On Board Online • April 27, 2026

By Kristen C. Wilcox, Maria I. Khan, Jessie Tobin and Aaron Leo
The University at Albany

Our team at the University at Albany, called NYKids, has examined state test scores and other data on school performance in New York State since 2005. We've noticed that some schools have consistently outperformed peer schools serving demographically similar communities. And we think we have figured out how they have done it.

Our most recent study crunched 20 years of publicly available state data including state test scores, high school graduation rates and attendance data. Using statistics to take into account characteristics of student populations (like the percentage of economically disadvantaged students) alongside school outcomes, we have identified some schools as "persistent positive outliers" or PPOs.

We conducted in-depth interviews, focus groups and document collection at PPOs to discover what makes them tick. The PPOs were:

• Alfred-Almond Jr/Sr High School (45% disadvantaged)
• Brookfield Central School (78%)
• Crown Point Central School District (57%)
• Malverne Senior High School (46%)

We also identified EPOs, or emergent positive outliers, which were once typically-performing yet have made positive progress over time. They were:

• Fillmore Central School (61%)
• LaFayette Jr/Sr High School (43%)
• Roxbury Central School (42%)

Based on our data analysis, our research team identified some important practices among the PPOs, and these were also in development or already in practice in EPOs. While we didn't expect to arrive at a framework to explain how some schools and districts consistently outperform their peers, that is where we landed. We offer this framework with a note of caution that our findings are based on a relatively small set of schools and only in New York State.

NYKids has been in the business of supporting school improvement for more than two decades. Because those 20-plus years have been characterized by some significant demographic and policy shifts, we think every school or district ought to embrace change and aspire to become a learning organization. That's a school or district in which staff are deeply involved in cycles of planning, doing, reflecting and acting that focus on better ways of doing things, even if this involves a significant departure from the status quo.

Scholarship on learning organizations

A growing body of scholarship explores the concept of the "learning organization." Our work has been influenced by prominent authors in the field of organizational studies, including Peter Senge of MIT's Sloan School of Management.

In a 1990 book called The Fifth Discipline, Senge popularized the concept of a learning organization. He identified five core tasks: systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision and team learning.

In 2014, Samantha Baard and her colleagues published an influential paper in the Journal of Management that examined how people seeking change in organizations deal with the unexpected and adapt. This has contributed to what is called performance adaptation theory: a theory that focuses on the cognitive, behavioral and emotional factors affecting adaptation.

Also, our analysis has been informed by the concept of "futuring." This has been defined by the Stanford Futuring for Equity Lab as "the act of being intentional, working as a collective, engaging in future-making" and being "committed to imagination, innovation and sustainability." Futuring involves a collaborative, equity-centered, end-driven mindset that can be powerful when shared by many people within an organization.

Three key steps to becoming a learning organization

Based on patterns we noticed in our data from schools in New York State, we have three recommendations on how school leaders can help their school become a learning organization, resulting in sustained better student outcomes over time.

Step 1: Develop a pipeline of emotionally and organizationally savvy change agents. Through the lens of performance adaptation theories of Baard and others, we have identified the essential need for leaders to pay attention to the emotional reactions to change, both internally and externally. It is common for employees to experience feelings of discomfort when trying something new, and communications with parents and other stakeholders when undergoing change can be critical.

In the schools we studied that outperformed their peers, we found educators who led innovations were sensitive and skilled in anticipating and handling potential negative reactions to change. How did they learn to do this?

In some schools, principals were hired specifically for having relational competencies including the ability to build trust, which our team has identified in other studies as essential in public education (see "The Role of District and School Leaders' Trust and Communications in the Simultaneous Implementation of Innovative Policies" at bit.ly/3Q6cxVf ). In other cases, principals were mentored to develop these competencies.

Leadership also came from others, including teachers and support staff who take on leadership roles. For instance, at LaFayette Jr/Sr High School, the distribution of leadership to professional learning communities (PLCs) has been a strategy in part implemented to help buffer anxiety about leadership turnover, effectively distributing leadership across the organization.

We also noticed that leaders in outperforming schools handled community communications with finesse. For example, according to a one district leader, a "big thing" has been to increase PTA involvement to include a diverse array of parents and caregivers. A "Central Council PTA" has encouraged collaboration across buildings and supplemented the work of building-level PTAs. "They really complement the work we do, and they're able to support in ways that I don't think a lot of us even realized they could," she said.

Other commonalities among leaders in schools that outperformed their peers included:

• They shared a belief that maintaining the status quo would amount to neglect of leadership. As one school leader explained, "It's just constantly knowing we can always do better. We can always work to be better."
• They anticipated how changes might be received. One school leader shared: "What's a math classroom going to look like at the high school level in the future? That's going to be out of [some teachers'] comfort zone."
• They were strategic in their approach. They identified what challenge or challenges were top priorities and recognized the hurdles that needed to be overcome to create a new way of doing things.

Step 2: Move out of a compliance orientation and into an innovation orientation. A common mindset in schools involves compliance, i.e.: "We do this because some group, entity or policy has told us we should or must." An innovation orientation, in contrast, would be: "We do this because we know that this is right and good for our youth and community and we know how, or will figure out how, to do it well."

This is a profound shift, and not an easy one. To lead such a transition, it helps to build on past successes, which enhances the credibility of district and school leadership. A shift to an innovation orientation requires a significant investment ensuring everyone involved is prepared and willing to participate in the work. This requires trust, individual competency and building of collective capacity (which may take years to develop). So, a short-term urgency sprinkled with patience is necessary.

Also, data plays a central role in this shift as return on investment in changes made need to be monitored and shared. A principal from an outperforming school where data is highly valued said, "We are all responsible for looking at our data and pushing the envelope and looking to see how we can better ourselves."

Step 3: Lean into traditions as stabilizing experiences. While having an innovative mindset, school leaders and staff in outperforming schools also value traditions. These can serve as sources of stability amid change.

One district leader cited an annual dinner in which students ask former teachers to attend. This reinforces important connections and calls attention to the mission of education to develop young people and celebrate their teachers:

The whole legacy dinner... was really phenomenal... the families were there and everything. What was really nice to see was the elementary school teachers who probably haven't seen them [their former student who picked them for the honor] in a very long time. [Teachers] felt so honored that they were picked . "Wow, I made a difference with Johnny Smith in third grade."

Through a performance adaptation lens, change is a social process involving thinking, doing and feeling. In this context, school traditions provide shared reference points. They can help individuals make sense of new expectations, strengthen relational bonds and reinforce collective identity. These, in turn, enable coordinated action and sustained commitment through new challenges.

Distinctions between PPOs and EPOs

We noticed some differences between schools we identified as persistent positive outliers and the emergent positive outliers, which had positive trends that were not as far along as the PPOs.

While EPOs showed evidence of having savvy change agents, embracing an innovation mindset and leveraging traditions, PPOs had normalized these as part of their school culture.

Taken together, our findings provide a provisional roadmap to what it takes to establish and sustain success as a learning organization. One PPO leader noted this involves never feeling like success has been fully achieved:

We don't feel like we're there - like our work is ever done. We're looking at areas where we need to improve. And I think the second we sit back and say we're good, we're going to have a lot of problems.

This sentiment captures the essence of what distinguishes schools that achieved sustained above-predicted student outcomes from those that experienced only episodic improvements in our studies.

Takeaways for school and district leaders

Our research demonstrates how educators can improve outcomes if they embrace approaches that are consistent with research on learning organizations. Innovation that results in measurable better outcomes requires much of district and school leaders, including a dissatisfaction with maintaining the status quo, a collaborative style that cultivates the next generation of agents of change, emotional sensitivity, an affinity for data use and the ability to inspire an innovation mindset in others.

In our experiences in schools that were PPOs or EPOs, we invariably met educators who were able and willing to work outside their comfort zone. This represents a key differentiator. If your school leadership team can create a culture in which working outside one's comfort zones becomes the norm, your school is on a path that has led other schools and districts to results that stand out, statistically.

At the same time, our research points to the value of schools honoring their cultural traditions. There is a pathway for addressing contemporary educational challenges that we would summarize as "historically informed and future-making leadership."

The ideas discussed in this article are explored in research reports and case studies at ny-kids.org. We invite readers to reach out if they are interested in direct school improvement support including coaching on how to use NYKids research and school improvement tools and processes at nykids@albany.edu.