What 3 Experts Say Schools Can Learn from Edison’s Success

I’ve been writing a lot about Edison Elementary School recently.  

Despite high levels of poverty, the school has for years exceeded expectations largely due to the hard work of its dedicated teachers and administrators. That’s why of the more than 700 schools in San Diego County, it scored the best on Voice of San Diego’s income vs. test score metric.  

Background: Poverty plays a nearly all-powerful role in education, with poorer schools almost without fail doing worse on a variety of academic metrics. Our metric income vs. test score controls test scores for poverty, allowing us to see how much value a school is adding outside of all-important socioeconomic factors. The school’s success, which has been ongoing for years, is a bright spot in what often seems like a hopeless battle. 

I recently profiled the school and its former principal because of the success it is having with students. Read those stories here. 

But how does Edison stack up against what education researchers have found to be effective strategies to close the achievement gap? And how can other schools learn from it?  

I interviewed three education researchers to answer that question.  

Teachers with Leadership in Mind 

Tyrone Howard, a professor of education at University of California, Los Angeles, has for years studied and written about educational inequities.  

He told me that positive changes often require a thoughtful and capable leader. Usually, schools that make progress have stable leadership in the form of a principal who’s been there for years. But Edison has had three principals since 2011. So, how does that work? 

“In this case, the teachers seem to have said ‘this is who we are, we’re going to stay by our core principles and operating procedures and continue to lift that,’” Howard said.  

The fact that current Principal Jamie Lee has recognized that impulse and continued to foster it is a testament to her leadership, he said.  

The stability Edison does have, however, is with its teaching staff. That makes a huge difference, Howard said, because they’ve built trust with the community. They also don’t seem to become complacent. 

The Progress Report: One City Heights Elementary School Is (Still) Doing the Nearly Impossible

by Jakob McWhinney February 29, 2024

“A lot of teachers get stuck in how they’ve always done things, ‘I’ve done it this way for 20 years, why do I need to change,’ but things change. The students that you taught 20 years ago are very different in terms of how they interact in the world, how they think and how they learn,” Howard said. 

Howard also found it impressive that Edison’s teachers seem to be evolving together not just individually.  

“Teachers talking, thinking, planning, building with each other can go a long way to help them develop new ideas, new strategies, different practices,” Howard said. 

Howard said while many assume teachers leave schools or districts just because they want more money, it’s not as cut and dry as that. His research has shown it’s much more common for them to leave because they want greater autonomy and to work within a thriving professional learning community, don’t have a supportive leadership, or don’t feel like they’re in a school that’s allowing them to make a difference. The collaboration present at Edison is likely a key factor contributing to their desire to stay at the school. 

“That teachers are making these long commutes, and still staying (at Edison), that, to me, says that they are getting the kind of thing that teachers all over the country are saying they want more of but don’t seem to be able to find,” Howard said. 

Edison Isn’t Interested in a Shiny Cure-All 

Karin Chenoweth has for years written about the strategies employed by high-performing but low-income schools. She said because of how influential income is in academic performance, it can be hard to know if high-performing schools in wealthy communities are actually good schools or if they’re just benefitting from the socioeconomic factors in their favor. High-performing schools in poorer neighborhoods, however, are a different story. 

“If you have a high-performing, high-poverty school, in my experience, it’s because they’re doing everything right,” Chenoweth said. “They’re not wasting time, they’re not wasting energy, they’re very focused on what they want to teach kids and are working hard to make sure that the kids learn what they’re trying to teach.”  

One of the things that stands out to Chenoweth is that instead of chasing shiny new educational cure-alls, staff at Edison are continuing to do the less flashy foundational work that makes a difference. She noted that Edison’s teachers and principal aren’t talking about one specific program or bit of curriculum. After all, she said, programs are tools and tools are only as good as their user. 

The Learning Curve: The Principal Who Sparked Edison’s Turnaround

by Jakob McWhinney March 20, 2024

Instead, they’re talking about larger strategies and approaches, like paying attention to individual student performance, tracking performance with data and building a culture of trust. Schools becoming over-reliant on a highly touted program, she said, can be a recipe for disaster. 

“If it doesn’t work, too often, the answer is, ‘it’s these kids, their parents don’t help. I don’t know what you expect me to do. We tried everything,’” Chenoweth said. “It sounds to me like at Edison, they come at this in a way of, ‘the kids can do it, we have to figure out how. We’ll try different things and if they don’t work, we’ll try something else.’”  

That flexibility and trial and error approach is vital, Chenoweth said.  

But those things don’t manifest without building a culture of trust and collaboration between leadership and teachers, and takes responsibility when students struggle.  

But she added that in order to preserve the school’s success and keep improving, the staff needs to maintain its high standards and continue to look for new ways to get better.  

“They are never going to be satisfied if they’re the kind of school that I think they are,” Chenoweth said. 

Long-Term Interventions Over a Quick Fix 

Kevin Welner, the director of the University of Colorado’s National Education Policy Center, said schools are often expected to perform miracles, but given socioeconomic realities, that’s just not realistic. 

“We can’t kneecap kids in their lives outside of school and deprive them of stable housing, security and health care and then expect schools to step in and make everything okay,” Welner said. 

Still, there are research-based practices that can make a difference. Welner said that as he read about Edison, he found himself checking them off one by one. A caring culture infused with respect and kindness? Check. Experienced, stable teaching force? Check. High academic expectations and challenges combined with strong supports? Check. The list goes on. 

“If you think about the things that Edison is doing, these are long term interventions, there’s, there’s no quick fix there,” Welner said. 

Like everyone else I’ve spoken to, though, Welner stressed that none of these strategies in isolation yield surefire success. Schools are a balancing act, he said, and the correct answer when asked which factor is key to improving performance “all of them.”  

“You can’t silo, or say ‘we’re just going to do this one thing,’” Welner said. “There are schools that have an enormously caring culture but don’t have high academic expectations and vice versa … These all interact and they build on one another.”  

In the same way that academic interventions can’t be siloed, the experts I spoke to said neither should Edison’s success. There are schools across San Diego Unified, and the district, struggling against the stacked deck of socioeconomic. That can be a demoralizing experience. 

“There are lots of teachers who are in this profession who don’t know, or have ever witnessed, what success looks like for kids in low-income communities,” Howard, the UCLA professor said. 

But Edison’s years of defying the odds is proof that it can be done. It’s not easy, or quick, but it’s possible. Howard said it’s not as simple as dumping the school’s model into other communities and expecting everything to change, but that more actively studying what’s going on at Edison, or even turning it into a learning lab for teachers, could provide a powerful model of excellence for the rest of the district. 

“Teachers need that hope, especially at a time when we’re losing lots of folks in this profession to burn out. I think you need to see something that can be a source of inspiration and say, ‘look, there are schools that are out there that are doing it,’” Howard said.