School Portfolio, The

A Comprehensive Framework for School Improvement

Victoria. L Bernhardt, Victoria L. Bernhardt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317920472
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

A school portfolio is the most effective way to ensure your school's success at systemic reform. Extensively tested, it is a non-threatening self-assessment tool which exhibits a school's goals, achievements, and vision for improvement. This book will show you how to develop a school portfolio tailored to your particular school and vision.

Chapter
1

INTRODUCTION

The Need for a Framework for School Improvement

Almost every school in America today is (or was) in the process of “restructuring.” However, a large percentage of these schools will abandon their efforts before they complete their restructuring process. Why is this? Clearly, schools want to improve. There is certainly nothing lacking in any school’s desire to improve. Why is restructuring—so needed and desired by schools—so hard to accomplish?

Further, many teachers believe that when efforts to restructure are implemented, it is an indicator that the school has set up a shared decision-making structure, i.e., teachers and principals would attend meetings, write a mission statement, create a new vision for the school, set goals, attend staff retreats, and participate in staff development activities that would enable them to implement a list of innovations in their classrooms.

restructure rethink rebirth improve better These words are exciting in the context of school—words designed to refute the kind of reports to which Americans have become accustomed for almost two decades. Why then, are teachers at many of the formerly restructured or restructuring schools so relieved to be back to “just being teachers and minding their own business”?

We have reached the point of diminishing returns … in continually reminding ourselves about the problems of education. And we’ve reached that refreshing point where we’re talking about solutions.

Garrey Carruthers Former Governor of New Mexico

Why “Restructuring” is Not Working

Reasons that the positive energy and interest for restructuring gets derailed and visions crumble are varied. Most teachers say something like, “it was too hard; too much work for too little or no benefit; we needed to get back to focusing on the kids; we got too tired; the conflicts became too great; we don’t want to make the decisions any more; the principal left; certain teachers left; the superintendent left; the district resented us for getting ‘special treatment’; nothing was different; the ‘wrong’ people were in power; it wasn’t what we thought it would be….”

Some researchers say that restructuring efforts do not work in most schools because critical elements are missing in the process, such as a solid plan or direction for change, personal meaning, a shared vision, incentives for change, learning opportunities for educators, “possibility thinking,” effective communication, and an evaluation or monitoring system—the latter tending to be the element most often missing.

These reasons imply that restructuring efforts are defeated early in the process because they probably started wrong. The sad fact is that schools usually have only one opportunity to launch a restructuring effort. It is next to impossible to begin such a gut-wrenching, time-consuming effort twice. When recognizing a false start, it is excruciating to back up and get on the right track.

Schools need help with the enormous challenge of restructuring. They need a framework to help them start right so they can get to the point of implementing and sustaining improved practices. A framework can help schools understand the overall process of school change, how to think through what to improve, how to improve, how to implement the improvement, and then how to know that the improvement is making a difference.

Starting Right

The manner in which schools think about the improvement or restructuring process as they begin determines their success. Schools wanting to restructure or improve systemically must thoroughly understand the overall process before they commit to begin that process. The process must be driven upward from the bottom and supported downward from the top. There must be a solid commitment to the process from every staff member, or, at a minimum, from a group of individuals, to not thwart colleagues’ efforts. There must be a solid, shared definition and plan for restructuring.

Further, a committed school would perhaps benefit by dropping the word restructuring and, instead, talk about rethinking the process of school to improve learning and achievement on a never-ending—or continuous improvement—basis. Too often, the word restructuring is misconstrued. School staff tend to believe that everything will be different, almost automatically more wonderful, when their school begins to restructure. They believe the restructuring process will be fun.

Staff at one school actually thought the corporation sponsoring their restructuring efforts would be sending them to Japan to study Japan’s educational system. Unfortunately that was not the picture the corporation had in mind. Many other schools started their restructuring efforts by designing schools of the future that resembled space ships, complete with swimming pools, waterfalls, and theaters. A handful of others thought, “I can’t wait until we are restructured so I can have my own office, my own secretary, and a teaching assistant in a beautiful new building. What will be neatest is that my class will be one-half the size, and I will have the entire afternoon to plan—everyday.”

Regrettably, the reality of the process is enough to end some schools’ dreams of ever working differently. Indeed, to learn that school improvement of any kind is difficult, extremely complex, and not something to start unless the school is ready to commit its energies to focusing on the students and their learning is a hard lesson. The schools described above could have profited from an overview of school improvement before they started dreaming. They either never would have started the process, or, at best, their efforts might have been grounded in reality.

Overview of the School Improvement Process

A framework for school improvement can help schools start their efforts by offering an overview of the process, followed by a comprehensive view of the elements within the process.

School staff must understand from the beginning that major elements of change are internal rather than external, requiring a transformation of all individuals’ thinking about school, students, teaching, and learning. Schools must also acknowledge and reinforce the fact that a new way of thinking, communicating, and budgeting time is required of all individuals. New mental models developed with facts, data, and research must replace old agendas and assumptions. Needs of students and different approaches to teaching must be studied as if both were totally unknown. A true collegial school must be one in which students are the focus; where staff communicate effectively and continuously about student learning; and, where staff work together, developing a continuum of learning for students as their first priority.

For real and appropriate changes to be implemented, school staff must conduct comprehensive needs analyses of students, teachers, parents, and the school community. They must develop a shared vision, based upon the values, beliefs, and personal visions of the individuals in the school community. They must establish a governance structure to support the bottom-up approach. Then, utilizing this information, they must develop a comprehensive action plan to increase each teacher’s repertoire of skills and understanding; include the community as true partners; evaluate the impact of new strategies; and, establish a plan for continuous improvement. These new ways of thinking and operating require strong teachers and principals who are capable of new levels of communication—who know from the start that there is no ending point, that the work is hard, and that school improvement is a continuous process.

The Purpose of this Book

This book provides a practical resource for school administrators and teachers. It describes a unique framework for school improvement that can assist schools in—

♦ thinking through the overall change process, enabling them to start the process right

♦ planning for improvements, with personal meaning for the individuals implementing the improvements

♦ determining what to improve in order to better meet the needs of the individuals they serve

♦ maintaining internal motivation during the process of improvement

♦ understanding the importance of establishing effective communication within the school, with parents, with the school community, with other schools in the district, and with the district

♦ guiding the concurrent implementation of multiple improvements

♦ assessing whether or not the school improvement effort is making a difference

♦ keeping the complex elements of the school congruent in order to create a whole, healthy, effective learning organization focused on students

This unique framework for school improvement takes the form of a portfolio—a school portfolio—with measurement rubrics that serve as the monitoring and guiding device for the school improvement process.

With the use of this book, schools will be able to develop their own school portfolios; assess their efforts using a framework of continuums; learn from examples provided about other schools’ efforts; and, think through and plan their own improvement from the overview of the systemic school improvement process. Most of the information contained in this book is not new. The intent is not to provide the world with one more restructuring book. The intent, rather, is to provide an overview of the thinking behind the continuums and to share research findings. References and additional resources for further reading are noted in the References and Resources section of this book.

The Structure of this Book

The School Portfolio: A Comprehensive Framework for School Improvement, second edition, begins by describing the need for a framework for school improvement and continues with how the school portfolio can serve as an overview and framework for comprehensive schoolwide planning.

Chapter 1 examines the school portfolio as an effective, positive, and ongoing monitoring system that is able to reflect the multidimensionality of each unique school—a system that can simplify the improvement and evaluation of these complex organizations.

Chapter 2 discusses the structure, purpose, and the various uses for the school portfolio.

Chapter 3 illustrates how the effective use of a school portfolio depends upon the criteria used to monitor the processes, products, and progress of the improvement efforts. It sets forth guidelines for creating, adopting, and adapting criteria. It introduces the Education for the Future Initiative Continuous Improvement Continuums (CIC). These continuums are used to form the basis of the school portfolio and schoolwide improvement efforts described in this book. It also discusses how the criteria serve as assessment and monitoring tools for the evaluation process.

Each of the next seven chapters, chapters 4 through 10, are devoted to one of the Education for the Future Initiative Continuous Improvement Continuums. Each chapter displays a continuum, defines the desired outcomes and elements of the continuum it discusses, and provides examples and lists of items to include in that section of the school portfolio. The final section of each chapter includes a self-assessment tool for use in developing an outline for a school portfolio. A brief overview of chapters 4 through 11 follows.

Chapter 4, Information and Analysis, explains how school personnel who collect, analyze, and use information about the school community make better decisions about what to change and how to institutionalize systemic change. Chapter 4 discusses the use of demographic information, different ways to survey the school’s clients, the use of student and teacher perceptions of the learning environment, disaggregating and charting standardized test scores and questionnaire results, problem analysis, and the effective use of synthesized data.

Chapter 5, Student Achievement, describes how to keep the focus of school improvement on students, with the goal of moving teachers from providers of information to researchers who can predict the impact of their actions on student achievement, and moving students from recipients of knowledge to goal-setting, self-assessors who produce independent, quality products. This chapter discusses using data to understand the unique needs of each student and the student population, identifying student learning standards, identifying critical processes to increasing student achievement, monitoring the implementation of new practices through the use of staff-developed rubrics and other data, and the value of teacher action research.

Chapter 6, Quality Planning, describes how all well-defined and well-execut...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• FOREWORD
• PREFACE
• 1 INTRODUCTION: THE NEED FOR A FRAMEWORK FOR SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT
• 2 A FRAMEWORK FOR SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT: THE SCHOOL PORTFOLIO
• 3 CRITERIA FOR ASSESSING SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT
• 4 INFORMATION AND ANALYSIS
• 5 STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT
• 6 QUALITY PLANNING
• 7 PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
• 8 LEADERSHIP
• 9 PARTNERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
• 10 CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT AND EVALUATION
• 11 PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
• APPENDIX A: EFF CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT CONTINUUMS
• APPENDIX B: STAFF-DEVELOPED RUBRICS
• APPENDIX C: CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT PROCESS
• APPENDIX D: SAMPLE QUESTIONNAIRES
• REFERENCES AND RESOURCES
• INDEX