district leaders: set up to the plate

Leadership, Sept, 2001 by Carolyn Downey

THESE NINE STEPS WILL TAKE THE MYSTERY OUT OF HOW TO DEVELOP HIGH-PERFORMING SCHOOLS.

Admonishing principals and teachers to do better will not turn around low-performing schools. If they could, they would. Just as in baseball, you can be given a bat, step up to the plate, and the ball will be thrown to you. But without the "basics" of the game, you could swing and swing and never get a hit that will take you to first base.

It is time to take the mystery out of the strategies for developing high-performing schools. The responsibility for doing this lies with district leadership. We must bring to school staff the information and tools that provide the knowledge and skills to move students to higher performance.

As Fenwick English states in the yet-to-be-released book "Fifty Ways to Raise Test Scores" (2002, Downey, et al.), "Typically, low-performing schools conjure up images of poor teaching, lazy or unmotivated faculty, incompetent administrators, overcrowded classrooms, outdated textbooks, or tragically stupid, hostile or unmotivated students. A low-performing school is considered "bad," and the traditional remedies run the gamut from doing more work ... doing something ... or doing away with them."

The "doing away with them" includes such penalties for low performance as loss of certifications, probation, takeover and privatization. None of these approaches recognize what really needs to be done. We do not have unmotivated staff -- discouraged maybe. We do not have students who lack the capacity -- frustrated maybe.

The problem is that our staffs don't know what to do. They try one idea after another, working hard, yet performance does not improve. It is up to the leadership of the district to become accountable for schools of low performance -- not the students, teachers or principals. As in baseball, it is understanding the rules and having the "basics."

We, as district leaders, must provide our staff members the essential steps to higher student achievement. As Covey (1989) states, "we must begin with the end in mind." We have to realize that what defines a low-performing school are the measures. Therefore, as we design our district curriculum around the state standards, we must first take into consideration how the standards are tested.

Further, district assessments of a criterion-referenced nature must be written at the same time as the curriculum. These measures are to be used by instructional staff in a diagnostic way as teachers align their teaching to the district curriculum.

It is time for district leaders to take charge of several areas that will help low-performing schools become high-performing schools. This includes the way the curriculum is designed, how it is assessed and the alignment of resources. However, it also means how staff are selected and assigned to these schools, and the way financial resources are allocated and staff development is provided.

The following are nine first steps to getting to "first base" gleaned from several of the "Fifty Characteristics of High Performing Schools" (Downey, 1999):

1 Write district curriculum to ensure that external assessment target objectives are embedded in the written content standards and student objectives. The district content standards and objectives need to be written so that the assessed objectives are clearly located in the curriculum. Focus first on language arts and mathematics, then pick up science and social studies. Make sure there are different objectives for each grade level/course as opposed to the same objectives across grades/courses.

2 Have clear, precise and deeply aligned district curriculum objectives that include the content, context, cognitive level and standard of performance. Your district curriculum objectives, aligned to external assessment objectives, need to be written with precision-- clearly specifying the content (skills, knowledge, concepts, processes, attitudes, etc.) to be learned; the context in which the learning must be demonstrated, including sample test formats; the appropriate cognitive level to be mastered; and the standard of performance -- degree of mastery required.

Deep alignment takes into consideration the range of the content tested. For example, if the test item is on number patterns using addition and single-digit numbers, the content could be expanded to include all four operations -- addition, division, subtraction and math -- for numbers up to 99. Deep alignment also means designing the curriculum around a variety of contexts students will need to demonstrate the content -- multiple-choice, fill in the blank, write and essay, real world performance application.

3 Provide a feasible number of objectives to be taught. Most district curriculum has far too many objectives to be taught within the time available for a typical learner. For low-performing schools there must be focus. The focus comes in designing a feasible number of objectives to be learned so that students can master them. District time allocations for all subject areas/courses need to be in place from which to compare feasibility.