Success for All
- Issue Areas
- K-12 education
- Outcomes
- Elementary and middle school success
Program overview
School-wide supports for literacy achievement: Success for All (SFA) Schoolwide Programs are a set of comprehensive, whole-school reforms that integrate changes to a school’s curriculum, instructional practices, student supports, and more. The model is associated with increased literacy achievement among pre-kindergarten, elementary, and middle school students.
Promoting literacy development: SFA includes literacy curricula for pre-kindergarten through middle school students. The curricula emphasize cooperative learning, which views learning as a social activity and encourages students to coach and provide feedback to their peers. For students who need additional support, SFA includes both small-group and one-on-one computer-assisted tutoring programs designed to reinforce what children are learning in class.
Providing support services: SFA incorporates multiple strategies to address non-academic factors that affect student success. The Getting Along Together program teaches students cognitive and social-emotional skills that support their ability to think critically and solve interpersonal problems. SFA schools also operate schoolwide “Solutions Teams,” which focus on attendance, interventions to support student success, parent and family involvement, community connections, and building a cooperative culture.
Focusing on continuous improvement: Each SFA school is supported by a coach from the Success for All Foundation and a school-based facilitator. These staff provide teachers with professional development and support them in implementing the SFA model. SFA also encourages schools to regularly examine data on student achievement to measure progress and identify and address barriers to success.
- Cost per Participant
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$104 per child per year
Multiple studies with rigorous designs provide some evidence for Success for All as an effective strategy for improving literacy achievement.
- This assessment is based on evidence from a 2017 systematic review.
Note: This content is currently under review.
Secure leadership support: Principals have a range of responsibilities in schools implementing the SFA model, such as scheduling and leading SFA meetings and setting an expectation that the SFA program will be fully implemented. As an evaluation of past implementation efforts shows, when school building leaders actively engage with the SFA program, the model is more likely to be implemented with fidelity.
Assign a designated facilitator: For schools to use SFA programming, school leadership must fund a full-time facilitator to support implementation of the model. The facilitator plays a key role in coaching and supporting teachers, monitoring and analyzing data on student achievement, facilitating the work of Solutions Teams, and more.
Use data to drive instruction: As part of the Success for All model, schools receive access to the “Member Center,” an online tool for capturing and analyzing student data. When implementing the program, school leaders and the SFA facilitator should train and encourage teachers to regularly monitor these data and leverage them to inform their instruction.
Create structures for rigorous literacy instruction: When implementing the SFA model, schools should make changes to the way they schedule and structure reading classes to support more rigorous literacy instruction. These changes typically include creating a 90-minute block for reading instruction, limiting class sizes in reading classes, and facilitating cross-grade instruction by reading level.