| It Started with a Question From Standards to Success Focus Group
Dr. Mark O’Shea, author of Standards to Success, posed a question while attending a Cornerstone Summer Institute two years ago:
“Do your teachers know their standards?” Of course, my first reaction was yes and then I paused. They know what the standards state; however, I could not say that they had a deep understanding of each of the standards they were required to teach. I needed more time to think about this. (He was asking relative to the Talladega School District where I was then serving as director of curriculum instruction.)That conference ended and Mark O’Shea left for California. Little did he know how persistent I could be. Three months later Mark, Becky McKay, and I were meeting at the district office not only to continue this conversation but also to develop a district plan. In our discussion we decided to target math and begin with third grade because in our state that is the first grade level to participate in standardized testing. Mark was developing a protocol process to review standards and to examine examples of released state testing questions and wanted to have a small team of teachers review the protocol. This team would edit, revise, and determine if the protocol was “user friendly.” I invited a small team of teachers, veteran and those with a few years experience, to participate. Two elementary principals also attended this session. Mark developed a model using one third grade math standard using the protocol he designed. He explained the process to the team, and then they implemented the protocol with another standard to assess the ease of the process. The teachers needed an additional meeting to complete their standard and for us to discuss how to present the protocol process to other third grade teachers. At this meeting we determined that I would introduce the process, and these teachers would explain the steps and share their experience as they developed the second standard. Many of the schools in our district are small and some have only two or three teachers in a grade level. My intent was to design a process that would enable a grade level to address all of the standards in a short period of time. Since it would be extremely time consuming to address in schools with small grade level teams, we decided to conduct district meetings and develop “standard expert” teams. I assigned to a team three teachers from different schools and organized the teams to pair veteran and new teachers together. Before the meeting, I sent a memo to all the participants and their principals. In the memo I listed the team members and the standard for which each group was responsible. Additionally, I requested they bring a laptop, teacher editions, and any materials related to their particular standard. In preparation for the session, I organized a standards protocol notebook, which included the third grade math standards, pacing guides, test specs, and the protocol process, for each participant. The meeting area included tables for each standard team, wireless access, and a table full of math resource books relative to third grade standards. The timeframe was designed to provide time to explain the process and time to work on their assigned standard. Since I would be the one distributing their final product throughout the district, I developed a format for their work and put it on my jumpdrive. Then I put the format on each team’s laptop so the form would be consistent. After each team completed their standard, I downloaded their work to my jumpdrive. This step allowed me to organize the material and prepare it for distribution. I printed a hard copy of each team’s work and they included it as well as any materials and resources developed in a folder labeled with their standard. In the first meeting, we were able to complete seven standards. Mark had completed one as an example and the initial third grade team had completed one. Mark’s example and the initial team’s work were included in the notebook that was distributed. Each participant left the session with these two completed standards. Then I copied the standards the teams had developed and distributed to each teacher all of the standards that were completed. Our next meeting was in the spring. In the morning meeting, the teams worked on the final set of standards. In the afternoon, Mark worked with them on reviewing sample student responses to open-ended questions from our district benchmark tests. By the end of this meeting, all of the third grade standards were completed. Although the majority of the third grade teachers had participated in the process, we scheduled another training in the fall for those who may have missed the training and for all the new third grade teachers. Throughout this process, principals and assistant principals were invited to attend and to participate in the training, and many did. The response from the teachers was positive and those principals who did attend wanted to know when we would begin with other grade levels. At this point, I invited several teachers who had been involved in the process to share their experiences with all of our principals at our administrators’ meeting. Some principals also shared how they had supported the process in their schools. In two years we have completed this process in math with grades 3-6 and completed some standards in 7th and 8th grades. We have also completed three-fourths of the standards for Algebra I and in May will be meeting with 10th and 11th grade social studies teachers. I can now answer Mark’s question. The teachers who have completed the protocol process do know their standards and the evidence is in the increased math scores in our district benchmark tests and on the state standardized test. As I mentioned in the Focus Group, every grade level (3-8) exceeded the state test benchmark math score, and every grade improved from 2%-4% in math on the SAT-10, except one grade level that remained the same. Since the majority of our schools are small and have a limited number of teachers at each grade level, we made the decision to organize this work from the district level. For us, combining the expertise of the teachers across the district enabled us to address several standards in a short period of time. However, this process could easily work for a school that is larger than ours or for a larger district in which area schools could work together. This process provides an avenue for district leaders and/or principals to create a collaborative structure for teachers to participate in collective inquiry. In his discussion of principals as staff development leaders, DuFour lists the following steps, which are evident in the standards protocol process:
Sometimes a simple question can lead to great results; for us those results included improved test scores and stronger collaborative teams. Thank you, Mark, for asking the right question. DuFour, R., “Collaboration is the key to unlocking potential,” The Learning Principal, November 2006, 1, 6-7. |
