Late last year, the Consortium on Chicago School Research published a summative report on the data it has collected on Chicago Public Schools over the past two decades. Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago cites five ingredients that work together to contribute to school improvement that leads to student achievement. These ingredients transcended changes in district leadership and in school reform initiatives, and the report confirms that working on any one ingredient alone is insufficient to produce significant and lasting results.

Not surprisingly, the ingredients are:

• Strategic school leadership that focused on instruction and includes others beyond principals;
• Deeper connection with parents and community that make schools open and welcoming;
• Purposeful development of professional capacity including professional development and collaborative work;
• Safe environment that creates support learning; and
• Strong instructional guidance and materials.

Remarkably, while each ingredient contributes to some improvements in student achievement, schools that had all five were 10 times more likely than schools with strengths in one or two areas to see gains in student achievement in mathematics and reading. An Education Week article on the report notes how different these five ingredients are from recent federal policy recommendations for improving schools. They do not include notable policy recommendations such as replacing teachers, closing schools, added compensation, more stringent teacher evaluation, or even more student assessment.

Of particular interest to NSDC and its members is the ingredient on professional capacity. According to the authors, professional capacity refers to "the quality of the faculty and staff recruited to the school, their base beliefs and values about change, the quality of ongoing professional development and the capacity of staff to work together. Schools where teachers were highly committed to the school and inclined to embrace innovation were five times more likely to improve in reading and four times more likely to improve in math than schools weak on this measure."

This study confirms what NSDC advocates: Professional learning in collaborative communities focused on expanding teachers' content knowledge, efficacy, and pedagogy, improves student achievement. NSDC does not claim that professional learning alone will make the substantive and lasting changes needed to improve schools, although the report provides evidence that it does. NSDC knows that a comprehensive approach to improving schools is essential for transformative change. Its strategic plan calls for policies at the district, state, and national level, improved evidence about what works, developing school leadership, closing achievement gaps by increasing collaboration and professional capacity, and engaging thought leaders within and outside of education to advance the message of the importance of educator learning.

Joellen Killion is NSDC's deputy executive director.