Transforming High School Teaching and Learning: A District-wide Design

High school improvement is one of the most pressing issues facing American education but little attention has been paid to reform strategies that will improve teaching and learning. Drawing on the expertise of teachers, principals, superintendents, policy makers and researchers, a new paper from the Aspen Institute Program on Education, Transforming High School Teaching and Learning: A District-wide Design by Aspen Senior Fellow Judy Wurtzel, offers both a new framework and concrete suggestions for a new approach to high school improvement across an urban school district. The data on high school student performance and graduation rates make clear that significant increases in student achievement are necessary if all students are to graduate from high school fully prepared for post-secondary education, citizenship, and work. Recent high school reform has focused on organizational aspects of high school, particularly creating a wide variety of smaller schools, smaller learning communities, and alternative learning pathways to meet the needs of young people. However, while smaller schools may create the relationships and conditions that make high quality instruction possible, improved instruction and achievement does not flow directly from them. Given this track record, questions facing the high school reform movement include: -- What will it take to get high school instructional improvement that results in demonstrated increases in student learning? -- What supports do high school teachers need to be successful in improving instruction and from where will they get them? -- What changes affecting the professional role, knowledge, and skills of teachers are needed if reforms are to be successful? Though the ideas represented in the paper are not new -- some school districts and states have implemented some of elements described -- what is useful is the attempt to lay out a fairly comprehensive picture of high school instructional reform and to push the conversation about high school instructional improvement into some new territory. First, the paper builds on work done in many urban districts at the K- 8 level to create systems of "managed instruction," that is, deliberate efforts to align common curriculum and instructional materials, formative and benchmark assessments, extensive professional development, and instructional leaders who support a shared set of instructional practices. Second, the paper suggests how these approaches can be developed and implemented in ways that are both consistent with and reinforcing of a robust vision of teacher professionalism. Third, the paper recognizes the urgency of attracting and retaining a teacher workforce that embraces this new job description for high school teachers and can effect improvements in student learning. Finally, it is useful to note that this paper focuses primarily on the district role in improving high school instruction. This is because it seems increasingly clear that school districts are a key unit for instructional improvement. However, much of what is described here could be initiated or supported by states, by consortia of districts, or by networks of managed schools within or across districts

Investigació i millora de l’educació. Cap a una pràctica i política educativa basades en l’evidència

Lección Inaugural Curso Académico 2014-2015 | Lliçó Inaugural Curs Acadèmic 2014-201

From Fragmentation to Coherence: How more integrative ways of working could accelerate improvement and progress toward equity in education

Informed by numerous conversations with education thought leaders, this document explains how educational reformers often create conflicts for educators, students, and families by moving ahead with solutions before fully understanding the nature of the problem to be solved, or the context in which it takes place. To address this issue, the paper calls for a learning agenda on how to build the capacities of organizations to work in ways that produce greater integration of effort, and less fragmentation

Roadmap for Next-Generation Accountability Systems

Offers a framework for designing and implementing state accountability systems that enable consistent, aligned goals to ensure college- and career-readiness; valid measurement, support, and interventions; transparent reporting; and continuous improvement

Close Reading Strategies for Difficult Text: The Effects on Comprehension and Analysis at the Secondary Level

Literacy skills are an essential component in transitioning from learning to read to reading to learn. But reading to learn has several levels of difficulty. This research focuses on exploring in what ways close reading strategies of difficult text can impact comprehension and analysis. The participants of the intervention were ninth-grade students of various reading ability levels at a rural public high school. During the six-week period, students used formative assessments, annotations, and written responses to determine if gains in comprehension and analysis scores can be connected. The pre- and post-intervention data reflects how students achieved with and without close reading. Both quantitative and qualitative data showed an increase in both comprehension and analysis scores on student assessment using these strategies. Observations also indicated that the intervention was engaging to students and held them accountable for their successes. The research project suggests that a more extensive investigation on other interventions may have positive effects on vocabulary and reading

Professional certification: Promoting and recognising successful teaching practices

This paper focuses on the challenge of developing a system forrecognising and rewarding accomplished teachers operated by the teaching profession – a standards-based professional learning and certification system. While the focus is on recent Australian experience, it draws on the experience of several countries that have sought to reform teacher career structures and pay systems so that there is a closer alignment between career progression and increasing expertise. Over the past twenty years or so, teacher associations in several countries have demonstrated that the profession has the ability to reach a consensus on teaching standards without imposing uniformity of teaching style. These standards indicate that the profession can lay down long term professional development goals for its members based on research and successful professional practice. A standards-based professional learning and certification system has the potential to overcome major limitations in traditional systems of professional learning for teachers: the lack of clarity about what teachers should get better at; the lack of incentive to attain high teaching standards, and the low level of ownership and control teachers have over the professional development system

Imagining school autonomy in high-performing education systems: East Asia as a source of policy referencing in England

Education reform is increasingly based on emulating the features of ‘world-class’ systems that top international attainment surveys and, in England specifically, East Asia is referenced as the ‘inspiration’ for their education reforms. However, the extent to which the features identified by the UK Government accord with the situation within East Asia is problematic. This paper examines the relationship between the English representation and the ‘reality’ of East Asian education systems, using school autonomy as an illustrative example. We focus on Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, which are cited extensively to legitimate policies providing greater autonomy for schools in England. We argue firstly that the English representation has been largely discursive and inaccurate; has failed to recognise the variations across the region; and has been selected to endorse the Government’s ideological preferences. Secondly, the scope, form and nature of school autonomy vary markedly, and are operationalised in eac

Strong Foundation, Evolving Challenges: A Case Study to Support Leadership Transition in the Boston Public Schools

Ten years ago, Thomas W. Payzant became superintendent of the Boston Public Schools and launched a reform program based on the idea that focusing on instruction, particularly in literacy and mathematics, would improve learning for all students. This case study examines the extent of instructional improvement a decade later and the complementary efforts that the district has made to improve the capacity of teachers, principals, and central office in support of continuously improving instruction. It also identifies some of the challenges now facing the Boston Public Schools. The purpose of the study is to inform the leadership transition that will occur as Payzant's superintendency comes to a close in June 2006. While the superintendent's departure is a landmark event in itself, it is likely to be accompanied by the departure of several key central office staff, and it coincides with the expected retirement of a greater-than-usual number of Boston teachers. Thus, the study is designed to inform not just a superintendent search, but a broader transition in leadership of the Boston Public Schools. Through its programs for urban superintendents, the Aspen Institute is acutely aware of how many city school systems will be experiencing transitions similar to the one in Boston. Aspen joined with the Annenberg Institute for School Reform to undertake the study. Aspen and Annenberg fielded a team of researchers to conduct the research and interviews on which the case is based. The research design was co-constructed by the Aspen- Annenberg team and a team from the Boston school district and its partners. The research was conducted from September through November. The process consisted of an extensive document review, a review of data on student outcomes, and interviews or focus groups with ninety-eight individuals -- students, educators, central office administrators, and community leaders. While this set of respondents is not a representative sample of the Boston community, it does typify a set of key roles within the district, its partners, and the community. The resulting interviews generated a remarkably consistent set of observations about what has been accomplished, what is under way that should be preserved, and what challenges Boston's next leadership team must address. A major purpose of this case study is to share these observations. The case has one additional, and crucial, purpose: to spark and support a conversation about how the city -- its educators, families, and communities -- searches for and identifies new leadership, engages that leadership in building on what has been accomplished, and formulates the remaining challenges that new leadership needs to address. This report is neither the final nor the only word on this important subject. Several local groups are also developing documents that will inform numerous discussions over leadership transition in the Boston schools. We hope that th

An Evaluation of Close Reading for Fourth Grade Students Receiving Tier 2 Responsiveness to Intervention Services

The primary purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a close reading instructional routine (also known as analytical reading decades ago) that has been described in the literature and promoted as a process to help students reading complex text independently and proficiently. A single subject alternating treatments design was implemented with six fourth grade students who had been identified as at risk for academic failure and were receiving supplemental, small-group instruction in their rural public school. The alternating treatments design allowed for a direct comparison of the close reading instructional routine and a validated reading comprehension strategy instruction intervention known as Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR; Klingner, Vaughn, Dimino, Schumm, & Bryant, 2001) over a six-week intervention time frame. Dependent variables included general outcome measures of reading comprehension and writing expression. No clear patterns emerged as a result of visual analysis. Results appeared to favor CSR in terms of reading comprehension and neither intervention in relationship to written expression. Limitations, implications, and future research areas were discussed