Assistance With Scheduling

Often high school redesign efforts are impossible because the schools are locked into schedules that don’t allow for the implementation of the initiatives that schools want and need. CSSR will work with the building administration to consider the outcomes desired with a scheduling change by being certain to include all stakeholders in conversation about what is needed to appropriately schedule each high school. We will then work with an administrative team to design and implement a new schedule, which will make the achievement of those outcomes possible.
 

Breaking Ranks II™ Leadership Training

To ensure that the guidance in Breaking Ranks II™ has a real effect on school improvement efforts, NASSP has developed 2-day and 3-day training programs for school leaders throughout the nation. The training aims to build the capacity of school leaders to engage their educational community in systemic reform for the purpose of improving student performance. The agenda for all programs is the same, except that the 3-day session includes a day-long “train-the-trainer” component. Currently, 21 state associations are offering Breaking Ranks II™ training with NASSP-certified trainers. CSSR and NASSP staff members are available to provide training onsite.
 

Building Professional Learning Communities

Professional learning community (PLC), as an organizational arrangement, is seen as a powerful staff development approach and a potent strategy for school change and improvement. The literature on professional learning communities repeatedly gives attention to five attributes of such organizational arrangements: supportive and shared leadership, collective creativity, shared values and vision, supportive conditions, and shared personal practice.

The requirements necessary for such organizational arrangements include: collegial and facilitative participation of the supervisor, who shares leadership through inviting staff input in decision-making; staff work informed by a common educational vision; collective learning among staff to create solutions that address students’ needs; peer feedback about work being done by educators (within and across departments, among and between schools and district offices), which is designed to support individual and community improvement; and physical conditions and human capacities that support such an operation.

Through these on-site services, participants will gain an in-depth understanding of the five key attributes and necessary requirements of professional learning communities. Additionally, participants will have practice developing a preliminary action plan to create a PLC in their respective educational organization.
 

Change Leadership

The best intentions and a well-crafted project plan are often not sufficient to insure SLC objectives are met. Major initiatives often fall short of meeting desired objectives because an effective change leadership process has not been instituted and sufficiently resourced either within the district office or the schools themselves. The change leadership support to the SLC initiative will include support in two ways: facilitating District leadership to support the SLC process and supporting each school to address the shifting roles and responsibilities that are necessary to sustain meaningful change.

Major initiatives necessitate the development and/or reprioritization of leadership knowledge, skills, and talents at the individual and team level. Workshops and consultation in this area enhance the leadership capabilities of all key stakeholders engaged in meeting SLC objectives. Leaders gain a thorough understanding of the motivational and influence requirements necessary to institute sustainable change. A key component of this is development of the knowledge, skills, and talents required to set and execute reasonable change goals in the face of individual, team, and/or organizational resistance. This enhancement of capabilities is provided within the context of improved organizational diagnostic skills that insure the application of leadership skills is focused for most impact. The result is enhanced influence, critical thinking, and team building skills.
 

Changing Roles to Drive and Sustain Meaningful Improvement

The success of any major redesign effort in schools will be a result of the effectiveness of individuals carrying out the new roles that become necessary for the change implementation. For example, schools need to clarify the new role of assistant principals in a high performance smaller learning community high school. Likewise, all other roles need to be designed or clarified.

The CSSR Changing Roles technical assistance process is designed to assist school leaders, which include the principal, assistant principals, academic deans, department heads, design team members, data teams, and any other group involved in the leadership of the school. Participants will learn of effective, research based leadership practices. They will identify what is working and not working in their school and select one focus area for their initial work together. The group will learn and practice successful team dynamics by identifying tasks, responsible parties, timeline, and assessment measures for their selected focus area.

This work will focus on how identification of target goals together with role clarification, teambuilding, and strong working relationships among staff improve a school’s overall performance. This support provides school teams with the tools and practical exercises required to define roles for those who are responsible for implementing change, and for those whose roles change as the result of improvement initiatives, e.g., teachers and administrators. Teams will understand, identify, and create in detail the following elements and expectations for critical individual and team roles:

·        Results/outputs

·        Key tasks and processes

·        Conditions (under which key tasks must be accomplished)

·        Critical contacts (interfaces with others that must be managed well)

·        Authority (what a role has the “final say” on)

·        Knowledge, skill, and talent requirements

·        Expertise and/or training required to meet specific role requirements

This training also provides an understanding of how role boundaries should be set, and how roles at different levels must be linked for appropriate alignment and the optimization of resource usage. The major elements of this workshop have been extremely helpful in assisting teams to design and implement Breaking Ranks II and Smaller Learning communities.
 

Classroom Walk-Throughs and Reviewing Student Work

Classroom Walk-Throughs (CWT) are protocols for looking at student work in the classroom environment. This teacher-driven process supports teacher inquiry with a protocol that focuses classroom observers on positive evidence of what students are learning, finding patterns they wish to enhance through teacher practice, and connecting to inquiry-driven professional development that enhances teacher practice and improves student learning. The process is built on research that supports Professional Learning Communities and Collaborative Leadership Structures

Looking at Student Work is a process for teachers to look together at student work. This process supports building the skills and culture necessary for collaborative conversations focused on student outcomes. This training will provide participants with applicable strategies to use when working in teams and looking at student work within their own schools.
 

Creating a Purposeful Advisory Program

CSSR will help school teams of administrators, teachers, and even students create a vision for advisory groups in their own school that is based on theory, research, and field expertise. Teams will develop specific purposes for the advisory program and explore the school procedures and structures that can support or diminish the success of advisory groups. In addition, participants will learn about content and a wide range of activities that can be used for advisory groups, investigate assessment mechanisms, and identify approaches to create long-term sustainability of advisory groups.
 

Critical Friends Training

CSSR will provide five days of Critical Friends Training for a group of 10 teachers and administrators.  This training will be designed to allow for these individuals to become Critical Friends Facilitators within the high school Community.
 

Data Team Coaching

The CSSR Breaking Ranks^TM process includes a values driven, data informed approach to the collection and assessment of data. Analysis of data should become part of the school culture. To this end, CSSR supports the formation of Data Teams as an important part of any initiative for change. Our process of data analysis includes examination of both assessment focused data and environment focused data. The Breaking Ranks^TM data process creates a cycle of inquiry designed for use by data teams to incorporate both types of data to improve student engagement and performance.
 

Designing and Implementing Successful Freshman Transition Programs

The CSSR/Breaking Ranks™ approach to freshman transition suggests that schools consider 12 components. The components are listed in order of both difficulty of implementation and the likelihood of producing a successful result. Many of these components can be quickly and inexpensively implemented. However, the components that will require substantial investments in time and resources are much more likely to result in increasing student performance both in their freshman year and subsequent years in the high school.       

1.      Gather eighth grade data

2.      Establish a summer bridge program

3.      Provide a freshman orientation program

4.      Support extra curricular opportunities

5.      Implement an advisor/advisee program

6.      Provide tutoring and support

7.      Establish a twilight school – for credit and concurrent support

8.      Create a Freshman Academy

9.      Be sure that teachers of freshmen are united (TOFU)

10. Incorporate a freshman seminar class

11. Team students with a matched set of teamed teachers

12. Appropriately modify staffing and scheduling

CSSR support for best use of common planning time for content teams addresses four key areas of instructional practice: 1) the strategic use of classroom data and action research within the classroom to provide continuous improvement targets to students and teachers; 2)constructivist classroom design that embeds literacy, numeracy, thinking, and learning strategies WITH students (rather than “for” students) in the mastery of essential learning targets; 3) differentiation, cooperative learning, and authentic standards-based project strategies that provide for “brains on” as well as “hands-on” learning that actively engages students in contextual application of content; and 4) assessment literacy that ensures grading practices and assessments FOR learning maintain college-ready standards in a motivational framework.

Common planning time for interdisciplinary teams that address supports for student success includes: 1) close monitoring and early intervention with supports that are automatic rather than “invitational”; 2) proactive parent outreach through specific target-based communication and broader parent universities that create a viable and specific partnership with parents in supporting the academic success of their child; 3) comprehensive and personalized guidance and academic advising that includes student-led conferences and a six-year educational plan that extends beyond graduation. Specific programs are designed to intensively support and “catch-up” students to academic proficiency while building strong adult relationships and positive attitudes about school.                                                                                  

It is critical that these programs not represent “school as usual,” but embody the best evidence-based instructional and support practice and be led by top teachers in the building. Such programs can include: 1) a summer bridge program for 8^th graders identified as likely candidates to struggle with ninth-grade standards that addresses some key literacy, numeracy, and study skills foundational to high school success; 2) an extended block of literacy or numeracy designed to get students ready for tenth-grade success; 3) an intensive support class that provides embedded monitoring and support of a student’s academic and personal success in their core curriculum; 4) freshman teams, houses, advisories, and/or other adult-student advocacy programs.
 

District Wide Strategic Planning

The CSSR process compels the district office to identify those practices that contribute to the school’s success, and to replace those policies and practices that no longer work with new ones that are more responsive to the school’s current and future needs. Our support for a district level task force helps to create a policy and support plan that will be useful as a guide for the district and that will be central to all aspects of creating SLC’s across all high schools in the district.
 

Leadership for Literacy and Math Training

This training provides school leadership teams with the background knowledge and skills necessary for instituting an adolescent literacy initiative. It is grounded in three publications of the National Association of Secondary School Principals: Breaking Ranks II™: Strategies for Leading High School Reform; Breaking Ranks in the Middle™: Strategies for Leading Middle Grades Reform , Creating a Culture of Literacy: A Guide for Middle and High School Principals and Making the Mathematics Curriculum Count.
 

Math and Literacy Supplemental Services Training

CSSR provides support that works with existing after school programs to provide tutorial and small group academic assistance to students who need additional support in mathematics or language arts. Our coaches work with and train local teachers or after-school providers to align supplemental before and after school services with the school’s current curriculum.
 

Pathways to College Support

CSSR has engaged with the Pathways to College Network (PCN) to enhance the College Readiness for All Toolbox. This is a web-based toolkit that provides both tools (self-assessment and implementation) and resources for enhancing college expectations, readiness (student achievement), and access – and ultimately, college success! PCN is a national alliance of organizations committed to using research-based knowledge to improve post-secondary education access and success for the nation’s underserved students, including underrepresented minorities, low-income students, those who are the first in their families to go to college, and students with disabilities. Among its 40 partners are ACT, The College Board, NAACP, and the Aspen Institute.

Through the partnership with PCN, the CSSR School Change Coaches are prepared to assist schools to use this comprehensive resource to address:

• P-16 Education
• Raising Expectations: Cultural Belief Systems
• The Link between High School Redesign and the Impact on Student Achievement and College Access and Success
• Change Management
• Planning
• Developing a Rigorous and Engaging Curriculum
• Social Support
• Data Collection and Application
• Peer Networks
• Teacher Role Assessment and Change
• The Role of Family and Community in Improving College Access
• Building Connections to Higher Education
• Outreach Programs
• College Access Marketing

The CSSR approach is unique, in that through the partnership with PCN, change and project management tools have been added to the toolbox, i.e., specific guidance in “how” to get things done, not just defining “what” can be done. This combination of both the “what and how” is a package unique to the field and to online toolkits, and is expected to provide real added value for users. CSSR can help schools and districts to employ appropriate aspects of the PCN College Readiness for All Toolbox to meet SLC requirements with regard to preparation for and success in post-secondary education.

Through this approach, CSSR helps schools support transitions to post-secondary success including:

·     Specific literacy and numeracy readiness classes provided for any student who, at the end of grade 11, still shows indicators that they are not college-ready. These courses would be designed to get them ready for postsecondary studies without having to take remedial courses.

·     Enroll identified students in a Capstone course designed to provide special assistance in identifying post-secondary destinations, fulfilling and meeting application requirements, and seeking and completing financial assistance.

·     Developing high-level, high-interest Senior Project, Internship, and/or Independent Study courses that help students maximize their senior year in readiness for post-secondary education.
 

Personalizing Teaching for Student Learning
 

Planning for Future Grant Funding

The CSSR coach will provide grant writing consultation with the school leadership team to assist in gaining additional funding to support continued implementation of the Breaking Ranks II™ strategies and recommendations.  Throughout the year, CSSR will conduct FREE grant writing workshops to help school and districts develop a winning SLC grant.
 

Reaching and Teaching Reluctant Learners

Through the Reaching and Teaching Reluctant Learners process, CSSR provides teams of teachers with tools that work for today’s students allowing even reluctant learners to achieve at high levels. This highly interactive, practical process provides a proven set of strategies for unwrapping standards, rethinking assessment, managing classrooms, and designing lessons that have shown to foster and grow the student motivation needed to stay engaged and work hard.

This is accomplished by introducing teachers to a condensed version of best practice research in a practical framework for classroom success–unit by unit. Embedded throughout the framework are strategies, activities and examples that improve student motivation and performance.

Through this process educators are taken through a process that includes:

·        Foundational Overview ­­­– Unwrapping the standards and ALL student paradigm shift; Using high-level common assessments as data to inform learning and teaching; creating assessments FOR learning and grading practice that maintains student motivation; personalizing learning WITH students; developing interactive “brains-on” and “hands-on” strategies for reluctant learners.

·        Unit Design –Teachers walk-away with a unit design that embeds the above practices, along with an action research model that measures increased in student achievement for that unit.

·        In-house Leadership of Instructional Design – Coaching for designated leaders about their role in follow-up, as well as designing an embedded professional development plan that ensures this work reaches students as quickly as possible.

·        Professional Learning Communities/Common Plan Design – A data-driven, action research model for teacher collaboration to ensure this unit design results in measurable increases in student achievement.
 

School Change Coaching and Organizational Support for Creating Smaller Learning Communities

The school change process necessary for the successful implementation of Smaller Learning Communities is difficult and complex. This is especially true when new practices are being implemented while school is in session, and prior professional development has not totally prepared the staff to deal effectively with the changes being introduced. A school change coach has expertise in facilitating the school change process and working with staff to ensure their successful adoption of the initiatives being introduced.

A significant part of this work includes supporting the change leadership strategies identified through the CSSR Change Leadership process. The best intentions and well-crafted project plan are often not sufficient to insure objectives are met. Major initiatives often fall short of meeting desired objectives because an effective change management process has not been instituted and sufficiently resourced. Workshops and coaching for school and district leadership about the change process are provided to the leadership team and other key stakeholders. The concepts and tools required to meet SLC objectives are provided to facilitate major change in the school. These include communication and influence requirements, and address the positive politics of change.

The coach is also knowledgeable in providing Breaking Ranks coaching for both teachers and administrators to create a culture of success in smaller learning communities. The school coach’s work is customized to meet the unique needs of each individual school and its staff and is a critical element in the successful implementation of a Breaking Ranks initiative. The coach will guide the school in timing of the delivery of additional technical assistance services at each school.

Although many districts have the capacity to manage school improvement from within, without outside facilitation, that internal expertise frequently goes untapped or uncoordinated. In addition, outside facilitation helps districts separate activity from results, and deal with internal perspectives and issues of territoriality that can slow down and frustrate the process.

A coach’s role is to “build skills rather than deliver information.” It means that an outside person has an overview of what schools are trying to accomplish in their school improvement plan, some experience and expertise related to that area, and a network of contacts and best practices related to the goals in the plan. Then they work with schools to coordinate ways to reach those goals.

There are five key differences from typical “consulting”:

1.      Coaching usually entails working with smaller groups of people for longer periods of time than typical staff development. The idea is to create expertise and comfort within a group as they plan, practice, and revise a very focused targeted goal. The advantage of coaching at this point is that it often saves time and potential misdirection. Because it links with researched best practices, it therefore speeds up the forward movement and implementation; and it leaves the school with a set of teacher/leaders who can sustain the vision and action related to each goal.

2.      Coaches have an overview of how each piece fits with where the school is going and can, therefore, help combine resources, avoid duplication, and give advice about priorities and how the pieces fit together and, again, save time and money. An important piece of this aspect of coaching is to make sure the action plans are not “add-ons” but folded into district and state mandates as well as other programs and initiatives in which the school is involved (and vice versa).

3.      Proactive coaching can save on-site personnel from some of the busy work and paperwork related to monitoring whole school reform and help them turn that time into proactive monitoring and support of the day-to-day implementation of the actions. Therefore, coaches can help create documentation and work products that facilitate efficiency and efficacy.

4.      Principals, teacher/leaders, and faculty are bombarded by the daily pressure of doing their job. Structured coaching protocols also provide us with a “friendly reminder” of both the support needed for action and the accountability process. It is the coach’s responsibility to create a communication routine with our schools so that the coach can address needs or create products as quickly as possible. For example, a specifically designed weekly e-mail contact or twice monthly phone conference can help keep things on mind and on track in a way that is both timely and relatively easy.

5.      Because good coaches see the big picture and feel so strongly about the success of “their” schools, they never try to be all things to all people. Instead, they assist with bringing in the right outside people into the school and making sure the school connects with the right best practices outside the school. They then have the advantage of assisting the school in preparing and “coaching” those facilitators so that time spent on campus will quickly “get down to business.” Likewise, a coach can ensure that other facilitators provide appropriate feedback and follow-up, and coordinate with each other.
 

Student Personalization: Personal Plans for Progress and Student Led Conferences

A Student-Led Conference is a conference with parents or other adults led by a student.  The student builds ownership and leadership by sharing reflections about his/her progress and plans.  Student-led conferences can focus on different themes or a combination of the following:

·        Students present the results of their personal investigations of their interests,
   skills, and passions.

·        Students present reflections on their academic progress.

·        Students present their “Personal Plan for Progress (PPP)” that includes
   academic and social short- and long-term goals.  

A Student Led Conference involves the important second step of articulating out loud reflections of past learning and experiences, and verbalizing their commitment to concrete “action plans” for the future.  In other words, students find out if they really believe what they say. 

Personal Plans for Progress combined with Student Led Conferences is a powerful combination to help students move plans from paper to actualization.  One requires writing and the other speaking. The more senses you involve, the more of an impression it leaves on you. Both processes are aimed at getting today’s students to be goal driven.  Studies on goal setting in high school have illustrated that students who are goal driven will be more engaged in their own learning. 

The CSSR process will help school teams of administrators, teachers, and students establish a purpose and organization of Personal Plans for Progress for students. They experience lessons for developing “Self Explorations” with students and explore teacher-friendly materials to establish Student Led Conferences. Participants also have the opportunity to investigate models and create mechanisms for implementing Personal Plans for Progress and Student Led Conferences for all four years.
 

Student Shadowing and Focus Groups

Students have unique school experiences that are not always comprehensible to the adults involved with their education. Often, this information is lost because adolescents and adults see things through different eyes. Accessing students’ understanding in grounded ways, through incorporating student shadowing and student focus groups, has the potential to improve school experience for more students, as well as for teachers and administrators. Through a student shadowing exercise (including classroom observations, debrief session, focus groups, forums, and next steps planning session), schools will gain insight how to create a richer, student-centered educational program.
 

Supporting a Move to Performance Assessment

Performance assessments (also known as “authentic assessments,” “performance-based assessments,” or “alternative assessments”) can be thought of as assessment that requires students to actively accomplish complex and significant tasks, incorporating prior knowledge, recent learning and relevant skills to address realistic problems.

The most common forms of authentic assessments are: portfolios, exhibitions and projects. A portfolio is a collection of a student’s performance-based work and accomplishments; this can include some of a student’s best work, or works in progress that are meaningful to the student.  Exhibitions are culminating high school graduation requirements that enable students to demonstrate their mastery of important concepts using multiple forms of evidence. Projects are designed to engage students actively in their educational experiences by applying the skills they are learning in their classes to solve challenging, real world-based problems.  There are many research projects and case studies that provide compelling evidence that authentic assessments, properly implemented, have a dramatic and important impact on teachers’ pedagogical practices.

Research studies that have found a measurable and positive impact on instruction have described a shift in teacher instructional practices to include a greater emphasis on analysis, communication, meaningful problem solving, and writing for a variety of purposes

Services in support of preparing high school graduates to be successful in post-secondary educational experiences requires that students become accustomed to thinking critically, preparing research papers, learning how to synthesize knowledge and learning how to apply that knowledge in a variety of settings. CSSR will provide support so that schools will: understand the value and practice of authentic pedagogy; develop an understanding of authentic assessment in theory and practice; demonstrate the ability to employ authentic assessment rubrics to develop teacher assignments; and create strategies for the implementation of authentic pedagogical practices in their classrooms.
 

Support for Data Teams

The CSSR Breaking Ranks^TM process includes a values driven, data informed approach to the collection and assessment of data. Analysis of data should become part of the school culture. To this end, CSSR supports the formation of Data Teams as an important part of any initiative for change. Our process of data analysis includes examination of both assessment focused data and environment focused data. The Breaking Ranks^TM data process creates a cycle of inquiry designed for use by data teams to incorporate both types of data to improve student engagement and performance.
 

Support for Freshman Academy Teams

The CSSR coach will meet with each of the freshman teacher teams three times over the course of the school year.  Meetings will take place in the fall to assess current practices and to recommend strategies for increasing team effectiveness, and in the spring to review progress and plan for the next school year.
 

Supporting Instructional Coaches

CSSR will work with the instructional coaches in the school to conduct a gap analysis that identifies practices being used and provides capacity, knowledge base, and skill-building on targeted needs. Subsequently a time-task analysis will be conducted to help coaches assess existing forums and structures and design effective use of that time, while learning how to embed best practice routines into weekly and monthly calendars. CSSR can then assist instructional coaches with identifying specific learning targets (content standards and benchmarks, departments, and/or teachers), and developing a coaching plan with measurable results.
 

Values & Strategy Alignment