Friday, January 17, 2020

HIGH RELIABILITY SCHOOLS
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT IN WEST ADA

"What are you really proud of, and what's making you crazy?"

West Ada Superintendent Mary Ann Ranells asks her team a lot of questions. She listens and gathers information. The question above was her way of ascertaining some of the things that were frustrating her team, and some things they thought were going well.

What she found was frustration around the Professional Learning Community process in the District. As a large, fast-growing district, PLC members were increasingly feeling isolated and collaboration was suffering. Even though Richard DuFour's popular model had been implemented in the District for some time, there was a need to "revive PLC", in Superintendent Ranells' words.

So, at a  [PLC] conference in Arizona, Ranells expressed her team's frustration to old friend Robert Marzano, who recommended that West Ada look at High Reliability Schools.  Ranells asked a team of West Ada principals and district administrators to visit with Marzano.  The team left the visit with a vision for systemic school improvement across 55 schools focused on research-based indicators,  stakeholder transparency, and targeted professional development. 

Superintendent Ranells and her team credit district-wide implementation of the High-Reliability Schools framework with the revitalization of the PLC strategy in the district, and with improving collaboration and communication in West Ada. The framework has provided a common language of effective school improvement practice and strengthen school cultures where high levels of learning are valued above all else. 



The HRS framework is based on evidence-based practices where schools demonstrate successful completion of improvement indicators in the five areas outlined in the model above, beginning with "Safe, Supportive, and Collaborative Culture" and proceeding to "Competency-Based Education". In 2018-19, after certifying all schools in the first level Safe, Supportive, and Collaborative Culture, West Ada's Continuous Improvement Plan now includes a goal focused on High-Reliability Schools and states By May 1, 2021, 100% of West Ada schools will qualify for Effective Teaching in Every Classroom certification as measured by the District Certification Team review process and anchored to the academic measures of the West Ada Continuous Improvement Plan.  District-wide progress toward their CIP goal is well underway.  

School leadership teams are already celebrating evidence that convicts them of successful progress in level 2 Effective Teaching in Every Classroom.  Meridian Elementary, initially the pilot school for HRS in West Ada, led by Principal Debbie Aholt is anticipating certification in Level 4 Standards-Referenced Reporting this Spring. Susan McInerney, Principal at Heritage Middle School and her leadership team are certifying in Level 2 Effective Teaching in Every Classroom, this spring as well.  Schools such as Meridan High School, led by Principal Jill Lilienkamp, are excited for the results of their HRS journey and note the value of clarity through a district-wide language of school improvement and laser-focus on learning above all else.   

With a renewed focus on learning through effective PLCs, West Ada administrators feel that, as their communication and collaboration have improved, they can model those skills for teachers in every school. They now have a common language that is used to describe progress and to delineate goals, so that folks are comfortably "speaking the same language" of improvement across the District.

In Level 1, the goal is not just physical safety, but safety in terms of feeling comfortable and vulnerable, a difficult achievement. Superintendent Ranells shared a story of a teacher who was "on board" with the direction of West Ada HRS goals until the school decided to do "peer visitation" to help improve instruction. A conversation ensued about the purpose of the visits so that the teacher felt safe in having the observations, and understood that there was a shared purpose.

The team that spoke to us indicated that they wanted to go beyond the ISAT and IRI in order to illustrate success in other areas. So West Ada is now using HRS surveys to gather valued input from staff, students, and parents to show status in many other areas of school improvement areas that impact student achievement, such as prioritizing standards.  Priority Standards are in effect District-wide, but teachers have the wherewithal to establish how they instruct for those standards, staying within the "banks of the river" established by the District. The locally developed assessment provides assurance that students are on track for achievement on state-mandated tests.




Back Row L to R: East Regional Director Marcus Myers, Central Regional Director David Moser, North Regional Director Geoff Stands, South Regional Director Mandy White, Curriculum Director Bret Heller; Front Row L to R: Meridian High School Principal Jill Lilienkamp, Heritage Middle School Principal Susan McInerney, Superintendent Mary Ann Ranells, Meridian Elementary Principal Debbie Aholt


Superintendent Ranells calls her administrative team "our wonderful learning leaders", and that was certainly evident in our conversations with this dynamic group. They are believers in the HRS system and have the evidence to feel confident it is helping West Ada reach its goals of continuous improvement.






Friday, January 10, 2020


A DIFFERENT WAY TO COMPARE LITERACY PROFICIENCY


In his recent series of articles in IdahoEdNews (Idaho’s Reading Challenge) Kevin Richert did an excellent job of looking at the issues surrounding literacy in Idaho’s schools. His articles were in depth and highlighted the many different and significant aspects to be considered in evaluating student reading performance and reading instruction in Idaho’s schools. It was a worthy read and should be reread to really appreciate the value of his coverage. The series was timely as the Idaho Legislature, now in session, considers continuing the effort championed by Governor Little to ensure that children can read proficiently by grade three, a direction and goal that we certainly support. 

There are a lot of positive things to take from Kevin’s articles and plenty to reflect on in considering how to keep moving the needle to improve student outcomes in reading proficiency. 

But there was one particular statement at the end of one of the articles that we found troubling. 

In his article, Reading Realities: Idaho Is Far From Its Lofty Literacy Goals, Kevin correctly noted that the 100% proficiency target is a tough objective to reach. He also correctly reports that no school district or charter school hit the 100% target this (last) spring, or this fall. Then, after reporting that no school district hit 90% proficiency, he wrote, “Five charter schools reached the 90% plateau this spring…These are the realities.” 

What struck us as misleading was the comparison of charter “schools” to school “districts”. It seems inappropriate, or at least unfair, to compare a charter school’s outcomes with a school district’s outcome. For example, is it valid to compare the overall performance of a charter school with an enrollment of 407 students that achieved the 90% proficiency target with a nearby school district with an enrollment of 5,200 students that did not make the target, even though the district had a neighborhood school with 459 students that reached 87% proficiency? 

That type of comparison ignores the serious differences in the size and demographics of the educational institutions being compared. One of the larger brick and mortar charter schools in Idaho has an enrollment of 1,095 (about 85 students per grade level).  86% of the school's students were proficient on the IRI. A nearby district has more than 3,000 students per grade level. As a district they did not make the 90% target (they achieved a remarkable 81%). They did have two neighborhood schools that made 90% proficiency and nine more neighborhood schools that made 85% or higher. 

It makes more sense (to us) that comparisons should be made between “schools” with similar sizes and demographics. When Kevin writes that there were five charter schools that reached 90% proficiency on the IRI this (last) spring, he could have also noted that there were nine public neighborhood schools throughout Idaho that also met that threshold. If you lower the target to 85% proficiency, another 24 public neighborhood schools would be highlighted along with an additional 3 charter schools. 


There are other socio-economic factors that should also be taken into consideration in making comparisons between schools; such as the number of students who live in poverty (reflected in Free and Reduced Lunch counts), the number of English Language learners, and the number of students with disabilities.  

Despite our criticism of comparing charter schools to school districts, Richert’s series, The Idaho Reading Challenge, is a must read. It is thorough, thoughtful, and full of insights that can help reinforce existing successful literacy programs and drive new initiatives to improve reading achievement for Idaho’s youth.

PLAYING CATCH UP

Written by Don Coberly. RISE/TVEP Executive Director During Governor Little's Task Force meetings last fall session,  Idaho legislato...