Just for the Kids-New York
Questar III Superintendents Meeting
October 24, 2008
Janet Angelis
Partnership of
The Business Council of NYS,
State of New York, and
University at Albany/SUNY
1
Background:
• Nationally, Just for the Kids began in 1995 (UT-Austin):
JFTK-NY began in 2004
• Relies on achievement data (state assessments) over
time
• JFTK-NY has completed three in a series of studies
• Elementary schools (2005)
• Middle schools (2007)
• High schools (2008)
• (2008-9: Middle school science)
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3
Our Sample
• 10 consistently HP schools with 5-6 similar but
consistently APs, based on 3 years of NYS
Assessment data
• Favor poverty (F/RL)
• Urban, rural, suburban
• Open admissions
• NYS average per pupil expenditures
• In consultation with our Advisory Board
4
Just for the Kids–New York
Best Practices Studies
2005-8
Higher-performing Elementary Schools
Higher-performing Middle Schools
Higher-performing High Schools
5
Representatives of
Advisory Board
The Business Council of New York State, Inc.
Conference of Big 5 School Districts
Foundation for Education Reform & Accountability
IBM
McGraw-Hill Companies
NY Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (NYACTE)
NY Charter School Association
NY City Department of Education
NYS Association of School Business Officials (NYSASBO)
NYS Association of Small City School Districts (NYSASCSD)
NYS Association of Teacher Educators (NYSATE)
NYS Congress of Parents and Teachers, Inc. (NYSPTA)
NYS Council of School Superintendents (NYSCOSS)
NYS Education Department (NYSED)
NYS Governor's Office
NYS School Boards Association (NYSSBA)
NYS United Teachers (NYSUT)
School Administrators Association of New York State (SAANYS)
State Farm Insurance
State University of New York (SUNY)
University at Albany
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Methods
• Made 2-day site visits
• Interviewed teachers and
administrators using JFTK survey
questions
• Collected documents
• Analyzed and wrote a case study for
each site
• Conducted and wrote cross-site
analysis
• Wrote summary report
Cases and reports available at:
http://www.albany.edu/aire/kids/
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8
9
1. Trusting and respectful relationships
2.
Social/
emotional
wellbeing
3.
Team
work
4.
5.
EvidenceShared
based
vision of
decision
mission
making
and goals
HigherPerforming
Middle
Schools
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JFTK-NY cf. NYS Essential Elements
JFTK-NY
• Relationships
• Emotional WellBeing
• Collaboration
• Evidence-Based
Decision Making
• Shared Vision
NYS Essential Elements
Basic goals
• Intellectual
development/academic
achievement of all
students
• Personal and social
development of each
student
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JFTK-NY cf. NMSA This We Believe
JFTK-NY
• Relationships
• Emotional Well-Being
• Collaboration
• Evidence-Based
Decision Making
• Shared Vision
NMSA This We Believe
Culture Matters:
• Collaboration
• Shared vision
• Safe environment
• High expectations for all
• Adult advocate for
every student
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5 Key Elements
Relationships Lay the Foundation
Trust and respect make possible
- security, well-being for students and faculty
- constant collaboration/teamwork
- honest evaluation of results; adjustments
- shared vision – developing and enacting it
Each necessary but not sufficient alone
or with only a few others.
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The single most important thing . . .
is to build trust with your faculty.
Trust
• Deliberate and planned
• “Family”
• Provides safety to disagree, to share challenges,
even failures
• Set it as a priority – from the top
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I feel totally comfortable to talk about concerns with the
principal. When the principal comes into my classroom,
we have strong support and trust.
We have had a trusting administration – they put full trust in
us. We’ve learned to embrace the state exams – if you
can’t beat them join them. What the state tests are
asking for is what we’re asking for – we’ve tried to look
positively at the state tests.
Queensbury Teachers
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Respect: Expected from and for all
Board for the professionals
The Board remains strategic . . . They respect the leadership of the
Superintendent.
Administrators for teachers
Their association is their safety net. Our work is too challenging to be
worrying about professional mistrust.
Teachers and administrators for students
There is a measure of respect and loyalty everyone has for each
other—we truly believe in the kids.
Educators for the community and parents
. . respectful of the diversity and value it as a positive.
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High & Explicit Expectations
Routines and consistency across the school . . .
Two rules—respect and responsibility . . . are posted in the office, in
classrooms, and in other places around the building. Teachers refer to
these rules, and they form the basis for decision making about program
and policy. Students hear about them on the first day of school and
every day after that.
. . . and rewarded
The teams recognize student achiever of the month—for
example, improvement, was failing and now has an 80 average;
or success comes from being respectful.
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Sharing Responsibility
• Some teams know each others’ standards
• Choosing new materials and programs in light of shared
vision and evidence of success with similar students
• Literacy across the curriculum
• Support rather than blame
For example, the scores on last year’s ELA were lower
than we wanted. Rather than a reprimand or finger
pointing, the assistant superintendent asked what more
the administration could do to help us be more successful.
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5 Key Elements
Social and Emotional Well-Being
• Its lack interferes with learning
• Connect with every student:
- teaming, looping, “guide rooms,” activities, social
services
- special attention for those at risk
• Transitions: ES – MS; MS – HS
• Safety, security, diversity
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• We . . . focus on what’s common among us and not
on what is different.
• We define success also [as] the ability to work in a
group, be a member of a team and a good citizen.
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5 Key Elements
Collaborative Conversations/Teamwork
• Purpose: student learning & achievement
- collectively, individually
• Consistent, expected, frequent
• Scheduled and unscheduled
• Teams, committees
- within, across, grades and subjects
- within, across, outside of school
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You need to work as a team; there’s nothing a teacher
can accomplish alone.
We communicate from
one grade to the next.
We respect teachers in
the grades below.
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5 Key Elements
Evidence-Based Decision Making
• Multiple sources
- student performance data
- teacher and administrator experience
- student, parent, and community input
- adopted program data (piloting and assessing)
• Ongoing and acted on
• Focus beyond the state assessments: standards
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We invite students back after a semester or two at college
and ask what was most helpful . . .
[and not] so helpful.
[The school improvement model we chose] expects
teachers to make professional choices.
We analyze the state exam –
kid by kid, question by question.
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5 Key Elements
Shared Vision
•
•
•
•
•
Raising learning and achievement for all students
Built by all
Clearly articulated
Echoed from central office to classroom
Never done
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You never arrive, you are
always becoming.
It’s a goal without a finish line.
Complacency bothers me.
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What makes high schools work }
The higher-performing high schools can be characterized as
1. Rigorous
2. Innovative
3. Transparent
4. Evidence-driven
5. Strategic
HigherPerforming
High
Schools
Wilcox, 2008
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What makes high schools work
}
Other research re effective high schools
•
•
•
•
Close monitoring of student progress
Develop particular habits of mind
Master teachers
Course variety and innovative scheduling
Achieve, Goldware & Housman, Huebner & Corbett, et al.
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What makes high schools work
}
Some middle school concepts work – e.g.,
• Smaller learning communities
• Teaching cognitive strategies
• Interrelatedness of some skills and content
knowledge
ACT, Adelman, Conley, et al.
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Rigorous Curriculum, Expectations
• Provide a rigorous curriculum
• Focus on encouraging -- and supporting -typically lower-performing students to enroll
and succeed in honors and AP courses .
Just for the Kids-NY
Our high school objective is 70% of students
getting an advanced Regents diploma.
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• Decrease tracking
• Add more inclusion classes
• “Emerging scholars” program for minority
8th-graders
• Open enrollment in AP courses
We put the middle kids in the most challenging
classes. We try to hit kids early on
in honors track to get the motivation.
Even if they falter, they can pick it up again later.
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• Variety of electives to
capture and hold interest
• Academics-athletics-arts
• Loss of extra curricular
activities and sports if failing
(lower than a C)
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What makes high schools work
}
Rigor: How AP and HP schools differ
•
•
•
Focus on meeting state
determined performance targets
Tracking and self-contained
SPED classrooms prevalent
Lower expectations and
willingness to accept limitations
(e.g., student poverty)
•
•
•
State determined targets not
sufficient
Higher-level courses offered to
more students
All students challenged
academically and to contribute
to the larger society
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Innovative Instructional Programs,
Practices
• Innovation and risk taking encouraged
• Resources, including teacher expertise,
deployed where most likely to have the
greatest impact
• Creative and flexible scheduling
• New ideas and suggestions taken up,
considered, nurtured if relevant to needs
• “Disciplined:” proposed innovations must
meet identified needs
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Micro-managing stifles innovation.
You need to develop a culture of participation
throughout the school.
• “What if . . .?” questions encouraged
• Teachers report department chairs,
curriculum coordinators supportive
• Teacher suggestions often the source of
an innovation
• Technology use supported and
encouraged, with adequate training
We insist on maintaining flexibility with the
master schedule. When we need to move kids
around and reassign teachers mid year, we
have done it.
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What makes high schools work
}
Innovation: How AP and HP schools differ
•
•
•
Schedule inflexible – how it’s
always been done
Work from failure backward
Technology without adequate
training
•
•
•
Flexibility – assign resources
according to need
Keep students on track before
AIS needed
Technology supported with
adequate training
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Transparent Communication
• Reporting student performance
• Developing and articulating goals and
strategic plans
• Sharing successes, challenges, problems.
Just for the Kids-NY
Know your teachers, students, and parents.
Take the temperature
and pulse of your school everyday.
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We have parents at the table with the
instructional support teams at the very first
sign of a problem about a child’s needs.
• Trust and transparency feed each other
• School = the heart of the community
• Know all students – well being of each
student everyone’s business: shared
responsibility
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• Humility, lack of face-saving behavior
when facing problems
• Willingness to acknowledge problems
and make them opportunities to innovate
• Mechanisms for knowing students and
communicating with families
The kids know if they need something in this
building . . . they can turn to somebody.
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What makes high schools work
}
Transparency: How AP and HP schools differ
•
•
•
Top-down approach to
articulating goals and vision
No curriculum map or just
begun
School-community tensions
•
•
•
Dialogue around goals and
vision
Transparent curriculum
available to all
School the heart of the
community
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Evidence-Based Decision Making
• A variety of evidence used in making
decisions about new initiatives.
• Systematic sharing and use
– of test score data (formative, summative, and
Just for the Kids-NY
state) to inform instruction and interventions
– parent and student input
– surveys
– exit and post-grad interviews
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It’s not just having the data and dispersing them,
but making sense of them.
By the time the results come from the state,
we’ve already had a headstart on the data
• Use of data embraced by all
• Data constantly analyzed and used
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What makes high schools work
}
Evidence: How AP and HP schools differ
•
•
Data analyzed primarily by
administrators
Still resistance to evidencebased decision making
•
•
Close analysis and discussion
of data among teachers and
administrators
Embrace of the use of a variety
of evidence to inform practice
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Strategic Targeting of Resources
• All resources targeted where they are most
likely to have the greatest impact on student
performance.
–
–
–
–
–
Teachers
Just for the Kids-NY
Programs
Time
Talent
Technology
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We will not: Adopt any new program or service
unless it is: consistent with and contributes to our
mission; accompanied by an analysis of the
resources and the staff development needed for its
effectiveness; accompanied by a plan to assess its
ongoing effectiveness.
• Proactive – look for trends in data to spot
potential problems
• Assign strongest teachers to neediest
students
• Vary class size by need
• Vary class length by need
• Outward and inward focus
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What makes high schools work
}
Strategic: How AP and HP schools differ
•
•
•
No particular professional
development agenda linked to
evidence
Use of data to inform specific
interventions not systematic
Lack of continuity and clarity of
priorities and vision
•
•
•
Professional development foci
informed by teacher needs
Strategic use of data to target
interventions
Constant dialogue re vision and
plans to reach it.
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Just for the Kids – New York
www.albany.edu/aire/kids
Case reports
Cross-case reports
Documentary evidence
Self-surveys
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