Confronting the Elephant in the Room: Overcoming Common Challenges

1. Confronting the Elephant in the Room:Overcoming Common Challenges Ohio Annual Statewide Education Conference 2012Columbus, Ohio, November 1, 2012 Dave WeaverDirector of Educational Evaluation andTechnical Assistance Services RMC Research Corporation, Portland, Oregon

2. Session Purpose • Identify challenges that limit effectiveness of school improvement efforts • Show how highly effective schools address these challenges • Present relevant research findings • Identify concrete steps that SIG schools can take to increase the likelihood that school improvement efforts will be effective

3. What Has Been Tried ???

4. Common SEA Approaches • Raise standards and expectations • Clarify content at each grade • Adopt curriculum materials • Align content with standards and assessments • Interpret data to change practice • Provide professional development • Reorganize administrative control • Require and monitor improvement plans • Send in experts • Many others . . . 

5. Common School Approaches • 3 out of every 4 SIG schools nationally implemented the transformation model • Replace principal • Increase teacher and leader effectiveness • Comprehensive instructional reforms • Increase learning time • Create community-oriented schools • Provide operational flexibility and sustained support

6. Common School Approaches • Develop another plan • Hire consultants and experts • Purchase new curriculum materials • Align content with standards and assessments • Provide professional development • Test kids more • Purchase technology • Others . . . 

7. The Overall Effect Is Mixed • With respect to overall student achievement: • A few move in the desired direction • Some stay the same or increase only on pace with AYP expectation • Some continue to get worse and fall further behind the AYP pace • Chronically low performing schools seem to be unaffected by the best ideas about school improvement

8. These efforts are necessary,but not sufficient to achieve the desired improvement in student learning What we have learned . . . 

9. WHY??Some Common Reasons City, E., Elmore, R., Fiarman, S., & Teitel, L. (2009), Instructional Rounds in Education. Harvard Education Press: Cambridge, MA.

10. Challenge 1–Lack of Vision & Purpose • “In most instances, principals, lead teachers, and system-level administrators are trying to improve the performance of their schools without knowing what the actual practice would have to look like to get the results they want at the classroom level.” (City, 2009, p 32) • There is often a “lack of an agreed-upon definition of what high-qualityinstruction looks like.”

11. We know a lot about howstudents learn The problem is that this knowledge is not consistently applied in daily instructional practices

12. Challenge 2–Sanctioned Private Practice • “Most people in schools work in siloed cultures characterized by independence and autonomy.” (City, 2009, p 62) • Chronically failing schools “are organizations that support the private practice of teachers”

13. Sanctioned Private Practice • “When you push hard on an essentially atomized culture with a strong set of external forces you too often get more atomized culture, not a more coherent one.” (City, 2009, p 37) • Sanctioned private practice of teachers is an equity issue

14. Challenge 3–Lack of Process • (City, 2009) “The problem is not that schools don’t have access to knowledge. Low performing schools are overwhelmed with people from multiple sectors and multiple levels of government telling them what to do.” It certainly isn’t because they aren’t trying—“Most educators are working at or very near the limit of their existing knowledge and skill.”

15. “The problem is that they don’t have a process for translating that knowledge systematically into practice.” It is often left entirely up to the teacher to determine how to use what they learned through professional development!

16. See the Elephant Yet?

17. The Bottom Line: Schools that . . .  • Have no clear vision of what effective instruction looks like in practice, • Sanction the private practice of teachers, and • Have no mechanism in place to put research into practice have little chance of improving what goes on behind the classroom door

18. Few school improvement efforts address these challenges EXPLICITLY! What goes on behind the classroom door remains unchanged!

19. How Highly Effective Schools Address These Issues

20. Characteristics of Effective Schools An instructional vision of effective learning experiences for students Job-embedded professional development Schoolwide collaborative culture Vertical and horizontal articulation of curriculum and instruction Leadership support, and encouragement

21. Instructional Vision • “Develop, with colleagues who have to work together on school improvement, a shared understanding of what they mean by effective instruction.” (City, 2009, p 10) • Build vision and purpose around knowledge of how students learn the subject (cognitive science) • Most instructional practices fail to effectively apply what research tells us about how students learn a given subject.

22. Developing Useful Vision Statements • Vision statements must be useful for improving instructional practice • A useful vision statement IS NOT: • A nebulous goal that no one can disagree with • Specific strategies the teachers should do • A useful vision statement IS: • Grounded in cognitive science • A description of what students do to learn • Recognizablewhen students are doing it • Believable

23. Science Example • Students learn science when they: • Articulate their initial ideas, • Are intellectually engaged with important science content, • Confront their ideas with evidence, • Formulate new ideas based on that evidence, and • Reflect upon how their ideas have evolved

24. Early Reading Example • Students learn to read best when they are engaged in a blend of learning experiences that focus on the development of: • Phonemic awareness • Phonics • Vocabulary • Fluency • Comprehension (NICH, 2000)

25. Math Example 1 (National Math Panel) Students learn mathematics best when they are engaged in a blend of learning experiences that focus on the development of: • Computational fluency • Efficiency, Accuracy, and Flexibility • Conceptual understanding • Problem solving

26. Math Example 2 (CCSS) If teachers use developmentally appropriate yet challenging tasks and activities that engage students in: • Explaining and justifying their reasoning mathematically • Identifying and verifying conjectures or predictions about the general case (generalization) • Using representations (symbolic, notation, graphs, charts, tables, and diagrams) to communicate and explore mathematical ideas • Applying mathematical skills and concepts to real-world applications Then student achievement and interest inmathematics will increase.

27. A General Instructional Vision Efforts To Provide a Clear Vision of Effective InstructionKennewick School District, Washington

28. Discussion Activity 1 To what extent does your school improvement plan explicitly address an instructional vision? If you have an instructional vision, does it meet the criteria of grounded in cognitive science, describes what students do to learn, is recognizable, and is believable? What steps must you take next?

29. Job-Embedded PD • The mechanism whereby teachers put research into practice • When teachers collaboratively work on enacting the instructional vision to make instruction more effective and consistent among teachers • “Puts educators in a position of having to actively construct their own knowledge of effective instructional practice” (City, 2009, p 10)

30. Key Elements of Job-Embedded PD • The purpose (Learning Theory Driven PD) • Enacting the instructional vision • Achieving vertical & horizontal articulation of instruction • The process • Structured process that teachers recognize as professional development separate from meetings • Applicable to unique contextual and instructional needs • The commitment • Expectation to apply learning to practice

31. Discussion Activity 2 To what extent does your school improvement plan explicitly establish job-embedded professional development? To what extent does the PD have a clear purpose and process, and requires commitment to change practice? What are your next steps?

32. How do we know learning theory driven PD works?

33. Observing for Evidenceof Learning Project Director: Caroline Kiehle, M.Ed. ckiehle@systemsbiology.org Senior Researcher: David Weaver, M.S. DWeaver@rmccorp.com Funding support by: National Science Foundation Department of Education through Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction The Seattle Foundation

34. OEL Purpose IF science teachers use effective instructional strategies and instructional materials to: elicit students’ initial ideas, engage students intellectually with importantscience content, provide opportunities for students to confront their ideas with evidence, help students formulate new ideas based on that evidence, and encourage students to reflect upon how their ideas have evolved, THEN students’ will have a deeper understanding of science and their science achievement will increase.

35. OEL Process: The OEL Cycles Guiding Questions What do the students understand as a result of this lesson? What specificevidenceshows us that the learning occurred? Which effective teaching moves can be generalized from this evidence of learning, and be used regularly in our classrooms?

36. Quasi-Experimental Analysis ofSchool–Level Science Achievement Data School is the unit of change 2004-2010 Grade 8 Measures of Student Performance (MSP/WASL) data for science 21 Middle Schools involved in OEL in 2010 Identified matched comparison schools for each OEL school Compared performance of OEL schools to matched comparison

37. Demographic Comparison of OEL and Comparison Schools

38. OEL Schools Compared to a Matched Set of Nonparticipating Schools

39. OEL Schools Compared to a Matched Set of Nonparticipating Schools Significant Gap

40. OEL Schools Compared to a Matched Set of Nonparticipating Schools

41. Comparison of Low Socioeconomic Schools

42. Comparison of Low Socioeconomic Schools

43. Comparison of Low Socioeconomic Schools

44. Comparison of Low Socioeconomic Schools

45. Gains in Student Achievement 2006 to 2010

46. Why was this project effective?They saw the Elephant in the room and addressed it!

47. It Was Effective Because . . .  Provided a clear vision (based on cognitive science) of what effective science instruction looked like in practice Deprivatized practice by establishing schoolwide collaboration among teachers through observation Contributed to vertical and horizontal articulation of instruction It established a well-defined process for teachers to put that vision into daily instructional practice through Job-embedded professional development Generalization to practice stimulatecommitment

48. Collaborative Culture • Deprivatize Practice • “It is clear that closed classroom doors will not help us educate all students to high levels.” • “Everyone is obligated to be knowledgeable about the common task of instructional improvement and everyone’s practice should be subject to scrutiny, critique, and improvement.” • “We can do more together than we can individually to improve teaching and learning.” (City, 2009, p 3)

49. Collaborative Culture You know you have established a collaborative culture when discussions among teachers are about“our students”rather than about“my students”

50. Articulation of Curriculum & Instruction “Effective schools are coherent learning environments for adults and students.” “Coherence means that the adults agree on what they are trying to accomplish with students and that the adults are consistent from classroom to classroom in their expectations for what students are expected to learn.”