Scholastic Achievement Partners Conference Summary by Caroline Bailey

FOCUS ON W H AT M AT T ER S MOST:

Making School Improvement a Reality

ROU N D TA BLE R EC A P prepared&by

SU M M A RY I s e e thi s a s wha t c ould b e c hara c te r i z ed a s the b e s t of tim e s and the wor s t of time s . All the things c oming down the pike hit at the ver y core of what public education h a s m e a n t t o a l l o f u s . If w e d o n’ t d o w h a t n e e d s to b e d o n e n o w, w e a re handing ove r e ve r ything, title and de ed , for wha t we k now a s p ublic e du c a tion . Focus&on&What& &conference&gathered&around& The&district&leaders&held&nothing&back&when&it&came&to&exposing&their&real&issues&and& words,&to&recapture&the&big&thinking&for&those&who&were&there,&and&to&extend&the& &

“It has to be all hands on deck,”

DAY O N E :

I DEN T I F Y I NG C H A LLENGES & GA PS A ROU N D COM PR EH ENSI V E SC HOOL I M PROV EM EN T O u r d i s t r i c t f e e l s lik e I h av e n i n e f ro n t b u r n e r s . I d o n’t have any b a c k b ur n e r s a t all . Eve r ything s e e m s to b e on the f ron t b ur n e r. &

leadership,&instruction,&assessing,&and,&of&course,&the&professional&development&&

TOPIC 1:

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T H E$U RG EN T$N EED$FO R $ C H A N G E & “It’s such an extraordinary time. I call it the Great Tsunami.”

“The big message we need to grapple with is this notion of reinvention as opposed to reform.” “You have 8,000 students reading below proficiency, and there’s no sense of urgency in the district, and even throughout the community, that these kids can’t read.” “We have to blow up the system and start again.” A L I G N I N G $ T H E $ S TA K EH O L D ER S

“There’s gap between what those of us in the field see as important and what those outside of the field see as important.” “The idea of reform takes on so many different configurations. To a politician it’s one thing; to a parent it’s another thing. We’re not speaking from the same page when we talk about reform.” “The Board of Education members would like things done as they have always been done, without recognizing that the world is changing and that we need to address the needs of our youngsters in a different manner than in the past.” H UG E$D EM A N D$FO R$ PRO FE S S I O N A L $ D E V ELO PM EN T$

“How do you build capacity when you have a teaching force that you’re not really treating like professionals in terms of giving them the time to master some of these new skills, or to talk to each other about the work that’s going on in the classroom?” “They’re asking, ‘Can we have some more professional development days?’” “The whole issue of coaching and PD are two really critical things.”

R ED$ TA PE changes&they&sought&to&implement&were&overridden&by&the&demand&to&appease& “Research is replete with when you have a political Board of Education versus a professional board, there’s a high probability that you’re going to have a failing system.” “We have a lack of control on what the state legislatures and what the State Departments of Education do, and even to a degree our own Boards of Education, who sometimes could care less about what we’re doing.” “[Our] education code is extremely thick. But when you go to charter schools their code isn’t. So what have these schools gotten rid of that’s allowed them to successfully meet the learning needs of their children?” BU D G E T$C U T S

“It costs $34,000 a year to maintain a juvenile in the system and they’re only giving me $5,200 to educate them.” “All of our careers we’re trying to figure out how to do more with less.” “We’re always accused of crying about the lack of money. So I wouldn’t want to disappoint.” L AC K$O F$CO L L A B O R AT I O N

“Lack of collaborative structure. I think we’re doing a better job within buildings, but across districts we still very much operate in silos.” “We as superintendents don’t spend enough time together. Isn’t it ironic that we expect our colleagues to have professional dialogues and professional learning communities but when do we sit and start talking?” 4

TOPIC 2:

C A PAC I T Y$ G A P S & help&teachers,&as&well&as&leaders,&understand&the&standards&and&incorporate&them&

“We are experiencing a huge gap]] our teachers are further along with the standards than our leadership.” “I see great issues with preparing social studies, algebra teachers, chemistry teachers, etcetera to understand that now they not only have to teach a concept, but have a literacy standard.” “[We’re] really just kind of f lying blind.” G E T T I N G$T H E$R I G H T$ PEO PL E $ FO R $ T H E $ J O B (S)

“We have to pay more attention to who we’re bringing into the organization. Every day I look at my Chief Economic Officer and say, ‘Who the hell hired this person?’ And when I looked at the hiring practices for the past, I felt like killing the HR person for what they created.” “When you talk about [cuts], it’s my younger teachers who are let go. My innovative teachers are the ones going.”

S C A L I N G$T H E$SUCC E S S $ S TO R I E S

“We’ve got a lab school that was founded on the International Center [ for Leadership in Education]’s concepts that really does work. They’re doing amazing things. But how do we replicate what they’re doing there?” “You have those schools [where] someone said, ‘Go for it. I give you permission. These are the parameters; go for it.’ And they did it successfully. Why can’t we do that system]wide?”

TOPIC 3:

The&big&theme&here:&teachers&need&stronger&content&knowledge,&and&they&have&to& &

R ED EFI N I N G$ T E AC H ER S

“There’s a dramatic difference in what our kids tell us is important and what our staff are teaching.” “The role of today’s teacher is very different. It is the role of the facilitator. It is somebody who possesses the perfect balance of skill and will, being better at inciting questions, inciting discord, and promoting individualized learning.” “We throw [new teachers] to the wolves on day one, without coaching, without support, and then 50% of them quit after five years. Most of the 50% are probably folks who are talented, and we might want to keep them.”

FE A R$ FAC TO R

“I see the general education teachers running scared.” “The ground is kind of unsettled. Even the teacher who is most established is now suddenly looking at their peers and saying, ‘So what do you know about the Common Core that’s coming?’” “There’s extremely low morale as a result of the attacks on public education, implications that teachers don’t deserve the pay they get, the retirement they get, etc. They’re feeling kicked around, and they are.” BU I L D I N G$S KI L L

“America’s colleges and universities do a lousy job preparing teachers. In most states, to teach sixth grade math or science you need only one semester credit in math or science to teach math or science. And then we wonder why we’re 25th in the world in math and science.” “Across the nation we don’t expect enough mathematics of our teachers. They’re only required one college level math to be an elementary school teacher.” C O PI N G$ WI T H$ U N I O N S

“Once you marry a teacher . . . it’s a 40]year marriage.” “The unions are saying for the first time on paper that there are teachers that don’t belong in the classroom and that there needs to be an expedited process to remove those teachers from the classroom.” “We’ve got to have higher expectations and higher standards. Until we get union buy]in to change the system that we currently have, we are not going to make the kind of change that we need.”

R E T H I N K I N G$ PRO FE S S I O N A L$D E V ELO PM EN T

“Quality means that you don’t hire a teacher and forever on after you don’t do anything to support them. There’s a great deal of professional development and support that needs to take place.” “The main reason teachers stay or leave is the level of support they get. We know that. It’s what the research says. 15th on the list is pay.” “Going to a conference, coming back and sharing with your colleague for an hour doesn’t work. You need a model that combines practice and follow]up. If we design a good model of professional development for teachers and superintendents too, I think we’ll have a better chance.” “You need a model that combines coaching, combines practice, combines follow up, a good model of professional development.” “We’re finding teachers are making time among themselves to model, to coach, to collaborate. And now that they’re coming out of their tombs, they’re allowing other people to come in and work with them, have peers come in to look at them, make assessments, and practice what they’re being taught, I see the whole apple cart being upset.”

TOPIC 4:

G R E AT$PR I N C I PA L S$A R E $ C RU C I A L $ TO $ C H A N G E

“The principal is still key. My experience over time is that you track success right back to the principal to a large degree.” “Where you see an outstanding school it’s largely because there’s been an outstanding principal that has led the school up to that point. I think we get the best bang for our buck by looking first to our principals.” G R E AT$PR I N C I PA L S$N EED $ G R E AT $ C OAC H I N G

“I think that most of us here probably had a great mentor, and that’s something we’re losing somewhat.” “Tiger Woods has a coach. Pavarotti has a coach. The people who are the best in their work have coaches. If you were as good as them, why would you have a coach? I think there is an intrinsic piece of them that always wants feedback. I sense a problem in that educators don’t like feedback.” G R E AT$PR I N C I PA L S$A R E $ H A R D $ TO $ FI N D

“The shortage of people stepping forward at this time to take leadership positions, whether they be in principal jobs or central office jobs is [problematic].” “The model for principal preparation that we have at the university level hasn’t changed. The same course you took, I took and my professors took years ago have not changed.” “We have a lot of high school principals that can run a 1970s high school, but not many that really can run the high school of the future.”

“One of my biggest challenges is what to do with mediocre leadership. I don’t have any incompetent principals, but I have a lot who are mediocre. And so when I propose to replace three principals who haven’t done anything bad, it’s been quite a challenge. The way I’m selling it to the board is saying well what’s your standard? If it’s mediocrity, then we’re doing great right now.” “What we need today are people who are instructional leaders, strategic, understand what goes on in classrooms, effectively deal with teacher performance, and who are good politicians—and there’s nothing wrong with that— that can galvanize communities into supporting reform efforts in schools rather than succumbing to the social pressures of the surrounding communities.” EN D L E S S$D I S T R AC T I O N S$

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“You know the Whack]a]Mole game? One thing pops up and you whack it and then the next one pops up. Instead of thinking systemically and strategically, we’re jumping and getting off track.” “The core purpose of our work is creating environments of rich and valuable learning, and the principal is in the office answering emails.” EI T H ER /O R$A PPROAC H E S $ TO $ I N S T RU C T I O N A L $ L E A D ER S H I P

“It worries me a little bit that veteran educators aren’t seen as being innovative. I see young principals and young teachers who make lots of mistakes. There’s a lot that veteran educators bring to the table. It’s really about those two groups working together to really collaborate and to bring expertise from both sides. I don’t see a lot of that going on.” “As school districts, what happens is we’re all the way here, and then we f lip all the way there. We never can find a synthesis of the two in the middle, where we say ‘You know what? There are some good things going on over here, and some great things going on over here.”

TOPIC 5:

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D EFI N I N G$I N T ERV EN T I O N$

“I asked my reading teachers, ‘What is intervention? What are the intervention programs you have in your school?’ When they named them, they were not intervention programs.” “We talk about RTI a lot. From Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, etc. But really, how do you really do it?” L AC K$O F$FAC I L I T I E S

“My buildings are maxed out. So we’re using closets, hallways.” “We have one principal who started holding parent meetings and training sessions at the local laundromat. At night, when their laundry is in, they taught English, reading, everything. The parents just f locked to it.” T H E$I M PAC T$O F$P OV ER T Y

“Kids jump from district to district and school to school because of poverty.” “The poverty gap keeps growing.”

I N C R E A S I N G$ C O N T EN T$ K N OWL ED G E

“Teacher content knowledge is a huge issue. There are very real issues around teachers’ ability to really understand how reading, and the teaching of reading, plays out across the years. Six credits and you can teach reading; that’s really pathetic.” “We don’t even identify teachers who specialize in secondary kids and are not able to read at a secondary level.” “[Trying to find] certified math teachers with special ed experience is not easy.”

DAY T WO :

C R A F T I NG & I M PLEM EN T I NG SOLU T IONS It ’s ab ou t fo c u sing our a t te n tion and fo c u sing our e f for t and fo c u sing our mon e y. & &

TOPIC 1:

FO C US,$FO C US,$FO C U S

“[Focus] on one thing because I find when you have a school in crisis, often you’re asked what are your eight goals or your ten goals for the year.” “Pick a focus, stay focused, and support it clearly through to implementation.”

C U LT I VAT E $ G R E AT $ L E A D ER S H I P

“You can have the right concept, but if you don’t have the right leaders, that concept is going nowhere.” “We have to come together on a national or regional level and create our own preparatory program for our leadership benches. We have them for superintendents at Harvard and other places. Why not create our own for our bench?” “I think we have to think about this notion of denser leadership and how we develop it within a school.” US E$ R E S OU RC E S$ M O R E $ S T R AT EG I C A L LY

“We know that additional bodies are not in the future, so as we proceed, we need to make sure we know where our staff members’ strengths are and how to shift people around to where they’re more suited and used more effectively.” “There’s a huge benefit to a circulatory system of talent. We need to become the equalizer of talent in these schools and that’s fundamentally part of our responsibility.” “You can’t empower people who are lost. If you put more money in a failing system, you get more failure.” G E T$M O R E$H A N DS$O N$ & $ C O L L A B O R AT I V E

“This concept of direct intervention with my principals is key for me. We come into a room and each principal has a chance at the table. That’s how we broke barriers. We forced the conversation to actually be witnessed by everybody in front of me and in front of everybody who actually believes in this body of work.” “Get in there and be a part of [teacher] discussions. Make people answer the tough questions to forge ahead in the direction they need to go to improve.” “There are no overnight miracles. That it’s about day]in day]out, week in week out.” 14

T U N E$I N$TO$T E AC H ER S $ & $ S T U D EN T S

“We need to do less speaking and more listening.” “We need to spend more time listening to what teachers are saying about education right now before we continue to just push some of these processes. We also have to focus on the student voice.” “Always check with the customer]] We very [rarely] check with the kids.” T U N E$OU T$N AYS AY ER S

“Taking the naysayers and putting them over in the corner. The point being, too often that is who we listen too.” “If we continue hearing how bad we are, we’re going to start believing that.” “We cannot tolerate the individuals who have not demonstrated the willingness to move. We tend to nurture and hope and try to grow people to change, but there’s a point where there’s got to be a line that says that’s not good for kids; we’ve got to move forward.” PAY$ AT T EN T I O N $ TO$ DATA

“Confront the brutal facts. Let’s put them out there, and let’s talk about what this means for our work.” “There’s got to be a clearinghouse of best practices, at the very least, organized by demographics so that the best ideas can be observed and studied.” “Using data very strategically to provide the kind of targeted support that’s necessary is a critical way of building the kind of teams that can do this work proficiently in school communities.”

ACC EN T UAT E$ T H E$ P O S I T I V E

“We do a very good job of educating our kids. We do a very poor job of marketing ourselves in our community.” “I think we need to tell the story [of our successes] and have a shared vision and mission out there that people can jump onto.” “I need to go back and reeducate all of my stakeholders, my parents, office staff, and my principals on the value of public education with respect to creating innovators.” C U LT I VAT E $ T E A MWO R K

“Leadership capacity is more than just one person, it’s a team.” “Building comprehensive groups of people that can bring a lot of perspectives, not necessarily all from a central office, more importantly from people in the trenches.” “[Have] everyone get down and wash the f loors together. Then it’s respected, and goes across all levels.” B O O S T $ M EN TO R I N G

“How many assistants who played for Belichick and the Patriots are now head coaches? We need an apprenticeship model that’s built in. Because you don’t learn to be a great principal on your own; you don’t learn it in a classroom. You learn it by doing it underneath the mentorship of someone who’s good.” “You have to make sure assistant principals are mentored under good leaders.” “I’m thinking about ways to shorten the distance between training and implementing for teachers. Not waiting for central or outside experts to teach them, but teaching themselves and then supporting each other.”

G I V E$S C H O O L S$M O R E$ AU TO N O M Y

& allowed&to&be&more&autonomous,&leading&to&the&nurturing&and&development&of&&

“We have to collapse central office functions and put more decision making on principals to do bold things.” “A lot of times, [an improved school] is successful in spite of the district not because of the district.” “For those of us that provide structure, leadership, and strategy for district systems, we need to understand how autonomy can fit into that and continue to motivate and energize and empower people in the classroom.” “The most powerful lesson I learned was knowing when to step back. It was hard for me as a superintendent to say, ‘Okay principals, go forth and do your work’ without my being ‘So what is he doing?’”

TOPIC 2:

N E W$ PRO FE S S I O N A L$ D E V ELO PM EN T$ S T R AT EG I E S

“Discontinue these big grant workshops and really look at practicing our best practices and doing it over and over again.” “My focus is going to be on my administrators. And on training with a focus on innovation, creative thinking, best ideas and models.”

K EEPI N G$ PR I N C I PA L S $FO C US ED understood&that,&they&knew&that&this&was&something&that&even&the&greatest&principal& “I’ve seen really transformative principals come in, they want to touch everybody and they want to make a difference. And it’s hard to get them to narrow it. It isn’t a negative attribute of theirs, but it’s just really hard to hone in.” “My new high school principal has a great many initiatives he’s trying to put in place with a somewhat disgruntled staff. I keep telling him to not be a jack of all trades and master of none. I’m going to go back and have him pick one initiative and focus on it and move it forward instead of trying to implement so many different things.” I N VO LV I N G$ T E AC H ER S

“One of the keys is to make it teacher driven. If you can get them involved and you guide them, that’s the best way.” “This work has to be a ground swelling from the ground up and not mandated top down, because when you’re mandated top down it becomes compliance driven.” “I like the concept of putting staff development funds to the side and having [the staff ] write a plan for it.” S TAY I N G$T H E$CO U R S E$

“Stand for what we see and believe is right. Give it time to work in the face of opposition. Just keep the wolves and sharks away, which is not always easy to do as a superintendent because they come at us first.” “The most important thing we heard today is, you have to begin to get results, and then that’s when the commitment truly comes from the teaching staff. Once people see that they are getting results with kids it changes and they become so committed to the initiatives.”

“We need to make those courageous decisions, having the guts to stand for what’s right, especially putting children first, thinking outside the box is imperative. Make sure that we see what is working, and make sure we don’t throw things out before we give it a chance to work.” E VA LUAT I N G$PRO G R E S S$

“Give schools the tools to evaluate some of the things that they’re doing that are not working, because often times they don’t know how to evaluate and align to see if it is actually making an impact.” “You have to monitor for fidelity.”

TOPIC 3:

Professional&development&and&mentoring&really&took&center&stage&in&this&meaty&&

PRO FE S S I O N A L $ D E V ELO PM EN T$FO R$A L L

“Rather than just meeting with principals on a monthly basis to just regurgitate information, we’ve changed our principal meetings into professional development meetings.” “We do a lot to support principals, or we think a lot about how we can support principals and make this leadership happen. But we don’t do a lot to support central office staff.”

“Let’s bring in an expert about a topic that’s been challenging us in terms of what we’ve been seeing in student work. Let’s bring in a speaker from a local university. Let’s hear somebody different than ourselves speaking. To me, that lack of an expert at the table in the biggest challenge.” G R E AT ER$FO C US$O N$ M EN TO R I N G$

& “We’re extending the mentoring program from two years to five years for our new teachers.” “We’re focusing on strengthening our union management partnerships. We have a peer assistance review process where ten master teachers work with first year teachers and veteran teachers who have been identified as needing additional support with their intervention.” “We nest leaders. Our literacy coaches become assistant principals. The best of the literacy coaches become assistant principals. The best of the assistant principals then become nested with the highest performing principals.” I M PROV I N G $ T H E $ TA L EN T$ P O O L

“We just involuntary transferred about 30 teachers. There were some folks that just needed to go, needed to move. The schools weren’t going to change with certain people just staying put.” “It’s the hiring process that’s wrong. How did it get so wrong and why can’t you get the right people in there? It’s about getting the right people in the first place.” “The goal, the mission, is to ensure that we can recruit and retain and support high]quality teachers.”

R E T H I N K I N G$T E AC H ER $ E VA LUAT I O N$

“We have an evaluation instrument that’s not only going to serve as an evaluative tool, but also professional development document.” “Look what we’re doing to ourselves in order to comply with something. We’re picking one form over the other. Who knows if either one is good? Both focus on what the teacher’s doing, not what the kid’s doing. This is what we ‘pick’ as opposed to thinking ‘What do we really want out of a highly effective teacher evaluation system?’” “Where is the teacher input in all of this? There wasn’t any. My question to the unions: ‘Are you making sure your teachers know the instrument that you selected to evaluate them?’” LO O K I N G$B E YO N D$“ T E AC H I N G $ TO $ T H E $ T E S T ”$ place&an&emphasis&on&teaching&students&skills&for&life&beyond&the&classroom&rather& “You have to believe that if I am doing this, the numbers will come. Instead of if I focus on the numbers, students will become literate.” “If you’re thinking about what do students need, and what do we want them to be able to do when they leave our school, then that has to be your target. It can’t be the test.”

TOPIC 4:

J O B @ EM B ED D ED$COAC H I N G

“Modeling for all what we want not only teachers to do, but what we want prin] cipals to do. If you don’t model what you want other to do, that’s a huge part of this, the improvements that we see and want just won’t happen at the scale and level that we anticipate.” “We’ve had a lot of luck with outside coaching. We’re doing a lot with inside coaching too. [But] while it’s great to have inside coaches, sometimes you really get more when the outside person comes in who is real direct with the people. So, we’re really stretching to think of how to keep some of our outside coaching when funding streams are dying out.” “We started the READ 180 and System 44 in Joplin last year, and we hired a coach from Scholastic. This year we hired a coach and another literacy person so that the Scholastic coach could mentor our teachers and our coach, in order to be the literacy coach next year. We’ve seen great growth.” C U S TO M I Z ED$ S O LU T I O N S

“We are really focused on putting decision]making back at the school site. So we’re not going to be mandating that this is the intervention you are going to select. They’re going to be looking at the data as a team, making those choices.” “We became our own SES provider this year, and we thought we’d go for it and see what would happen. It was approved at the state level. We’re mandating kids who aren’t performing on our benchmarks that they do attend this.”

“We had eight of our very best math teachers get together and devise an intervention program that we offer as a direct instruction model in summer.” “We started [our own] literacy model to teach kids at a lesser cost. We also developed Saturday academies and we have some schools that have gone to an extended day model, where they have academic intervention built]in to the day.” C U LT I VAT I N G$ A $ “ N O @ FA I L”$ C U LT U R E & & “Early and intensive interventions. You just can’t wait until things are too far]gone, hold kids back, and then socially promote later. “At the high school level, any student now that makes below a C is required to stay before or after school to get additional help. The goal is to bring your grade up from a D or an F to a C or better. [Change] the culture to ‘You’re not going to fail here, and we’re going to do what we need to do to support that.’”

TOPIC 5:

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R E S T RU C T U R I N G$ S TA FF $&$S YS T EM S

“I need to restructure our staff so that we can enhance and empower the schools to focus more. A lot of times, we are probably the problem.” “We created a Tier 1, 2 and 3 for each school on the various things we believe are important. Now we can get resources out sooner.”

“We want to do some vertical teaming and mirror the organization at the district level, having someone who is accountable in every building in every district to be focused on comprehensive school improvement.” “Organize for learning as opposed to teaching. If you do that, everything else sort of falls into place.” “We’re looking at a more competency based model. If a student is achieving 8th grade math at 5th grade then why shouldn’t they be in the 8th grade classroom? If they’re achieving 5th grade math and they’re in 8th grade, why shouldn’t they be focusing on what they need.” “We set up a system, almost an RTI system, for our schools where we differenti] ate how we support schools. [Our lenses are] assistance, autonomy, accountabil] ity. Schools that are performing at high levels have more autonomy and those at very low levels receive more assistance. Because we know that providing equal support is not equity.

CONC LUSION & &

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