Whole School Improvement and Restructuring as Prevention and Promotion: Lessons from STEP and the Project on High Performance Learning Communities

We describe two research-tested approaches, the School Transitional Environment Project and its successor, the Project on High Performance Learning Communities, that have contributed to building a developmentally based design for comprehensive school improvement called the High Performance Learning Communities Model. The model seeks to modify the ecology of schools and schooling in order to build the principles of prevention and promotion into “whole school” change. Findings from a series of studies are presented that show that whole school change efforts, when implemented comprehensively and with appropriate intensity and fidelity, may powerfully influence the prevention of socioemotional, behavioral, and academic difficulties, as well as promotion of the acquisition of the full range of developmental competencies necessary for life success, well-being, and resilience.