Teaming for Success in Underperforming Schools
Posted on: Wednesday, 30 April 2008, 03:00 CDT
By Kinsler, Kimberly
Like never before, today's classroom teachers routinely are being asked to collaboratively analyze student data, develop or implement new mandated curricula, and assess the effectiveness of these innovations. Ironically, few preservice preparatory or in-service professional development programs actively train classroom instructors in the use of team-based inquiry or collaborative data- driven problem solving. Framed within the context of the literature and governmental efforts to achieve school reform, this article describes one such in-service program, in practice at public and charter schools in high-need communities in New York City. Team- Based Inquiry and School Improvement
For well over 20 years, the literature on school improvement has shown a link between collaborative data-driven problem solving at the local school level and increases in student achievement, particularly in schools with high populations of underperforming students. As early as the 1980s, some educators urged school systems to adopt a "bottom-up" approach to improvement, focused on altering the culture of local schools, in contrast to "top-down" approaches in which agencies mandated bureaucratic change from afar. They reasoned that to obtain greater local participation and involvement in reform efforts, schools had to break down teacher isolationism, to give voice to previously silenced local stakeholder groups (such as teachers and parents), and to cede to them much greater ownership of and responsibility for their schools' problem-solving and decision-making efforts (lieberman and Rosenholtz 1987; Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy 1986).
Around that same time, the "effective schools" literature lent further support. In both Britain and the United States, a number of commonalities were found among successful schools serving high populations of children in poverty. In general, this literature reported that successful schools were ones in which local school stakeholders focused on their students' acquisition of central learning skills and closely monitored student progress (Reynolds and Cuttance 1992; Levine and Lezotte 1990). In today's school improvement literature, articles again urge classroom teachers to conduct inquiry-this time in the form of action research in their own classrooms and with the larger school community (e.g., Carrett 2006).
In the 1990s, recognizing the value of collaborative site-based inquiry focused on student achievement and trying to provide assistance to schools struggling to meet higher educational standards, many state departments of education began to prod poorly performing schools to form school councils or school leadership teams (SLTs) as working bodies to problem solve around issues of student achievement. Comprised variously of teachers, administrators, parents, and other local stakeholders, these councils (or teams) in turn authorized the formation of smaller topic-specific subcommittees. These subcommittees, focusing on topics such as literacy, mathematics, and school climate, were charged with the tasks of collecting data, analyzing it, and problem solving around their targeted area.
In some states, these councils (or teams) also were required to create Comprehensive Educational Plans (CEPs)-that is, "living documents" which described their schools' challenges as identified from the data and reported detailed "action plans" of the problem- solving steps and resources they would take to address each specific challenge area. Schools were to show how they built on the knowledge gained each year by updating and adjusting their CEPs and action plans. In mandating these activities, states aimed to have schools in need of improvement not only adopt and recreate significant elements of "best practice" identified in the effective schools research, but also incorporate common elements of the most advanced thinking in the school improvement literature (Kinsler and Gamble 2001).
Currently, under central parts of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, states and other local education agencies are being required to use research-based practices as the foundation of instruction, to develop tests to assess student performance using these methods, and to make ongoing data-driven decision-making an integral part of their educational systems (Yell and Drasgow 2005). In turn, local schools and teachers routinely receive disaggregated standardized test score data reporting the grouped scores for students that are economically disadvantaged, disabled, and limited English proficient, as well as data by race and ethnicity. Using these data, local school stakeholders are to determine whether all their students are making adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward attaining their states' learning standards and, if not, to develop specific site-level plans to make their research-based innovations more efficient and tailored to the unique instructional needs of these student populations.
Ironically, and despite all the efforts described earlier, team- based data-driven problem solving or inquiry has not become routine practice in most schools across the nation. One possible contributing factor is that few educator preparation programs instruct their candidates in the use of team-based problem solving. Traditionally, most teacher preparation programs train candidates in classical positivist forms of research, using control groups and emphasizing the role of the researcher as an uninvolved objective observer.
More recently, educators have advocated that pre- and in-service teachers receive instruction in action research-a more participatory form of inquiry designed to improve the operation of the local schools and the classrooms in which the research is conducted. However, even this modification often fails to approximate the real- world circumstances under which teachers actually will conduct inquiry. College-based instruction in action research most often advances the single researcher model rather than the small group, grade-level, or subject-specific schoolwide researcher designs more often needed in the actual school setting.
The Inquiry Based School Improvement Program
The Inquiry Based School Improvement Program (IBSIP) was created and designed to help schools serving high-need communities in New York City engage in the types of team-based inquiry and data-driven problem solving needed to meet the everchanging institutional demands on these schools to improve.
Housed at the Hunter College School of Education of the City University of New York, IBSIP helps participating public and charter schools form school-based problem-solving teams, or committees, and provides these teams with instruction and site-based assistance in their development and execution of team-based data-driven inquiry and action planning. Most of our schools are located in the East Harlem section of New York City, serve economically disadvantaged families and students, and at one time or another had been identified by New York State as schools in need of improvement.
Each year, IBSIP recruits small teams of four to seven teachers from each of its eight to ten participating public and charter schools. Teachers can span the range in terms of years of teaching experience and the grades or content they instruct. In return for Hunter College graduate credits toward their salary differential, teacher participants attend seven instructional workshops and hold weekly meetings at their local schools, where they plan and execute one or more inquiry projects to improve student performance.
The instructional workshops consist of five all-day Saturday sessions and two 2-hour Monday sessions, with a core curriculum of topics focused on team-based inquiry. For example, topics might include the grounded inquiry process; team building; gathering initial informative data; creating data-collection instruments; and action plan development, implementation, and monitoring. The curriculum has enough built-in flexibility to adjust to the changing institutional demands being imposed on these schools from year to year. For instance, action research is emphasized in some years, while CEP development is our focus in others.
In our workshop sessions, teacher participants are provided with the time to start their inquiry planning process or to begin the development of the data collection instruments they actually will use in their projects back home. They also are asked to bring their data to these sessions to take advantage of the all-too-rare continuous block of time and space to analyze and collaboratively discuss their data during real-world instructional time. These sessions encourage the crossfertilization and sharing of successful action plans and thinking among participating schools. At each session, teams "report out" on the progress they have made on their inquiry projects from the previous session, offering their successes and challenges. Operating as "critical friends," IBSIP teachers from other participating schools advise, offer alternate interpretations, and share useful informational resources to assist other teams in their inquiry process.
During weekly visits to participating schools, program administrators and staff attend meetings of IBSIP teacher participants and facilitate the inquiry process at the local sites. In these meetings, IBSIP faculty members function as "external coaches," or participant observers, helping IBSIP teacher participants engage in their inquiry and problem-solving efforts. We listen to their deliberations, offering advice and theoretical as well as practical pedagogical information. In these sessions, we help teachers draw real-world connections between theory and practice in ways that are immediately meaningful and applicable. In addition, we work hard to establish positive relationships with each school's administration and are careful to keep them well-informed of all of the inquiry projects with which IBSIP participants are involved. Occasionally, we are asked to act as emissaries and to use these lines of communication to achieve greater administrative support for or facilitation of these schools' and participants' action plans.
Aside from these program features, IBSIP participants also engage in a number of other significant program-related activities. Each teacher participant must agree to lead or co-chair one area- specific SLT problem-solving subcommittee; maintain a log of all IBSIP problem-solving activities; participate in writing his or her school's CEPs; and present his or her process and the products of the inquiry at an informal end-year "conference."
Since IBSIP's inception, about seven years ago, the schools with which we have partnered have made significant progress in advancing the academic performance of their students. As previously mentioned, most of our schools were at one time on the New York State list of Schools Under Registration and Review (SURR) for chronic underperformance. Since joining our program, all of : our participating schools have been removed from the SURR list and have made great strides in both meeting and maintaining the new AYP standards. Moreover, IBSIP's commitment to and relationship with participating schools are long-term. Though, over the years, we have lost and added a few schools, roughly one-third of our participating schools have been with us since our inception, and another third have been with us for three or more years.
Extending the IBSIP Model
Ample evidence in the research literature illustrates the divide between the instructional content of college-based, teacher preparation programs and the real-world instructional realities and pressures on schools and teachers (Anagnostopoulos, Smith, and Basmadjian 2007). More and more, classroom instructors must accommodate increasing student diversity in a climate of conflicting demands to adopt mandated research-based innovations while simultaneously assessing and tailoring them to meet the unique needs of their student populations.
Successful schools and teachers serving high-need communities know that different teacher behaviors may be required on a school- wide, grade-level, or subject-area basis, and that educators need to work collaboratively both to discern their specific challenges and to adapt or supplement instruction to accommodate these needs. Unfortunately, too few teachers are trained in collaborative, data- driven problem solving, thus perpetuating teacher isolationism and the seeming enormity of the pedagogical needs these students present. However, consistent with the literature cited earlier, it is in collaborations and partnerships with parents and local college faculty that the knowledge and combined strength to solve these problems will be found.
Toward this end, classroom teachers need instruction in collaborative or team-based, data-driven problem solving. Lessons learned and features from IBSIP that may be extended and incorporated into both pre- and inservice teacher preparation programs include the following:
* College-based research courses must be made more relevant to reflect the real forms of inquiry teachers actually will be asked to conduct. Instruction needs to shift from an emphasis on positivist research and inquiry models to more qualitative action or participant research designs that are much more likely to be used in actual school settings.
* Efforts need to be made in these courses to give candidates practice with team-based, or small-group, inquiry. In real school settings, the true efforts to achieve schoolwide student improvements most often are not accomplished by the solitary teacher, working alone with students in his or her own class, but rather by collaborative groups of teachers, sometimes in concert with parents.
* Preservice professional development-but perhaps, more appropriately, in-service professional development-needs to focus on the integration of theory and practice in helping teachers to develop data-driven instruction for their grade-level or content area. Rather than esoteric commitments to current, and often changing, beliefs about "best practice," classroom teachers- particularly in urban settings-need to know and practice using the full array of theory-based methodological approaches to instruction and know how to match them to the needs of learners and circumstances of their environments.
Closing Thoughts
Ultimately, if classroom teachers are to effect significant change in the academic performance of their students, they must unite with other teachers in their schools to develop a unity of purpose toward achieving equitable outcomes in the education of all children in their schools and in the larger society. School personnel not only must embrace their collaborative responsibility to tailor mandated innovations to the dynamics of their own schools, but also, more importantly, take informed site-level control over the school improvement process. In unity and collaboration, teachers truly will find the strength to make a difference.
"It is in collaborations and partnerships with parents and local college faculty that the knowledge and combined strength to solve these problems will be found."
References
Anagnostopoulos, D., E. R. Smith, and K. C. Basmadjian. 2007. Bridging the university-school divide: Horizontal expertise and the 'two-worlds pitfall.' Journal of Teacher Education 58(2): 138-52.
Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy. 1986. A nation prepared: Teachers for the 21st century: The report of the Task force on Teaching as a Profession. New York: The Forum.
Garrett, J. L. 2006. It's time to spring into action research. Kappa Delta Pi Record 42(3): 104-05.
Kinsler, K., and M. Gamble. 2001. Reforming schools. New York: Continuum Press.
Levine, D. U., and L. W. Lezotte. 1990. Unusually effective schools: A review and analysis of research and practice. Madison, WI: National Center for Effective Schools Research and Development.
Lieberman, A., and S. Rosenholtz. 1987. The road to school improvement: Barriers and bridges. In The ecology of school renewal, Eighty-sixth yearbook of the Notional Society for the Study of Education, ed. J. I. Coodlad, 79-98. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Reynolds, D., and P. Cuttance, eds. 1992. School effectiveness: Research, policy, and practice. London: Cassell.
Yell, M., and E. Drasgow. 2005. No child left behind: A guide for professionals. Upper Saddle River, N|: Pearson/Merrill/Prentice Hall.
Kimberly Kinsler is an Associate Professor with the Hunter College School of Education. For the past 18 years, she has worked with teams of teachers from chronically underperforming public schools in the East Harlem section of New York City. In 2000, she created the Inquiry Based School Improvement Program described in this article.
Copyright Kappa Delta Pi Spring 2008
(c) 2008 Kappa Delta Pi Record. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
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