Getting Smart, November 18, 2018

Here at Getting Smart, we believe school visits are the best form of professional learning. Based on a couple thousand school visits, and with help from colleagues and readers, we’ve compiled a list of elementary and middle schools that can give educators a better sense of what’s possible. This list includes schools that achieve extraordinary results for underserved communities, create powerful learning experiences, and/or have innovative school models. Read the full article…

EdWeek, October 31, 2018, by Tom Vander Ark

There are five important attributes of Personalized Learning:

1. Whatever is best for that learner at that time. Personalized learning is what’s best for the learner rather than what is the most expedititoius for the institution.

Personalized learning weighs learner interest, learning progression (the best next unit not the easiest), opportunity (a unique local learning experience: a full moon, high tide, service need, civic event, or business trip). Personalized learning is a balance of what the learner wants to do, what the learner should do and what the learner could do.

2. Extended challenges.  If you value critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, character (including agency and persistence) you can’t get there with a series of worksheets. Learners need big integrated projects–some individual, some team, many community-connected and often with voice and choice in topic and product.

3. Individualized skill building. Identifying skill gaps and addressing them with targeted instruction, both by teachers and adaptive tools is a critical part of enabling all students to participate fully in high quality project-based learning. Skill building can occur before, during and after projects.

4. Anywhere, anytime learning. Personalized learning happens at school, after school, during the summer. As LRNG has been attempting to do, we have to unlock rich out of school learning experiences for all students; and we have to get better at capturing and signaling those new capabilities to other stakeholders so that learners can progress on demonstrated master (this is one of the reasons competency-based policies are so important, it can help unlock opportunity).

5. Social and emotional learning.  Self and social awareness and the ability to navigate complex relationships are developed in trust-based communities. At Thrive Public Schools in San Diego, they start and end the day in the community. Founder Nicole Assis wants to make sure every child is greeted every day, that they are “Known, seen and valued.” They make sure every kid has a voice.

When you do these things, learners build agency, a sense of identity as a learner, they begin to own their own learning. These are lifelong dividends.

How Teachers Support Personalized Learning

There are (at least) five ways teachers make learning personal.

1. Recognize and celebrate jagged profiles (Todd Rose).

2. Help every learner build a plan. Teachers in Cajon Valley help every student build a plan based on their unique strengths, interests and values. They explore these through 54 engagements with the world of work between K-8 (#CVWoW).

3. Plan extended challenges. To boost engagement, application, integration and critical success skills, learners need periodic community-connected challenge (we call this HQPBL). Do it with a partner, or a grade level team, or make it a school-wide endeavor for a week.

4. Leverage smart tools. Don’t try to grade every edit of every paper yourself, use automated writing feedback systems, use adaptive math systems, give learners the chance to manage their own progress (good competency systems do that)

5. Collaborate. Personalized learning is a team sport: it’s difficult, complicated, the tools aren’t good enough to fully support these ideas. It still takes hard work and teamwork

10 Ways Administrators Can Help

There are at least 10 ways school and system heads can support personalized learning:

1. Build a collaborative vision. Share your own personal story of personalized learning. Help others tell their story. Weave them together into a shared vision–a concise, compelling picture of powerful learning.

2. Define success. Hold a community conversation. Define what graduates should know and be able to do. Build a graphic graduate profile.

3. Help teams grow into the frame. Thoughtful district leaders build an academic framework and allow schools to grow into that framework in their own way. (Great examples: Mesa County, Colorado; Albemarle County, Virginia; Salisbury, Pennsylvania; Cajon Valley, California.)

4. Support teacher leadership. Thoughtful leaders Identify and embrace teachers leading the way. Find ways to support them. Create new roles for them. Opportunity Culture is a network of school using new staffing strategies that leverage the talent of teacher leaders.

5. Build a fast lane and slow lane for change management. Like students, teachers need personalized and competency-based learning too. Look for ways to support teacher teams ready to move (perhaps with microschools, #6) as well as those that need more time and support.

6. Use micropilots and microschools. In Kettle Moraine, superintendent Pat DeKlotz sponsored the development of four microschools for teachers that were ready to move. Singapore American School piloted new classroom configurations to investigate and illustrate facilities plans.

7. Use opportunities. Use whatever comes your way as an opportunity to launch or expand personalized learning: new schools opening; budget, staff or policy changes. Work from the edge in.

8. Develop personalized learning infrastructure. Adopt a learning platform and a competency-based grade book. Build project rubrics. Share a library of quality prompts and quality student work.

9. Work in phases. Break the work into three phases. Make it doable with clear targets and strong supports.

10. Put the vision on a timeline. Equity requires that all learners have access to personalized learning. Organic change is comfortable but it’s not equitable. Balance the desire to go slow with the need to accelerate student progress.

5 Tips on Learning Environments

1. Space: Larry Rosenstock developed all of the High Tech High spaces with as much “Height, light, and exposed structure” as possible to make it inspiring and inviting.

2. Exhibitions: Create permanent and pop up exhibitions of student work; welcome and celebrate contributions. (Below: High Tech Middle School, #shareyourlearning).

3. Flexible space: From east to west coast (e.g., Albemarle County and Lindsay USD) school districts are combining classrooms to facilitate easy movement between skill groups and project teams.

4. Seating options: Offer high and low, hard and soft flexible seating options (see featured image of Singapore American School).

5. Access: Make access to schools and programs equitable by paying attention to location, enrollment, and transportation.

There are many ways teachers and leaders can contribute to making learning personal. It starts with a shared commitment to know and care for each child.

Originally posted on EdWeek.

EdNC, October, 26, 2018

The following is a press release from Public Impact.

Public Impact is pleased to announce our fourth cohort of Opportunity Culture Fellows. This year’s 15 fellows are Opportunity Culture multi-classroom leaders and principals who have achieved strong results and been leaders in their schools and districts.

Fellows provide support to their cohort, take one another’s ideas back to their schools, write columns about their experiences, and speak locally and nationally about their Opportunity Culture roles. Their feedback and leadership are invaluable in helping to improve the Opportunity Culture initiative, and all materials related to it.

This year’s fellows come from Texas, Indiana, Arkansas, and three North Carolina school districts. We welcome and congratulate:

Lara B. Harris, K–2 Multi-Classroom Leader, Druid Hills Academy, Project L.I.F.T. zone, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, North Carolina.

Amber Hines, 3–5 English Language Arts and Science Multi-Classroom Leader, Zeb Vance Elementary, Vance County Schools, North Carolina.

Faith Jones, 6^th-grade English Language Arts Multi-Classroom Leader, North Little Rock Middle, North Little Rock School District, Arkansas.

Mollie Lyman, 6–8 English Language Arts Multi-Classroom Leader II, Whitewater Middle, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, North Carolina.

Okema Owens Simpson, 6^th-grade English Language Arts Multi-Classroom Leader, Ranson IB Middle, Project L.I.F.T. zone, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, North Carolina.

Jacqueline Smith, 3–5 Math and Science Multi-Classroom Leader II, Nations Ford Elementary, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, North Carolina.

Juan Pablo SuarezOrtiz, K–5 Multi-Classroom Leader, Spring Branch Elementary, Spring Branch Independent School District, Texas.

Brandon A. Warren, Grades 3, 7, 8 Multi-Classroom Leader III, William Penn Elementary, Indianapolis Public Schools, Indiana.

Jeremy Baugh, Principal, Lew Wallace Elementary (School 107), Indianapolis Public Schools, Indiana.

Donnell Cannon, Principal, North Edgecombe High, Edgecombe County Public Schools, North Carolina.

Kelly Gwaltney, Principal, Garinger High, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, North Carolina.

Janet Moss, Principal, Coulwood STEM Academy, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, North Carolina.

Sarah Reeves, Principal, Shamrock-Gardens Elementary, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, North Carolina.

Philip A. Steffes, Principal, Albemarle Road Elementary, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, North Carolina.

Chris Winstead, Principal, Pine Shadows Elementary, Spring Branch Independent School District, Texas.

An Opportunity Culture—now in more than 20 districts in nine states—extends the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within recurring budgets. In an Opportunity Culture school, teachers gain time to plan and collaborate, everyone gets more support, and students get personalized, high-standards instruction. Research indicates that multi-classroom leadership, the foundation of an Opportunity Culture, helps teams of teachers produce substantially higher student learning growth than in typical schools.

Rocky Mount Telegram, October 24, 2018, by Amelia Harper

The Rocky Mount branch of the NAACP hosted a special education forum Tuesday to allow representatives of the N.C Justice Center to share information about state education.

Two Edgecombe County principals from the school district’s northern Innovation Zone also shared strategies that Edgecombe County Public Schools is using at certain schools operating under the state-approved restart model.

Kristopher Nordstrom, a senior policy analyst at the N.C. Justice Center, gave a presentation about the current state of educational affairs in the state.

“Years of mismanagement and under-investment are undermining North Carolina’a public schools,” Nordstrom said.

Nordstrom said the public school system has been undermined because lawmakers have denied schools the resources needed to allow students to flourish, prioritized school choice and implemented half-baked underfunded versions of school initiatives that have failed in other parts of the country.

Nordstrom encouraged participants to support a new plan that promotes “human flourishing.”

“Children are paying the price for these policies,” Nordstrom said. “We should be investing in policies that are beneficial to all students and boost student achievement.”

Sarah Montgomery, a policy advocate with the N.C. Justice Center, encouraged attendees to vote for candidates that will support public education. She also introduced Jennifer O’Meara of Philips Middle School and Donnell Cannon of North Edgecombe High School.

The two principals shared some of the strategies they are using in the Innovation Zone at the northern end of the county where all three schools are operating under a restart model that allow greater flexibility in handling personnel, funding, curriculum and the school calendar. Some of these changes include the implementation of Public Impact’s Opportunity Culture model that allows exceptional teachers to stay in the classroom while still mentoring less-experienced teachers, earlier starting dates for schools in the zone and the implementation of a trial “micro school” that allows students to use design thinking to solve problems.

Both principals spoke passionately about the new model.

“We hope to be able to scale the micro school model beyond the school year because it allows for a more enriching experience across several grade levels,” Cannon said.

O’Meare agreed.

“We truly believe that this is what equity looks like,” she said.

O’Meara emphasized that education is a complicated issue and that a single solution does not fit all schools.

Shelton Jefferies, superintendent of Nash-Rocky Mount Public Schools, spoke highly of the two young principals.

“We talk a lot about policy and strategies, but the linchpin of success in schools is a dynamic leader,” Jefferies told the principals. “You are examples of the reason public education will succeed.”

Several candidates spoke briefly at the event about the issues they consider important in the coming election. These candidates included Nash-Rocky Mount Board of Education District 8 member Reginald Silver; school board District 2 candidate Dean Edwards; Albert Pacer, who is running for the state Senate District 11 seat; and Nash County commissioner Mary Wells and candidate Bruce Berry, who are both running for the District 6 seat on the Nash County Board of Commissioners.

Originally posted on Rocky Mount Telegram.

EdWeek, October 16, 2018, by Madeline Will

Principal Mary Beck knew that in order to transform her Chicago high school’s staff culture, she had to go the distance—13.1 miles, to be exact.

Beck, who is the principal of Nicholas Senn High School on the North Side of Chicago, ran a half-marathon last year both to raise money for her teachers and to encourage them to prioritize their own wellness. It had been a tough few years in the cash-strapped Chicago district, and teachers were feeling burnt out and, increasingly, leaving the classroom.

“The culture of my building wasn’t very strong,” Beck said, adding that she had to hire 21 new staff members when she first came on board in 2015. “We can say we appreciate teachers, but it’s hard to really show it.”

To change the culture, Beck started inviting teachers to work out with her.

She tapped the community to sponsor her half-marathon and used the money to buy gift cards and prizes to give to teachers every month. Staff members began spending time together outside of work, which fostered more trust at work.

Beck’s efforts paid off: In 2015, the school’s teacher-retention rate was about 70 percent. At the end of last school year, it was about 85 percent.

Research has shown that effective school leadership is among the strongest predictors of teacher retention. How principals engage their teachers matters in terms of whether they will stick around.

“Principals are major sources of support, encouragement, and recognition for a job well done,” said Jason Grissom, an associate professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University. “There are expectations that principals are coaching teachers, providing them with targeted professional development, in addition to creating their classroom assignments. … Principals play a large role in setting the culture and climate of the school.”

The most recent federal data show that 84 percent of teachers who were teaching during the 2011-12 school year stayed at the same school the following year, with 8 percent moving to a different school, and 8 percent leaving the profession altogether. Among teachers with three or fewer years of experience, 80 percent stayed at the same school the next year.

Creative Ways to Hold Onto Staff

In schools in high-needs areas, it’s especially tough to retain teachers. Just 78 percent of teachers stay in the highest poverty schools, compared to the 87 percent of teachers who stay in schools with little or no poverty, the federal data show.

Those principals have an especially tough job retaining teachers. They often have to get creative and stay nimble in their work to create a school community where teachers stay.

“It’s all about support,” said Kevin Armstrong, the principal of DuPont Hadley Middle School near Nashville, Tenn. “We have to give support to the point where teachers [actually] feel supported.”

Although he leads an urban, Title I school, the teacher-retention rate there hovers near 90 percent. That’s through making sure all teachers, novice and veteran, have both the professional-development and social-emotional support they need, Armstrong said.

For example, he said, the school has new-teacher meetings every month, and new teachers are asked to lead sections of professional development for the veterans.

“We have a wealth of knowledge from teachers who are just coming out of college that have learned new strategies that some of our veteran teachers have not been exposed to,” he said.

“It really makes a young teacher feel good when they’re able to lead a professional development session of something they just learned, in some instances, a couple months ago.”

And administrators are tasked with making sure new teachers are not only comfortable with the content, but are fitting into the culture of the school.

“Oftentimes, I feel like some principals hire someone and stick them in the classroom and then turn around and walk off—and then [the teacher is] putting in a letter of resignation because they’re overwhelmed,” Armstrong said.

Changing the Instructional Culture

When Jeremy Baugh started as the principal of Lew Wallace Elementary School in Indianapolis in 2015, about half the teaching staff was leaving every year. The high-poverty, low-performing school had been flagged by the district for transformation, and Baugh was hired to turn it around.

District officials offered Baugh flexibility with staffing if he piloted the Opportunity Culture model, an initiative led by Public Impact, an education policy and management-consulting firm in Chapel Hill, N.C. The model seeks to put high-quality teachers in charge of more students.

Teachers who have demonstrated effectiveness with student learning are named “multiclassroom leaders” and are tapped to lead a teaching team and provide on-the-job coaching to their teachers. There are now four multiclassroom leaders at Lew Wallace who are paid up to $18,300 more.

Baugh said that after some initial implementation bumps, teachers began to embrace the model. They felt supported, and that meant they were more likely to stay. At the end of last academic year, only one teacher left—and that was because of retirement.

“We talk about expanding the reach of teachers, but in a way, I feel like it allows me to expand my reach,” Baugh said. “I couldn’t get to 23 classroom teachers and have them feel overly supported on a daily basis. I’m one person. This allows us to distribute some of that leadership, and it allows me to be more involved on that academic side than if I didn’t have that support.”

After all, principals say that it’s important for them to be as involved as possible in the daily work of instruction.

That’s the philosophy of Jayda Pugliese, a first-year principal at St. Mary Interparochial School in Philadelphia. There’s relatively little teacher attrition at the K-8 private school, but Pugliese knew from her own experience as a teacher how important it is to have supportive school leadership.

“I’m a new principal, a young principal,” she said. “I didn’t want them to feel like my ideas were going to chase them away. [I wanted them to know] I’m going to put in the work to support them in any capacity.”

Her solution is to teach in each grade level for one period a week. Teachers can spend the time planning or catching up on work, or they can observe Pugliese’s lesson.

“Teachers really enjoy their free time, so I’m giving up my principal time to try to support my teachers, show them that I notice their free time is valuable,” Pugliese said.

“This dynamic allows me to not only support them by giving them more time for planning. … Opportunities for collaboration are now being better developed, and more than everything, it allows me to get to know my students.”

Creating a Community

Principals in rural school districts often face an extra challenge retaining teachers.

Some areas are so isolated that principals have to work beyond the hours of the school day to make their teachers feel supported and welcome, said Hannah Nieskens, the principal of Whitehall Middle and High Schools in rural Montana, and the state’s high school principal of the year.

While Whitehall is close to more bustling areas, Nieskens previously served for four years as the principal of Northside Elementary School on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, which was three hours from the closest big city.

“And by big city, I mean a city that has a Walmart,” Nieskens quipped.

She would typically have to replace between one-third and one-half of her staff every year.

“It’s kind of a culture shock for someone to move somewhere that’s so isolated,” said Nieskens, who was on the reservation for six years altogether.

“It requires a lot of changes to your life. We don’t have good cell service, we don’t have good internet access. It’s challenging to travel. … If they’re not in love with where they are, it’s tough to get them to stay.”

To make teachers feel at home on the reservation, she and her staff planned community events at the school, like bingo nights and powwows.

That way, teachers were able to interact with members of the community and experience the local culture.

“It’s easier for people to walk away from a community if they don’t feel like they’re a part of it,” Nieskens said. “It’s more difficult” when they feel at home.

Originally posted on EdWeek.

eSchool News, October 3, 2018, by Talia Milgrom-Elcott and Mo-Yun Lei Fong

It’s Management 101 that employees need to be inspired to create services and products that are relevant and effective. Identifying the workplaces that do the best job of keeping employees inspired, motivated, and productive has become a cottage industry. There’s a reason for that, and it’s not just to give out blue ribbons. It’s because places that are great to work in return the greatest value to their shareholders, employees, customers, and communities. Feeling fulfilled and supported at work leads employees to go the extra mile to deliver on their mission, whatever it may be, and that translates into great outcomes.

Yet, one of the American workplaces with the most to learn is, ironically, public schools themselves. Too few schools prioritize employee satisfaction, failing to recognize the link between it and customer value. In other words, they fail to see how fulfilled and supported teachers lead to better student learning and growth. In too many schools, teachers don’t get the right kind of support to flourish. If the teachers at your kids’ school aren’t flourishing, you can bet that your kids aren’t either.

There’s a lot that schools can learn from the companies that do this best, and Google regularly ranks at the top. One of us runs a national network focused on STEM education, and the other is a 12-year veteran at Google and was a public school assistant principal and teacher for four years. Together we thought we might share some lessons from Google that schools can adapt and put into place to improve student learning by focusing on the experience of teachers.

Leadership matters

Google ran an “uncontrolled experiment” in 2002 that offers insights for those hoping to foster strong school culture. They got rid of all managers. But like a conductor-less orchestra that slowly veers off-beat, it turned out that teams needed managers, because they set the culture, decide who comes into the organization to be part of that culture, and determine who and what is prized or valued within that culture.

Within schools, principals play a similar role. But in too many places, principals are treated like middle managers with too many direct reports and too many responsibilities in too many domains, and what little flexibility or support they get is rarely devoted to nourishing healthy cultures for the professionals under their wings. Leading non-profits like New Leaders understand this, as does USHCA, a non-profit advising districts on their talent portfolios. The most important support principals can get isn’t pedagogic, and it isn’t in business practice: It’s in creating environments in which the experts—teachers—can thrive.

There is already strong evidence that support from principals is one of the most important factors in predicting whether teachers stay, and it’s especially important for minority teachers. Laszlo Bock, former SVP of Google’s People Operations, details the eight essential attributes of what makes a good manager in his book Work Rules!, including the ability to be a good coach and empower teams. School leaders who co-create the school environment and culture alongside their teachers will have the highest chance of achieving a successful outcome.

Empower teachers to experiment in the classroom

What does thriving look like in the 21st-century economy? The most attractive and successful workplaces don’t tolerate failure. They encourage it. Astro Teller, CEO of X (formerly Google X), who has led efforts from balloon-powered internet services to self-driving cars, often talks about innovation and improvement being reliant on the ability to fail fast. Google also support the culture of 20% projects, where engineers have the opportunity to tinker with projects that are not core to their daily roles, but may lead to greater innovation—case in point: This was how Gmail was born.

Granted, when it comes to students, we need to be able to experiment and fail by creating safe spaces to carry out those experiments – understanding our risk tolerance and when to stop if the outcomes are not producing great results. But neuroscience has long shown that the brain is elastic, and simply believing that improvement is possible yields greater growth. We should encourage our teachers to change—or adjust—their mindsets, as studies have shown that when math teachers change their mindset about which students can succeed, student grades increase dramatically.

Authentic growth demands experimentation, and experimentation goes hand in hand with failure. Yet schools are not places where teachers are empowered to experiment or encouraged to fail and learn. Celebrate failure, for students and teachers alike. Chandra Byrd-Wright, a principal at a Chicago-area school, speaks here about the importance of fostering such a “growth mindset”—and there are useful tools developed by Achievement Network that can help schools rethink their approach to learning and continuous improvement.

Give teachers the time to collaborate and improve their craft

At Google, a hallmark of the company culture is the level of collaboration. Even the buildings and workspace layout are set up to facilitate chance conversations and increase opportunities for “water cooler” encounters. The décor is bright and colorful full of whiteboards and long tables that invite everyone to gather around and brainstorm together. Each conference room is outfitted with video conferencing units and projectors so there can be real-time discussion and document editing. It only takes a few minutes to generate and start refining ideas. Even without the expensive gadgetry, schools can embrace similar approaches.

100Kin10’s analysis of the biggest reasons people leave teaching, or don’t choose to teach in the first place, found that time for collaboration and professional growth during the work day are among the most critical issues. Indeed, teachers confirm that they lack time for their own professional development and do not have sufficient opportunities to collaborate with other teachers.

Making time for collaboration and professional growth isn’t something reserved just for Fortune 50 companies like Google. Schools in Japan and Sweden build time for teacher collaboration into the school day and put budgets and time behind teachers’ professional growth. Public Impact has created a model they call Opportunity Culture that helps any school create teacher leadership and growth within existing budgets. Creating a collaborative environment has even been shown to help lower teachers’ elevated stress levels. The models are there, and our schools and school systems can choose to make this a priority and allocate the necessary resources to make it happen.

Give teachers the tools to succeed

If you work in a high-performing environment, you don’t even think about having the tools you need to do your work. Phones, laptops, and tech-enhanced meeting spaces are the floor, not the ceiling. But if you’re a teacher, those kinds of perks are practically unheard of, and too many lack even fundamental supplies. Only one third of adults believe teachers currently have the resources they need to provide a quality STEM education, and for good reason: Ninety-four percent of public school teachers in the United States reported paying for supplies without reimbursement in the 2014-2015 school year.

At the end of August, DonorsChoose.org, a crowd-funding platform that helps teachers nationwide buy supplies, tallied nearly 14,000 projects requesting basic classroom supplies like copy paper, notebooks, pens, and pencils. Last year, there were 70,000 of these projects, coming in at about $9 million. That number might seem big, but it’s a rounding error on the $620 billion spent annually on public education. The lack of these basic supplies stings, and it’s a one of the primary reason teachers leave. It’s no surprise that pictures of shoddy textbooks or broken school chairs went viral on social media during this spring’s teacher protests. Considering that each time a teacher leaves, school districts spend more than $20,000 on average to bring on a new one, it’s clear that the return on investment for adequately resourcing teachers is very high and would pay for itself even if it only slowed the rate of teacher attrition.

It goes without saying that there are many key differences between working at Google and helming a classroom or school. But we believe that all organizations can foster an environment that supports and champions everyone’s learning, creativity, and collaborative spirit. That alone will yield dividends for students.

We can’t just wave a magic wand and make schools a great place to work. Ingrained structural barriers may seem insurmountable, but parents, advocates, funders and administrators all have a role to play in changing a school’s environment and operations and addressing unexpected and complex challenges. Finding common ground starts with asking the simple question, “How we can make schools more supportive and compelling environments for the adults who work there?” The evidence suggests that once those elements are in place, a cascade of benefits for teachers and students will follow—the proverbial snowball down the mountain.

Originally posted on eSchool News.

American School Board Journal, October 2018, by Nora K. Carr

When Georgia’s Fulton County Schools formed its Achievement Zone, the district hoped to improve a cluster of 10 struggling schools characterized by poverty and low achievement. Now, three years later, strategies forged in the Achievement Zone are transforming the entire district, thanks to the school board’s willingness to take the calculated risks necessary.

“By embracing the diverse needs of the students and continuing to push for improved academic achievement, we’re gaining momentum,” says Linda Bryant, president of the Fulton school board. “Improving teaching and learning is what drives every decision we make.”

A challenging mix of urban poverty, wealth, working- class neighborhoods, and suburban affluence that bookend Atlanta, Fulton is a microcosm of the demographic shifts and public education challenges—and opportunities—
playing out across the U.S.

The district’s 96,000 students are 42 percent black, 29 percent white, 15 percent Hispanic, 11 percent Asian and 3 percent multiracial/other. About 46.5 percent are considered economically disadvantaged. About 8.7 percent are English learners, including many first-generation immigrants who represent more than 60 world languages.

Historically, as is true nationally, test scores in Fulton often mirrored the socioeconomic status of each school’s students, with a few exceptions that proved difficult to bring to scale. Fulton has some of the highest-performing schools in the state. The district also has some of the state’s lowest-performing schools. Breaking that stranglehold was the focus of the district’s partnership with the University of Virginia (UVA).

“Failing schools are not recent anomalies. They represent generational challenges,” says Jeff Rose, who was named Fulton superintendent in 2016. “We’ve taken what we’ve learned in the Achievement Zone and developed a strategic support model that is based on the level of achievement and the needs of kids at each school.”

ART AND SCIENCE OF SCHOOL TURNAROUNDS

Applying leadership lessons gleaned from successful turnarounds in business, government, and education, UVA’s Partnership for Leaders in Education focuses on building the capacity of principals and district administrators to transform chronically underperforming schools.

By focusing on small changes daily, school teams build momentum and grow more confident—important considerations in a profession characterized by widespread morale issues nationally. The change desired isn’t incremental, however.

UVA’s systemic approach to creating rapid and sustainable school turnarounds blends expertise and research from the Darden School of Business and the Curry School of Education. Its evidence-based focus on building internal capacity in partner schools works. More than half of all partner schools in 12 states have seen double-digit gains in student achievement in two years or less.

Fulton experienced similar results, with most of its original 10 Achievement Zone schools posting gains in academic achievement at multiple grade levels and in multiple subjects since its inception in 2015. The hard-won gains in performance in many of the district’s toughest schools are inspiring hope among parents and community members, reinvigorating educators, and changing perceptions about what makes a good school.

Fulton has organized the work in the Achievement Zone around three areas: talent development, culture and climate, and teaching and learning. Teachers who take on more responsibility and get better results can earn higher pay, as do principals willing to tackle the leadership challenges associated with struggling schools.

“We work really hard at being great on purpose, to make it intentional,” says Jovita Wallace, principal at Brookview Elementary School, where 80 percent of the students who started the school year weren’t enrolled in the spring when state testing began during Wallace’s first year on the job.

Extensive outreach to parents and community partnerships has whittled the churn to about 60 percent—still significant, but a major gain in stabilizing schooling for many of the district’s most vulnerable children. “We work really hard at creating a culture of respect and a culture of accountability.”

At Brookview, partnerships are helping bridge the opportunity gaps that help create and exacerbate achievement gaps. When private funding paid for a trip to Red Lobster for students and parents, it was eye-opening to Brookview staff to learn that many had never experienced having a meal served to them in a restaurant before.

“UVA really taught us how to find our priorities by finding the ‘why’ behind the data,” says Wallace. “The protocols are simple to use and help us focus, very intently, on a problem of practice that needs to be solved. We keep asking why until we get to the root cause of the problem, which is usually something we can fix ourselves. The process started with the Achievement Zone, and now it’s grown to the entire district.”

The work of turning around schools is daunting, and in many ways represents one of America’s greatest educational challenges, but it’s also deeply rewarding. “You feel the family walking in the door,” says Shondra Evans, an extended impact teacher at Woodland Middle School. In addition to leading her own classroom, Evan also works with students and colleagues in English/language arts as part of the district’s “Opportunity Culture” initiative. “Everyone in the school is accountable for everyone’s learning.”

Parents whose children attend Achievement Zone schools feel the difference, and more are fighting to stay in “their” schools even when housing instability and poverty force unexpected moves.

“The teachers all help each other out, all staff members are always warm and nice, and the principal has an open-door policy for parents,” says Beverly Cain, a Brookview parent. She says the differences are stark in the opportunities now being afforded to her youngest child that weren’t available when her older child attended the same school. Cain is working with Wallace to restart the school’s Parent Teacher Association and parent volunteer program.

GROWING STUDENTS

Sustaining significant growth in learning and life outcomes is becoming business as usual in FCS. In 2017, all but one Achievement Zone school showed gains in the percentage of students meeting or exceeding state standards for proficiency in grade four English/language arts. Most Achievement Zone schools also posted gains in the third, fourth, and sixth grades in all tested subjects. Several schools posted double-digit gains.

“This what we do: We grow students,” says Jason Stamper, principal of Woodland Middle School, which earned recognition recently as one of the state’s top-performing Title I schools. Being located in a high-poverty area marked by housing instability, rent increases, or special discounts can drive families at Woodland and other Achievement Zone schools from neighborhood to neighborhood, and from school to school, as they seek ways to reduce housing costs. As a result, about 65 percent of Woodland’s students move in and out of the school each year.

Despite these challenges, Woodland showed gains last year in the percentage of students scoring in the “proficient” or “distinguished” range on end-of-year tests in English/language arts and mathematics in sixth grade as well as gains in eighth-grade mathematics, science, and social studies.

The focus on culture and climate is driving down the school’s referral and suspension rates, as school personnel learn how to engage students more effectively and build better relationships with students and their families, according to Stamper, who gives his cellphone number to every parent. Understanding the students and neighborhoods they serve is key, Stamper says.

IMPROVING INSTRUCTION DRIVES PLANNING

Based on its experiences in driving sustainable improvement in its Achievement Zone schools, the district now packages its supervision and support into three different levels, based on a combination of research-based factors, with improving student achievement at the top of the list.

Driven by the Fulton school board’s belief in academic achievement for all students, Rose started the planning process with a sketch on a napkin that showed how he wanted to align a school support strategy to the academic needs of the students. The school board has since provided feedback and embraced a support model as a centerpiece of the district’s 2022 strategic plan.

“We spent a lot of time and energy figuring out what to hold tight and what to loosen up on,” says Rose. “In some cases, our schools needed less autonomy and more support. In other cases, they needed us to cut the ‘red tape’ so they could move more quickly. “

APPROACH YIELDS RESULTS

The unified approach is working; Fulton’s 2017 results are impressive. The district posted its highest score ever—78.0—on Georgia’s College and Career Ready Performance Index (CCRPI), besting the state average.

The CCRPI uses a variety of measures, including test scores, financial efficiency, and school climate ratings, and cohort graduation rate data by subgroup, among others. Seventy-four out of 108 schools, or 68 percent, showed gains on the CCRPI.

The district also reduced the number of state-identified, “chronically failing schools” from 14 to eight, while it reduced the overall number of F schools on the state’s school grading system from 28 to 18. In 2017, 26 of 28 F schools achieved gains on the CCRPI, while 38 schools improved by at least a letter grade.

“There are so many levels of support now, you’re really guaranteed success if you take advantage of the opportunities provided for students and teachers,” says Monica Roberts, a model teacher at Woodland. Model teachers in Fulton serve as instructional improvement coaches and classroom teachers.

The systems and structures put in place to encourage feedback and sharing at the school and districts level help build teacher confidence, reduce fear and embarrassment, and encourage more risk taking, according to Roberts. “We’re constantly sharing ideas—about what worked, what didn’t, why and how we can improve—not just in our zone, but Fulton County-wide,” she says.

Originally posted on American School Board Journal.