What does it mean to have high expectations for all students?
Recalling the information on perceptions from Bernhardt’s research on multiple measures of data, the beliefs and attitudes of the students, teachers, and parents impact student achievement because they create the school’s culture. In Lawrence Lezotte’s research on the school climate/culture, he concludes that there are Seven Correlates of Highly Effective Schools. One of the seven correlates is a climate of high expectations (Broward County Public Schools Division of Professional Learning and Continuing Education).
In the effective schools, there is a climate of high expectations where the staff believes and demonstrates that all students can achieve mastery of standards and the staff also believes that they have the capability to help all students achieve that mastery (Association of Effective Schools). Consequently, a school that has this type of culture will have positive learning results because the students are being challenged with a rigorous curriculum and they have to perform at increasing levels of cognitive demands (Kirk and Jones, 2004). More importantly, the students believe they can do it and the teachers do too.
One of the design questions in Domain One of Marzano’s Evaluation Model focuses on high expectations for low expectancy students. Design question nine is titled, “What will I do to communicate high expectations for all students?” According to Marzano, strategies and behaviors regarding expectations draw from the research on establishing an appropriate affective tone with all students and providing equal opportunities to all students for complex academic interactions. The reason that Marzano emphasizes teachers communicating high expectations for all their students is due to the reality that teachers treat high expectancy students differently than low expectancy students. This simply means that students should be challenged and provided a rigorous curriculum regardless of the proficiency level. Therefore, a student in a regular chemistry class should be exposed to a progressively increased level of cognitive thinking levels, as would the students in an honors chemistry class.
What role do school leaders play in creating a climate of high expectations? First, they believe that the students can learn and achieve. Second, they work to improve instruction and use data to drive their decisions. In the School Principal as Leader: Guiding Schools to Better Teaching and Learning, it states that effective principals work relentlessly to increase student achievement by focusing on the quality of instruction. Additionally, they help define and promote high expectations and connect directly with teachers and the classroom.
In order for school leaders to create a climate of high expectation, they must first identify the current perceptions and begin to negate the attitudes that are rooted to low expectations. School leaders must engage in a discussion with the staff to look at past and current school data. Then, allow the staff and leaders to explain their beliefs about student learning. Lastly, the school leader must work collaboratively with the staff on creating a vision that reflects students’ mastery of the learning goal. When the vision is created, work can continue to create a plan to achieve the goal. The effective school leader will monitor the plan and be responsible for aligning all school processes to the vision.
