Streamlining your school: understanding the relationship between instructional program coherence and school performance

Instructional program coherence, which refers to the consistency and stability of school-wide programs that are guided by a common instructional framework, constitutes a vital school improvement strategy. Since Newmann and colleagues, in their study of 2001, conceptualized and created a measure of instructional program coherence, much of the empirical work has been carried out in one large urban school district, Chicago Public Schools. Using more generalizable data from a representative sample of all schools in the state of Florida, we found a positive relationship between teachers' perceptions of coherence and student achievement. Our finding is consistent with previous studies but provides a more nuanced picture. Examining program coherence in more diverse contexts than prior work, we find that instructional program coherence is positively related to academic outcomes in middle schools while there is no significant relationship in elementary schools. Further, the magnitude of association is far more substantial when examining math, compared to reading outcomes in middle schools.