Increasingly, research helps us understand what makes a healthy school community healthy. Widely different projects have arrived at similar conclusions about the school practices which best improve student achievement. The nine Common Principles of the Essential Schools correspond rather closely to the eight over-arching recommendations of Carnegie Corporation’s middle school report, Turning Points. The Texas Mentor Network, the National Association of Secondary School Principals’ Breaking Ranks and the Carnegie Corporation’s Years of Promise also identify the same eight or nine basic ideas essential to healthy school reform.

We offer, therefore, a draft of what might become the publicly reported elements for subsequent reports. We consider this effort to be only the beginning of a dialogue about what school indicators might be most useful to report from the SALT surveys. The following elements represent large scale, structural aspects of a school. Such information would be garnered by combining the answers from related questions from the surveys. The SALT survey results will be too voluminous to report at a
state level, but will be available on the Internet and at the school. The elements for state-level reporting may describe the extent to which the following practices have been implemented:

1. Small, personalized learning communities

This element would include practices such as breaking large schools into "houses" or schools-within-schools; teachers that are teamed; teachers or teacher teams given common planning time; and advisory systems that ensure that every child is known well by at least one adult.

2. Integrated instruction

This element assesses the practices that emphasize deep, integrated instruction in a core academic program. It would include techniques that promote problem-solving skills, conceptual understanding, life-long learning and effective leadership.

3. High expectations for all students

This element would examine the different ways that the educational program promotes success for each individual student and every kind of learner.

4. Promoting foundation skills throughout the curriculum

This element would measure the extent to which math, reading and writing are woven into all or most projects, because students need to practice and reinforce these skills often.

5. School-based decision-making

This element would evaluate whether or not the decisions directly affecting students have been moved closest to the student, teachers and school community, which would include the principal, the parents and the larger community around the school.

6. Well-prepared teachers

This element will look at how many teachers with certified expertise are teaching to the developmental level of their students, how much experience the teaching staff has and the extent to which teachers are provided with on-going, appropriate, coherent professional development opportunities.

7. Health and safety

This element will assess the school and classroom practices which promote health, safety and fitness. Research shows that health, safety and fitness improve academic performance.

8. Engaged families

This element includes techniques which encourage family involvement such as parent/teacher conferences, Open Houses and phone calls or notes between school and home.

9. Community linkages

This element looks at practices which stimulate support and advocacy from the immediate community, such as adopt-a-school programs, school-to-work internships, shadowing opportunities or special events sponsors.

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