1. Structuring Retreats to Share Findings and Discuss Recommendations Paul Cobb and the MIST Team

2. Collaboration with Districts

3. Collaboration with Districts

4. District Feedback Meetings • Two hours – conference room • 6-8 district leaders • Decision making authority • Mathematics expertise • Lead researchers + district specialist(s) • Talk from notes – no PowerPoint slides • Encourage open discussion

5. District Feedback Meetings • Setting norms • Design failure • For each district strategy: • ToA: Envisioned forms of practice that constitute the goal of the strategy + intended supports and accountability relations • Findings – how that strategy is being enacted in schools • Explain why this is the case • Recommendations for revising the strategy

6. District B(2011):General Framing of the Report • The district continues to make progress but two areas where there is room for improvement: • Depth of teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching has not improved and is still below the national average • Quality of teachers’ instructional practices have not improved • Description of findings about classroom instruction + why it matters for students’ learning

7. General Framing of the Feedback Report • District is implementing a number of initiatives • These initiatives as they are actually being implemented have not been effective in supporting instructional improvement • Instructional improvement and student achievement

8. District Initiatives • Supports for Middle-Grades Mathematics Teachers • Teacher professional development • Enhanced pacing guides and interim district assessments • Teacher collaboration • Mathematics coaches • School instructional leadership

9. Findings: School Instructional Leadership • School leaders and accountability • School leaders’ visions of high quality mathematics instruction • Monitoring classroom instruction • Professional development for school leaders

10. Recommendation: School Instructional Leadership • Professional development that: • Focuses on a small number of high-leverage instructional practices • Aims to support development of their visions of high quality instruction • Enable them to communicate appropriate instructional expectations • Aligned with teacher and coach PD • Focuses on the same instructional practices

11. Reflection: Negotiating an Instructional Improvement Agenda • Researchers have to go 90% of the way: • Take district’s current ToA as the primary point of reference • Explicate conjectures that underpin findings/recommendations and give them significance • Researchers’ role is advisory • Ethics – fragile/non-existent research base

12. District Leadership Institutes • 1 ½ days in summer • Leaders across district central office units • Co-planned with senior district leader(s) • Overall goal: Develop shared agenda for instructional improvement for the next school year across central office units

13. CCSS-M: Clarifying Mathematical Capabilities Students Need to Develop • Mathematics problems from old and new 7th grade state assessments • Apply taught procedures to familiar types of problems • Analyze novel problems to determine procedures to use / calculations to perform • Can all district 7th-grade students analyze and solve novel types of problems?

14. Implications for Instruction • Teachers should: • Pose high-level tasks • Clarify distinctions between the two sample problems • Maintain the challenge of such tasks throughout the lesson • Proceduralize the task from the new state assessment

15. District Teachers’ Current Practices • District mathematics experts • Choice of tasks + maintaining rigor of task • MIST data: IQA and MKT

16. Supports for Teachers’ Development of Needed Instructional Practices • Curricular resources: • To what extent and in what ways are teachers currently using district curriculum frameworks and adopted instructional program? • Mathematics experts + MIST data • Challenge: How can we work to ensure that teachers are making greater use of available resources? • Proposal: Focus teacher collaborative time on lesson planning using the curricular resources

17. Supports for Teachers’ Development of Needed Instructional Practices • Professional learning communities: • What should happen if teacher collaboration is to support instructional improvement? • What is currently happening when mathematics teachers work together? • Math experts + MIST data • Challenge: How to make PLCs more productive? • Proposal: Leadership + types of activities + protocol

18. Implications for School Leadership • School leaders’ current practices • Leadership directors + MIST data • To what extent are these practices likely to support instructional improvement? • Articulate a vision of: • School leadership • School capacity for improvement

19. Implications for District Leadership • Clarify the work of: • District mathematics coaches • District curriculum specialists • Leadership directors

20. Wrap Up • Review what we have accomplished: • Goals fro students’ mathematical learning • Teachers’ instructional practices • School instructional leadership • District leadership • Review resulting plan for moving forward: • Clarify how MIST can assist FWISD