E-Hints Related to Governance and Leadership

Below is an archive of E-Hints related to the governance and leadership of curriculum, instruction, and assessment work. We welcome you to use them to make improvements district- or schoolwide, or share them with a colleague who might benefit.

Thank you for ensuring that your staff is doing what's best for kids!

Leadership Tip - Participate in the development of curriculum. Select a subject area that you are most familiar with and be an active member of that committee. You'll have a better understanding of what is involved and how the curriculum is intended to be used.

New Challenges Require District Curriculum Councils to Revisit Curriculum Governance Policies

April 6, 2021 by Stu Ervay

Woman holding small chalkboard that says Think Big

America is beginning to change. So are its schools. The reasons are obvious. The COVID 19 Pandemic is one of them.

Other important reasons are associated with social disparities, funding, shifting governmental policy, and the purpose of education in a developing 21^st Century.

School boards, curriculum councils, teachers, and administrators are under more pressure than ever. Parents and school patrons demand solutions to nearly unsolvable problems. Most of which involve virtual learning, social distancing, and learning quality.

Meeting agendas often include topics shown below:

keeping students engaged using distance education,
the role of curriculum and instructional design,
the extent to which students are “falling behind,”
internet access,
availability of electronic tools like computers,
budgets that sustain the many changes in learning configuration,
family support systems,
teacher salaries and morale, and
the health of both teachers and students.

These topics have long been areas of concern. They are challenges made worse by the pandemic.

The first three topics in the list should be discussed as priorities by the curriculum council. They need both immediate and long-term attention. Subsequent E-Hints will offer ideas for solving immediate issues. However, now is a good time to ensure long-term policies are still in place and working.

Three are most important:

Ensure your district has a clear policy for academic program development, implementation, maintenance, and evaluation.

If there is a policy in place, is it being adhered to by the board, curriculum council, and administrative staff? If not, how can that problem be addressed?

Make certain your district has a long-range plan of action, a process that systematically upgrades the quality of curriculum, instruction, and assessment of student learning over time.

If a plan of action exists and is up to date, is it being followed according to policy provisions? If not, what can be done to resolve that problem?

Clear intentions for student learning called mastery statements are more essential than ever!

Teachers need mastery statements to guide their planning, instruction, and assessment. Parents and school patrons want to know what is expected of students. Three kinds of mastery statements are essential:

a comprehensive description of what students who complete a district’s full curriculum will know or do
descriptions of what students who complete each subject area in the district’s curriculum will know or do
an accurate statement of what students will know or do after completing each subject at grade level

If those three actions were taken years ago, today’s unique challenges might require a few modifications. We suggest the process start with your curriculum council. Recommendations can then be made to the administrative staff and board of education.

A Reflection on “What Works” from a Veteran Consultant

March 2, 2021 by Rhonda Renfro

As I reflect on the past 25 years or so of working directly with school districts of various sizes, I debated my last topic for an E-Hint. A staff colleague asked, “In your work, what have been the most important things districts can do to change school culture through curriculum development, instructional planning, and local assessment development?” So, I created this list of actions that I feel lead to the most significant impact for districts implementing the model. I daresay that these actions would lead to positive effects within any school district. They have led to intense study of best practice through research, consistent improvement of student learning, and powerful conversations between and among teachers, administrators, the board of education, and community members.

To achieve significant results, a district must establish:

a “district” mindset for the governance of curriculum, instruction, and assessment by a representative group of teachers, administrators, board, and local stakeholders.
- This district mindset demands that members put aside their titles and their individualism to make decisions that will positively benefit the school district.
- District personnel bring their expertise to the table, but the stakeholders are free to discuss as equal participants in the decision-making steps involved.
a climate of accountability for teachers and students along with district-level and building-level leadership.
- As with many action decisions, if no one is checking, it is natural to do what is “easier” when stress and deadlines encroach on planning. Accountability structures lead to productive actions for the entire school staff and foster a sense of daily accountability for students.
a Long-Range Plan to outline timeframes for curriculum development, instructional planning, and local assessment development.
- Teachers and teacher teams will not have to wonder when changes are to be made to a curriculum, leading to instructional planning adjustments, assessment revisions, and the potential for new resources.
- Administrators can budget time and finances, for upcoming needs in advance.
district-wide parameters for grading policies that positively impact student learning.
- Stakeholders should have opportunities for research and dialogue to identify and implement best practice grading solutions regarding the why and how students are evaluated for their performance.
- Teachers’ closely held beliefs about grading are often shared while decisions are made about what scores are “fair” to include and how to incorporate the scores into a “grade” for students.
- An environment of equity and fairness results from the discussions.
a common, local curriculum aligned to standards allows teachers of the same grade level or course opportunities to have planning conversations.
- Teachers collaborate to develop instructional plans with common outcome targets, leading to using all teachers’ expertise of the same grade level in each classroom. Teachers learn from each other in pursuit of common goals.
- The common, local curriculum establishes the Tier One curriculum on which to base intervention plans.
common assessments with descriptions of defined performance levels.
- Teachers carefully align local assessments to make sure they are assessing the established curriculum.
- Subjectivity is removed from grading as much as is possible.
- Results are shared within the grade level or courses to determine best instruction practices on a specific curricular goal and identify the most effective instructional strategies.
- Teachers can implement interventions in a timely manner.
- Communication regarding student progress can be more specific and include celebrations or clear steps for improvement.
a seamless progression of content and skills in each subject area for efficient instruction.
- There is a clear “roadmap” of the students’ journey of content and skills.
- Teachers can identify where or when students may have experienced a loss of successful learning.
- Teachers can rely on the learning in previous grade levels to provide the basis for new learning expectations.

These strategies or steps to improve curriculum, instruction, and assessment alignment lead to better communication between and among all stakeholders and provide stability throughout a school district. While these actions would lead to positive effects within any school district, it is often impossible to maintain the priority without a district-mandated structure explicitly designed to require discussion.

Addressing the Social-Emotional Needs of Teachers

February 2, 2021 by Emily Makelky

Teacher looks frustrated and exhausted at desk with his hands on his face

Teaching through the pandemic is more stressful, time-consuming, and emotionally-draining than any other time in recent history. The stressors of teaching kids in person, virtually, and often a combination of the two, are far beyond the many stressors that teachers have experienced. What has become abundantly clear, is that for today’s educators, the conditions and scenarios in which they are working, cannot sustain if we want to avoid mass burnout.

Since the start of the pandemic, there has been a push to make sure we are meeting the basic needs of our students. As we know, if their basic needs are not met, the chances of students being successful at achieving academic targets are slim. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is used to determine how to better meet the needs of students. This same hierarchy should also be used to better meet the needs of our teachers. Within your Curriculum Coordinating Council (CCC), or curriculum governing committee, make this topic a priority at your next meeting. Here are some ways to address this issue:

Do the research As is common practice when discussing issues within the CCC, find articles that clearly communicate the topic like this one on teacher morale from Edweek. Upon reading, ask committee members to share out what resonates with them. Ask them to reflect upon the strategies listed, determine if their school is already doing them, or if any of the strategies could work there.

Introduce Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and each level of the hierarchy. Relate each need to teachers and how their needs are not being met due to the pandemic. For example, a physiological need that may not be met right now is food. As stress levels rise and time is short, teachers may be rushing to get out of the house in the morning and may not prioritize packing a healthy lunch. Another physiological need that may be lacking is sleep or rest. Additional responsibilities at work usually take away from personal downtime and might make it more difficult for teachers to get adequate rest.

Brainstorm solutions Ask CCC members to come up with ways that the district could help meet teachers’ basic needs. Put a poster-sized piece of paper for each level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs at different tables around the room. Divide the paper into columns. The first column would identify the specific need, the second column to list what the district is already doing, and the third column is used to record what more can be done. For example:

Encourage members to be as creative as possible and not to worry about the costs. If a solution does cost money, ask them to add a dollar symbol to that one.

Prioritize solutions Use a facilitation activity, like “Spent a Dot,” to determine priorities. Give members of the committee six or so dot stickers, or sticky notes, whatever you have on hand. Ask them to walk to each paper and review the ideas offered during the brainstorming session, and “spend a dot,” or add a dot sticker to the ideas that they think should take priority while planning next steps. After the activity, it should be clear which ideas, or solutions, to move forward.

Plan next steps Good intentions and discussions will always remain just those, unless, a plan is created and followed through. For each of the priority solutions, plan what needs to be done, who will be responsible for seeing it through, and when it needs to happen. It may be helpful to create a subcommittee for following through with the plan as some solutions might take more time and effort than others. To ensure that the next steps happen, make sure to revisit this topic at the following CCC meeting, and create ways for teachers to offer their feedback.

Continue to monitor the social-emotional health of your teachers throughout the remainder of the year and be sure to communicate your efforts to better meet their basic needs. The last thing anyone wants is for a third of the teaching staff to resign because they can’t continue teaching under the conditions of this past year or so. Your teachers will appreciate that you care and that the district is looking out for their well-being.

The Role of the School Board in Ensuring Equity in Education in Various Learning Environments

January 5, 2021 by Rhonda Renfro

Teaching during COVID-19 is stressful, challenging, and confusing to even those of us who are career educators. Luckily, at least we know what is expected of us, though the environment might be varied. School board members, who don’t necessarily have experience in the classroom, are probably wondering how they can be most effective in their role. Whether an experienced educator or not, this is an excellent time for school board members to take a step back and determine what local measures are in place to ensure that all students, no matter how they attend school, receive an equitable learning experience.

In this E-Hint, we present a series of questions to serve as a starting point for open dialogue between a school board and its district superintendent, curriculum director, and the staff at large. These challenging questions would also be appropriate for an administrative team to affirm or evaluate their current curriculum processes in this environment of students “attending school” in remote, hybrid, and in-person settings.

The first question the school board and administration should answer is, “Is there consistency in what is taught and what is expected of all students within the same grade-level or course regardless of the teacher, learning environment, and time of day?” Skills, topics, and level of rigor should remain the same no matter the variables associated with teaching. Therefore, is this articulated K-12 for each content area? In other words, do we have a locally written, results-based curriculum to which all teachers have access?

Additional questions to help ensure equity in education through COVID-19 include:

Do we have a model or system of processes that we follow, as a district, to align curriculum, instruction, and assessment?
Do we have a district-wide, board-approved policy for how curriculum, instruction, assessment, and student learning decisions are made? Does it ensure stability when there are multiple learning environments for students and when immediate changes occur to those environments?
Do we have locally written, approved, common assessments by which student learning is measured?
How do the building principals and other administrators function as instructional leaders within the district and monitor student progress in various learning environments?
How are staff members prepared to follow the local curriculum and assessment protocols as they meet the challenges of the current reality in various learning environments?
Do we have a method of determining student placement in courses at the beginning of the next school year?

Although not exhaustive, these are some examples of questions that the CLI Model for School Improvement provides support in answering. The media presents the message that education is in a state of disarray. At the Curriculum Leadership Institute, we believe that teachers and districts are currently doing their best to meet student needs, even as difficult as that might be. As long as dialogue continues to ensure equity and alignment, we can successfully navigate this challenge in education as we have met challenges in the past.

Could COVID-19 Spark Updates to Grading?

November 3, 2020 by Emily Makelky

Are you tired of talking about COVID-19 and discussing how this pandemic has set your students back? One of the common complaints from teachers who incorporate any virtual learning is that grading is more complicated and challenging to maintain than when students are learning solely in person. I can’t help but wonder if this could be an opportunity to fix some of the philosophically diverse grading issues keeping schools from moving forward with their grading policies and practices.

Robert Marzano, Ken O’Connor, and others have been encouraging educators to update grading practices for decades. It seems as though these shifts happen more easily in the elementary grade levels than they do in secondary schools. There are various reasons for this delay, most notably that parents are more comfortable with the typical A-F system, or 100% grading scale. Another is the fear that colleges won’t admit a student if their grades don’t reflect a traditional grading system. While I can’t speak on behalf of post-secondary institutions, I would like to address the confusion that students and parents have felt while learning/schooling remotely.

The discussion of updating grading practices begins with clarifying what a grade means or should represent. There’s a correct answer to this question, as it’s somewhat rhetorical. The answer is that a grade should represent learning, or what a student knows and can do. A considerable benefit of standards-based/standards-referenced/competency-based grading systems is that what a student knows and can do is clearly identified. Extra factors that could affect a grade, such as late work, extra credit, or student behaviors, are left out.

Additionally, grades align with learning targets or standards rather than assignments. So, if a student cannot succeed on a learning target on one assignment, they can show success at another time. Their grade for that target or standard can then be updated to accurately reflect their current knowledge or ability. When contemplating the purpose of standards-based grading, it’s a no-brainer. But, when factoring in the intended audience’s philosophical and emotional differences, updating grading practices can get a bit more tricky. But, that was before COVID-19. Things are a bit different now.

Here’s how to begin the conversation with your teachers. Ask them what difficulties they’re having with grading that are due to adding the virtual piece. Extend the conversation to parents, too. Is there a parent-teacher organization with whom you could discuss this? Or perhaps you could send out a survey to the parents of your online students. Identify the most significant challenges to grading and analyze whether switching to a standards-based grading system might solve some of these issues. I like doing a book study with Ken O’Connor’s A Repair Kit for Grading. It includes simpler fixes as well as more complex ones. You might be able to develop momentum by fixing some of the simpler issues while working toward shifting to standards-based grading.

The pandemic has forced us to change the way teaching and learning look in our districts. I have yet to meet an educator who claims that these changes have been easy. But, perhaps a silver lining to COVID-19 and requiring a virtual component to education, is that it provides an opportunity to re-evaluate our grading practices to communicate better what our students know and can do. It may give that extra push that some of us need to make the leap to standards-based grading.

Maintain Learning Expectations No Matter the Setting

October 6, 2020 by Rhonda Renfro

African-American mother supervises her teenaged son as he studies on his computer

The “start of school” has come and gone, and school district officials have made some of the hardest decisions they have ever made. Decisions that require re-evaluation nearly every day. The building preparation, bus preparation, and schedule concerns have all been addressed to the degree that gets the school year going. Now, it’s time to focus on teaching and learning. Ensuring that all students, whether entirely on-site, fully online, in a hybrid setting, or even homeschooled, reach a level of learning such that they are prepared for their future, as unsure as that may be.

Districts have long had curriculum, instruction, and assessment conversations. They have made decisions as a district regarding their local curriculum and expectations for student performance. Those conversations and decisions are critical within a district to ensure equal opportunity for students and smooth transitions from grade-level-to-grade-level and course-to-course. The professional staff has, in turn, had detailed conversations about the importance of those decisions and any ramifications for instruction and assessment. Those decisions, though, have probably only been communicated generally to parents.

In a typical school year or school environment, as a district, you are covered! Let’s get started! However, there is NOTHING normal about this school year. Students are attending school in a myriad of ways. For the decisions made by professional staff to be implemented for all the varieties of ways that students “attend” school, communication must be carefully planned and executed. Without good communication, unintended results might occur. Those unintended results might include:

inequity issues among students,
missed building blocks within the learning process,
an unclear vision of what is “good enough” for student success,
and students may work very hard but misunderstand expectations. Therefore, when they re-enter the in-person setting, they may feel their hard work was wasted.

For the most part, parents are engaged with helping their children succeed as students; investing in their children’s success is a high priority. However, parents have jobs, multiple children, past experiences with school, and rarely do they have professional training or experience as educators. Some of the decisions that the district made will make complete sense to their staff, but not necessarily to the people charged with monitoring and implementing the remote portion of a student’s instruction.

Often, it isn’t the “what” that non-educators can’t understand, it’s “why?” Having not been present for discussions among professional staff, decisions are communicated as, “Here’s what we are going to do,” not as, “Here’s what we are going to do, this is why we are doing it, and these are the expectations for your child because of what we’re doing.” In other words, the expectation has been to communicate decisions to stakeholders and parents without necessarily explaining “why” that decision was made.

This school year, with so many variables for how students are being educated, why is just as important to parents as what. Knowing why a particular decision was made could go a long way toward alleviating unintended consequences. It may also help parents determine appropriate steps to help a struggling student without losing sight of the expectation. The time spent designing this communication might pay big dividends when students come back together in a more “normal” setting.

E-Hints Related to Governance and Leadership

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