Ensuring Teacher Quality
Introduction to Leader’s Resource Guide
I. Purpose of Leader’s
Resource Guide
This resource is intended to guide the efforts of district and school administrators,
teacher leaders, campus mentors, and others in setting expectations and providing
teacher support to meet those expectations through leadership and mentoring
support protocols.
Setting expectations
Rigorous performance expectations at the district and campus levels are crucial to
the success of any endeavor to improve student achievement. Those performance
expectations cannot be set without an understanding of the need for such an
endeavor, nor can they be set without an understanding of the format and
programmatic nature of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills.
Professional development must be a part of the everyday life of the school, and
successful leaders provide an environment that encourages an ongoing study of the
TEKS and goal-focused collaboration among teachers, while creating structures to
sustain the implementation of these practices.
The Leader’s Resource Guide provides protocols and resources that members of
the district leadership team can use to set expectations and design support for
teachers in translating what they learn about content and pedagogy into classroom
practice.
Providing teacher support
Campus and district leaders can, through professional development tied directly to
curriculum and pedagogy, increase the conceptual content understanding that
teachers need to ensure student understanding of the TEKS and success on the
Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.
The Leader’s Resource Guide can be used to initiate conversations among the
leadership team centered on sustained, intensive, comprehensive teacher training,
grounded in the TEKS and aimed at student learning and TAKS achievement.
Through the protocols in this guide, these discussions will hone in on the
importance of a coordinated curriculum, common instructional strategies and
assessments, and collaborative analysis of student work—all leading to improved
student success.
II. Organization of Leader’s
Resource Guide
The Leader’s Resource Guide is designed for flexibility and utility. Leaders can
choose among several protocols based on the varying needs of the leadership
team. The protocols are:
◊ Materials for a study of Improving Algebra I End-of-Course Exam Scores:
Evidence from the Field: text and PowerPoint presentation
◊ Materials for a Format of the TEKS presentation: text and PowerPoint
presentation
◊ Materials for a Programmatic Nature of the TEKS presentation: text, PowerPoint
presentation, and vertical articulation chart.
◊ Materials for Looking at Student Work presentation: text, handouts, PowerPoint
presentation
December 2004. Ensuring Teacher Quality: Algebra I and Algebra II, produced by the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of
Texas at Austin for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
V. Course Follow-up, A. Leader’s Resource Guide, 1. Introduction
2
The Leader’s Resource Guide also includes
◊ References
These protocols can be modified to use one-on-one, with a small group, or for large
group presentations.
In addition to implementation guidelines, each protocol includes significant overview
statements, crucial points to be made, and important vocabulary, located in the
outer columns of each page. Presenters can modify these protocols, while
maintaining the focus provided by the overview statements and crucial points to be
made.
The guide also provides a materials list and PowerPoint slides for each protocol.
How to Use the Leader’s
Resource Guide
Identify connections between the work of Ensuring Teacher Quality courses and
your district’s long-term plans.
Identify critical factors for successful implementation into your district—including
existing structures (site-based decision-making, vertical alignment teams,
curriculum meetings, departmental organization); key personnel (district and school
administrators, teacher leaders, campus mentors); and need (student assessment
data).
Identify opportunities to share this information and initiate conversations with key
personnel.
Based on the connections, critical factors, and opportunities to share the
information, design your support sessions and presentations by choosing from the
various protocols offered in this section. All the information in this guide can be
used to support successful implementation of the work of Ensuring Teacher Quality,
but one size does not fit all. Rely on your working knowledge of your district culture
and your colleagues to determine which of the materials and protocols best meet
their needs.
Additional Resources
Many additional materials exist to help leaders provide the support structures and
professional development to ensure quality teaching of Algebra I and Algebra II.
TEXTEAMS (Texas’s statewide mathematics and science professional
development) provides practice-based professional development institute materials
and experiences in looking at student work through the Algebra I Assessments and
Algebra II Assessments (Dana Center, 2002 & 2003). Participants analyze student
work to evaluate the level of student understanding. Instructional strategies to
address student needs are generated and discussed. Participants gather work on
selected assessment tasks from their own classroom. Classroom, campus, and
district-level implementation is addressed as it relates to the TEKS and TAKS.
The TEXTEAMS Algebra I: 2000 and Beyond Institute and the TEXTEAMS Algebra
II Institute assist teachers in bridging the gap from students’ concrete understanding
of arithmetic to the functions-based algebra called for in the TEKS. These institutes
December 2004. Ensuring Teacher Quality: Algebra I and Algebra II, produced by the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of
Texas at Austin for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
V. Course Follow-up, A. Leader’s Resource Guide, 1. Introduction
are designed to broaden and deepen teacher content knowledge and instructional
strategies.
TEKS for Leaders offers a series of modules for campus and district leaders. For
descriptions of TEKS for Leaders modules and TEXTEAMS see
www.utdanacenter.org.
December 2004. Ensuring Teacher Quality: Algebra I and Algebra II, produced by the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of
Texas at Austin for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
3