"Great" School Diagram and G2G Update

At the March 25th meeting of the Exeter Region Cooperative School Board, I unveiled the "Great" Schools Diagram  which was developed through the work of CMS's Good to Great Committee (G2G).  

By way of reminder, CMS mobilized G2G as a response to Dr. John Cronin's analysis and reportof the NWEA results of CMS  students from 2004-2006.  On page 12 of his report, Dr. Cronin referred to CMS  as "a reasonably good school with aspirations to become a great one."  That statement, which he said several times during his November visit, led to the genesis of G2G.

As G2G reviewed the recommendations of Dr. Cronin, page 10 of his report gave us some insight as to our purpose. It reads:

The grouping arrangements in place today work substantively better for high achieving students than low achievers.  In reading and language usage, the flexible grouping arrangement produced better growth for high achievers than the ability grouping arrangements.  Low achieving students have shown poor growth in the flexible grouping arrangement, but did not show substantively better results in ability grouped situations.  In mathematics, the current course assignments produce excellent growth with high achieving students in grades seven and eight, although growth has slipped this past year.  This assignment system has produced poor results with low achieving students and these results have declined further during the most recent school year. 

This leads to the general conclusion that decisions about grouping per se may not have much to with the results produced by the middle school.  The school employes flexible grouping arrangements for reading and groups by achievement in mathematics.  These "conflicting" arrangements have both worked relatively well for high performers and both work very poorly for low performers.  Thus simply making a change in grouping arrangements, whether toward or away from ability grouping, without a constellation of changes that are targeted more directly at improving the quality of curriculum and instruction, is unlikely to make much difference.

With the declaration from Dr. Cronin that a change in grouping would not appear to have an effect on the performance of students at CMS, G2G focused on the "Constellation of Change" about which he wrote and spoke.  Our discussions, both with the committee proper and the faculty-at-large have led to a focus on three key domains:  Curriculum, The Holistic Well-being of Students (which includes the social, emotional, academic, and physical well-being of our students), and the Constancy of Purpose that Dr. Cronin spoke of so eloquently at his presentation (See the "Great" Schools Diagram to see how the three domains intersect). Moreover the G2G committee has come to the conclusion that in order to provided a high quality education for each student, the three domains must be acutely balanced.  Specifically, if any one of the three domains is deficient the ability of the school to deliver high quality education will be compromised. 

With the "Great" Schools Diagram model in mind, G2G is now involved in a couple of processes.  First, trying to determine how well each domain is currently woven into the fabric of the school.  Are we lacking in any of the three domains?  More than one?  All three?  Further, can specific reasons be determined as to why any one or some combination of the three domains are deficient?  Is there a domain (or 2?  or 3?) in which CMS is outstanding?  Why are we outstanding?  Is there a common trait between those areas in which we are outstanding that can be replicated?  Which leads to the second process.  Developing action plans to address deficient domains and replicate those that are outstanding.  More will come of this process on a later post.

Good to Great

As was written of a December, 14th post, CMS is dedicated to continual improvement .  On December 11, 2007, the faculty of CMS began this process.  The focus of the meeting was on the statement made several times by Dr. John Cronin (NWEA) during his visit to CMS.  The statement was also written in his formal report.  The statement was:

"CMS is a good school, not a great one."

Toe begin the process of moving to "greatness" the faculty engaged in a cross-grade, cross discipline discussion to answer/discuss the following questions:

1.  What can we do and/or stop doing to move CMS in the direction of greatness?

2.  How can a school's greatness be measured?

Notes/data were collected from those discussions and CMS administrators, through an iterative process, looked for not only general themes, but also the frequency of such themes.  A summary of discussions was posted and all CMS faculty were invited to provide additional comments and or edit the summary.  The following are the themes that emerged through that process.

1.  Most groups commented about the over-reliance, over-use, and general amount of standardized testing CMS engages in each year.  Generally, teachers like having data for a variety of uses, including, but not limited to instruction, placement, IEP evaluation, and recommendation for high school, but the disruption caused by standardized testing is wearing on the faculty.  There seems to be a general need for assessment, but in a more reasonable, pragmatic way.

2.  All groups expressed their desire for common planning time for curriculum groups (e.g. all 7th grade social studies teachers).  The idea that common planning time can help CMS move from Good to Great is consistent with current educational research.  Rick Dufour was able to lead Adlai Stevenson High School in Illinois from poor to high quality partially because of their use of common planning time.  More can be read about common planning time and the development of a professional learning community at the following websites:

http://www.mesd.k12.or.us/si/dufour_PLCs.pdf

http://www.allthingsplc.info/

3. Several groups made comments regarding the elimination of non-teaching duties (e.g. lunch duty, hall duty, etc.).  The general thought would be to provide more time for teachers to collaborate, plan, etc.  Two comments in particular best expressed the faculty's sentiment:

"Take away duties for teachers not related to curriculum, instruction, and assessment."

"Stop (Remove!) extraneous duties that take up time."

4.  Several groups expressed support for a systemic model of support for those who are struggling with their academics.  The general idea was similar to the Response to Intervention (RTI) model implemented in many schools.

This theme is consistent with Dr. Cronin's report in which he highlighted the growth achieved by our high achieving students is not seen in our middle achieving students and especially in our our low achieving students.  This achievement gap, as measured by NWEA, between our high achievers and our low achievers is widening!  RTI (or similar program) may be a strategy CMS can employ to reduce that gap.

5.  There was a large contingent of comments expressing the feeling that the CMS faculty is "spread too thin."  It was pointed out that there was a certain irony in the fact that Mr. Baldasaro asked faculty to identify those items on their plates which needed to be removed and in the next breath announced a new "Good To Great" steering committee.  The duality of those events was noted.

Generally, this concept was similar to what Dr. Cronin proposed when he spoke and wrote of "constancy of purpose" and the need to develop a comprehensive long-term improvement plan.  While we prefer the idea of a long-term vision (Good to Great) using short, measurable goals based on that vision, there is a general belief in having a "constancy of purpose."

6.  There was a lot of discussion about the CMS curriculum.  Within this theme, there were many sub-themes.  They were:

More sharing of curriculum.

"Slimming" of the curriculum.

Eliminate obsolete curriculum items - concentrate on key concepts.

Greater adherence to curriculum and grade level standards.

Vertical (6th to 7th, 7th to 8th grade) alignment of the curriculum.

Consistency across grade level content areas.

"High Accountability for all students."

Generally, the conversations centered on the amount of curriculum concepts that needed to be "covered" as opposed to the quantity of the curriculum.  This is a classic "depth over breath" discussion.  Robert Marzano would call for a "guaranteed and viable" curriculum for all CMS students as opposed to a curriculum spread so thin teachers are racing to "cover" it.

7.  A couple of groups discussed the grading and development of more consistent school-wide grading policies.  There is already a group of teachers meeting on a regular basis to discuss the possibility of standards-based assessment and the use of formative assessment in the classroom.  Although that sentiment was not discussed widely during the Good to Great meetings, it has been talked about generally at CMS.

8.  Almost every group discussed the importance of the emotional and social well-being of CMS students - something of an addendum to the discussions related to concerns of becoming too focused on data.  While the focus of the afternoon was on curriculum, instruction and assessment, it is clear through the development of this theme in so many groups that there is a concern on the part of the teachers about the social and emotional well-being of CMS students. Further, there is a belief at CMS that if we are educating the "whole" child, then one can not focus solely on "academic" growth.  There is an interesting study by Kristen Bub (an advanced doctoral student at Harvard) on the connection between behavior and grades.  You can read more here.

9.  There here a couple of comments regarding the supervision and evaluation of teachers.  Two comments centered on the "informal" walk-through process, that teachers felt as though a 5-10 minute walk-through did not provide adequate time for an administrator to make a judgment and provide feedback.  There was also a discussion in at least one group on the importance of feedback for teachers and a suggestion that others in the department (i.e. peer coaching model) complete observations to offer constructive feedback.

10.  There were a number of miscellaneous items that did not fall within a "theme".  They are quoted below:

• "Stop letting the school board 'push' us around.  Need to be more direct and less defensive at school board meetings - things that are going well need to be voiced.  School board needs to hear that emotional rigor is important and that it is part of our mission statement.  The administration is being passive with the board.  The board needs to be told that they aren't looking out for all students."
  
• "[Need] a true "curriculum" coordinator."
• "Observe/visit other 'great' schools to find out what makes them great."
• "Define a 'great' school from administration/board."
• "No attendance policy, no accountability for kids, passing times for kids, no bells, clock differences."
• "Emphasize thematic learning"
• "Stop scheduling like we are a junior high school."
• "Parent Portal - time consuming, takes away from preparation."
• "Current goal setting process is too restrictive/dictatorial and pointless."
• "Teachers have meetings without agendas to be creative and attentive."
• "Is the 'Good to Great' committee just another example of 'whack-a-mole'?"
• "Stop feeling tied to textbooks/old instruction."