Edna Varner Associate,Leadership Development

Seven of our first year schools have received their first annual school review report, and others have reviews over the next two months. While Mary Jean Whitelaw and the Cornerstone team do an excellent job of preparing schools for the school review, I fear that we leave school leadership teams to figure out on their own the important work that must follow. That work includes addressing the questions asked most often in first year schools:

These and other questions that tend to vary from school to school are the subject of this article. The suggestions that follow are designed to help first year schools get started, but more importantly, to stimulate further conversation about using school review to usher the entire school community into whole school reform driven by literacy.

1. How can we use school review to answer the essential first year question: What is Cornerstone and what does it mean for our school?

There it is--that first school review interview question for grade level teams, parents, and students. I have served on school review teams for four years now, and with few exceptions, new Cornerstone schools struggle with that question as if it were the riddle of the Sphinx. The typical response is, "It's not a program. It's a philosophy-but that's all I know".

By the time the review team arrives, faculty and parents have usually participated in a Cornerstone overview and they generally embrace the promise of Cornerstone's definition of literacy posted in their front hall. Review teams report that the school community is always eager to know more about Cornerstone and about what will look different in the school and classrooms.

One way a leadership team can begin to build knowledge and understanding of Cornerstone principles is to look to the guiding questions for the three focus areas of the school review, The Practice of Teaching, Student Learning, and The Learning Community. Refer to the Reviewers guide, beginning on page 13 for the complete list of guiding questions, but note these examples for now:

The Practice of Teaching

From questions about The Practice of Teaching---

What is Cornerstone?
Cornerstone is a partnership that helps teachers employ a range of strategies and classroom organization with the whole class and smaller groups and reflect on how well their approaches work.
Ask us about Crafting!

From questions about Student Learning---
What is Cornerstone?
Cornerstone is a partnership that helps us improve student learning. Students understand what they are doing, what they are expected to learn from it, where their strengths and weaknesses lie, and how they may improve.
Ask us about Rubrics!

From questions about The Learning Community---
What is Cornerstone?
Cornerstone is a partnership that helps us organize our school day so that principals, teachers, parents, and others can work together to translate principles of adult and student learning into practice.
Ask us what our school leadership team is working on!

Some Cornerstone schools accomplish this same purpose-knowledge building-in different ways. Muscogee County Schools have Cornerstone's literacy definition printed on the back of this year's school t-shirt. Horry County Schools in their first year develop a word wall of Cornerstone terms that grows as the work progresses so that teachers can use a common language. Other schools print a Cornerstone quotation about the new work on daily school announcements, and one school has Cornerstone moments where coaches share a strategy with the whole school at every faculty meeting.

Of course, building basic knowledge is what Cornerstone calls a surface skill, and it should only prepare the faculty for the deep structure skills to follow. These deep structure skills develop as faculties begin to make meaning of Cornerstone principles through rich conversations at leadership team meetings and other adult gatherings. Principals and coaches can begin those conversations by ensuring time on each meeting agenda to use school review guiding questions like the following:

From questions for The Practice of Teaching---

Do teachers ensure they are providing a learning experience that is consistent with other classes in their grade?

Discuss what "providing a learning experience consistent with other classes in your grade" means beyond using consistent content or activities. What should the each student's learning experience be?

From page one of the School Review---

Read The Cornerstone Definition of Literacy and discuss implications for literate students and adults. For example, What does it mean to inquire systematically into any important matter?

2. What are some best leadership practices for sharing the content of the school review written report?

While helping the whole school build knowledge and understand Cornerstone principles is one use of the school review report, the school review has a more specific purpose, described in the pages of the Reviewers' manual which all principals and coaches receive when they participate in their first review. Ultimately the purpose is to encourage self review, using a yearly external review as one more perspective schools can add as they hold up a mirror to their practice and the ongoing improvement of it.

As soon as the principal receives the written school review, we recommend meeting with the leadership team to discuss the report and how you will share the contents with the entire school community. Making the report available for others to read is commendable, but the document should be shared, discussed, and used as a tool for learning throughout the year. Distributing the report without holding the important conversations necessary to make meaning of it may even be counterproductive.

As indicated in the Reviewers' manual, "The first review provides a baseline assessment of the school's current position and what it needs to do to advance as a Cornerstone school. One way to share the highlights from the school review report to prepare faculty, parents, and students for the rich discussions to follow is to capture the report in a posting such as the following.

Adults and faculty will be naturally curious about the findings of the team, so a posting in the faculty room, an announcement in the school newsletter, and postings in places where students can see the recommendations will encourage further dialogue.

With that, the leadership team has time to discuss the review team findings and the report's relationship to their own perspective, choose a focus, add appropriate recommendations to the school's literacy action plan, and determine next steps. The team may decide to share the review report in sections and discuss how each set of observations led to a specific recommendation. Each grade level could be assigned to carefully read a section and discuss the observations through the lens of work at their grade level. They can later continue this discussion with the grade above or below. The important thing is to further rather than limit conversation about the school review recommendations and the evidence that supports them.

Two other questions remain from the list that began this article:

3. What do we do with the review document after we have shared it with the leadership team, faculty, and parents?

4. What are appropriate entry points to address the main recommendations in the conclusion of the report and the subsidiary recommendations embedded in each section.

I leave these unanswered because they are questions for video conferences with principal colleagues, coaches, and Cornerstone fellows. They are questions that require answers better informed by a leadership team walk-through of selected sections of the Cornerstone toolkit, a survey of archived newsletter articles on the Cornerstone website, or a visit to observe the work and talk with the leadership team of a second year Cornerstone school in your district or a district nearby.

The annual school review program has been designed to contribute to, inform, and shape a professional dialogue in every Cornerstone school and school district. A review is not an end in itself, but rather a means to an end. Studying your school review report and the Reviewers' manual, its "look fors" (what do you see?) and "ask fors" (what does this tell you?) can provide a rich self study for schools during their first year and every year.