In the 1990s, BetsAnn Smith and her colleagues began visiting elementary schools throughout Chicago to observe in classrooms, interview teachers and administrators, and analyze their instructional programs.

What Smith and the research team wanted to understand was how schools were organizing their improvement efforts, and whether these efforts gave attention to a concept they had been developing – instructional program coherence.

“There had been several discussions in education that used the concept of coherence,” said Smith, an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Administration. “Mostly, they were discussions about policy coherence that focused on how public policy making in education was
becoming cluttered, unaligned and contradictory.

“We were interested in the improvement practices of school organizations. The idea of instructional program coherence developed from studying school improvement efforts and seeing school staffs that were working hard to adopt new ideas, programs and partnerships but weren’t seeing changes in student achievement. “We did not see much collective and sustained focus on developing coherent instructional programs. Often we would meet teachers who didn’t know half of the projects that were going on in their schools.”

Since the research team published its findings, instructional program coherence has resonated among many in the field. The American Educational Research Association awarded the research team its Palmer
O. Johnson Memorial Award for the most outstanding article published in an AERA journal, and the notion of instructional program coherence has provided new insights into the way effective schools are organized. [see Newman, F.M., Smith, B., Allensworth, E. & Bryk, A.S. (2001). Instructional program coherence: What is it and why it should guide school improvement policy. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 23(4), 297-321]

Smith and her colleagues define instructional program coherence as a set of interrelated programs for students and staff that are guided by a common framework for curriculum, instruction, assessment, and learning climate and that are pursued over a sustained period of time.

She is quick to point out that instructional program coherence is not the same as alignment or curriculum coherence. “Teachers can agree to teach a set of aligned topics and concepts, but not work to develop a shared understanding of how best to do that, how best to develop their students’ knowledge and skills in those areas over several years of schooling. That is why we speak of an instructional framework.”

Strong program coherence means schools are collectively addressing pedagogy and assessment as well as how teachers’ working conditions, school improvement planning, program evaluations, and resource allocation directly assist that framework.

The strength of a school’s instructional coherence can have a powerful impact on student achievement, as the research on the Chicago elementary schools makes clear.

The study involved two surveys of all teachers in Chicago public
elementary schools. The researchers used data from the 222 elementary schools that participated in both surveys. In addition, field studies were conducted at 11 elementary schools that represented a diversity of approaches to school improvement. Researchers observed classrooms, interviewed all observed teachers, as well as curriculum coordinators, school improvement program coordinators, principals, and local school council and union representatives.

What Smith and her colleagues found was a strong positive correlation between improving coherence and increasing annual student learning gains. Schools that improved their instructional program coherence from 1994 and 1997 showed improved student test scores over the same period of time.
Smith said there is a sharp contrast between schools that are coherent and those that lack that type of focus. It’s also clear to Smith that achieving instructional program coherence is not easy. For one, teachers bring with them a range of talents and beliefs about teaching that can make reaching agreements on a framework difficult.

The external environment of schools also works against program coherence. Decisions made at the state and district level often push schools in multiple directions, undermining efforts to sustain a focus from one school year to the next.

Then there is the policy environment. Smith noted that schools are sometimes pulled in different directions by various policies. “If a state or district decides it is going to require that all teachers take three hours of training in 10 different things, for example, then the opportunity for a school staff to work collectively for 30 hours on a key element of their
instructional framework, such as developing high quality tasks and assignments, becomes less possible.”

But there are things schools and districts can do to strengthen instructional program coherence.

One key is the principal. All of the schools that had strong coherence also had strong leadership from principals who had explicit notions about coherence. She is convinced that principals and external partners who work with schools need to see the development of instructional program coherence as one of their major duties.

Principals in the more coherent schools also invested heavily in high quality materials and in staff training that was sustained over multiple years. In addition, the training was provided to everyone on the teaching staff.

“It’s not simply bringing in new resources,” she said. “That may well be part of it, but it’s the coordinated and strategic allocation of those resources and linking them to explicit instructional goals and the development of a staff’s capacity to reach them that matter.”

At the district level, school officials have to take seriously the need for a certain form of stability. The constant changing of staff assignments, curricula or testing systems, for example, works against the development of teachers’ skill and school development.

Finally, organizations that fund special projects in schools also have a role to play. Smith suggests that these organizations include as one of their criteria for funding that schools explain how the proposed project is linked to the school’s core instructional goals, and how it will help strengthen rather than weaken coherence.

For Smith, the benefits of strengthening instructional program coherence are clear – increased opportunity for teachers to develop their knowledge and skills and increased student achievement. Without attention to coherence, Smith and her colleagues believe that reform efforts may ultimately fail to improve student achievement.

“We found that it’s very productive to think about how to create a continuity of learning opportunities that motivate children to learn, that help them recognize and integrate new learning challenges with their previous learning experiences,” Smith said. “We know that is what children need to learn and it’s fundamental to instructional program coherence. The same applies to teachers. Teachers need to know that they are going to be supported to really develop expertise in a particular framework for learning over time.

“Right now, it’s hard for teachers to invest themselves because they are pretty convinced that things will change within two years.”

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