Improvement Science

Promoting Equity in Schools

Deborah S. Peterson, Susan P. Carlile, Deborah S. Peterson, Susan P. Carlile

• Publisher: Myers Education Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781975504694
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Teoría y práctica de la educación

A 2022 SPE Outstanding Book Honorable Mention Improvement Science: Promoting Equity in Schools is intended for classroom teachers, school leaders, and district leaders charged with leading improvement efforts in schools. From questions such as "how do I develop a love of reading in my classroom?" to "how can I better manage student behavior during independent learning time?" to "what should we do to make sure kids of all races read at grade level by 3rd grade" to "how could we include families of all backgrounds as partners in learning" or "how do we increase our graduation rate among underserved students, " this book shares real-life examples from those who are currently leading equity-focused improvement in our classrooms and schools. If you are curious about how Improvement Science has been used, or how others have succeeded—or failed—at equity-focused improvement efforts in our classrooms and in our schools, or if you're wondering how to spur discussions in school districts, universities, and communities about leading equity-focused improvement, this book is for you. Teachers, students, family members, community members, principals and superintendents will be inspired to embrace Improvement Science as a method to improve equity in their schools.The book helps people new to Improvement Science to understand the basic steps to implement the process. If you're a beginner, it provides some basic steps and a resource ( https://www.carnegiefoundation.org/our-ideas/six-core-principles-improvement/ ) to help you understand the process better; for those with some experience, the book will be an excellent refresher and tool with functional suggestions to take your practice further.

1. Form a Team.

2. Examine Data.

3. Ask Why.

4. Read Research.

5. Get Perspective of Those Closest to theProblem.

6. Plan the Change.

After you've done the above, then it's time to test one idea, using short Plan Do Study Act cycles. These are short improvement cycles. Students are only in our classrooms generally for one year, so the cycles need to be short, perhaps even as short as one week, to ensure that every instructional move we are making truly does improve the experience of the students.Readers of Improvement Science: Promoting Equity in Schools will be taking an important step toward achieving the goal of producing socially just classrooms and schools. WATCH: Meet the Authors (ZOOM recording from #CPED21 Virtual Convening, 10/20/21). To learn more about Improvement Science and see our full list of books in this area, please click through to the Myers Education Press Improvement Science website. Perfect for courses such as: Culturally Responsive Learning Environments; Educating For Equity And Social Justice; Cultivating Culturally Responsive Classrooms; Integrating Methods And Curriculum Design; Inquiry, Assessment, And Instructional Design; Foundations Of Culturally And Linguistically Responsive Practice; Math Literacy; Physical Education; Professional Collaboration In Education; Language And Literacy Development Of Diverse Learners; Equal Opportunity: Racism; Diversity And Equity In Schools; Cultural Proficiency In Schools; Language And Power In Education; Teaching For Equity In Literacy; Supportive Classroom Communities; Cultural Diversity In Literature; Engaging Students In Writing; Introduction To School Leadership; Introduction To School Improvement; Teacher Leadership And School Improvement

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

DEBORAH S. PETERSON AND SUSAN P. CARLILE

This book was written by classroom teachers, principals, and school district leaders for teachers, principals, and leaders. We are teachers ourselves. One of our daughters, two sisters, a niece, and a nephew are teachers. We wrote this book with deep respect for our nation’s classroom instructors, people who wake up every day committed to improving the life of every child in our care. People who spend their evenings and weekends thinking about how to improve the experience in our classrooms, from the moment the child gets on our school bus or is greeted at the door, even in the environment of COVID-19, or especially in this time when so many children and families are struggling. Continuous improvement, especially for students and communities who have been historically underserved in our schools, is our mission.

When our boss first asked us several years ago if we might consider learning more about improvement science, many of our friends and colleagues in education were aghast that we might take an improvement method from the business community, specifically from the health care and auto industry. However, we were ready to examine something different. Like so many teachers, we were tired of hearing that we just need to “work smarter” in our schools. Or that we just need to implement a change “with fidelity to [the] model.” We were tired of top-down mandates with proscribed solutions that might have worked in another county, in another state, in another classroom.

We have taught long enough to know that when even one seemingly small contextual change is made, say, adding one student to the classroom or replacing one classroom assistant with another person or using a new textbook, the instructional strategy for success in the classroom might also have to change—and sometimes change dramatically. So why would any leader mandate the precise change that has to happen in any classroom? You must post “I can” statements. All PLCs (professional learning communities) must use this template to document your agenda. Principals must use the (name it) framework during walk-throughs. If these improvement strategies truly were the solution to every instructional problem in every classroom in our nation, we could have reduced our national educational budget tenfold by now because every child would be above benchmark. Instead, we were exhorted to try harder or told we’ll be held accountable, or we blame the teachers, their families, our students.

So, why are we so excited about using improvement science to increase equity in schools? What we learned about improvement science from a highly respected professor in the School of Public Health, Professor Sherril Gelmon, was that each unique context requires a potentially different solution based on variables unique to that setting. Through her guidance, we found in improvement science affirmation for Freire (1993) when he declared that freedom is obtained through contextualized, action-oriented, and collaborative actions that enhance the humanity of the individual and the community. We agreed with Dewey (1990) that making meaning by those closest to the learning will best serve our aim. These, we discovered, are the tenets of improvement science.

We have found that people new to improvement science want to know the basic steps before beginning. If you’re a beginner, here are some basic steps and a resource (https://www.carnegiefoundation.org/our-ideas/six-core-principles-improvement/) to help you understand the process better:

1. Form a Team. Create a team of people in diverse roles and with diverse racial, ethnic, linguistic, and gender backgrounds to form your improvement team: leaders, teachers, community members, and students who will form your improvement team.

2. Examine Data. Examine your data to identify an area for improvement in your classroom or school. Collect additional data through an equity audit to get more information about whom you are not serving. We recommend the equity audit in Leading for Social Justice: Transforming Schools for All Learners by Elise Frattura and Colleen Capper (2007), Appendix A.

3. Ask Why. Complete a root-cause analysis (fishbone diagram and ask the 5 Whys).

4. Read Research. Examine research on this problem.

5. Get the Perspectives of Those Closest to the Problem. Conduct empathy interviews and surveys to get more information specific to your context.

6. Plan the Change. Design a theory of improvement that includes an aim statement, primary drivers, secondary drivers, and possible change ideas.

After you’ve done these six steps, then it’s time to test one idea, using short Plan–Do–Study–Act cycles. These are short improvement cycles. Students are only in our classrooms generally for 1 year, so the cycles should be short, perhaps even as short as one week, to ensure that every instructional move we are making truly does improve the experience of the students!

How did we get started? With so many important and deep problems impacting our lives—systemic racism, the gendered oppression of women, the devastation of our environment, income inequality—it might have seemed reasonable that we might initially have chosen one of these critical projects for our first improvement projects. Professor Gelmon, however, had us learn by doing: She had us engage in our own improvement projects on a topic of our choosing. We identified a problem we wanted to work on—a personal improvement project.

Deborah chose to increase her physical activity after dinner. She thought the reason she wasn’t walking after dinner was that she didn’t have the right shoes, so she bought new walking shoes. And she still didn’t walk after dinner. Then she thought the problem was the socks weren’t right. She bought new socks—and still wasn’t walking. After several cycles of collecting data on her physical activity after dinner—and spending quite a bit of money on new shoes, socks, rain pants, and a rain jacket, thinking that those change ideas would result in increased walking after dinner, she discovered the change idea that really did increase her postdinner walking was having the whole family clear the table and do the dishes so the family could walk together. This is the power of improvement science: She identified a problem she wanted to work on, she thought about what might be the reasons for not walking after dinner, and she tried different change ideas while collecting data on whether the change idea resulted in an improvement.

Susan sought to improve bilateral symmetry and strength in her hips after hip replacement surgery. Through specifically designed change ideas implemented in several Plan–Do–Study–Act cycles, Susan improved strength in each hip and increased her mobility and the muscles in her upper core that had diminished. She learned the power of considering balancing measures—does improving one area negatively influence another area?—when making changes in complex systems like the human body. You have to look at the entire system, not just one part of the system. Similarly, in school improvement efforts, change ideas can focus on social-emotional success and academic success.

Why is the cycle of Plan–Do–Study–Act important to our work in schools? As a classroom teacher or school leader, you might be told by your supervisor that the problem in your school or classroom is attendance or graduation rates or discipline. You’re educated, most likely have an MA or higher degree, and you read research. You know research says the problem might be any one of those. But you, the person closest to the problem, have a hunch the problem might be something else. It might be that you have a high homeless population and your students haven’t eaten in 18 hours. Or maybe the problem is that the children are experiencing trauma because your area had a wildfire and families are still displaced. Or maybe the local industry shut down and there is a lot of uncertainty in the community.

So how do you respond? What do you do next? How do you “test” whether your hunch is right? How do you collect data that will tell you whether what you’re trying is an improvement? How do you adjust what you’re doing based on your data? When do you just stop trying one thing and try another? And finally, when do you take the idea that is working in your setting and help others—your grade-level teammates down the hall, the science department, maybe even the whole school, or every school in the district—to adjust the strategy for their context and scale up the change idea so that each child, each teacher in the entire school or district is succeeding? How do you ensure that change in one area is not negatively influencing another? These are the essential questions and strategies of improvement science.

As you read this book, consider the core improvement science questions:

1. What are we trying to accomplish and by when?

2. How will we know the change is an improvement?

3. What changes are within our sphere of influence that will result in improvement?

Think about the following:

1. What personal improvement project could I try to learn how to use the tools and strategies of improvement science?

2. What can I learn about successes in classrooms across the United States and the world that can help me understand the particular and the local within the context of our global community?

3. What are the promising practices that help me recognize and address structural inequities in my school related to race, ethnicity, gender, home language, socioeconomic status, or ability?

4. What is the role of data collection and analysis in my own change ideas?

5. What happens when I (we) make missteps, and how does my organization support risk-taking and trial by error?

6. How can I ensure the voices of families and other community members are included in my improvement project?

7. How can I involve student voices in our classroom or school improvement efforts?

8. How do I ensure that my improvement efforts truly do address issues of equity and truly do result in improvement and not just change?

9. What existing resources do we have that could help us take small-scale improvements to scale in our grade levels, department, school, or district?

10. What resources exist to collect, analyze, and discuss data regularly to ensure we use data to adjust our practices? What resources do we have to engage in Plan–Do–Study–Act cycles weekly, monthly, and quarterly?

We’ve compiled the stories of several teachers, principals, and university professors who are working within their sphere of influence to improve schools, with those being most impacted by any changes informing what the change needs to be, how to measure whether you’re improving, and testing the improvement.

We hope the experiences of the teachers and leaders in this book inspire you and motivate you to adapt the strategies to your context. Improvement science empowers each of us to start today, now, in whatever sphere of influence we have, to improve the lives of each student in our care. We encourage you to start today, collaboratively, with your colleagues, students, families, and leaders.

References

Dewey, J. (1990). The school and society and the child and the curriculum. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1956).

Frattura, E., & Capper, C. A. (2007). Leading for social justice: Transforming schools for all learners. Corwin.

Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: The Continuum International Publishing Group.

Part I:
Reading

CHAPTER TWO

Impact by Design: Promoting Equity Through Reading Achievement of Students of Color

NAICHEN ZHAO, ERIN ANDERSON,

SANDY LOCHHEAD, AND LAURA VASTA

Background

This chapter gives an overview of how Academy of Success (AS) Elementary School used an improvement science model to bridge the opportunity gap in literacy for K–2 students of color (SOCs) throughout the 2019–2020 academic year. AS was one of eight schools involved in the third cohort of the design improvement (DI) program, a state-funded program offered by the University of Denver to schools and districts throughout the state. The DI program is a 2-year professional learning model based on liberatory design, design thinking, and the core principles of improvement science (Bryk et al., 2015; Clifford, n.d.; Kelly & Kelly, 2013). The district and university co-constructed the program to reflect the needs and goals of the district. School design teams, made up of the principal and other key school-based teachers and staff, worked closely with an improvement coach to both learn the process and solve a problem of practice selected by the school team. The authors describe the DI process in more detail later in the chapter through a discussion of AS’s process.

The program began with a 2...