7 Strategies for Improving Your School

Ronald Williamson, Barbara R. Blackburn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429749735
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book provides the busiest leaders with an accessible set of tools that can immediately be deployed to positively impact their school. Authors Ronald Williamson and Barbara R. Blackburn explore the COMPASS model—Culture; Ownership and Shared Vision; Managing Data; Professional Development; Advocacy; Shared Accountability; and Structures to Sustain Success—as an overall framework for school improvement. Chapters include in-depth discussions of easy-to-implement, useful strategies for improvement and address the most common concerns facing today's school leaders. Supplemented with templates, charts, and other adaptable tools for ongoing, practical use, 7 Strategies for Improving Your School is your key guide to school improvement.

1
Overview and Introduction of the COMPASS Model for School Improvement

Whether you’re a principal, curriculum coordinator, superintendent, or teacher leader, you’ve likely faced the challenge of school improvement. Improving a school, including student learning, is a complex task. It often feels like it’s difficult to stay on top of the issues let alone deal with the competing interests and priorities from every stakeholder group.

Over the past 35 years we’ve worked in hundreds of schools in every region of the country and served every type of school community. We’ve watched the struggle. We’ve applauded the successes and we’ve supported those whose initiatives didn’t achieve the results they envisioned.

Those experiences inform this book and the model we suggest for school improvement. We believe that change is not an event but rather a journey. We recognize that schools are in a constant state of change. They are shaped by demographic, social, political, and economic factors of contemporary American society. Because of those factors, schools change a little each day in response to state and national issues, parent and community demands, and new research and knowledge about student learning.

The most successful schools are those that recognize that change is a constant, that improvement is a journey, not an event. Just like a road, the process has multiple paths and you may suddenly approach an intersection and find yourself needing to change routes. You might find yourself looping back, covering the same stretch of road more than once, or making unplanned stops along the way. You may even encounter potholes or bumps in the road.

The journey to becoming a more successful school is not straight, but often winding. To successfully navigate that road it is important to have a good set of tools—a roadmap, useful contact information, and a GPS unit or compass.

The COMPASS Model

A few years ago, following a presentation, we were talking about the many approaches to school improvement. We talked about the questions from participants and that led to a much longer conversation about the complexities of school improvement.

That conversation led to talk about how we conceptualized school improvement. We both find a compass to be a good metaphor to understand the way leaders can positively impact their school. A compass provides direction and guidance. It can help you find your way when lost and help you stay on track. Most importantly, a compass stays on “true” north and constantly remains on target.

After those initial conversations we shared our thinking with teachers and principals in schools across the country. We asked about their experience with school improvement. We listened as they described their successes and their challenges. We took notes on strategies and tools they found useful. And we used their practical, on-the-ground experience with school improvement to inform our model.

We created the COMPASS model as a way to capture both the complexity of school improvement and to demonstrate the connections between each of the components. Here’s a brief overview of the seven strategies for improving your school.

C—Creating a Positive and Supportive Culture

We’ve discovered that to make significant change in a school’s program a leader must understand the school’s culture and incorporate strategies that will allow them to positively impact the culture.

When we talk about culture, we are talking about the complex set of values, traditions, and patterns of behavior present in a school. A school’s culture reflects deeply held beliefs about students and schooling. It manifests itself in “the unwritten rules and assumptions, the combination of rituals and traditions, the array of symbols and artifacts, the special language and phrasing that staff and students use, the expectations for change and learning” (Deal & Peterson, 2016).

Principals recognize the importance of cultural symbols. They use these symbols to promote the institutional values and the school’s core mission. Successful principals understand the power of these cultural symbols to telegraph what is important.

Successful principals model the behaviors and practices that they expect others to use. It is important to use constructive language, support risk-taking, and build relationships.

Chapter 2 will discuss the importance of culture in more depth and provide strategies and tools that leaders can use to assure a culture supportive of the success of every student.

O—Ownership and Shared Vision

When all the critical stakeholders are engaged in the process, their collective commitment to change is greater (David, 2009; Hord, 2009). Research also shows that when teachers and others collaborate on instructional issues, their practice is more likely to change (Borko, 2004).

When we work with teachers, families, and other school personnel, we almost always find that they have very different ideas about school improvement and how it should shape their schools. These different ideas mean that it is important to involve each group in any discussion about refining and strengthening your school.

If your school’s mission statement has not been updated in several years, it may be appropriate to review it and make needed changes. Schools change in subtle ways over time. Students are different, the community changes, the economic and social issues change. All of these can lead to changes in a school’s mission.

Ownership and shared vision are one of the essential components of our COMPASS model and will be discussed in Chapter 3.

M—Managing Data

Groups that use members’ opinions as the primary source of data almost always become contentious. We’ve found that the most constructive groups are characterized by the gathering and analysis of data independent of any individual’s experience or opinion.

It is essential to gather data about student learning. Put together a portfolio of materials that reflect the academic expectations of students, the quality of their work, and agreed-upon measures of academic success.

It may also be useful to conduct a self-assessment of your school’s program. A brief survey or other instrument can be used to gather data from teachers, parents, students, and others about the state of the instructional program. One principal we knew used a simple rubric to assess classroom practices. At a staff meeting, groups of teachers worked together to complete the rubric. These data were then used by the School Improvement Team to guide the discussion about their program.

Another way to provide data may be to gather data directly from students. Ron helped a school in Connecticut design an assessment to be completed by students. First, the faculty agreed on their indicators for an engaging academic program, then a short survey using a Likert scale was constructed. Individual students completed the survey and the results were aggregated by category (grade, gender) to provide information about how students perceived the engagement of their academic program.

These and other strategies will be discussed in Chapter 4.

P—Professional Development

Also essential to improving your school’s program is providing teachers and other staff with appropriate professional development. The principal can set the direction for a school’s professional development agenda. It is important that the principal model a commitment to continuous improvement and be an active participant in professional development activities.

We’ve found that the most successful professional development is focused on increasing the capacity of the staff. Too often professional development consists of workshops, institutes, or seminars. The most successful models include a wider variety of activities such as collaborative work teams, study groups, critical friends groups, peer coaching, and external support, such as partnerships and networks focused on specific knowledge and skills.

Learning Forward (2019) recommends that professional development focuses on improving the learning of all students by organizing adults into learning groups or communities whose goals are aligned with those of the school or district. The groups use disaggregated student data to determine adult learning priorities and sustain improvement, and deepen educators’ content knowledge and instructional capacity.

At Tucson High School, Principal Abel Morado organized his staff into a set of small learning communities. Each group, either content or interdisciplinary, selected a goal related to the school’s mission and identified data they would collect about their progress. During monthly meetings the work groups reviewed their data, discussed their progress, and identified steps for continued progress. Dr. Morado described the process,

At first they were reluctant. We’d never done anything like this before. So we focused on developing the skills to work together. There’s room for improvement, but it is going well. Teachers are talking with one another about students and their learning.

Chapter 5 will explore the importance of professional development in more depth.

A—Advocacy

What leaders pay attention to becomes important (Schein, 2016), and it is important that school leaders express support for and advocate for their school’s improvement efforts. Advocacy is a way to press for changes in your school. It is also a way to build support for your school’s vision and to secure resources to support that vision.

School leaders must advocate with many diverse audiences, both internal and external. They must work with teachers and other staff to assure a shared commitment to school improvement. They must work with families and community to understand the need for change and to cultivate their support. They must also work with district-level staff to make sure that their school has the flexibility and resources to support the school’s vision.

One important first step is to build a network with others who share your vision. But don’t limit your contact with just those who share your point of view. Talk with those who hold other opinions. Monitor your environment. Get to know the “movers and shakers” in your community. Finally, identify your allies and your opponents so that you can build alliances in support of your vision.

Successful advocacy is more than just having a passion for your vision to improve your school. It requires developing a thoughtful and compelling message about the importance of what you propose and identifying strategies to share your vision and mobilize support.

Chapter 6 will provide you with a set of useful tools that you can use to design your advocacy plan and to build support for your vision.

S—Shared Accountability

We believe that one of the biggest roadblocks to school improvement is the resistance from teachers, parents, and others. As we discussed earlier, every person deals differently with change. Some are more accepting; others more resistant.

No change is successful unless accountability is established. We suggest that teachers, families, and community, along with school leaders, are accountable for improving your school.

Accountability is more than issuing mandates and forcing compliance. For school leaders it involves energizing and motivating individuals as well as groups.

As we discussed earlier, the culture of the school must be one where high value is placed on improving students’ educational experience, where there is a collective commitment to improvement, and a parallel commitment to supporting people who take risks and make changes. Further, the culture must not accept failure as an option. Every student must be expected to learn and the staff must be committed to supporting students in their learning.

The most important role of a school leader is instructional leader. But the principal is not the only person responsible for a quality instructional program. Teachers and other staff are responsible for delivering instruction and positively impacting every student’s learning.

School leaders, however, are responsible for creating a climate and culture at their school that supports quality instruction, promotes innovation, and nurtures professional growth. You can do this by:

• Providing time for collegial discussion and dialogue about improved instruction, including time to reflect on efforts to improve the education of every student;
• Staying current on educational trends and developments;
• Modeling quality instructional practices at meetings and during other interaction with staff; and
• Att...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Meet the Authors
• Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• eResources
• 1. Overview and Introduction of the COMPASS Model for School Improvement
• 2. A Positive and Supportive Culture
• 3. Ownership and Shared Vision
• 4. Managing Data
• 5. Professional Development
• 6. Advocacy
• 7. Shared Accountability
• 8. Structures to Support School Improvement
• 9. Improving Your School: Making It Happen
• 10. Common Concerns
• References