Teaching Matters Most

A School Leader's Guide to Improving Classroom Instruction

Thomas M. McCann, Alan C. Jones, Gail A. Aronoff

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781452283883
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Leadership in Education

A laser-beam focus on improving instruction to improve learning

If we want to change how students write, compute, and think, then teachers must transform the old “assign-and-assess” model into engaging, coherent, and rigorous instruction. The authors show school leaders how to make this happen amidst myriad distractions, initiatives, and interruptions. Unlike other books that stop at evaluating teachers and instruction, this work demonstrates how to grow schools’ instructional capacities with a three-step process that involves:

• Envisioning what good teaching looks like
• Measuring the quality of current instruction against this standard
• Working relentlessly to move the quality of instruction closer and closer to the ideal

What are common practices in schools?

1

If we could enter the minds of a superintendent, a principal, and other school leaders as they prepare for the opening of a new school year, we might find them preoccupied with a dizzying array of responsibilities and uncertainties. We know because we have been there ourselves. For example, the superintendent might worry about her personal image, her relationship with members of the school board, her role as motivator to the staff, her political need to advance student achievement and to look competitive when compared to neighboring school districts, the logistics of executing the day’s agenda, and much more. A principal or dean might focus on keeping the school safe and orderly, with buses arriving on schedule and students being fed wholesome meals in the cafeteria. A department chair might focus on the competition for technology resources or the current status of a book order. In danger of being lost or subordinated in the web of preparation is overt attention to the core mission of schools: that students will learn, that they will develop their talents, and that they will hone their sense of good character and responsible citizenship. We hardly think that the few school leaders named above are alone in their preoccupations.

When we examined the school improvement plans from twenty randomly selected school districts, we were curious to see the trends among the targets that schools have set for improvement. From our examination, we drew three conclusions: (1) Schools first target the areas identified for measuring adequate yearly progress. Reading is the first concern, with mathematics following as a close second. (2) When schools have not made adequate yearly progress, they target improvement in reading or mathematics for a particular subgroup, especially ethnic or language minorities. (3) In addition to setting sights on increasing achievement in reading and mathematics, schools set goals related to a wide array of concerns and topics, some that one can recognize as related to the core mission of schools, and some that seem more distant. While it is reasonable to aspire to increase student achievement in reading and mathematics, we question the means that schools take to realize this goal, and we especially wonder about the second and third trends listed above.

Consider the seemingly reasonable tendency for schools to try to fix up the underperforming subgroups in an effort to make adequate yearly progress. In our sample, we see statements that express the intention to improve reading and mathematics achievement among African Americans, Latinos, and students from low-income homes. The presumption implied by such goals is that all African Americans, Latinos, and students from low-income homes perform similarly and that everyone else is more or less doing fine. In short, the model calls for correcting the deficient and for letting everyone else carry on. Of course, we question the assumptions, and we haven’t seen schools make radical improvements by implementing tactics or interventions to remedy the deficient subgroups. We say more about this difficulty below.

The third trend reveals a kind of fragmented response to significant issues about learning and achievement. Here are some representative goal statements from our sample:

“Improve the participation of our Hispanic students in the PSAE [Prairie State Achievement Exam] math test.”

“Boost enthusiasm for learning.”

“Engage in courageous conversations.”

“Implement a restructuring plan.”

“Increase enrollment in rigorous programs.”

“Increase stakeholder involvement.”

“Increase professional collaboration.”

“Expand grading by objectives.”

“Implement and maintain consistent school wide initiatives that will adequately increase the graduation rate.”

“Review curriculum in all areas for alignment with College Readiness Skills.”

We understand that a committee or an individual administrator conscientiously wrote these goals because they seemed to be significant statements within the particular school contexts. However, we have to ask in each instance if the goal, aggressively pursued, will substantively improve the quality of teaching and thereby significantly advance the learning for all students.

Our work in schools for more than a combined one hundred years, our thousands of hours of observations of classroom instruction as supervisors in schools, and our more recent observations in schools as university supervisors and consultants have convinced us that schools will not make significant progress in advancing the learning and achievement of all students unless they make significant strides in improving the quality of instruction in all classrooms. We urge renewed and sustained attention to improving the quality of instruction in schools. Furthermore, we insist that schools work against this effort when school improvement plans offer a labyrinthine network of initiatives, like having “courageous conversations” and increasing “stakeholder involvement,” that touch on the peripheral matters of schooling and often distract from the core effort to advance learning and improve the quality of students’ experiences in schools. We understand that students are likely to develop a deep understanding of essential concepts, to learn generative procedures, and to refine complex communications only when they experience quality instruction. We propose an approach to school improvement that does not single out struggling subgroups as the focus for correctives. Instead, we offer that schools need to conceive firmly and in substantial detail what good teaching looks like and sounds like. Schools must take the measure of the quality of instruction against this yardstick, and must work relentlessly to move the quality of instruction closer and closer to the ideal.

WHAT WE FOUND IN CLASSROOMS

In the variety of schools we have visited over a three-year period as outside consultants, we have seen many hard-working teachers who apparently devote much time to planning lessons and who generally enjoy a positive rapport with students. In the classrooms, we have seen cooperative students, apparently willing to learn, and noticeably compliant with the directions of their teachers. We have seen schools rich in diversity, with students representing a variety of social, economic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds, functioning collaboratively and expressing pride in the harmonious mixture of students in their school. These two factors—conscientious teachers and willing learners—appear to be the basic elements for a formula for a high-achieving student body and a dynamic learning environment.

At the same time, we have witnessed learners enduring compliantly a lot of uninspired instruction, with implied simplistic learning goals, discourse dominated by teacher talk and student recitation, and assessments that placed greatest value on recall of disseminated information. We watched lessons that began in medias res, with no foregrounding through a review of previous activities and learning, no preview of subsequent activities and projects, and no explicit expression of current and long-term goals. The students we interviewed expressed some distress that while teachers set tasks and were available at various times to help students complete the tasks, the teachers did not make it easy to navigate the curriculum—the knowing why they were engaged in the assignment or project and where the work was leading. Indeed, we saw little evidence from classroom observations, from interviews with teachers, or from forums with students, that teachers could convey to students the unifying elements of the curriculum or had a sense themselves of the curriculum as a unified whole. We have to admit that our sample size is small, and the schools we visited across states and across socioeconomic boundaries may not be representative of a mass of schools where high-quality teaching and a commitment to its continual improvement are the norm. But, based on our experience, we judge that any school has a lot of room for improvement in the quality of instruction.

As part of our consultations in schools, we talked to administrators who spoke of magical qualities in the instructional practices in schools, but we failed to see this magic during our hundreds of classroom observations. Teachers testified of the need to have in place a supportive teacher evaluation system that set clear standards for performance and promoted teachers’ development toward these benchmarks. We recognized an absence or inconsistent sense of what quality teaching is, making it difficult to know what to look for in hiring, mentoring, supporting, and retaining staff.

In short, what we have witnessed is an enormous potential for rapid improvement in learning in schools, with the concomitant closing of achievement gaps among subgroups of the student population. Most teachers are hard working and knowledgeable about their subjects, and most learners are willing to learn. And the administrators we have met are conscientious, hard working, and even courageous. While critics might be eager to fault everyone in schools for failing to see and do what needs to be done to improve schools dramatically, we find it difficult to fault anyone for failing to see truths hidden in plain view, especially since a variety of external factors conspire to obscure the obvious.

TRUTHS HIDDEN IN PLAIN VIEW

Many schools and the administrators who manage them are under fire. In response to mandates to raise test scores or face dire consequences, school districts rush to implement the programs or “scientifically proven” interventions to advance achievement rapidly in their schools. We say more about this problem in Chapter 2. What is largely ignored in school improvement plans is what goes on in classrooms between teachers and students around subject matter—the truth before our eyes. The reality is that administrators busy themselves with a wide array of responsibilities, and teachers invest precious time in workshops that promise to advance the way they teach. At the same time, the century old assign-and-assess method of instruction remains intact: teachers talk a lot, students listen a lot, and teachers grade a lot. If what we are trying to do in schools is fundamentally change how students write, compute, and think, then the pervasive assign-and-assess method of instruction must not only change but be transformed into a model of teaching. This model must promote quality interactions between teachers, students, and peers. Subject matter must be organized to draw students into disciplined approaches to solving contemporary problems and dilemmas, and assignments must be designed to replicate authentic responses to real-world tasks.

We think we have discovered some fundamental truths that have been hidden in plain sight. First, schools are never going to make substantial gains in improving students’ learning and achievement until they emphasize improvement in the quality of teaching across the curriculum. Citing recent research about the relative effects of teacher quality, Darling-Hammond and Haselkorn (2009) affirm that quality instruction from well-prepared teachers has a greater impact on student achievement than “the effects of race and parent education combined” (p. 30).

While schools strive to accelerate learning in the core areas of reading and mathematics for those students who struggle in these areas, the broader challenge is to improve the quality of instruction across a school or across an entire system. The research is clear that the quick fix might lead to transitory gains, but the overall improvement in instructional practices allows schools to boost learning substantially and sustain improvement in an environment of high expectations and high performance.

The second truth we have discovered hidden in plain sight is that students will only learn at high levels when teachers teach. Hillocks (2009b) has called for a “revolution” in literacy instruction (p. 8). To make his case, he cites his study of the impact of various coded activities in hundreds of observed lessons. Trained research assistants designated separate “episodes” within lessons and coded the episodes according to the current activity. Not surprisingly, the more episodes that were coded as diversions (for example, announcements on the public address system, students engaged in social conversation, teacher conferring with a colleague in the hall), the less learning occurred. There was a negative correlation: more diversions, less learning. Perhaps less obvious was that the more teachers devoted time to instruction, especially instruction to advance procedural knowledge, the more students learned. This is a positive correlation: the more teaching, the more learning. Time taken up with assessment had less positive impact on learning.

While we are reporting the obvious, we will add a third truth hidden in plain sight. Quality instruction must feature some basic routines, including the rudimentary practices of situating learning in the essential concepts of the curriculum, reminding students about what they have experienced so far, what the current and long-term goals are, and how the current activities will prepare them for subsequent learning and performance. As we have noted earlier, the dominant assign-and-assess model just doesn’t work well. As Willingham (2009) suggests, students will engage if they see instruction as a purposeful effort at problem solving, with classroom discourse patterns elevated above mere recitation.

TRANSFORMING ACCOUNTABILITY

Jumping off the treadmill of a decade worth of accountability mandates and attending to the classroom truths children experience each day requires a fundamental change in how we talk about accountability and how we act upon this new conversation. Based on our extensive observations in real classrooms in a variety of schools, we recommend a four-part strategy for transforming the truths in American classrooms.

First, educators must stop using business terminology such as accountability, quality dashboards, or metrics to describe what they do in schools. Unlike typical circumstances in the business sector, the certainties of inputs, outputs, and means of production are not a part nor will they ever be a part of uncertainties of teaching twenty-five or more students how to read, write, compute, and think well. The term educators should be using is responsibility. Accountability implies that supervisors and employees guarantee, will be held accountable for, implementing certain methods in certain ways resulting in certain outcomes within certain times. Responsibility implies that administrators and teachers create the organizational configurations, staff development opportunities, and acquisition of materials to support an agreed upon instructional worldview—a coherent response to the fundamental questions of schooling (How do children learn? What knowledge is of most worth? How should subject matter be organized? How should we teach? How should we assess what students understand?). Entering conversations dominated by the fundamental questions of schooling returns professional educators to responsible discourses over how best to organize curriculum and instruction to draw out the interests, talents, and emotions of young people.

Second, school administrators must orchestrate a conversation about what is quality teaching. Our interviews with teachers about what they do in classrooms reveal that teachers envision patterns of instruction that closely align with research and best practice in the field, although the vision is often inconsistent with their actual practice. While the implementation of these patterns of instruction are complex and often are opposed to current institutional configurations of schooling, the outcomes of these conversations establish a common vocabulary or understanding of what is quality instruction. The shared understanding of what quality teaching is should inform much of the aligned business of schools: recruitment and hiring, induction, mentoring, certified staff evaluation, and professional development.

Third, school administrators and other school leaders must enter classrooms to observe the instructional truths in their buildings. The goal of these observations is to identify the depth and breadth of the existing gaps between the truths in the classrooms they supervise and an agreed upon instructional worldview. If school administrators feel they lack the expertise to conduct an instructional audit of their building, the responsible alternative is to seek out knowledgeable colleagues in the field and academia to assist with the important function of identifying the what is and what ought to be going on in a school’s classrooms.

Finally, school administrators and teachers must work together to develop a plan for narrowing the gap between a school’s instructional worldview and prevailing truths of what teachers are actually doing in classrooms. To flesh out this responsible plan further, we suggest that it should contain the following elements:

1. Define quality teaching. The foundation of school improvement is defining the criteria for effective teaching, identifying the gaps between that definition and actual classroom performance, and providing teachers with quality staff development programs that close the gap between what tea...