Worlds Best School System

1
Worlds Best School System

• Quality of a School System Cannot Exceed the
  Quality of its Teachers

McKinsey Consulting Report - 2007
2
Capacity of Country to Compete in Global Economy

• Meet Demand for high-level skills
• Quality of Education System
• Equity of Learning Opportunities

3
Educational Excellence is Attainable and
Affordable

• Canada
• Finland
• Japan
• Korea
• Singapore

4
Regardless of Social and Cultural Context
Top-Performing School Systems

• 1) Get the right people to become teachers
• 2) Develop teachers into effective instructors
• 3) Ensure every child benefits from high quality
  instruction

5
Top-Ten School Systems

• Alberta
• Australia
• Belgium
• Finland
• Hong Kong

• Japan
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Ontario
• Singapore
• South Korea

6
Improving Systems Studied

• Atlanta
• Boston
• Chicago
• England

• Jordan
• New York
• Ohio

7
US Efforts to Reform Education

• 1980 to 2005 public spending on education
  increased 73 allowing for inflation
• Student-to-teacher ratio fell 18
• Thousands of improvement initiatives
• Many initiatives focused on local control and
  autonomy
• Charter Schools

8
US Efforts to Reform Education

• What happened with reform efforts?

Actual Student outcomes showed little improvement
not only in US but in other OECD countries
9
Class Size and Student Learning

• 112 Studies
• 9 studies showed slight positive impact
• 103 studies showed no relationship or negative
  relationship

10
What Does Matter

• Variation in teacher quality completely dominates
  
• any effect of reduced class size
• You cant improve student learning
• without improving instruction

11
Teacher Quality vs. Class Size Reduction

• Teacher quality as much as 50 percentile points
• Reducing class size from 23 to 15 in early grades
  an average of 8 percentile points

12
Schools and Teachers Impact LearningStudents who
enter with 50th percentile performance
Source Marzano, Figure 8.3, What Works in Schools
13
Teacher Quality vs. Class Size Reduction

• Students placed with high quality teachers will
  progress 3 times faster than those placed with
  low-performing teachers
• Students placed with low-performing teachers two
  or more years in a row the effect is largely
  irreversible

14
University of Virginia Study

• Over 800 - 1st grade classrooms
• 23 high quality positive emotional and high
  academic climate
• 31 positive emotional climate but low academic
  climate
• 28 mediocre overall quality
• 17 low overall quality
• Represents 32 states, regular and private settings

• From Study of Early Childhood Care and Youth
  Development 17 year research study National
  Institute of Child Health and Human Development
  (NICHD)

15
Foundational Components

• Rigorous Standards ISS Curriculum Guides IB
• Formative Assessments Predictive and Common
• Clear Expectations and Accountability ISS
  Raising Achievement and Closing Gap Model
• Differentiated Support for Teachers Students -
  ISS Raising Achievement and Closing Gap Model
• Sufficient Funding Stimulus for Title I and
  IDEA and possible grant for RACG Model
• Sufficient Facilities - 170 million in last six
  years

16
Attract the Best

• Top Performing systems recruit from top 5 to top
  30 of high school graduates
• Commission on Skills of American
  Workforce-reports US recruits bottom third of
  college bound graduates
• Major implications for our screening and
  interviewing

17
Attract the Best

• Alternative Programs Boston Teacher Residency,
  New York Teaching Fellows, Chicago Teaching
  Fellows recruit from top graduates
• NC Teaching Fellows is great pool for NC

18
Attracting Quality Recruits

• Status of Profession
• Good Starting Salaries above GDP per capita

19
Attracting Quality Recruits

• Effective Screening/Selection to enter teaching
  degree
• Assessment
• Interviews
• Profiles
• Limit Number of Spots in Teacher Training

20
Debunking the Myths

• We can improve schools without fundamentally
  raising the quality of people who enter teaching
• Status of the teaching profession is outside our
  control
• Attracting better people into teaching requires
  higher salaries
• Top performers are not attracted to teaching

21
Improving Instruction

• Coaching Classroom Practice
• Teacher Training in Schools and Classrooms
• Enable Teachers to Learn from Each Other
• ISS model is perfect fit for these recommendations

22
The Tasks

• School system
• Ensure teacher has materials available
• Teacher and school system
• Knowledge and capability and ambition to take one
  more child above standard than she did yesterday

23
Improving Instruction at Teacher Level What Works

• Individual teachers need to
• Be aware of their instructional weaknesses
• Gain understanding of specific best practices
  through demonstration in authentic setting
• Be motivated to make improvements
• High expectations
• Shared sense of purpose
• Collective belief they can make a difference

We MUST connect this to our teacher evaluation
process and IGPs
24
What Does Not Work

• Performance-based pay NC may eliminate ABC
  bonus
• Workshops, conferences, written best practices
  outside of application within context this is
  why we do IF model

25
Different Approaches to Improving Instruction

• Building practical skills in training
• Placing coaches in schools
• Selecting developing instructional leaders
• Enabling teachers to learn from each other

ISS succession plan model, RACG model, HYIS,
CASL, and Instructional Facilitator model
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Instructional Leaders Top Systems

• Get right teachers to become principals
• Develop instructional leadership skills
• Focus Principal time on instructional leadership

ISS Leadership Academy and 21st Century School
Executive Standards
27
Teachers Learn from Each Other

• Japan Lesson Study
• Boston Common Planning
• Finland One afternoon each week

ISS PLCs
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Being a Teacher is about Helping Children Learn

• Being a Principal is about helping adults learn
• Being a Superintendent is about helping schools
  learn

29
Process Designed to Ensure All Children Learn

• High Expectations for All Children to Achieve
• Monitor Performance Against Expectations
• Intervene When Expectations Not Met
• School Level
• Teacher Level
• Student Level

ISS Response to Intervention, RACG Model and
Teamwork Matrix
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Process Designed to Ensure All Children Learn

• The System needs to ensure that EVERY child has
  access to excellent instruction
• Schools and effective teachers can overcome the
  disadvantages resulting from a students home
  environment

31
Process Designed to Ensure All Children Learn

• The notion that a school could be failing,
• is known to be failing, and left to fail,
• looks scandalous in retrospect

32
US Conditions

• Higher educated families require more of schools
• Higher educated countries provide more funding to
  schools
• Top 5 of schools spend 12,400/pupil
• Bottom 5 of schools spend 5,700/pupil

33
Setting High Expectations

• Unpacking generalized state standards
• Student-friendly language
• Communicate standards to parents
• Collaborate on instruction with parents
• Focus on numeracy and literacy in early years
• Limit number of standards to focus on depth not
  breadth

34
Monitor Expectations and Intervene

• Low performers monitored more School in
  Improvement model
• High performers monitored less
• Key is monitor growth not just percent proficient
  EVAAS

35
Monitoring Intervention Tools

• Assessments
• School Review
• Annual until improvement shown
• External
• ISS moving from QAR to random audits 7 schools
  per year and once every 5 years

36
Monitoring Intervention Tools

• Publication of Performance Results
• (mixed results good get better, low performers
  could get worse)
• Replace School Leaders
• Sharing of Best Practices

37
Student Level Intervention

• Children of Poverty vs. Children of Professional
  Parents Age 3
• IQ 117 vs. 79
• Vocabulary 1100 words vs. 525 words
• Number of positive interactions with adults vs.
  negative interactions

38
Student Level Interaction

• Top Systems Provide
• Early Interventions Pre-school
• Intervention continuum in early grades
• Prevent early failure from compounding

39
Research Analysis

• Not a single documented case of a school or
  school system successfully turning around its
  pupil achievement trajectory in the absence of
  talented leadership
• Changing the governance or management of a system
  may be a necessary prerequisite to improvement in
  student learning

40
Expected to Remember

• Context, culture, politics, and governance will
  determine the course which system leaders must
  follow, however, none are more important than
  these guiding principles

41
Guiding Principles

• The quality of an education system cannot exceed
  the quality of its teachers
• The only way to improve outcomes is to improve
  instruction
• Achieving universally high outcomes is only
  possible by putting in place mechanisms to ensure
  that schools deliver high quality instruction to
  EVERY child