INCREASING ACHIEVEMENT LEVELS FOR AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDENT THROUGH INSTRUCTIONAL ROUNDS

Dr. Matthew W. RossAsst. Supt., Educational

ServicesEastside Union School

DistrictLancaster, California

Dr. Mark E. MarshallSuperintendent of SchoolsEastside Union School DistrictLancaster, California

FACTS ABOUT EASTSIDE UNION SCHOOL DISTRICT

We are located in East Lancaster. We are an urban/suburban Community. We are very diverse (60% Hispanic, 23% African

American, 17% White and Other). We have a free and reduced lunch rate of nearly

90% We have increased student enrollment. We have declining revenue from the State.

RESPECTIVE ROLES

The Board of Trustees develops policies. The Superintendent ensures that the policies are

being followed. The District Office provides the technical

expertise and supports the work of the schools. School Sites have some autonomy yet the share

in the accountability with regard to local decisions.

CELEBRATIONS IN EASTSIDE! We have had 3 consecutive years of positive district API growth We have Science partnerships with NASA We are expanding the AVID program to our Elementary Sites,

while Cole Middle is poised to be AVID Demonstration Site Our Middle School Boys recently won the League

Championships: for both Basketball and Soccer We have major Capital Improvements in the works: Construction

of Eastside Academy (Final Stages), and a 5th Elementary School (Ground Breaking)

We are working with High Desert Alliance of Black School Educators (HDABSE) to establish a Parent Academy

We have a partnerships with the City of and other entities to augment the services to our students.

THE GOAL

My goal is to facilitate a 5 year Strategic Plan that addresses the following: Academics, Capital Improvement/Technology Enhancements, Fiscal Responsibility, Professional Development, Human Resources, Stakeholder Engagement, and Safety/Climate Needs of the Eastside Union School District. This action will serve as a pillar in our quest to become a “World Class System of School”.

THE OUTCOMES The Eastside Union School District will become a top

academic achiever in the Antelope Valley. The Eastside Union School District will be positively

recognized by the State of California. The Eastside Union School District will become a premier

school district on the West Coast. The Eastside Union School District will become a nationally

recognized model school district. The Eastside Union School District will be transformed into a

World Class System of School that has attained excellence!

ELEMENTS OF THE PLAN

What does a “World Class System of Schools” Look Like?”

ATTENDANCE, STUDENT DISCIPLINE,SCHOOL SAFETY, AND SCHOOL CLIMATE

Following state policies on enrollment and attendance, we ensure that our students attend school regularly and continue to develop incentives to foster positive attendance and student achievement.

All of our schools consistently follow the established student code of conduct.

School wide discipline plans and positive reinforcement plans are established at all of our sites.

All schools develop and maintain annual Safety Plans. We work cooperatively with law enforcement and the judicial

system to stay current in community trends.

CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS/TECHNOLOGY

We ensure that our school facilities are up to date and safe for all students.

Our students and staff members have access to up to date technology.

We stay abreast in funding opportunities that will enhance our capacity in this area.

We work closely with the individuals charged with carrying out the actual work in our school system (project managers, architects etc.).

We are transparent with the public as it pertains to any renovation, building projects, or technology upgrades.

FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY Budgets are developed to serve Students in the best

manner possible. The Board of Trustees are always provided with the data

necessary to make budgetary decisions. In the event of a financial crisis, a transparent and

inclusive stakeholder process is used to make the hard decisions.

Financial reports are developed and provided to stakeholders on a monthly basis (or as requested)

We develop and maintain a healthy reserve fund balance.

HUMAN CAPITAL

We recruit, hire, sustain, and retain the best employees for our students.

Employees are knowledgeable of and follow the established policies of the Eastside Union School District .

All employees are evaluated at least annually and held to the highest standards.

Employees are encouraged to give feedback on our performance in this area.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT An Aligned Professional Development Framework is

developed (or enhanced) in our district and is a priority in our district to enhance student achievement.

Staff members are invited to give input relative to their Professional Development needs and the quality of our program.

We increase the number of staff members with advanced degrees and/or attaining National Board Certification.

School administrators engage in professional growth to stay current in the field; including leadership development and succession planning.

STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT

We meet regularly with our stakeholders to keep them abreast of district initiatives and issues that impact student learning.

While we regularly promote the School District accomplishments, we will also be transparent in articulating the challenges.

Stakeholders have regular opportunities to give us feedback about our work.

We continue to network with colleges and universities. We continue foster partnerships with local businesses.

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

The School District and each individual School makes annual gains on its Academic Performance Indexes.

The School District and each individual School makes Adequate Yearly Progress.

At least 80% of our students meet or exceed Standards on State Assessments.

All students are exposed to a rigorous course of study, innovative instructional practices, and highly qualified teachers.

Our Schools become State (California Distinguished), AVID Demonstration and National Schools of Distinction

HOW DO WE GET THERE???

A special Thank You to everybody who ever put anything on the internet for

us to use as we developed our Instructional Rounds protocols.

INSTRUCTIONAL LEADERSHIPInstructional leaders are obligated to:

• Establish goals and expectations • Ensure orderly and supportive

environment • Promote and participate in teacher

learning• Plan, coordinate and evaluate curriculum• Plan, coordinate, and evaluate teaching• Align resource selection and allocate to

priority teaching goals(Hattie, 2009)

MOVING FROM A “COMPLIANCE CULTURE” TO AN “INQUIRY AND ACCOUNTABILITY

CULTURE” “Classrooms, schools, and districts are nested

learning communities whose cultures are closely linked. Teachers who operate in a compliance mode with their principals are unlikely to create anything

other than a compliance environment for their students. And as a former principal ... put it,

‘Principals cannot lead collaborative learning if they have not experienced it.’ Students are not likely to

take risks, collaborate, learn together, and experience higher order tasks unless their teachers are. Recognizing these nested relationships helps leaders in a variety of roles take responsibility for

leading learning.” -Dr. Richard Elmore-

Leadership Practice

Model public learning

Create environment supportive of risk-taking (psychological safety)

Focus on structures, processes and content of team work

Examine available instructional supports / PD

Organizational Processes

Structures in place

Instructional mandate (vertical accountability)

Attention to processes

Explicit focus on group commitments

Increased exposure to instructional strategies and practices (individual)

Increased expectation of group success leads to “normative press” (lateral accountability)

Press leads to greater risk-taking, perseverance, resilience in face of failure

Individual and Collective

Efficacy Beliefs

Individual efficacy linked to classroom behaviors

Collective efficacy a strong predictor of whole-school achievement

Student Achievement

INTRODUCTORY ACTIVITY1. Write down what you know about the Common Core

State Standards and how you believe they will affect classroom instruction in the year 2014.

2. What challenges do you believe African-American students will encounter with the Common Core State Standards.

3. What challenges do you believe you or your staff will encounter teaching the Common Core State Standards.

4. How will you help African American students overcome those challenges with the Common Core State Standards.

5. How will you help your teachers help African American students overcome those challenges with the Common Core State Standards.

COMMON CORE PERFORMANCE STANDARDS

Student must demonstrate Depth of Knowledge and application

Increased collaboration/interaction between the teacher and the student

Ability of the student to self-report learning and progress

PURPOSE

Demonstrate how to use Instructional Rounds as one element of the instructional observation protocol in the rollout of the Common Core State Standard to build a culture of high quality instruction at scale and for identifying the various levels of academic engagement among African-American students in the classroom, ensuring that all students have access to high-quality instruction no matter which classroom they are in.

TOPICS TO BE COVERED

Origin of Instructional Rounds What Instructional Rounds are and

are not Rationale for Instructional Rounds The relationship between

Instructional Rounds and the more general processes of school improvement

Instructional Rounds process

What Do Rounds Look Like In The Medical

Profession?• Identify a medical problem• Discuss the next steps to

solve the problem• Follow through on the

implementation of various strategies.

How is the learning done?

• Observing• Applying and utilizing

shared strengths of team members

What Do Rounds Look Like In Education?

• Identify an instructional problem

• Discuss the next steps to solve the problem

• Follow through on the implementation of various strategies.

How is the learning done?

• Observing• Applying and utilizing

shared strengths of team members

The basic premise of Instructional Rounds is that people best learn about the

meaning of high quality instruction by observing

teachers, students, and the work students are asked to do, followed by meaningful

conversation and analysis.

FOCUS OF INTRUCTIONAL ROUNDS

Instructional Rounds help in building individual and collective capacity to:  Ensure that all students have access to high-

quality instruction no matter which classroom they are in.

Understand what kind of teaching and learning is happening in each classroom, at each school across the district.

Build a shared language and understanding of high-quality teaching and learning in order to move exceptional practices from a single classroom to the school, and from a single school to the district, from a individual to the collective.

WHAT INSTRUCTIONAL ROUNDS ARE AND ARE NOT…

Focused on the instructional core

A Learning Community

Collaborative to Create Coherence Around Instructional Improvements at Scale

Tailored to A Common Instructional Problem

A Method to Examine Quality Teaching.

• Evaluative • Punitive• Simplistic • Random • Isolated• Disconnecte

d • Reductive

Instructional

Rounds Are

Instructional

Rounds Are Not

WHAT INSTRUCTIONAL ROUNDS ARE AND ARE NOT…

Culture-Building Practice

Instructional Problem-Solving

A Process Descriptive,

Predictive, Diagnostic

Professionalizing

• Supervision and Evaluation

• Implementation Check

• An Event • Normative,

Judgmental • Bureaucratic,

Hierarchical

Instructional

Rounds Are

Instructional

Rounds Are Not

THE BIG IDEA!The idea behind Instructional Rounds is that everyone involved is working on their practice, everyone is obliged to be knowledgeable about the common task of instructional improvement, and everyone’s practice should be subject to scrutiny, critique, and improvement.

• Instructional Rounds inform and are informed by improvement strategies.

• Instructional Rounds start with a problem of practice, one that often emerges from some improvement strategy, and end with ideas for making our improvement strategies more effective.

• Instructional Rounds are, then, a vehicle for improving our strategies and making us much more reflective about our work.

THEORIES OF PRACTICE(SINGLE-LOOP LEARNING)

THEORIES OF PRACTICE (DOUBLE-LOOP LEARNING)

THE LADDER OF INFERENCE

In school leadership, we are conditioned to jump from observation immediately to evaluation.

The rounds process asks us to break this perpetual habit by using the ladder of inference: Description before Analysis Analysis before Prediction Prediction before Evaluation

LADDER OF INFERENCE

Descriptive and Concrete

Interpretive and Abstract

• What teachers are saying and doing

• What students are saying and doing

• What the task is

• Assumptions

• Beliefs • Values • Attitudes

SchoolImprovement

Team SITPOP evolving

POPPlacement of Instructional Rounds in the Instructional Improvement Process

Various inputs: CST, CAHSEE, API, AP, Surveys, IQT, Observations

ConsistentHigh Quality

Instruction At Scale

IRsite visit

Nextlevel

ofwork

Nextlevel

ofwork

Cycle repeats as necessary

Continuous instructional improvement

IRsite visit

Various Outputs or Strategies

Various Outputs or Strategies

FOCUS OF INSTRUCTIONAL ROUNDS

Collective learning rather than individual supervisory practice

Patterns of practice and predicted results rather than compliance with directives

Supportive of existing improvement strategies rather than a new strategy

TRADITIONAL BALANCE OF OBSERVATIONAL ATTENTION

STUDENT

TEACHER

CONTENT

ACTIVITY

What percent of your classroom instructional observations are focused on• The Teacher• The Student• The Content

INSTRUCTIONAL OBSERVATION TRIANGLE

INSTRUCTIONAL CORE

Instructional Rounds

Classroom Instructional Observations

Instructional Quality Teams

COMPARISON OF INSTRUCTIONAL OBSERVATION PROTOCOLS

• Theory of Practice/Problem of Practice/Instructional Initiatives

• Focus Questions• Descriptive

Instructional Rounds

• Observing and Monitoring the implementation of one concrete, actionable classroom management or instructional technique school-wide

• Descriptive and Evaluative in Nature

Instructional Quality Teams

• All Areas of Instruction• “Checklist”• Descriptive and Evaluative in Nature

Classroom Instructional Observations

Broad and comprehensive

look

Defined set of “look fors”

Teacher Compass

More teacher directed

Identification of growth area & action plan to impact

Constantly revisiting components of effective instruction

Focus and structure for observing classroom instruction

Instructional Rounds

Narrow & deeper look

Impartial network of observers

Isolating singular element deeply

Problem of practice (POP) generated from campus

Periodic planned classroom visits focused on POP

Network suggestions for next steps

Analysis of data collected

Component of improvement

strategy

Leading toward consistent quality

instruction

Capturing multiple data points

Evidence-based classroom

observation

Next level of work

HIGH-QUALITY INSTRUCTION AT SCALE

High-quality instruction at scale involves the systemic improvement efforts to the instructional core within individual classrooms and across all

schools, which can be applied to all levels of practice that are needed to systematically improve instruction

and increase learning for all students. In short, high quality instruction at scale moves the teaching and learning from a single classroom to the school, and from a single school to the district; and

from the individual to the collective.

ACTIVITY

Check In…Now that you know a little about Instructional Rounds, how do you see it in the context of your current observational protocols?

INSTRUCTIONAL ROUNDS PROCESS

Problem of

Practice

Next Level of

Work

Observation

of Practice

Observation Debrief

PROBLEM OF PRACTICE

Definition. The specific problem of instructional improvement that the school and the school system is working on and want feedback about .

Using data to identifying a “Problem of Practice”: Assessment Data Formal/Informal Classroom Observations Teacher Surveys Student Surveys Etc.

PROBLEM OF PRACTICE

A Problem of Practice:• Focuses on the instructional core.• Is directly observable.• Is actionable (is within the school/district's

control and can be improved in real time).• Connects to a broader strategy of

improvement (school, system).• Is high-leverage (if you acted on it, it

would make a significant difference for student learning).

PROBLEM OF PRACTICEDetermining a Problem of Practice What are the strength of your school's instructional program? What areas of your schools' instructional program need to be

strengthened? How did you determine the strengths and weaknesses of

your instructional program? What are your sources of data? How do you know if you are making progress in these

instructional areas? What else have you been learning from these sources of

data? What is puzzling to you about the data? What has felt challenging? What does your faculty continue to grapple with?

SAMPLE PROBLEM OF PRACTICE

Problem of Practice. It seems to be a challenge to make the classroom task address material that is immediate to the student's time and place. The engagement of student skills to real-world problems that have some consequence. Not only on a singular basis, but as a regular practice for course design.

Focus Question. How do we design our courses to integrate seamlessly with current and pressing issues and challenges that are in evidence to our students?

SAMPLE PROBLEM OF PRACTICE

Problem of Practice. The students at our school infrequently collaborate or communicate on group projects or engage in project based learning. In the few instances where teachers are engaging students in this work, the school is seeing more higher order thinking skills being addressed as part of the core curriculum. These teachers are also having success engaging students outside of the classroom, extending learning beyond the school day.

Focus Question. How do we integrate group projects that involve complex communication and collaboration into instruction?

ACTIVITY

Using the Problem of Practice Development Worksheet, take a moment to write your own Problem of Practice and share it with your neighbor.

THEORY OF PRACTICE

Definition. A theory of practice is a set of causal connections, usually in the if-then form that serves as a story line that connects broad vision with the more specific strategies used to improve the instructional core.

Three Criteria for Using Theories of Practice within the Instructional Rounds Framework Statement of a Causal Relationship: What we are doing and what

constitutes a good result in the classroom. Empirically Falsifiable: Must be able to disqualify all or parts of the

theory as a useful guide to action that is based on evidence of what occurs as a consequence of our actions.

Open Ended: Must prompt us to further revise and specify the causal relationships we initially identified as we learn more about the consequences of our actions.

THEORY OF PRACTICE

The theory of action emerges from the outcome and the specific problem of

practice

Instructional Goal+

Problem of Practice______________________

Theory of Action(If …Then)

SAMPLE THEORY OF PRACTICE

“If lessons are guided by clear learning targets aligned to established content standards, and if students and teachers use effective formative and summative assessments of learning aligned to those targets, then students and teachers will have richer information to guide the teaching and learning process and to differentiate learning for individual student needs, and higher student achievement will be the result.”

Note. Your Theory of Practice will guide your selection of particular instructional strategies and professional development activities.

QUALITY TEACHING DEFINED

“Task Predicts Performance”

What predicts performance is what students are actually doing...the instructional task is the actual

work that students are asked to do during the process of instruction-not what teachers think they

are asking students to do or what the official curriculum says that that student are asked to do...”

-Dr. Richard Elmore-

Discussion Question: How do you and your staff define high quality teaching?

INSTRUCTIONAL COREThe instructional core is composed of the teacher and

the student in the presence of content.

TEACHER

STUDENT

CONTENT/TASK

OBSERVATION OF PRACTICE IN INSTRUCTIONAL ROUNDS

What is the teachers saying and/or doing?

What are students saying and/or doing?

What is the task?

DEBRIEF PROTOCOL (EXCERPT)

Analysis (Next Level of Work)As you reflect on the school’s school-wide reform initiatives, professional development, theory(ies) of practice, and/or problem of practice, consider the advice you would give to the administration and teachers about the next steps.

Analysis (Transfer to Practice)As you reflect on the Observation of Practice related to school-wide reform initiatives, professional development, theory(ies) of practice, and/or problem of practice consider how you will transfer what you have learned to your practice.

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