desire

to discuss the results of the exams. This attitude is reflective of a bigger movement

against standardized testing, so it becomes a difficult belief to advance.

As a building, the instructional leadership team should begin to encourage

some of these collaborative conversations around final exams, because this is the
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only common data that teachers will likely have. In the future, though, teachers

should find ways to develop smaller, common formative assessments that can be

used to facilitate discussion about student learning. Though some schools may use

structured protocols to have these discussions, I believe that protocols lead to a

contrived sense of collaboration that will not necessarily lead to improved teaching

and learning. Instead, teachers at Stoney Creek need to collectively buy into the

assessment tools that are used in order to have deeper conversations about student

learning.

Finally, teachers do a good job of using data to inform parents about student

progress. A growing number of teachers at Stoney Creek are implementing

standards-based grading in an effort to increase clarity of student grades, which

allows parents and support staff to specifically identify areas of struggle for

individual students. This data management will continue to benefit students as they

work through the re-assessment process embraced by many teachers. Student

achievement will likely rise as students work to master a skill or concept over time.

Principle 5: Gaining Active Engagement from Family and Community

In a high school setting, gaining active parent involvement can be a

particularly thin line to walk. On one hand, research has shown that active parent

involvement in a student’s academic journey is related to his chance for academic

success. This is likely because parents help to ensure their student is organized and

studying appropriately. However, at the high school level, we want our students to

become self-motivated and self-sufficient in their preparation for college and the
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outside world. Thus, as a staff at Stoney Creek, we are trying to do more to

communicate this balance to parents. A few staff members started this process by

explaining Carol Dweck’s theory of the growth mindset to parents at our fall

curriculum night. A portion of this theory revolves around the idea that making

mistakes and persevering through them will help students learn more over time.

The goal was to make sure that parents know that it is okay for their student to face

adversity, because ultimately it will help them build character.

Our parent support at Stoney Creek High School is strong. Since we are

located in an affluent community, many families place a high value on a good

education, which motivates many students to strive to achieve in order to attend a

prestigious university. A good percentage of parents attend fall curriculum night

and parent-teacher conferences in the fall and spring. They often email individual

teachers to check up on their student’s progress if they notice any issues in the

online gradebook. Overall, this parent support helps to maintain the students’ high

levels of achievement.

Outside of academics, our parents are actively involved in athletic and music

booster organizations, as well as the PTSA. The administrative team does a great job

of communicating with these groups, but it would be helpful for teachers to become

more involved, too. This would help to shape a stronger alliance between teachers

and parents.

In terms of community engagement, students at Stoney Creek High School

are eligible to sign up for a practicum course, in which they shadow a local

professional for half of the day. This is a great way for local businesses, doctors, and
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other professionals to share their talents and give back to the community. Students

in this program walk away with a greater sense of what the job field entails and are

better able to pursue their future hopes and dreams. My recommendation is to

expand on this practice by inviting local professionals to the school to give one-hour

talks about their profession, in order to give students a small preview of possible

career options.

Principle 6: Building Sustainable Leadership Capacity

Perhaps one of the most overlooked aspects of a good organization is its

sustainable leadership capacity. Many great organizations become great because of

their leadership, but fade to mediocrity after that leader moves on to a different

position. Stoney Creek High School was in danger of this for a time, but the shared

capacity of the teaching staff helped to keep the school on course.

Dan Hickey was the founding principal of Stoney Creek High School. He

worked closely with the staff to develop a strong foundational belief in student-

centered education, which drove every decision that was made in the school. Stoney

Creek’s initial years were incredibly successful because of his visionary leadership

in advocating for students. After his retirement, though, the school was in danger of

changing course. Luckily, he had left a teaching staff and administrative team with a

strong shared vision of good teaching and learning. This capacity for leadership

helped to keep the school on the right path through the tenure of the next principal,

Larry Goralski, who helped to carry on the original vision of the school.
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As we enter a new era of leadership with our new principal, Cathryn Skedel, I

can already see that she is doing her best to develop a true model of shared

leadership in our school. In the short time that she has been at Stoney Creek, she

noticed the need for an instructional leadership team made up of teachers across

different departments in the building. This team will help to plan and present

professional development that is most relevant to the teaching staff, as well as

clarify the mission and values of the school. Her vision of an instructional leadership

team aligns with Abbott and McKnight’s (2010) research regarding the positive

impact of these teams on student achievement and staff collaboration.

The long-term impact of these instructional leadership teams will ideally be a

distributed leadership model at Stoney Creek High School, which will ultimately

allow teachers to take ownership for rallying around a common vision to improve

student learning, regardless any changes in the principal’s office. This is the most

important aspect of the sustainable leadership described by Blankstein (2013).

Because of this, my recommendation is to continue to empower the instructional

leadership team to take ownership of their professional learning in the pursuit of

improving teaching and learning throughout the building.

Conclusion

Stoney Creek High School is a successful school that already implements

many practices to maintain high levels of student achievement. However, “good” can

often be the enemy of “great.” Many schools that feel as though they are performing

at a high level do not see the urgency in analyzing their current practices to
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determine areas for improvement. After examining Stoney Creek High School

through the lens of Blankstein’s six principles that advance student achievement, I

have found a few opportunities for improvement.

First, teachers should begin to work on developing a stronger sense of

collaboration across the building. There are many talented teachers at Stoney Creek

High School from whom other teachers could learn. Using an instructional rounds

process could help to create a sense of mutual respect and common understanding

of effective instructional practices by allowing teachers to learn from one another. I

believe that our administrators are doing their best to encourage teachers to step up

to lead collaboration efforts by scheduling departmental lunches and implementing

an instructional leadership team. However, teachers need to feel comfortable

sharing with one another. As a staff, we may want to explore team-building

opportunities in order to break the ice across departments, making it easier to share

effective instructional practices throughout the building.

In addition to collaboration with each other, teachers could become more

involved with parent booster organizations to forge stronger partnerships with

these groups. This would help both groups to create a common definition of student

achievement and success. The PTSA works to encourage teacher membership, even

offering grants to individual teachers and departments. However, I do not believe

the teachers value the parent community as much as they should. I see many

teachers treat parents as an obstacle, as opposed to a partner. By defining exactly

what we expect the role of parents to be in our school system, we may be able to

better partner with them to enhance the educational opportunities for our students.
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Finally, the instructional leadership team should continue to grow and

explore options to empower teachers throughout the school. This model of

distributed leadership will be an important piece, not only in encouraging

collaboration between teachers, but in sustaining leadership capacity at Stoney

Creek High School over a long period of time. Regardless of how long our current

administrative team stays at Stoney Creek, teachers need to feel confident in the fact

that our school’s long-term shared vision will endure. I believe that this safety will

motivate teachers to take more risks and step out of their comfort zone, because

they will know that they have the backing of the overall mission and vision of the

school community.

In all, Stoney Creek is a very strong community academically. By encouraging

parent support, developing shared leadership, and encouraging teacher

collaboration, we can begin to make strides toward an even higher level of student

success. Blankstein’s six principles provided the necessary lens to begin assessing

our current level of performance in serving our students and community at Stoney

Creek High School.

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References

Abbott, C. J., & McKnight, K. (2010). Developing instructional leadership through

collaborative learning. AASA Journal of Scholarship & Practice, 7(2), 20-26.

Retrieved from

http://search.proquest.com.huaryu.kl.oakland.edu/docview/757171257?acc

ountid=12924

Blankstein, A. M. (2013). Failure is not an option: 6 principles for making student

success the only option. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Roegman, R., Hatch, T., Hill, K., & Kniewel, V. S. (2015). Relationships, instruction,

understandings: One district's implementation of rounds. Journal of

Educational Administration, 53(5), 625-641. Retrieved from

http://search.proquest.com.huaryu.kl.oakland.edu/docview/1694933706?a

ccountid=12924