Indicators of Distress: A Proactive Approach to Identifying and Supporting Schools in Need of Improvement

By Aimee Evan

 As a Senior Research Associate and School Improvement Specialist with WestEd’s School Choice team, Evan works at the intersection of research, evaluation, and technical assistance to promote equity in education for all students.

The United States boasts an impressive number of public elementary, middle, junior high, and high schools, which require effective structures, systems, and practices to shape positive student outcomes. While academic content mastery is the primary focus of schools, other indicators of success and engagement, such as high graduation rates, strong attendance rates, healthy school climates, and reduced gaps between different student groups, are also considered in determining school effectiveness.

To ensure that schools continue to achieve and sustain effectiveness, educators must identify and address problems before they lead to a decline in performance. Doing so requires a proactive approach because schools do not suddenly experience a decrease in performance; rather, such decline is the result of unaddressed issues that accumulate over time.

Nearly 15 states nationwide use this proactive early identification and intervention model in schools. This blog post explores the national research that sparked the evolution of school improvement to early intervention and its impact in two states in particular: New York and Delaware.

What Our Research Says About Indicators of Distress

At WestEd, developing a robust understanding of the nature of school decline is an aspiration of our larger research agenda to ensure high-quality educational options for all children. Our previous work includes developing a framework and tools to guide education leaders in examining school decline. This framework was based on a robust literature review and qualitative data collection and analysis (NCSRC, 2020, 2021).

The research identified what we call indicators of distress in schools that experienced decline. These indicators were a walk back in time to uncover the precursors of what was happening in schools before the decline. We collected data from education leaders, school leaders, and governing board members in struggling schools nationwide. This research is for decision-makers at the state, district, and school levels interested in proactively addressing schools’ challenges before they negatively impact their students. The “Indicators of Distress” model is a comprehensive system that describes characteristics of schools in the beginning phases of decline, such as increases in teacher turnover and decreases in student and staff attendance. These are a few examples, and the model includes these “look fors” in leadership, talent, culture, and instruction, as well as in operations, finance, and government.

The research found that many schools struggled in similar ways before comprehensively declining. However, by analyzing schools that previously struggled in and across specific states, we noticed that these characteristics also differed depending on whether the school served students in urban or rural areas—not because of the students but because of contextual differences, such as teacher and leader pools.

These “look fors” provide state, district, and school leaders the opportunity to recognize trouble even sooner and, like a medical team making a diagnosis, be “laser sharp” in deciding what course of action is most appropriate for a school, according to John Carwell, an Education Associate at the Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) and an adopter of WestEd’s Indicators of Distress model.

Carwell firmly believes in the early identification system’s potential for all schools. His experience with Delaware’s school improvement office, which is responsible for intervening in chronically low-performing schools as required by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, has only strengthened his conviction.

“Our ambitions are the same,” he says. “We want to improve school systems to improve outcomes for kids.”

Implementing the Indicators of Distress in New York and Delaware: A Tale of Success

As an acknowledgment of the impact school failure has had on historically underserved communities, state education agencies are harnessing the power of these data to drive programmatic improvement at the decision-making level and using the Indicators of Distress to improve their education systems.

For example, the New York State Education Department (NYSED) is shifting its accountability system from exclusively top-down compliance to a community-focused school network in which families and communities contribute. The Indicators of Distress study WestEd conducted for NYSED identifies indicators of distress in specific geographic locations, making it easier to determine community-specific oversight and target support and interventions.

Based on our study, we also developed a self-assessment for school leadership teams to drive decisions at the building level by identifying and leveraging what was working with school programming and where improvement was needed. This self-assessment helps focus leadership teams and accountability on the significant precursors to decline, helping get schools back on track before school decline requires comprehensive improvement.

Similarly, the DDOE aims to create a system of support for all schools in the state, including charter schools, by focusing on early identification of indicators of distress and helping schools as soon as possible before they require more intensive support. By identifying these indicators early, schools can prevent being identified as Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) or Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI) schools—designations assigned to schools with urgent needs for improvement.

“We needed a way to maximize our limited resources, both human and financial,” Carwell said. “We wanted to identify those schools where the engine light is on, and with some intervention and support, they could turn things around and catch them well before they identify for CSI or TSI and require more intensive support.”

The long-term plan addresses systemic issues that lead to school underperformance, while the short-term plan aims to provide immediate assistance to enhance student proficiency. By creating alignment across many teams within the DDOE, all public schools receive support to achieve their goals.

The Importance of Early Identification and Intervention

Having worked with declining schools, I have seen them often fall into a common organizational trap—a series of small mistakes and missteps, compounded over time, that lead to a significant decline. A school’s decline is often due to a culmination of strategic and operational errors that are not effectively identified or addressed in time.

To prevent such scenarios, educational institutions need early warning systems to identify stress signals and intervention methods that can be deployed before issues snowball. Continuous oversight and adaptive leadership, combined with a willingness to seek advice and support, can play crucial roles in sustaining school health and averting the need for drastic measures at the point of failure.

Educators and policymakers can intervene more effectively by implementing a system that monitors these early indicators closely. This approach is not just about salvaging test scores but also about ensuring that a high-quality, equitable education is accessible to all students without losing critical formative years. It’s about infusing schools with the necessary support to thrive whether it’s through expert guidance, strategic investments, or community partnerships.

As a society, we need to ensure that the narrative of school decline is not standard but is rather an exception from which we’ve learned so that we can guarantee that all students have access to the education they deserve from the start. This entails making hard, timely decisions and sometimes having the courage to act preemptively in the best interest of students, being transparent with the community about the challenges, and always striving to engage all interest holders in the school improvement process.

References

National Charter School Resource Center. (2020) Identifying indicators of distress in charter schools part I: the Role and perspective of charter school authorizers.

National Charter School Resource Center. (2021) Identifying indicators of distress in charter schools part II: the Roles and perspectives of charter school leaders and governing board members.