I.1. The chapters answer the how-to questions of implementation by providing templates and protocols that any school or district can use to improve student learning.
Each chapter culminates with an opportunity for schools and teams to reflect on their current reality and determine actions that will increase student learning. A rubric guides the reflection process. Finally, questions to consider when doing the work in each chapter allow for collaborative team discussions to further target improvement efforts.
Chapter 1: Charting a Course Focused on Learning
This chapter outlines the actions necessary to chart a course focused on improved student learning. It demonstrates a model of leadership that is shared and widely dispersed to engage all stakeholders in the school-improvement process. The chapter also includes a collaborative audit, called a needs assessment, that helps teachers get at the root causes of stalled improvement and plan how to improve.
Chapter 2: Transforming Culture and Structures
In our experience, creating a culture of success is the number one challenge in underperforming schools. This chapter details specific and targeted ways to move schools from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset and outlines the differences between toxic and healthy cultures. It shows how staff within schools can envision the desired culture and determine a plan to get there.
Chapter 3: Focusing on 21st Century Learners
Students in 21st century classrooms face higher expectations for learning than ever before. To improve, schools and teachers must first answer the question, Who are our learners and what are their needs? To ensure high levels of learning for all students, teachers must focus on what each student needs. This chapter describes how to shift the focus to the individual needs of 21st century learners.
Chapter 4: Establishing a Common Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum
All improvement efforts begin by asking, “What is it that students need to know and be able to do?” the first of four critical questions of a PLC (DuFour et al., 2016). The answer to this question cannot be up to each individual teacher. Collaborative teams of teachers work together to determine priority standards, unpack them into learning targets, and develop a common curriculum map that paces student learning. This chapter walks teachers through the rationale and process for developing a guaranteed and viable curriculum.
Chapter 5: Creating and Using Common Assessments
Common formative and summative assessments are the lynchpin around which student learning revolves. Using timely and specific data on student learning drives instruction on a daily basis and helps students reflect on their learning. This chapter lays out the steps to developing common assessments. These are a crucial part of a system that ensures more learning and aligns with the requirements of the state and national assessments. When done well, this aligned system has predictive value for the high-stakes assessments.
Chapter 6: Planning Meaningful and Effective Instruction
This chapter demonstrates how to plan effective instruction using the proficiency and curriculum maps that we establish in the two previous chapters. It describes the necessary shifts in instruction to meet the demands of increased rigor. We discuss the process of responding to student learning within core instruction (first-best instruction), as a collaborative team and as a school. We also outline the process of analyzing data and student work in a PLC that results in a targeted, effective response to student learning.
Chapter 7: Embracing Accountability
A continual focus on data is the key to school improvement. There is so much to learn from even the most negative data. This chapter takes a broad look at data sources that are extremely helpful in the school-improvement process. It reinforces the need for regular data review cycles in a PLC, which are necessary to monitor progress along the journey. These data reviews promote authentic ways to measure growth and celebrate small successes of both collaborative teams and students. The only way to reverse a cycle of failure is to celebrate small wins.
Follow the Path Ahead
We acknowledge that all schools are in need of improvement, but some more than others. We believe that if all students can learn, all schools can become models that others emulate. Our intent with this book is to further that cause for every school or district on an improvement journey.
CHAPTER 1
Charting a Course Focused on Learning
Indeed, there are virtually no documented instances of troubled schools being turned around without intervention by a powerful leader. Many other factors may contribute to such turnarounds, but leadership is the catalyst.
—Kenneth Leithwood, Karen Seashore Louis, Stephen Anderson, and Kyla Wahlstrom
It was October at Grant High School when the newly assigned principal realized that 204 of the 264 seniors were not on track to graduate that year. Most of them had not passed the state end-of-year assessment or had failed required courses. As Sharon, the school-improvement coach for the PLC at Work process (DuFour et al., 2016), met with the new principal, it was evident that immediate action was necessary. No student should spend an entire year in school with absolutely no hope of graduating. Sharon and the principal created a spreadsheet to show the current status of each student and each student’s relevant information. The spreadsheet included courses completed, passing of required assessments, days absent, discipline referrals, tardies, and other pertinent data. The principal assembled a team consisting of the principal, assistant principals, counselors, registrar, team leaders, and the coach. The team discussed each failing student to determine his or her most appropriate pathway to graduation—for example, course recovery, night school, GED completion, and alternative options like blended schools or online school.
It became painfully clear that to meet the needs of these seniors, the entire master schedule, student schedules, and even teacher assignments would need to change. Many staff members complained and reminded the principal that schedules were only changed at the beginning of each semester—not in October. The principal met with teachers individually, in teams, and as a whole faculty to discuss the dire need for the changes. She told the stories of specific students to further demonstrate this need. She asked her staff members to put aside their own concerns because the consequences of not earning a high school diploma would be life altering.
She then met with each student and his or her parents to discuss the pathway to graduation that was most appropriate. As the principal and staff agreed on an individual plan for each student, they revised schedules and made appropriate placements.
The school year ended with all but seven students graduating through either the standard pathway or an alternative route. On graduation day, the teachers led the processional in caps and gowns. The student speaker at graduation thanked the teachers and administration and proclaimed, “You believed in me when I did not believe in myself.”
Without the strong leadership of a student-centered principal, this story would have a very different ending. She understood that her priority was to be an advocate for her students no matter how difficult or how many obstacles stood in the way. She was willing to take up the cause with students, parents, teachers, counselors, and even the district office. When the school-improvement coach asked if it was worth all the trouble and effort, the principal answered with a resounding, “Yes! This was the right thing to do,
