With a recent evaluation showing success in New York City schools, Strategic Inquiry is spreading to California as a leadership development approach “embedded in school improvement work.” Strategic Inquiry is an innovative instructional model for promoting teacher collaboration around identifying specific “learning gaps” that keep struggling students from succeeding.
The model is now receiving increased attention because of a recent evaluation by researchers at Teachers College, Columbia University, focusing on New York City’s Renewal Schools, a group of low-performing schools that receive technical assistance and additional resources to meet improvement goals. Focusing on 2014-16, the researchers found that students in Renewal high schools were more than twice as likely to be on track to graduate and less than half as likely to be off track for graduation than their peers in non-Renewal high schools, who were not exposed to the model.
