Building Understanding . Deciding to Become a Pilot Replication District
The Design Stage . Accountability and Research Components
Launching a Network of Pilot Schools

  The adoption of the Pilot Schools model requires a partnership between a public school district and the local teachers union.  The Pilot model requires a different relationship between these two parties, one in which each side gives up historical control they have exercised over schools. Creating such a model in a district requires a deliberate process, and a re-evaluation of central office services to these schools.  The following steps outline the role CCE has played in the replication of Pilots. Depending upon the conditions within a district, these steps are not necessarily undertaken in sequential order.

• Learn about Pilot Schools.  Read the Center for Collaborative Education (CCE) reports on Pilot Schools’ progress, and how freedom over budget, staffing, and scheduling enables schools to better meet student needs.  Discuss the viability of replicating the Pilot model in your district.

• Pilot School Visits.  Assemble one or more teams, including the superintendent and teacher union president, as well as key principals, central office administrators, and teacher leaders, to participate in one or more CCE-facilitated visits to Pilot Schools in Boston.  The goal is to learn first-hand how the Pilotareas of autonomy enable schools to create the conditions by which students can be academically successful.  The trip will include structured visits to Pilot Schools, meetings with Boston Public Schools’ central office administrators, and debriefing sessions with CCE staff.

• CCE Visit(s) to Meet with Key District and Union Staff.  Invite a CCE representative to spend a day within the district, meeting with key constituencies in order to present the Pilot model and its benefits, and to discuss what a process could look like in replicating the Pilot model within the district.  Key constituencies to meet with could include the superintendent and central office managers, the teacher union president and union staff, the heads of community organizations that are affiliated with the school district, school board members, and key principals and teacher leaders.

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• Gain Agreement.  Once the key constituencies have had opportunities to learn about Pilot Schools, and have engaged in dialogue about the benefits and feasibility of replicating the Pilot model, assess whether there is agreement to move forward in becoming a Pilot replication district.  Minimally, the superintendent, teacher union president, and school board chairperson need to assent to adopting the Pilot model.  In some districts, a CCE presentation on the Pilot model to the school board may be a helpful step.

• Prepare a Letter of Commitment.  Once agreement within the district has been reached to pursue the Pilot model, a letter of commitment to adopt the Pilot model should be prepared for submission to the Center for Collaborative Education.  The letter must be signed by the superintendent, teacher union president, and school board chairperson, and signal a commitment and timeline to create a defined number of Pilot replication schools over a five-year period, each with enrollment of no more than 450 students.  The letter should indicate whether the Pilot Schools to be created will be start-up and/or conversion schools.  (It should be noted that a district can decide upon a name other than "Pilot Schools" for its replication initiative; the first true Pilot replication district, Fitchburg (MA), calls their two schools “Partnership Schools.”)

• Craft New Contract Language.  CCE will facilitate discussions with the district and teacher union to engage in dialogue to craft new teacher union contract language that would extend the Pilot autonomies to the Pilot Schools to be created.  Oftentimes, the teacher union may wish to include a representative from the state teacher union affiliate at these meetings.  Once new language has been agreed upon, it needs to be ratified by the union’s executive committee and/or membership (depending upon the union’s by-laws).

• CCE Pursuit of Funding.  Upon receiving a letter of commitment for Pilot replication, CCE will work to secure funding to support the replication work.  The district and CCE will work together to put together a package of funding to support the multi-year work.

• Create a District-Wide Pilot Steering Committee.  The steering committee should be an oversight body to direct the Pilot School initiative.  This body approves the request for proposals, reviews and approves submitted proposals, deals with overarching questions around issues such as election-to-work agreements and facilities, and other pertinent issues.  Steering committee members should include the superintendent and/or a key central office manager who will have direct oversight for the Pilot initiative, the teacher union president and key teacher union staff officer who will have direct oversight for the Pilot initiative, heads of key partner organizations, and any other members that the superintendent and teacher union president agree upon.

• Facility Selection. The steering committee should ecide upon the facilities that will house start-up Pilot Schools. If the facility will house more than one school, the committee should determine how the facility will be sub-divided into multiple small schools.

• Request for Proposals.  Using the timeline for design and implementation of Pilot Schools, develop a request for proposals for design teams to use in submitting a proposal to become a Pilot School. 

• Technical Assistance to Design Teams.  Conduct an orientation meeting for interested design teams (groups of faculty, administrators, parents, community members, and students who wish to submit a Pilot design proposal) to review the Pilot model and proposal requirements.  Provide assistance to individual design teams as they explore Pilot status and construct their individual proposals.

• Design Approval.  CCE will work with the steering committee to review and approve Pilot proposal designs, and then provide approved design teams with technical assistance in small schools design, including governance, schedule, curriculum, assessment, staffing, budget, student support, family engagement, and community partnerships.

• Budget Autonomy.  CCE will work with the district’s budget office to craft an equitable lump sum per pupil funding formula for all approved Pilot Schools.  As well, most likely to be implemented in year two of the initiative, CCE will assist the budget office in identifying central office discretionary services that can be itemized into per pupil amounts and offered to Pilot Schools as services or as discretionary funds to be added to their lump sum budget.

• Other Central Office Redesign.  CCE will work with other central office departments (e.g., Personnel/Human Resources, Curriculum, Special Education, Title I) to prepare for a different service delivery model to approved Pilot Schools, based on the autonomy that these schools will be granted.

• Community Engagement.  CCE will work with the steering committee to gain media coverage on the Pilot initiative, as well as garner family and community support for the model.

• Longitudinal Database.  CCE will work with the district to build its capability to collect individual student-level line data for multiple indicators of student engagement and achievement – attendance, suspensions, transfers, grade retentions, course failures, graduation, college-going, and state standardized test rates.  CCE will annually receive a data transfer from the district containing this data so that the organization can track and report on each new Pilot School’s progress as compared to the rest of the district.

• School Quality Review.  CCE will work with the steering committee to set up a timeline and process for conducting school quality reviews for all established Pilot Schools.  In this process, each school develops a portfolio based on a set of benchmarks that articulate the criteria of a high performing Pilot School.  The school then hosts a three-day visit of practitioners to assess the school’s practices and performance against the Pilot benchmarks, and the visiting team provides to the school a written report of findings, commendations, and recommendations for improvement.  Generally, the SQR process will occur in year five of a Pilot School’s existence, and every five years thereafter.

• Coach in Pilot Schools.  CCE will provide coaching in the launch of each new Pilot School, assisting in all aspects of small schools design.

• Create a Network of Pilot Schools.  Once multiple Pilot Schools are off the ground, CCE will create district network opportunities for Pilot educators to come together in multiple forums to learn and share from one another, including leadership retreats, teacher sharing roundtables, and cross-school visits.

• Pilot Residency.  This is a three- or four-day experience in which school or design teams engage in facilitated visits to Boston’s Pilot Schools, structured experiences to learn about the Pilot areas of autonomy and how they can enable schools to implement innovative practices designed to improve student learning, and facilitated team planning time.

• Summer Pilot Institute. This is a four-day institute dedicated to Pilot Schools sharing their innovative practices across all Pilot School areas – curriculum, instruction, assessment, governance, staffing patterns, creative budget use to maximize resources, student support, schedules, family engagement, and more.

• Critical Friends Groups.  This is a five-day institute in which teacher leaders are prepared to become facilitators of Critical Friends Groups (CFG), groups of teachers who engage in reflective dialogue about improving instruction and student learning through examination of student and teacher work, action research, peer observation, and text-based discussions.