The History and Foundations of the Marzano Academies Model

example, a school or district might consider a new reading program or a new response to intervention (RTI) program as a major reform intervention. Such one-dimensional efforts do not address the systemic nature of the issues facing schools and do not foster continuous improvement (West, 2012). Education researcher Victoria M. Young (2018) maintained that practices and policies that require coordinated cultural, structural, and political strategies must replace typical myopic, onedimensional reform efforts. We refer to this multifront approach as the circuit-board effect.

A computer circuit board is a sheet of material onto which engineers mount microchips, conductive pathways, and other components. Each microchip has a number of inputs or prongs along its sides that send electrical pulses along paths to other chips. When a microchip receives an electrical impulse, it either responds by performing an operation or passes the information along to other microchips that reply in various ways. All these communications, mathematical calculations, and transactions occur in milliseconds and provide the user with an output.

A circuit board is emblematic of the interconnectedness of the education system. Truly transforming education requires a type of systemic change that will yield a product that better serves all students. How can we configure the various circuits in the typical school to make them produce results hitherto not produced? The first step is to identify the right circuits. The Marzano Academies model provides such a guide to an interconnected system.

The History and Foundations of the Marzano Academies Model

The Marzano Academies model, as described in this book, is the product of decades of interrelated efforts to translate research and theory into practice, starting with efforts in the 1980s to integrate direct instruction in thinking skills into the K–12 curriculum (for instance, Marzano et al., 1988). Such efforts have proceeded up to the present, with works that cover a wide variety of topics, including instruction, leadership, curriculum, assessment, vocabulary, standards, grading, high reliability organizations, professional learning communities, personalized competency-based education (PCBE), student motivation, social-emotional learning, teacher and leader evaluation, and taxonomies of knowledge and skill, to name a few.

The model of secondary schools presented here is the integration of numerous research and theory efforts over multiple decades, all of which were developed such that every piece is designed to fit with every other piece. This type of systematic planning is a unique aspect of the academy model in terms of school improvement. In contrast, in the name of school improvement, many secondary school leaders attempt to combine separate and sometimes disparate programs designed independently by different experts and organizations. While such efforts are well intended and have a certain intuitive appeal, they often fail because the selected initiatives might clash and cancel each other out, even though all are effective in their own right. For example, a high school leader might simultaneously try to implement a new online algebra tutorial program and a new online reading intervention without realizing that they both add a great deal of content to an already bloated curriculum. While each program could be useful independently, together—and without corresponding changes to make room in the curriculum—they add new requirements for content coverage that teachers simply can’t meet.

Marzano Academies employs its sixteen school-level indicators, which have all been designed so as to be compatible with the other indicators, in a seamless system that produces consistent, high-quality education. This model is a departure from traditional structures of schooling in a number of ways. First, and perhaps foremost, it is a competency-based system. Competency-based education (CBE) refers to the practice of promoting students to the next level only when they have demonstrated

mastery of the academic content at the previous level. Time is not a factor—a student can progress at an accelerated rate in one subject and take more time in another. For example, a middle school student might be working on sixth-grade English language arts (ELA) content and eighth-grade mathematics content, even though she is chronologically a seventh grader. Students are organized into classes and groups by their ability rather than by age, allowing teachers to provide more targeted, effective instruction. CBE ensures that students actually learn before advancing, so they master the content the school considers important at each level and are prepared for the next one.

Second, to articulate the content students are expected to learn at each level and in each subject area, the Marzano Academies model defines its academic program in a highly precise manner. For each topic that students must master, a proficiency scale delineates the progression of learning, from basic knowledge and skills, to the target level that students are expected to reach, to opportunities for advanced applications. A manageable set of proficiency scales for each content area at each level ensures consistency—students master the same content and skills no matter which teachers they learn from. The power of proficiency scales is that they show exactly what students need to know and how they will get there. Furthermore, teachers assess students, score work, and report grades based on proficiency scales. Feedback to students lets them know where on the scale their current level of knowledge falls, making it easy for them to see what they need to do to improve. When teachers report grades, those grades do not take the form of an omnibus percentage or letter grade, but rather a set of individual scores for each topic that the student is currently working on.

A third way that the Marzano Academies model differs from a typical traditional school is its recognition that effective education goes beyond academic content. The model includes directly teaching cognitive and metacognitive skills, such as analytical thinking, problem solving, impulse control, and collaboration. These skills are as essential to preparedness for life and career as academic content, so age-appropriate learning progressions for each skill are defined through proficiency scales. Students learn information and processes related to each skill and teachers give feedback on students’ mastery thereof.

The Marzano Academies model also includes social-emotional components. The community of the school sets the environment for learning, and the quality of that community impacts the quality of students’ education. The academy model emphasizes relationships and a sense of belonging among students, teachers, leaders, and other stakeholders. In addition to regular social-emotional learning on topics like mindfulness and empathy, students in a Marzano Academy participate in inspiring programs like those presented by Rachel’s Challenge, an anti-bullying organization that focuses on kindness and compassion (www.rachelschallenge.org).

The final unique component we will mention here is the Marzano Academies approach to instruction. An instructional model defines in detail the practices associated with excellent teaching. The Marzano Academies instructional model includes forty-nine elements of effective instruction for CBE, ranging from content-delivery elements, like recording and representing content, to elements related to the classroom context, such as showing value and respect for all learners. With support from school leaders, teachers are expected to set goals and develop their abilities relative to the elements of the instructional model. Instruction in the Marzano Academies model also includes the systematic use of strategies known to improve students’ retention of information, such as cumulative review.

While the Marzano Academies model may seem complex, its components form a coherent whole that drives toward a single goal: the highest-quality education for all learners. The structure that allows school leaders to manage these seemingly different initiatives in a cohesive, integrated fashion is the concept of a high reliability organization.