McREL Blog

A formula for planning effective school improvement

It’s nearing the end of the school year across America, which means thousands of principals are preparing school improvement plans for the 2013-14 school year. There are two common scenarios that take place, illustrated here by Principal A and Principal B:

Principal A sits down and, with little input or involvement from others, dutifully writes an ambitious school improvement plan for the next school year. The plan is submitted to the central office and receives a stamp of approval. At the beginning of the new school year, the plan is shared for the first time with the school staff. Momentum and focus are quickly lost, and the plan sits on a shelf, practically untouched, until the end of the school year. 

Principal B, on the other hand, meets with the school leadership team to collect, organize, and analyze data to form several key problem statements. Next, the principal meets with school faculty members to present the data analysis and the key problem statements. Collectively, the faculty members review the data, identify root causes of the problem statements, develop goals, and create an action plan based on research-based practices. This all takes place before the summer break. At the beginning of the new school year, the plan is reviewed and staff members sign-up for subcommittees to lead implementation and actively monitor progress. Monthly progress reports and achievement data are reviewed by the school leadership team.

Which school is more likely to meet its goals? It’s easy to predict that Principal B’s school will have greater odds for success, yet we still see too many principals using Principal A’s approach. How do we help principals move from A to B? From our research and experience working with schools and districts, we know that principals and leadership teams must develop deep knowledge and skills in these five areas:

• Use data to guide school improvement and assess progress. Successful schools use data to develop their school improvement plans and regularly monitor their progress toward the goals, adjusting as needed.
• Use research-based practices to make improvements and increase student achievement. Schools that develop and implement action plans founded on research-based practices are more likely to meet their goals.
• Foster and engage in shared leadership for improvement. Principals who share leadership in the development, implementation, and monitoring of their school improvement plans have more school-wide staff commitment to the plans.  
• Create and maintain a purposeful community. Schools that function as purposeful communities—with collective efficacy and the capability to produce outcomes that matter to all community members through agreed-upon processes—will be more likely to meet their school improvement plan goals.
• Apply a comprehensive and systematic continuous improvement process. An example of this
  process is our Success in Sight model:  1) Take stock; 2) Focus on the right solution; 3) Take collective action; 4) Monitor and adjust; and 5) Maintain momentum.
   
  

Dr. Kay L. Frunzi is a principal consultant at McREL, providing services, strategies, and materials to schools and districts across the country. Before joining McREL, she served as a school principal in four districts and taught graduate-level courses at various universities.

 

Balancing the Common Core: Leveled readers vs. complex text

The art of teaching requires many careful balancing acts, and implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for literacy offers an opportunity for one more. We’ve heard a lot about the CCSS’ focus on complex texts; however, this doesn’t mean texts matched to students’reading levels aren’t still important. It takes both to build competent and fluent readers.

Elementary classrooms and libraries across the country are filled with leveled readers, or books categorized into reading levels. During literacy blocks, many teachers carefully and systematically ensure that each student is assigned to a reading group or given a selection of texts for independent reading based on his or her assessed reading level. This is common practice in reading instruction and is, in fact, the centerpiece of popular curricula such as Lucy Calkins’ Reading and Writing Project.

On the other hand, Reading Standard 10, which underlies all of the reading comprehension standards in the Common Core, expresses an expectation that all students comprehend complex texts on a continuum that leads to college readiness by the end of high school. This expectation certainly is a shift—not because college readiness and reading comprehension weren’t previously our goals, but because many of us thought that we could achieve higher student reading comprehension scores solely by enticing students to read more.

In my own teaching practice, I felt that if I coaxed a non-reader to pick up a magazine or graphic novel or just about anything, I was succeeding. I tried to get them to fall in love with reading and learning by allowing them time to read whatever they wanted. I still believe offering such choices is important, but I have now come to understand that a balance is needed.

The Common Core’s Publishers Criteria states that scaffolding reading instruction should not include using easier versions of the same text (pp. 8–9), but rather teachers should model reading strategies and provide other supports, like guided questioning and vocabulary development, when students struggle. However, the CCSS also state in the K–5 domain for Reading Foundational Skills that students need to build fluency—which comes as they read self-selected texts and texts matched to their level.

Research doesn’t offer much clarity on the effectiveness of either. In a recent blog, Timothy Shanahan, a literacy professor and researcher, notes the surprising lack of research proving the effectiveness of using leveled readers: “Research shows that matching kids to books does not guarantee big learning gains. In fact, in the two best and most recent studies on the topic, one study found minor benefits of a good book match on one measure only, and the other study actually found that kids made better progress in the frustration level books!” (For a rebuttal on the research on frustration level books, read this blog by literacy consultants Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris.)

I advocate for the middle ground. We do not need to take all of the choice out of classroom literacy instruction in order to meet the Common Core’s expectation for text complexity, but we do need to deliberately guide student reading so that all students have supported opportunities to engage with rich literature and build complex knowledge with informational texts. Sometimes the best thing to do is not to listen to all the hub-bub about the standards and just read the standards themselves:

Students need opportunities to stretch their reading abilities but also to experience the satisfaction and pleasure of easy, fluent reading within them, both of which the Standards allow for (The Common Core State Standards, Appendix A, p. 9).

A former English language arts teacher, Susan Ryan is a standards consultant at McREL and co-author of Common Core quick-start guides published by ASCD on English language arts and mathematics standards at the elementary, middle, and  high school levels.

Creating Your Own Destiny

 
I just had an article published in Middle Ground magazine, Creating Your Own Destiny: Teaching the Importance of Effort. This article talks about the importance helping students to understand the relationship between effort and their success.

Have you had a student like Lynn as described in the article? What strategies worked for you?

Elizabeth Ross Hubbell is a consultant at McREL.

Ensuring teacher quality: A global view

There are few things more talked about in U.S. education circles right now than how to improve evaluation for teachers. While states and districts are focused on what’s wrong with our current systems and how we can make them better—by changing what we evaluate, how often we evaluate, and even who evaluates—perhaps we should look to how other countries with the top student achievement rates in the world, such as Finland, South Korea, and Singapore, are already getting it right.

Only the best get in. Only 15 percent of Finnish prospective teachers are admitted into teacher programs. Once in, their preparation includes extensive coursework on teaching principles and at least one full year of in-school experience (Darling-Hammond, 2010). By the time Singaporean candidates pass a demanding test and panel interview, only one out of eight applicants successfully becomes a teacher (Tucker, 2011).

Teachers in high-performing countries also receive high-quality professional development in research methods and pedagogical practice, and they participate in it quite often. Common in Western European countries is “job-embedded professional development,” which supports teacher research on a specific learning practice. Because teachers are provided time and support for studying and evaluating their own teaching strategies, their learning is ongoing and sustained (Wei, Andree, & Darling-Hammond, 2009).

Teacher collaboration in high-performing countries ensures high teacher quality. In South Korea, only about 35 percent of teachers’ working time is spent teaching pupils. The rest is spent working in a shared office space exchanging instructional resources and ideas. Likewise, teachers in Finnish schools meet at least one afternoon each week to jointly plan and develop curriculum, and they are encouraged to share materials and work with teachers at other schools (Wei et al., 2009).

These methods appear to be working. Results from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) released in December 2012 reflect that in 4^th-grade mathematics, Singapore, Korea, and Hong Kong were the top performers, followed by Chinese Taipei and Japan (Mullis, Martin, Foy, & Arora, 2012). According to the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), the top-performing countries in 4^th-grade reading were Hong Kong, the Russian Federation, Finland, and Singapore (Mullis, Martin, Foy, & Drucker, 2012).

In addition, high-performing countries have high levels of graduation and post-graduate education. More than 99 percent of Finnish students, for example, complete upper secondary school and two-thirds of those graduates go on to universities or professional schools (Darling-Hammond, 2010).

While these practices may seem utopian to U.S. educators, they provide insight into how teacher quality in other countries contributes to the student achievement results that we strive for. To achieve best-in-the-world results, the United States needs to determine what best-in-the-world evaluation practices we can apply or modify to create the highest quality teachers.

How can these practices be implemented in your school? Do you have the time and resources to do so? Do you think they would improve teacher quality in your school or district?

Written by Jennifer Tuzzeo, Writer/Editor II

References

Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). What we can learn from Finland’s successful school reform. Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/home/40991.htm

Mullis, I. V. S., Martin, M. O., Foy, P., & Arora, A. (2012). Chestnut Hill, MA: TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center, Boston College. Retrieved from  http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/timss2011/downloads/T11_IR_Mathematics_FullBook.pdf 

Mullis, I. V. S., Martin, M. O., Foy, P., & Drucker, K. T. (2012). PIRLS 2001 international results in reading. Chestnut Hill, MA: TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center, Boston College. Retrieved from
http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/pirls2011/downloads/P11_IR_FullBook.pdf  

Tucker, M. (2011). Standing on the shoulders of giants: An American agenda for education   reform. National Center on Education and the Economy. Retrieved from http://www.ncee.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Standing-on-the-Shoulders-of-Giants-An-American-Agenda-for-Education-Reform.pdf

Wei, R. C., Andree, A., & Darling-Hammond, L. (2009). How nations invest in teachers. Educational
Leadership, 66(5), 28–33.

 

Data show classroom observations decline in spring

Classroom observations, or walkthroughs, are quick snapshots that, over time, begin to show trends within a school—trends which can be used to identify staff development needs. Based on feedback from our Power Walkthrough clients, we’ve found that schools and districts use their observation data to set goals, provide specific professional development, increase coaching conversations, and enhance mentoring programs.

But in examining our clients’ data, we often see a decrease in the number of walkthroughs during April and May. Walkthroughs should be an integral part of the school culture and part of the normal routine in which teachers and students are comfortable with administrators in the classroom. If we know and understand the importance of walkthroughs, why is there such a large drop-off in how many are done during the last quarter of the school year?

Are you seeing similar trends in your school? Why do you think this might be? We welcome your insights in the comments below.

Written by senior consultant Lisa Maxfield and administrative specialist Cheryl Mervich.