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Administrators grapple with a host of forces demanding a break from business as usual

The school district-long the fundamental unit overseeing public education for some 50 million American children-is an institution in flux.

Like a landmark building that keeps its facade while undergoing massive renovation, most of the nation's more-than 13,000 districts hold to a familiar structure even as they evolve in response to economic, demographic, and educational pressures.

The basic contours remain familiar: schools clustered into administrative groups based on geographic boundaries; hiring, curriculum, and infrastructure needs overseen by a central office; an overall entity run by a superintendent and governed by an elected or appointed school board.

But in recent years, the shape of that unit-including in some of the nation's largest districts-has begun to shift. Budget crises, state and federal demands for academic improvement, and the rise of market-based approaches to running schools are spurring new models of governance and internal administration.

Some of the most radical changes can be seen in big districts with deep and long-standing challenges:

* Post-Hurricane-Katrina New Orleans, where Louisiana's Recovery School District and charter school operators run most of the schools.

* New York City and Chicago, both shaken up under mayoral control.

* Memphis, Tenn., where state-run schools vie with charters and regular city schools in a district that recently merged with its suburban neighbor. ("Memphis Schools on the Hot Seat Amid Rival Management Strategies," this issue.)

Broad Sweep

The changes are not limited to the biggest cities. York, Pa., officials considered, but rejected, a New Orleans-style approach to makeover. Fulton County is Georgia's largest "charter district," which allows it the flexibility to drop some state regulatory requirements in return for creating strict accountability standards. The Paradise Valley district in Arizona-the most affluent community in the metropolitan Phoenix area-converted some of its elementary schools to charters to take advantage of a state law that gives more per-pupil funding to charter schools.

"There has been a diversification of public education, particularly in cities, with the rise of educational management and charter organizations and the like," said Michael D. Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools. "Regular districts feel enormous pressure to improve-maybe more pressure than any institution, public or private, in the nation."

And administrators in long-stable districts, whether they be in suburban, small-town, or rural areas, are not immune from anxieties from developments such as the push for common academic standards, teacher evaluations and school accountability tied to test scores, and state and federal budget cuts.

"I've been doing this for 30 years, and I can't recall a time in my career when there were more changes happening at the same time. It's a busy time, and it's hard work," said David A. Cox, the superintendent of the Allegany County school district in Cumberland, Md.

Riding the Current

-Swikar Patel/Education Week

People have been asking questions about district governance for quite some time, "but it's no longer an academic debate," said Robin Lake, the director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a Seattle-based research organization under the University of Washington.

Some patterns are emerging, in her view.

"The first is one governing entity-a district creating a portfolio [of schools], like in Denver," where the district might oversee charter schools, regular schools, or other public school options, she said. "The second is a place with two main [governing] entities, like Indianapolis or [the District of Columbia], where the mayor or, in D.C., the charter board, is chartering schools and [the] district's getting smaller. It's straight-up competition.

"And then there are places with multiple chartering authorities and governing agencies, like Milwaukee, or Cleveland, or Detroit," which Ms. Lake describes as the "crazy quilt" model of governance.

Cities in a few states have even crazier quilts.

In addition to empowering multiple charter authorizers, Michigan, Louisiana, and Tennessee all operate state-run districts with responsibility for low-performing schools, an authority now given to the state of Virginia, too.

In Detroit, the public school district is governed by a state-appointed emergency manager, while the separate state-run Education Achievement Authority runs a small group of schools, and more than 40 percent of students attend charter schools. The Detroit school board plays only an advisory role.

The responsibility for coordinating the various publicly funded schools and the long-term financial implications are anything but clear.

"That's the challenge of governance in the future," Ms. Lake said. Issues include "who's responsible for making those kind of oversight decisions-and making sure the system is rational-for parents who want to enroll their kid, but have to apply for 20 different schools to find something; for special education; even just for teachers who want to find jobs." The sheer variety of models can pose a leadership challenge.

"There's a variability and complexity about how districts, especially reform districts, are being organized. It's no longer standardized," said Andrés A. Alonso, who served as CEO of Baltimore's 85,000-student public school system for six years before leaving last year. "Running such a complicated system takes an enormous understanding of the local context."

Takeover Repercussions

There is a fresh array of issues in cases where the district itself is being replaced by state control or by another model.

Takeovers are hardly a new phenomenon: New Jersey, for example, has been running the Jersey City, Newark, and Paterson public school systems for almost 20 years, and just last year took over the beleaguered Camden district as well.

Twelve years ago, severe budget woes and dismal academic performance prompted the state of Pennsylvania to take control of the Philadelphia school system, which enrolled 200,000 students at the time. That takeover brought sweeping changes to the district that included handing over the operations of more than 40 low-performing schools to private nonprofits and for-profit entities.

What's more, in an era of high-stakes accountability for low-performing schools, a small but growing number of states have carved out districts of their own to oversee the schools in most need of improvement. Perhaps the most prominent example is Louisiana's Recovery School District, which includes, but is not limited to, New Orleans' troubled system.

"When the district goes away, how can you build a system that takes care of all of the pieces that are important-expulsion, enrollment, facilities management-the invisible architecture of a school system?" asked Andy Smarick, a partner at Bellwether Education Partners, a Washington nonprofit consulting firm, and a former deputy commissioner of education in New Jersey.

In New Orleans, the state-run school district eventually established a consistent expulsion policy, but only after it noticed that schools were disciplining students differently and that some students were dropping out as a result.

Changing From Within

Concerns have been raised about the more-dramatic shifts in governance.

Charter schools and state-run districts are often not directly accountable to elected boards. Similarly, state takeovers often remove schools from the authority of an elected board.

-Swikar Patel/Education Week

Many of those changes have taken place in cities with large numbers of public school students from traditionally disenfranchised communities.

"We shouldn't treat school districts as sacred," said Kevin G. Welner, the director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who has criticized what he sees as market-based school choice policies. "But we shouldn't discard the benefit of [the] district as a vehicle for local democratic voice. That's how people in a community jointly express their wishes for their local school system, and, of course, local school systems are the heart of many communities."

With state takeovers and the growth of charter-management organizations without local boards, "decisions about local schools are now being made in a nondemocratic way by people far from the community, who are responding to market incentives that may not be well-aligned with the interests of the most vulnerable children in the community," Mr. Welner said.

School-Level Autonomy

Even in stable districts, where the traditional structure remains intact, momentum continues toward reducing the role of the central office-shifting responsibility toward allowing principals, rather than the central office, to hire teachers, for instance.

Changes are being seen in the "traditional service delivery, which is top-down, dominated by the appointed superintendent," said Kenneth Wong, a professor of education policy at Brown University, in Providence, R.I.

In that city, for example, the teachers' union and school district created a 501(c)3 organization-called United Providence!-that now is responsible for several previously low-performing schools.

Many urban districts have responded to the school-level autonomy in charter schools by giving their own schools similar autonomy.

"If you look at the ingredients of autonomy-you don't have to use the word 'charter' to make that happen," said Jean-Claude Brizard, a former CEO of the 400,000-student Chicago district, who now works at the College Board's Washington office. "It could be done in other structures."

In the Memphis area, for instance, the combined Shelby County-Memphis district has given hiring and budget autonomy to schools in a 13-school "innovation zone" aimed at improving low-performing schools.

In Baltimore, "we took a leap to give schools enormous autonomy in decisionmaking and created fair student funding," said Mr. Alonso, the former CEO. "There was an enormous shift in mind-set about holding on to kids [in the face of a growing charter sector], and we saw an early turnaround of the decline in enrollment."

And in the 141,000-student Charlotte-Mecklenburg district in North Carolina, a number of local philanthropies partnered to support a corridor of schools in West Charlotte on a project in which each of the schools has been granted more autonomy.

Accountability and Efficiency

Reducing the size of a central office or shifting the way a district does business is not an easy lift.

In Indianapolis, where the district has considered various responses to state intervention and a growing charter sector, "when you really have to make those difficult decisions about changing structure, people may be losing jobs," said Diane Arnold, the chairwoman of the school board. Indianapolis, for example, endured budget cuts that led to the loss of administrator and teacher jobs. "It's easy to talk the talk-much easier."

Moreover, districts are struggling to find ways to cope with the head-on challenge of a burgeoning charter school sector, which can siphon off both students and their per-pupil dollars in ways that have profound effects on districts' coffers and their educational programs. ("Charters Add Competitive Twist to District-Governance Puzzle," this issue.)

To try to combat such concerns in Denver, Superintendent Tom Boasberg said that "with new charters, we have been clear: We're all public schools, we all play by the same rules." More of the district's charter schools have neighborhood boundaries, which helps reduce accusations that they "cream" students who are somehow easier to educate from the regular public school system.

In Detroit, where the regular school district's enrollment of 50,000 is less than one-third of where it was 15 years ago and where more than two-fifths of students attend charter schools, "we've literally created marketing plans for each school," said Steven Wasko, the district's assistant superintendent for community relations.

Mr. Wasko, said, for instance, that while the district has an operational relationship with the state-run Education Achievement Authority, "we are having to view it as competition." The district hired a demographer to predict enrollment trends.

While some of these changes have been occurring on the ground, the overall sense is that there has not been a coordinated conversation at the state or national level about how to cope with them.

Mark A. Elgart, the president of Advance Education, a Georgia-based organization that accredits schools, said that the national conversation has not caught up with reality in many districts.

"We hear principals saying external activities like virtual classes are affecting planning, programming, and policies," he said. "We haven't had the level of conversations nationally and otherwise about how to ensure equity as we have a deepening of the trends toward personalization and market-driven reform."

CLOSE × - Matthew Staver/Bloomberg/Getty-File
Enrollment: 84,000
Character: Urban
Demographics: 58 percent Hispanic; 20 percent white; 15 percent African-American; 3 percent Asian; 1 percent American Indian; 3 percent other. About 72 percent of students qualify for free and reduced-price meals; 35 percent are English-language learners; and 10 percent qualify for special education.
Governance: Elected school board, appointed superintendent
Schools: 143
Charters: 42

CLOSE × CLOSE × CLOSE × CLOSE ×

Vol. 33, Issue 16, Pages 4-9

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School Systems Shake Up Organizational Model

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The school district-long the fundamental unit overseeing public education for some 50 million American children-is an institution in flux. Like a landmark building that keeps its facade while undergoing massive renovation, most of the nation's more-than 13,000 districts hold to a familiar structure even as they evolve in response to economic, demographic, and educational pressures.

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October 2009 | Volume 67 | Number 2
Developing School Leaders Pages 22-27

William Parrett and Kathleen Budge

Two thousand miles to the east, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, 341 elementary students parade through the impoverished neighborhood surrounding Dayton's Bluff Elementary School. They're celebrating having accomplished their goal of reading a million words in the past year. "Twenty-five books read this year by each of our students, and we're letting our community know about it!" proudly proclaims Principal Andrew Collins, who leads the K-6 march with a bullhorn, while the students follow with noisemakers and banners.

Dayton's Bluff has risen from being the lowest-performing elementary school in Saint Paul-and one of the lowest-performing in Minnesota-to becoming a school in which nearly 70 percent of students meet or surpass state standards in reading and 75 percent meet or surpass state standards in math.

From Low- to High-Performing

These schools demonstrate that it's possible not only to reverse historic trends of underachievement but also to sustain their gains. So how did they do it?

Leaders in schools like Granger and Dayton's Bluff began their remarkable turnarounds by making tough calls-and many of those decisions were about how to use resources. The budget in a high-performing, high-poverty school is a moral document, reflective of the school's beliefs about the conditions necessary to sustain success for all students and the adults who serve them. As budgets constrict, school leaders maintain their success by working collaboratively with staff to stay focused on the priorities that guide their work. They know that cuts in critical resources can jeopardize their hard-won gains. Countering these challenges becomes their top leadership priority.

On the basis of a growing body of knowledge that has emerged from the research on school effects (Teddlie & Stringfield, 1993), coupled with more recent analyses of strategies that have guided hundreds of schools in their successful efforts to reverse historic trends of underachievement (Barr & Parrett, 2006; Calkins, Guenther, Belfiore, & Lash, 2007; Chenowith, 2007; Duke, 2007), we initiated a study seeking to understand how school leaders' actions influence a turnaround in low-performing schools.

In addition to Granger High and Dayton's Bluff, we visited four other high-performing/high-poverty schools: Taft Elementary in Boise, Idaho; P.S./M.S. 124, an elementary school in Queens, New York; Lapwai Elementary on the Nez Perce Reservation in northern Idaho; and Port Chester Middle School in Port Chester, New York. Despite high levels of poverty in their communities, these schools have sustained improvements on multiple measures of student success (achievement test scores, graduation rates, attendance rates, and behavior measures); and national and state organizations have recognized and honored them for their achievements.

An important message reverberates from these successes: A school can indeed overcome the powerful and pervasive effects of poverty on a student's learning. Sustained improvements usually began with an individual or a small group of leaders committed to equity and the goal of successfully teaching every student.

Asking the Right Questions

The economic downturn and the recent passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act confront many district and school leaders with the confounding paradox of managing both recession-driven budget cuts and new stimulus funding intended to improve the achievement of underserved students.

Leaders in high-performing/high-poverty schools begin by asking questions. The questions leaders ask fall into three interrelated domains: (1) building the necessary leadership capacity; (2) focusing the staff's everyday core work on student, professional, and system learning; and (3) creating and fostering a safe, healthy, and supportive learning environment for all. In tough times like these, their questions may provide valuable guidance for other school leaders facing their own challenges and opportunities.

Questions About Leadership
Do we have a data system that works for classroom and school leaders?
All schools in the study have implemented data systems to guide their work. In fact, using data-based decision making was one of the two most common explanations offered for the schools' success. (The other was fostering caring relationships.)

Professional development in using data-based decision making, coupled with establishing measurable goals and developing aggressive time lines to achieve them, is vital to sustaining Lapwai Elementary's success. Concerned about the quality and level of teacher-parent communications, Lapwai staff members decided to set a schoolwide goal to have weekly contacts with families. They held themselves accountable by reporting their contacts to the principal, Teri Wagner, who shared the data at the district's board of trustees meetings.
Are we eliminating policies and practices that manufacture low achievement?
Research on the negative effects of low expectations, inequitable funding, retention, tracking, and mis-assignment to special education are well documented. All the schools studied confronted such policies and practices.

When Richard Esparza came to Granger High as principal 10 years ago, changing beliefs about students' potential was foundational to all the other actions he took. He began by modeling his belief in students' ability to meet high academic standards and by stating that he expected the faculty to believe the same thing. He worked with teachers to eliminate a bell-curve mentality-accepting that some students will fail-and a policy of one-chance testing. Instead, students who fall below a C in their coursework are now required to get extra help, and they can retake tests until they earn a C or better.
Have we extended learning time for underachieving students?
Underachieving students living in poverty require more instructional time to catch up to their higher-achieving peers. All high-performing/high-poverty schools find a way to extend learning time for students who need it. The schools offer a blend of before- and after-school tutoring, weekend and vacation catch-up sessions, summer school and full-day kindergarten, and sheltered classroom support. At Queens's P.S./M.S. 124, for example, school is in session "pretty much five and a half days per week," according to principal Valarie Lewis. On Saturday mornings, middle school students who need to catch up attend small learning academies.
Have we reorganized time to better support professional learning?
Eighty percent of a district's or school's budget is typically allocated toward personnel; becoming a high-performing school therefore requires making significant investments in people. Schools must find their own ways to reorganize time to support the development of communities of practice (Wenger, 1998). They can repurpose time traditionally set aside for faculty meetings, reorganize the schedule to accommodate common planning time, bank time for professional development, or locate funds for ongoing release time.

At Dayton's Bluff Elementary, grade-level teams of teachers use release time to review classroom-based assessment data, discuss instructional strategies, and plan for each upcoming six-week period. As teachers discuss individual students' performance and specific teaching strategies, the school's literacy coach and a district-level instructional coach look on and take part. By participating in collaborative planning sessions, coaches are better able to provide just-in-time support.

Questions About Learning
Does our instructional framework guide curriculum, teaching, assessment, and the learning climate?
Leaders in the schools we studied credit much of their success to a high level of instructional program coherence. Several of the schools began their improvement efforts by adopting a comprehensive school reform model. For example, P.S./M.S. 124 selected Core Knowledge, whose framework emphasizes building students' knowledge base in world history, geography, civics, literature, science, art, and music.

Schools customized the reform models to better fit their needs. Finding the content to be "too Eurocentric," teachers at P.S./M.S. 124 have added content relating to Africa, Latin America, and Asia. In addition, they have incorporated knowledge about the various ethnicities and cultures represented in their student body.
Do we have common assessments, and do we embrace assessment literacy?
High-performing/high-poverty schools establish clear learning targets and engage their students in activities that help them acquire assessment literacy. These activities include selecting individual learning benchmarks, compiling portfolios, making public presentations of work, completing reflective revisions, and participating in student-led conferences.

Leaders in the Lapwai School District use professional learning time to focus on developing assessment literacy and common classroom-based assessments. At Granger High, the initiation of student-led conferences not only improved students' understanding of their own learning, but also significantly improved parents' attendance rates at their child's conferences.
Are all students proficient in reading?
Second only to safety, ensuring that all students develop literacy skills became a priority in most of the schools we studied. Designing a comprehensive approach to reading improvement may entail conducting an analysis of students' unique needs (for example, those of English language learners); developing an understanding of the influence of poverty on reading achievement (Neuman, 2008); and examining the research base, especially concerning adolescent literacy (see Slavin, Cheung, Groff, & Lake, 2008).

All teachers at Port Chester Middle School consider themselves to be English language arts teachers. To sell this idea, school leaders began by helping teachers understand that students' inability to read proficiently was a significant barrier to learning the content the teachers were attempting to teach. Now all teachers teach 24 bundled key reading and writing skills.
Do we provide targeted interventions?
The schools we studied use data to identify students who need before-, during-, and after-school small-group and individual tutoring; self-paced interventions using technology; one-on-one academic advising and coaching; homework support; or additional assessment time.

Taft Elementary in Idaho focuses on developing literacy skills early. The school offers full-day kindergarten and keeps class sizes small. In addition to the district-adopted reading program, Taft assesses the proficiency of all students and, if necessary, assigns students to one of three different reading interventions that provide different approaches to literacy learning.

Questions About the Learning Environment
Is our school safe?
In all the schools studied, particularly the secondary schools, leaders emphasized safety for students and staff as a prerequisite for learning. At Port Chester Middle School, principal Carmen Macchia explained, "In the beginning ... kids would hold their bladders all day out of fear of what might happen to them in the bathrooms." The school established structures, such as the frequent presence of school staff in bathrooms and hallways, to help students become accountable for their actions. The staff's expectations and modeling of appropriate behavior and other good citizenship practices encouraged students to help promote school safety, which authentically contributed to changing students' perspectives from one of "ratting out" their friends to one of civic responsibility to their school.
Do we understand the influence of poverty on student learning?
Although the concept of a culture of poverty has been refuted (Gorski, 2008), too many educators continue to believe that people who live in poverty share a common set of beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors (such as a poor work ethic, alcohol or drug abuse, and apathy toward school). To counter these myths, leaders in the schools we studied use data and research to support high expectations of students. An ethos of professional accountability for learning is tangible in all the participating schools, in contrast to schools that blame students and families for poor achievement.

When Taft Elementary School welcomed more than 60 refugee students one year from 16 different countries, principal Susan Williamson knew the importance of developing an understanding of the cultural and socioeconomic characteristics of the refugee students' families (Budge & Parrett, 2009). Enlisting the help of a former refugee whom the refugee community trusted, Susan and a small team of teacher leaders conducted multiple visits to each student's home. Although the purpose of these visits was to invite students to a two-week summer camp designed to familiarize the students with Taft and foster friendships, the visits also helped teachers gain a much better understanding of the cultural and socioeconomic influences on these students' lives.
Have we fostered a bond between students and school?
The high-performing/high-poverty schools we studied provided "protective factors" that help build a bond between students and school. Paramount among these factors is promoting caring relationships between adults and students as well as among peers.

Although Granger is a small high school serving only 388 students, many students felt disconnected from school. Former principal Esparza's focus on personalization led the staff to reorganize the school day to include a well-designed advisory program. All professional staff members, including the principal, advise a small group of 18-20 students four days each week and stay with those students for four years, navigating their path toward graduation and beyond. The advisory teacher regularly reviews each student's progress through school-generated biweekly reports, holding students accountable for staying on track. Advisors identify any student who falls behind and work with the student's teachers to intervene. "It's all about relationships with the kids," explained current principal Paul Chartrand, "and the advisory program is key to our continued success."

Other high-performing/high-poverty schools provide additional protective factors, such as restructuring into small learning communities and removing economic barriers to participation in various extracurricular activities. Some schools work to counter the adverse effects of student mobility by dedicating staff to the task of welcoming and placing new students.
Do we engage parents, families, and the community?
High-performing/high-poverty schools do not go it alone. Instead, they build positive and productive relationships with students' families and the broader neighborhood and community. In partnership with the city of Saint Paul and the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, Dayton's Bluff Elementary provides students and families with a recreational facility and the services of a nurse-practitioner, dentist, and social worker at the school.

Leaders in the schools we studied engage stakeholders in various ways-for example, hiring a school/family/community liaison, offering adult mentoring and community service learning programs, ensuring two-way communication between the school and the family, and using the school as a community center.

Tough Decisions, Tough Times

Leaders in the six schools we studied expressed confidence that the processes they had in place would guide their decisions regarding the use of possible stimulus funding. The principals voiced concern for two top priorities: (1) maintaining and perhaps adding staff, because keeping personnel is key to a low student-teacher ratio and caring relationships in school; and (2) providing targeted support to the students who need it most. "Target the lowest-performing kids," cautioned one principal, "even if the stimulus money doesn't last forever."

Leaders in high-performing/high-poverty schools recognize their efforts and successes as a continuing journey. Whether surviving budget cuts, carefully targeting new stimulus funding, or both, leaders in all schools may benefit from reflecting on the questions leaders ask in high-performing/high-poverty schools to support and sustain student success.

References

Barr, R., & Parrett, W. (2006). The kids left behind. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.

Budge, K., & Parrett, W. (2009). Making refugee students welcome [Online article.]. Educational Leadership, 66(7). Available: www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/apr09/num07/Making_Refugee_Students_Welcome.aspx.

Calkins, A., Guenther, W., Belfiore, G., & Lash, D. (2007). The turn-around challenge: Why America's best opportunity to dramatically improve student achievement lies in our worst-performing schools. Boston: Mass Insight Education and Research Institute.

Chenowith, K. (2007). "It's being done": Academic successes in unexpected schools. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Duke, D. (2007, February 21). Turning schools around. Education Week, 26(24), 35-37.

Gorski, P. (2008). The myth of the culture of poverty. Educational Leadership, 65(7), 32-36.

Neuman, S. (2008). The mediating mechanisms of the effects of poverty on reading achievement. In S. Neuman (Ed.), Educating the other America: Top experts tackle poverty, literacy, and achievement in our schools. (pp. 1-16). Baltimore: Brooks Publishing.

Slavin, R., Cheung, A., Groff, C., & Lake, C., (2008). Effective reading programs for middle and high schools: A best-evidence synthesis. Reading Research Quarterly, 43(3), 290-322.

Teddlie, C., & Stringfield, S. (1993). Schools make a difference: Lessons learned from a ten-year study of school effects. New York: Teachers College Press.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. New York: Cambridge University Press.

William Parrett ( wparret@boisestate.edu; 208-426-4343) is Director of the Center for School Improvement and Policy Studies and Kathleen Budge ( kathleenbudge@boisestate.edu; 208-426-3758) is Coordinator of the Educational Leadership program at Boise State University in Idaho. They are the authors of a forthcoming ASCD book on leadership in high-poverty/high-performing schools.

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October 2009 | Volume 67 | Number 2 Developing School Leaders Pages 22-27 William Parrett and Kathleen Budge Two thousand miles to the east, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, 341 elementary students parade through the impoverished neighborhood surrounding Dayton's Bluff Elementary School. They're celebrating having accomplished their goal of reading a million words in the past year.

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How the Best School Leaders Create Enduring Change

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How the Best School Leaders Create Enduring Change

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Week 3

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Transforming a school is a long, hard, and often lonely task. Some people want change, others don't, and some simply aren't prepared to wait for results to show. As a school leader sets off on this journey, how do they know what to do, when to do it, who to listen to, and how to manage critics along the way?

Our study of the actions and impact of 411 leaders of UK academies found that only 62 of them managed their turnaround successfully and sustainably transformed their school. While other leaders managed to create a school that looked good while they were there, but then went backwards, these 62 leaders built a school that continued to improve long after they'd left. We call them Architects, because they systematically redesign the school and transform the community it serves.

We studied them over eight years, using 64 investment and 24 performance variables to identify what they did, when they did it, and the impact they had. We visited the schools to see first-hand their actions and results. And we interviewed the leaders and their teams to understand the challenges they faced, when they occurred, and how they overcame them.

We found the Architects sustainably transformed a school by challenging how it operated, engaging its community, and improving its teaching. They took nine key steps over three years, in a particular order. Each step represented a different building block in the school performance pyramid. But it was a bumpy ride, with 90% almost fired at the end of their second year. Here's what they did, and how they did it.

The school performance pyramid

Building Block 1-Challenge the system: stay for at least 5 years. The first step is to develop a 10-year plan, clearly showing how you aim to transform the school and the community it serves. This shows everyone you're committed to the long haul - like your students and their families - and are prepared to make tough decisions and manage their consequences. As one Architect said, "No one trusts you at the beginning. They've been let down too many times by too many people. That's why I moved to the local area - to show I was committed to the school, the community and to making it work. I wasn't going to walk away halfway through, like the other Heads before me." In our study, it took at least five years to engage a school's community, change its culture and improve its teaching. The most successful leaders stayed for the whole of this journey, and often longer, with test scores increasing by an impressive 45-50 percentage points in the first eight years after they took over. This doubled, or even tripled, the number of students graduating with five or more grade Cs, increasing their projected lifetime earnings by £140,000.

Building Block 2-Teach everyone: expel less than 3% of students. Once you've committed to the journey, then you need to commit to the community. You can't just kick kids out to improve test scores. You need to show parents and students you want to help them. Show you want to fix the problem, not give it to someone else.

This doesn't mean you can ignore poor behavior, be nice to everyone, and expect them to like you. But you should only expel students as a last resort - when everything else has failed. In our study, the most successful leaders suspended 10-15% students in the first three years after they arrived, but expelled less than 3%. As one Architect told us, "If you start kicking kids out as soon as you arrive, then your community wonders if you're trying to help or get rid of them. Instead of expelling students and passing the problem to someone else, we created multiple pathways inside our school - so we could manage and improve behavior ourselves."

Building Block 3-Teach for longer: from ages 5 to 18. Of all the changes made by the leaders in our study, teaching kids for longer was the one with the most consistent impact. It took five years to see results, but test scores then suddenly jumped by nine percentage points and continued to improve by five percentage points each year after that.

Teaching kids from a younger age meant the schools could embed the right behaviors earlier on, teach the kids in a consistent way for longer (for 13 years, rather than 5) and create valuable resources (as revenues increased by 30-40%). And teaching them up to age 18 gave the younger kids something to aim for. As another Architect explained, "Setting up a sixth form was one of the best things we did - even though it still loses money! Last year, 51% of our sixth formers went to university - compared with only 27% four years ago. This sends a great message to our younger students, and we use the older ones to mentor them as they progress through the school." (In the UK, " sixth form " is a final, sometimes optional phase of secondary education in which students prepare for college entry exams.)

Building block 4-Challenge the staff: change 30-50%. Now it's time to start changing how the school works. That usually means changing staff. "Too many Heads duck the issue of firing poor teachers," one Architect told us. "But you have to ask yourself: who are you here to help - the students or the teachers? I believe you let down 30 students a year by protecting one incompetent teacher. Once you start thinking like that, the tough decisions become easier to take."

In our study, the most successful leaders changed 30-50% of staff in the first 3 years by clarifying teaching and marking targets, displaying real-time performance (such as attendance, behavior and test scores) on video screens in corridors and staff rooms, and managing out poor performers. Typically, a half of this change came from recruiting new staff to resource growth, a quarter from reducing the number of supply teachers and a quarter from managing out poor performers. Leaders who changed less than 30% of staff had little impact, while more than 50% created too much disruption. As another Architect told us, "The culture in the school suddenly tipped when we had 30% new staff, people who were serious about trying to transform the school and the community it serves."

Building block 5 - Engage students: keep 95% in class. It's pretty simple really. You can't teach your kids if they're not there - or don't care. However, it's easier said than done. As one Architect explained, "Half our students live in poverty, in communities that have been let down by their schools for generations. That's their starting point, so you can see why they're not interested. But, after two years of hard work, things suddenly started to change. They started believing in themselves - and that we could help them. Instead of saying 'there's no point' or 'I can't be bothered', they're now saying 'I aced that test' or 'I'm going to be a doctor'."

The turning point in the schools we studied occurred when at least 95% students attended all their classes. And the most successful leaders achieved this in the first 3 years-by bringing in external speakers to inspire students, asking students to evaluate teachers, so they felt part of the process, and getting older students mentor the younger ones, so they had someone to look up to.

Building Block 6 - Challenge the board: manage 30-60% of them. It doesn't matter what your governors say, they all want test scores to improve as quickly as possible. (In the UK system, "governors" are the school's board of directors.) They'll give you one year's grace, but then they want some hard evidence that the school is improving. If you can't do this, then you're often out of a job. But the most effective, most sustainable actions take three years to show results. So, how can you show you're on the right track when test scores are still the same?

In our study, the best early signs of sustained improvement were teaching students from ages 5 to 18, having 95% of students in class, 50% of parents at parents' evenings and 70% of staff with no absence. Leaders who achieved all this in the first three years subsequently improved test scores by 45-50% in the following six years. However, 90% of them were almost fired at the end of the second year, as test scores hadn't improved fast enough. They survived this challenge by moving the discussion away from this year's test scores to the progression of students aged 11 to 13.

Architect leaders can also emphasize other metrics, such as more students attending classes, more parents coming to parents' evenings, and fewer staff member absences. As one Architect told us, "Too many boards simply fire their Heads when there's a problem. Instead, they need to make sure the Head is around long enough to have an impact and help them make the right decisions along the way." A strong, healthy board was critical to the success of all the schools in our study, with the best leaders challenged by 30-60% of governors on key decisions in their first three years. Poor decisions were made if the challenge was less than 30%, and the leader lost control of the school if the challenge was greater than 60%.

It's important to take time to get to know your governors, build relationships with them and understand their needs-so they trust you and understand why you're not focusing on this year's test scores. Their concerns are legitimate and need to be managed. Use their challenge to help improve decision making-to better explain why decisions are made and the impact they'll have.

Building Block 7 - Engage parents: have 50% at parents' evenings. You need to start engaging your parents right from the start, but it can take a while to happen. This is particularly true in rural or coastal schools in the UK, where people are less mobile and parents and grandparents may have attended the same school. As one Architect explained, "Our parents and grandparents had very strong views about the school based on what it did for them. It took a long time to change these views. But, if we hadn't, then all our hard work would have disappeared when our students went home."

Attendance at parents' night was as low as 10% when many leaders first arrived - but the most successful ones increased it to more than 50% by the end of the third year. They did this by making it a social event with food, drink, and student performances, offering education and support services such as IT skills and career advice, and providing similar services at home through outreach programs.

Building block 8 - Engage staff: 70% with no absence. Engaging your staff also takes time. "You walk into a very stressful environment," one Architect explained. "Your staff have just been told they've failed and you're here to sort them out. You need to convince them that you're here to help. That their jobs will get easier and become more fulfilling if they work with you, rather than against you. In the year before I took over, we had 14 staff on long-term sick leave and only 20% of staff with no absence. Now it's up at 90% - that's a big shift in three years!"

In our study, the most successful schools had more than 70% staff with no absence by the end of the third year. They did this by reducing the number of supply teachers, asking teachers to evaluate each other (through informal observations), team teaching, visiting other schools (to see how they worked) and simplifying processes to reduce administration and paperwork.

Building Block 9 - Teach better: 100% capable staff. Anyone can fire staff. The real question is: How do you replace them? "Good teachers don't apply to work in failing schools in deprived areas," one Architect told us. "They want to work in good schools with engaged students. So we contacted the good schools near us who'd recently advertised jobs and had more applicants than places. We asked them who else they'd employ, if they could. We then contacted these teachers and asked them to join us! We got some of our best teachers this way. Teachers who didn't apply to work with us, but love being part of what we're doing." The most successful schools in our study all had 100% capable staff by the end of the third year. They achieved this by recruiting capable teachers, increasing informal teaching observations (through mentoring programs within and across subjects), and sharing best practices within and across schools. As another Architect said, "Too many poor teachers are simply moved from one school to another. We need to develop them, rather than simply passing them on to someone else."

Building the pyramid in practice

Pick six building blocks out of nine: the 90/60 principle. We found it wasn't always possible to put all nine building blocks in place in the first three years, no matter how hard you try. Sometimes, the board won't support you, parents won't engage with you, or you can't find the right teachers. The good news is our research clearly shows there's a tipping point in each transformation when six of the building blocks are in place - not all nine. The last three blocks help to sustain the transformation, but there are diminishing returns. Leaders who put all nine blocks in place in three years increased test scores by 50 percentage points in the following five years. But leaders who put in six blocks increased results by 45 percentage points. In other words, test scores increased by seven percentage points for each of the first six blocks put in place, but only by one percentage point for the three after that.

So, ask yourself: which are the six easiest, or most urgent, blocks to put in place first? And which can wait until later? If you can't engage parents, then engage students. If you can't engage students, then teach the ones you can, better and for longer. Find the right pattern of actions for your school; see the pyramid as a menu, rather than a recipe. Select, mix, and match the ingredients that work best for you.

Take your time. School leaders are often under huge pressure to turn the school around quickly, but sustainable transformation takes time. In our study, the schools that improved the most in the long term didn't see test score improvements until year three, and continued to get better through year five and beyond. You need to explain this to your board, so you don't get fired along the way. Fast improvements can only be achieved by expelling poor performing students or attracting better ones from other schools. And neither solution benefits the community in the long run. Instead, try to put 6 of the 9 blocks in place in the first three years. But, don't worry if it takes longer - the improvement won't be as fast, but it will happen. And it will be sustainable.

No single action or combination of actions is more significant than any other. Eighty percent of the best leaders stayed at the school for more than five years - but not all of them. And all the best schools taught kids from ages 5 to 18 - but so did 40% of the poor ones. Rather than searching for a silver bullet, put as many blocks in place as you can. Remember, the number is more important than the type.

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Research: How the Best School Leaders Create Enduring Change

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Transforming a school is a long, hard, and often lonely task. Some people want change, others don't, and some simply aren't prepared to wait for results to show. As a school leader sets off on this journey, how do they know what to do, when to do it, who to listen to, and how to manage critics along the way?

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Week 2

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"I felt like I was throwing him to the wolves every day." This is how Jennifer describes the experience of sending her son Isaiah to preschool.

A bright, sensitive boy adopted at a young age, Isaiah struggled with his school's rigid environment from the moment he first arrived until his family eventually moved after third grade. Isaiah entered preschool after receiving early intervention services for developmental delays and was still entitled to individualized services, but something in his behavior wasn't right. Fire alarms were overstimulating, causing him to race around the room and push classmates if they came too close. Unable to settle him down, teachers isolated Isaiah from his peers or sent him to the principal's office. Isolation was especially painful for Isaiah, as his early experience in foster care left him with separation anxiety. Visits to the principal's office failed to change his behavior; at a young age, Isaiah could not understand her role as an authority figure, and chafed at rules he saw as unreasonable and unfair. As a result, teachers labeled him as defiant and aggressive, which led a painful cycle of overstimulation, disruptive behavior, removal from class, fear and loneliness.

When doctors finally diagnosed Isaiah with attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) at age 7, it cast new light on his classroom behavior. Isaiah wasn't defiant or aggressive; he was navigating a world of sensory overload and unfathomable social rules. He was still receiving services through his Individualized Education Program (IEP), but was now entitled to additional supports for his ADHD and ASD. Unfortunately, these diagnoses did not change how his school disciplined him. Fed up, Jennifer and her family seized the opportunity to move to a new school district at the end of Isaiah's third grade. Today, Isaiah attends sixth grade in a different school that understands and supports him.

Sadly, too many young children with disabilities and social or behavioral difficulties are currently living a version of Isaiah's harrowing early learning experience. According to new data, children ages 3 to 5 with disabilities and or emotional and social challenges, while comprising just 12 percent of early childhood program populations, represent 75 percent of suspensions and expulsions. The odds of being suspended or expelled are more than 14.5 times higher for children with disabilities and emotional challenges than for their typically developing peers. (see Appendix)

The consequences of this disciplinary reality are devastating. Suspensions and expulsions lead to lost learning time and also deprive children, especially those with disabilities, of valuable opportunities that can help them overcome early challenges. Moreover, removing children with disabilities from classrooms can deprive them of crucial services available under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

This report presents a new analysis-detailed in the appendix-highlighting the prevalence of suspensions and expulsions among young children ages 3 to 5 attending early childhood programs. It also provides background on these exclusionary disciplinary practices; presents analysis of recent nationally representative data; and explains the consequences of expulsions and suspensions for all children, specifically children with disabilities. Finally, it provides recommendations to ensure that all young children-particularly those with disabilities-reap the full benefits of early learning, including:

Prohibit suspensions and expulsions across early childhood settings

Develop alternatives that proactively address children's emotional and behavioral needs

Invest in teacher professional development

Reduce teacher stress

Empower teachers with tools to fight implicit bias

Promote meaningful family engagement

Evidence clearly shows that high-quality early learning experiences allow children of all backgrounds to acquire critical social, cognitive, and academic skills. Disciplining children by removing them from the classroom disrupts this process, resulting in long-term negative consequences. Moreover, when programs apply discipline in a discriminatory manner, they may exacerbate inequalities based on race, gender, and physical and mental disabilities. Policymakers should consider implementing policies that limit punitive disciplinary practices and ensure all children receive a strong start.

New data reveal that although children with disabilities represent a relatively small proportion of the population of children ages 3 to 5 attending preschool, they make up a disproportionately large share of suspensions and expulsions. Children with any disability or social-emotional challenge make up only 13 percent of the preschool population, but they constitute 75 percent of all early suspensions and expulsions. A similar pattern of overrepresentation can be found across all disability conditions.

Note that these data are descriptive statistics that do not account for child or family characteristics that could contribute to a child's greater likelihood of being disciplined. It is possible that other traits, such as race or family poverty, could be driving this effect. Additional regression analyses show that compared with their typically developing peers, and after controlling for several child and family characteristics, the odds of being suspended or expelled were still more than 14.5 times larger for children diagnosed with any disability or social-emotional challenge. In addition, compared with their typically developing peers:

The odds of being suspended or expelled were more than 43 times higher for children with behavioral problems.

The odds of being suspended or expelled were 33 times higher for children with ADHD.

The odds of being suspended or expelled were more than 14 times higher for children with anxiety.

The odds of being suspended or expelled were 10 times higher for children with autism/ASD.

The odds of being suspended or expelled were more than 7.5 times higher for children with developmental delays.

The odds of being suspended or expelled were more than 4 times higher for children with speech disorders.

Consistent with earlier research, the odds of being suspended or expelled for African American boys in this sample were between 3 and 5 times greater than the odds of other children being similarly disciplined. Non-Hispanic white boys were also more likely to be suspended or expelled than other children, but by a smaller margin-3 to 4 times higher odds. Although the sample size precluded the authors from being able to investigate the added effects of race and disability on preschool discipline, previous research suggests that children of color with disabilities are among the most likely to be suspended or expelled.

The findings above are based on the authors' analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau's 2016 National Survey for Children's Health (NSCH), the first nationally representative survey to include questions on early discipline using a sample of children attending both public and private early learning programs. The analysis predicted the odds of being suspended or expelled based on whether a child currently had a disability or challenges with social-emotional issues. (see Appendix) Previous reports have relied on data from public preschool programs. However, since private programs are not required to report suspensions and expulsions, earlier reports likely underestimated the frequency of exclusionary disciplinary practices in early childhood settings. Moreover, earlier reports rely on data from "hard" expulsions, whereas the NSCH contains information on preschool disciplinary practices that do not carry the suspension or expulsion labels. The NSCH's way of capturing preschool discipline more accurately captures the nature of suspension and expulsion in preschool. This report therefore provides more accurate information on disciplinary practices across all early childhood settings.

Beyond their immediate and long-term impact on individual children, suspensions and expulsions may violate federal civil rights laws if administered in a discriminatory manner. Administrative law requires that programs ensure children with disabilities are not suspended or expelled for behaviors related to their disability. If a child's behavior disrupts others' learning, early childhood programs must consider implementing reasonable policy and practice modifications that reduce the need for discipline. As most children in this study were currently diagnosed with a condition that made them eligible for IDEA services, findings suggest that disciplinary practices in early childhood settings must do better to protect the civil rights of children with disabilities.

The findings of this report affirm what parents such as Jennifer already know-the early childhood system must do better to ensure that children with disabilities are able to fully participate in valuable early learning experiences. Improving how early childhood programs address disciplinary practices will require systemwide structural and cultural changes. At a minimum, districts should defend the progress made during the Obama era by protecting the previous administration's guidance documents against potential repeal by the current Department of Education. Policymakers can further catalyze these changes by implementing the following recommendations:

Prohibit suspensions and expulsions in early childhood settings

Develop alternatives that proactively address children's emotional and behavioral needs

Invest in teacher professional development

Reduce teacher stress

Teaching young children with challenging behavior can be stressful. Moreover, teachers are often poorly compensated and subject to undependable hours. When teachers experience long, irregular hours or high student-teacher ratios, they can feel overwhelmed and tired. Teachers in these circumstances are more likely to suspend or expel children, regardless of the severity of a child's behavior. To avoid this situation, policymakers should ensure programs provide teachers with reasonable, dependable work hours with regular breaks; maintain low student-teacher ratios-for instance, at or below the National Association for Education of Young Children's (NAEYC) ratio of 10 preschoolers per teacher; and provide teachers with other respite and mental health services as needed. Improving teachers' compensation and benefits can also help ease economic insecurity, another contributor to teacher stress.

Empower teachers with tools to fight implicit bias

Promote meaningful family engagement

When Isaiah's school continued to discipline him despite clear signs that he needed support rather than punishment, Jennifer was fortunate enough to be in a position where she could relocate her family to a supportive setting that has helped Isaiah thrive. However, this is not an option for most people. Children such as Isaiah-and indeed, all children-benefit from a welcoming, inclusive environment that is sensitive to their needs.

Evidence clearly shows that high-quality early learning experiences allow children of all backgrounds to acquire the crucial social, cognitive, and academic skills needed to succeed in school and beyond. Removing children from classrooms through suspensions and expulsions disrupts this process, resulting in long-term negative consequences. Moreover, when programs apply discipline in a discriminatory manner, they may exacerbate inequalities based on race, gender, and physical and mental disabilities. More importantly, they deny children access to valuable early learning experiences and critical early intervention services to which they may be entitled. Ensuring children's equal access to high-quality early learning not only pays significant dividends in the long run; it is fundamental to guaranteeing students' civil rights.

Sample

The analysis was restricted to children ages 3 to 5 years who were currently enrolled in preschool or child care and answered questions about preschool disciplinary practices (n=6,100). When weighted, the sample represents 9.03 million children ages 3 to 5 who were enrolled in preschool when the data were collected. About half the weighted sample were boys, 88 percent spoke English at home, 68 percent identified as non-Hispanic white, 14 percent identified as African American, and 18 percent identified as "Other" race.

Variables

The following variables were created:

Disability categories

The 2016 NSCH contains several questions that ask parents whether their child had a current diagnosis of different medical and behavioral conditions. For this report, the authors restricted the analysis to conditions that make children eligible for Part B 619 preschool special education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) or emotional challenges that could affect classroom behavior. Only conditions with sufficiently large sample sizes were included. Although the following conditions make children eligible for special education services, they were excluded due to small sample size: traumatic brain injury (n=21), cerebral palsy (n=15), intellectual disability (n=29), and Down syndrome (n=7). Based on these two criteria, the following conditions were selected: learning disability, ADHD, anxiety, behavior problems, Autism/ASD, developmental delay, and speech delay.

Suspension and expulsion

The 2016 NSCH included a question asking parents of children ages 3 to 5 about preschool and child care disciplinary practices. Parents were asked whether they had been asked to keep their child home from any child care or preschool because of their behavior in the past 12 months. Using parent responses, the authors of this report defined a suspension or expulsion as being any situation where a parent was asked to keep a child at home for a full day or more (out-of-school suspension) or being informed that a child could no longer attend the program ("hard" expulsion). This definition represents a "hard" suspension or expulsion, a stricter definition of preschool discipline. Parents also reported being asked to pick up their child early on one or more days. This action on the part of early learning programs constitutes a "soft" expulsion if it results in families finding different care arrangements. For this analysis, the authors selected a "hard" definition, as it is more conservative.

Descriptive analysis

For each disability category, the authors calculated the share of the preschool and child care population these children represent and the share of preschool suspensions and expulsions these children represent. This was done by running individual crosstabs for each disability and "hard" expulsions, using survey weights.

Regression analysis

The analysis used logistic regression with survey weights to predict the odds of being suspended or expelled, based on whether a child currently had a disability or behavioral or social difficulty. As the outcome of interest-removal from the classroom through either suspension or expulsion-was a dichotomous variable, a logistic regression was most appropriate. Survey weights adjust the estimates to be nationally representative. Regression models controlled for several child characteristics that could also affect the likelihood of being suspended or expelled. These included a child's gender, race, home language, and the family poverty ratio.

Limitations

As with all regression analyses, it is possible that other variables not included in the model also predict the odds of suspension or expulsion. In particular, some evidence suggests that disciplinary practices vary across school or program type-for example, publicly funded prekindergarten, private child care, or other. As this data set did not make this information publicly available, the model used in this analysis is likely biased due to omitted variables.

Cristina Novoa is a policy analyst for Early Childhood at the Center for American Progress. She studied developmental psychology and public policy, specializing in the academic and behavioral development of children from immigrant families. She holds a doctorate in developmental psychology and a master's degree in public policy from Georgetown University as well as a bachelor's degree in psychology from Yale University.

Rasheed Malik is a senior policy analyst for Early Childhood at the Center where he focuses on child care infrastructure and supply, the economic benefits of child care, and the disparate impacts of early childhood policy. He received a master's degree in public policy from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.

The authors would like to thank Rebecca Cokley for her guidance and insight, as well as Katherine Gallagher Robbins for her helpful review of the report's data and methods. Special thanks to Jennifer and Isaiah for sharing their stories.

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Suspensions Are Not Support - Center for American Progress

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"I felt like I was throwing him to the wolves every day." This is how Jennifer describes the experience of sending her son Isaiah to preschool. A bright, sensitive boy adopted at a young age, Isaiah struggled with his school's rigid environment from the moment he first arrived until his family eventually moved after third grade.

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by James H. Stronge, Pamela D. Tucker and Jennifer L. Hindman

As a second-year teacher, Mandrel Epps is showing a lot of promise, but he still has some rough edges. He works very hard to develop engaging lessons and accompanying materials. Another teacher on his grade level said that if she shares an activity with him, he gives it back with some additional, and often better, twists. Mandrel showed a lot of courage coming back to teach after the tough first year when he had 12 of the most challenging students in the grade level placed in his classroom. Mandrel's students say they like him and he makes learning interesting, but sometimes they also take advantage of him. It is as if he has a jigsaw box of puzzle pieces, but he cannot get all the pieces to fit together. He just doesn't seem to understand how to manage a classroom.

Research Summary

The classroom is a vehicle for getting students from where they are when they enter the schoolhouse door to where they need to be an academic year later. Ideally, we all would like to see at least one year of progress for one year of seat time. In talking about classroom management and student achievement, it may help to think of the teacher as the driver of the car who needs to respond to the passengers' needs in order to ensure that they reach their destination. In driver education there is a substantial focus on the mechanics of driving and the rules of the road, but not very much attention is given to keeping the automobile functioning. People learn about preventative maintenance as a secondary set of skills through guidance, observation, reading, and trial and error. The first flat tire or dead battery becomes a significant learning experience. Great driving skills don't matter when the car won't move. Similarly, great instructional skills won't matter if students in the classroom are disengaged or out of control. Both novice and experienced teachers consider classroom management to be a high priority and an area of concern (Sokal, Smith, & Mowat, 2003). Teachers learn "tricks of the trade" from such sources as watching other teachers, reading about the topic, and reflecting on what is occurring in their classrooms. While mastering effective classroom management techniques takes work, effective teachers make classroom management look easy. When an effective teacher is in the driver's seat, one knows that a preventative, proactive, positive approach is in place to ensure that learning is on course.

The classroom environment is influenced by the guidelines established for its operation, its users, and its physical elements. Teachers often have little control over issues such as temperature and leaky ceilings, but they greatly influence the operation of their classrooms. Effective teachers expertly manage and organize the classroom and expect their students to contribute in a positive and productive manner. It seems prudent to pay careful attention to classroom climate, given that it can have as much impact on student learning as student aptitude (Wang, Haertel, & Walberg, 1993). Effective teachers take time in the beginning of the year and especially on the first day of school (Emmer, Evertson, & Anderson, 1980; Emmer, Evertson, & Worsham, 2003) to establish classroom management, classroom organization, and expectations for student behavior.

Classroom Management is "the actions and strategies teachers use to solve the problem of order in classrooms" (Doyle, 1986, p. 397). Effective teachers also use rules, procedures, and routines to ensure that students are actively involved in learning (Marzano, Marzano, & Pickering, 2003). In essence, they use management not to control student behavior, but to influence and direct it in a constructive manner to set the stage for instruction (McLeod, Fisher, & Hoover, 2003).

Classroom Organization focuses on the physical environment. Effective teachers organize a safe classroom environment (Educational Review Office, 1998). They strategically place furniture, learning centers, and materials in order to optimize student learning and reduce distractions.

Expectations for Student Behavior is a key element in setting expectations for students. (Note: A second key, Expectations for Achievement, is discussed in Chapter 4 of the Handbook.) Effective teachers know that student behavior is not only about rules and consequences (McLeod et al., 2003); they also know that a larger component is the development of a classroom climate that influences how students perceive their environment and behave (Woolfolk-Hoy & Hoy, 2003). Thus, effective teachers expect students to act in a manner that contributes to a positive classroom environment.

This sampling of findings highlights the complexity of teaching as it relates to classroom management. Figure 3.1 provides a visual overview of this chapter. Following an elaboration of the three key quality indicators associated with the quality of classroom management and organization, tools to enhance effectiveness are presented in the context of our fictional teacher, Mandrel. The questions posed in the Focus on the Teacher section are addressed at the end of the chapter before the presentation of the blackline masters.

Figure 3.1. Chapter Overview

Classroom Management

Effective teachers create focused and nurturing classrooms that result in increased student learning (Marzano et al., 2003; Shellard & Protheroe, 2000). These teachers teach and rehearse rules and procedures with students, anticipate students' needs, possess a plan to orient new students, and offer clear instructions to students (McLeod et al., 2003; Emmer et al., 1980). They use a minimum number of rules to ensure safety and productive interaction in the classroom, and they rely on routines to maintain a smoothly running classroom (McLeod et al. 2003). In fact, it has been noted that classroom management skills are essential in a classroom for a teacher to get anything done (Brophy & Evertson, 1976). In some ways, classroom management is like salt in a recipe; when it is present it is not noticed, but when it is missing, diners will ask for it.

Rules

Virtually everything that involves interactions among people requires rules. Webster's dictionary defines a rule as "a fixed principle that determines conduct" (McKechnie, 1983, p. 1585). Let's deconstruct this definition: a rule is "fixed" meaning that it does not change regardless of the situation. In reality, we know that rules have to undergo occasional modifications in the everyday life of a classroom. Nonetheless, rules establish the boundaries for behavior (Nakamura, 2000), and consistency in their implementation is essential to effective classroom management.

Effective teachers have a minimum number of classroom rules, which tend to focus on expectations of how to act toward one another, maintain a safe environment, and participate in learning (Marzano et al., 2003; McLeod et al., 2003; Thompson, 2002). These teachers offer clear explanations of the rules, model the rules, rehearse the expectations with students, and offer students opportunities to be successful in meeting the expectations (Covino & Iwanicki, 1996; Emmer et al., 1980). There is no magic number of rules that govern a classroom; rather, it is the clear establishment of fair, reasonable, enforceable, and consistently applied rules that makes a difference in classrooms.

Effective educators have a sense of classroom tempo and student harmony such that they are aware of when an intervention may be needed to prevent a problem (Johnson, 1997). Often, teachers use nonverbal cues, proximity, and redirection to prevent misbehavior. These techniques typically allow the momentum of the instruction to continue and refocus the student; however, there are times when a stronger intervention is necessary. When a rule is broken, an effective teacher is prepared to address the problem. Effective teachers tend to react in several ways, including the following: positive reinforcement that points to the desired behavior, consequences that punish the negative behavior, a combination of reinforcement and consequences, or indirectly responding to the behavior such that the student is reminded of why a rule is important. What an effective teacher does not do is react to an entire class for a rule infraction by a single student.

Routines

While they are more flexible than rules, routines or procedures are specific ways of doing things that, for the most part, vary little during the course of the day or the year. Classrooms typically require many routines to operate efficiently and effectively (McLeod et al., 2003). For example, routines commonly include how to enter and leave the classroom, take attendance, indicate lunch selection, secure materials, dispose of trash, label work, turn in assignments, make a transition during or between instructional activities, get to safety during drills and actual emergencies, and change from one activity or location to another. In essence, routines shape the classroom climate.

Effective teachers use routines for daily tasks more than their ineffective counterparts (Stronge, Tucker, & Ward, 2003). They invest the time at the start of the school year to teach the routines. By establishing and practicing routines that require little monitoring, teachers ensure that the focus of the classroom is more squarely on instruction (Covino & Iwanicki, 1996; McLeod et al., 2003; Shellard & Protheroe, 2000). Effective teachers frequently provide students with cues to remind them of acceptable behavior, and effective teachers are good at organizing and maintaining a positive classroom environment (Education USA Special Report, n.d.).

The establishment of routines allows for flexibility. For example, the teacher may not rehearse with students what should occur if a new student joins the class, but might adapt the routine used for greeting classroom guests (Emmer et al., 1980). Additionally, routines empower students to be more responsible for their own behavior and learning in the classroom (Covino & Iwanicki, 1996). When classroom management issues arise, the teacher has procedures to address the concern in an efficient, fair, and consistent way (Shellard & Protheroe, 2000; Thomas & Montgomery, 1998). Thus, the result of established procedures is more time for teaching and learning.

Classroom Organization

Classroom management and organization are intertwined. While rules and routines influence student behavior, classroom organization affects the physical elements of the classroom, making it a more productive environment for its users. How the classroom environment is organized influences the behavior in it. For example, actions as simple as color-coding folders, establishing fixed locations for lab supplies, maintaining folders for students to pick up missed work after being absent, keeping extra copies of "Back to School Night" items to share with new students, and designating specific places for other classroom supplies can have a dramatic effect on classroom organization and, consequently, on student learning. While these procedures and a multitude like them are simple matters, they nonetheless can be essential components for a smoothly operating classroom.

Classroom organization is evident in a room even if no one is present. Furniture arrangements, location of materials, displays, and fixed elements are all part of organization. Effective teachers decorate the room with student work, they arrange the furniture to promote interaction as appropriate, and they have comfortable areas for working (Kohn, 1996). They also consider student needs in arranging the room by leaving space for wheelchairs to maneuver; having walkways so students can access materials, pencil sharpeners, and the trashcan with minimal disturbance to others; and organizing in such a way as to allow the teacher to freely move around the room to monitor student progress (McLeod et al., 2003).

Teachers are observers of behavior and understand the rhythm of the classroom. Placing materials near the pencil sharpener may seem like a good idea, until one considers that at the start of a lesson this area may become congested with some students retrieving materials for their group and others waiting to use the pencil sharpener. However, the pencil sharpener and the trashcan may be a good pairing if the pencil sharpener tends to break regularly, spilling its contents on the floor; this way shavings fall into the trash instead. Effective teachers think about the little details that enhance the use of available space in the classroom as well as the big issues.

Expectations for Student Behavior

Attending to issues of classroom management and organization provides the foundation for having high expectations for student behavior. Effective teachers have higher expectations for how students are to conduct themselves in the classroom than their less effective colleagues (Stronge et al., 2003). They are better managers of student behavior (Emmer et al., 1980). They establish relationships with their students in which high levels of cooperation and dominance (i.e., giving students a sense of purpose and guidance) are balanced, resulting in an optimal relationship (Marzano et al., 2003). Effective teachers teach expectations to students and reinforce the desired behaviors with their verbal and nonverbal cues. Another characteristic of effective teachers is that they hold students individually accountable (Kohn, 1996) and, if necessary, use intervention strategies to help students learn the desired behavior (McLeod et al., 2003). An exploratory study of effective and ineffective third-grade teachers found that ineffective teachers had five times as many disruptive events in an hour when compared with their more effective counterparts (Stronge et al., 2003). Through fair and consistent discipline, teachers reinforce their expectations of students and create a classroom that is focused on instruction.

Visualizing the Quality

The following graphic organizer (Figure 3.2) is one way of conceptualizing how the components of the Quality of Classroom Management and Organization fit together. "Classroom organization" captures the structural aspects of how a teacher structures his or her classroom, and "expectations for student behavior" refers to the interpersonal and conduct norms that a teacher establishes. Together these structural and interpersonal elements contribute to the overall classroom management and ultimately to the unique climate and culture of every classroom.

Figure 3.2. Visual Representation of Classroom Management and Organization (Example of Fishbone Mapping)

Focus on the Teacher

Mandrel has the desire and determination to succeed; he wants to be a good teacher. Others can see his potential, but it has yet to be fully realized, largely because he hasn't learned how to effectively manage his students. This is a hurdle he can overcome. This year, Mandrel was given a choice as to who would be his mentor. He selected a teacher with whom he has good rapport and who is willing to meet regularly with him. The tools presented in this section of the chapter can be used to identify areas of strength and weakness to support growth in the effective implementation of classroom management and organization.

Classroom Management: Rules

Last year, Mandrel had his classroom rules, along with the consequences for not following the rules, posted for students. However, he found it difficult to get students to follow his rules. Worse yet, he knows that he did not do a very good job enforcing them. Before the new school year started, Mandrel met with his mentor to examine the classroom rules he had created. The mentor suggested organizing the rules into a table (figure 3.3) to make sure they met the criteria for being a good rule. There are four criteria that a rule needs to meet to stay on the list. The rule must be all of the following:

1. clearly stated so students know what is expected of them.

2. reasonable so students can realistically follow it.

3. enforceable such that Mandrel will take the time and effort to address any violations. If he is not willing to invest the effort, then the item may be too trivial or there may be a better solution.

4. general so that the rule addresses several behaviors as opposed to one specific misdeed.

Reflect on the Teacher: Case 3A

Mandrel has several rules that he feels are important; suggest ways he can consolidate or reword them.

A good rule of thumb is that the rule should be written as a positive statement so that students know what is the desired behavior. However, if something is an absolute, such as "No gum chewing," then it is simpler to just say so.

Only two of the rules in figure 3.3 meet all four criteria. The rules Mandrel created were all clearly stated in terms of the behavior. However, two of them were not reasonable because students would not be expected to follow them at all times. Of course there is some flexibility, but keeping a list of rules to a minimum will help Mandrel enforce them. When rules such as "talk in an indoor voice" are made, it is more difficult to enforce them. An "indoor voice" in one home may be at a whisper-level and in another home, it may be at a higher volume. Only two of the rules were general enough in nature so that they could be applied across multiple behaviors. It is simply not possible to regulate all behavior with written rules, so having broader ones helps to cover more behavior.

Classroom Management: Routines

Mandrel's mentor observed him during a recent lesson. She asked Mandrel to explain the routines he used with his students in terms of taking attendance, getting materials, and turning in work. Mandrel could clearly explain his attendance/lunch request procedure and indicated that he had modeled it after the one his cooperating teacher had used during student teaching. In terms of the other two items, Mandrel said he just did what seemed to fit at the time. His mentor suggested that he build on the success he had with the lunch routine (described in the Resources section) by developing routines for common events in the classroom. The first step was for Mandrel to generate a list of what these recurring activities were. He then shared the list with his mentor.

Mandrel and his mentor reviewed the list. She asked him to recall what he had shared with her about the attendance/lunch routine. She asked him if he were absent, how the substitute teacher would know about it. Mandrel showed her his standard substitute plan information sheet that had the procedure written out. His mentor said that he could cross the first two bullets off the list since he had a routine for each of them. She asked him if there were any other items on the list that the students consistently did well. He indicated that drills, starting morning work, and walking in the hall were fine, so he crossed those off the list, too. Looking together at the list, they decided to prioritize what routines should be developed and taught early on and which ones could be added later. They focused on materials management (a combination of getting and returning materials) and changing activities as these transitional times were when Mandrel felt like he was losing time. Together they brainstormed detailed steps for each routine on an index card that Mandrel could easily reference (Figure 3.4). They talked about how he could introduce the routine and practice it with students. They agreed to meet after he introduced the first routine-changing activities. The second routine would be introduced a couple of days later. As students mastered a routine and became comfortable with it, a new one would be added.

Common Classroom Occurrences

Attendance

Lunch counts

Collecting work

Returning work

Distributing supplies

Returning supplies

Walking to specials (PE, art, music, library, computers)

Morning work

Make up work

Afternoon dismissal

Settling students down

Changing activities

What to do when you finish your work

Drills: Fire, Tornado, Lock-down

Figure 3.4. Mandrel's Changing Activities Routine Cue Card

1. Get the students' attention.
Strategies: "if you can hear my voice clap once, if you can hear my voice snap twice, if you can hear my voice. . ." should work in two to three actions.
Flicker the lights, play a tone on the xylophone.
Students need to know that they need to stop what they are doing and look at me for further instruction.

2. Tell the students that we are changing activities and what they need to do in a specific amount of time.

3. Let students ask questions if they have them . . . see if another student can answer it.

4. Give students the signal to change activities and time them.

5. Report back to students how well they did changing activities.

Classroom Layout

Mandrel is a fairly well-organized teacher. Walking into his classroom, his mentor noticed that Mandrel's desk was free of clutter, his classroom displays were attractive and up to date, and there were areas designated for materials and specific activities. He typically had materials prepared and lessons staged so he could go from one activity to the next. Mandrel used bins and color-coded accordion folders. He had one bin for his morning activities and another one for the afternoon. The folders held the book, papers, sample, etc. for the different subjects. His mentor noted the presence of the bins on his desk (see the Resources section for other organizational tips).

One area in which Mandrel needed feedback was in making the best use of his classroom layout. He has a combination of fixed features (gray items on Figure 3.5) and movable furniture. He has two main concerns: 1) students seem to gather in the back of the room near the sink and water fountain when they finish their work; and 2) he has tables that seat six students each with an open cubbie space affixed under each place on the table, so some students always have to turn their chairs around when he does whole group instruction. He currently has 21 students. Mandrel wants to be able to see his students at all times even if he is working with a group at a table or at his desk.

Figure 3.5. Mandrel's Current Classroom Layout

Reflect on the Teacher: Case 3B

What can Mandrel do to eliminate some of the traffic flow problems?

Suggest an alternative room arrangement that would address his concerns about students focusing on each other instead of on him when he is trying to teach. NOTE: One wildcard in this room arrangement is the movable wall. If the wall is rarely moved, then it can be used like a fixed wall; if the wall is moved more than weekly, one would want easy-tomove items along that wall. Make your own determination of how you want to deal with the wall. Use Figure 3.6 to sketch out your idea.

Figure 3.6. Suggestions for Improved Room Layout

Expectations for Student Behavior: Time on Task

Mandrel and his mentor have been working on classroom management issues, which influence his expectations for student behavior. His mentor observed Mandrel's class using a time-on-task chart that captured off-task behaviors as well as how Mandrel managed the situation.

Mandrel's mentor recorded student engagement in the teaching-learning process at five-minute intervals (see Figure 3.7). Additionally, she recorded comments regarding off-task behavior and teacher responses. Two types of student behavior were recorded as off-task: 1) instances when students disrupted others and 2) instances when students were visibly disengaged. Those visibly disengaged students certainly could be thinking about class, but they are not participating in class in the same manner as their peers. During each five-minute cycle, the mentor watched and listened carefully for one full minute to get a clear sense of what was happening in the classroom, and recorded her notes during the four minutes before the next sampling of information. If Mandrel was uninvolved with students, the activity he was doing (e.g., grading papers) was noted under the "Task" column as well as what the students were doing. If the teacher takes no action to address disruptive or disengaged students, his mentor checked the box for "None."

Figure 3.7. Time on Task Chart

Notes:

Disrupting others would include students who are not only off task but also attempting to distract others from the teacher-assigned tasks.

Visibly disengaged would include students who are daydreaming, doodling, staring out the window or otherwise not focusing on the teacher's assigned tasks, but who are not distracting other students.

Management strategy would be any action taken by the teacher either in response to a lack of attention by students or in anticipation of possible disruptions.

Nature of intervention would include positive responses such as praising students who are attending or participating, negative responses such as yelling at students, or neutral responses such as changing the activity or moving near the student or students.

Under Comments, note the type of action taken or what was said.

Reflect on the Teacher: Case 3C

Describe Mandrel's management strategy.

What type of interventions does he use most?

Based on the students' responses, where can he improve?

Making Connections

Consider the Scenario

Reread the teacher scenario at the beginning of this chapter and the bits of information shared on the form with examples about Mandrel, the fictitious teacher in the scenario. Consider the questions below.

Using the space below, summarize what positive teacher behaviors and actions exist, and what performance areas need improvement for Mandrel.

What descriptor best describes Mandrel's skills in the area of "classroom management and organization"?

Why did you select a particular descriptor?

How could Mandrel's performance be improved?

Reflecting on My Current Performance

Rate your own performance on the qualities associated with classroom management and organization using the explanation of each major quality highlighted in the chapter.

Classroom Organization

Expectations for Student Behavior

Reflection Learning Log

What do I better understand now after studying and reflecting on classroom management and organization?

What are next steps to improve my performance?

What resources (e.g., people and materials) are needed to enhance my teaching effectiveness?

Resources

This section contains three items:

further elaboration on issues raised in the discussion of Mandrel's case,

the Authors' Perspective, and

blackline masters of forms that can be used to promote improvement and reflection on qualities of effective teachers.

Follow-up Explanation of Mandrel's Attendance/Lunch Routine

On the first day of school, students were given a piece of paper the size of a business card that was affixed to a magnet of the same size (available at most office supply stores). They were told to write their first name and last initial in big letters on the card. Then students decorated the cards with a picture of their favorite activity to do outside of school. Mandrel had students introduce themselves by talking about their card. Then he had them find at least one other person in the class with whom they shared an interest. Finally, he explained the attendance/lunch procedure. When students arrive each day, their magnets are all on the magnetic chalkboard in the "Welcome" column. Before students even put away their bags and coats, they move their magnet to the appropriate lunch choice column (Figure 3.8). Then, after morning announcements, Mandrel takes attendance by seeing whose magnet has not been moved and counts the number of students who are buying lunch.

Mandrel also shared that he lines up students for lunch by calling for the students who are buying lunch or milk to be in the front of the line, so they can continue ahead in the cafeteria to the food service line while he leads the rest of the students to their assigned table. He had not thought of this as a routine, just something he did that worked. His mentor commented that this worked well and he could build from this experience to enhance the operation of other parts of the instructional day. Additional organizational tips that work across grade levels are included in Figure 3.9.

Figure 3.9. Organizational Tips

Place scissors, tape, stapler, hole punch, calculators, rulers, and other commonly needed items in a common place that students can access on their own.

Have a can of sharpened pencils near the pencil sharpener. If the lead breaks during class, a student can place the pencil in the can and retrieve a sharpened one. At a more appropriate time (e.g., end of the lesson) the student can return the borrowed pencil and sharpen the one that was left (Thompson, 2002). HINT: The teacher may not have to buy the initial pencils, since pencils frequently can be found on the floor when they have rolled away under another desk. Just tell your custodian where retrieved pencils can be placed for student use.

Keep extra school supplies on hand for students who forget or run out of their own. Also, this is helpful when a new student arrives in class who may not have all the supplies needed.

Set up numbered work stations with necessary supplies and assign students to matching work groups. This works well when students must go to the equipment (e.g., science lab) versus taking the equipment to their desks.

Create wall organizers with identified bins for class assignments so that students can pick up missed work after a late arrival or an absence.

Keep plans in a binder that has divider pages for the different subjects/periods. Use plastic page protectors to hold copies of handouts and transparencies (make sure to have the "crystal clear" sleeves or else the transparency will have to be removed from the sleeve).

Organize lesson plans electronically. If the room is equipped with a monitor for PowerPoint presentations, use the first slide to identify the title and the second slide the goals; this not only organizes the students, but also reminds the teacher as well.

Know the location of the nearest fire extinguisher and fire alarm pull.

Train students to know what to do in an emergency situation.

Clearly label the office call button so substitute teachers can immediately identify it if an emergency occurs.

Keep a list of all students who may require medical attention in your grade book. Know the protocol for what to do, for example, diabetics, bee stings, epileptic seizures, etc. As appropriate, alert substitute teachers.

If in a specific-use classroom, such as science, know how to operate the eyewash station and shower, the location of the emergency shut-off valves in the room, and where safety equipment is stored.

Write a daily agenda for students to know what to expect in terms of the day's objective (see Chapter 5 on writing informational objectives), activities, and homework. Note any changes in the regular daily schedule in this location.

Create a Web page with weekly assignments listed and hyperlinks to possible resources.

Use a blend of student-made and commercial products to display on the walls. An art portfolio works well to keep posters flat and poster board can be tabbed with headings of different units, so the teacher can pull out new material as appropriate for display.

Reflect on the Teacher: Authors' Perspective

The Reflect on the Teacher questions are provided to encourage interactive and reflective reading and application of the Handbook for Qualities of Effective Teachers. In most cases there are no right or wrong answers. The Authors' Perspective is provided as one way to reflect on the information presented.

Reflect on the Teacher: Case 3A (see p. 72)

Mandrel has several rules that he feels are important. Suggest ways he can consolidate or reword them.

Group rules (Figure 3.3, p. 72) according to their commonalities.

Rules 3, 8, and 9 address the classroom environment. He could combine the rules to create a new rule: "Keep the classroom and materials neat." In the explanation of the rule, Mandrel can explain that this includes no eating because crumbs and sticky substances tend to get everywhere even when someone is being careful.

Rule 1 ("Respect each other") is broad enough to incorporate the safety issues in Rule 10 as well as the need to keep voice volume at an appropriate level so everyone can learn (Rule 4). Rules 5 and 6 are about respecting the teacher's authority in the classroom. This could be addressed under Rule 1: Students should respect the teacher as well as their classmates.

Rule 7 can be included in the explanation of what it means to be prepared for class.

The overall suggestion would be to keep Rules 1 and 2 and add one new rule about classroom neatness.

Reflect on the Teacher: Case 3B (see p. 75)
What can Mandrel do to eliminate some of the traffic flow problems?
The classroom has a lot of "attractive nuisances" in the back of the room near the sink area. There are two group worktables, a reading space, bookcases, and the cubbies all in the back half of the room. Part of Mandrel's challenge is the physical space arrangement; the other part of the challenge is classroom management. If traffic is a problem, limit the number of students who may be at any of those locations after they finish their work. There seems to be more potential for congestion on the left-hand side of the room and in the back than in the front or to the right. Additionally, the group worktable near the cubbies is in the way when students line up to exit from either door. One way to avoid this problem is to move the work table to another location so that students can line up a few feet out from the cubbies.

Suggest an alternative room arrangement that would address his concerns about students focusing on each other instead of on him when he is trying to teach.

Mandrel has three of the five tables oriented so no students have to turn around to look at him. So in rearranging the room, the other two could be flipped. This will create less space from the front wall to the back wall so the other furniture will have to be moved around. There are various pros and cons to placing the teacher's desk in the front of the room. By placing the desk in the back of the room, Mandrel is still able to see his students, but he has now created a space where he can work individually with a student without having the student or himself in the class' spotlight. These are the two main changes we suggest. As for the other suggestions, a lot depends on personal preference for how spaces work.

Figure 3.10. Authors' Perspective Suggested Improved Room Layout

Reflect on the Teacher: Case 3C (see p. 76)

Describe Mandrel's management strategy.

Mandrel does not seem to have a clear preference between verbal or nonverbal responses. However, he tends to use verbal interventions when students are being disruptive or have the potential to disrupt the learning of others. The nonverbal approaches are used to refocus students.
What type of interventions does he use most?
While Mandrel uses positive, negative, and neutral interventions about equally, he tends to focus on the positive a bit more. In the cases where he used negative interventions, the students had already been warned about their behavior-it was noted on the chart that the students already had their names on the board.
Based on the students' responses, where can he improve?
At 50 minutes, Mandrel praised the students for their work. They responded with cheering that was short, and they quickly refocused. The students made a smooth transition to the next activity. When the class was recognized for behaving appropriately, it seemed to encourage more of the desired behavior. Perhaps Mandrel could try praising desired behaviors instead of relying so heavily on tally marks.

Blackline Masters

The following blackline masters can be photocopied and used in your school or district.

Classroom Rules Criteria

Proposed Rule

Clearly stated

Reasonable

Enforceable

General

Stated Positively

Classroom Arrangement

1) Take an inventory of the movable furniture/items in the room. There is space provided for additional items.

_____ Student Desks w/chairs

_____ Teacher's Desk w/chair

_____ Overhead Projector

_____ Computer(s)

_____ File Cabinet

_____ Work table(s)

_____ Bookcase(s)

_____ _________________________________________

_____ _________________________________________

_____ _________________________________________

2) Make a sketch of the classroom's fixed elements in the space provided. If the room is not rectangular, shade off areas to reflect the classroom space. In your sketch, include

Door(s)

Window(s)

Chalkboards/whiteboards

Mounted TV monitors

Computer stations

Bookcases

Storage cabinets

Lab stations

Sinks

Pencil sharpener

3) Determine how the room will be primarily used (e.g., lecture, discussion, group work).

4) Use dotted lines to show key walkways or spaces that need to stay open.

5) The biggest grouping of furniture is the student desks and chairs. Place them on the layout first. They can be moved about later on the diagram as needed, but they do encompass the largest area in most classrooms.

6) Sketch in the other furniture items.

Time on Task Chart

Observer __________

Date __________

Teacher __________

Subject __________

Number of Students __________

Start time __________

Interval

Task, activity, event, question

Off-Task Behaviors (Note # of students and describe behavior.)

Management Strategy

Nature of Intervention

Notes:

Disrupting others would include students who are not only off task but also attempting to distract others from the teacher-assigned tasks.

Visibly disengaged would include students who are daydreaming, doodling, staring out the window or otherwise not focusing on the teacher's assigned tasks, but who are not distracting other students.

Management strategy would be any action taken by the teacher either in response to a lack of attention by students or in anticipation of possible disruptions.

Nature of intervention would include positive responses such as praising students who are attending or participating, negative responses such as yelling at students, or neutral responses such as changing the activity or moving near the student or students.

Under Comments, note the type of action taken or what was said.

Endnote

It is made using colored tape to form the outline, and the labels are on magnets. This makes it easy to remove in order to clean the chalkboard.

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by James H. Stronge, Pamela D. Tucker and Jennifer L. Hindman As a second-year teacher, Mandrel Epps is showing a lot of promise, but he still has some rough edges. He works very hard to develop engaging lessons and accompanying materials.

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April 2015 | Volume 72 | Number 7
Communications Skills for Leaders

Eric Sheninger

In 2009, as principal at New Milford High School in New Jersey, I made a small change that ultimately transformed my leadership style and my school. I shifted from using traditional forms of communication with families and community members-newsletters and e-mail-to using social media. With a click of a mouse, I set up my Twitter account and changed the course of my instructional leadership.

Twitter was my first step in a social media communication strategy that expanded to include a range of tools and approaches. What made these tools different from any I'd used before was their power to reach in all directions. Whether sending updates on school cancellations or tweeting about great student projects, with a few keystrokes, I could share ideas and information with students, students' families, community members, and the larger world-while inviting everyone's responses.

This transformation involved more than new tools. My colleagues and I had to make pedagogical and philosophical shifts, which had a deep impact on New Milford's students and our community. Each of these transformations was powerful for me personally. Watching my colleagues and me learn new things, reach out across geographic divides, and take risks offered a powerful model for students.

As I leveraged social media to enhance our school's impact on learning and our image, I discovered key principles for effectively communicating through digital tools: transparency, flexibility, and accessibility.

Tapping the Power of Transparency

The power of using social media rests in the ability to engage stakeholders in two-way communications. Tools like Instagram, Twitter, Google+, and YouTube let me share information about New Milford more frequently and accurately and provide updates in real time-which engaged more stakeholders than traditional methods had. Teachers, parents, and even outsiders began contributing ideas to New Milford's work.

For this to happen, I had to commit to a new level of transparency and openness. This sometimes meant sharing challenges as well as successes and opening myself to feedback from anyone.

This was the case when I tackled the grading culture at New Milford High School in 2012. At the time, our grading policies were similar to those of most U.S. schools. However, after reviewing the latest research on grading and considering what was best for our students, I knew our current behaviors had to change. Getting detailed information to everyone in the community would be crucial.

The grading shift was one of the most difficult changes to make. When I broke the news to my staff that we were going to revise our grading culture, they reacted with questions, skepticism, and resentment. During initial conversations, I presented up-to-date research, some of which I gathered through social media, to serve as a foundation for changing our system. Social media also enabled me to share with staff perspectives on grading from other educators across the Unites States. Showing teachers how their colleagues in other schools were tackling grading to make learning assessments more beneficial for students went a long way in moving this change forward.

Together, we tackled difficult questions (What does a letter grade actually mean? How do you measure student learning?). A group of teacher volunteers helped establish new grading guidelines and support structures focused on student learning. These included

Using multiple forms of assessment.

Promoting retests and retakes.

Eliminating zeros; students had to keep trying until they got a score of 50 or higher on any graded assignment.

Requiring teachers to meet seven criteria before they gave any student a failing course grade.

To ensure that parents and students were fully aware of the changes and why we made them, I began posting about these new policies on my principal's blog. Before adopting social media, I would have written a traditional memo about the new policies-that might or might not have made it to parents-and placed the information on the school's website. Visibility and access to the information would have been limited. We did place the information in the student handbook, which was linked to from the school website, but blogging enhanced the chances that the entire school community would see it. I pushed out the message using an arsenal of social media tools and our school app, with a hyperlink to my blog posts included.

I received a tsunami of tweets and comments on the blog. Many comments were from other educators offering insights on grading philosophy, including feedback from colleagues around the world as my posts were shared. A handful were from parents asking for more clarification. One student commented openly in support of creating a system that focused more on learning than on quality stamping effort with letters and numbers. A greater discussion on effective grading practices transpired before my eyes.

Reviewing and responding to this feedback took time, but as a leader looking to improve ineffective practices, I felt it was time well spent. The transparency and open dialogue allowed us to build stakeholder support.

Many comments supported our rationale for creating a different system, comments representing different points of view challenged my thinking and afforded me the opportunity to further refine the grading changes we'd made. One comment focused on the importance of avoiding a situation in which one major project has the potential to very negatively affect a student's overall grade. With this information in hand, we made sure to shape our policy to avoid this scenario.

Flexibility: Checking How Our Community Wanted to Communicate

One important aspect of our approach was involving students, parents, teachers, and community members in shaping the tools and processes we would use to communicate. We invited many stakeholders into our leadership and decision-making process.

Students, teachers, and administrators collaborated to develop our school communication app in partnership with a company called Beeonics. The only way we could create a tool that met everyone's needs was to invite representatives from the community to lead the design process. This team shaped the app's requirements and features, a process that involved both face-to-face brainstorming and eliciting feedback through online tools like Facebook and Google Apps.

The result was an app that supported communication in every direction: between students and teachers, between families and school staff, and across the faculty. It enabled students to check grades and submit work, teachers to share assignments and information, and parents to easily connect with teachers and view student progress. It also made it much easier for me to share updates and announcements quickly with all members of the school community.

This experience helped cultivate leadership skills across our student body. It also made clear to families that they were a valued part of the school community. And modeling transparency in school policy changes set an expectation of transparency across the school. Students' focus, too, shifted to sharing work and getting feedback at all levels, including creating work for a wider audience. This increased the quality of work across the board.

Expanding Access to Learning

Digital connections helped me grow professionally. Through Twitter, I discovered like-minded, passionate educators from all over the world. When struggling with a challenge, I could collect diverse ideas-more than my staff and I could have generated-from these colleagues. I engaged in conversations that ultimately improved my professional practice. How liberating to acquire new knowledge, resources, ideas, and feedback from anyone anywhere-while sitting at home in my pajamas!

For the longest time, I felt that professional development was something done to me. It lacked meaning and rarely helped me acquire skills and knowledge that enabled me to create a better school culture. Social media put me on a path to becoming the driver of my own professional learning.

Inspired to offer this kind of learning to my entire school, I began sharing with groups of teachers several ideas, strategies, and tools I'd acquired from my personal learning network. We worked as a team to create a shared vision for integrating social media to enhance teachers' learning, with an emphasis on free web-based tools. At targeted learning sessions after school, I demonstrated how to integrate these tools to enhance learning. Teachers chose from a variety of topics throughout the school year. I followed up with teachers who attended-and used social media to celebrate their successes! As we removed the fear of failure and provided necessary support for a culture of experimentation, teachers began to leverage their newfound autonomy and online tools.

Soon, instructional practices shifted and students also began to harness social media to support their own learning. Rather than limiting themselves to the expertise available within our school, students became part of a global classroom, drawing on expertise from leaders and thinkers around the world.

To provide students and teachers with access to this global classroom, I also needed to make sure the path was clear. Many districts block social media sites to "protect" students. Policies like these can be counterproductive; students will access social media outside school, so why not provide a supportive environment in which they learn to use these tools productively and safely? Digital leaders' work involves helping community and district leaders understand the power of social media for learning and creating tech policies that support access.

Sharing Positive News

From Communications Boost to Public Relations Strategy

Once students and staff embraced this shift of learning from-and sharing with-a wider network, my job was to communicate this positive change far and wide. New Milford's communications strategy evolved into a powerful public relations strategy of targeted blog posts, tweets, and Facebook updates. These communications about the work taking place in our school caught the eye of national media outlets, which began producing news stories focused on our innovative practices.

Educators make a difference every day, but mainstream media often focus on the negative stories. Subtle but hopeful stories-such as a teacher's conversion to a paperless digital learning environment-go unseen and unheard. Social media give school leaders the means to shape and share their school's narrative on their own terms, to highlight the everyday successes and hard work of students and teachers.

Amplifying Students' Stories

As well as raising New Milford's profile and enabling school leaders to tell a more nuanced, optimistic story about our work, digital communication tools empowered students to tell their stories to new audiences. This was the case with a presentation created with digital tools and shared through social media by sophomore Sarah Almeda.

As part of our Academies program, in addition to the added coursework students must complete to receive an Academies certification, students engage in authentic learning activities-field trips or special projects-outside the school day. For one such project, students read Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative by Ken Robinson (Capstone, 2011); watched a video on the importance of creativity in learning; then created a presentation sharing their creative experiences with their Academies group. Students could use any format they wanted-a written document, poster, collage, pin board through Pinterest, or any other media or combination thereof-as long as they answered these questions:

Tell about your creative self and how you are creative.

When do you feel the most inspired?

What stifles your creativity?

Tell about (at least) one other person whose creativity you admire.

What do schools need to do better to enhance students' creativity? Provide an example of something that helped you be more creative-or that would have helped you.

In the resulting presentations, student after student explained the essential role of creativity in their learning-and how they yearned for freedom over how they might demonstrate their present and emerging learning. All students shone as they presented meaningful learning artifacts that reflected their own choices and voices.

Sarah's video (created with a graphics tablet, Bamboo Pad, the iMovie editing program, and QuickTime to record, on the computer screen, Sarah in the act of drawing) was one of the most thought-provoking student presentations I've seen. Not only was it created entirely through self-directed learning, it also sent a strong message about the power of creativity. In the video, Sarah articulated how schools strip creativity away from students and how schools could change this situation.

Social media amplified Sarah's voice and took her project to a whole new level. She uploaded her completed video to YouTube, and we were able to share her project well beyond our school community. To date, it's been viewed more than 10,000 times. With her permission, I shared the link to her video through my Twitter and other social media accounts and posted it on the school Facebook page. Other students, teachers, and schools could now see Sarah's exemplary work. Ken Robinson himself commented on Sarah's project on Twitter and posted the YouTube link to it on his official Facebook page.

The Most Important Transformation

To use social media effectively, I had to see myself as a learner, not just a leader. Making the shift from traditional to digital leadership demanded that I question my own assumptions, acknowledge how much I don't know, take risks, and learn from failure. This transition from a fixed to a growth mind-set was probably the most important component of the transformation at my school.

Just as teachers differentiate instruction for a variety of learning styles in the classroom, school leaders should differentiate our communication efforts if we want true partnerships between home and school. As leaders, we have the power to shape the culture of our schools. Using social media and digital tools as a lever, we can open the door to new ways of learning, thinking, and communicating for all members of our community.

Endnotes

Sheninger, E. (2014). Digital leadership: Changing paradigms for changing times. Thousand Oaks: CA: Corwin Press

In 2013, Newsweek identified New Milford High School as one of the top 2,000 U.S. high schools (and I immediately took to Twitter to share the article)!

Eric Sheninger is a senior fellow with the International Center for Leadership in Education and Scholastic Achievement Partners, and K-12 Director of Technology and Innovation in the Spotswood School District in New Jersey. He is author of Digital leadership: Changing Paradigms for Changing Times (Corwin, 2014).

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Transforming Your School with Digital Communication

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April 2015 | Volume 72 | Number 7 Communications Skills for Leaders Eric Sheninger In 2009, as principal at New Milford High School in New Jersey, I made a small change that ultimately transformed my leadership style and my school. I shifted from using traditional forms of communication with families and community members-newsletters and e-mail-to using social media.

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I really enjoyed this article because it gave a good insight as to how the role of the instructional leader and principal differ.  “If principals are to take the role of instructional leader seriously, they will have to free themselves from bureaucratic tasks and focus their efforts toward improving teaching and learning.”
(Jenkins, Billy. 2009 January/February. What it takes to be an instructional leader.  Retrieved from https://www.naesp.org/sites/default/files/J-F_p34.pdf)