While attending a conference recently, I was amazed at the intensity of anti-NCLB sentiments I heard expressed. Comments like, “When are we going to stop taking time away from instruction for all this testing?” rang throughout numerous sessions. Although a few administrators, teachers, and parents countered these comments with positive examples, those defending No Child Left Behind (NCLB) were definitely in the minority.
The continued negativity toward the law surprises me. I have witnessed first-hand improvements in the quality of education provided in urban schools that came about through practices required by NCLB. Five of the urban districts where I have seen such strides were finalists for the 2005 Broad Prize for Urban Education, an annual prize awarded to the most improved urban school districts in the United States. Despite poverty, high student mobility, and other challenges, these districts developed well-aligned systems that boosted students' achievement and narrowed achievement gaps. A closer look at the practices of the Broad Prize finalists reveals how NCLB helped these schools clarify and strengthen their curriculums, effectively use data, and intervene to reach struggling students.
Recognizing Urban Success
The Los Angeles–based Broad Foundation established the annual Broad Prize in 2002 to identify and reward urban school districts that significantly improve student achievement while reducing achievement differences among ethnic groups and between low- and high-income students. The $1 million prize is divided among the winning schools, and the money goes to graduating high school seniors for college scholarships. For the past three years, as a project manager with the National Center for Educational Accountability, I have overseen data collection for the Broad Prize and visited most of the finalist school districts.
In 2005, 80 urban school districts competed for this award. On the basis of data compiled and analyzed by the National Center for Educational Accountability, the Broad Foundation selected five finalists and then sent teams of education researchers and practitioners to visit each finalist. The teams interviewed district administrators, parents, community leaders, school board members, and union representatives. They spoke with teachers and principals, and they observed in classrooms.
A jury of leaders from government, business and industry, and public service selected Norfolk Public Schools in Norfolk, Virginia, as the 2005 Broad Prize winner, awarding the district $500,000 in college scholarships. In the past four years, Norfolk has increased its percentage of elementary students reaching proficiency in reading by 14 points and increased the percentage of middle schoolers reaching reading proficiency by 12 percent. Similar improvements were achieved in math, and achievement gaps between Norfolk's minority students and white students were dramatically decreased. Four finalists—Aldine Independent School District near Houston, Boston Public Schools, New York City Department of Education, and San Francisco Unified School District—received $125,000 each in scholarships.
The value of analyzing districts and choosing a Broad Prize winner lies in learning which practices at the district, school, and classroom levels most strongly affect urban students' achievement. Best practices cannot be identified with a single program, initiative, or school leader. They are systemic, aligned, inclusive, data driven, evidence based, goal oriented, and student centered.
Putting Principles into Action
Improving Curriculum
- supported teachers by providing curriculum guides and pacing charts,
- aligned curriculum between grades, and
- monitored curriculum implementation through frequent school and classroom walkthroughs.
Many states are continually improving their core subject curriculums in response to NCLB. These high-performing districts go further in articulating, refining, and supporting their state's standards. All five districts use teams of classroom teachers and curriculum experts from the central office to develop their curriculums, often aiming higher than state expectations. For example, Texas state standards require 70 percent mastery on benchmarks, but the Aldine district looks for 80 percent mastery, believing that if students don't achieve at this level they have not truly internalized the skills. The districts also provide teachers with curriculum support documents to help them understand the content and pacing of each learning objective.
Curriculum pacing guides for Norfolk's public schools are available to teachers electronically, with hyperlinks to the state standards, the objectives of quarterly standardized tests, frequently asked questions, common vocabulary for key content, and suggested classroom activities.
In a similar move, Aldine articulates and aligns curriculum across all schools within its district. Consistent learning objectives, benchmark assessments, instructional calendars, and model lessons ensure that as students move from kindergarten through 12th grade, they receive the same tools and opportunities for learning no matter what school they attend. Walk into any elementary math classroom in Aldine and you will see similar word walls, posted learning objectives, and math warm-ups. This tight alignment has been crucial to Aldine's success at reaching the district's highly mobile student population.
All five of the winning districts closely supervise how new teachers are implementing curriculum in their schools by doing frequent classroom walkthroughs and providing feedback to all teachers observed. Deputy superintendents in Boston Public Schools conduct implementation reviews similar to mini-accreditation visits. Principals from each of the district's middle and high schools review data and identify a problem or academic subject area that needs attention before the review begins. A team of central office staff then keeps this issue in mind as they observe in each school's classrooms. After these visits, the team debriefs with the principals and provides an extensive write-up covering each observed teacher, giving recommendations for improvement. The deputy superintendent later follows up with each school principal, making sure the recommended intervention plan is being followed for those classrooms identified as needing improvement. Edwards Middle School, for example, had the lowest math scores in both the district and the state. As a result of recommendations made after the visit, the school provided math teachers with more targeted professional development, helping teachers present algebraic concepts more explicitly. Students' achievement soon rose above the median mark for the district's middle schools.
Central office administrators in Aldine attend formal walkthrough training to improve their skills in observing and conferring with teachers. Norfolk requires its district support specialists to spend 70 percent of their time in classrooms observing and working with teachers. All the districts agree that information obtained through walkthroughs may not be used in evaluations. This policy helps build trust and focuses walkthroughs on giving teachers support and guidance.
Collecting and Using Data
- created common benchmark tests or other assessments,
- created comprehensive student information systems,
- modified student instruction on the basis of data, and
- facilitated teacher conversations about underperforming student groups.
Each of the districts supports data collection. Some districts have created large, easily accessible databases that teachers use every day; others are still working toward that goal. Regardless of the technology available in each district, all place user-friendly data into the hands of teachers as often as possible.
Realizing that the end of the year is too late to find out whether students have mastered instructional objectives, these districts have created varying degrees of intermediate benchmark assessments. The Norfolk district, for example, has developed mandatory quarterly assessments to measure how well its instructional programs meet students' education needs. In each school, teacher teams administer their own assessments in between the quarterly district assessments. Results from all assessments are scanned into Norfolk's data-monitoring system, Assessor. This system provides an item-by-item analysis showing which questions students got wrong and how many students chose each answer.
Similarly, the Aldine district uses a data-monitoring system called Triand that gives principals and teachers easy access to results from state and district assessments. The district has developed quarterly benchmark assessments in all core areas, and Aldine's schools develop and administer their own schoolwide assessments during the period between the district's benchmark tests.
The Boston Public Schools' “MyBPS” data system enables teachers to view their students' report cards, performance on district benchmark assessments, and state assessment results. Teachers can look at how a particular student answered a test item and then see which concepts and skills that item measures. They can download and print each student's writing sample and score from the state writing assessment.
The availability of data, disaggregated in any format desired, has led administrators and teachers to engage in frequent conversations about improving instruction and targeting interventions to specific students. One Norfolk administrator asserts, “Having data available has helped administrators focus on what we are going to work on for that school year. We used to flounder; now we have trends for every year.”
For instance, middle schools in Norfolk examined data from their quarterly tests in writing to determine which questions more than a third of students missed, then targeted the objectives those questions measured for reteaching. In reteaching these objectives, teachers also taught question stems so students could better interpret what the test was asking, and they helped students practice rereading skills to pinpoint information in a passage that corresponds to specific questions.
Teachers in Aldine use data to both review student progress and analyze their own teaching practices. Teachers submit individual scorecards showing students' achievement data, attendance, and disciplinary records; scorecards also note instructional initiatives that teachers are implementing. Teacher teams at individual schools review these scorecards weekly, and central office administrators review them quarterly. One year, scorecard results indicated that 5th graders throughout the Aldine district were having problems making inferences and answering higher-level questions. Once teacher teams identified this problem, they changed the curriculum sequence, teaching inferences closer to the beginning of the school year and reinforcing the skill throughout the year. The next year, inference scores improved by 17 points throughout the district.
Teachers also receive monitoring reports generated by their principal and district-level classroom observers that give feedback on their teaching. Such reports capture the level of student engagement and the instructional style characteristic of a classroom. One teacher noted, “[The report] is broken down into class periods. It allows you to see that maybe you do better in the morning, for example, and allows you to rethink your process.” Such detailed information enables teachers to make small changes that can have large effects on student learning.
In observing teacher team meetings in both Norfolk and Aldine, I saw surprisingly similar—and effective—operating procedures. In both districts, teachers reviewed benchmark assessment results to determine whether students had mastered specific learning objectives. Unhappy with the results, the teams reviewed their lesson plans to pinpoint why students hadn't learned this content well. They looked at lesson plans of teachers whose students scored higher on those objectives to see whether they could glean successful techniques. These teachers were clearly comfortable with reviewing data together to enhance their instructional practices.
Intervening for Struggling Schools and Students
Aligned curriculum, common assessments, and effective data review have led to more targeted help for struggling students in these schools. To ensure that all student groups improve and achievement gaps decrease, all five districts have put systems in place to intervene effectively with students, teachers, and entire schools that are falling behind.
San Francisco Unified School District created the STAR (Students and Teachers Achieving Results) initiative to increase student performance at underachieving schools. The initiative is based on the belief that a well-supported teacher can create effective interventions to reach struggling students. STAR schools hire a variety of specialists to support teachers, including those they call instructional reform facilitators, who work directly in the classroom to support teachers' instruction, and content specialists who demonstrate best practices to engage students in specific content areas. Regularly scheduled instructional walkthroughs ensure that instruction is appropriate and on target. Teachers provide additional instruction in math and reading (on the basis of the needs reflected by analyzing student data) before and after school.
In addition to improved classroom instruction, the STAR initiative provides comprehensive services to students and families, such as parent liaisons, advisors for middle school students, and school nurses. These interventions ensure that all students attend school prepared to learn.
The Aldine district assigns an intervention team of program directors and area superintendents to each low-performing school to help build and implement a specific improvement plan. Interventions may include additional staff development and planning time, extended-day programs, supplemental instructional materials or programs, or content-area specialists.
The New York City Department of Education requires that every elementary school have a team that develops a personal intervention plan for each struggling student, addressing that student's areas of need. Starting next year, the department plans to expand this practice to middle schools. In addition, each of the department's 13 regions has an intervention team that meets monthly to discuss and evaluate school intervention programs. One administrator described the role of intervention specialists as “analyzing fromA to Z a whole series of difficulties that kids have and finding scientifically based research materials that work.”
And the Winner Is...
Although certain problems (such as inadequate funding) still need to be addressed in implementing NCLB, ample evidence exists that the law has helped build stronger, better-coordinated education systems. The requirements of NCLB helped spur key improvements in the five urban districts profiled here. The Broad Prize finalists and other urban districts that have raised student achievement consistently cite having a clear, aligned, well-supported curriculum (one of the main requirements of NCLB) as a key success factor. Teachers in these schools know exactly what to teach, district administrators and schools know exactly what students have learned, and school systems provide effective responses when groups of students do not master a subject. The success of these challenged urban systems demonstrates the benefit of strong standards, data-driven decisions, and effective districtwide coordination. The true winners are the students.
