Tennessee Successful Schools

1
Tennessee Successful Schools

• A Project of the State Improvement Grant
• Susan M. Benner, Ed. D.
• Anne McGill-Franzen, Ph. D.
• Kandy Smith, Doctoral Candidate
• University of Tennessee
• LEAD Conference
• October 5, 2009

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Tennessee Successful Schools Project

• Context of State Improvement Grant and Higher
  Education Task Force
• High Need Elementary Schools
• Literacy Focus

3
State Improvement Grant

• Serving identified schools preschool through high
  school, SIG helps sustain important services to
  schools, administrators, teachers, and students
  and their families so that children and youth
  will achieve strong literacy and pre-literacy
  skills
• Literacy and SPED
• Transition of SIG to system-level RtI consulting
  and professional development

4
Selection of Successful Schools
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(No Transcript)
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Characteristics Participating Schools21
identified 14 participated

• 12 schools in towns
• 2 schools in cities
• Enrollment of schools between 300 and 750
• Grades Served
• 5 K-4 schools
• 3 K-5 schools
• 3 K-6 schools
• 3 K-8 schools

• Economically Disadvantaged (State Average 54.7)
• Below the state average 3 schools
• Above the state average 11 schools
• Lowest percentage in these schools 42
• Highest percentage in these schools 94 

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School Characteristics

• Percent MinorityState Average 32 minority
• Below the state average 12 schools
• At or above the state average 2 schools
• Lowest percentage in these schools 1
• Highest percentage in these schools 35

• Percent Special EducationState Average 15.4
• These schools (for 2007 only)
• Below the state average 9 schools
• At or above the state average 4 schools
• Lowest percentage in these schools 1
• Highest percentage in these schools 25

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Perspectives from the FieldRegional Focus Groups

• Administrators
• Classroom Teachers
• Special Education Teachers
• Parents

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Anecdotal or real-life experience of teachers is
always going to trump research.

• Nelson, Leffler, Hensen (2009)

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General Question

• To what do you attribute your schools success in
  literacy ?

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Probes

• How does your school overcome the challenges
  presented by the at-risk student population?
• Reflect on the use of student assessment data in
  the schools instructional planning?
• How do teachers collaborate in supporting
  students with special needs or struggling readers
  in your school?

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Probes Contd

• How does the leadership in your school support
  its success?
• Reflect on parent involvement in your school.
• Reflect on the importance of professional
  development in your schools success.
• What instructional practices in your school do
  you think contribute to your success?

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What do these successful schools look like?

• Unique paths to successthere is no universal key
  to success
• Each school has its own DNAEducation Trust, 2009
• Common patterns of effort that reflect the
  research base focused on schools that beat the
  odds
• Shared characteristics across schools throughout
  this and other research

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The Schools

• Elvis Presley
• James K. Polk
• Richard Boyd
• James Napier
• Cordell Hull
• Dolly Parton
• Wilma Rudolph

• Perry Wallace
• Casey Jones
• Nancy Ward
• Alvin C. York
• Pat Summit
• Roy Acuff
• Henry Foote

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Elvis Presley Elementary School2003 - 2007

• K-5 and K-4
• Average enrollment 727
• Rural
• 55 Economically Disadvantaged
• Racial Composition
• 70 White
• 21 African American
• 8 Hispanic
• Less than 2 Asian

• 2003
• Targeted assistance
• (AA and ED performance)
• 2004 - 2005
• School improvement
• (AA and ED performance)
• 2006 - 2007
• Good standing

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James K. Polk2003 - 2007

• PreK - 5
• Average enrollment 262
• Average 55 economically disadvantaged
• Predominately white
• Increase in Hispanic from 0 to 4.6
• African American approximately 4

• 2003--20 Below Proficient
• 2004 --13 Below Proficient
• 2005--4 Below Proficient
• 2006--7 Below Proficient
• 2007--6 Below Proficient
• Value-Added improved from C in 2003 to A from
  2005 to 2007

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Cordell Hull

• K - 8
• 328 average enrollment, gradually declining
• 98 economically disadvantaged
• High referral rates to DCS
• Children read better than parents
• Over 91 white, declining
• increase in Hispanic population from 3.3 to
  10.5
• African American relatively steady with average
  of 10.7

• 2003
• Targeted Assistance
• 2004 - 2007
• Good Standing
• Below Proficient ratings did not drop
• Value-Added went from F (2003) to A (2006-2007)

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Perry Wallace Elementary

• K-6
• Demographics
• 233
• Rural
• Economically Disadvantaged As high as 97.2, as
  low as 73.9
• 35 African American, 65 Caucasian
• .4 Hispanic

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Perry Wallace AYP Data

• 2003
• F in Academic Achievement F in Value-Added
• 2004
• F in Academic Achievement B in Value-Added
• 2005
• F in Academic Achievement B in Value-Added
• 2006
• D in Academic Achievement B in Value-Added
• 2007
• C in Academic Achievement A in Value-Added

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Perry Wallace Elementary

• In 2003, did not meet Federal Benchmark (X)
• With the only two subgroups in which there were
  more than 45 students
• All students
• Economically disadvantaged
• In two main categories
• Reading, Language Arts, Writing
• Math

21
Perry Wallace Elementary

• 1 of 74 Reading First schools in Tennessee
• Became a Reading First school in spring of 2004

22
James Napier

• 2003 low achieving school, targeted assistance
• 2004-2007 good standing
• Percentage of students below proficient on TCAP
  assessments in reading and language arts reduced
  by around 50 in all subgroups,
• Largest gains achieved with special education
  students
• 2003 70 of the students with disabilities were
  below proficient on the state assessment
• 2007, 25 below proficient

23
James Napier

• Academic achievement grades have risen from C in
  2003 to B in 2007.
• Value-added scores have risen from C in 2003 to A
  in 2007.

24
Richard Boyd
25
Dolly Parton Elementary

• Grades PreK-6
• Demographics (2007)
• 480 Students
• Rural
• 78 Economically Disadvantaged
• 95 White 3.8 African-American 1 Hispanic

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Dolly Parton Reading Grades

• 2003, 2004
• B in Academic Achievement F in Value-Added
• 2005
• B in Academic Achievement, A in Value-Added
• 2006, 2007
• A in Academic Achievement, A in Value-Added

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Percent of Students Proficient or Advanced in
Reading

• Dolly Parton

• State

• All Students
• 2003
• 2007 95
• Students with Disabilities
• 2003
• 2007 86

• All Students
• 2003 80
• 2007 90
• Students with Disabilities
• 2003
• 2007 70

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Wilma Rudolph
29
Casey Jones
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Overriding Forces

• External support and effective ongoing
  professional development
• Administrative leadership and standards
• Collaboration between teachers
• Grade-to-grade, SPED-to-regular, cross-grade
• Dedicated time for engaged instruction
• Connections between assessment and instruction,
  understanding use of data

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External Support and Effective Ongoing
Professional Development

• Perry Wallace
• Cordell Hull

• Overriding Forces

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Prevailing Theme Rigor/Fidelity

• What gets checked on gets done.
• Required Reading First Fidelity Checks
• Administrator, Literacy Leader, Cadre Trainer
• Tiers 1, 2, (Voyager) and 3
• Rigor logs
• MORT Missed Opportunities for Rigorous Teaching
• Student data/assessments for interventions

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Prevailing Theme Collaboration

• Leadership Team Collaboration
• Principal, Literacy Leaders, Interventionists
• Grade Level and Cross-Grade Level Collaboration
• Professional Development
• Shared Vision
• Full inclusion school
• School-wide behavior management (COMP)

34
Cordell Hull

• Resources and professional development in
  literacy education provided through Reading First
• Special and general education teachers
  participate in the same professional development

35
Learning to Change

• And I, I think, just explicit and systematic
  instruction has helped us so muchIve been there
  for 26 years, and I really thought I was a pretty
  good teacher. some of the things, I mean not
  everything, but, I mean, some of the things that
  Ive learned, and Im thinking, what was I
  thinking?
• The dinosaurs, honey, let me tell you it was
  hard you know these new ones that came in they
  could do it snap, snap, snapIt takes a long time
  to re-train yourself to do this. ButIve
  embraced it and really done well with it. And we
  teach the five components of reading

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Administrative Leadership and Standards

• James K. Polk
• James Napier

• Overriding Forces

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James K. Polk

• Strong principal focused on Student Performance
  Indicators
• Requires weekly lesson plan reviews
• Connections back to district office with
  assistance provided in data interpretation

38
James Napier Administrative Leadership and
Standards

• Special Education Teacher describes principal as
  very supportive in anything you want to try
• Gen Ed Teacher very much focused on SPIsmore
  focused on SPIs than on basals

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Collaboration between Teachers

• Dolly Parton
• Elvis Presley
• Perry Wallace
• James Napier

• Overriding Forces

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Dolly Parton Theme 1

• Access to grade level curriculum with support
  enabled lowest achieving students to improve
• The school moved to total inclusion for grades
  3-6
• The school became school-wide Title 1 thereby
  gaining two teachers, assistants, and
  instructional coach
• Title 1 teachers, assistants, and special
  education teachers push into classroom to support
  instruction during reading block

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Dolly Parton Theme 2

• Collaborative planning enabled adjustments to
  curriculum
• The school initiated daily common planning and
  weekly grade level meetings
• The instructional coach identified students for
  intervention based on mastery of SPIs
• The special education and Title 1 teachers and
  assistants consulted classroom teachers posted
  plans
• The special education teacher and classroom
  teachers monitored students progress on reading
  curriculum assessments

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Dolly Parton Theme 3

• Technology programs increased the time students
  spent reading
• Two computer labs and classroom mini-labs with
  Study Island and River Deep software supported 40
  minutes extra reading daily
• AR libraries are located in every classroom

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Most Important Element of School Success

• Were looking all the way down and we are
  beginning to see what we can do for all levels of
  students. And I think that comes through the
  collaboration that we now have with our
  teachers.They want to do the best job they can
  do and so they are looking for that
  communication.I think thats whats important.

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Inclusion Issues

• Im planning probably an hour and a half or two
  hours a day after school and at home just making
  sure I am prepared for the next day. And I am a
  veteran teacher.I love my intervention teachers,
  but I just dont understand why they dont have
  their own curriculum and why once kids are
  targeted they dont pull them out and do a
  program. Regular Education Teacher

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Elvis Presley Elementary

• Collaborating on Lesson Plans on grade level and
  across grade levels
• Sharing responsibility for raising student
  achievement
• pulled together as a school, collaborated,
  approached the problem as a school problem, lots
  of crossover meetings to get communication
  flowing, a lot of hard work, a lot of meetings
  after school, a lot of dedication on the part of
  teachers to understand and accept we were going
  to have to work early and stay late to accomplish
  our goals

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Perry Wallace Collaboration

• Leadership Team Collaboration
• Principal, Literacy Leaders, Interventionists
• Grade Level and Cross-Grade Level Collaboration
• Professional Development
• Shared Vision
• Full inclusion school
• School-wide behavior management (COMP)

47
James Napier Collaboration Between Teachers

• One of the best things thats happened in the
  last couple of years just like some of you have
  already said, we have grade-level time now where
  we all have the same planning time, and so we
  have the freedom to collaborate and talk to each
  other and help each other because weve found
  that thats probably the most successful thing
  thats happened in the last few years is getting
  to talk to other people. And, you know, we
  constantly have new teachers coming in, and it
  really helps them out a lot, too.

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Dedicated Time for Instruction

• Elvis Presley
• Cordell Hull
• James K. Polk
• Perry Wallace

• Overriding Forces

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Elvis Presley

• Protecting Instructional Time
• we look at our minutes of instruction and see
  how few we really have when you break it down,
  and we just cant waste it, so we start looking
  at what we can eliminate and then we take it
  back

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Cordell Hull

• Differentiating instruction
• I have probably like 30 minutes of whole group
  a day, and thats it. Everything else is small
  group, individual differentiated instruction.

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James K. Polk

• Full day Kindergarten
• Reading Coach
• 90-minute reading block
• Small group instruction in classrooms
• 30-minute pull outs for Tier 2, with Title One
  teacher, reading coach, or paraprofessional
• 60-minute pull outs for Tier 3
• Computer lab time with Successmaker in reading

52
Perry Wallace Rigor/Fidelity

• What gets checked on gets done.
• Required Reading First Fidelity Checks
• Administrator, Literacy Leader, Cadre Trainer
• Tiers 1, 2, (Voyager) and 3
• Rigor logs
• MORT Missed Opportunities for Rigorous Teaching
• Student data/assessments for interventions

53
Connections between Assessment and Instruction

• Elvis Presley
• James K. Polk
• James Napier

• Overriding Forces

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Elvis Presley

• Monitoring student achievement closely in
  disaggregated data sets with fluid small groups
  receiving intervention as needed
• making sure every child has a significant
  relationship in the building
• Setting academic goals with students and
  communicating them to parents
• Sharing responsibility for student achievement
  throughout the building

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James K. Polk

• We use data in basically three different ways.
  One we identify the students and the needs, where
  they need their improvement and we zero in on
  that student at the classroom level. We also use
  it with our teachers to identify those students
  plus to also look at their teaching. You can look
  at those test scores and say, Okay, I did a good
  job in this section. I need to work in this
  section and I always encouraged my teachers to
  share with each other, and then we also use it
  as a way to focus our entire school on our
  weaknesses and our strengths so that we could
  build from the data. You know the data was our
  guiding force.

56
James Napier Collaboration Between Teachers

• One of the best things thats happened in the
  last couple of years just like some of you have
  already said, we have grade-level time now where
  we all have the same planning time, and so we
  have the freedom to collaborate and talk to each
  other and help each other because weve found
  that thats probably the most successful thing
  thats happened in the last few years is getting
  to talk to other people. And, you know, we
  constantly have new teachers coming in, and it
  really helps them out a lot, too.

57
Themes Related to Research

• Students are spending more time engaged in
  reading and related literacy experiences.
• Increased engagement time leads to higher student
  achievement (Carroll, 1965 Fisher Berliner,
  1985).
• Collaboration (within and across grade levels
  between classroom teachers, specialists, and
  special education teachers) has increased.
• Effective collaboration improves achievement
  outcomes for at-risk students (Snow, Burns
  Griffin, 1998).

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Themes Related to Research

• There is an increased emphasis on using
  assessment data to plan instruction.
• Effective instruction requires matching
  curriculum to learners level of readiness
  (Vygotsky, 1978 Walpole McKenna, 2006).
• In some schools, inclusion of most special
  education students is on the increase.
• Some studies indicate that inclusion results in
  higher student achievement, more positive student
  outcomes and higher teacher expectations (Idol,
  2006 Ritter, Michel Irby, 1999)

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Implications for Practice

• Inclusion Practices
• Coordination of curricular materials across
  regular and special education
• Professionals share responsibility for planning
  and instruction
• .
• .

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Lingering Questions

• Whose thinking is privileged?
• How are planning and teaching responsibilities
  distributed across classroom teachers, special
  education and Title 1 teachers, instructional
  coaches, and assistants?
• How is classroom instruction differentiated?
• How is complex push-in scheduling managed?
• Is there an opportunity cost with increased use
  of technology software?
• How do we interpret TCAP reading scores when
  reading portions of the test are read to many TN
  students?

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References

• Booker, K. C., Invernizzi, M. A., McCormick, M.
  (2007). Kiss your brain A closer look at
  flourishing literacy gains in impoverished
  elementary school. Reading Research and
  Instruction, 46(4), 315-339.
• Caroll, J. B. (1963). A model for school
  learning. Teachers College Record, 64, 723-733.
• Crawford, E., Torgesen, J. (2007, November).
  Teaching all students to read practices from
  schools with strong reading intervention
  outcomes. Retrieved February 15, 2009, from
  http//www.fcrr.org
• Fisher, C. W., Berliner, D. C. (1985).
  Perspectives on instructional time. New York
  Longman.

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References

• Idol, L. (2006). Toward inclusion of special
  education students in general education A
  program evaluation of eight schools. Remedial and
  Special Education, 27, 77-94.
• Nelson, S., Leffler, J., Hensen, B. (2009).
  Toward a research agenda for understanding and
  improving the use of research evidence. Portland,
  OR Northwest Regional Education Laboratory.
• Ritter, C.L., Michel, C.S., Irby, B. (1999).
• Concerning inclusion Perceptions of middle
  school students, their parents, and teachers.
  Rural Special Education Quarterly, 18(2), 10-16.

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References

• Snow, C. E., Burns, M. S., Griffin, P. (Eds.).
  (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young
  children. Washington, DC National Academy Press.
• Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind and society The
  development of higher order mental processes.
  Cambridge, MA Harvard University Press.
• Walpole, S., McKenna, M. C. (2006). The role of
  informal reading inventories in assessing word
  recognition. The Reading Teacher, 592-594.

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Seven Common Traits Observed in Successful
Schools

• Strong Leadership
• Positive Belief and Teacher Dedication
• Data Utilization and Analysis
• Effective Scheduling
• Professional Development
• Scientifically Based Intervention Programs
• Parent Involvement

(Crawford Torgesen, 2007)
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Flourishing literacy gains in impoverished
elementary school

• Detailed case studies of four exceptional schools
• Themes common to all four school
• Administration and teacher knowledge and training
• Strong internal and external community
• Commanding leadership and thorough proper
  monitoring
• What gets checked on gets done

(Booker, Invernizzi, McCormick, 2007)