Texas-style school improvement: after adapting the Brazosport, Texas, model, Hesperia USD refocused its energy on narrowing the achievement gap. Their new plan calls for aligning curriculum, teaching and learning with assessment — simple, but not easy

Leadership, Nov-Dec, 2001 by Richard E. Bray, Rob Challinor

Like all districts in California, Hesperia Unified has been working to improve student achievement. Despite the sustained efforts to improve our schools, there is still much to be done. What makes Hesperia Unified's challenges less painful is the knowledge that we are not alone; other districts throughout the United States are facing the same issues. Fortunately, there are models in place to help in the transition toward making all students successful learners. Hesperia Unified believes it has found its model in the one used by the Brazosport, Texas, Independent School District.

Gerald Anderson, Brazosport's former superintendent, adapted his model based on the teachings of W. Edwards Deming, who pioneered the idea of Total Quality Management. According to Deming, it is business managers, not workers, who are responsible for the majority of the defects in products or services. Anderson took the same principles and applied them to education. It is the administration, not the students, who are responsible for the defects in learning.

Why pattern Hesperia Unified after Brazosport? Because the demographics (enrollment, poverty level and ethnicity) of Brazosport, Texas, are similar to those of Hesperia, California. Also, both districts share the conviction that all children can learn, given the time and resources. Making excuses for low academic performance based on socioeconomic or racial differences is unacceptable.

Brazosport, located in the densely industrialized region along the Gulf of Mexico, was the first district to earn the Texas Award for Performance Excellence. The majority of its students -- white, Hispanic, African-American -- in each of the district's schools achieved mastery on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills. The accomplishment earned an "exemplary" recognition by the Texas Education Agency.

If it can work there, it can work here

There is a great deal of creative energy among teachers in Hesperia, but the data proved much of that energy was unfocused and dissipated without achieving the desired effect. Although we have seen gains using various programs in our elementary schools, we felt we needed an overall plan to align and focus our energies to ensure greater improvement, K-12.

Last year, we assembled a team of principals and teachers and flew to Texas to get acquainted with the Brazosport model. In his soft-spoken, down-home style, Superintendent Anderson outlined the process his district used to narrow the gap between its high and low achievers. The results were impressive. In a 10-year period, the achievement gap between high and low achievers was significantly decreased, with all of our students demonstrating progress.

Hesperia Unified hopes to emulate those results and has begun by setting the vision of "800 by 2010." Our vision is to get all schools and demographic subgroups to 800 on the API by the year 2010. The idea is simple, but not easy. For students to master the state standards you simply must align the curriculum, the teaching and the learning with the assessment. Simple -- but not easy.

Rolling up our sleeves

An effective school is one in which equal proportions of low - and middle-income level children evidence high levels of mastery of the essential curriculum. Just as Brazosport did, we assembled a team of teachers and administrators and took a long hard look at the data (SAT-9) to identify our own best practices, instructional strengths and weaknesses; noted low performance areas in relation to accountability standards; and developed grade-level pacing plans and benchmark assessments based on those standards. In effect, Brazosport challenged the way they had "always done it," and so did we. Most importantly, we asked teachers to not just teach, but to take responsibility for student learning.

During the current school year, our teachers will work in collaborative grade-level or department groups developing eight-to 10-minute focus lessons that reinforce the standards. These focus lessons spring directly from the prioritized needs developed by analyzing the disaggregated data.

The district will retain and continue to evolve programs that have already garnered positive results, including ExCEL (Excellence: A Commitment to Every Learner), Reading Recovery and AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination). Additionally, the elementary school schedules have been adjusted to allow teachers and administrators to meet one afternoon each week to develop and share successful teaching strategies (Collaboration Wednesdays). Key personnel have gone through Total Quality Management Training, and designated instructional leaders will be trained in the plan/do/check/act cycle. It is the district's goal to make instructional focus everybody's business -- including parents, administrators, teachers and support staff.

This year, Hesperia Unified added two new positions to our instructional services division: director of curriculum and assessment and coordinator of professional development. The director's responsibilities include developing district assessments, disaggregating state and district data, and aligning curriculum to state standards.