Principal's Message - May Edition 2010

CAN THE QUALITY REVIEW HELP US?

The June calendar has been posted on my wall. It’s one of my first indicators that the school year is winding down. With the amount of testing packed in May and the first few weeks of June, there is still so much that needs to be done to close out this school year. As mentioned in the previous Principal’s Message we still need to make sure we are ready to go for next year. The frame of the houses and grade teams for next year has been laid out. The key step that needs to be done right now is learning what the expectations of the Quality Review, comparing the current work and structures we have in place already to the actual Quality Review, and then building on what we have developed thus far to see how we can meet those expectations.
The reality we must face is that the Quality Review will most likely be conducted in October of 2010. This gives us about two to three months to move the work along outlined in the actual document. What we also must realize is the Quality Review has become far more challenging since we were last assessed. The expectations are higher than ever before.

I believe in this Quality Review. I think the concepts involved are best for children and best for our school. A large amount of research was put into creating the criteria for all areas of the Quality Review. The five main foci are Instructional and Organizational Coherence, Gather and Analyze Data, Plan and Set Goals, Align Capacity Building, and Monitor and Revise. Many of the practices being asked of schools are used by many of the schools I studied who developed outstanding change within their school. I have been analyzing award winners of the National School Change Award for almost 8 years now. These schools had many commonalities among them. Many, if not all of them, exist in the expectations of the Quality Review…The development of professional learning communities, the use of data to assess student needs and adjusting instruction according to the information, getting as many constituents involved as possible with the education of the students, and more.

The day-to-day work within the Quality Review involves an Inquiry Group process to exist among staff and ongoing data management to shape instruction. This will involve a large amount of learning for both teachers and administration. We have touched upon both areas in the last three years but have failed to infuse in our professional learning. The fact that we were unable to execute these operations in our school is a reflection on my leadership. We started off this school year with infusing Theory of Action and Analyzing students into our meetings. When we began to struggle, I allowed us to abort those systems. What I should have done was broken down the expectations and looked to see how we could have still moved the process along by either providing additional support or reducing the amount of focus. For instance, with the student analysis, I can easily reflect on those months and realize that we were trying to do too many students at one time. What we should have done was picked a select group of students to really dig deep into their learning and struggles. By covering all of our students, we lightly touched on the learning of our students and no real steps were developed to provide better guidance for us on how to handle our students. This is a sample of what the Inquiry Process will look like.

The Inquiry Group process begins with an analysis of our current data. From there, trends and patterns should be investigated. What is commonly done is a group of students, who staff struggle with, are identified. For instance, focus will fall most likely on a population of students who either declined in test scores or did not increase. From there, commonalities are sought after like gender, race, special education, English language learners, or anything else that may be identified among as many of the students as possible. Once a key group is selected then a sample of the students ranging from 15 to 20 in numbers are picked. From there, research is conducted on those selected students to see how to increase their learning and provide the best possible instruction for them. The research usually involves administering a more specific assessment to see what strengths and weaknesses these students may have. Then, using that information, we would try and see if there are any connections to previous struggles with those specific children.

Two years ago, the instructional cabinet conducted an inquiry group. Our concentration was on students who had high reading levels but scored low on the ELA exam. After assessing the students and looking at their work, we realized that the reading levels being reported were not accurate. Since the students were being diagnosed with the wrong reading levels, they were being encouraged to read books they were unable to comprehend. We provided additional professional development to our teachers to strengthen their assessment skills. We made sure the students were getting the support they needed and were measuring those specific students regularly. We saw visible improvement in reading levels and ELA scores. The process was very engaging for several reasons. One, it reminded us that the impact of teaching is in our hands and we controlled the learning of our students. Second, it helped us reflect on the work we were doing. Our professional development was not good enough at that time but it was a problem that could easily be fixed once we realized it could be improved. Finally, the process opened our eyes to the possibility. We thought we were getting the best from the sample of students. We realized there was more that could be done. When I say more, it was not more worksheets, more prep time…It was more support within the time allocated. Just by making sure the student had a book in his or her hand that they could understand is a huge step in increasing student engagement. Having knowledge of that information makes a simple step of switching a student’s book very easy to do. It’s just a matter of getting to that information. The inquiry process was the key to making it happen.

The tools that will allow us to be successful with the Quality Review are our curriculum writing and mapping and our meetings we have worked out with our duty periods. In the last two years, we have built some experience with collecting data and using data to prepare our students for testing. We have a good base to work off of. In addition, we have touched upon using Theories of Action as a basis for our decision making. We need to finish making this a part of our culture with data to demonstrate our current state and measurements conducted regularly to see if our steps are having an impact.

We have a great chance of earning a well developed on our next Quality Review. It’s a matter of creating a plan and executing it, first starting with the CEP and making it a real goal setting process to guide us in our entire decision making. We need to use our strengths to build on and take our learning to the next level. When we battle similar challenges we encountered early in the year, instead of aborting the plan, actually assessing the struggles and finding solutions to continue on. We have to have faith in this process regardless of the day-to-day struggles we face and know in our hearts that inquiry and data analysis will help us learn about our students. Right now, we don’t know much about them, but when we do, the deep culture change we are craving will truly take place.

Staff Birthdays

Rachel Levene May 1st
John Gonzalez May 15th
John Ciano May 19th
Cassandra Williams May 21st
Selena Lashley-Hall May 28th

Quote of the Month

“I have one life and one chance to make it count for something . . . I'm free to choose what that something is, and the something I've chosen is my faith. Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands -- this is not optional -- my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.” –Jimmy Carter