District Administration - September 2012 - (Page 70)

Models for Education Reform Rick & Becky DufouR ties to pursue their individual interests rather than making up skill deficiencies, says Superintendent Peter Noonan. Interventions include opportunities to focus on STEM areas through such content as National Geographic materials and Jason dent of Adlai Stevenson High School District 125, says the culture of collaboration is so deeply embedded in teacher practices that it’s no longer a subject of particular discussion. The district has operated as a Professional Learning Community at Work for 15 years, and sharing success stories with colleagues across the country has become a formalized process through hosted monthly site visits and a yearly mini-conference. Twadell says that the district has over 50 different intervention programs for struggling students and those seeking enrichment, including mandatory tutoring, guided study, reading programs and mentorships by older students. “Teachers here learn at a higher rate, and students are the beneficiaries,” he says. Head, Heart and Evidence Nearly all the districts profiled here have made exponential growth in student achievement despite ongoing shifts in student populations, drastically reduced budgets, economically disadvantaged communities, and the obstacles that come with meeting the needs of large numbers of English language learners. Every superintendent who weighed in said that district teachers insist they can never go back to the traditional, autonomous and isolating approach to instruction. “When we talk about the program, we make a conscious effort to appeal to the emotions, to remind educators why they got into the profession, and to read testimonials from teachers who found a revived faith in themselves and in the profession,” says Rick DuFour. “I wanted a process in place to support rigor for all kids, and to change the attitude of education from ‘You can succeed if you were born smart’ to ‘You can succeed if you work hard.’ And I think we’re collecting plenty of evidence to show that’s true.” DA Susan McLester is a contributing writer to District Administration. She wrote the previous article in this series on Sally Reis and Joe Renzulli. District Administration funds to hire seven reading coaches who could support interventions in all of the district’s schools. Among the greatest early challenges, says Rafferty, was confronting the PE, music and fine arts teachers who offered great resistance to changing the bus schedule, which for years had been set to accommodate their programs. “It was hard for them to accept that literacy was a greater priority than their programs,” he says. Rafferty made buy-in from all stakeholders a target goal, requiring all district staff to attend DuFour training, including central office personnel, board members, the union president, administrators and site teacher leaders. “I wanted the responsibility for student achievement to be shared by everybody,” he says. Seven years after implementing PLC at Work, Schaumburg CCSD 54 has seen the collaborative process pay off in both student achievement and teacher dedication to the model. In 2005, Illinois Standard Achievement Test results for grades 3 through 8 showed a proficiency level of 76 percent in reading and 81 percent in math. In 2012, proficiency levels on the same test for the same grade levels soared to 91.5 percent in reading and 95.3 percent in math. The district went from being in the top 25 percent of the state to the top 9 percent. This increase in achievement has occurred in spite of the fact that the district is dealing with a high student growth rate and a growing population of economically disadvantaged families, a fact not lost on state administrators, who named Rafferty Illinois’ 2010 Superintendent of the Year. Interventions for Accelerated Students One of the largest and best-performing districts in the country, Fairfax County Public Schools in Fairfax County, Va., serves 175,000 students in 200 schools and has been a PLC at Work district for 10 years. Unlike in the other districts profiled here, most of the Fairfax County students attending intervention periods are advanced and looking for opportuni70 September 2012 “The biggest impact of PLC at Work has been in teachers’ increasingly accepting attitudes toward collaboration.” —Superintendent Peter Noonan Project software, which connect students to “real world” science explorations involving the scientific process of inquiry. Students can also work with peer mentors on creative writing. The biggest impact of PLC at Work, says Noonan, has been in teachers’ increasingly accepting attitudes toward collaboration. A rise in math scores has been one result of this. On the Virginia Standards of Learning state test, sixth-grade students have increased proficiency by 16 percent since 2007. Sixth-graders scoring at the advanced level in math grew from 41 percent to 60 percent in the same period. And the percentage of students proficient in algebra 1 by the end of eighth grade increased from 44 to 64 percent during the same period. Noonan advises districts to “just dig in and do it” when it comes to implementing PLC at Work. “Understand that over time you’ll just get better and better,” he says. Eric Twadell, the current superinten-

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - September 2012

District Administration - September/October 2012
Contents
From the Editor
Letters
News Update
Curriculum Update
Inside the Law
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Product Focus
Resistance to High-Stakes Testing Spreads
Postgraduation for Special Needs Students
Rick & Becky DuFour
CIo News
Getting the Best ROI in Technology
Shaping a Digital Decade
Professional Opinion
Professional Opinion
Online Edge
Going Mobile
New Products
New Directions

District Administration - September 2012