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Classroom observational data from an innovative 2-year, university-based teacher induction program indicate that the inductees made significant gains in the level of their teaching skills. First-year gains in instruction typically resulted from improvements in the classroom organizational and management skills of the inductees. Second-year gains tended to be related to changes in more intellectually complex areas of teaching.

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The situation at Sandfi elds Comprehensive School in southern Wales could hardly have been more grim in 1996. The British government had recently decided that it would close any school that persistently had fewer than 20% of its students achieving solid scores on the national assessments given to all 16-yearolds. High-poverty Sandfi elds had two consecutive years of 13%. One of the most depressing challenges facing the school was that many parents decided not to send their children to the school because they had attended it themselves and didn't believe the school was socially or academically supportive of students. Even parents who enrolled their children at Sandfi elds didn't get them there often enough: Student attendance was less than 80%. The school and grounds were littered with trash and graffi ti. Serving students in the same relatively high-poverty Neath Port Talbot Local Authority, Cwmtawe Secondary School's situation was troubling but less dire. The school had a new building and with 32% of its students doing well on the exams, Cwmtawe's performance was only moderately below district and national averages. However, Cwmtawe's leadership and teachers shared with Sandfi elds' a desire for dramatic improvement. Their shared improvement opportunity began when their headteachers (equivalent to principals in the U.S.) invited coauthor David Reynolds to speak about high-reliability organizations (HROs) (Roberts, 1993, 2009). HROs are organizations-like air traffi c control towers and electric power grids-that are assigned the very challenging task of operating without critically cascading errors the fi rst time, every time. Could this work in schools? Reynolds and the coauthors embarked on a four-year relationship with Sandfi elds, Cwmtawe, and nine other schools in the Neath Port Talbot district of Wales to learn. The researchers worked with the schools from 1996 to 2000, and the schools produced stunning results. Making best practice standardand lasting A 16-year-old effort to improve schools in a challenged, high-poverty area in Wales could offer lessons to schools elsewhere.

This article presents data from a 15-year, mixed-methods school improvement effort. The High Reliability Schools (HRS) reform made use of previous research on school effects and on High Reliability Organizations (HROs). HROs are organizations in various parts of our cultures that are required to operate successfully “the first time, every time.” This is a requirement increasingly placed on our schools. The HRS reform was conducted in all 11 secondary schools in one Welsh (U.K.) Local Authority (LA). Data are provided on the Neath-Port Talbot (NPT) district along with case studies of two of NPT schools. Pre-reform data indicated that students in the LA were performing well below Welsh averages. Over a four-year intervention, NPT's students made gains that were nearly double the national average. Achievement data from five and 11 years post-intervention indicate that the relatively high-poverty schools in the LA have continued to rise to well above the national averages. Qualitative observations and interviews with the schools’ and LA's leadership and student groups, combined with analyses of recent school inspectors’ reports, indicate that schools are continuing to use HRS principles and are continuing their refinement of them in context. Implications for future school reforms and research are presented.

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