{"id":3762,"date":"2026-02-09T10:24:49","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T18:24:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/?p=3762"},"modified":"2026-02-09T10:24:50","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T18:24:50","slug":"clear-measurable-goals-and-empathy-help-scale-improvement-science-at-high-tech-high-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carnegiefoundation.org\/clear-measurable-goals-and-empathy-help-scale-improvement-science-at-high-tech-high-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Clear, Measurable Goals and Empathy Help Scale Improvement Science at High Tech High"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Editor\u2019s note: A core concept of improvement science is seeing the problem from the user\u2019s perspective. <\/em>High Tech High<\/em><\/a>, a network of charter schools in San Diego County, has been bringing students directly into the change process through empathy interviews and other methods of understanding their students\u2019 challenges. This summary of what teachers learned from using improvement science methodology is based on a recent article in <\/em>Kappan<\/em><\/a> magazine, written by High Tech High\u2019s Kristen MacConnell and Stacey Caillier.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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High Tech High, a charter management organization in Southern California with thirteen K-12 schools and its own graduate school of education, has been on an improvement journey to increase the number of students of color who go directly to 4-year colleges. It all began in 2014, when the director of one of their high schools, High Tech High North County (HTHNC), decided to apply to college himself and realized how challenging it was. Within two years, by focusing on support for the application process<\/a>, HTHNC went from having the lowest percentage of students applying to and attending 4-year colleges in the organization to having the highest. During this same time, the HTH network of schools increased the total percentage of students going directly to 4-year colleges from 67% to 73%, and the number of boys of color going directly to 4-year colleges from 53% to 60%. Currently, about 45% of HTH faculty are engaged in sustained improvement work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s great is that we\u2019ve gotten to a place as an organization where we have multiple schools where the whole faculty is engaged in improvement work together, and we have groups at different schools working on the same topics so there are opportunities to learn across sites\u201d said Stacey Caillier, Director of the Center for Research on Equity and Innovation<\/a> at High Tech High\u2019s graduate school of education, during a phone conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Caillier and Kristen MacConnell, an Educational Leadership resident at High Tech Elementary in Chula Vista (HTeCV)\u00b9<\/a>, write about the journey of a team at HTeCV in their recent Kappan <\/em>article, \u201cGetting better together: An elementary school uses improvement science to help students express and share their thinking.\u201d When enacting changes to improve student learning, they note that educators \u201coften struggle to set clear, measurable goals, let alone develop systematic ways for tracking our progress.\u201d They go on to write that improvement science provides a clear methodology for developing and quickly testing ideas, as well as a \u201cnetwork structure that facilitates sharing and accelerated learning,\u201d making it \u201ca promising framework for scaffolding teacher learning and scaling good ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Created by Jeff Robin, art teacher at Gary and Jerri Ann Jacobs High Tech High School<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agency and Empathy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A fundamental aspect of improvement science is to give teachers agency to identify the specific problems that are creating roadblocks to achieve their goals for their school, their students, and their own professional development. \u201cSo many schools are trying to improve, but they\u2019re being told what to improve by somebody else,\u201d said Caillier. To ensure that teachers were invested in a problem that serves as the focus of their improvement efforts and its solutions, MacConnell and the Director of HTeCV asked teachers to consider three questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n