A Broad Look at a Small School

This post references a small, innovative secondary school in the North Central Region of North Carolina whose staff uses data to drive decision-making, and this mindset is ingrained in the culture of the school.  This organization has been in existence for three years and the four C’s- Creativity, Communication, Collaboration, and Community - are interwoven into daily operations.  The leadership team is comprised of the following staff:  Principal, Assistant Principal, Magnet Coordinator, Academically Gifted Facilitator, Exceptional Children Facilitator, MTSS Facilitator, and a Program Manager.  I am a member of the leadership team and the reflections in this post are solely my opinion.

What’s Working Well

Members of the leadership team meet weekly to discuss trends seen during walkthroughs conducted by administrators and consider ways to address school performance.  Central office personnel and state leaders who have visited during leadership team meetings have all commented on how efficient the team works as a Professional Learning Community (PLC). 

Currently quantitative and qualitative data are collected from various sources, including but not limited to student assessment scores, faculty observations, surveys, and general feedback from the community.  This data is then discussed in PLCs, department meetings, and at faculty meetings as a preliminary step to plan interventions and professional development.  Core instructional practices are closely examined as depicted in the Multi-Tier System of Supports (MTSS) model to determine if performance is a student, teacher, or school issue.  Named as one of the best schools in the district in regard to implementing MTSS correctly, the school serves as a district model for implementing interventions at the secondary level.  Employees are aware of the areas outlined in the school improvement plan that need to be addressed and know how the organization is rated according to the school report card scores.  Members of the school leadership team and other staff lead data conversations and make recommendations for improvement. In compliance with the Family Educational and Privacy Rights Act (FERPA), access to the district’s data warehouse is restricted to the principal, data manager, and school test coordinator.

What are the Needs

Though there are several faculty members who are skilled at accurately making decisions, some first-year employees are lacking the skillset that existing staff uses to analyze data. For example, one teacher may know how to retrieve historical scores from PowerSchool (a student information management system) and use data from previous test scores to determine individual student growth.  However, new employees may not have had the same level of professional development and remain unknowledgeable about the functionality of the system.  The fact that this is a small organization also means that several key support staff serve in multiple roles and those additional responsibilities directly impact the overall performance of the school.  One area that Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) data revealed as “not met” was with proficiency of students enrolled in the Exceptional Children (EC) program.  The fact that the EC Facilitator is split amongst three schools hinders his/her availability to attend meetings where decisions are made that affect the school’s

performance.  Since accurate decision-making is essential to the overall health of the organization, and analyzed data helps to determine a plan of action for the School Improvement Team (SIT), more frequent discussions around data are necessary. Data conversations should happen more often during PLCs, department meetings, and faculty meetings and the school improvement plan should be used to facilitate that dialogue.  Current practices entail interdisciplinary planning, a few conversations about students (non-academic related), and rare conversations about data unless test scores are the focus.

Make a Difference, Going Forward

Now that the school year is almost over, this is the best time to start strategically planning how meetings can be restructured such that the PLC format remains, but discourse around data- qualitative and quantitative- becomes a driving force in how to improve the school’s performance.  As a unified effort, each member of the leadership team and I should assist teachers in developing a growth mindset for continuous improvement.  The following essential question from the PLC framework should be addressed in every meeting- “How will we know if students have learned what has been taught?” Suggestions for what to ask next may be the following: How many/ what percent?  Was this before or after re-teaching?  Was this before or after interventions?  The whole point is to get teachers to seriously reflect on student performance and not just go through the motions of simply completing a clerical task, but rather be deliberate in thinking about meeting the goals of the school improvement plan as well as addressing the needs of learners.  Once the “At-Risk” reports and EVAAS data reports are available, the school leadership team and I must conduct internal data digs with

teachers.  Collectively and within individual content area departments, we should develop goals to address deficits.  These goals should include recommendations for professional development, further data interpretation, requests for additional instructional support and resources.  I will present a summary of these goals to the school improvement team so that these suggestions are taken under advisement when developing the school improvement plan.

References

DuFour, R. (2004). What is a Professional Learning Community? Educational Leadership , 61 (8), 6-11.

Durham Public Schools. (2013, April 25). District Policies. Retrieved June 6, 2016, from Durham Public Schools: http://www.dpsnc.net/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&DomainID=112&ModuleInstanceID=227&ViewID=047E6BE3-6D87-4130-8424-D8E4E9ED6C2A&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=214&PageID=261

Dweck, C. (2016, January 13). What Having a "Growth Mindset" Actually Means. Retrieved June 3, 2016, from Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2016/01/what-having-a-growth-mindset-actually-means

Metcalf, T. M. (n.d.). What's Your Plan? Accurate Decision Making within a Muti-Tiered System of Support: Critical Areas in Tier 1. Retrieved June 5, 2016, from MTSS/RTI Action Network: http://www.rtinetwork.org/essential/tieredinstruction/tier1/accurate-decision-making-within-a-multi-tier-system-of-supports-critical-areas-in-tier-1

VanDerHeyden, A., Burns, M., Brown, Rachel, Shinn, M. R., Kikic, S., Gibbons, K., et al. (2016, January 5). Educaton Week. Retrieved June 3, 2016, from Education Week: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/01/06/four-steps-to-implement-rti-correctly.html

Wikipedia. (2015, May 12). Adequate Yearly Progress. Retrieved June 4, 2016, from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adequate_Yearly_Progress