Creating A Culture For Continuous School Improvement

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Creating A Culture For Continuous School
Improvement

• Meetings The Needs Of All Students

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Why are we here
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Take three minutes and write down your intended
outcomes for our time together today. Answer this
question Today will be successful if
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Report outToday will be successful if
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Who am I?

• How can I help?

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What Do We Believe?

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School Climate Defined

• The climate of a school reflects the attitudes,
  behaviors, and values of the many stakeholders
  who interact within the school community.
  Substantive climate change occurs when each
  individual looks within and contributes to the
  change process.

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Structure vs. Climate

• The structure of an organization
  is founded in its
• Policies
• Procedures
• Rules
• The climate of an organization
  is founded in its
• Values
• Behaviors
• Beliefs

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Challenge Educate The Kind Of Kids We Have

• Not the kind we used to have
• Not the kind we want to have
• Or the kind that exists in our dreams

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Consider The Impact Of Our Decisions
Society
Organization
Individual
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Philosophy

• Systematically developed programs based on the
  philosophy that we are NOT going to lose ANY
  childfailure is not an option

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Philosophy

• Based on 2 principles
• 1. Base all decisions on what is in the best
  interest of children
• 2. Nothing is impossible

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What is your primary purpose?

• In one sentence write down the primary purpose
  of education-do this individually-be prepared to
  report out

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What is your primary purpose

• Report out
• What are you willing to do to achieve your
  primary purpose?

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Mission

• Does your school have a mission statement?
• What does it say?
• Does it make a commitment to educating all
  children?

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Mission

Our Real Mission
is to sort and select students into widely
varying programs on the basis of their innate,
fixed aptitude. We are responsible for assessing
each students ability and/or willingness to
learn, and we then teach them accordingly. We
take credit for the achievements of
high-performing students and assign blame for
low-performance to others

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What Would Help All Students Be Better Students

• Take three minutes to write your answer to this
  question.
• Be prepared to report out.

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What Would Help All Students Be Better Students

• What students said
• More hands on activities
• More enthusiastic teachers
• Teachers expand their teaching techniques
• Teachers improve their attitudes
• Have students learning from students
• Teachers show more respect towards students
• (Results of a five year study of students ideas
  on improving learning, school safety, risk
  prevention and relationships. James Ciurczak.
  February 2004).

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Additional Findings

• What would help all students be better students
• Students drive to achieve academically is often
  driven more by the student-teacher relationship
  than by a fundamental interest in the subject.
• Students see a positive relationship with
  teachers as the pillars that come before learning
• (Results of a five year study of students ideas
  on improving learning, school safety, risk
  prevention and relationships. James Ciurczak.
  February 2004).

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Analyze The Data

• What does this data tell us?
• How do we use it?

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Even The Playing Field

• July 11th 1984
• Two babies born-July 11th was the first and last
  day those two children were on the same playing
  field
• We are not comparing apples to apples
• Social Isolation

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Important Research

• Journal of the American Medical Association
  (September 10, 1997)
• Longitudinal study on adolescent health
• Survey of over 90,000 youth
• Findings-two key indicators for lowering the
  risk of a child's involved in negative behavior
  and improvements in academic achievement
• Connectedness to a parent
• Connectedness to a school based person

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Key Predictor of Problem Behavior

• Based upon the federally funded national
  longitudinal study of at risk youth behavior the
  single most common risk factor for
• crime, substance abuse, violence, teen pregnancy
  and educational performance is unsupervised time.
• Source research from-Americas Promise,
  Communities in Schools, OJJDP, and Title V

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Enhancing School Climate Means Dealing in Reality
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Deal in Reality

• In any initiative such as this, reality is the
  operative word
• The more clearly and openly we address the
  brutal facts, the greater the opportunity to meet
  the challenges ahead of us.

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Deal in Reality

• I never gave anybody hell. I just told the
  truth and they thought it was hell.
• Harry Truman

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Embrace The Brutal Facts

• Organizations only improve
• where the truth is told and the brutal facts
  confronted
• Jim Collins

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School Change

• Successful schools do not always have fewer
  problems, they just cope with them better.
• Fullan

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Where are we now?
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Assessing Your Current Situation

• An important first step in any change initiative
  is to begin by assessing your current situation
• In this case, we are examining data that will
  help us analyze our current reality with respect
  to enhancing school climate
• Examining factors that either enhance or impede
  the school climate for all stakeholders.

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Multiple Measures of Data to Drive Decision Making
Demographics
School Processes
Perceptions
Student Learning
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Create the Dialogue
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Improving Achievement for All Students
Professional Development Training (Skills
and Knowledge)
Rigorous Learning (Specific Examples of Academic
Rigor)
Intervention (Systematic Support for Students
who are not Succeeding)
A C H I E V E M E N T
A C H I E V E M E N T
Personalization (Relationships and
Respect)
Relevance (Real-World Applications)
C U L T U R E
A P P L I C A T I O N
Focus on Results (Accountability)
D A T A
D A T A
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Change Zones
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What is the best way to move
people out of their Comfort Zone?

• Reduce isolation
• Accountability through collaboration

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The Role Of Leadership
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• No Organization Can Rise Above The Constraints Of
  Its Leadership-If You Want Collaboration Model It

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Leadership Curves
Technical Skills
Interpersonal Skills
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• Model behavior you want others to practice

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20-70-10 Principle

• According to Jack Welch
• 20 Get it
• 70 Could get it
• 10 Will never get it

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CAVE People

• There will always be C.A.V.E. people

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Immediate Steps To Improve School Climate
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Visibility

• Run for governor
• Practice active visibility
• Be seen where students dont expect you to be
  seen
• Cafeteria
• Bathrooms

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Know Your Customers

• Meet with students everyday
• Five per day
• Notes-letters
• Meet with staff everyday

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Putting It All Together

• One Practical Model For Building A Positive
  School Climate
• A Pyramid Of Intervention

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The Pyramid Addresses

• Student achievement
• Options/alternatives
• Personalization
• Relationships
• Empowerment
• Collaboration
• Time

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How Did We Build Our Pyramid of Intervention?

• The pyramid on the previous page is the result of
  a significant amount of research and data
  collection
• The development of a pyramid is a process
• Any process begins with outcomes in mind

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Parental Involvement

• Critical to success
• Engage early and often
• Focus on assets
• Develop a team approach with parents
• Over-communicate
• Emphasize accountability and responsibility
• Stress support on the home front

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Professional Development

• A commitment to on going systematic professional
  development
• Skill and time are critical
• A collaborative model

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Summer Transition Program

• 80 identified middle school students
• 3 week program
• 3 hours a day
• Program components
• Academic
• Socialization
• Recreation

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Interdisciplinary Teaching Teams

• 100 students/4 teachers
• Core disciplines
• Two year cycle
• Minimum two interdisciplinary units/year
• 5 periods per week of team planning
• Creative scheduling
• Tutorial support

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Tutored Study Halls

• Requirement for all 9th graders
• Replace traditional study hall
• Academically driven
• Enhances instructional programming

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15 Day Identification

• Identify students who are not meeting standards
  by the end of the third week of school
• Teachers determine criteria for meeting team
  standards
• Identify cause(s) of failure
• Attendance
• Behavior
• Failure to do homework
• Lack of basic skills

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15 Day Identification Log
Team
Date
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Tutor Pullout

• Tutors work with individual or small groups of
  students based on the criteria for failure
• Advantages
• Individualized instruction
• No audience
• Chance to catch up
• Highly structured
• Defined outcomes

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After School Study Hall

• Parental cooperation
• Mandated for selected students
• 1 hour, 4 days per week
• Supervised by team tutors
• Attendance records kept

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Credit Recovery

• All courses semesterized
• After-school option for students who previously
  failed a core course
• Time is equivalent to summer school
• Needed to maintain a C in current class of the
  same subject

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Success Team

• For 9th and 10th grade non-special education
  students who are unsuccessful in the regular
  class environment
• High level of accountability and structure
• Designed to help them matriculate back into the
  mainstream

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Life Program

• Off-campus location
• Last stop for students who exhibit significant
  behavioral and/or attendance problems
• Focus on basic life skills
• Components
• Academic
• Counseling
• Vocational

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On-Line Courses

• Meet the needs of students in special situations
• Earn up to 2.5 credits

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Another Example of a Pyramid of Intervention

• Recycling
• Double block students in core academic subjects

• Specific Strategic staff development to enhance
  school improvement
• Academic Individualized Education Plans Identify
  alternate assessment strategies
• Develop an academic contact for teachers to
  monitor tutorials in after school tutoring
  programs

• After school tutorials
• Mandatory remediation
• Parent contact
• Data analysis
• Re-teach and retest

• BBC
• 3-, 6-, 9- weeks assessment
• Parent communication conferences, history
• Data analysis and intervention plans
• HOTS (Higher Order Thinking Skills)

• Collegial walk-through by teachers in and out of
  department
• Peer tutoring
• Content team collaboration
• Practice electronic test-taking

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• Questions/Comments on The Pyramid

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Consider Vertical and Horizontal Articulation
To Enhance School Climate
Grade Levels
Content Areas
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Design Your Own Pyramid

• Based on the work we have done today begin to
  design your own pyramid of intervention

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Based On The Previous Chart

• Identify and your work thus far today identify a
  gap in services and begin to design an
  intervention strategy by following the steps on
  the next slide.
• Be prepared to report out

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Fundamental Principles of Classroom Instruction

• Ralph W. Tyler (1949) wrote Basic Principles of
  Curriculum Instruction

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Tyler argued that there are two fundamental
questions to be answered with respect to
classroom instruction

• What do we want students to learn (curriculum)?
• What evidence will we accept to verify their
  learning (assessment)?

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Taking Tylers original work one step further, we
need to ask the questionWhat do we do when
students dont learn?
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What DistinguishesSuccessful Schools

• Consistently reinventing themselves to achieve
  their primary purpose
• No plateaus, always moving forward, looking at
  new ways to meet the needs of all students
• Realize that the opportunity set is always
  changing
• The external environment
• Understand that the skill set must change to
  meet the changes in the external environment

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The 80-15-5 percent principle
5
15
80
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Keep in Mind

• It is important to note that when considering
  prevention and intervention strategies this is
  not solely a school issue
• There are both internal and external factors
  that impact these strategies, and it will take a
  commitment from multiple stakeholders to address
  these challenges
• Be creative

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From your teams perspective

• With your team, using any information at your
  disposal clearly state (and record) the
  intervention and prevention strategies you
  currently have in place in your school
• Please be as specific as possible
  (academic/behavioral)
• Be prepared to report out

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Collaboration
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Teacher isolation is one of the central impeding
factors to successful and sustainable school
reform
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Creating a Collaborative Culture

• We need to make collaboration the way we do
  business
• A collaborative culture needs to become the
  institutional norm, not the exception
• By no means easy to do, but the great schools do
  it-what is the alternative?

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Determining Your Readiness For Collaboration
Review Culture Resources and Renewing Americas
Schools A Guide for School-Based Action by Carl
Glickman
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Collaboration is not Congeniality

• The Secret Santa exchange
• Recognition of birthdays
• Friday afternoon social gatherings

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True Collaboration is not Staff Developing
Operational Guidelines and Procedures

• The attempt to build consensus on
• How teachers respond to issues such as tardiness,
  whether the school permits classroom parties or
  not, supervision rotation for recess, etc.

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Cooperation is not Collaboration

• Many schools point to teachers working together
  to create school wide programs as evidence of a
  collaborative culture
• Planning an annual school picnic
• Science Fair
• Career Day
• Etc.

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The Examples Described in the Previous Slides

• Are often used as examples of collaboration
• All the activities mentioned above are of value
  and worthwhile
• There is little evidence that teacher
  congeniality and social interactions impact
  student achievement. Simply put, they will not
  transform a school (Marzano, 2003)

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Collaboration Defined

• A commitment by all stakeholders to establish
  teams of educators who meet on a regular basis to
  analyzing student data, examine individual and
  collective professional practice and improve
  student achievement with measurable results.
• Steve Edwards

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The Key Term is Systematic

• Teachers are not invited or encouraged to
  collaborate
• Collaboration is embedded in the routine
  practices of the school

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What Does It Look Like?

• Teachers are organized into teams and given time
  to meet during the school day
• Teachers are provided specific guidelines and
  asked to engage in specific activities to help
  them focus on student achievement

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Teams Address the Key Questions

• What is it we want students to learn?
• How will we know when each student has learned
  it?
• How can we improve on current levels of student
  achievement?
• What is our primary purpose?

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The Role of This Team In The Collaborative Process
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Building a Collaborative Culture

• Work from the micro to the macro
• Your team
• The staff
• The community
• And beyond

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This School Leadership Team

• How do you behave as a team? Do you model
  collaboration as stated in the previous slides?
• Do you regularly collaborate in the truest sense?
• Are you exploiting the leadership capacities of
  this team?
• What are your individual strengths? Where are
  your gaps?

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Impact Professional Practice

• Staff uses collaboration as a catalyst to change
  practice
• Continuously looking for more effective ways to
  help all students learn

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Collective Process is Assessed

• Assessed on results
• Not based on perceptions, projects or positive
  intentions
• Teams identify and pursue specific, measurable,
  results-orientated goals
• Further, teams look for evidence of student
  achievement as their measure of success

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The Leadership Teams Contribution

• You as a leadership team foster collaboration
  when you engage teams of teachers in
• Clarifying the essential knowledge and skills of
  a particular grade level
• Developing common assessments of student learning
• Analyzing results to identify strengths and
  weaknesses for both individual teachers and teams
• Establishing specific goals and action plans to
  improve achievement
• Teachers need both student achievement data and
  collegial support

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Based On The Previous Chart

• Identify and your work thus far today identify a
  gap in services and begin to design an
  intervention strategy by following the steps on
  the next slide.
• Be prepared to report out

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What gets measured gets managed
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Your 3 X 5 Card

• What do you value? How is it built into your day?
• 5 (students/day) x 5 (days) x 40 (weeks)1000
  visits
• 1 (staff member/day) x 180 (days)180 visits with
  staff
• 5 (classroom visits/day) x 5 (days) x 40
  (weeks)1000 classroom visits
• 5 (parent class/day) x 5 (days) x 40 (weeks)1000
  calls
• Schedule nothing during time or lunch

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Classroom Visitation Log
September, 2005
Supervisor Dr. Edwards
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Data Notebooks

• Data Notebooks
• Each principal, assistant principal, LEAD, and
  teacher will maintain a data notebook
• Contents of the notebook will be consistent for
  each of the above four groups
• Included in the teacher notebook will be
• Grade distribution data
• Results of three, seven, and nine week
  assessments
• Specific areas of weakness identified through
  periodic course assessments
• Reports from walk-through
• Intervention action sheet
• Teachers individual Blueprint for Excellence
• LEADS and building Blueprint for Excellence

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Intervention Action Sheet

• Intervention Action Sheets
• This sheet will document adjustments that will be
  made in instruction based on data analysis of
  identified weaknesses
• Evidence of interventions will be
• Teacher lesson plans that demonstrate adjustments
  in instructional practices
• Periodic review of teacher lesson plans by LEADS
• Evidence of modification in lessons as viewed
  during walk-through
• Teacher lesson objectives that address
  intervention strategies

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• Intervention Action Sheet
• Key Elements
• Identified weaknesses from periodic assessments
• Specifically state intervention strategy
• Identify how you will measure the effectiveness
  of the intervention strategy
• What data will be used?
• Identify how the intervention strategy will be
  observable
• Assessment Period from ______________ to
  _____________________

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Based on what we have discussed today consider
the following
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Knowing Where You Are
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Reach the Unreachable
Terrell Young
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Success

• The wealth of a school and the community can be
  measured in its ability to educate ALL its
  children!

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Final Thoughts
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Contact Information

• Steven W. Edwards, Ph.D.
• Phone [phone]
• Cell [phone]
• Email stevewedwards_at_comcast.net