Preparing for ESEA/ESSA: What Effective Schools Do to Continuously
Improve . . . and What Ineffective Schools Need to do to Significantly
Improve
Dear Colleagues,
Introduction
HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!!
As I fly over the
Rocky Mountains on my way home after a week of consulting in California, I am
reading up on some recent national reports that are essential to district and
school success.
Two reports, this
past month, have especially caught my attention:
The First Report:
ESSA Leverage Points: 50-State Report on Promising
Practices for Using Evidence to Improve Student Outcomes
was published this month (January, 2018) by Results
for America.
This Report discusses
their analyses of the Elementary and Secondary Education/Every Student
Succeeds Act (ESEA/ESSA) Consolidated State Plans—from every state department
of education in the country—that were submitted to the U.S. Department of
Education over the past 10 months.
Specifically, the
Report describes how the state departments are proposing to address thirteen
“leverage points” that relate to ESEA/ESSA’s requirements for school
improvement.
_ _ _ _ _
The Second Report:
Examples of Actions Taken by Principals Trying to Lead
Turnaround (2017)
is from the WestEd Center on School Turnaround (CST).
On the About
page in the Introduction of this document, it states:
“The CST is one of 7 national Content
Centers in a federal network of 22 Comprehensive Centers. The U.S. Department
of Education charges the centers with building the capacity of state education
agencies (SEAs) to assist districts and schools in meeting student achievement
goals. The goal of the CST is to provide technical assistance and to identify,
synthesize, and disseminate research-based practices and emerging promising
practices that will lead to the increased capacity of SEAs to support districts
in turning around their lowest-performing schools.”
The Abstract page of this document states:
“This report describes examples of actions that school principals have taken
in trying to lead turnaround. Most principals have either not worked in a
turnaround situation or have fallen short in a turnaround attempt, despite
their best efforts. Not all of the principals highlighted in this
report have successfully turned around their schools, but we intend for
these examples to be helpful to other principals, teacher-leader teams, and
principal supervisors who are looking to approach turnaround work with
strategic, but less common actions in an effort to get new, better results (my
emphasis added).
The authors draw on prior research to frame the
examples. The report also draws on the observations of two organizations with
deep experience in the turnaround field: Public Impact and the University of
Virginia Darden/Curry Partnership for Leaders in Education.”
_ _ _ _ _
Clearly, as
transformational leaders, all educators are in the business of school
improvement. While teachers and support
staff are focusing on student improvement. . . Building administrators and
supervisors are focusing on staff improvement. . . and, district administrators
are focusing on school improvement.
And this
improvement is contextual. Some schools
want to go from “great to greater.” Some
schools from “good to great.” And some
schools from “targeted or comprehensive external support” to a level of “good” independent
success.
But the
introductory comments (as above) in the Turnaround Report are
particularly striking.
Indeed, I cite
these quotes at the beginning of this Blog to emphasize that—even after 13 years
of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) version of ESEA (and two additional
years since the passage of ESEA/ESSA)—the lead school improvement
Technical Assistance (TA) Center for the U.S. Department of Education
acknowledges that:
* We still do
not know how to best turn significantly underperforming schools around to
ensure student, staff, and school success;
* They are
publishing a major national report with conclusions based on schools where “not
all of the principals highlighted. . . have successfully turned around their
schools;” and
* They have
selected their own research to fit into their own school improvement
model to organize the Report and frame their recommendations.
_ _ _ _ _
The “Take-Away’s”
are that:
* There is no
reliable, valid, or guaranteed evidence-base to any facet of school
improvement—not for organization and planning, or staff and professional
development, or curriculum and instruction, or student assessment and
intervention; and
* No one—especially
the U.S. Department of Education (with its spotty NCLB/school improvement track
record)—is “the expert” when it comes to guiding this process.
_ _ _ _ _
Thus, in order for school improvement and
turn-around to succeed, it needs to be done:
* At each involved school and district site
using intensive and sustained activities that include—
-- Ongoing local
needs assessment and strategic planning science-to-practice processes;
--Local
resource analysis and capacity-strengthening science-to-practice processes; and
--Local and on-site organizational,
staff development, consultation, and technical assistance science-to-practice processes.
The Key to these
processes are the professionals (both at the site and involved as
consultants), and their ability to use sound strategic planning processes to
select the best services, supports, strategies, and interventions at the
district, school, staff, and student levels to facilitate ongoing and
sustained success—at all of those levels.
Said a Different
Way: Just as we knew from the
beginning of NCLB that “every student was not going to be proficient
by 2014” . . .
We know right
now: That having state department
of education-determined “evidence-based or promising practices” embedded in
a district or school improvement plan is NOT going to increase the number of
students whose academic proficiency improves.
Student achievement
occurs in the classroom, NOT at the state capitol.
_ _ _ _ _
The Dilemma .
. . and The Solution
My point here is not
to criticize, but to caution.
But State
Departments of Education have a Dilemma:
While we still
have not identified definitive science-to-practice approaches that maximize the
probability of school improvement. . .
ESEA/ESSA still
requires our state departments of education (and districts and schools) to plan
and implement—starting next year—school improvement processes for at least 5%
of their schools . . .
and the departments
must provide guidance to the districts involved so that the schools in
improvement status have at least one evidence-based intervention in their
improvement plans.
_ _ _ _ _
The Solution
recommended here is:
For the Departments
of Education to ensure that the District with school in improvement status
use—and require those schools to use—evidence-based strategic planning
processes . . .as required by ESEA/ESSA (see below).
This will satisfy
ESEA/ESSA’s evidence-based practice requirement, and will result in better
decisions relative to the organizational, curricular, instructional, and
multi-tiered systems of support practices that are actually needed by a
school relative to staff and student success.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Report I: What Does ESEA/ESSA Require for School
Improvement ?
As noted above, the
first report (ESSA Leverage Points) identifies ESEA/ESSA’s requirements
in the area of school improvement, and then describes what the state
departments have proposed to address thirteen school improvement “leverage
points.”
These ESEA/ESSA-required
leverage points are (from the Report with some edits):
Requirement/Leverage
Point 1. States must create local
ESSA plan procedures in consultation with the governor and in collaboration
with the Districts (i.e., Local Education Agencies—LEAs).
Requirement/Leverage
Point 2. States must monitor LEA
implementation of ESSA strategies described in their plans to ensure compliance
with statutory and regulatory requirements.
Requirement/Leverage
Point 3. States must plan for
periodic review and revision of SEA and LEA ESSA plans to reflect changes in
strategies and programs—submitting significant changes for approval by the
USED.
Requirement/Leverage
Point 4. States must allocate at least
95% of the state’s school improvement set-aside to LEAs with schools identified
for comprehensive and targeted school improvement—ensuring that the funds are
“of sufficient size” to enable the LEA’s to effectively implement the selected/approved
school improvement strategies.”
Requirement/Leverage
Point 5. States must describe their
plan for developing and monitoring a school improvement application that
includes the elements required by ESSA, including how the LEA will (a) develop,
implement, and monitor CSI (comprehensive support and improvement) plans, while
also supporting TSI (targeted support and improvement) schools; and (b) oversee
the “rigorous review process” that the LEA will use with potential external
partners.
Requirement/Leverage
Point 6. States must engage in
“monitoring and evaluating the use of [school improvement] funds by local
educational agencies” and allows states to use part of the (5%) state school
improvement set-aside to carry out these responsibilities.
Requirement/Leverage
Point 7. States must provide
technical assistance to LEAs “serving a significant number” of CSI or TSI
schools.
Requirement/Leverage
Point 8. States must ensure LEAs
conduct their own school-level needs assessment in every identified CSI school,
using monitoring/auditing to ensure compliance.
Requirement/Leverage
Point 9. States must provide
sufficient guidance to LEAs such that all CSI and TSI plans include at least
one evidence-based intervention and that all CSI and TSI plans supported by
federal school improvement grants include at least one intervention supported
by the top three levels of evidence.
Requirement/Leverage
Point 10. ESSA does not explicitly
address a state-approved list of interventions but permits states to “take
action to initiate additional improvement” in LEAs with either significant
numbers of TSI schools or non-improving CSI schools and allows states to
“establish alternative evidence-based State determined strategies that can be
used by local educational agencies to assist” CSI schools. In other words,
states are permitted to create a list but are not required to.
Requirement/Leverage
Point 11. States must take more
rigorous actions for non-exiting CSI schools, and districts must take
additional actions for non-exiting TSI schools. The law on its own does not
necessarily require that these actions relate to the use of evidence.
Requirement/Leverage
Point 12. States are permitted—but
not required—to “take action to initiate additional improvement” in districts
with a “significant number” of CSI schools that do not meet the state’s exit
criteria or in districts with a “significant number” of TSI schools.
Requirement/Leverage
Point 13. States must review LEA
plans and monitor expenditures to ensure LEAs use federal funds on
evidence-based activities where required by law. For those allowable uses
conditioned on the availability of supporting evidence, states must determine
whether evidence is “reasonably available.”
_ _ _ _ _
What the “Leverage”
Report Found
The Leverage Points
above reinforce a critical issue for when educators are preparing to implement practices
that are based on policies that are based on laws.
The Issue: It is essential that all district and
school personnel actually read the original ESEA/ESSA law to determine what
elements are required and which ones are recommended or suggested.
Indeed, based on my
thirteen-year career directing a multi-million dollar federal grant at the
Arkansas Department of Education, I have described in numerous, past Blogs how
the U.S. Department of Education and its TA Centers (and some state departments
of education) sometimes suggest that some practices— while cited in
federal or state law—are required when they are actually recommended.
In my experience, (federal
and state) departments of education often do this to assert their preferences
for specific programs or practices, or to drive districts and schools to use
personnel or programs that they have funded.
Moreover, when they
do this, they are depending on the fact that virtually all of the state,
district, or school personnel with whom they are interacting will not
question, research, or confront their exaggerated statements.
Critically, even
when practices are actually mandated, states, districts, and schools still
often have the right to request a waiver—which can be approved with
sufficient empirical support and practical documentation.
_ _ _ _ _
This “required versus recommended” issue is
apparent at the very beginning of the Results for America Leverage Report. Indeed, in its Executive Summary, it says:
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) gives states,
school districts, and schools new flexibility to design K-12 education systems
that reflect local needs and priorities. In exchange, ESSA encourages, and
in some cases requires, the use of evidence-based approaches and continuous
improvement to drive improved outcomes.
Thus, the whole
issue of when and how to use evidence-based and “promising practice” approaches
is flexible and fluid.
Among the
questions are:
* How do we apply
ESEA/ESSA’s “evidence-based” definition to specific programs, practices, curricula,
and interventions?
* Who makes the
decision, and how is it objectively, independently, non-politically, and
consistently validated?
* Which parts of
ESEA/ESSA require evidence-based practices, and where in ESEA/ESSA are these
practices only encouraged?
_ _ _ _ _
All of this aside,
the Leverages Report detailed the following major results:
* Across all 51
state plans (50 states plus the District of Columbia), 162 promising practices
for building and using evidence to improve student outcomes were identified;
all but five states included at least one promising practice.
* Just nine states
emphasized the use of evidence and continuous improvement in the design of
their school improvement applications (Leverage Point 5).
* Only 14 states
highlighted plans to base funding allocations at least in part on the proposed
use of evidence (Leverage Point 4).
* Only three states
(Delaware, South Carolina, and Texas) described strong plans to prioritize the
use of evidence and continuous improvement when exercising their authority to
intervene in districts unable to improve their lowest-performing schools
(Leverage Point 12).
* Only seven states
(DE, IN, IA, MN, OH, OK, and TN) prioritized high-quality needs assessments
as a key component of the school improvement process (Leverage Point 8).
Given my comments
and recommendations above, this last result is the most troubling.
This result
suggests—now more than 15 years removed from the passage of No Child Left Behind—that
our state departments of education still do not fully understand the importance
of science-to-practice strategic planning relative to successfully addressing
the needs of underperforming districts and schools.
_ _ _ _ _
Report II: How Principals Try to Turnaround Under-Performing
Schools
As introduced
above, the second report that caught my attention this past month was: Examples of Actions Taken by Principals
Trying to Lead Turnaround from the WestEd Center on School Turnaround
(CST).
While I still do
not completely understand why it was published, the Report does outline
a number of important strategic planning processes that could help a
district or school to locally identify and effectively implement the
organization and planning, staff and professional development, or curriculum
and instruction, and student assessment and intervention strategies needed by a
district or school to facilitate meaningful improvement.
But unfortunately,
the Report is largely descriptive, and reads like a menu. It identifies a number of common
organizational actions, but it does not identify the characteristics or
conditions in a specific district or school that makes one or more of the
listed actions more advantageous and/or more predictive of improvement success.
And so, the fear is
that a district or school would simply pick and implement (without using a
systematic and effective needs assessment and strategic planning process) one
or more actions from the menu provided—resulting in failure, enhanced
frustration, and perhaps, a more convoluted problem.
Significantly, this
continues a common approach used—since the passage of NCLB and before—by
the U.S. Department of Education and its funded TA Centers. The approach is to present states, districts,
and schools a menu-driven framework, and then suggest that—in the
absence of data-driven decision-making—they pick the strategies off the menu
that they think will work.
_ _ _ _ _
At this point, I
will list the “examples of actions taken by principal trying to lead
turnaround” that are cited in the Report.
But this will lead to Part II of this Blog, where I will discuss
strategic planning in more detail.
The
Turnaround Actions listed include:
Vision
Help Staff Understand and Embrace the
Need for Change
Goals
Prioritize Goals and Focus Areas
Make Action Plans Based on Data
Identify and Achieve a Few Early Wins
Reduce
Time Focused on Nonessentials
Data
Establish the Expectations for a Data
Culture
Adjust Instructional Practice through
Visible Data
Use Data Continually to Solve Problems
Change Leadership
Focus on Successful Tactics, Discontinue
Unsuccessful Ones
Break Rules and Norms, Take New Action
Change Systems and Structures
Teachers and Leaders
Make Necessary Replacements
Attract, Select, and Retain Top Talent
Build and Lead a Team of Leaders
Ensure Ongoing Professional Growth
Opportunities
Instruction
Align Instruction to Assessments and
Standards
Monitor and Improve Instructional
Quality
Develop and Deploy a Team of
Instructional Leaders
Strategic Partnerships
Gain Support of Key Influencers
Enlist Partner Organizations
_ _ _ _ _
Once again, all
of these strategies are potentially useful to districts or schools in need of
improvement. Two questions remain:
1. With all that a
school in improvement status needs to do, which of these strategies are
the immediate, high-hit strategies that will begin the improvement process in a
timely way?
2. Once the
high-hit strategies are identified; exactly what is the training, who and where
are the targets; and what are the resources, implementation steps, and short-
and long-term outcomes needed such that improvement begins, is established, and
can be maintained over time?
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Summary
As noted earlier:
* There is no
reliable, valid, or guaranteed evidence-base to any facet of school
improvement—not for organization and planning, or staff and professional
development, or curriculum and instruction, or student assessment and
intervention; and
* No one—especially
the U.S. Department of Education (with its spotty NCLB/school improvement track
record)—is “the expert” when it comes to guiding this process.
_ _ _ _ _
Thus, in order
for school improvement and turn-around to succeed, it needs to be done:
* At each involved school and district site
using intensive and sustained activities that include—
--Ongoing local
needs assessment and strategic planning science-to-practice processes;
--Local resource
analysis and capacity-strengthening science-to-practice processes; and
--Local and on-site organizational,
staff development, consultation, and technical assistance science-to-practice processes.
The Key to
these processes are the professionals (both at the site and involved as
consultants), and their ability to use sound strategic planning processes to
select the best services, supports, strategies, and interventions at the
district, school, staff, and student levels to facilitate ongoing and
sustained success—at all of those levels.
In Part II of
this Blog series, we will discuss the five phases of the strategic planning
process—based on my work in hundreds of schools across the country, and on the
fact that the process to be described was part of the school improvement
process for the Arkansas Department of Education for all Focus Improvement Status
schools in the state during the NCLB Waiver/Flexibility years of the Obama
administration.
_ _ _ _ _
Meanwhile, I hope
that this discussion has generated both interest in and questions about the
school improvement process—especially as our state departments of education
move toward finalizing their respective processes on behalf of our districts
and schools nationwide.
As always, our
focus must be on the progress and outcomes for all students. But we all know that success for our students
means staff who similarly successful at what they do.
If you would like
to continue this discussion on a more personal level, I am always available by
e-mail. If your Leadership or Strategic
Planning Team would benefit from a free one-hour conference call with me, let’s
set it up as soon as possible.
Best,
Howie
