Cycle of Inquiry

Springboard Schools helps schools manage change by helping educators learn and use a continuous, data-based improvement process. We call this process the Cycle of Inquiry. The Cycle of Inquiry supports teachers to focus on a high priority student achievement problem; pose questions about the causes of the gaps in student achievement in this focus area; implement strategies to address these gaps and then analyze data to determine the effectiveness of their strategies.

Cycles of Inquiry often focus on students who have been traditionally marginalized in schools. In California, the groups that most often score the bottom 25 percent on achievement tests are Latino, African American, Filipino, Pacific Islander students, poor children, and children of color. "Of course, we want all students to achieve, and evaluation shows that inquiry tends to lift the test scores for everyone, "comments Lisa Congdon, a veteran teacher and Springboard Schools inquiry expert who teaches the Cycle of Inquiry to teachers and leaders at several schools. "But to narrow the achievement gap, we have to do something to accelerate the learning of the kids who struggle the most. So our inquiry process is about understanding and meeting the needs of those struggling students."

Teachers begin by examining student achievement data including diagnostic assessments to determine which students are struggling and in which areas. Because inquiry also looks for links between what teachers do and what students achieve, Springboard Schools schools adopt and give more frequent assessments. This allows teachers to better diagnose students' needs and fine tune classroom strategies before students move on to the next grade.

Originally launched in 1995, Springboard Schools has introduced the Cycle of Inquiry to more than 200 k-12 public schools in six Bay Area counties. An independent evaluation by Stanford University research has shown that schools using the Cycle of Inquiry made faster test score gains than other comparable schools—and that the more inquiry that a school uses, the more gains it makes. "The Cycle of Inquiry has become the process tool that distinguishes Springboard Schools work from other reform strategies," notes a five-year report released by Stanford University evaluators in 2002. It "offers schools a problem solving process around school practices while California's focus on data merely identifies strengths and weakness without offering a means to improve."

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