University of Vermont DRAFT June 8, 2009
Assignment, Palo Alto Convening June 2009
Developing Problem-based cases for PPD preparation
For convening: Develop a 2-3 page case of a problem of practice based on experience from your students. These do not need to be fully developed cases but rather problems of practice that we can work together to develop. Please send to Jill and bring a copy to the convening.
At the very least, your problem of practice should include:
- Statement of the problem of practice
- Statement of subsequent problems and implications
- Identification of the important players within the organization, the "stakeholders"
- Identification of other target groups of the organization
- Identification of the role of the educational leader
- Identification of strategic issues
- Identification of decisions needed to be made
- Identification of risk factors
- Identification of historical precedents
U NIVERSITY OF V ERMONT
Student Mobility Across School Districts: Challenges to
Sustaining District-Wide Academic Progress, Student
Engagement, and Student Academic Growth
Synopsis
The case study examines the issue of student mobility due to changes in residency and requires Ed.D. candidates to identify the problem, examine the issue from multiple perspectives, and to develop strategies to address the problem.
Subsequent Problems and Implication
Student mobility has implications for both individual students and their schools. When students move from one school to another due to changes in family residency, students’ social, emotional, and cognitive development can be disrupted, which has implications for their academic growth and human development. In addition, when a large proportion of the student body
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University of Vermont DRAFT June 8, 2009 turns over from year to year, a school’s annual performance data presents a skewed assessment of instructional practices, which has numerous implications related to school improvement initiatives.
Learning Objective
This case provides the opportunity for candidates to analyze the incidence and implications of student mobility for the individual student, the classroom, the school, the school district, and for school district accountability measures and to develop strategies to mitigate the negative effects of student mobility.
Key Skills
Problem identification; qualitative and quantitative data analyses; collaborative problem-solving; and communication skills.
Topics Covered
 Causes of school mobility (socio-economic, school climate issues, migration patterns)
 Implications of disruptions to social, emotional, and cognitive development for individual students and their families
 Implications of high mobility rates for classroom and school communities
 Policy issues related to governance and school funding
 Interrelationship between education and social services
 Annual yearly progress expectations and consequences
Case Study Scenario
The Queen City School District is comprised of nine schools that serve the district’s 3600-student PreK-12 population. During an in-service professional development workshop facilitated by the school district’s literacy coordinator on the topic of literacy instruction, teachers planned to use this time to look at annual performance data disaggregated by gender; socio-economic status; race and ethnicity;
ELL status; and students identified as having special needs to try to better understand the relationship between test scores and demographic characteristics.
While scores had been reported for the entire school population, teachers attending the workshop intended
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University of Vermont DRAFT June 8, 2009 to bring the scores to the level of the classroom and to put student faces on the data sets as a first step in analyzing their instructional practices.
Teachers participating in the session began with a general discussion about the challenges of using annual performance data as a reliable indicator of effective instruction due to the nature of a continuously shifting population as students move in and out of the district. Teachers argued that if the assessments were intended to provide information about the vertical alignment of curriculum across grade levels, the assessments would only provide evidence for continuously enrolled students. For those students new to the district, the annual performance assessments provided some evidence of previous learning experiences, but little evidence of the school districts’ literacy curriculum.
Because the school districts’ annual test scores were published in the newspaper each year, comparisons between one district and another generally influenced public perception about the quality of various schools. One of the teachers in the workshop suggested that although their faculty’s initial reaction was that students’ test scores should not be equated with instructional effectiveness, they did want to improve their instructional practices for those students who consistently did not meet standards.
Further analysis of demographic characteristics of the students and test scores raised questions about some of their most vulnerable students. For example, they noted that students in the lower quartile were comprised predominantly of students receiving free or reduced lunch. When they looked at the enrollment history of these students, teachers noted that many of the students were either new to the district or the students had experienced some disruption in their continuous enrollment in the prior three years.
For example, when using the disaggregated data, one school determined that continuously enrolled students out-performed their peers who moved into the school on the State’s reading assessment by at least 5% points.
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University of Vermont DRAFT June 8, 2009
At the prompting of workshop participants, the literacy coordinator for the district agreed to bring the issue of student mobility to administration as a topic requiring further study. To highlight the importance of the topic, the literacy coordinator emphasized two points: First, the Queen City School
District has seen both an increase in the number of families moving in and out of the district and second, the district has seen the English Language Learner population surpass the population of students identified as having special needs.
Each of the public schools (seven elementary, two middle level, one secondary, and one alternative) has experienced an increase in the numbers of students who transfer into or move out of the school district each year. During a ten-year period (1999-2009), student mobility has increased from a constant net migration
EdD Candidate’s Assessment Objective
To improve the performance of students who transfer from one school to another due to changes in residency.
Assignment:
Imagine that you are the superintendent of this school district and you must address this issue. What would you do? Specifically,
 What is the problem?
 What does the literature say about this problem?
 Who are the stakeholders?
 What other information is needed?
 What strategies would you use to determine possible solutions? of about 10% non-promotional changes to close to 30%, which correlates with a stable population (same student, same school) of about 70%. In addition, because Queen City has a successful refugee resettlement program, immigrants speaking nearly 50 first languages other than English bring both rich international cultures to the schools and new challenges for teachers unfamiliar with English
Language Learner instructional practices.
The Queen City School District has a long-standing relationship with the local university with many
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University of Vermont DRAFT June 8, 2009 faculty ad university students working in local schools and human service agencies for their clinical field experiences. As you consider strategies for addressing the problem, include strategies that build on these relationships.
Possible Activities
 Collaboration Exercises o Educational Support Teams within schools o Cross-District partnerships o Interagency Partnerships
 Data Analyses – Quantitative Methodologies
 Case Studies – Qualitative Methodologies
Definitions and Assumptions
School mobility: School change due to factors unrelated to normal promotion (e.g., change of residency)
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