Curriculum Leadership Institute

Pathways to School Improvement

school improvement

Leaders Hungry for Details of Systemic Change

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In July 2018, we were invited to present at the Southern Region Leadership Conference in Biloxi, Mississippi, hosted by the Mississippi School Board Association.  The goal for our two sessions was to help district leaders from Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas prioritize specific take-home steps for their districts to build and establish systemic leadership for curriculum, instruction, and assessment.  Reflecting upon the group and individual interactions both during and after the sessions, we believe that we achieved the level of interest for which we were striving! District leaders were excited about the specific implementation details for creating systemic leadership and questions for evaluating their current leadership processes for curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

While not a comprehensive list by any means, we present this list of questions to initiate and open a dialogue regarding district-wide academic processes among stakeholders within a district.  These challenging questions could help an administrative team affirm or evaluate their current curriculum structures and processes.  The questions are posed from a first-person perspective from within a district.

  1.      Do we have an academic structure in place to ensure that our curriculum processes are district-based rather than site-based?
  2.      Do we have a model or system of processes we follow, as a district, for alignment of curriculum, instruction, and assessment?
  3.      Does our current model or system of processes have a built-in reporting method so that documentation is readily available for accreditation           visits or mandated reports (ESSA, AdvancED, etc.) without having to spend an extra amount of time and expense to prepare such evidence?
  4.      Have we, as a district studied change theory sufficiently to support first and second order changes within the district?
  5.      Do we need outside help to establish a systemic, shared-decision making culture for these issues?
  6.      Do we have a district-wide, board-approved policy for how curriculum, instruction, assessment, and student learning decisions are made to             ensure stability when there are administrative staff changes?
  7.      Do we have a structured timeline (long-range plan) to indicate the cycle of curriculum development, resource adoption, and the writing of               local assessments for every subject area?
  8.      Do we have a district-wide, representative body of stakeholders (various levels of administration, teachers, specialists, board members,                 community members) that meets regularly rather than leaving the responsibility to a single person to address such things as:
    • Acceptable grading practices
    • Assessment use (security and administration)
    • Accountability requirements to assure implementation of the district curriculum
    • Instructional alignment to the curriculum
    • Definitions of mastery
    • Use of data from assessments
  9.      What roles do the building principal or other administrators play as instructional leaders within the district?
  10.    Do we have consistency in what is taught and what is expected of students within the same grade level or course regardless of the                         teacher, building, or year?
  11.    How are new staff members prepared to follow the model/procedures before they begin teaching in our district?
  12.    How does the district ensure that the required use of the curriculum is put into practice with fidelity?
  13.    Do we have valid, local assessments to use as data for timely intervention for students who are struggling?

Although not exhaustive, these are some examples of questions that the Curriculum Leadership Institute Model for School Improvement provides support in answering.  Click here for a rubric to determine where your district’s current strengths and weaknesses are in addressing these critical issues.

Photo Credit: Jamie Street

Choosing a School Improvement Strategy

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Old public school building

download_pdf_smWhether your district is already working with CLI, or is considering that possibility, it is important to know why CLI is the right choice in this new era of school improvement.  CLI’s comprehensive and multi-dimensional Pathways to School Improvement Model fits nicely with all new and emerging recommendations for meeting standards and expectations.

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During the original NCLB era school district leaders could choose an improvement strategy focused primarily on gathering and using data about student learning, and ensuring that students meet adequate yearly progress (AYP) goals as measured on a state’s assessments.   Board members and a district’s administrative team often chose an improvement strategy that emphasized the internal development of classroom and grade level or subject area “common” tests.  Such tests were to be aligned with state standards in NCLB’s designated subjects, initially mathematics and reading.  The logic behind this kind of school improvement seemed clear:  Tests identify what students should know or do, so instruction should be designed and delivered to ensure that students do well on those assessments.

Any outside individual or organization asked to help the district achieve that type of measured accountability had to guarantee progress in achieving AYP.  That usually meant improving the effectiveness of local techniques for gathering data and using them appropriately.   It also meant raising the ability of teachers to create classroom learning targets and helping students meet them on standards-aligned local tests.

Changes Caused by the Common Core, NGS, C3, and Other State Standards

Although not all states have adopted or kept the new, more nationally accepted State Standards, they influence the general discussion about school accountability in new and complex ways.  What emerges from those discussions are novel ideas of what schools should be like, most of which involve much more than what was included in the original NCLB era.  In a nutshell, here are four ways conditions are different and how CLI can meet the new challenges:

  • Teachers: The standards are now centered on the importance of students being prepared for college and careers, and that requires teachers to be more than instructional guides for helping students do well in specific and narrow learning outcomes.  Teachers must now create a scholastically deep and meaningful learning environment that includes theories, applications, and dynamic involvement with the subject.  That means both the preservice and ongoing preparation of teachers must be more comprehensive, intense, and involving.
  • Accreditation: Leaders in both education and business now realize the importance of a PK-12 district in developing, maintaining and implementing a well-articulated and sequentially coherent academic program.  No longer do key organizations that approve public school programs isolate their attention on individual buildings alone, or ignore the internal decision-making and action-taking dynamics required to make programs run smoothly.  The primary school accreditation association in the United States is AdvancED, which evaluates these internal processes at the district level and assists in identifying areas of strength and weakness as well as goal-setting to improve.  The CLI Model aligns almost perfectly with the AdvancED standards with the exception of tangential aspects such as budget priorities.
  • Assessment/Student Expectations: The media have been reporting on debates concerning what public school students should know or do, and a consensus is emerging that traditional fill-in-the-bubble multiple choice assessments are losing favor as a sole means for measuring student academic skills.  Assessment organizations such as ACT, PARCC, SBAC, and SAT have made it clear that students should also be able to score well on performance-based assessments that show college and career readiness, although there is some debate about the formatting and weight of these types of questions.
  • Scholastic Behaviors: It’s unclear how pervasive the less measurable aspects of school improvement can become, but such professional organizations as the National Education Association are capsulizing important student behaviors as they prepare to become productive and reflective college students, job holders, citizens and leaders.   The NEA refers to them as the “Four Cs,” which stand for critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity.  These four behaviors are either inherent to or supportive of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Domains, which are also a significant part of the CLI Model.

School improvement isn’t easy; however, CLI advocates that all districts can empower themselves to meet the challenges through well-planned and implemented processes.  School improvement is always a top priority for every school district!