Achieving Equity and Excellence. Douglas Reeves

Figure 4.2: The common PLC profile.

      These simple displays (see figure 4.1, page 39 and figure 4.2) allow faculty members to make frequent midcourse corrections in how they allocate collaborative team time. For example, after reviewing figure 4.2, faculty members might observe, “We’ve devoted so much time to lesson planning and intervention for low-performing students that we’ve failed to address the needs of students who are already proficient. If we don’t get to the fourth question more consistently, those students are going to be bored and will become disengaged. Let’s really focus on more even allocation of our collaborative time next month.”

      In equity and excellence schools, leadership decisions about time extend to the classroom and individual students. The focus on student achievement is especially important in an environment where many students come to school with academic skills substantially below grade level. These schools typically display charts showing weekly improvements from the fall through the spring, giving the consistent message, It’s not how you start here that matters, but how you finish. Improvements of more than one grade level in a single year are common, and teachers and administrators pay particular attention to students whose reading and writing deficiencies would have a profound impact on their success in other subjects. Some students spend as many as three hours per day in literacy interventions designed to get them to desired achievement levels. Leaders in equity and excellence schools know if a fifth-grade student is reading at a second-grade level, then there is no place for instructional strategies scattered among dozens of standards and curriculum strands. This student must learn to read, making up for years of reading deficiency, or the student will be headed for failure throughout his or her middle and high school years. Plus, the student will be almost certain to drop out as he or she fails to accumulate the required credits to graduate with peers.

      Literacy is the top priority of equity and excellence schools, and leaders make it clear that the purpose of every lesson is to enhance student literacy skills. Teachers do not assign struggling readers to read a chapter and hope for the best. Rather, teachers have struggling students approach the text paragraph by paragraph, and then they stop the students and check for understanding, making marginal notes on paper or with the appropriate technology. Teachers prioritize comprehension over coverage. They also challenge the prevailing use of sustained silent reading because they know some students engage in little more than sustained silent sitting during this time. So, teachers frequently stop students as they read silently or aloud and check to ensure students have circled or highlighted unfamiliar vocabulary words, summarized every paragraph, and maximized every opportunity for improving literacy skills and personal confidence in reading. Teachers apply the same techniques in mathematics. Leaders and teachers understand that a significant problem in mathematics achievement concerns not merely number operations but also understanding the directions and stories in the mathematics test items.

      Finally, a consistent finding in equity and excellence schools is that interventions occur during the school day. Although there are isolated examples of after-school and weekend programs having some effect, the consistent observation of equity and excellence teachers and leaders shows that students who most need intervention do not come to after-school and weekend sessions. Many students (and, indeed, teachers) have unbreakable obligations for sibling care, work, or other commitments outside school hours. If intervention is going to happen with any impact, equity and excellence schools conclude, it must happen during the school day.

      Devoting Leadership Attention to Achievement

      I have had the good fortune to shadow equity and excellence school leaders during their day. These leaders have no external similarities; they are young and old, less experienced and veterans, men and women, every color of skin, ebullient and reserved. But one thing they all have in common is they are frequently out of their offices and in the classrooms, hallways, and common areas of their schools. Even in the most heavily unionized environments, these leaders know they can walk into any class at any time, sit next to students, and learn about the reality of teaching and learning firsthand. It is equally important to note what these leaders are not doing. They are not answering email; in some cases, more than one hundred emails will accumulate when these leaders check their incoming mail. They are not answering their phone; rather, they have an assistant who respectfully but insistently explains to callers, “The principal has a commitment right now” to be with teachers and students. In what is perhaps the most telling decision of equity and excellence leaders, they do not attend many external meetings. At some risk to their relationships with central office department heads, equity and excellence principals decide that being fully present with students and faculty is more important than being visible in meetings. Every central office in every school system—even the very best ones I have observed—would benefit from an audit to critically evaluate the purposes and results of meetings. It is not unusual in some large systems for principals to be called out of the building two to three days each week, rendering their role as instructional leaders a frustrating impossibility. Unless the purpose of a meeting is deliberation and collaborative decision making, the goals of improved teaching and learning are far better served when the principal is in the school, not at meetings. This is particularly true when the purpose of the meetings is to deliver a message—a function that in the 21st century does not require in-person presentations.