World Best Workforce 2014 Report
Overview of our approach to helping create the World’s Best Workforce:
As a new charter school that opened its doors in August 2014, we cannot complete
all aspects of the WBWF report because we do not yet have the necessary data. But we are
able to share the way our school is structured and the processes and systems we have in
place to ensure all students are successful and on a path to being productive, fulfilled citizens
of our great state. From the time we set out to create a new school, the Northeast College
Prep team, made up of board members and founding team members, was fully committed to
the goal of providing a high-quality educational experience for diverse under-served students
in Minneapolis and surrounding communities from Day One. All members of the team
bought deeply into the belief that the students we were setting out to serve—low-income
minority students who were currently not finding success in the local schools—could not
afford anything but a high-quality education from the very first day we opened our doors.
This led us to some critical decisions about the planning of our academic program and
school culture that have led directly to the success we are currently experiencing in delivering
on our promise of high-quality from day one.
Our commitment to high quality from day one led us to the first question: do we
have any models of success that we can learn from? Global Academy in Columbia Heights
was the most obvious example. Global’s success with a high-poverty population is now well
documented. Doing our homework on charter school openings in high-poverty areas of the
Twin Cities led us to a strong grasp of just how elusive quality from day one can be. Global
was the best example of quality from day one and ever-increasing success from there. So we
decided to try to soak up as much of their “secret sauce” as possible. We also sought an
authorizer that would share our deep commitment to quality education for under-served
populations. Student Achievement Minnesota fit that bill. As we spent much time at Global
and studied their success very closely, we were led to three major elements of that “secret
sauce:”
1. Focus abundant time and resources on establishing a peaceful, focused school
culture right from the very first minute students step into the building. (Strong
school culture is a major point of emphasis for SAM.)
2. Choose a rigorous, broad and rich curricular program that will meet the basic skills
needs of high-poverty, high-LEP population, but will also always be pushing for
higher order thinking in the classroom. This program must include systems of
rigorous assessments and strong plans for how to use assessment data (Curricular
rigor and the new school’s preparation to be able to deliver it are another major
priority for SAM.)
3. Find a way to get a strong, experienced (especially urban) teacher into every
classroom right from the start and build a strong support structure around them so
that they can feel effective, feel supported, and continue to grow. (Attracting, hiring,
training, and growing great teachers is highly valued by SAM.)
Best Practice Strategies and Action Steps:
These conclusions led us to a series of major instructional and curricular decisions to
implement the following “best practices” from Global Academy:
1. School-wide implementation of the ENVoY program. So far, we have invested
in two full days of whole staff ENVoY training, as well as two full weeks of ENVoY
coach training for our Assistant Director. We also invested one-and-a-half full days
observing Global Academy teachers implementing ENVoY (and their curricular
programs) with students. Anyone who walks into our school sees the ENVoY nonverbal signals and visual cues posted and being used all around the building. Our
Assistant Director is in each classroom for 15-minute observations 2-3 times per
week and holds a 30-minute feedback session with each teacher once per week.
These sessions typically include feedback and follow-up on the implementation of
ENVoY strategies. Our teachers are integrating ENVoY into their practice quickly
and effectively.
2. International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme (PYP). To this point in
the school year, we have invested in one full day of IB training given by two
outstanding Global Academy teachers. We have also observed Global Academy’s IB
planning process, our teachers have connected with their grade level counterparts
and received useful IB planning materials. In the IB planning sessions we have held
on our own, our teachers have already demonstrated a high degree of competence in
forming central ideas, lines of inquiry, summative assessments, key concepts, and
learning activities. We have opened up our teachers’ ideas to the feedback of Global
Academy teachers who have more experience with the IB program and their
feedback has been very complimentary about the quality of our teachers’ planning.
3. Reading Street reading program and Investigations/Calendar Math math
program. We have spent well over $40,000 on these curricular programs (about half
of which has come out of CSP funds). We also invested in two days of training in
these programs led by two outstanding Global Academy teachers. Our teachers have
received lesson plans and other materials from Global Academy teachers to
effectively implement these two programs. Our teachers have also spent significant
time observing their grade level counterparts teaching these programs at Global
Academy. To date, we do not have a lot of solid academic data to indicate major
student progress in reading and math, but we do know that 70-80 percent of our
students came into our school below grade level (based on NWEA MAP test results
from our second week of school), and we know anecdotally that already many more
that that are now able to do grade-level work.
4. Second Step Social Skills Curriculum. This is another aspect of Global
Academy’s program that we are replicating. Second Step has been very effective for
them in teaching students social skills that are critical for success inside and outside
school. Our teachers teach two Second Step lessons per week, as Global Academy’s
teachers do. Already teachers are reporting significant improvements in students’
ability to deal with typical interpersonal challenges at their respective grade levels.
We believe this is due to many factors, not least of which is the peaceful school
culture we have worked so intentionally to create, but also due in part to the Second
Step curriculum. We already have numerous success stories to report; such as a
student who used to run out of school frequently at his previous school and began
our school year having to spend significant time in the office; this student now is
spending his entire day in his classroom with only minimal and minor disruptive
moments.
Two of the most significant best practice strategies aimed at increasing the performance
of our students are the following:
1. Implementing a rigorous series of quarterly interim assessments aligned to state
standards and our curricular programs; and
2. Dramatically increasing the amount and quality of coaching that each teacher
receives over the course of the school year.
Quarterly assessments:
Because we have not yet arrived at the end of the first quarter, we have not yet given
students the first interim assessment, but we do have them made. Getting them done was a
major endeavor in and of itself. It entailed a very deep dive into the state standards in
reading and math, as well as a lot of time studying Reading Street and Investigations. The
sequence of skills reflected in the interim exams had to mirror the curricular programs—we
had to ensure that students would be assessed on skills they had been learning through the
curricular programs. But in creating these assessments, we also had to be sure that by the
time the MCA’s came around, all of the skills that the MCA’s assess will have already
appeared on the interim exams, with ample time for re-teaching is students do not show
mastery on the interims. This is no small task. It took great amounts of time and finding
the right people with the right expertise to help out. But we got it done and the interims are
ready for implementation.
Abundant quality coaching:
Erika Sass, our Assistant Director spent large amounts of time in the pre-operational
year doing training for coaching. Our challenge in maximizing the development and
effectiveness of our teachers was to free Erika up to use that training to the benefit of the
teachers by being in their classrooms frequently and meeting with them consistently to debrief those observations. Much of our planning process for this school has been informed
by the experience of other start-up schools. We have done our homework on lessons
learned over the course of the local charter school movement. One challenge that we heard
about with many schools is giving teachers consistent coaching. As we analyzed this
challenge, we came to the conclusion that the primary reason schools usually fall well short
of their best intentions with regard to time devoted to coaching is the immense number of
operational challenges and unpredictable events that come with starting up a new school. In
our organizational planning, we decided to try to meet this challenge through our
administrative structure. We designated our Director, Carl Phillips, as the go-to on
operations and the chief reactor to unpredictable events since he came in with experience in
young charter schools and the kinds of things that can come up unexpectedly. With him in
this role, we crafted the Assistant Director’s role as one of much more predictability; we
made the commitment that the Assistant Director would be able to create a daily schedule of
observations and feedback sessions that she would not have to break due to unexpected events.
The overarching purpose of this structure, again, was to increase the productivity
and effectiveness of our teachers by giving them dramatically more and better coaching than
they would find in almost any other school. To this point in the school year, each teacher is
getting on average 2-3 15+ minute observations and one 30-minute feedback session per
week. At this rate, this will add up to 25 hours of observation and 20 hours of feedback
sessions for each teacher over the course of the school year. This is truly a dramatic
difference from the more typical experience of teachers where 3 observations per year are
more likely. In addition to this, our teachers have one full, uninterrupted hour each day to
plan with their grade level partner, as well as another 35 minutes of planning time. We have
a shorter day with students on Fridays to give teachers two hours of professional
development. We also had 17 days of professional development prior to school opening
and we have six full days without students built into our school calendar. We are finding
already that thanks to these structures, the amount of time it is taking teachers to address
challenges in their teaching is much quicker than one would typically find in most schools.
Drilling a Little Deeper into our Specific Goals, Assessment System,
Early Data, and Approach to Teacher Evaluation:
Given that our student population is overwhelmingly minority and receives free or
reduced lunch, our student achievement goals align with the goals of the World’s Best
Workforce legislation to ensure that all students in third grade achieve grade-level literacy
and all achievement gaps are closed.
Charter contract goals and benchmarks for instruction and student achievement:
Authorizer contract goals for Year 1:
1.1.2 Comparative Proficiency – District & State (Reading). NECP will demonstrate
higher grade-level and school wide proficiency rates than the Minneapolis school district in
Year 1, for the same grades as offered.
1.2.2 Comparative Proficiency – District & State (Math). NECP will demonstrate
higher grade-level and school wide proficiency rates than the Minneapolis school district in
Year 1, for the same grades as offered.
NWEA MAP. In Math and Reading, students scoring in the lowest quartile (1-25%) on
the fall NWEA MAP who are continuously enrolled for one year will on average increase
their percentile ranking by at least 30 percentage points by spring. Students scoring in the
next quartile (26% to 50%) will on average increase their percentile ranking by at least 20
percentage points from fall to spring. Students scoring in the next quartile (51-75%) will on
average increase their percentile ranking by at least 10 percentile points from fall to spring.
Students in the top quartile (76-100%) will on average increase their percentile ranking by at
least 5 percentile points from fall to spring.
Assessment System:
Internal assessments:
Our internal assessments are the NWEA MAP test, given twice per year in fall and
spring, as well as locally-developed interim assessments aligned to state standards and our
reading and math curriculum programs (Reading Street and Investigations).
NWEA:
Growth will be measured over the course of the school year by giving the NWEA
MAP in the fall and spring.
Internal Interim Assessments:
Our authorizer, Student Achievement Minnesota, has provided a highly skilled
assessment expert named Lori Magstedt to work with us to create quarterly interim
assessments that are aligned to state standards. These assessments also follow the trajectory
of our reading (Reading Street) and math programs (Investigations) so that as teachers use
the curriculum, the content they are teaching is what appears on the interim assessments and
student progress can be measured. At the current time, we are just arriving at our first
quarterly assessment, so we do not have any results to report.
Process for assessing and evaluating each student’s progress toward meeting state
and local academic standards and identifying strengths and weaknesses of
instruction:
Curriculum mapping:
Our entire curriculum is mapped out and is reflected in our quarterly assessments.
Each quarterly assessment assesses the state standards that were taught during that quarter,
as well as assessing an appropriate amount of standards from the previous quarters so that
students retain what was learned throughout the year. By the end of the year, all state
standards will have been assessed on the quarterly interim assessments.
Formative assessment for improving instruction:
The results of the quarterly interim assessments are used to zero in on specific
standards that individual students need more help with. But the quarterly interims are not
the only time teachers are assessing their students. Teachers are conducting formative
assessments throughout each week. These assessments take many forms, including informal
assessments made throughout individual lessons. There are also many assessments built into
the reading and math programs that we use. This gives us a seamless system of state
standard assessments: informal on-going formative assessments > frequent curriculum-based
assessments tied to the math and reading programs and aligned to state standards > quarterly
interim assessments aligned to state standards and the reading and math programs > MCAs
at the end of the school year.
Periodic reviews of curriculum and instruction:
Every quarter, following the students’ quarterly assessments, teachers sit down in
grade level teams with our Assistant Director and Lori Magstedt from our authorizer (SAM)
and analyze the assessment results. They go through class-wide data to look for trends and
patterns in what students know and don’t know, and they also go through student-bystudent data to determine where gaps are in individual students’ level of understanding of
concepts. This data is then used to make instructional plans for the following weeks.
Early data:
NWEA:
We gave the fall MAP test in the second and third weeks of school. Our results were as
follows (showing students scoring above and below grade level):
Math Above
Math Below
Reading
Above
Reading
Below
Kindergarten
1st Grade
2nd Grade
3rd Grade
25%
75%
19%
22%
78%
24%
52%
48%
44%
14%
86%
11%
Average
School-wide
28%
72%
24%
81%
76%
56%
89%
76%
The following shows a further breakdown of each grade and where our students scored in
comparison to their peers nationwide.
Math:
Kindergarten
1st
2nd
3rd
<21%
64
43
17
50
21-40%
11
19
17
23
41-60%
9
19
22
23
61-80%
4
14
22
3
>80%
13
5
22
0
Beginning with the kindergarten line, this should be read as: “64 percent of our
kindergartners scored in the bottom 21st percentile in math; 11 percent scored between the
21st percentile and the 40th percentile…” and so on. Over half of our school’s students came
into our school in the lowest quintile nationwide in math.
Reading:
Kindergarten
1st
2nd
3rd
<21%
40
30
22
64
21-40%
30
35
26
16
41-60%
13
22
22
8
61-80%
9
5
13
12
>80%
9
8
7
0
Again, beginning with the kindergarten line, this should be read as: “40 percent of our
kindergartners scored in the bottom 21st percentile in reading…”
As is evident, our first group of students in each of our four grades enter our school
well behind their grade level peers nationally. We expected this because it is evident in the
data of the district and charter schools in the area of the city where we are located. Our
entire school design was crafted with this population of students in mind and we believe the
structures and processes we have in place (and laid out above) are the right ones to meet
their needs.
Teacher Evaluation System:
The purpose of all of our school central structures and processes is to maximize
student achievement. Our teacher evaluation system is another example of this. It is
designed to strengthen each teacher’s instruction over time. Here are its components:
A. Individual Professional Growth and Development Plan
All licensed teachers at Northeast College Prep will set an individual professional
growth goal by October 1st of each school year that will be reviewed by their grade
level administrator. The teacher must explain how the goal will result in improved
student learning at Northeast College Prep. Each teacher will review the progress
made in meeting the goal in a spring meeting with their grade level administrator.
B. Peer Review Process
Teachers at Northeast College Prep will participate in instructional rounds and/or
peer observations at least twice each academic school year.
C. Professional Learning Community
Teachers at Northeast College Prep will participate in a professional learning
community through collaborative staff planning workshop days and grade level
meetings.
D. Student Engagement
Longitudinal data regarding student engagement will be collected for each teacher
through the following means: student surveys, peer observations, administrative
observations.
E. Test Data
Teachers will collect data from valid and reliable assessments aligned to state and
local academic standards. Student success will be measured by the percentage of
students who meet NWEA growth targets in reading and math. Specific
benchmarks for acceptable scores will be determined annually by the administration
and communicated to the teaching staff.
F. Staff Development Activities
The administration will survey staff regarding potential staff development activities
that will be coordinated with this evaluation process and teacher outcomes.
G. Summative Evaluation
1. The director will prepare a summative evaluation of every teacher on a threeyear cycle.
2. The summative evaluation will consider the following components:
a. A review of at least 6 formal teaching observations conducted by the
school’s director over the three year cycle;
b.The teacher’s self-reflection based on professional standards established in
rule (8710.2000 Standards of Effective Practice for Teachers);
c. Completion of all other components required in this process.
d. Teachers may prepare a portfolio for administrative consideration in the
summative review process (optional).
H. Overall Evaluation
1. The administration will keep a record of all components of a
teacher’s evaluation process.
2. The overall evaluation for each three year cycle will be based on the
following:
65% Summative administrative review
35% Student test data
3. Specific benchmarks for overall acceptable job performance will be
communicated to the teachers each fall.
4. The final overall evaluation will be placed in the employee’s official
performance review file.
5. Teachers with unacceptable job performance will be subject to Northeast
College Prep Policy 403: Discipline, Suspension, and Dismissal of School
District Employees.
Results/Indicators of Progress:
Because it is so early in our first school year, we do not have a lot of hard data to
illustrate our successes. We are very confident that will be coming soon. What we do have
are some terrific anecdotes of student successes, such as this one about a student we will call
"Brittany." Brittany is a 3rd grader from North Minneapolis who found out about Northeast
College Prep (NECP) through a relative who discovered NECP over the summer and
immediately enrolled her granddaughter in our kindergarten. Brittany's school career has
been marked by major behavioral and academic struggles. The behavioral struggles got
increasingly more severe last year, as she was suspended multiple times from school for
fighting and even bringing a weapon to school. When she was not suspended from school,
she was removed from the classroom on almost a daily basis. This learning time lost had
had a detrimental effect on her academic development, and she was reading at a first grade
level.
Brittany's mother, upon the recommendation of her relative, came in to visit NECP
during our first week of school. She was struck most by the calm, peaceful culture we had
established even that early in the school year. She believed that Brittany's behavioral
problems in years past were at least in part due to the culture of the school she was in. She
thought NECP might be a place where her daughter could get past the behavioral challenges
that had plagued her and begin to recover academically.
Since beginning to attend NECP in late August, Brittany has not had a single
significant behavioral incident. When she has experienced frustration, she has been able to
talk through her feelings with her teacher and find peaceful, more effective strategies for
dealing with that frustration. Her mother has described a "transformation" in her behavior
and attitude toward school. She says she now wakes up eagerly and gets on the bus (just
after 6:30 a.m. it should be noted) enthusiastically. She is now focused in class and is already
showing signs of bringing her academic performance into alignment with her potential.