“If you wait for external forces to change, you’ll be waiting forever. Transform from within or be left behind.”

Introduction: The Root of the Problem

Every year, American schools invest billions into reform efforts. Many of these initiatives target external issues—poverty, parenting, media, and other societal forces outside the school’s control. These are important, but they are not the lever for sustainable improvement. They are the distraction.

The hard truth? Failing organizations—especially schools—waste time and resources chasing external causes instead of fixing what’s within their power. Successful institutions understand the inverse: long-term change comes from focusing on internal locus of control—the things they can influence and change from the inside out.

It’s time we change the conversation.

Defining the Concepts

Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a method of problem-solving that identifies the fundamental reasons for an issue’s occurrence, rather than just its symptoms (Anderson et al., 2014). It is not merely about listing causes—it’s about drilling down to the origin of the problem and separating controllable causes from uncontrollable ones.

Locus of Control is a psychological concept developed by Julian Rotter (1966). It refers to an individual or organization’s belief about what causes outcomes:

• Internal Locus of Control means you believe that your actions and decisions directly affect outcomes.
• External Locus of Control means outcomes are seen as controlled by outside forces (e.g., parents, policy, poverty, culture, etc.).

The difference between successful and failing schools? Successful schools identify internal causes—and act on them. Failing schools blame external ones.

The Parental Involvement Myth

We all know the research: children whose parents read to them regularly tend to perform better academically (Bus, van IJzendoorn, & Pellegrini, 1995). This leads schools to pour millions into parental involvement campaigns—newsletters, family nights, parent centers. But the data is shocking:

“Despite decades of investment, school-based parental involvement programs have very limited, inconsistent, and often no measurable academic effect on student achievement in disadvantaged communities.”

(Jeynes, 2012)

Why? Because schools don’t control parents. They can encourage, but not enforce. If a parent doesn’t read at home, no policy will change that. This is an external factor, and schools consistently overestimate their influence on it.

Attendance and Truancy: Stop Blaming, Start Creating

When students are chronically tardy or absent, what’s the usual blame? Parenting. Lack of supervision. Broken homes. Poverty. Trauma. But again—these are real issues with no immediate internal fix.

Yet research shows that school climate—something entirely within a school’s control—is a powerful determinant of student attendance. In a 2020 study of over 200,000 students across multiple states:

“Students who reported a positive, engaging, and welcoming school climate were 35% less likely to be chronically absent—regardless of poverty or home life.”

(Gottfried & Kirksey, 2020)

Schools that prioritize joy, relevance, safety, and relationships—internally driven elements—improve attendance significantly. This is where energy must go.

The Internal Levers That Work

1. School Culture and Climate

• Investing in student voice, positive behavioral supports, and staff-student relationships yields measurable improvements in engagement and achievement (Cohen et al., 2009).

2. Instructional Leadership

• Schools with strong instructional leaders—who use data, provide coaching, and model expectations—outperform peer schools, regardless of student demographics (Leithwood, Louis, Anderson, & Wahlstrom, 2004).

3. Professional Development

• Continuous, embedded, teacher-centered professional learning increases student outcomes more than any parental engagement campaign ever has (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017).

4. Relevance and Rigor

• High expectations, culturally relevant curriculum, and project-based learning boost attendance and performance in high-poverty schools (Ladson-Billings, 1995).

Shock Value: What Failing Schools Must Wake Up To

• Schools with low internal locus of control are twice as likely to experience staff turnover, chronic absenteeism, and declining test scores (Anderson et al., 2014).
• More than 80% of school improvement plans focus primarily on external factors (Jeynes, 2012).
• In a review of 50 turnaround schools, the ones that succeeded focused exclusively on what they could change internally—their systems, culture, and instruction—not parents or policy (Leithwood et al., 2004).

Urgency: Why You Must Act Now

Every day spent blaming external factors is a day stolen from a student’s future. Every dollar spent on an outreach program that doesn’t yield results is a dollar not invested in a teacher’s capacity, a student’s engagement, or a principal’s leadership.

Failing schools obsess over what’s broken outside. Successful schools fix what’s broken inside.

The difference is not ideology—it’s urgency, ownership, and execution.

Final Word: Transformation Starts From Within

If your school, district, or organization is struggling with under performance, disengagement, or resistance to change, start with the question:

“What do we control—and what are we doing about it?”

If the answer leans too heavily on external conditions, it’s time to shift. Because the solutions already exist within your walls.

References

Anderson, M., Leithwood, K., Louis, K. S., & Wahlstrom, K. (2014). How leadership influences student learning. Wallace Foundation.

Bus, A. G., van IJzendoorn, M. H., & Pellegrini, A. D. (1995). Joint book reading makes for success in learning to read: A meta‐analysis on intergenerational transmission of literacy. Review of Educational Research, 65(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543065001001

Cohen, J., McCabe, E. M., Michelli, N. M., & Pickeral, T. (2009). School climate: Research, policy, teacher education and practice. Teachers College Record, 111(1), 180–213.

Darling-Hammond, L., Hyler, M. E., & Gardner, M. (2017). Effective teacher professional development. Learning Policy Institute. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org

Gottfried, M. A., & Kirksey, J. J. (2020). It’s about time: School climate, attendance, and the effectiveness of school-level policy mandates. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR), 25(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/10824669.2020.1720202

Jeynes, W. H. (2012). A meta-analysis of the efficacy of different types of parental involvement programs for urban students. Urban Education, 47(4), 706–742. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085912445643

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312032003465

Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 80(1), 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0092976