District Learning Tied to Student Learning

Finalists for the annual Broad Prize for Urban Education consistently demonstrate a learning loop that influences the district's ability to learn, which ultimately influences student opportunities to learn.
By Ledyard McFadden

The barrios of Brownsville, Texas, bear little physical resemblance to the boroughs of New York City or the coast of Long Beach or the tropical communities of Miami. On the surface, the educational practices of the school districts in these communities are as distinct as their geography.

Yet, those school districts have all been recognized by the Broad Prize for Urban Education because they have consistently outperformed districts serving similar student populations. What makes the difference?

To be sure, the Broad Prize winners and finalist districts aren't perfect. They contain failing schools and failing students. All of them struggle with graduation rates, and none claim to be satisfied with their current results. Their success is best characterized as a matter of pace and stamina in a race to provide effective education to urban students. While none is close to turning the final corner to proficiency for all students, their rate of improvement and their ability to close achievement gaps distinguishes these districts from their peers.

But these districts do share much in common beyond their promising results. They share practices and policies that enable them to truly be learning organizations. The goal of their work is high levels of student learning. They achieve improved student learning because of processes that make possible organizational learning at all levels.

Learning Cycles

Looking beyond textbooks and committee titles, bond issues and strategic initiatives, one can see that these districts share two interrelated learning cycles.

The first is a Student Learning Cycle in which student learning is driven by coherence and connections between curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

The second is the Organizational Learning Cycle. From the superintendent's cabinet to grade-level teams, human resources are carefully organized for teaming, communication, knowledge capture, and professional learning. These human networks allow information about curriculum, instruction, and assessment to flow throughout the district. Individuals throughout the system drive ongoing improvement of curriculum, instruction, and assessment by setting goals, measuring progress, and making adjustments. Belief in a mission that is transformational for children motivates personnel to continually review and improve their work in -- you guessed it -- curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

We know from research that teachers' actions in the classroom have the greatest impact on student achievement, so the Broad finalists' tight focus on curriculum that truly guides teachers' work, approaches to instruction that help teachers adjust to the needs of each student, and assessments that help teachers understand student learning is a powerful triad of support.

None of this is new thinking. One can turn to many years of research to hear the importance of coherence between curriculum, instruction, and assessment. What the Broad finalists offer are examples of great execution -- how to get the work done across tens or hundreds of schools, thousands of teachers, and tens of thousands of students.

2008 Winner
Brownsville Independent School District, Texas
Finalists
Aldine Independent School District, Texas, 3rd year as a finalist
Broward County Public Schools, Florida
Long Beach Unified School District, California, Won the Broad prize in 2003
Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Florida, 3rd year as a finalist

2007 Winner
New York City Department of Education
Finalist districts: Bridgeport Public Schools, Connecticut; Long Beach Unified School District, California; Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Florida; Northside Independent School District, Texas

How Do They Do It?

Based on the example of Broad finalists, success in the Student Learning Cycle is driven by success in the Organizational Learning Cycle. To achieve higher student learning through coherent curriculum, instruction, and assessment, Broad finalists develop an Organizational Learning Cycle that links belief in the district's mission and vision to organizational structures and improvement processes.

Effective districts don't simply do things well with few mistakes. They make plenty of mistakes and face many setbacks. However, they are able to overcome these missteps through a constant cycle of organizational learning. Human resources, organized into teams at every level of the system, communicate frequently to address issues and make ongoing improvements in their work. These teams have different names in each of the Broad finalist districts, but they all share the common practices of frequent communication focused on both qualitative and quantitative data, links to other teams in the system, and a nothing-is-sacred attitude in the pursuit of better performance. As one Aldine administrator puts it, "There are no fiefdoms here."

Belief in missions and visions is also part of the organizational learning cycle. Long Beach educators talk about "the Long Beach way." One administrator in the Northside Independent School District echoed this belief by saying, "There's a way we do things in Northside." These beliefs are usually articulated in relation to the district's stated mission and vision. They are also manifest in planning documents and accountability systems, such as Aldine's balanced scorecards and Miami-Dade's strategic planning system.

When the Student Learning Cycle and Organizational Learning Cycle are joined, districts can experience outstanding performance. As depicted in Figure 3, the Organizational Learning Cycle serves as the intellectual engine for the Student Learning Cycle. The entire system can build momentum capable of overcoming significant challenges.

The Student Learning Cycle

Coherence and Connections Between Curriculum

Curriculum, instruction, and assessment are linked in a cycle of mutual influence in the recent Broad finalist districts. Both Aldine and Brownsville, Texas, discuss the "written, taught, and assessed curriculum" -- emphasizing the importance of tracing skills and knowledge from curriculum documents to classroom lessons and finally to what students demonstrate they know and are able to do on a variety of assessments. As depicted in Figure 1, this path is intentionally circular, and Broad finalists carefully build a strong infrastructure and practice to ensure coherence and connections between curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

Curriculum

Broad finalists don't define curriculum as a collection of textbooks, commercial programs, and materials, or anything else that might be listed in a school's materials budget. They refer to such things as "resources" and regard them simply as tools for implementing the curriculum. Like the tools in an auto mechanic's shop, resources are only as effective as the knowledge and skill that direct their use.

To Broad finalists, curriculum is a layered statement of what, when, and how students will learn. The first layer organizes state standards into a sequence across each grade and from one grade to the next. These documents are often called scope and sequence or alignment documents. Districts use them for a bird's-eye view of how students will move through each year and through the K-12 continuum. They are helpful for macro-level planning. For example, Miami-Dade provides comprehensive, competency-based curriculum guides across grade levels and subject areas that are aligned to Florida state standards. The curriculum also reaches beyond state standards to prepare students for competition in a global economy, which is one of the district's five strategic goals. The curriculum design, for example, is heavily influenced by the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills report -- a 1990 Department of Labor report that set expectations for job skills.

The second layer of documents breaks what students must know and be able to do into more detailed chunks. These bridging documents link the more general scope and sequence to planning at the classroom level. Tools such as nine-week plans, unit plans, and pacing charts all provide principals and teachers guidance about what, when, and how to teach. For example, a review of Northside's curriculum shows extensive documentation that flushes out the detail of what each standard means and provides strategies to be used to address specific standards. Both Miami-Dade and Broward County give schools nine-week plans with nonnegotiable expectations for what will be taught.

While these second-layer curriculum documents are specific, they aren't stifling. They generally don't provide lock-step directions for what will be taught each day or how it will be taught. These districts balance centralizing common expectations across schools with flexibility to allow each school to adapt to the unique needs of its students.

The third layer of documents comprises school-level documents for monthly, weekly, and daily planning. While there may be common templates for lesson planning across the district, this level of curriculum is often driven by school leadership teams, grade-level teams, and individual teachers. Broad finalists give their schools a fair amount of autonomy to operate at this level.

Instruction

Like their approach to curriculum, Broad finalists strike a balance between nonnegotiable, districtwide guidance about instruction and flexibility for schools to adapt that guidance to the needs of their students. As a group, they spend considerable time defining what excellent instruction looks like.

In Broward County, the superintendent calls quality instruction the "silver bullet" to successful academic programs. Broward has made a concerted effort over the past few years to promote the use of effective, research-based instructional strategies across all schools. This began with the roll out of the "Effective Schools 7-8-9 Plan" in fall 2005.

The 7-8-9 Plan is defined as follows:

The 7 correlates of effective schools: Safe and orderly environment, climate of high expectations, instructional leadership, clear and focused mission, opportunity to learn and student time on task, frequent monitoring of student progress, and home school relations.
The 8-step instructional process: Data disaggregation, instructional calendars, instructional focus per calendar, formative assessments, tutorials, enrichment, maintenance, and monitoring.
Marzano's 9 high-yield strategies: Identifying similarities and differences, summarizing and note taking, reinforcing effort and providing recognition, homework and practice, nonlinguistic representations, cooperative learning, setting objectives, generating/testing hypotheses, and questions and advanced organizers.

"All schools in Broward do the 7-8-9 Plan," said one principal. In focus groups, teachers reported using a range of strategies defined by the 7-8-9 Plan, while maintaining that they have autonomy, based on their style and student needs, to deliver instruction as they choose.

In another example, Long Beach has a "common core pedagogy" grounded in the use of differentiated practices. Beginning with lesson planning, teachers are asked to define a lesson's instructional components, including strategies for delivery, modeling, guided practice, checking for understanding, and independent practice. Long Beach requires teachers to use the Essential Elements of Effective Instruction (EEEI), a range of research-based strategies (e.g., active participation, classroom management, reinforcement theory, behavior modification, motivation, Bloom's taxonomy, teaching to the objective). Teachers uniformly described EEEI as central to practices. District staff described EEEI as "our foundational pedagogy." There is extensive training and support for teachers, both in lesson design and EEEI, during their first two years in the district. "This has been the real key," one district administrator told the Broad site-visit team. "In any part of the city, instruction looks more alike than different."

Assessment

Assessment is the third and final component of the Student Learning Cycle. Broad finalists share three common attributes in how they measure student progress. At the school level, a wealth of diagnostic assessments identify student learning needs. At the district level, interim assessments track student progress against state standards. School leaders and teachers have easy, online access to assessment data.

Diagnostic assessments play a key role in identifying student learning needs. In addition to such packaged assessments as the Scholastic Reading Inventory, Broad finalists create many of their own. For example, Long Beach uses a range of school-based diagnostic assessments to measure and monitor student learning. Long Beach teachers receive extensive training on "unpacking" content standards, analyzing items, and using data to drive instruction. The district provides standards-based assessments -- in place of text-based chapter tests -- that teachers use regularly to measure student mastery of state standards and to determine next steps when planning instruction. "We give the standards-based assessment; we do an item analysis for the test to see what questions students missed the most," explained one teacher. "Once you figure that out, we ask why did they miss it? And that allows you to review and re-teach whatever is needed. We do this for any test that we give." Teachers at all levels of the district meet regularly to review data and decide how instruction can best address student needs.

Interim Assessments

All of the Broad finalists use interim assessments, often referred to as benchmark assessments, at least several times a year to provide feedback on student attainment of state standards. Brownsville students in grades 3-12 take benchmark assessments twice a year in core academic subjects to measure student achievement of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. In addition, Brownsville schools also administer regular assessments in core subjects to monitor student progress. How often and when school-based benchmarks are administered is up to the school, the department, or the individual teacher, which is consistent with Brownsville's philosophy of local control. Information from benchmark assessments (district and school-based) is used to identify student learning strengths and those areas that need attention.

Broward County has a similar mix of assessment practices. First implemented during the 2003-04 school year, the Benchmark Assessment Test (BAT) in reading, language arts, and mathematics is administered in grades 3-10 twice a year to guide instruction. In addition, mini-BATs give teachers more frequent assessment data. The mini-BATs are required in struggling schools and optional in all others. The BAT results allow individuals at all levels of the district, including teachers, to narrow student results down to the specific standard and skill. Based on these results, adjustments may be made to better meet the learning needs of students.

The BAT is also an indicator of how students are likely to perform when they take the state assessment later in the year -- that is, it has some predictive function. This was further described by a district curriculum specialist: "We wanted these numbers to help us look at student performance, as compared with other students taking the same tests. You can see just who made faster growth on average, slower growth than average, or the same. Kids were making faster progress than the rest of the district at the beginning of the school year. They've now slowed down in the second administration. What has changed?"

Sharing Information

In order to make the most of assessment data, Broad finalists use online features to enable district administrators, principals, and teachers to review and analyze assessment results. In Aldine, for example, common assessments are administered at least every six weeks. Teachers can review test results -- including some open-response items -- just hours after the assessments are administered when results are uploaded onto an online system called TRIAND. Results are organized by standards, which allows teachers to identify where students have succeeded and struggled within the six-week benchmark standards.

After each six-week assessment, administrators and teachers across Aldine compare results at the classroom and school levels to determine which programs, teachers, and schools are yielding the greatest results. Successful teachers are tapped to help others and to provide model resources. This is also done through the TRIAND system. Many initiatives expand through this process. For example, the Model Classroom Project began at one school and then spread to other schools because of positive results. At one elementary school, the entire approach to literacy was shifted from a commercial program to a guided-reading approach when consistent results indicated that student comprehension was not improving through the program.

Organizational Learning

The individual practices described here are neither innovative nor unique. One can find curriculum documents, instructional approaches, and a variety of assessments in many districts with a wide range of performance results. What differentiates the Broad finalists is superior execution. Everything is tightly aligned and integrated to produce better results. This is accomplished through the organizational learning cycle.

As noted in Figure 2, the organizational learning cycle comprises three key components:

Human resources are organized into teams to share critical information about the student learning cycle.
Ongoing improvement of the student learning cycle is Job One for individuals and teams across the district.
Belief in the district's stated mission motivates individuals and teams in the continuous improvement effort.

Human Resources

Personnel are organized into teams at every level of the Broad finalist districts. Starting at the school level, significant resources are provided to create teacher teams. For example, Long Beach teachers reported regular, ongoing, and structured collaboration with their peers. This time is used to review data, plan lessons, share effective instructional strategies, and promote topics of focus. "We have structured grade-level meetings. We are given directives by our principal, but there is flexibility within those directives," said one teacher about common planning time at her school. "We look at our pacing charts -- what we're doing in each classroom. What are the different needs so that we can help each other; if we're struggling with something, another teacher can help us out."

Teams also exist between the school and central office levels. These teams transfer information about districtwide initiatives and nonnegotiables from the district to the school and also feed up to the central office information about school-level successes and needs. In Brownsville, for example, district-level content-area curriculum specialists are deployed to clusters of schools. They maintain regular, weekly schedules at each school to support teachers and school leaders with instructional tasks. Curriculum specialists describe themselves as "the link between the district and the campus level. One of our biggest things is we look for high quality of instruction." Because the needs at different campuses vary, the daily tasks of curriculum specialists vary. "We collaborate with the principal, the facilitator, or the dean of the campus," said a district curriculum specialist. "They're the ones who are in the classrooms, and they're the ones who direct us to where the need is on their campus."

At the district level, multiple teams monitor strategic initiatives and drive the organizational learning cycle. For example, in Miami-Dade under then-superintendent Rudy Crew's leadership in the 2007-08 school year, the Instructional Council (comprising cabinet members and regional superintendents) met monthly to examine new information relevant to current initiatives and emerging needs. The council was described as a "think tank" for the superintendent. Essentially the same district personnel also participated in ComStat, or Communication Status, meetings. The superintendent reported that these meetings were his "nerve center." ComStat monitored immediate operational needs in the field and marshaled resources to deal with critical issues in a timely and immediate manner.

Knowledge sharing and capture are critical team functions. Broad finalist districts learn through the regular examination of their practice. They identify practices that are working well and disseminate them across the district. For example, in Northside Independent School District, a flurry of comparative analysis follows the release of school-level benchmark test results. Teams probe the data for schools and teachers that have outperformed the average. These examples of success are documented and shared through team meetings. In Aldine, successful lesson designs are captured in the TRIAND system, mentioned earlier, so that all teachers can access them.

Yet another example of knowledge capture is the Miami-Dade 2005 report, Lessons Learned: Remarkable Transformation Stories in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools. The publication documents the work of 29 schools that moved from F or D to A status under Florida's school accountability system.

Each of these examples demonstrates the same fundamental approach to organizational learning: We can learn from the best that our people have to offer. Broad finalists don't organize their human resources into teams to disseminate a purely top-down vision of how things will be done. While they use teams to spread districtwide expectations, an equal if not greater function of teams is solving problems and sharing what works. Inherent in this organizational approach is the belief that with the proper knowledge, guidance, and autonomy, individuals at all levels of the district system are capable of innovation and improvement. The district brain trust is in its schools as much as its central office. This is an important belief that makes organizational learning possible.

For example, Broad finalists provide significant guidance through curriculum documentation and instructional models; they also allow principals and teachers the autonomy to implement. Central office administrators recognize that the individuals closest to students have intimate knowledge about them and must be able to exercise their judgment in the final delivery of programs and instruction. By granting this autonomy to individuals, the district reaps the benefit of small innovations that can be captured and shared to drive districtwide improvement.

For example, in Aldine, one elementary school principal continually pointed out that the existing literacy program wasn't working for his students. He replaced the program and redeployed instructional support staff in a unique pattern, unlike any other school in the district. While the district required him to justify this decision with data and a clear rationale, it allowed the changes to take place. This innovation happened to work well, and student achievement improved. It could have been a mistake. This is the crux of the matter. For organizational learning to take root, individuals need reasonable decision-making power and license to take calculated risks.

Ongoing Improvements

With teams and knowledge sharing in place, ongoing improvements can be made effectively. Broad finalists are thoughtful tinkerers. In Brownsville, for example, a district document outlines the alignment and review process for the curriculum for all subjects in all grade levels. A formal review occurs annually among all members of the district -- area superintendents, principals, curriculum specialists, and teachers -- as well as among departments and within clusters, with an effort to include representation from every campus. "We look at the curriculum, at the TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills), and at the test scores to see if there needs to be any kind of modification," said one curriculum specialist. "We detail lesson by lesson, analyze it, dissect it, and look for gaps." The District Educational Improvement Committee vets curriculum revisions.

In Long Beach, ongoing improvements to professional development are based on data. The district's Office of Research and Evaluation plays a prominent role in evaluating the effectiveness of professional development. "Every time there's a new program, they're doing surveys. They're doing pre-, post-. There's tons of data analysis in this district," said one research office administrator. "The role that a centralized, systematic evaluation plays is to increase the sophistication of the analysis. We draw random samples from throughout the district. We do cross-sectional studies, longitudinal studies, studies where we're controlling for all the variables that really need to be controlled for."

Long Beach's evaluation of one of its data-driven programs, called Mathematics Achievement Program Professional Development, provides a rich example. To assess fidelity of implementation, the district ran correlations on 24 criteria developed with curricular staff. After establishing interrelated reliability, a team of observers visited classrooms to assess practices. The research office ran multiple analyses, controlling for specific variables. The results determined that the presence of coaches was correlated with higher fidelity of implementation, and fidelity of implementation was correlated with higher rates of student achievement.

Beliefs

Strong belief in the district's stated mission is an essential part of the organizational learning cycle. Broad finalists express their beliefs in terms of mission, vision, and measurable goals.

In Brownsville, stakeholders share an understanding of the district's mission and purpose, which is grounded in a focus on student achievement:

Mission: Brownsville Independent School District, rich in cultural heritage, will produce well-educated graduates who can pursue higher educational opportunities and who will become responsible citizens in a changing global society by utilizing all resources to give equitable opportunities for students.

Excellence is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction, skillful execution, and the vision to see obstacles as opportunities.

When asked about mission, stakeholders throughout the district voice a focus on high levels of achievement and opportunities for all students. As one stakeholder said, "Graduating our students, giving them opportunity to go to college, making them responsible citizens: that is the mission of the district, and everything focuses around the mission." Teachers, parents, principals, district personnel, and community members speak first and foremost about meeting the needs of all students, regardless of what it takes. One parent commented, "The mission is laid out very clearly."

Beyond clear statements of mission, vision, and values, Broad finalists express their beliefs in terms of measurable goals. Typically, goals cascade down from districtwide objectives to school and even individual goals.

For example, Aldine uses data to determine a few key objectives and then articulates them in multi-year targets. Aldine's current strategic plan has three key priorities:

Aldine ISD will demonstrate sustained growth in student achievement.
Aldine ISD will implement effective student management strategies to improve student behavior.
Aldine ISD will improve parent/community relations in all campuses and facilities.

For each goal, targets are set for one-year and three- to five-year periods. These districtwide goals then cascade down to departments, vertical teams (K-12 feeder patterns), and school goals for the current year. Some goals are unique at each level of the system, while others flow from bottom to top. For example, a school will have some unique goals that relate to particular programs it is instituting locally. Other goals -- such as student achievement and attendance -- are a part of districtwide targets.

Goals cascade even further down to principals, teachers, and, sometimes, students. In a sample set of goals for one high school, the connection was evident between the goals established for the district, the vertical K-12 team, the school, the teachers, and student scorecards. Through these cascading goals, Aldine has created a sense of connection and shared accountability among all levels of the system.

Progress toward stated goals is measured on a regular basis. In Northside, district goals are reviewed every quarter. Data roll in from all parts of the district to inform a report compiled by the superintendent's cabinet and presented to the school board. This regular reporting on goals keeps key objectives at the forefront of all personnel's thinking and allows for continual adjustments to plans.

Conclusion

Broad finalist districts drive improvements to the Student Learning Cycle through an Organizational Learning Cycle. In essence, Broad finalist districts are practicing at a systemic level what teachers are asked to do at the classroom level, namely, use data to continually adjust and adapt practice for better results. This pattern of organizational behavior has promising implications for other districts. Success occurs because the learning cycle enables mid-course corrections in response to any missteps. In short, these districts have excelled because they have learned how to continue learning.

Broad Finalists

The $2 million Broad Prize for Urban Education, established in 2002, is the largest education award in the country given to school districts. The Broad prize is awarded each year to honor urban school districts that demonstrate the greatest overall performance and improvement in student achievement while reducing achievement gaps among poor and minority students.

The Broad Prize for Urban Education has four goals:

Reward districts that improve achievement levels of disadvantaged students.
Restore the public's confidence in our nation's public schools by highlighting successful urban districts.
Create competition and provide incentives for districts to improve.
Showcase the best practices of successful districts.

Districts are evaluated according to:

Performance results on mandated state tests in reading and math for elementary, middle, and high schools.
Performance of a district compared with its own prior performance and compared with expected performance for similar districts (based on poverty levels) in the state.
The reduction of achievement gaps between ethnic groups and between low-income and non-low-income students.
Graduation rate, calculated using the latest enrollment data available from the National Center for Education Statistics' Common Core of Data, the Average Freshman Graduation Rates, the Urban Institute Graduation Rates (Cumulative Promotion Index), and the Manhattan Institute Graduation Rates (Greene's Graduation Indicator).
Advanced Placement exam passing and participation rates.
SAT and ACT scores and participation rates.
Student demographic data (income, language, ethnicity).
Adequate Yearly Progress as called for under No Child Left Behind.

LEDYARD McFADDEN is the founder and president of SchoolWorks, an education consulting company based in Beverly, Massachusetts.

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Yet, those school districts have all been recognized by the Broad Prize for Urban Education because they have consistently outperformed districts serving similar student populations. What makes the difference? To be sure, the Broad Prize winners and finalist districts aren't perfect. They contain failing schools and failing students. All of them struggle with graduation rates, and none claim to be satisfied with their current results. Their success is best characterized as a matter of pace and stamina in a race to provide effective education to urban students. While none is close to turning the final corner to proficiency for all students, their rate of improvement and their ability to close achievement gaps distinguishes these districts from their peers. But these districts do share much in common beyond their promising results. They share practices and policies that enable them to truly be learning organizations. The goal of their work is high levels of student learning. They achieve improved student learning because of processes that make possible organizational learning at all levels. Learning Cycles Looking beyond textbooks and committee titles, bond issues and strategic initiatives, one can see that these districts share two interrelated learning cycles. The first is a Student Learning Cycle in which student learning is driven by coherence and connections between curriculum, instruction, and assessment. The second is the Organizational Learning Cycle. From the superintendent's cabinet to grade-level teams, human resources are carefully organized for teaming, communication, knowledge capture, and professional learning. These human networks allow information about curriculum, instruction, and assessment to flow throughout the district. Individuals throughout the system drive ongoing improvement of curriculum, instruction, and assessment by setting goals, measuring progress, and making adjustments. Belief in a mission that is transformational for children motivates personnel to continually review and improve their work in -- you guessed it -- curriculum, instruction, and assessment. We know from research that teachers' actions in the classroom have the greatest impact on student achievement, so the Broad finalists' tight focus on curriculum that truly guides teachers' work, approaches to instruction that help teachers adjust to the needs of each student, and assessments that help teachers understand student learning is a powerful triad of support. None of this is new thinking. One can turn to many years of research to hear the importance of coherence between curriculum, instruction, and assessment. What the Broad finalists offer are examples of great execution -- how to get the work done across tens or hundreds of schools, thousands of teachers, and tens of thousands of students. 2008 Winner Brownsville Independent School District, Texas Finalists Aldine Independent School District, Texas, 3rd year as a finalist Broward County Public Schools, Florida Long Beach Unified School District, California, Won the Broad prize in 2003 Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Florida, 3rd year as a finalist 2007 Winner New York City Department of Education Finalist districts: Bridgeport Public Schools, Connecticut; Long Beach Unified School District, California; Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Florida; Northside Independent School District, Texas How Do They Do It? Based on the example of Broad finalists, success in the Student Learning Cycle is driven by success in the Organizational Learning Cycle. To achieve higher student learning through coherent curriculum, instruction, and assessment, Broad finalists develop an Organizational Learning Cycle that links belief in the district's mission and vision to organizational structures and improvement processes. Effective districts don't simply do things well with few mistakes. They make plenty of mistakes and face many setbacks. However, they are able to overcome these missteps through a constant cycle of organizational learning. Human resources, organized into teams at every level of the system, communicate frequently to address issues and make ongoing improvements in their work. These teams have different names in each of the Broad finalist districts, but they all share the common practices of frequent communication focused on both qualitative and quantitative data, links to other teams in the system, and a nothing-is-sacred attitude in the pursuit of better performance. As one Aldine administrator puts it, "There are no fiefdoms here." Belief in missions and visions is also part of the organizational learning cycle. Long Beach educators talk about "the Long Beach way." One administrator in the Northside Independent School District echoed this belief by saying, "There's a way we do things in Northside." These beliefs are usually articulated in relation to the district's stated mission and vision. They are also manifest in planning documents and accountability systems, such as Aldine's balanced scorecards and Miami-Dade's strategic planning system. When the Student Learning Cycle and Organizational Learning Cycle are joined, districts can experience outstanding performance. As depicted in Figure 3, the Organizational Learning Cycle serves as the intellectual engine for the Student Learning Cycle. The entire system can build momentum capable of overcoming significant challenges. The Student Learning Cycle Coherence and Connections Between Curriculum Curriculum, instruction, and assessment are linked in a cycle of mutual influence in the recent Broad finalist districts. Both Aldine and Brownsville, Texas, discuss the "written, taught, and assessed curriculum" -- emphasizing the importance of tracing skills and knowledge from curriculum documents to classroom lessons and finally to what students demonstrate they know and are able to do on a variety of assessments. As depicted in Figure 1, this path is intentionally circular, and Broad finalists carefully build a strong infrastructure and practice to ensure coherence and connections between curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Curriculum Broad finalists don't define curriculum as a collection of textbooks, commercial programs, and materials, or anything else that might be listed in a school's materials budget. They refer to such things as "resources" and regard them simply as tools for implementing the curriculum. Like the tools in an auto mechanic's shop, resources are only as effective as the knowledge and skill that direct their use. To Broad finalists, curriculum is a layered statement of what, when, and how students will learn. The first layer organizes state standards into a sequence across each grade and from one grade to the next. These documents are often called scope and sequence or alignment documents. Districts use them for a bird's-eye view of how students will move through each year and through the K-12 continuum. They are helpful for macro-level planning. For example, Miami-Dade provides comprehensive, competency-based curriculum guides across grade levels and subject areas that are aligned to Florida state standards. The curriculum also reaches beyond state standards to prepare students for competition in a global economy, which is one of the district's five strategic goals. The curriculum design, for example, is heavily influenced by the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills report -- a 1990 Department of Labor report that set expectations for job skills. The second layer of documents breaks what students must know and be able to do into more detailed chunks. These bridging documents link the more general scope and sequence to planning at the classroom level. Tools such as nine-week plans, unit plans, and pacing charts all provide principals and teachers guidance about what, when, and how to teach. For example, a review of Northside's curriculum shows extensive documentation that flushes out the detail of what each standard means and provides strategies to be used to address specific standards. Both Miami-Dade and Broward County give schools nine-week plans with nonnegotiable expectations for what will be taught. While these second-layer curriculum documents are specific, they aren't stifling. They generally don't provide lock-step directions for what will be taught each day or how it will be taught. These districts balance centralizing common expectations across schools with flexibility to allow each school to adapt to the unique needs of its students. The third layer of documents comprises school-level documents for monthly, weekly, and daily planning. While there may be common templates for lesson planning across the district, this level of curriculum is often driven by school leadership teams, grade-level teams, and individual teachers. Broad finalists give their schools a fair amount of autonomy to operate at this level. Instruction Like their approach to curriculum, Broad finalists strike a balance between nonnegotiable, districtwide guidance about instruction and flexibility for schools to adapt that guidance to the needs of their students. As a group, they spend considerable time defining what excellent instruction looks like. In Broward County, the superintendent calls quality instruction the "silver bullet" to successful academic programs. Broward has made a concerted effort over the past few years to promote the use of effective, research-based instructional strategies across all schools. This began with the roll out of the "Effective Schools 7-8-9 Plan" in fall 2005. The 7-8-9 Plan is defined as follows: The 7 correlates of effective schools: Safe and orderly environment, climate of high expectations, instructional leadership, clear and focused mission, opportunity to learn and student time on task, frequent monitoring of student progress, and home school relations. The 8-step instructional process: Data disaggregation, instructional calendars, instructional focus per calendar, formative assessments, tutorials, enrichment, maintenance, and monitoring. Marzano's 9 high-yield strategies: Identifying similarities and differences, summarizing and note taking, reinforcing effort and providing recognition, homework and practice, nonlinguistic representations, cooperative learning, setting objectives, generating/testing hypotheses, and questions and advanced organizers. "All schools in Broward do the 7-8-9 Plan," said one principal. In focus groups, teachers reported using a range of strategies defined by the 7-8-9 Plan, while maintaining that they have autonomy, based on their style and student needs, to deliver instruction as they choose. In another example, Long Beach has a "common core pedagogy" grounded in the use of differentiated practices. Beginning with lesson planning, teachers are asked to define a lesson's instructional components, including strategies for delivery, modeling, guided practice, checking for understanding, and independent practice. Long Beach requires teachers to use the Essential Elements of Effective Instruction (EEEI), a range of research-based strategies (e.g., active participation, classroom management, reinforcement theory, behavior modification, motivation, Bloom's taxonomy, teaching to the objective). Teachers uniformly described EEEI as central to practices. District staff described EEEI as "our foundational pedagogy." There is extensive training and support for teachers, both in lesson design and EEEI, during their first two years in the district. "This has been the real key," one district administrator told the Broad site-visit team. "In any part of the city, instruction looks more alike than different." Assessment Assessment is the third and final component of the Student Learning Cycle. Broad finalists share three common attributes in how they measure student progress. At the school level, a wealth of diagnostic assessments identify student learning needs. At the district level, interim assessments track student progress against state standards. School leaders and teachers have easy, online access to assessment data. Diagnostic assessments play a key role in identifying student learning needs. In addition to such packaged assessments as the Scholastic Reading Inventory, Broad finalists create many of their own. For example, Long Beach uses a range of school-based diagnostic assessments to measure and monitor student learning. Long Beach teachers receive extensive training on "unpacking" content standards, analyzing items, and using data to drive instruction. The district provides standards-based assessments -- in place of text-based chapter tests -- that teachers use regularly to measure student mastery of state standards and to determine next steps when planning instruction. "We give the standards-based assessment; we do an item analysis for the test to see what questions students missed the most," explained one teacher. "Once you figure that out, we ask why did they miss it? And that allows you to review and re-teach whatever is needed. We do this for any test that we give." Teachers at all levels of the district meet regularly to review data and decide how instruction can best address student needs. Interim Assessments All of the Broad finalists use interim assessments, often referred to as benchmark assessments, at least several times a year to provide feedback on student attainment of state standards. Brownsville students in grades 3-12 take benchmark assessments twice a year in core academic subjects to measure student achievement of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. In addition, Brownsville schools also administer regular assessments in core subjects to monitor student progress. How often and when school-based benchmarks are administered is up to the school, the department, or the individual teacher, which is consistent with Brownsville's philosophy of local control. Information from benchmark assessments (district and school-based) is used to identify student learning strengths and those areas that need attention. Broward County has a similar mix of assessment practices. First implemented during the 2003-04 school year, the Benchmark Assessment Test (BAT) in reading, language arts, and mathematics is administered in grades 3-10 twice a year to guide instruction. In addition, mini-BATs give teachers more frequent assessment data. The mini-BATs are required in struggling schools and optional in all others. The BAT results allow individuals at all levels of the district, including teachers, to narrow student results down to the specific standard and skill. Based on these results, adjustments may be made to better meet the learning needs of students. The BAT is also an indicator of how students are likely to perform when they take the state assessment later in the year -- that is, it has some predictive function. This was further described by a district curriculum specialist: "We wanted these numbers to help us look at student performance, as compared with other students taking the same tests. You can see just who made faster growth on average, slower growth than average, or the same. Kids were making faster progress than the rest of the district at the beginning of the school year. They've now slowed down in the second administration. What has changed?" Sharing Information In order to make the most of assessment data, Broad finalists use online features to enable district administrators, principals, and teachers to review and analyze assessment results. In Aldine, for example, common assessments are administered at least every six weeks. Teachers can review test results -- including some open-response items -- just hours after the assessments are administered when results are uploaded onto an online system called TRIAND. Results are organized by standards, which allows teachers to identify where students have succeeded and struggled within the six-week benchmark standards. After each six-week assessment, administrators and teachers across Aldine compare results at the classroom and school levels to determine which programs, teachers, and schools are yielding the greatest results. Successful teachers are tapped to help others and to provide model resources. This is also done through the TRIAND system. Many initiatives expand through this process. For example, the Model Classroom Project began at one school and then spread to other schools because of positive results. At one elementary school, the entire approach to literacy was shifted from a commercial program to a guided-reading approach when consistent results indicated that student comprehension was not improving through the program. Organizational Learning The individual practices described here are neither innovative nor unique. One can find curriculum documents, instructional approaches, and a variety of assessments in many districts with a wide range of performance results. What differentiates the Broad finalists is superior execution. Everything is tightly aligned and integrated to produce better results. This is accomplished through the organizational learning cycle. As noted in Figure 2, the organizational learning cycle comprises three key components: Human resources are organized into teams to share critical information about the student learning cycle. Ongoing improvement of the student learning cycle is Job One for individuals and teams across the district. Belief in the district's stated mission motivates individuals and teams in the continuous improvement effort. Human Resources Personnel are organized into teams at every level of the Broad finalist districts. Starting at the school level, significant resources are provided to create teacher teams. For example, Long Beach teachers reported regular, ongoing, and structured collaboration with their peers. This time is used to review data, plan lessons, share effective instructional strategies, and promote topics of focus. "We have structured grade-level meetings. We are given directives by our principal, but there is flexibility within those directives," said one teacher about common planning time at her school. "We look at our pacing charts -- what we're doing in each classroom. What are the different needs so that we can help each other; if we're struggling with something, another teacher can help us out." Teams also exist between the school and central office levels. These teams transfer information about districtwide initiatives and nonnegotiables from the district to the school and also feed up to the central office information about school-level successes and needs. In Brownsville, for example, district-level content-area curriculum specialists are deployed to clusters of schools. They maintain regular, weekly schedules at each school to support teachers and school leaders with instructional tasks. Curriculum specialists describe themselves as "the link between the district and the campus level. One of our biggest things is we look for high quality of instruction." Because the needs at different campuses vary, the daily tasks of curriculum specialists vary. "We collaborate with the principal, the facilitator, or the dean of the campus," said a district curriculum specialist. "They're the ones who are in the classrooms, and they're the ones who direct us to where the need is on their campus." At the district level, multiple teams monitor strategic initiatives and drive the organizational learning cycle. For example, in Miami-Dade under then-superintendent Rudy Crew's leadership in the 2007-08 school year, the Instructional Council (comprising cabinet members and regional superintendents) met monthly to examine new information relevant to current initiatives and emerging needs. The council was described as a "think tank" for the superintendent. Essentially the same district personnel also participated in ComStat, or Communication Status, meetings. The superintendent reported that these meetings were his "nerve center." ComStat monitored immediate operational needs in the field and marshaled resources to deal with critical issues in a timely and immediate manner. Knowledge sharing and capture are critical team functions. Broad finalist districts learn through the regular examination of their practice. They identify practices that are working well and disseminate them across the district. For example, in Northside Independent School District, a flurry of comparative analysis follows the release of school-level benchmark test results. Teams probe the data for schools and teachers that have outperformed the average. These examples of success are documented and shared through team meetings. In Aldine, successful lesson designs are captured in the TRIAND system, mentioned earlier, so that all teachers can access them. Yet another example of knowledge capture is the Miami-Dade 2005 report, Lessons Learned: Remarkable Transformation Stories in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools. The publication documents the work of 29 schools that moved from F or D to A status under Florida's school accountability system. Each of these examples demonstrates the same fundamental approach to organizational learning: We can learn from the best that our people have to offer. Broad finalists don't organize their human resources into teams to disseminate a purely top-down vision of how things will be done. While they use teams to spread districtwide expectations, an equal if not greater function of teams is solving problems and sharing what works. Inherent in this organizational approach is the belief that with the proper knowledge, guidance, and autonomy, individuals at all levels of the district system are capable of innovation and improvement. The district brain trust is in its schools as much as its central office. This is an important belief that makes organizational learning possible. For example, Broad finalists provide significant guidance through curriculum documentation and instructional models; they also allow principals and teachers the autonomy to implement. Central office administrators recognize that the individuals closest to students have intimate knowledge about them and must be able to exercise their judgment in the final delivery of programs and instruction. By granting this autonomy to individuals, the district reaps the benefit of small innovations that can be captured and shared to drive districtwide improvement. For example, in Aldine, one elementary school principal continually pointed out that the existing literacy program wasn't working for his students. He replaced the program and redeployed instructional support staff in a unique pattern, unlike any other school in the district. While the district required him to justify this decision with data and a clear rationale, it allowed the changes to take place. This innovation happened to work well, and student achievement improved. It could have been a mistake. This is the crux of the matter. For organizational learning to take root, individuals need reasonable decision-making power and license to take calculated risks. Ongoing Improvements With teams and knowledge sharing in place, ongoing improvements can be made effectively. Broad finalists are thoughtful tinkerers. In Brownsville, for example, a district document outlines the alignment and review process for the curriculum for all subjects in all grade levels. A formal review occurs annually among all members of the district -- area superintendents, principals, curriculum specialists, and teachers -- as well as among departments and within clusters, with an effort to include representation from every campus. "We look at the curriculum, at the TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills), and at the test scores to see if there needs to be any kind of modification," said one curriculum specialist. "We detail lesson by lesson, analyze it, dissect it, and look for gaps." The District Educational Improvement Committee vets curriculum revisions. In Long Beach, ongoing improvements to professional development are based on data. The district's Office of Research and Evaluation plays a prominent role in evaluating the effectiveness of professional development. "Every time there's a new program, they're doing surveys. They're doing pre-, post-. There's tons of data analysis in this district," said one research office administrator. "The role that a centralized, systematic evaluation plays is to increase the sophistication of the analysis. We draw random samples from throughout the district. We do cross-sectional studies, longitudinal studies, studies where we're controlling for all the variables that really need to be controlled for." Long Beach's evaluation of one of its data-driven programs, called Mathematics Achievement Program Professional Development, provides a rich example. To assess fidelity of implementation, the district ran correlations on 24 criteria developed with curricular staff. After establishing interrelated reliability, a team of observers visited classrooms to assess practices. The research office ran multiple analyses, controlling for specific variables. The results determined that the presence of coaches was correlated with higher fidelity of implementation, and fidelity of implementation was correlated with higher rates of student achievement. Beliefs Strong belief in the district's stated mission is an essential part of the organizational learning cycle. Broad finalists express their beliefs in terms of mission, vision, and measurable goals. In Brownsville, stakeholders share an understanding of the district's mission and purpose, which is grounded in a focus on student achievement: Mission: Brownsville Independent School District, rich in cultural heritage, will produce well-educated graduates who can pursue higher educational opportunities and who will become responsible citizens in a changing global society by utilizing all resources to give equitable opportunities for students. Excellence is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction, skillful execution, and the vision to see obstacles as opportunities. When asked about mission, stakeholders throughout the district voice a focus on high levels of achievement and opportunities for all students. As one stakeholder said, "Graduating our students, giving them opportunity to go to college, making them responsible citizens: that is the mission of the district, and everything focuses around the mission." Teachers, parents, principals, district personnel, and community members speak first and foremost about meeting the needs of all students, regardless of what it takes. One parent commented, "The mission is laid out very clearly." Beyond clear statements of mission, vision, and values, Broad finalists express their beliefs in terms of measurable goals. Typically, goals cascade down from districtwide objectives to school and even individual goals. For example, Aldine uses data to determine a few key objectives and then articulates them in multi-year targets. Aldine's current strategic plan has three key priorities: Aldine ISD will demonstrate sustained growth in student achievement. Aldine ISD will implement effective student management strategies to improve student behavior. Aldine ISD will improve parent/community relations in all campuses and facilities. For each goal, targets are set for one-year and three- to five-year periods. These districtwide goals then cascade down to departments, vertical teams (K-12 feeder patterns), and school goals for the current year. Some goals are unique at each level of the system, while others flow from bottom to top. For example, a school will have some unique goals that relate to particular programs it is instituting locally. Other goals -- such as student achievement and attendance -- are a part of districtwide targets. Goals cascade even further down to principals, teachers, and, sometimes, students. In a sample set of goals for one high school, the connection was evident between the goals established for the district, the vertical K-12 team, the school, the teachers, and student scorecards. Through these cascading goals, Aldine has created a sense of connection and shared accountability among all levels of the system. Progress toward stated goals is measured on a regular basis. In Northside, district goals are reviewed every quarter. Data roll in from all parts of the district to inform a report compiled by the superintendent's cabinet and presented to the school board. This regular reporting on goals keeps key objectives at the forefront of all personnel's thinking and allows for continual adjustments to plans. Conclusion Broad finalist districts drive improvements to the Student Learning Cycle through an Organizational Learning Cycle. In essence, Broad finalist districts are practicing at a systemic level what teachers are asked to do at the classroom level, namely, use data to continually adjust and adapt practice for better results. This pattern of organizational behavior has promising implications for other districts. Success occurs because the learning cycle enables mid-course corrections in response to any missteps. In short, these districts have excelled because they have learned how to continue learning. Broad Finalists The $2 million Broad Prize for Urban Education, established in 2002, is the largest education award in the country given to school districts. The Broad prize is awarded each year to honor urban school districts that demonstrate the greatest overall performance and improvement in student achievement while reducing achievement gaps among poor and minority students. The Broad Prize for Urban Education has four goals: Reward districts that improve achievement levels of disadvantaged students. Restore the public's confidence in our nation's public schools by highlighting successful urban districts. Create competition and provide incentives for districts to improve. Showcase the best practices of successful districts. Districts are evaluated according to: Performance results on mandated state tests in reading and math for elementary, middle, and high schools. Performance of a district compared with its own prior performance and compared with expected performance for similar districts (based on poverty levels) in the state. The reduction of achievement gaps between ethnic groups and between low-income and non-low-income students. Graduation rate, calculated using the latest enrollment data available from the National Center for Education Statistics' Common Core of Data, the Average Freshman Graduation Rates, the Urban Institute Graduation Rates (Cumulative Promotion Index), and the Manhattan Institute Graduation Rates (Greene's Graduation Indicator). Advanced Placement exam passing and participation rates. SAT and ACT scores and participation rates. Student demographic data (income, language, ethnicity). Adequate Yearly Progress as called for under No Child Left Behind. LEDYARD McFADDEN is the founder and president of SchoolWorks, an education consulting company based in Beverly, Massachusetts.
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