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Cognia helps close performance gaps and creates culture of ongoing improvement
Accreditation and planning processes address the big question: ‘How do we know that what we’re doing is really the best we can do?’ Sheppard Ranbom reports.
Manaret Heliopolis International School (MHIS) opened in Cairo, Egypt four years ago to provide students from families of relatively modest means a top-notch international education. ‘In a country where teacher-centric learning is everywhere, most Egyptian young people are apathetic about school by the time they reach middle and high school’ says Sam Welbeck, the school’s founding principal. ‘Our goal was to create the antithesis of a military-style learning regimen. We intentionally created a learner-centric school—a place where learning is fun and nurturing, and that creates lifelong learners who are free to think for themselves.’
MHIS uses the International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme. It is the only school in its district to do so, and one of only 13 IB schools in Egypt. Begun as a K–3 school, MHIS has added a new grade each year and now serves students in K–7. The school offers an inquiry-based, projectcentered approach that allows students to take responsibility for their own learning at a young age.
Mr Welbeck notes that two years after the school opened, its leaders wanted an independent, objective evaluation to see if the school was achieving its vision and high standards, and effectively executing its plan. The leaders turned to Cognia™ (then AdvancED®), an international accreditation, assessment and school improvement organization, to put their work to the test. ‘The choice of working with Cognia was easy,’ Mr Welbeck says. ‘We wanted to work with a group
that had credibility and a broad global network. We also were intrigued by their accreditation process, which taught us some humbling lessons.’
Cognia showed Mr Welbeck’s colleagues that the school employed numerous performance-monitoring approaches to gather all kinds of data, but never put the data to use. The school relied on teacher feedback, grades, and report cards to tell parents how well students were performing. But none of the micro-level information being gathered could demonstrate at the macro level if new programs and existing policies bolstered student and school performance.
‘Cognia showed us how to find the story the data tell.’ according to Mr Welbeck. ‘We learned that it’s not enough to know that in the second term Yusef exceeded his firstterm score in reading or math. The bigger questions are: ‘How is Yusef’s data helping us decide whether we are doing better for him and students like him? How does this and other data influence where we invest our financial resources and time to close performance gaps?’ ‘We were making the same mistake too many schools make. With no objective understanding of our performance, we attributed success to our own programs when grades went up and attributed every problem to students when grades went down.’
Now, Mr Welbeck notes that thanks to the accreditation process and its focus on continuous improvement, school officials systematically: • Reflect on what they are doing • Seek to prove what the problem is and determine whether it requires a solution • Determine what type of solution is required based on evidence • Judge whether the proposed solution will solve the problem • Implement the solution and monitor results • Make regular changes based on results • Repeat the continuous improvement cycle
New tools lead the way
Mr Welbeck notes that the Cognia Effective Learning Environments Observation Tool® (eleot®) and stakeholder surveys have been particularly effective. The Cognia eleot, Mr Welbeck says, is the ideal instrument for a learner-centric school. Installed on cellphones and other mobile devices, eleot does not videotape the teacher but focuses on what students are doing and how they are responding in classrooms, across multiple aspects that support learning. ‘This app gives us a fair and objective assessment of classroom practice. It helps teachers improve their practice and school leaders develop policies to better support more engaging teaching.’
In addition, Cognia provides surveys that enable members of each institution’s educational ecosystem to share their perspectives and experiences. School leaders learn how the work of the institution affects these stakeholders, including, most importantly, students. Teachers, staff, parents, and students can work with building leaders to set school goals and gain a shared vision of what needs to be accomplished. The stakeholder engagement process also helps to develop a common language and understanding about what learnercentric education is. ‘Everyone becomes part of the culture and conversation about how learners improve instead of focusing on what students are doing,’ Mr Welbeck says. The Cognia stakeholder process encourages student voice. At MHIS, for example, students participate with parents and other leaders on an advisory council suggesting needed changes at the school.
Actionable improvement plans
Accreditation does not lead just to a seal of approval. At MHIS, educator and stakeholder committees focus on different areas of improvement to develop actionable plans to raise performance. All plans include clear decision checkpoints that allow the school to make changes in programs, policies, and practices in short periods of time.
The school has made particular progress in helping students (97 percent of whom are first-time English language learners) raise performance in English language literacy, including reading, grammar, and fluency. In the upper grades where students have been in school for two years or more, the school has seen a 34 percent increase in achievement on a commonly used standardized test that maps student growth across these skills in a year and a half. The school is now working to make the same types of improvements in numeracy, science, and social studies in the upper grade levels. For lower grades, the school has created its own diagnostic exams to set benchmarks for and measure improvement.
Site visits expand horizons
In the Cognia accreditation process, school leaders have opportunities to conduct accreditation reviews at schools in their own and other countries. ‘I’ve had the chance to see how schools in Eastern Europe and Egypt use eleot, monitor progress, and tackle their biggest challenges. That’s one of the best things about being part of the network. You see that every school is different, and you bring back new ideas. Cognia doesn’t tell you what to do. They show you how to examine everything and make needed changes based on evidence. They help schools address their biggest questions, most notably: ‘How do we know that what we’re doing is really the best we can do for our students?’’ says Mr Welbeck.
