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Trust Improves Schools

November 2004

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS&—Educators who want to improve academic achievement often focus on exciting new strategies for teaching reading and math. But without a basic atmosphere of trust—among teachers, principals, parents, and students—such reforms have little chance of success, according to a Stanford education expert.

Speaking at a Nov. 5 conference sponsored by the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute, Tony Bryk, a noted Chicago area school reformer recently appointed Stanford's Spencer Foundation Professor of Organizational Studies, a joint appointment in the schools of education and business, described a study he did in the 1990s measuring levels of trust at Chicago area elementary schools. The multiyear effort included periodic surveys of teachers and principals that asked what was happening in their school buildings in terms of respect, personal regard, confidence, and integrity.

On one questionnaire, for example, teachers were asked if they felt their fellow educators cared about their well-being, whether they felt comfortable confiding in colleagues and raising concerns with administrators, or if they felt their principals put the welfare of children ahead of the teachers' personal and political interests.

As it turned out, educators working at top quartile schools reported much higher degrees of trust on their campuses than their colleagues at lower-performing schools. Over time, Bryk noted, schools with low trust rankings had only a one-in-seven chance of improving student scores in reading and math, while schools with more trusting atmospheres had a one-in-two chance of improvement.

Why would this be? For one thing, teachers who feel they can trust their colleagues and administrators feel less vulnerable, and therefore are more inclined to try new educational approaches, Bryk said. Trust also promotes internal accountability and a shared attachment to the school and its mission.

Trust, he added, "is not something learned through a one-day sensitivity training but is built patiently through day-to-day interaction." Principals play a key role in developing and sustaining this trust, and the smaller and more stable the school, the easier it is to build trusting communities.

Bryk was joined on the conference panel by Linda Darling-Hammond, the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford and faculty co-sponsor of the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute. "It's easy to teach kids who come to school already knowing a lot of the basics and have tremendous support at home," she said, but much harder to reach students with diverse backgrounds and learning styles. Among the other challenges she listed: teacher isolation, "wildly uneven" preparation for teachers and school administrators across the nation, and principals who focus more on management issues than instructional quality.

The session ended with a talk by Hans Weiler, professor emeritus of political science and education at Stanford and chair of the International Advisory Committee on Innovations in Teacher Education at German Universities. "The United States is not the only country concerned about school reform," he told the audience. Among the key German goals: expansion of preschools, lengthening of the school day, restructuring of educational financing, raising national quality standards, and promoting school autonomy.

Called "The Coming of Age for Educational Leadership: Transforming Schools for Effective Teaching and Learning," the conference also featured keynote addresses by Ellen Moir, executive director of the New Teacher Center at the University of California-Santa Cruz, on developing instructional leaders for a new status quo; and Cisco Systems board chair John Morgridge, who spoke about the corporation's Networking Academy Program. Since the program's launch in 1997, Cisco has established more than 10,000 academies aimed at providing international students with the Internet technology skills they need to succeed in a global, digital economy.

The Stanford Educational Leadership Institute (SELI) was created in 2002 as a partnership between the Center for Social Innovation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Stanford University School of Education. It is the first truly integrated venture between a school of business and a school of education to study, provide professional development, and develop resources for K-12 public education.

—Theresa Johnston