Fewer, Better, Shared: The Case for Common Effective Practices

In the world of education, we are rich in new and old “best practices.” To move the needle on student learning, we seldom need more practices. We need common effective practices. This distinction isn’t just semantics—it is the difference between a system that creates coherence with impact for students and one that jumps from one new thing to the next without achieving the desired impact on student learning.

Effective means one thing: does this practice actually help students learn and master the content and critical concepts?  But “effective” alone isn’t enough. The other word that matters just as much is “common.” When practices aren’t common, students pay the price.  As students are challenged to learn new and increasingly rigorous concepts, they should not have to also continually adjust to different teachers’ systems.  Common practices give students a shared experience across classrooms and grade levels which allows them to focus their attention on mastering new concepts rather than trying to figure out “how it works in this teacher’s classroom.” This is especially true for secondary students who may have to endure different practices from their five to seven different teachers everyday.

Districts and schools that consistently deliver strong student outcomes identify a relatively small number of highly effective practices and invest the time and resources to help teachers become very skilled in these practices.   This isn’t about isolated effective practices. And it’s not about common practices for the sake of consistency. It’s about building a small, focused set of practices that are both common and effective—so they can be supported, refined, and improved over time.

An Example of Common Effective Practices from the San Benito School District 

When they joined the On Track Collaboration, Hollister High School in the San Benito Union High School District was already doing a number of good things.  Individual teachers were utilizing a variety of effective practices, however they didn’t have many shared effective practices. 

Hollister, with the district’s support, moved to align its practices by focusing on a Reteach-and-Retake cycle. The reteaching process can serve as a self-learning mechanism. It forces teachers to ask: “Did I put a prompt in front of the students that actually matched the standard?”  Teachers who began using a very specific 15-minute “ reteach” process  moved from a 30% proficiency rate on exit tickets to 80%. They also started finding ways to teach it more effectively the first time after seeing how successful their reteaching sessions were.  Building on the success of Hollister High School,  San Benito Union High School District created a bridge between the 8th and 9th grades with these “common effective practices,” including moving toward policy changes that reflect their goal of students mastering grade-level standards, such as shifting the weight of grades to 90% summative and 10% formative, and allowing retakes for full credit.

The Power of Adopting Common Effective Practices

In districts like San Benito, which embrace doing a few things extremely well across their classrooms, adopting common effective practices is about a coherent systemic strategy, not individual teacher practice. When common effective practices are combined with clear expectations for student outcomes and a way to monitor those outcomes, and teachers are given the time and support to build capacity to use the effective practices, amazing results begin to grow and spread.