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Design

A Design for Whole School Change
Our Theory of Change:
In order to improve and sustain student learning, schools need to focus deeply on (1) improving learning, teaching, and assessment, and (2) creating the structures and supports in schools that enable all students to learn at high levels, and all faculty to engage in continuous professional development and purposeful collaboration. In working for sustainable change, schools need to have the twin goals of high student achievement (high performance) and ensuring opportunity and success for each and every student (equity).

The Nature of Our Work:
The Center believes that whole school change is facilitated by collaborative work with schools in school-based as well as in external practices. This collaborative work includes onsite coaching, professional development, and teacher collaboration.

School-based Practices:
1. Improving Learning, Teaching, and Assessment: Ultimately, student learning does not increase unless there is a continual focus on setting high expectations for each and every student, and providing ongoing support for teachers to improve their practice of teaching and assessing student learning. This process includes:

• Setting standards for important things that all students should know and be able to do in grade spans
• Creating an explicit goal of closing the achievement gap between white students and students of color, and between low-income and more affluent students, and setting in place instruction and academic support that will achieve this
• Standards-based curriculum development, framed around essential questions, to ensure that the curriculum assists students to meet standards
• Adopting effective, focused approaches to teaching literacy and numeracy to all students
• Promoting habits of mind that create life-long learners and democratic citizens
• Looking collaboratively at student work to assess student progress and improve instruction
• Developing authentic and reliable assessments (e.g., rubrics, exhibitions, portfolios, exemplars), with clear performance criteria, to ensure that students know and can do important things

2. Building Leadership Capacity and a Professional Collaborative Culture: Schools require strong, shared leadership to promote a professional collaborative culture. Schools in which faculty interaction is collegial, and teacher talk and collaborative work is focused on curriculum, instruction, and assessment, have experienced strong improvements in student achievement. This process includes:

• Creating a democratic school community, including shared decision making through a representative leadership team and involving all faculties in making decisions about high impact issues affecting learning, teaching, and assessment
• Fostering the skills and practices of strong leadership among administrators and teachers to manage and facilitate change, and to stay focused on teaching and learning
• Establishing regular common planning time to talk about learning and teaching
• Embedding professional development in the daily practices of the school, through practices such as action research to explore important classroom questions, peer observation to promote collegial feedback, and looking at student work
• Building the faculty's capacity to look critically and constructively at teacher work

3. Data-based Inquiry and Decision Making: Ongoing analysis of data from multiple sources provides a comprehensive picture of a school's strengths and challenges. School-wide participation in this inquiry process results in thoughtful decisions for improvement. This process includes:

• Setting a vision for the school, and what students should know and be able to do upon exiting the school
• Ongoing collection and analysis of multiple sources of data, including disaggregating data by race, gender, and income status
• Analysis of differences between vision and reality
• Inquiry into priority areas for change that most impact learning, teaching, and assessment, leading to identification of causes and development of solutions and a plan of action
• Setting of annual measurable goals for improving learning, teaching, and assessment

4. Creating Structures to Support High Achievement: High performing schools create structures that promote the conditions for high quality learning and teaching. This process includes:

• Fostering school cultures of decency, trust, and respect
• Establishing small learning communities with common planning time for faculty teams
• Eliminating tracking and rigid ability grouping (equity)
• Lowering student-teacher ratios (no more than 80:1 secondary and 20:1 elementary)
• Building parent and community partnerships, including greater involvement in decision making and students' learning

External Practices:
1. Developing District Capacity to Support School Change: Schools have a greater chance of improving and sustaining student learning if the district is engaged in supporting reform efforts to promote effective instruction and a learning community. This includes:

• Collaborating with the district to pursue means of flexibility and autonomy that allow the school to be more innovative (e.g., freedom over budgets, staffing, curriculum, governance, and the school calendar)
• Building the district capacity to better support whole school change (e.g., developing vision, training coaches, redirecting resources)

2. Networking with Like-Minded Schools: Participation in a network in which schools share a common philosophy and develop mutually beneficial relationships greatly strengthens each school's effort to improve student learning. This process includes:

• School year network meetings for leadership teams to share and problem solve
• Summer institutes on leadership, learning, teaching, and assessment
• Critical friends visits from other schools to provide feedback on key issues of learning, teaching, and assessment
• Forums to influence the public's support for democratic and equitable school