Five Levers to Improve Learning

How to Prioritize for Powerful Results in Your School

Tony Frontier, James Rickabaugh

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781416617648
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

Why have decades of school reform had so little measurable effect on student achievement? Why have billions of dollars spent on technology, small-school initiatives, and school-choice options failed to improve our schools?

Too often, educators are simply pulling the wrong levers, say Tony Frontier and James Rickabaugh. They explain that the various components of schooling fall into five categories: structure, sample, standards, strategy, and self. Understanding how these five "levers" work--and their relative power--can help unlock the potential for lasting improvements in teaching and learning.

The authors show readers that changes to structure and sample (how schools are organized and how students are grouped) will not be effective without changes to standards (expectations for student learning), strategy (instructional strategies to engage students in meaningful learning), and self (the set of beliefs teachers and students have about their capacity to be effective).

At the heart of this book is a simple message for teachers, administrators, board members, and education policymakers at all levels: the key to success is not doing more work and making more changes, but doing the right work, and making the right changes.

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Chapter 1

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Lever 1: Structure

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Vignette 1: Traditional or Block Schedule?

Frustrated with levels of achievement and attuned to teachers' concerns that kids are disengaged from their learning, a principal decides to implement a block schedule. A study committee is formed to make recommendations for either an A/B block schedule or a 4×4 block schedule. The committee convenes and six months later offers a recommendation for the 4×4 option. On the night of the initial hearing at a school board meeting, a number of parents come forward to speak against the plan. They explain that a neighboring community tried a block schedule, which resulted in a major change in the schedule for two years, followed by a reversion to the traditional schedule a few years later. A teacher representative expresses concerns about the impact of the change on planning time for some teachers. Almost two years after the principal's initial efforts, the community and the board are still discussing and debating the new schedule. It has become a divisive matter (prompting frequent letters to the editor in the community newspaper and argumentative exchanges via blog posts) and the central issue of the upcoming school board election.

Vignette 2: One-to-One Computing

In an attempt to ensure that every child is adequately prepared for the 21st century, a district undertakes an initiative to provide every student with a laptop computer. With a high level of community support, the district begins a multiyear process to purchase 5,000 laptops. The following school year it distributes computers at four pilot sites. Within a month, teachers are able to provide abundant anecdotal evidence that technology gaps among students of different economic groups have been largely addressed. More students can practice computer skills and have access to a broader range of academic resources than in the past. However, two years into the initiative, student achievement scores are unchanged, as are achievement gaps on statewide accountability tests between students of different economic groups. Several board members are concerned about the initial results and ask administrators for formal documentation that the investment is improving student achievement before continuing with the next phases of purchase and implementation.

Structure: Definition, Misconception, and Opportunity

Definition: Structure includes logistical components such as schedules, staffing, tools, and administrative processes.

Structural changes at the building level could include a shift to a block schedule; at the district level they could include a shift to smaller high schools; at a macro level they could include implementation of a voucher or choice system, or a districtwide move to year-round schooling. Changing structure is highly visible, and often highly political, but this type of change is enticing because it is apparent for all stakeholders and often can be articulated in a linear planning process that includes specific dates for implementation.

Misconception: Focusing on a change in structure results in an improved learning environment.

If all you knew about a school was that it used block scheduling or had small class sizes, what could you tell about the quality of that school? What if you knew it was a charter school or a small high school? Time and again, research shows little or no difference in student learning based on structure (Bifulco & Ladd, 2006; Milesi & Gamoran, 2006), and those studies that do find a significant effect for structural interventions often attribute the gains in student learning to changes in classroom practice associated with the change in structure—not the structure itself (Patall, Cooper, & Allen, 2010; Penuel, 2006). Structure tells us nothing about the quality of the processes, practices, and relationships at the classroom level where learning occurs.

Opportunity: When thinking about structure, form should follow function.

Structure is related to conditions for learning but rarely has any effect on student learning. Changing school structure results in increased student learning only under four conditions: when it (1) supports the use of more effective instructional strategies, (2) allows for more responsive use of strategies to benefit specific groups of students, (3) removes barriers in the way of learning opportunities for students or commitments among staff to collaborate on behalf of student learning, or (4) empowers staff and students to better realize their capacity to teach and learn.

The Lure of Structural Change

We contend that there are two reasons why structural change is so enticing. Both are rooted in powerful mental models of where leadership should exert effort to gain leverage in creating change. The first reason is related to beliefs about standardization, as exemplified by the persistence of an assembly-line mentality among many educators; the second is related to beliefs about change that pay too little attention to the complex human dimension that is involved.

From Teachers as Artisans to Schools as Assembly Lines

In the mid-1800s, the one-room schoolhouse was the dominant structure of education in rural areas of the United States. Given a building with a single classroom and a teacher, small towns and rural areas could educate a group of children across a wide range of ages. The role of the teacher was analogous to that of an artisan; she would work with each student or small groups of students, tending to each component of their development over an extended period of time until the final product emerged. Students, too, were tapped to support the learning of other students across grades and achievement levels.

The one-room schoolhouse was replaced by a 20th century model of schooling that called for greater efficiency through specialization. This model is analogous to the factory assembly line in terms of the underlying assumptions related to technical and mechanical components of efficiency. Just as a factory could be tooled to produce a complex mechanical product by allowing line workers to specialize in a specific portion of the production process, a school could produce an educated student by allowing teachers to specialize in a specific portion of the educative process. As students "rolled through" their schooling experience, specialists would add various parts or components along the way. If all went as planned, students would emerge at the end of the line as finished products.

The impact of the assembly line on how we think about schooling cannot be overstated. The intent was to remove the human factor from the manufacturing process. Standardization, efficiency, and automaticity drove innovation and practice. The very definition of an effective manufacturing process was that it could be staffed by almost anyone who had received a minimal amount of training and still produce a uniform product. If management wanted to change the product that came off the line—for example, to produce a new model of an automobile—significant structural changes needed to occur first. Changes in the structure of the line resulted in a change in the manufacturing process, which resulted in a different product. A direct cause-and-effect relationship linked each of these steps. Retooling the line meant an outside group would come in and undertake the necessary technical changes. Workers then came back in and engaged in processes and tasks similar to those they had used in the past, yet an entirely different product would roll off the line. Although some minor adjustments may have been necessary by the workers, the time, effort, and energy invested in retooling the line resulted in the new, desired product—every time. In other words, leveraging the structure of the manufacturing process resulted in an extremely efficient change in outcomes.

Assembly-Line Thinking and the Limits of Structural Change

Obviously schools are not factories, and children are not products. Yet many educators and policymakers have an assembly-line mentality when they think about processes and outcomes related to student learning. Consider the case of the Global Prosperity Academy—the small-school restructuring effort described in the introduction to this book. In an attempt to create new outcomes for students, the district pulled on the structural lever to get different results. But unlike structural changes to the assembly line that are designed to be independent of human factors, each of these changes at the school will be effective only if teachers and students interact with one another in different ways because of the structural change. Through the lens of the five levers, we can gain a deeper understanding of the assumptions and actions that influenced the process and the eventual outcome exemplified by the Global Prosperity Academy:

• The "assembly line" was retooled from a larger school to a smaller school, yet a structural shift to a smaller school will have an effect on student learning only if teachers use the shift to create samples and implement strategies that capitalize on personalized and customized opportunities for teaching and learning.
• The report card was retooled from a traditional approach to a standards-based approach. The switch was merely a structural change in the reporting process; the effect of a standards-based report card is accelerated or limited by the extent to which it supports a standards-based system of teaching and learning. Such a system would include powerful, research-supported practices of (1) clearly articulating standards in student-friendly language, (2) using assessment formatively as a strategy to ensure developmental feedback and goal setting to help students learn, and (3) ensuring students develop a sense of self-agency by helping them connect the relationship between their effort and resultant learning (Stiggins, 2004). Further, when teachers help students to see the purpose and usefulness of what they are asked to learn, show them how to achieve mastery, and give them a measure of autonomy in how they will learn, students are more likely to commit to learning and to respond to a grading approach that is aligned with their effort and the progress they achieve.
• Textbooks were retooled as laptops, yet a structural shift from textbooks to laptops has little effect on student learning unless teachers have a firm grasp of how to use strategies that support technology as an instructional and learning tool and believe in the efficacy of using digital tools to improve student learning (Mouza, 2008).

As in the age-old riddle about the tree falling in the forest, we must ask ourselves the following question: If we've engaged in significant change efforts but students don't have a significantly different learning experience, has anything really changed? In the next sections we consider just a few examples of structural changes that have received a lot of attention in recent years—acquisition of technology, school choice, and increased seat time—and place those components into a broader context through the five-lever framework.

Technology as a Structural Lever

Over the past three decades, schools and districts have spent billions of dollars on technology. Early iterations included having students use computers for drill and practice on skills. Computers have been presented as a way to increase student engagement, and the Internet was seen as a way to liberate students from textbooks and give them access to the world's knowledge. Some even thought that computers and other technology tools would replace teachers.

Almost every school and school system has invested in building the technology skills of teachers with the hope that their growing competence would mean greater integration of technology into instruction and increases in student learning. Technologies such as interactive whiteboards have been a favorite focus of parent groups and other fund-raising organizations, and more recently, many school districts and some states have invested in laptop computers for every student, betting that if students have greater access to technology, they will learn more and teachers will more completely transform their instructional practices to take advantage of technology tools. For many people, virtual and blended instruction has been the approach of choice to deliver on the promise of technology to increase student engagement and improve learning.

Faulty Assumptions About Technology and Learning

Unfortunately, despite the billions spent on technology, there is little evidence that the investment has paid off in a more powerful manner than most other interventions (Tamim, Bernard, Barokhovski, Abrami, & Schmid, 2011). The belief in technology as a driver for education reform rests on several assumptions: technology will increase the efficiency of instruction and thus lead to more learning; technology will make instruction more effective or at least more engaging; and giving students greater access to technology will result in their having greater ownership of their learning and thus better outcomes. Each of these assumptions seems reasonable, but technology has not been proven to have the intended impact.

It is correct that technology has increased efficiency in some areas of school operation. A wide array of administrative tasks, from budget management and library media organization to student attendance, has become more efficient, but these processes are not directly connected to student learning. Technology has enabled teachers to develop and store lessons and related documents digitally, thus making retrieval and updating more efficient; but again, these changes do not, by themselves, increase student performance.

Technology's role in making instruction more effective and engaging is also questionable. Lecture remains the most common instructional delivery mode in the United States. Lessons may be supported by PowerPoint presentations and digitally stored videos, but these approaches retain and depend on the legacy instructional model. Without changes in the strategies teachers use to deliver and support instruction, too often technology simply changes the platform for instruction, not the instruction itself. Consequently, the results have not changed. At the extremes are teachers who use interactive whiteboards in the same way they once used chalkboards, or computers as a means for students to complete worksheets, but now with a digital platform. Obviously, deploying technology in this manner holds little potential for increased student learning.

Similarly, the assumption that giving students their own technology will increase ownership of learning and result in increased performance misses the point. Ownership of learning—which is, indeed, important if we want to significantly raise student performance—is embedded not in the technology itself but in the processes and strategies that allow students to take full advantage of technology and to exercise a measure of control over what, how, and where they will learn. If we operate within a system of legacy formats and traditional expectations—so that students are expected to comply in response to problems teachers develop and to complete tasks generated without consideration for their interests, current level of learning, and readiness for new learning challenges—it should not be a surprise that they do not necessarily feel ownership of learning.

It is not necessarily the case that technology lacks the potential to increase student learning. Examples of technology dramatically transforming and elevating the performance of other organizations and industries are many. However, the role technology has played in the transformation elsewhere is very different from what has happened in education. Technology was not considered a tool for efficiency alone or a means to better engage the client, although these elements often are by-products of the transformation. The transforming role of technology in other enterprises has been to facilitate and support deep rethinking and reorienting of the core work (think Amazon.com as compared to traditional bookstores). Technology made transformation possible. It was not seen as a tool to be integrated into work performed in much the same way it had been done in the past.

Moving from Transactional to Transformational Use of Technology

Realizing technology's promise will require rethinking and redesigning the intersection of teaching and learning to maximize the benefits it has to offer. In its current iteration, technology is primarily treated as a structural solution, driven by the notion that by changing structure we will change core behaviors. Technology holds the potential to support other efforts but does not offer high leverage for change by itself. As Rana Tamim and her colleagues (2011) conclude in their meta-analysis of 40 years of research on the impact of technology on student learning,

It is arguable that it is aspects of the goals of instruction, pedagogy, teacher effectiveness, subject matter, age level, fidelity of technology implementation, and possibly other factors that may represent more powerful influences on effect sizes than the nature of the technology intervention. (p. 14)

The leverage in unleashing the power of technology lies in first developing a set of strategies that hold the potential to transform the way we think about and approach education and learning in the United States. We need to move beyond the transactional, lock-step approach that assumes 180 days of seat time equals one year's growth in learning. A system that is not designed or capable of responding to individual learning needs and readiness too often holds some students back while pushing others forward before they have learned core skills and strategies. We need a system that is customized to the point where engagement, agency, flexibility, and success are built in from the beginning rather than withheld until students fail, at which point we then attempt to remediate or otherwise intervene—a strategy that too often falls short and sends a message to learners that they are flawed.

When educators redesign teaching and learning to position the learner at the center and customize the instructional approach to meet learners' needs, we will be able to employ technology to support learning in ways that unleash potential; that ensure that learners are ...