MORE Race To The Top Cartography

Not too long ago I shared our Race To The Top Road Map. That is a tool that can help you navigate the way to college and career readiness in New York via the Common Core Learning Standards, Data-Driven Instruction, and the Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR). Since we released that map, another kind of map has been developed that you can use in your Race To The Top. This map came from the training and resources we have been providing for evaluators of principals.

Principals are smack dab in the middle of the new systems of evaluation. They are the key implementers of the new teacher evaluation system. While working to implement the new system of teacher evaluation the principals will now be working within a new system of evaluation for themselves. That’s what I call being in the middle!

In order to help principals, and their evaluators, get a handle on all that is now expected of them we generated a “map” that lays out the year, at-a-glance, with regard to teacher and principal evaluation. Based on the thinking behind the Professional Learning Map that many principals use to map out their year in a fashion similar to a curriculum map, this map lays out the most important pieces of the year in the life of a principal in Race To The Top. The map is actually a spreadsheet which allows users to fill in other things like building initiatives around the big responsibilities already charted in the map. The map lays out a broad timeline for the actions a principal will need to lead in the coming year. Juxtaposed with the principal’s responsibilities are those of the principal’s evaluator. In this way the principal’s evaluator can assist the principal as she/he leads the school. It should work hand in hand with the contextualized ISLLC goal setting process described in a previous post. Users of the map report that it captures the incredible amount of new work in Race To The Top in a way that shows the interrelatedness of the pieces and provides the lay of the land for their year.

Race To The Top Cartography

There’s no shortage of idioms and expressions about the need to know where you are going. Lewis Carroll said something like, “If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there” – a remark echoed in “Any Road” on George Harrison’s last [posthumous] record. Except for the most carefree among us, most of us are working diligently, if not frantically, to get to a better educational place.

We all have a lot on our plate: Standards, Data, Practice, and Culture all have to change and have to change at the same time [now]. For Standards, this means the Common Core, and soon enough, Next Generation Science. For Data, this means common formative and interim assessments. For Standards, this means APPRs for teachers and principals. For Culture, this means we simply have to change the way we do business – that actual, honest-to-goodness “co-laboring on the right work” has to become our fundamental operating system. Each of these four areas is a heavy lift in their own right. To try to do all four simultaneously is a monumental task that will require Herculean efforts on the part of each and every educator. The four are so interdependent, however, that to look at them in isolation could lead us off in different directions. So, we must make sure that they are interconnected and that they do all point in the same direction: students ready for their future in the 21st Century (College, Career, and Citizenship readiness).

To get “there” from “here” is quite a journey. Until the app is developed or address ready to be entered into the GPS, we’ve developed a good, old-fashioned road map to lead us to that destination. Our RTTT Road Map can be used to point you to your destination and it can be used to locate yourself in order to know where you stand in relation to your destination. We’ve already found it useful while working with districts to help them plot their course and, when necessary, to double-back a little ways in order to make sure that they are ready to move ahead.

Our Race To The Top Road Map, while certainly not perfect and certainly not appropriate for all contexts, might help you on your journey. Unfold it, locate yourself, and take off. Good luck!

ISLLC Win-Win... Win!

So, you're trying to help principals, or principal evaluators, or principal-candidates understand the ISLLC Standards:

1. Setting a widely shared vision for learning
2. Developing a school culture and instructional program conducive to student learning and staff professional growth
3. Ensuring effective management of the organization, operation, and resources for a safe, efficient, and effective learning environment
4. Collaborating with faculty and community members, responding to diverse community interests and needs, and mobilizing community resources
5. Acting with integrity, fairness, and in an ethical manner
6. Understanding, responding to, and influencing the political, social, legal, and cultural contexts.

Maybe you do an overview of the six standards and then ask your audience to try to makes sense of them graphically. Sooner or later the conversation shifts to using the ISLLC Standards for evaluation -- and how to collect evidence of the Standards. A natural activity would be to have the participants generate lists of the artifacts and other sources of evidence for each of the Standards. That's a logical approach and not unlike one I've employed in the past. What do you get when you do this? You get a cacophony of potential artifacts -- and everyone reaches for a 4" three-ring binder in which to collect all this stuff and which will eventually accompany the other three-ring binders in the vinyl library.

We can do better! We can use the ISLLC Standards for school improvement and not just evaluation. A colleague, Dawn Shannon from Broome-Tioga BOCES, showed me how to use the ISLLC Standards in a way that can guide school improvement initiatives and provide a scheme for growth-producing feedback and evaluation.

Here's how: Rather than collecting all sorts of evidence about all sorts of efforts, the principal and superintendent (or supervisor) should identify an initiative for the school year (yes, this overlaps with the goal) and use the ISLLC Standards to guide, follow, and evaluate the success of the initiative/goal. The evidence that is collected, therefore, is centered (and authentic) on the initiative. The initiative will benefit from the analysis and application of the ISLLC Standards and the evidence will be collected for proposes of evaluation. This is a win-win situation! We can comply with the APPR regulations while also helping principals with their authentic initiatives and goals.

This is a much better alternative to just collecting binders full of evidence that is disconnected -- the shotgun approach to evidence collection. Instead, follow an initiative (and improve the initiative) while collecting evidence. Along the way, monitor the progress of the initiative with the ISLLC framework. It can be a trifecta: growth-producing feedback for the principal, evaluation for the regulations, and initiative improvement for the school. Win-win-win!

Do not pass Go! Do not collect $200!

Stop! Before you do any more work on Common Core Learning Standards (CCLS) implementation, make sure that your staff first understands the six shifts that have to occur prior to any CCLS work. The shifts have to be understood before any other CCLS work because it is the only way that the CCLS has any chance of making a significant difference in our schools and classrooms.

A close analysis of the six shifts (the shifts for ELA are detailed in this edition of NTnews) indicates that some profound and significant changes are necessary in our curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Most significantly, we have to rethink the balance between fiction and nonfiction we ask our students to read and write because we have to rethink our orientation toward our students’ future and away from the adults’ past. Our obligation (and purpose for existing as an institution) is to prepare young people for their future. A consideration of their future indicates a paramount need for skilled interaction with informational (nonfiction) text. Adults, especially in their work, but also in their personal lives, interact with far more nonfiction than fiction. Of course, fiction provides a great richness and pleasure to our lives. Nonfiction, however, occupies all of our work and a good portion of our personal lives, too. As a result, we have to shift the balance of fiction and nonfiction in our schools.

Our primary classrooms have to use more nonfiction informational texts as students learn to read. As students grow older, informational text must be more prominent in intermediate classrooms as students make the transition from learning to read to reading to learn. At the secondary level, students must write and closely read authentic texts in each and every content area. This does not include textbooks – they are not particularly authentic. Secondary teachers will have to identify the authentic texts of their discipline and use these in their classroom, teaching students how to read, write, speak, listen, etc. in their content area. If secondary teachers do this, students will learn the material more deeply and permanently as well as be better readers and writers.

These shifts are foundational; the shifts have to occur in order for any subsequent curriculum and assessment work to be productive and meaningful. Stop! Before going any further with curriculum and assessment you have to make these shifts. Then, and only then, can you pass Go!

Ride the Elephant

In his remarks at the Network Team Summer Institute, Commissioner King held up a book about change that he referred to at several points during the institute. The book he held up (and referred to) was Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, by Chip and Dan Heath. I dutifully noted the title during the institute in August, but it wasn’t until a few weeks later that I got around to reading it. I’m glad I didn’t wait too much longer.

 

Now we all know that there is no shortage of books about change and leadership – our bookshelves are full of them. If you are like me, some of those books influenced your practice; some didn’t. I like Switch and I think it’s already starting to influence my practice. Basically, it uses an analogy previously described by Jonathan Haidt in his book,The Happiness Hypothesis: the elephant and its rider.

The rider, in the metaphor at the center of the books, sits atop a big elephant. The rider (which represents the rational part of human behavior) uses knowledge and reason to guide the elephant – sort of like a leader of a big system. The elephant represents the emotional part of human behavior. Our emotional side is governed by instinct and short term needs. If you can picture a rider perched atop a great big elephant you can get a sense of the struggle the little rider has to steer the big elephant. Most of the time, the elephant is going to go where it wants to go! The challenge is for the rider to persuade the elephant to go in a desired direction to a desired location. A reluctant elephant won’t get anywhere. A directionless leader won’t get the elephant/rider pair anywhere, either. Of course, both the rider and the elephant need each other for this to happen. Working together is not enough, the Heath brothers caution. What also must be clear is the path to take.

 

With a clear path the rider can know where to lead and know how to avoid spinning her/his wheels. With a clear path the elephant will encounter fewer obstacles and distractions. Of course, if you know where you are going you are a lot more likely to get to your destination.

 

If you think about our present situation it’s easy to identify the rider and the elephant. The rider is the reform agenda – the rational places we have to go. The elephant is our present system and status quo – comfortable and reluctant to change. The rider has to work with the elephant. In our roles as educational leaders we have to make sure that the path is clear to both the rider and the elephant. Not always easy to do – but absolutely necessary if we are to get our elephant and rider anywhere. Toward the end of chapter 1 in Switch, the Heaths describe their framework which they suggest can get us through any change situation:

 

• Direct the Rider. What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity, so provide crystal-clear direction.
• Motivate the Elephant. What looks like laziness is often exhaustion. The Rider can't get his way by force for very long. So it's critical that you engage people's emotional side—get their Elephants on the path and cooperative.
• Shape the Path. What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem. We call the situation (including the surrounding environment) the "Path." When you shape the Path, you make change more likely, no matter what's happening with the Rider and Elephant.

So, as you move ahead, make sure you take care of all three components if you want change to happen. Oh, and in all your spare time, you might want to get Switch and give it a read. I think you’ll like it.

 

 

 

Refill Your Popcorn

If you haven’t gone to the engageNY movies yet you are missing a great [and informative] show. On this enageNY site you can find a wealth of videos that will help you understand the shifts necessary for Common Core implementation. David Coleman, one of the primary authors of the ELA/Literacy Common Core State Standards, is the star of these movies. Coleman, along with co-stars Commissioner King and Regent Fellow Gearson, succinctly explain the shifts we need to make. Bravo!

These introductory videos are a great way to raise the curtain to show the Common Core. Once the curtain is up, the next step is to explore each of the shifts in ELA/literacy and mathematics. One by one, you can watch the trio of stars explain the shifts in ELA/literacy – and you should watch them all. They are short and sweet and can prompt great discussion. I believe that the six shifts have to be understood before any other curriculum work can proceed. Without an understanding of the shifts, the transition to the Common Core will not be transformational. It will merely be another episode of using checklists to realign a few things (think pre March/post March) and not much else. Every moment spent with these videos is a good investment – the reviews of these ELA/literacy videos give them all “two thumbs up.”

The collection of the mathematics videos, however, is not quiate as large as for ELA/literacy. It’s not that our three stars didn’t do a good job in the math videos – they did. What I hear from math leaders, though, is that we need more of them that address each shift explicitly. Additionally, math leaders have mentioned that including some of the primary authors of the mathematics Common Core in the stable of engageNY stars would lend additional credibility to the engageNY cavalcade of stars.

Some math videos do exist at engageNY and I recommend that you check them out and think about how you might use them to help make the mathematics Common Core be transformational. Our neighbor, Vermont, has put together a bigger collection of math videos that come straight from the primary authors of the mathematics Common Core: William McCallum and Jason Zimba. Math leaders whom I respect have recommended these videos to me and I, in turn, am recommending them to you. If you go visit Vermont and their video collection you’ll recognize our friend David Coleman in the ELA videos and you’ll get to see the math authors in starring roles. The engageNY videos are great; these additional math videos will help us even more with our work.

Go! Refill your bucket of popcorn, make yourself comfortable, and go [back] to the movies!

Co-Labor on the Right Work

Syracuse was fortunate to host the Professional Learning Communities at Work© Institute just a few weeks prior to the opening of school and the beginning of the hard Common Core and Data Driven Instruction work. One thousand people from all over North America attended, including an [obviously] large contingent from the Empire State. Rick and Becky DuFour were there, as were other presenters from the PLC stable of practitioners and presenters. It was a great three days, which included a Saturday in August! PLC-ers are hard core!

More than the flawless conference logistics and more than the large and enthusiastic audience I was impressed by how closely aligned the PLCs at Work message is with the work before us. Rick DuFour, in his keynote address effectively explained how educators must co-labor on the right work. He doesn’t use the word collaborate anymore – that’s been corrupted to mean something more like just getting along. Co-labor has a stronger connotation and means professionals interdependently working together on shared goals with mutual accountability. It sounds serious, doesn’t it? It is.

It isn’t enough, Rick said, to “merely” co-labor. More than that, we have to co-labor on the right work. This is what he said at the Institute constitutes the “right work.” Check out how it lines up with the RTTT work (with my connections in parentheses):

• Educators work collaboratively and take collective accountability for student learning (sounds like professional practice to me)
• Collaborative teams implement a guaranteed and viable curriculum, unit by unit (sounds like the Common Core Learning Standards to me)
• Collaborative teams monitor student learning through ongoing common formative assessments (data-driven instruction, here)
•  Educators use the results of the common assessments to improve professional practice, achieve instructional goals, and intervene on students’ behalf (data-driven instruction meets professional practice)

 

Why I was surprised to see absolute alignment with Common Core Learning Standards, Data-Driven Instruction, and Improving Professional Practice I do not know. I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I was struck by the absolute convergence of research and best practice around the same things – the right work. No fad. No flavor of the month. No next new thing. A clear and consistent identification of the work we all have to do in all of our schools. The right work. Our co-labor.