EDL 273 - Field Based Learning Assignment

Spring, 2018

The purpose of this assignment is for students to have an opportunity to learn about the development of a
responsive strategic school improvement plan using cycles of the Plan-Do-Study-Act process.

Part Ia: Plan – Collect and Chart Data to Assess the Current Situation

Assess Current Reality

Measure Data What do the data mean?

MAP Assessment 2016-2017 reading percent of students The MAP Assessment shows a
Data on track for college and career readiness continual growth in students until
Grade Fall 2016- Winter the second semester of their
sophomore year. Though it is only
2017 2016-2017
four points within the same school
9th 49.5% 56% year, it shows a regression in
10th 57.6% 51.3% students’ achievement.

Iowa Assessment Percent of students proficient in reading in The data reveals a trend of reading
Data each class over the span of three years proficiency generally decreasing as
Graduating 15-16 16-17 17-18 students near the end of high school.
Class Each of these graduating classes has
2021 93.2% 90.2% 94.8% the highest reading proficiency in 9th
2020 88.1% 89.6% 86.9% grade, and a gradual decline follows
2019 91.5% 85.6% 84.2% in the proceeding years.

1. What do the data say about students’ current level of performance?

The lack of data makes it difficult to authentically examine students’ current level of
performance, but the data available reflects a generally high level of student achievement. However, the
data does not reflect much growth as students continue to progress into higher grades. Regarding the
Iowa Assessment Data, proficiency levels are somewhat stagnate throughout middle school, but slowly
decrease after 9th grade.

2. What might be causing the current results?

A potential cause of the current results could be teachers at the high school working nearly in
isolation when planning and teaching each course. Though there is regular vertical alignment between
high school teachers to ensure all skills are being for students to succeed in successive English classes,
each course has only one instructor, which creates opportunities for variance when determining
standards’ proficiency levels. Additionally, the high school does not have functioning professional
learning communities. At most, PLCs meet once every two weeks during staff professional
development, but that is often not the case due to the emergence of other time-sensitive issues. When the
English PLC does meet, the emphasis is often on vertical alignment of skills as opposed to the specific
assessments and measurements used in each course and, due to the infrequency of PLCs, it is difficult to
sustain a topic from one PLC meeting to the next. Another potential cause for the current results could
be the students’ opinion of Iowa Assessments and other standardized assessments. Students often
verbalize their view of these assessments as pointless, which could reflect the effort they put into the
assessments.
Part Ib: Plan – Define the Current Situation

1. What is the problem/opportunity for improvement and why are you selecting it?
The opportunity for improvement is to improve reading proficiency as students progress through
high school. To do so, the English department needs to utilize collaboration in order to best support and
improve student learning in each of its general courses.

2. How is this opportunity for improvement connected to the mission and vision of the school?
The school’s vision is “Learning for all by learning from all.” While this vision was created with
the students in mind, it also extended to the teachers within the district; staff members can and should
glean ideas from one another. When a negative trend begins to emerge, it is all the more pertinent for
staff to collaborate to combat any issue, especially if it pertains to student success.

3. What is currently being done to address the issue?

Currently, each department meets approximately every two weeks. As previously mentioned,
these PLC meetings are cancelled or cut short due to other district and staff concerns that arise
throughout the school year. Teachers often share ideas and resources to support the vertical alignment of
the curriculum, but each course, as well as the students’ work within it, is in the hands of one teacher.

4. What SMART goal(s) will you set for improvement?

a. Specific d. Relevant
b. Measureable e. Time Bound (annual goals)
c. Attainable

Each graduating class’ reading proficiency will increase at least one percent each year
throughout high school as measured by the Iowa Assessment.

Part II: Do – Plan Improvement Strategies

1. What improvement (change) strategies will you implement in the next 45-60 days?
The primary strategy that will be implemented is to establish and hone the focus
of PLCs, particularly the English PLC. Doing so will require the PLC to work together to
create benchmark assessments reflecting the target standards for each grade level. After
creating benchmark assessments, teachers will administer them, analyze the results, and
determine the learning objectives that will drive their instruction. Since 9th and 10th
grades share standards, as well as 11th and 12th grades, teachers will collaborate to create
common formative assessments for each power standard to measure students’ retention of
skills and information from year to year. Using both the benchmark assessments along
with the formative assessments, the PLC will establish weekly goals and action plans
based on student data. Additionally, an instructional coach will meet with the English
department to review strategies and resources that support differentiation, specifically
targeting different intelligences, student choice, and active learning. Teachers will be
required to complete at least two walk-through observations of another teacher’s
classroom each quarter to monitor and glean ideas from the use of differentiation and
responsive instruction.

2. What professional development might be needed to prepare staff for the

implementation of this work?
The English department, and potentially the rest of the staff, will need training on
the practices of PLCs. Specifically, teachers will need training on analyzing data and
creating action plans to make use of the data, which share a strong connection to the latter
two of Dufour’s four questions to drive the work of PLCs. Much of this can be
 accomplished with professional literature; however, it would be more effective to conduct
a professional development in which each teacher is required to bring student data,
analyze it, and create an action plan with the guidance of instructional leaders and other
members of the PLC. If necessary, the instructional coach may need to review
differentiation strategies in the context of and English classroom to better support and
guide the work of the English department. It will also be necessary to create a walk-
through form for the English teachers, which should be simplistic, focusing on went well,
an area of improvement, and a takeaway that can be used in his or her own classroom.

3. What has caused you to select those strategies?

When an entire course is left in the hands of one teacher, an unintended
consequence is isolated instruction. Also, when proficiency levels and student
achievement are generally high, teachers do not face the same level of accountability.
With the presence of these two factors, the most powerful aspect of improving
instruction—collaboration—tends to go to the wayside. By refining the practices of
PLCs, it will promote collaboration within the English department and create a shared
responsibility for students’ learning outside of an individual course or classroom.
Similarly, the use of walk-throughs will be helpful in reversing the culture of teaching in
isolated classrooms, and it will expose teachers to the application of a variety of effective
strategies being used by their peers, which is the same aim of working with an
instructional coach to review differentiation strategies. As a building that is experiencing
substantial growth, change is inevitable. One teacher will no longer be able to teach an
entire graduating class. Not only will these strategies support the quality of instruction,
but they will also help to create a foundation of the changes to come, such as teacher’s
sharing courses, creating common assessments, and calibrating their grading practices to
promote equal evaluations of student work.

4. By what method will you gather data to determine if the improvement strategies are
working?
Benchmark assessments will be given quarterly to measure students’ growth in
each class. After each benchmark assessment, the results will be used to shape the content
of each unit studied for the remainder of the quarter. If the teacher is framing instruction
to meet the greatest needs of the students, then the following benchmark test will reflect
growth in the targeted learning objectives.
While the results of benchmark assessments will help determine the content of
units of study, formative assessments will be used to determine which specific lessons
need to be revisited. Since grades 9 and 10 as well as 11 and 12 will share formative
assessments for each power standard, a higher average in the succeeding course on
formative assessments will also indicate the effectiveness of the implemented strategies.
Formative assessments will be used weekly and, along with the quarterly benchmark
assessments, they will drive the work of the PLC. Though each grade level will likely not
be assessing the same skills simultaneously, the shared formative assessments will
provide a baseline of students’ understanding of the power standards throughout each
course.
On a larger scale, the MAP Assessment and Iowa Assessment will measure the
reading proficiency of students as well as their college and career readiness. By analyzing
this data, it will provide insight to specific skills and areas in need of improvement within
the English curriculum. Also, these assessments will reveal trends in student achievement
from year to year, which be the ultimate measurement as to whether or not the SMART
goal is met.
 45-Day Action Plan:
Strategies for Improvement
Annual SMART Goal: Each graduating class’ reading proficiency will increase at least one percent
each year throughout high school as measured by the Iowa Assessment.
45-Day SMART Goal: Each graduating class will increase their proficiency of English power
standards by 5% as measured by benchmark data.
Tactic Metric Goal
Forming benchmark -Attendance at PLC meetings
assessments for each -Completed benchmark
grade level assessments
Forming common -Attendance at PLC meetings
formative assessments -Completed benchmark
assessments
Weekly PLC meetings -Attendance at PLC meetings
centered on student data -Completion of PLC data form
from common formative (template provided by
assessments principal)
-Completion of teacher action
plan (template created by
PLC)
Implementing -Attendance at professional
differentiated instruction development focused on
practices differentiation
-Completion of teacher action
plan (template created by
PLC)
Data analysis workshop -Attendance at professional
development focused on data
analysis
-Completion of teacher action
plan (template created by
PLC)
Classroom walk-through -Completion of walk-through
observations observation form (created by
instructional coach)
-Completion of teacher action
plan (template created by
PLC)
Person(s)
Date
Responsible
-100% department 3/27/18 English teachers
engagement in
creating benchmark
assessments for 9-12
grades.
-100% department 3/27/18 English teachers
engagement in
creating benchmark
assessments for 9-12
grades.
-100% department Wednesdays English teachers
attendance and (3/28/18, 4/4/18,
analysis of student 4/11/18, 4/18/18,
data 4/25/18, 5/2/18,
5/9/18, 5/16/18,
5/23/18)
-100% of department 4/2/18 Instructional
attendance at PD coach, English
-100% of teachers teachers
complete an action
plan highlighting the
use of differentiated
instruction and
assessment
-100% of department 4/16/18 Instructional
attendance at PD coach, English
-100% of teachers teachers
complete an action
plan showing how
instruction is adjusted
based on student data
-100% of English 3/27/18-5/25/18 Instructional
teachers complete at (teachers must coach, English
least two walk- complete two teachers
throughs per quarter walk-throughs in
-100% of English this timeframe
teachers complete an
action plan showing
how a peer’s
instructional practices
improve their own
teaching
Notes:

Part III: Study – Determine the Effectiveness of the Plan

------You cannot complete this as you do not have any “real” data related to your plan.---

1. What data gives evidence of plan’s effectiveness?

2. What data gives evidence of plan’s lack of effectiveness?
3. Were all strategies implemented with fidelity? Why or why not?

Part IV: Act – Determine the Next 45 to 60 Day Action Plan Based on Your Results

------You cannot complete this as you do not have any “real” data related to your plan.---

1. What strategies will you continue in the next 45 to 60 day action plan? Why?
2. What strategies will you discontinue in the next 45 to 60 day action plan? Why?
3. What additional strategies will you add in the next 45 to 60 day action plan? Why?
4. How will you sustain improvements found to be effective?
Pertinent Data
 Reflection

It quickly became clear to me that creating a responsive strategic school improvement

plan would be quite a challenge simply due to the fact that there is a considerable absence of data

to measure the effectiveness of instruction in each building. Rather than looking at the results of

frequent or periodic assessments throughout the school year, I had to rely on biannual and annual

data and struggled to identify a specific issue since there is not much of a measurable process in

place. With the lack of systematic measurements, much of this project was spent thinking of

measurements to create as opposed to examining current or existing measurements. Certainly,

this illuminates the importance of documentation in order to establish a process.

Even with the lack of available data, an unappealing trend emerged as I traced student

achievement over the course of multiple years. The Iowa Assessment data revealed that,

generally, each graduating class reached their highest percentage of reading proficiency as

freshmen, and a slow decline followed each year. Unfortunately, this is the result of the school’s

measurement system mirroring the invisible scoreboard analogy; we teach students day in and

day out, but rather than frequently checking the scoreboard or having frequent measurements, we

wait until the end of the game to see if we won. With the lack of systematic progress checks, it

becomes increasingly difficult to identify what needs specifically needs improvement since it

cannot be identified as a component of a process.

Not only did the lack of data create difficulties with identifying what specifically needs to

be improved, but it also presented a challenge with setting pragmatic SMART goals. Since there

were not many numbers, figures, or statistics to examine, it caused me to write goals that, in my

opinion, were overly general as opposed to specific to the system I aimed to improve. The lack
of specificity is largely due to the lack of measurements; without much data to examine, it

becomes increasingly difficult to set a sensible percentage for growth.

It seems that most of the complications I faced throughout this school improvement plan

could be alleviated with the use of active PLCs. Currently, the school’s system of operations

does not support functioning PLCs; we meet every other week at the most, but staff professional

development often overrides PLC time. Consequently, much of the staff does not see the

potential of PLCs, nor do they have the buy-in that allows them to see the benefits of

collaboration and focusing on student data. With regular time built into the schedule for PLCs, it

would give teachers the opportunity to collaborate and create some of the measurements that the

building and district do not already have in place. While implementing PLCs is not a universal

solution to all of the building academic issues, it certainly helps to establish a foundation for

teachers to delve into students’ work and shift away from the invisible scoreboard model that is

currently in place.

As a growing school and district that is on the brink of substantial change, this process

helped to expose some of the weaker aspects of the school as well as some potential methods that

can be used to manage the growth of both staff and students. As the school grows, it will force

more teachers into collaborative scenarios due to shared courses, classrooms, and resources.

Ideally, this will help to close the currently protracted gap between the “Do” stage and the

“Study” and Act” stages of the PDSA process. The more frequently teachers are able to close the

loop in the PDSA cycle, the more targeted instruction can be, which will ultimately result in

higher student achievement.