***Office of Elementary and***

***Secondary Education***

**"No Child Left Behind" Programs/Initiatives**

January 23, 2004

# **Ray Simon**

# Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education

# 

# **Jackie Jackson, EdD**

Acting Director of the Student Achievement and School Accountability
Program, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, U. S. Department
of Education

# **Fran Walter**

Special Assistant to the Director of Title I

# **Chris Coxon**

Deputy Superintendent for Teaching and Learning, Boston Public Schools
System

# **Walt Gibson**

Community Superintendent, Montgomery County Public Schools

# 

# **Introduction -- Ray Simon, Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education**

Welcome to this broadcast from the United States Department of Education
concerning school and Local Education Authorities (LEA) improvement
guidance. I'm Ray Simon, Assistant Secretary for Elementary and
Secondary Education. I want to first of all thank the members of our
audience for joining this broadcast today. This is particularly aimed at
our LEA supervisory staff. We understand the important role that you
play in helping our schools meet their obligations under "No Child Left
Behind."

More importantly, we recognize that any true reform that will occur in
our schools is going to happen in the classroom. The Department of
Education, and specifically the staff at the Office of Elementary and
Secondary Education (OESE), are committed to helping you help your
teachers and students be successful. That's the purpose of this
broadcast.

We are going to bring together today a number of individuals, both from
our staff and from the field---practicing educators who know how to make
these improvements, and make these reforms work. We hope you find
today's broadcast helpful to you, and certainly want to hear from you in
any further way that we can assist you in doing your job.

I'm going to now turn the program over to Dr. Jackie Jackson, Acting
Director for Student Achievement and School Accountability within our
office. She will carry us through the remainder of the program. Thank
you very much.

# **Dr. Jackie Jackson, Acting Director of the Student Achievement and School Accountability Program, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, U. S. Department of Education**

Welcome. My name is Jackie Jackson and I am the Acting Director of the
Student Achievement and School Accountability Program, Office of
Elementary and Secondary Education, U.S. Department of Education. We
decided to have this audio conference today so that we could share with
you the new school and LEA non-regulatory guidance that was recently
released.

Joining with us today is Walt Gibson with the Montgomery County Public
Schools in Maryland, and Chris Coxon from the Boston School District.
But first, we're going to start with Fran Walter of the Title I Office,
who will give you an overview of the annual review of schools section of
the guidance.

## Fran Walter, Special Assistant to the Director of Title I

Thanks Jackie, I really want to start out, if I may, talking a little
bit about guidance for school districts. The department is very
committed to helping people really do what the law, in this case "No
Child Left Behind", says they should do.

And so, in addition to the language of the law, and the language of what
we call regulations, the department is also committed to, and in this
case has, written guidance for school districts that are really
concerned with the implementation of the law. And so, when we talk about
a guidance document, it is really that. It's really intended to be a
document that will guide the actions and decisions of people at the
district and school level.

And so as you said, today, we are going to talk about what we call the
LEA, or school district, and school improvement guidance. As everyone
who's read "No Child Left Behind" knows, the guidance, the law is very
clear about the requirements for accountability for schools, and
specifically around student achievement.

And so what the guidance tries to focus on at the beginning is reviewing
what the student achievement status is in every school and in every
district. The law says that every year states have to take a hard look
at every school, at every district, and do that kind of measurement, and
say, "How are the doing relative to where we are trying to go?" Which is
all students being proficient by 2014.

So the purpose of the review is really two-fold. Part of it is to, as I
said, look at student achievement data. In the case of "No Child Left
Behind" we're not only asking schools to look at overall progress, but
also at the progress of students in what we call, "sub-groups." The very
specific progress of students who are special education students,
students who are limited English proficient students, those who are
poor, those who are of varying ethnicities.

The law really wants to guarantee that each of those groups of students,
and all students as a whole, make progress. And so the very first, and
certainly the part of the review that gets the most attention, is really
the academic assessment, the scores, how did each of these sub-groups do
in terms of those assessments.

And so, in every case we know that schools are trying to make continuous
improvement. Nobody doesn't want to do better. But, in this case, the
state is really specifically stopping and saying, "How are you doing in
these specific areas?" Once the review is over, then there are
consequences for schools that do not make progress, and there are
rewards and further incentives for schools that do.

**Dr. Jackie Jackson:**

Fran, I'd like for you to address, just very briefly, the flexibility
that's in this law in terms of the state departments, states, being able
to make decisions about Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), and the
trajectory in order to get all kids to the proficient level by the
2013-14.

**Fran Walter:**

Okay, I'll do that. One of the major events that happen in every state
within the last year was, as you said, each state was given the
flexibility to design it's own accountability system. Those systems were
reviewed by other people who have experience working with states, and
then ultimately approved by the U.S. Department of Education.

But every accountability system had to take certain things into account.
And you mentioned a term called Adequate Yearly Progress---that many
people have heard of---and I'd like to spend just a second briefly
defining.

Adequate Yearly Progress means, "Did the school meet a target that was
set by the state?" As I referenced earlier, every state has to guarantee
that all of its kids will be proficient by 2014. This is 2004, and so
every state had to lay out, where are they now, and where are they
going, and say that every year a school will have to make "x" amount of
progress to get to the goal. And so, each state has to set a numerical
target for achievement.

And one of the unusual things about this law, and one of the things that
the people who support the law are proudest of, is that that target is
the same for all schools in the state, and it's the same for all
students in the school.

And so there is no more varying targets by what we think a certain group
can do, or what we think a certain school can do. Every school has the
same target.

The other two components of this: Did the school make enough progress or
not, in addition to the achievement scores? What was the rate of
participation of every school in the assessment? It's easy enough to
see, even for a non-mathematician, that if you are trying to get high
scores, one of the ways to do that, would be to leave out people who you
think won't score high. And so law tries to address that, by saying 95%
of all students who have been in that school for a year need to
participate in the assessment, or the assessment scores don't have as
much; they don't count as much.

And then the third thing that each state was invited to create was what
is called in the law, another academic indicator. It's also a huge
problem in many places that the graduation rate in high schools is not
as high as it should be. And so many states, and in fact the law
actually required for high schools, chose as their other academic
indicator, an improved graduation rate over time.

And so it's really those three components: the achievement scores, the
participation rate, and the other academic indicator, that states use to
measure whether or not a school has made, what we call, Adequate Yearly
Progress.

**Dr. Jackie Jackson:**

Thank you Fran. For the participants, it would be very helpful if you
would become familiar with your state accountability plans. Because this
outlines for you, as Fran indicated, the progress that you need to make
on a year-to-year basis.

Now, we are going to have a reaction about the annual review of schools
by our two people with expertise on school improvement. And that's Walt
Gibson, from the Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, and Chris
Coxon from the Boston Public Schools.

Walt and Chris, I would like for you to discuss two major parts of this,
and this, of the Annual Review of Schools. And I'd like you to talk
about how we can intervene by monitoring early in schools that we see
are beginning to go into the improvement mode. And also, what practices
or structures did you put in place in order to continuously monitor your
schools. Walt, would you like start first on this question?

**Walt Gibson, Community Superintendent, Montgomery County Public
Schools**

Be glad to. I think that the key place to start in working with the
school is with their data. The district has a great deal more expertise
often to look at the data in a school, help a principal and the school
improvement team to disaggregate that data to truly understand the kind
of performance issues that the school faces.

And so, one of the places that we started in Montgomery County, is with
what we call data dialogues. Someone from my staff or, in many cases me,
meets with principal and the school improvement team, and really tries
to understand the data based on what we've seen from, not just the
Maryland State Assessment, which is our state test, but a number of
other kinds of indicators that we have at the local level.

So we're not just looking at the big test, the one that counts, the one
that Maryland measures. We're really trying to look at a whole series of
information, formative data, about how students are doing against the
standards that the state has set. And this really truly requires that we
have an alignment between our curriculum, the instructional practices in
the classroom, and what we're measuring. Because if what we're measuring
and what we're teaching isn't what's on the state test, or the kinds of
knowledge and skills that kids need to have, then there's a real
disconnect.

So, in our district, we really have tried to begin the discussion around
data. "What do your kids look like? How are they performing? Where are
the gaps in whatever ways we can disaggregate the scores, and look
really deeply inside those scores? What are knowledge and skills that
kids are missing? What are the kinds of instructional interventions that
we need to use to get kids to meet those kinds of standards?" I think
for us, that's the first step before we even move on to school
improvement, we really need to understand what are those things that we
need to improve.

**Dr. Jackie Jackson:**

Chris, would you like to add anything to that?

**Chris Coxon, Deputy Superintendent, Teaching and Learning, Boston
Public Schools system**

I think, just to add, we also look very deeply at the data. The district
has invested heavily in creating tools that will assist schools in
looking at data, to actually do the disaggregation of the data for them.
It's one thing for schools to spend their time trying to do that
disaggregation. That was taking a lot of their time. They never really
got to the next step, which is then actually the analysis, and what do I
do about what the data is revealing to me.

So, we've taken a step of helping schools in creating electronic tools
that will allow that disaggregation to occur much easier.

Although that is an important piece, one of the missing pieces that we
found was, it's not only looking at student achievement data, but it's
also looking at the implementation of the curricular initiatives we have
in place in our schools. So we have gone on also to develop
implementation **rubrics** around our specific curricular initiatives.

And through the help of a self-assessment that the schools do, but then,
also the follow-up of the different department people, and also the
deputies that go into the schools, they also assess the school, and how
well are you actually implementing the curriculum that we believe will
get increased student achievement.

And I don't know if it's understood, I mean obviously the state
assessment is a very important piece; it's not the only one. Our state
assessment results are not given to us until the mid-fall of the
following year. So, an important piece in monitoring on an ongoing basis
are the formative assessments that the district has developed, which are
also aligned with our state test to make sure that we're dip sticking
along the way to make sure kids are making progress, that schools are
making progress. We can't just wait until the following year, when those
kids are no longer in that grade, to see whether or not the kids in the
schools are making improvement.

**Dr. Jackie Jackson**

And you hit on one of the items in "No Child Left Behind" that require
states to promptly provide the assessment data.

**Walt Gibson:**

I really do think that the point that Chris has made is a very important
point, though if you rely only on that state data, even if it comes on a
fairly regular basis, it's really hard to identify the issues that
classroom teachers need to work with for kids.

In Montgomery County, we've been very fortunate, that is, as they have
in Boston, make all of this electronic. So, at the end of the end of
each unit of instruction, particularly in grades K through 3, our
teachers submit data about student performance based on our own
formative assessments to a data assistant in the school, who then enters
that data into a computer database. And we're able to track every
student based on how well they're meeting the standards that we've set
in our curriculum, which are very much aligned with the state standards.

So, we're getting really constant feedback. We sort of focus our work
around four critical questions. "What do kids need to know and be able
to do at every grade level? How do we know they know it? What do we do
if they do? What do we do if they don't?" And it really helps us to hone
in on identifying those kids who have met a standard, have a particular
academic skill, and can then move on to the next level, and those kids
who need re-teaching support, extended time, all of the other things
that we can provide.

**Dr. Jackie Jackson:**

So, in those series of questions that you ask, you basically talked
about our standards assessment and accountability systems. You captured
it in a very easy way for us to understand.

**Walt Gibson:**

Easy way to understand, difficult to do.

**Dr. Jackie Jackson:**

No question. Now we\'re going to move on to a discussion about school
identification and school improvement plans. Fran will lead that
discussion and tell us, describe for us, what\'s in the guidance.

**Fran Walter:**

Thanks, Jackie. I wanted to get back to that concept that Walt and Chris
talked about which is really monitoring for improvement. They said
probably what everybody who works here hopes to hear, districts are
saying, which is that they don\'t wait until the scores come back to
notice whether people are doing well or not, whether schools need help
or not. And so, it\'s very heartening for all of us here to know that
schools and districts are really keeping track of their schools, the
progress of their students, the academic achievement of their students.

But, that being said, the law is very specific about certain benchmarks
that have to be taken note of; and I referred earlier to the term
Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), and how that\'s prescribed in each
state. The requirement is that every school, again, in its sub groups,
and with its students as a whole, meet this target every year. If they
don\'t meet it for one year, everybody can figure out that that\'s not
good.

If they don\'t meet the target for a second year, then the "No Child
Left Behind" law is very clear that there\'s a very specific name given
to that, which is, that school is identified for what we call school
improvement. Once a school doesn\'t make AYP for two years, and is
identified for improvement, there are a variety of requirements that are
mandated, and we\'re going to spend some time later on today talking
about those.

Once a school is identified for improvement, the law prescribes a series
of interventions that the district must take in the life of a school.
All of them are focused on improving student achievement for all
students in the school, and helping that school, the students in the
school, reach the target that the state has set. The requirements
include a school improvement plan---which we\'re going to talk about in
a little while---increased parental involvement, lots and lots of things
that are intended to address the teaching and learning that goes on in
that building.

But, the law also prescribes that if a school is identified for
improvement, the parents of children who attend that school must be
given a choice to go to another school that is not identified for
improvement. This is called, in the law, public school choice, and as I
said, it\'s the right of every parent to exercise that option.

If that entire year goes by, and at the end of the year, when students
take the assessment, the school still has not met the target, then it
enters what is called a second year of school improvement. The
requirements, by and large for the second year of school improvements
stay the same, in that the school continues to work on improving,
continues to focus on teaching and learning, and yet the parents are now
given an additional option.

If they are staying at the school and keeping their children at the
school, the students in that school are entitled to what\'s called
Supplemental Educational Services (SES). You\'ll often hear it called
SUP services or SES. Those services are really designed to be additional
academic tutoring, if you will, academic interventions with kids that
are outside the classroom, that take place before or after school. It\'s
the responsibility of the state to come up with a list of approved
providers of SUP services, and it\'s up to the district and the school
to make sure the parents are informed about these services. Not all
children are eligible to receive them, so the eligibility requirements
have to be very clear, and parents need to be contacted in a timely way,
about the availability of these services to them.

**Dr. Jackie Jackson:**

Thank you, Fran. Prior to moving into the section on the school
improvement plan, we\'d like for Walt and Chris to give us some idea of
how they go about ensuring that schools are **identified** in their
respective school districts. Chris, maybe we\'ll start with you this
time.

Chris Coxon:

Sure. The state gives us a list of schools based on our state
achievement scores---achievement scores on the state exam---and they are
very clear about which schools fall into which categories. For us, many
of those schools are not a surprise, because, as I said earlier, we have
been looking at their progress using formative assessments in the
district, and also our ongoing visits out to the schools to monitor
their progress, with the implementation of our actual curricular
initiatives.

Once these schools have been identified, one of the things that we do do
is bring them together, discuss why it is that they were identified as
such, and make sure that they\'re very clear about what the next steps
are for them. It has caused us in the district to really look at
realigning our resources and say, "Okay, now what do we do for these
schools? How far back are they? What is their next target? And how can
we, in collaboration with them, come up with a plan that is going to
allow them to make the progress they need to make?" And it\'s very
important that it\'s not just any progress, but that it\'s an
acceleration of the progress, because they\'ve already been identified
as being further behind.

So, a lot of our work in the district has been relocating people and
re-administering some of our services to really be supportive of those
schools. And each school is a little bit different. That is why, as Walt
had said earlier, looking at each school\'s data, not every school that
has been identified as needing improvement, is needing improvement for
the same reason. So it\'s really digging deep into that data with them,
identifying what are the areas where we can be most supportive, which
things are on the school\'s plates, which things are on the district
level that we need to support, and which ones are we going to work on
together.

I\'d say the other missing piece that we\'re doing, trying to do a
better job of, is really bringing in the community, and finding out what
their role is, and how they\'re also supporting this work. Because
that\'s an area at least, where we have not done as good a job, and
we\'d like to really improve on.

**Dr. Jackie Jackson:**

So one of the important components that came out of that discussion with
Chris is that you reconfirm the partnership between districts and
schools as they improve themselves. I think that that is particularly
important. Walt, would you like to respond to that somewhat?

Walt Gibson:

I definitely would. I don\'t think there are any surprises for us in
Montgomery County. Four years ago when our superintendent, **Dr. Jerry
Weast**, came to Montgomery County, he recognized that we were becoming
a **bifurcated** school district: that we had a very wealthy suburban
district in one part of the county, and an increasingly diverse second
language segment in another part of the county. And we had already begun
the process, before "No Child Left Behind," of realigning our resources
of putting more resources into those schools that had the greatest need
for improving student achievement.

For instance, in the schools in my part of the county, which are those
schools that are more diverse, with more second language learners, and
more kids who come from families of poverty, we have full day
kindergarten---that was already in place before the mandates of "No
Child Left Behind" ---staffed at a ratio of 15 to 1, because we think
lower class size and more personal attention makes a difference.

We also have a smaller class size initiative at 17 to 1, for
kindergarten and first grade. And the results from that initiative have
been pretty remarkable. We\'ve gotten a good deal of state, regional,
and national attention for our early childhood initiatives. So I think
we knew, who the schools were, we knew where the challenges were, and
the resources were really focused already on those.

Now, the question of beginning to look deeply at those parts of the
population in schools that have not met Adequate Yearly Progress is
another challenge. Focusing on second language students, on funds,
students, on poor kids, on those kids who bring second language to the
school house, and we\'ve got an incredible array of second language
students.

Those are deep root challenges. Those are not addressed necessarily just
by reducing class size. So I think we knew who the schools were. Our job
was to provide a kind of customized approach, using however our district
curriculum, the instructional practices that we think work for kids, but
customizing them to each one of those unique school situations.

**Dr. Jackie Jackson:**

Now that we\'ve discussed identification of schools and some of the
challenges that\'s associated with that, we\'re now going to move into
the school improvement plan that begins to help us understand and know
how to improve our schools.

Fran Walter:

Thanks, Jackie. We're really eager to get back to Walt and Chris talking
about what they do as district people with schools that are struggling
to meet the needs of all kids. **B**ut I did want to take a couple
minutes to just talk about the requirements of the law, as far as the
school improvement plan.

There probably aren\'t many schools left in the nation that don\'t have
some kind of a plan. It\'s not uncommon at all for districts to require
schools to lay out their goals for the coming year, and then measure the
achievement of those goals at the end. So the school improvement plan is
really designed to support what districts are already doing. But again,
it lays out some very specific criteria that need to be met once the
school is identified for improvement, and so let me just talk for a
minute about those requirements.

The first requirement is that the school must take an existing plan, if
it has it, and revise that one. Or, if it is possible that a school
doesn\'t have a plan of any kind, to begin from the beginning. The
school must work with parents, with teachers, this is not a plan that\'s
to be written by a central office. This is a plan that\'s to be really
developed at the school level in order to be very focused on what\'s
happening in the teaching and learning process in that school.

The school has 30 days to do this process. Now anyone who\'s worked on
school planning knows that 30 days is a pretty tight timeline, and so,
needless to say, the kinds of data analysis that both Chris and Walt
have talked about that\'s going on in an ongoing way, is extremely
helpful if a school has only 30 days to develop a plan. The components
of the plan, as I said, are very clear.

First of all, it must focus on teaching and learning. It can\'t talk
about things outside the control of the people who work in that
building, and what\'s wrong out there, that keeps the school from
meeting its targets. It really has to say, "What do we do here on a
day-in day-out basis to affect student achievement, and what is it about
what we\'re doing that isn\'t working, and how can we do things
differently?"

So, like all good plans the school improvement plan requires schools to
develop very clear and measurable goals, so that when the year is over,
and at periodic, as Chris said, dipstick points along the way, we really
can stop and check, how are we doing. So, the first requirement is that
this plan has very clear, very specific, and measurable goals.

Then, as I said, it must really focus on teaching and learning, and the
law says specifically teaching and learning that takes place in language
arts and mathematics. The law really requires that schools access what
is called in the law, scientifically-based research---what we informally
call "what works." If you have only a finite amount of time in the
classroom with your students, the law says to teachers, "You must be
doing what research tells us works in order to produce the greatest
results." And so the law asks that schools document what they\'re doing,
and really make it clear that they are not just choosing their favorite
strategies, or strategies they\'ve used for 20 years, but strategies
that really are proven to improve student achievement.

The law also requires that teachers get lots and lots of assistance in
learning to do things in a new way. There isn\'t a teacher on earth who
doesn\'t want all of her students to do well, all of his students to do
well. And so what we\'re coming to realize is that many teachers need
assistance in learning how to do that in the most effective and most
productive way. And so, the school improvement plan must also include a
section on what we call in the business, professional development. What
kind of training will be done for teachers; what opportunities will
teachers have to participate in learning how to do things differently in
the classroom. The law specifically says this has to be what\'s called
"high-quality professional development."

And again, I think Chris and Walt will probably agree with me that the
old days of one-shot workshops, or one-day workshops, where you
supposedly learn something and then went back in your classroom and
applied it, have really gone by the way. And so "high-quality
professional development" has really sustained over time, it gives
teachers time to learn something, time to practice it in the classroom,
time to get feedback from other teachers and other professionals, and
time to relearn or practice, and get better at what they\'re doing. And
so the plan that is required has to lay out in a very specific way, what
kind of professional development will be provided.

And just as a little footnote, the plan also has to acknowledge that any
building might have new teachers, teachers who are relatively
inexperienced, and so the school improvement plan must also address
teacher mentoring, and really make sure to have a component in it that
says if a teacher is new or inexperienced, he or she really needs
additional support in addition to professional development.

And, finally, two more things. One is the plan has to really contain a
strong component of parental involvement. And again, anybody who\'s
worked in schools, and school districts, knows that meaningful parental
involvement, parental involvement that helps parents be additional
teachers of their children, is key to any school success. And so the
plan must really say, "What are we going to do, again, in terms of
involving our parents in the academic lives of their children?"

And then, finally, the plan---and I think this is probably going to be
very difficult for schools to do, and they will really need district and
state support---but the plan has to really lay out what the law calls
policies and procedures that really are focused on what works. And
probably, it goes without saying, that if a school knew what worked,
they would be doing that, and no school is trying to not do well. And so
really trying to say, "What are the things we can do in the classroom
that need to be different, and what do I need as a teacher to give up
doing that just isn\'t working, and what do I need to start doing?"

Those things need to be very clearly specified, and then in addition,
what I would call the infrastructures in the school, also need to be
addressed. What needs to be done outside the classroom, that supports
what goes on in the classroom? How do resources need to be reallocated?
And both of these gentlemen have already talked about that a little bit.
Not only financial resources, but also human resources---the resource of
time. What needs to be done differently outside the classroom, that
supports what goes on in the classroom?

So, in closing, I guess I can state the obvious, which is that the
school improvement plan is quite involved. It certainly is quite
demanding, as I said it has to be developed or revised under a very
short timeline. But the belief is that if there is a plan that\'s
actually followed on a day-to-day basis, that will be a tool to improve
schools.

**Dr. Jackie Jackson:**

One of the things that we found out that when we monitor, and we go look
at school improvement plans, we find that in a lot of instances, the
school improvement plan has nothing to do with what goes on on a
day-to-day basis in that school. So could you give us some ideas about
how we could suggest to the people who are listening to this audio
conference, how to make this into a living document that really works
for the schools and for the district. Who would like to start?

Walt Gibson:

That\'s a tough question. Go ahead Chris.

Chris Coxon:

The plan is obviously only as good enough as whether or not it\'s
implemented. The process of just writing it is very involved. The
process of making sure that everybody in the school understands it, but
also just making sure that things are put in place so that there are
regular check ups to see that the plan is actually being implemented,
whether that be your school improvement team, people from outside a
central office that are coming into the school to monitor whether or not
the work is happening.

One of the things that I think I found most successful in helping
schools understand the school improvement process and the plan, was to
take all of these numbers, which we\'ve been really working with them to
understand what percentage of kids we want to get over the bar, what
that bar really is, is then taking those numbers, and doing the
transformation of the fact that these are kids in our classrooms. It\'s
too easy to get confused when we say, "We\'re going to reduce by 20% the
level of kids that are in our failing category." How many kids is
actually 20%? Where are those kids? Which classrooms?

So once all of this planning is done, one of the things that I found
successful when I took the plan back to the teachers that are not on the
school improvement team, is then saying, "All right, look, we said
we\'re going to do this. We\'re going to reduce the number of kids by
20% that are in the failing category. How many kids is that in your
class? Look at your class roster. Tell me which kids do you think are
going to make it just because they\'re at that level, if you just give
them the regular curriculum for the year, they\'re going to do well,
they\'re going to meet the standard. Which of those kids that are going
to need more support? We need four or five of those kids to be over that
bar."

Walt Gibson:

I'm so glad to hear you say that Chris, because I think it\'s\... If we
can translate it to kids, if we can bring it down to the fact that we
really need to affect the lives of students to improve their academic
performance, because their future hinges on it, then I think we\'ve
really accomplished something. And like you, we try to make sure that
it\'s about kids.

The document itself, writing the school improvement plan, isn\'t what
it\'s all about. It\'s writing a plan that can be implemented in
classrooms, that can affect the lives of real kids. And, as Fran said,
teachers are good people. They really want to do the right thing. If you
can tell them who that kids is that\'s not meeting the standard, what
are the issues that we\'ve identified from any number of different
assessments, formal or informal? What do we know this kid knows and is
able to do? What do we know that they can\'t do? And then give them some
strategies that are going to work to raise the level of performance of
that student and other students like that student. I think there\'s an
enormous chance that we can be successful and get above that bar.

**Dr. Jackie Jackson:**

Both of you have hit on something that\'s near and close to my heart,
and that\'s that we\'ve spent, what I think, an inordinate amount of
time developing policies and procedures both at the federal, state and
district level. The real work becomes how do we translate those policies
and procedures into instructional strategies and language that makes a
difference in the classroom?

Could we push a little harder on that and talk about some of those
instructional strategies that you\'ve seen identified in school
improvement plans? For instance, if we were talking, Walt you had
indicated that in your school district you\'ve increasingly got a number
of English language learners that have moved into your school district.
What are some of the very concrete things that you\'re doing to work
with those children that would be reflected in the school improvement
plan?

Walt Gibson:

Let me even come back for a second to the school improvement planning
process, because I think that if all we do is identify a group of
students, and not really focus in on who those students are, and begin
to look at the differences that those students bring to the classroom.
In the lower part of Montgomery County, we have an incredible array of
kids who come from many, many different kinds of backgrounds, and bring
many languages. One of the populations that we\'re beginning to see that
we hadn\'t seen before is African kids who are coming out of war-torn
countries in Africa. Many of those kids bring with them literacy from a
system that\'s very similar to ours.

Addressing their needs, however, is very different from addressing the
Central American kids---and we have a large El Salvadorian
population---of kids who have never been to school. Or if they\'ve been
to school, it\'s interrupted. They have bits and pieces of literacy.
They have bits and pieces of math knowledge. So I think it comes down to
individual students, understanding what their needs are, and beginning
to focus on meeting the needs of those kids. So I don\'t think there\'s
a prescription. I think, rather, there\'s a whole series of
interventions and solutions that can work with kids. But until you start
to look at individual students and understand what they need, it\'s very
hard to come up with a way to meet the needs of those kids.

**Dr. Jackie Jackson:**

So one of the things that we should come out of this with is that, while
we\'re developing a school improvement plan, that school improvement
plan actually deals with, or intervenes, provides intervention for
individual student progress. So we need to get beyond just what the
school is doing to translating this into instructional strategies for an
individual student based upon their specific needs, am I correct in
that?

Walt Gibson:

I think you\'re very right. In fact, I would say that the message that
we deliver across our schools on a daily basis that\'s reinforced by our
superintendent, is that there really is no variance in the fact that all
kids need to meet the standard, in that the curriculum and the outcomes
that we\'re looking for are the same for every student. Now they may not
all get there in the same time frame. They may not all have the same
kinds of interventions, but all kids need to meet the standard.

And when I visit classrooms, as I do on a pretty regular basis, one of
the things I\'m looking for is that our curriculum, and the outcomes
that are connected to that curriculum, is what I\'m seeing in every
classroom. That what the teacher\'s doing has a really good chance of
getting kids to the outcomes.

**Fran Walter:**

Do you know of any schools that are really trying to come up with
individual learning plans for individual students? Can you talk a little
bit about that process, if you do?

Chris Coxon:

One of the components of our accountability system is to have
individualized student success plans for all of those kids who have not
met the proficient level. So, what schools have done, obviously besides
identifying those kids by name, is to then look at what are their
individual needs, and to come up with a plan based on the availability
of what resources we have, whether that be additional tutoring. Some of
those kids will also participate in a supplemental educational services,
and making sure that all of those things complement one another, so that
we don\'t have tutoring taking place outside of the school that is not
reflective of the work that the child is doing in the school. So that
type of work is very much in place, and again, what we have done, is to
try to facilitate these things.

There\'s paperwork that's involved which can become a labor in itself,
however, the fact is, are we being accountable for the progress of these
individual children. And so, in the individualized student success plans
that we\'ve developed, we get input not only from teachers, we\'ve
developed an accountability system for ourselves to make sure that
they\'re not only completed, but that they\'re actually followed, and
one of the key parts of it is including the parents and the child in
that process so that there\'s constant communication back with the
family about, "These are the things that your child is doing in this
plan. This is how we are within the school hours, and after school
hours, trying to help your child make the mark that they need to make."

Walt Gibson:

One of the things that we\'ve had great success with, and this has come
largely from our principals and some of their key staff members, is
developing data notebooks in every school, where the outcomes, the
indicators of student success that we want at every grade level, which
are very much in line with the state standards, are listed on a fairly
substantial sheet of paper, or series of sheets of paper. And every
student in that classroom is on, what, in a sense, kind of looks like a
gradebook, except it\'s not, "Did you get an A or a B?" it\'s "Did you
meet the standard?"

And as kids meet the standard, or don\'t meet the standard, you begin to
get, by filling out the various boxes in these data notebooks, you can
get a picture of where students are having success and where they are
not. And then you can direct them to the extended learning programs, you
can direct support staff that come into the classroom to working with
those kids. We try not to use pull-out programs, but rather bring in
supplemental services.

And as you begin to understand each individual student\'s achievement
and chart it, you can really begin to look at, "Do I expect this kid to
meet standard on the next administration of the state test?" And our
principals have done a remarkable job of developing data tracking
systems. Far beyond what we have because we function at a different
level. They function at their schools and individual teachers and
buildings are really beginning to track student progress in the way that
Chris is describing.

Dr. Jackie Jackson:

Now I would like you to address the issue of how you coordinated, or
insured, that there was continuous improvement by including the
components of "No Child Left Behind" in your district and school
improvement plans, without causing a major disruption within your school
system.

Chris Coxon:

I wouldn\'t say it didn\'t cause a major disruption. One of the things
that we did, as you said, yes, we were doing school improvement plans
prior to this. We were actually looking at disaggregation of data, so in
Boston, as I\'m sure in other places, some of those components were
already there. To ask schools to take on the work of trying to figure
out what are all the new requirements of the law, to try to make sure
that they put that into the plan, is a lot to ask from them when their
job is about teaching and learning. So what we have done, and have
continued to do, is to modify the actual template, which all schools
will use, for school improvement planning, and we\'ve embedded those
requirements in there.

It\'s one thing to just embed them in there, and people can feel like
they\'re marking off boxes and stuff without knowing the reason. The
real work, then, is trying to explain how all of these different pieces
fit together, and so we have done that at several levels. We\'ve done it
with, not only at the deputy level, to make sure that when we go out and
speak to schools, and talk to the principals, and talk to teachers, we
can articulate that. We make sure that our principal leaders across the
district, whom many of the other principals call on, understand it, and
then we actually have people who go in and work with individual school
improvement teams to make sure that they understand it at that level. I
think this layering on of getting the message out is very important.

Walt Gibson:

I\'ve got just a couple of hints, if you will, that we found helpful.
And one Fran alluded to in the initial question that she asked, and
that\'s the more stakeholders who are off the table, the more likely it
is that your plan will have a chance for success. So, people not just
getting in at the end of the process and saying, "Here, sign this," and
say that you were part of the process. But, actually helping to develop
the goals, really looking at the data with the school folk, and really
beginning to help to identify the issues that the school\'s going to
work on. There\'s a much greater level of accountability when you\'re
part of the process of developing it.

The second thing, and this is one I feel very strongly about, is don\'t
try to do too many things. Really try to hone in on what are the
critical issues in the performance of your kids. I\'ve seen school
improvement plans that have a goal that have 25 tasks associated with
it. You can\'t do 25 tasks. You maybe can do three, or four, or five,
but I\'d rather see you do those core three, or four, or five things
really well, making sure that they\'re connected to the outcomes that
you want and to where your kids have needs. Those two pieces: include
people and really focus in on, with laser-like focus, on what you need
to get done.

Dr. Jackie Jackson:

That raises an important issue. I know in a lot of high poverty schools
that I go into, I often have the principal or the teachers ask me, "How
do you get a viable parental and community involvement program? Because
a lot of our parents, no matter what we do, we just can\'t get them up
here to be a part of it." So what are some of the strategies that
you\'ve used to get community and parental involvement?

Walt Gibson:

I think we\'ve learned in Montgomery County that we need to go to
parents where they are. That many parents, particularly parents new to
this country or who\'ve not had any experience in some cases, but
certainly not good experiences with government agencies, are not going
to come to our schools. So, we meet them at apartment complexes, we meet
them in community centers, we try to hold our meetings at times when
people can come, because often times some of our folks are working
multiple jobs and can\'t easily access the school when you might have a
traditional PTSA meeting.

We try to do all of our programs in multiple languages. Right now, I
think we\'re translating six or seven. I lose track once in a while. But
we\'re really focusing on meeting people where they are and trying to
really respect their cultural mores, and look at how they best receive
information, and how we can give it to them that will be comfortable and
acceptable to them.

Dr. Jackie Jackson:

So now, let me ask you, what are some of the kinds of questions that you
would, or some of the kinds of discussions, that you would have with a
parent who\'s new to this country, who doesn\'t speak the language, who
doesn\'t really understand our educational system, because a lot of
times, coming from another country, their educational system is
different, very much different from ours. So how do we begin to get them
to give us their thoughts about where they want their child to go?

Walt Gibson:

That\'s a really difficult question because I think it varies by
individual and not even just necessarily by cultural and language group.
For instance, in dealing with Asian population, and we have a
significantly large Southeast Asian population in the lower part of
Montgomery County, one of the things that we found is going through
community organizations and helping, not just to translate the language,
but to translate the message. This is how you succeed in this school
district. These are the outcomes that we want. These are strategies for
moving your child into an advantaged curriculum. These are the
particular precise ways in which you navigate our system.

We just put out a manual for Asian-American parents in how to navigate
through the Montgomery County public schools. And, it\'s in Korean,
it\'s in Vietnamese, it\'s in Chinese, and probably before long it\'ll
be in a couple of other languages. It specifically tries to define or
describe, more than define, what Montgomery County Public Schools looks
like, where you go when you have a particular issue. And it could be
anything. It could be transportation, it could be school lunch program,
could be "How do I approach a classroom teacher?"

**Dr. Jackie Jackson:**

So can I make the assumption that if we first start on the premise that
if we help parents who don't understand our system to understand the
system that their child is going through, then we can take the next step
of having them provide us with their opinions and thoughts about how
that school improvement plan should be formulated. Is that a correct
assumption?

**Chris Coxon:**

That's correct. I guess I would add to what Walt has said, that the
other piece that we try to do, besides going out to the communities, is
also to help schools understand how they can reach out. We have
**tasked** people who are from the community, that work with
community-based organizations, who volunteer their time and energy, to
work with individual schools to help the schools navigate, "Okay, this
is my community. How do I use the resources that are here to help
support the families that are in this community, that are in this
school?"

And we are beginning to see a great deal of success in communities
coalescing around schools and really bringing in the families. Not only
to understand the school system, which I agree is sort of a first step
that needs to happen. But then, what is their role, and where they can
help us out in helping their children? For us, that starts first and
foremost in getting home reading programs set up. It's not a big step,
but we've found it to be an important one.

One of the things that we tell schools though, is obviously, "You can't
bank on home reading programs being your savior of getting kids' reading
scores up. That's a complimentary piece that the community can work and
help on. But we need to focus on in the classrooms what we do here,
day-to-day, with the kids, and making sure that the two align with one
another.

**Dr. Jackie Jackson:**

So, in this system of trying to improve our schools, we've got
interventions coming from the federal level, under "No Child Left
Behind." You have additional interventions and requirements placed at
the state level, based upon how your system is set up. How do you ensure
that this vision for education within your state is, in fact, reflected
in the school improvement plan having at least three...four different
levels?

**Chris Coxon:**

I think for us it has been, schools need to understand what the district
culture, and what the district's mission is. For Boston, it is
understanding what our theory of action is, that improved instruction at
the classroom level is what is going to get us increased student
achievement. So a lot of our work is focused on, "What does that
instruction look like in the classroom? What is the professional
development that we need to provide for schools to be able to reach the
type of instruction that we think is going to raise student achievement?

One of the things that happens, is once the school has written their
school improvement plan, and has it signed off by their school
improvement team and their school psych counsel, is that then, at our
level, at the district level those plans are reviewed. And the review is
to look at, "Is that alignment there? Do the goals that they have stated
for themselves, and the strategies with which they are going to use to
reach those goals, are they aligned with what our district's mission and
theory of action is. Does it look like they have things in place?"

Similar to what Walt said, we look at, "Do they have too many things
down there?" Do we have to go back to them and say, "What are you
realistically going to do here? Because you've got too much on your
plate." And that's difficult for some schools.

So, I'd say at that level, it's not only a check off---does it
align---but it also then signals for us, for the district, what's our
role in going back in supporting the school. If the school says, "This
is where we're at. These are the strategies we're going to use. We've
agreed to that." Then that now puts the onus on us to support them in
getting that work done.

**Dr. Jackie Jackson:**

And you know, you've hit upon another topic as we try to improve our
schools, that sometimes at the school level, we get feedback, that they
don't feel that the district policies and procedures are aligned to make
school improvement a reality. Can you talk a little bit about how you've
gone about trying to ensure that your district plan supports school
improvement plans in a way that makes it possible for the school level
people to change their instructional strategies.

**Walt Gibson:**

I'd like to think at the district level, and we've just finished redoing
our strategic plan, that we've modeled what we would like schools to do.
We have four goals. We have a series of tasks underneath those goals. We
have a series of measures for each of those goals. We've tried to keep
it simple. We've tried to keep it focused. And we've tried to keep it
relevant to what, as Chris said, we know is going to improve student
performance. It's curriculum instruction and an assessment loop.

The other piece I would add, is that we really have tried not to make a
school improvement plan just an event, but rather, an ongoing
process---that at pretty regular intervals, schools look at their school
improvement plan, create a feedback loop that gives them information. I
think we kind of started with this, with data.

Some of that data involves feedback from the kinds of groups that you
are talking about: from parents, from business partners, from higher-ed
partners, from the number of different people that are involved in a
school, and helping it to develop a plan to improve.

We have a number of schools, for instance, that have partnerships with
schools of education, and have a number of practicing teachers in them.
We want to make sure that what the practicing teachers are learning in
their college classroom, is aligned with what expect to see happening in
our school.

So, schools are complex places. And you can't just write a plan, in
whatever the month is that you write it in, June or July, and hope that
it looks the same come the following March. So, we really try to make it
an organic process, to help the school to come back regularly to look at
it.

The other piece that we do on a regular basis, and this is really a
requirement for me as a community superintendent, is, I'm in my schools
all the time. And we do regular walk-throughs in our schools that have
with them, a really well-defined protocol of what we're looking for. I
expect to see in classrooms, in schools that I'm responsible for, the
curriculum instructional practices and assessment practices that our
teachers have been taught to do.

Now that sounds a lot like monitoring. I'd like to think it's more
support. That we go, we look, I don't just walk through by myself with a
checklist. I go with the principal, with the staff development teacher
from that school, with a team of teachers from that school. We go with a
particular focus and we try to provide feedback at the end of the day.

**Fran Walter:**

I'd like to go back to the school one more time, and the school
improvement plan, and ask you both about the role of the principal. It
strikes me as you're talking, that's an enormous job. So much of what we
write about focuses, rightfully so, on the classroom, and on the
teaching and learning interaction. But what do you both see as the role
of the principal in making school improvement work?

**Chris Coxon:**

The principal is the primary player in all of this work of making sure
that they are not only identifying what are the needs of the school, and
helping teachers to understand that. But also being the person that's on
the ground there, helping and supporting teachers as they try to
implement that plan.

They've got an extremely difficult job in responding back to us at
central office about what it is that we're looking for. And I would say
that many of my principals do an actually very good job of calling us on
the task, when asking for things that are not aligned with the school
improvement plan. So they're good at reminding us **when we sort of get
bogged down.**

***Laughter***

But, I guess, the job is an incredible one. It is a very difficult one.
I often wonder how they're able to do such a good job that they are
doing. I think it's important for us to continually support them.
Unfortunately, a lot of times that support means extra meetings for
them. It means extra time away from the school, and I think they would
probably differ, some of them, on whether or not that's truly supportive
or not. But just keeping them informed, letting them know what's
happening. Them sharing back with us, what are their struggles. Where do
they need extra help? It's a big job for them.

**Dr. Jackie Jackson:**

If we're going to focus on instruction, how do you help the principal
keep from getting distracted with all the other kinds of things that
they have to deal with, when they are in charge of a building?

**Chris Coxon:**

There are a couple of ways to do that. Obviously it's upon us to not be
burdening them with extra things. That's a challenge from our side of
the house. Structurally, some of the things that we've done, is try to
look at our teacher evaluation instrument, and how can we better align
that, so that it really reflects their job in going in and observing
instruction, and using it more as a tool to help teachers improve their
instruction.

So, that's been a big piece for us, is to get that in there. To try to
create structures and supports for them, that encourage them, and
mandate in some instances for them, to be in the classrooms more often,
to be supportive. It is when I go out to visit a school, and don't spend
my time sitting in the office with the principal talking about how's it
going, but walking with the principal classroom to classroom, and seeing
how it's happening.

And for me to be knowledgeable about their school improvement plan when
I go in there. So, it's me reviewing that plan before I walk in there.
Making sure what are the types of question I am going to ask based on
where they say they should be at this point in the year. Making sure
that my questions are aligned with that, and I'm not asking about other
things that aren't at that time taking place in the school.

**Dr. Jackie Jackson:**

So you're basically having everyone focus on instruction. So that the
kinds of questions you ask, the kind of inquiries that you make at the
school level, always come back to instructional strategies and
practices.

**Walt Gibson:**

The other piece that we've done in Montgomery County is in our schools
that are most impacted, we've reduced the number of students you need
before you get an assistant principal. And so we've tried to put another
administrator in the building. And we've built, I think, an exceptional
system for training those assistant principals. So that when the
principal is ready to say, "I'm going to retire"---and that's happening
increasingly frequently, because we've got a lot of people that are
ready to end their careers---we've got a bench ready to step right in
and do the same kind of work because they've trained under, and with,
and next to master principals. They know what our expectations are, and
they step right up and begin it.

So, for instance, last week, I have a number of assistant principals in
schools at all the grade levels that I supervise, at elementary, middle,
and high school, and I sit on their development teams. And I spent a lot
of time last week in development team meetings. Looking at hoping to
develop these principals so that they have core competencies that we are
looking for, and will step immediately into that job, and be ready to
take over. But the key piece is instruction. We can manage the buildings
in other ways, but we need the principals to lead instruction.

**Chris Coxon:**

I was just going to add, one of the things that I think that I'm sure
it's not unique to Boston...that so much of the profession development
that our teachers are participating in, our principals are sitting
alongside of them learning that work right then and there. So that they
are aware of what are the expectations for practice, they are able to
see what the learning curve is for these teachers, and they are able to
provide that assistance.

It doesn't mean that they are the expert in how to teach reading, or how
to teach math. The issue is that they know what it is that's involved.
They are aware of the work. And not only are they symbolically
supporting the teachers, they are actually strengthening their role as
the instructional leader saying, "I'm about instruction. I'm about
teaching and learning in this school. And I will be there with you when
you're getting trained so that I know it better also."