1. education
2. school

<===Select an indicator from the Table of Contents
Resources
& Research
for Oregon’s District
Improvement Indicators
Oregon’s District Improvement Indicators
Innumerable confusions and a profound feeling of despair invariably
emerge in periods of great technological and cultural transitions. Our
“Age of Anxiety” is, in great part, the result of trying to do today's job with
yesterday's tools and yesterday's concepts.
(McLuhan & Fiore, 1967, pp. 8-9)
You can download a copy of this document from the Oregon Department of Education’s website at
http://www.ode.state.or.us/schoolimprovement/cdip/oregon_randrs_for_indistar_district_level.pdf. To
find the document, search the ODE website for ‘CIP’ or use the QR Code to the right.
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Table of Contents
Click on any Table of Contents entry to go
directly to that point in the document.
Introduction ...................................................................................................... vi
Searching for Resources .................................................................................. vii
Navigating this Document .............................................................................. viii
1.0 District and School Structure and Culture.................................................. 1
Effective district and school systems support the learning and achievement of all students.
Indicator DDSC1.1 .................................................................................................................... 3
The district has a process for setting clear goals for student achievement for all students,
including appropriate district, school and student sub-group achievement targets that are
reviewed annually.
Indicator DDSC1.2 .................................................................................................................... 5
Using appropriate and complete data sets, the district evaluates existing school improvement
strategies being implemented across the district and determines their effectiveness, modifying
and adjusting as analysis of evidence suggests.
Indicator DDSC1.3 .................................................................................................................... 7
District-wide behavior standards create a safe, drug free educational environment that is
conducive for learning and are evident in staff interactions with students. Behavior standards
are a part of district policy and procedures and are routinely communicated to staff, parents
and students.
Indicator DDSC1.4 .................................................................................................................... 9
The school board and superintendent actively engage families and the community in building a
shared vision and supportive culture across the district, establishing mutual expectations for
what the district and schools will look like when outcomes have been met.
Indicator DDSC1.5 .................................................................................................................. 11
The district has developed a unified, comprehensive, systemic and equitable approach for
addressing barriers to learning and teaching designed to re-engage disconnected students that
includes: supporting transitions, increasing home involvement and engagement, creating a
caring and safe learning environment, increasing community involvement, and facilitating
student and family access to effective services and special assistance.
Indicator DDSC1.6 .................................................................................................................. 14
The district’s mission and goals reflect high expectations for equity by developing awareness of
the cultural diversity among students, staff, and community that is reflected in the shared
vision at both the district and school levels.
Indicator DDSC1.7 .................................................................................................................. 17
The district collaborates with community members and pre-kindergarten providers to ensure
that students enter kindergarten ready to learn.
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Indicator DDSC1.8 .................................................................................................................. 19
The district coordinates the goals and strategies across improvement plans being implemented
including but not limited to the following plans: District Improvement; School level
Comprehensive Achievement Plans (CAPs); Educator Effectiveness; Talented and Gifted; English
Language Learners (ELL); ESEA Title III (if applicable); Perkins/Career Technical Education (CTE);
the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
2.0 Family and Community Involvement ....................................................... 21
Effective family involvement efforts bring families and educators together to collaboratively
work to support student achievement.
Indicator DFC2.1 ..................................................................................................................... 23
The district school board and leadership employ advisory structures and collaborative
processes that are representative of the district demographics to implement an effective
communication and decision-making system that involves families, students, teachers, school
employees and community in data-driven decision making for determining goals, creating
policy, reviewing budgets, evaluating school reform initiatives, and in creating safe learning
environments.
Indicator DFC2.2 ..................................................................................................................... 26
The district policies, procedures and systems facilitate communication with families where staff
implement and monitor frequent two-way communication with families regarding learning
standards, their children’s progress toward meeting those standards, K-12 instructional and
extra-curricular options and the families’ role in their children’s success in school including
preparation for post-secondary education and careers.
Indicator DFC2.3 ..................................................................................................................... 29
The district has systems in place to support schools’ activities and processes to educate families
on opportunities to be involved in the school and at home to support student learning.
Indicator DFC2.4 ..................................................................................................................... 32
The district promotes and supports school environments that demonstrate cultural proficiency
and integrate cultural values that represent the students and community.
Indicator DFC2.5 ..................................................................................................................... 35
The district creates connections between schools and the broader community to support
student learning and career related learning opportunities.
3.0 Technical and Adaptive Leadership .......................................................... 38
Effective leaders create a professional learning community.
Indicator DTAL3.1 ................................................................................................................... 40
The district publishes policies and procedures which clarify the scope of site-based decision
making to allow school leaders reasonable autonomy to implement district and school
improvement plans.
Indicator DTAL3.2 ................................................................................................................... 43
The district has a plan and process established to develop staff leadership across the system
and reviews the plan on a frequent basis to ensure that it continues to meet the needs of the
district.
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Indicator DTAL3.3 ................................................................................................................... 46
The superintendent, central office administration and school principals ensure the use of a
process for data-driven improvement planning that includes research-based programs,
practices and models for school improvement and student learning outcomes.
Indicator DTAL3.4 ................................................................................................................... 49
District and school leaders actively promote a shared vision for equity and high expectations
for the success of all students.
Indicator DTAL3.5 ................................................................................................................... 52
The district ensures that the change agent in each school (typically the principal) is skilled in
motivating staff and the community, communicating clear expectations, and focusing on
improved student learning.
Indicator DTAL3.6 ................................................................................................................... 55
The district has appropriate policies and procedures in place to ensure that all teachers are
highly qualified in the content areas in which they teach.
Indicator DTAL3.7 ................................................................................................................... 59
The district has a clear and collaborative process for reviewing operations and programs to
achieve efficiencies through coordination of federal, state and local resources in an effort to
make more effective use of resources to support student achievement.
Indicator DTAL3.8 ................................................................................................................... 62
District staff systematically monitors the implementation of school-level Comprehensive
Achievement Plans (CAPs) and school progress on a regular basis, providing feedback, followup to school staff, enabling the coordination of available resources to meet school needs and
intervening early when a school is not making adequate progress.
Indicator DTAL3.9 ................................................................................................................... 65
The district provides schools with the technology resources (including adequate infrastructure
and connectivity), technical assistance, and professional development for school staff to
integrate technology into teaching and learning, and for assessments, data collection, data
analysis and reporting.
4.0 Educator Effectiveness ............................................................................. 69
Effective educators promote the success of every student.
Indicator DEE4.1 ..................................................................................................................... 71
The district implements short-term and long-term professional development plans based on
indicators of effective teaching, school performance data, district goals and needs identified
through the district’s system of educator evaluation.
Indicator DEE4.2 ..................................................................................................................... 74
A district wide system ensures that all educators recognize the unique differences of learners
who bring differing personal and family backgrounds, culture, skills, abilities, perspectives,
talents and interests and use research-based instructional strategies and services delivery to
empower students intellectually, physically, socially, emotionally and politically.
Indicator DEE4.3 ..................................................................................................................... 79
All educators in the district have high expectations for each and every learner and implement
developmentally appropriate, challenging learning experiences within a variety of learning
environments that help all learners meet high standards and reach their full potential.
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Indicator DEE4.4 ..................................................................................................................... 82
All teachers in the district are actively engaged in professional learning and collaboration
resulting in the discovery and implementation of stronger, research-based practice to improve
teaching and learning.
Indicator DEE4.5 ..................................................................................................................... 86
Professional learning for all staff throughout the district (as appropriate to job description) is
ongoing and embedded, research-based instructional practice that is aligned to adopted state
standards across all curricula (including but not limited to Common Core, Science, English
Language Proficiency, Oregon Social Studies, Technology, and CTE Skill Sets).
5.0 Teaching and Learning ............................................................................. 88
Effective teaching and learning relationships are supported by the district.
Indicator DTL5.1 ..................................................................................................................... 90
The district has rigorous, standards-based curricula which includes but is not limited to vertical
alignment across all grade levels (PreK–20), horizontal alignment across all classrooms, and
high levels of rigor in content areas including mathematics, English language arts, social
studies, science, technology, the arts and career and technical skill sets.
Indicator DTL5.2 ..................................................................................................................... 92
All educators in the district differentiate instruction, adapt content and utilize digital tools and
resources to create personalized learning opportunities to meet the diverse needs of all
students.
Indicator DTL5.3 ..................................................................................................................... 95
All students in the district have access to and develop proficiency in utilizing technology to
enhance their preparation for college and career.
Indicator DTL5.4 ..................................................................................................................... 98
Teaching and learning outcomes at each level of the system are driven by standards providing
students with the academic, career and technical skills necessary for successful post-secondary
transitions to college or career. Those standards may include but are not limited to: Common
Core, Science, English Language Proficiency, Oregon Social Studies, Technology, and CTE Skill
Sets.
Indicator DTL5.5 ................................................................................................................... 101
The district provides all students and staff in each school with equitable access to a
comprehensive library program which provides instruction in information literacy and research
proficiencies, promotes integration of digital learning resources, advances reading
engagement, and creates collaborative learning opportunities with teachers.
Indicator DTL5.6 ................................................................................................................... 104
The district ensures that all students and staff in each school have equitable access to a
professionally-developed and well-managed school library collection of current and diverse
print and electronic resources that supports teaching and learning, college and career
readiness, and reading engagement.
Indicator DTL5.7 ................................................................................................................... 106
The district has a balanced assessment system aligned to the district curricula which include
formative, interim and summative measures that are rigorous and cognitively demanding.
Indicator DTL5.8 ................................................................................................................... 111
The district ensures planning for teaching and learning focuses on a variety of appropriate and
targeted instructional strategies to address diverse ways of learning incorporating new
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technologies. Research-based instructional resources, strategies and programs are coordinated
and monitored for progress in closing the achievement and opportunity gaps.
Indicator DTL5.9 ................................................................................................................... 118
The district works with schools to provide early and intensive intervention for students not
making progress.
Indicator DTL5.10 ................................................................................................................. 120
The district provides all English learners in the district with learning opportunities to ensure
that they will become proficient in reading and writing English in order to meet the
requirements of obtaining an Oregon Diploma.
References ............................................................................................................................ 123
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Oregon’s District Improvement Indicators
Introduction
All districts in Oregon use the Indistar® tool to develop, monitor, and maintain plans for
improving educational outcomes for students.
This document includes the thirty-seven indicators used with district-level planning across the
state. For each indicator, we provide a rationale for its inclusion that addresses the question,
“Why does this matter to our success as a district?” This is followed by a brief statement of what
effective implementation of each indicator would entail that targets, “How does this look in a
district when well implemented?” Finally, each indicator is supported by a small collection of
links to web-based resources and research relating to that indicator. These are by no means
comprehensive lists of available resources but are intended as a starting point for any
investigation that district and school staff might choose to undertake.
It is important to recognize that these indicators are for district-level planning. For the most
part, districts establish policy and school staff implement those policies. The most wellintentioned policy is of little value without the necessary follow-through ensuring that the
policy is fully implemented by a supportive school staff. Engaging school staff in the planning
behind these policies and associated practices can strengthen both the policy and its
implementation.
If you need further information about these indicators or the Indistar® tool, feel free to contact
Carla Wade at the Oregon Department of Education (carla.wade@state.or.us or 503-947-5631).
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Searching for Resources
Each of the indicators is accompanied by a brief list of search terms that will provide additional
resources through an Internet search engine. This document in PDF form includes links that
will directly run the searches indicated. The terms, rather than the search links, are provided
because they 1) give suggestions of suitable search terms and 2) are far more easily typed to
complete the searches than would be the links they generate.
If you are using this document as a PDF, you can simply click on the search terms and the linked
searches will be performed. If you have a printed copy of this document, you can launch a
search engine in your browser and enter the search terms provided.
Providing support materials in this format will help to maintain currency of the resources.
Fixed lists of resources and Internet citations would be out of date very quickly and would need
frequent and costly updates.
The links provided will conduct the search using the Google search engine but any search
engine you choose should prove just as effective.
The “Google Scholar Searches” have been performed using the Google Scholar search engine
rather than the more typical Google search engine. Google Scholar provides search results
targeting scholarly works including articles in peer reviewed journals and books rather than
the unfiltered and unreviewed results found in Google searches. The Google Scholar searches
have been restricted to materials released since 2004 and have eliminated patents and citations
from the results. Many of the returned citations of articles and books will be available in full text
form. If you prefer to avoid books and limit your search to articles, adding -book to the search
terms will eliminate books from the results.
If you are working with a print copy of this document, you can repeat these searches by going to
scholar.google.com and entering the search terms provided or any search terms appropriate to
your needs.
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Navigating this Document
Navigating this document within Adobe’s Acrobat Reader is made easier by using the
bookmarks imbedded throughout. On the left side of the document screen are several buttons
as shown:
Pausing on each button shown will display the button’s name and clicking on the “Bookmarks”
button will change the display to include a list of bookmarks on the left (these may already be
showing when the document is opened):
Clicking on any of the entries among the bookmarks will display that portion of the document.
Clicking on the small “+” sign to the left of some entries will expand those entries to provide
more precision. You can also double-click on an entry to expand it.
The Table of Contents within the document functions just as do these bookmark entries;
clicking on any of the linked entries will take the user directly to the beginning of each
individual indicator entry.
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As shown in the following illustration and as an additional navigation tool, printed at the
bottom of each page beginning with page 1 you will find the words “Table of Contents” in blue
and underlined. This indicates that this text is a hyperlink. Clicking here will display the
beginning of the Table of Contents so that you can navigate to another indicator.
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Oregon’s District Improvement Indicators:
District and School Structure and Culture
1.0 District and School Structure and Culture
Effective district and school systems support the learning and achievement of all
students.
“School culture reflects the shared idea—assumptions, values, and beliefs—that give an
organization its identity and standard for expected behaviors (Tableman & Herron, 2004, p. 1).”
This is equally true in school district offices or in any other organization whether public or
private. Tableman and Herron assert that the culture of a school or district is evident in the
presentation of its buildings; the interactions of staff with each other, students, and the
community; and the beliefs about human nature that govern these interactions.
These elements of culture both affect and effect aspects of district operations and the outcomes
the district can achieve. While culture at the school building is critical in that it is the point of
contact for most staff-student interactions, that culture is the result of the personal beliefs of
staff, the values evident in the interaction of district staff with school staff and the larger
community, and the values expressed through decisions supporting certain expenditures and
acquisitions over others.
Indicator DDSC1.1
The district has a process for setting clear goals for student achievement for all students,
including appropriate district, school and student sub-group achievement targets that are
reviewed annually.
Indicator DDSC1.2
Using appropriate and complete data sets, the district evaluates existing school improvement
strategies being implemented across the district and determines their effectiveness, modifying
and adjusting as analysis of evidence suggests.
Indicator DDSC1.3
District-wide behavior standards create a safe, drug free educational environment that is
conducive for learning and are evident in staff interactions with students. Behavior standards
are a part of district policy and procedures and are routinely communicated to staff, parents
and students.
Indicator DDSC1.4
The school board and superintendent actively engage families and the community in building a
shared vision and supportive culture across the district, establishing mutual expectations for
what the district and schools will look like when outcomes have been met.
Indicator DDSC1.5
The district has developed a unified, comprehensive, systemic and equitable approach for
addressing barriers to learning and teaching designed to re-engage disconnected students that
includes: supporting transitions; increasing home involvement and engagement; creating a
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District and School Structure and Culture
caring and safe learning environment; increasing community involvement; and facilitating
student and family access to effective services and special assistance.
Indicator DDSC1.6
The district’s mission and goals reflect high expectations for equity by developing awareness of
the cultural diversity among students, staff, and community that is reflected in the shared vision
at both the district and school levels.
Indicator DDSC1.7
The district collaborates with community members and pre-kindergarten providers to ensure
that students enter kindergarten ready to learn.
Indicator DDSC1.8
The district coordinates the goals and strategies across improvement plans being implemented
including but not limited to the following plans: District Improvement; School level
Comprehensive Achievement Plans (CAPs); Educator Effectiveness; Talented and Gifted;
English Language Learners (ELL); Title III (if applicable); Perkins/Career Technical Education
(CTE); the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
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Indicator DDSC1.1
The district has a process for setting clear goals for student achievement for all
students, including appropriate district, school and student sub-group achievement
targets that are reviewed annually.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
In “How Leadership Influences Student Learning” (Keithwood, Seashore Louis, Anderson, &
Walstrom, 2004), the authors assert:
Evidence suggests that [leadership practices] account for the largest proportion of a
leader’s impact. This set of practices is aimed at helping one’s colleagues develop
shared understandings about the organization and its activities and goals that can
under gird a sense of purpose or vision. People are motivated by goals which they
find personally compelling, as well as challenging but achievable. Having such goals
helps people make sense of their work and enables them to find a sense of identity
for themselves within their work context.
Often cited as helping set directions are such specific leadership practices as
identifying and articulating a vision, fostering the acceptance of group goals, and
creating high performance expectations. Monitoring organizational performance
and promoting effective communication throughout the organization also assist in
the development of shared organizational purposes (p. 8).
That is, leadership depends on the act of setting direction for the organization. Goal setting is
the concrete expression of that direction.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
In Oregon, all districts are required by law to complete and submit Achievement Compacts
outlining the numerical targets toward which each district is striving. By design, the
Achievement Compact should result from a widely collaborative effort among school district
personnel (for example board members, central office staff, principals, and teachers), families,
community members, and local employers and business leaders.
Beyond the requirements of the law, however, is the importance of best practice. All districts
that make successful use of goal setting do so with a clear technique. In Oregon, some of the
districts use SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound) Goals while
others use a logic model or theory of action. Still others use alternative models that have proved
useful with the district’s staff. In any case, an effective model can provide the necessary
structure to support discussion and planning and can increase the likelihood of meeting the
goals.
Successful districts give careful consideration to setting goals and developing plans in support
of those goals. These goals should include all students and should address subgroups of
students across the district’s schools to the extent necessitated by demographic breakdowns.
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Goals should be aggressive but reasonable and progress toward their realization should be
monitored on a periodic schedule.
Indistar can be used to create and monitor planned activities leading toward the
accomplishment of these goals and can provide needed documentation as districts review
progress and reevaluate the goals, setting new goals or creating new plans as needed to move
the district forward.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):



Oregon’s Achievement Compacts
district and school goal setting and academic achievement
effective goal setting school districts
Research (links use scholar.google.com):

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school district academic goal setting
school district safety goal setting
effective goal setting school districts
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Indicator DDSC1.2
Using appropriate and complete data sets, the district evaluates existing school
improvement strategies being implemented across the district and determines their
effectiveness, modifying and adjusting as analysis of evidence suggests.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
In implementing programs and services for students, district and school staff express an
interest in improving outcomes for their instructional efforts. This intent is value-based and is
the essence of program improvement. Ensuring that the desired program improvement occurs
is dependent, in part, on effective evaluations of the impact of the particular strategies
employed.
MEERA, the University of Michigan’s website on environmental education evaluation (Zint,
n.d.), posits that program evaluation can have two positive and needed impacts:
Improve program design and implementation.
It is important to periodically assess and adapt your activities to ensure they are as
effective as they can be. Evaluation can help you identify areas for improvement and
ultimately help you realize your goals more efficiently. Additionally, when you share
your results about what was more and less effective, you help advance … education.
Demonstrate program impact.
Evaluation enables you to demonstrate your program’s success or progress. The
information you collect allows you to better communicate your program's impact to
others, which is critical for public relations, staff morale, and attracting and
retaining support from current and potential funders (Should I evaluate my
program? section).
Knowing that the program is accomplishing the desired outcome can help staff continue
challenging work in difficult times. This knowledge can also help to clarify and justify budget
priorities to school boards and the public.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
In districts with effective school improvement programs, staff periodically review aspects of
these programs, modifying practices and roles to accommodate any identified shortcomings.
This can be done through formal program evaluation or simply by reviewing practices and
making an effort to evaluate the contribution each makes to improving outcomes for students.
Initially, these evaluations should track adherence to prescribed procedures (fidelity); over
time, they can shift based on what is found to work in the context of the district’s schools.
Districts with effective programs focus both attention and evaluation on the fidelity of
implementation of programs. That is, a program that has proved effective outside the district
should be brought into the district’s schools with careful attention to all of the elements of
training, materials, district and outside supports, and any other elements shown to impact
effectiveness. Once implemented, the program must be monitored to ensure that this fidelity
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remains and that any changes are intentional and not merely the result of a lack of attention to
the details of the program.
In the absence of periodic reviews, ineffective programs and practices can remain in place for
some time. It is not uncommon to find programs that once had a strong impact on student
learning have weakened over time. This could result from any of a number of shifts in the
district’s schools including: staffing changes that bring in new teachers and paraprofessionals
not trained to implement the program, exhaustion of support materials needed for
implementation, changes in student demographics, or any of a number of challenges that
weaken otherwise effective programs.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):


program evaluation models schools
effective "school improvement" practices
A particularly thorough model for program evaluation designed and implemented by a school
district, can be found at “Rockwood School District Program Evaluation Plan.”
The US Department of Education has published a guide to program evaluation called Evaluation
Matters available for download at http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oese/sst/index.html.
Research (links use scholar.google.com):
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methods for evaluating programs in "public school"
effective "school improvement" practices
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District and School Structure and Culture
Indicator DDSC1.3
District-wide behavior standards create a safe, drug free educational environment
that is conducive for learning and are evident in staff interactions with students.
Behavior standards are a part of district policy and procedures and are routinely
communicated to staff, parents and students.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
In the book Promoting Social and Emotional Learning: Guidelines for Educators (Elias, et al.,
1997), the authors argue that:
The challenge of raising knowledgeable, responsible, and caring children is
recognized by nearly everyone. Few realize, however, that each element of this
challenge can be enhanced by thoughtful, sustained, and systematic attention to
children’s social and emotional learning (SEL) [author’s emphasis]. Indeed,
experience and research show that promoting social and emotional development in
children is “the missing piece” in efforts to reach the array of goals associated with
improving schooling in the United States. There is a rising tide of understanding
among educators that children’s SEL can and should be promoted in schools…
Although school personnel see the importance of programs to enhance students’
social, emotional, and physical well-being, they also regard prevention campaigns
with skepticism and frustration, because most have been introduced as disjointed
fads, or a series of “wars” against one problem or another. Although well
intentioned, these efforts have achieved limited success due to a lack of coordinated
strategy… (p. 1).
This highlights the importance and broad impact of district policies targeting the social and
emotional learning of students and their impact on safety and school climate. It is important to
realize, however, that while districts can and typically do establish policies regarding these
issues including policies targeting student behaviors related to weapons, drug use, classroom
behavior, and a range of related issues, the impact occurs when these policies and their
associated procedures are familiar to everyone involved and adhered to in a consistent and
effective way.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
It is commonplace for districts across Oregon to take advantage of the services of the Oregon
School Boards Association (OSBA) in their attempts to address both required policies and
policies that have been identified as a local need. On a fee-for-service basis, OSBA can provide
either boilerplate policy documents that local staff or boards can modify as necessary or
consultative services to develop needed custom policies. OSBA hosts this service, along with
many other supports for school boards and district staff online at http://policy.osba.org/
(Oregon School Boards Association, 2014).
Beyond the adoption of needed policy, however, is the careful consideration of what that
adoption should entail. In the case of a policy related to student behavior standards, for
instance, successful districts clearly communicate the policy to families and students through
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direct discussion and through student handbooks and similar publications. Simply
communicating the policy is insufficient to ensure real behavior management among students.
Districts must establish clear expectations and then follow through with these expectations in a
fair and equitable way ensuring that all school staff apply the policy equally across all students,
targeting behavior without regard to any special status or membership in any identified
subgroups. This can only result from effective and diligent leadership and a shared vision for
the values expressed in the policy.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):





how does school safety affect academic outcomes
safe school policies
behavior management policies
best practices bullying prevention intervention
drug prevention schools
Research (links use scholar.google.com):


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
how does school safety affect academic outcomes
safe school policies
behavior management policies school district
best practices bullying prevention intervention
drug prevention schools
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Indicator DDSC1.4
The school board and superintendent actively engage families and the community in
building a shared vision and supportive culture across the district, establishing
mutual expectations for what the district and schools will look like when outcomes
have been met.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
In “The Three Essentials: Improving Schools Requires District Vision, District and State Support,
and Principal Leadership,” Bottoms and Schmidt-Davis (2010) describe the results of a broad
study of the proper role and essential functions of effective school districts. The authors assert:
The district — including the school board, the superintendent, key staff and
influential stakeholders in the community — must have the capacity to develop and
articulate both a vision and a set of practices that send a clear message of what
schools are to be about. This is a message not only for educators, but for the
community at large. This message creates public understanding of what the school
system is trying to do…
The authenticity of this message is affirmed through the district’s development of a
strategic plan that manifests the vision — and then by district actions that establish
the conditions necessary for principals and teacher leaders to create a different kind
of school. These conditions include aligning all policies and resources to the plan;
creating a collaborative and supportive working relationship with each school;
expecting and supporting the principal to become the school’s instructional leader;
and communicating the vision and strategic plan to the public in a highly visible way
that provides the context for principals to make decisions supported by parents and
the larger community.
If instructional staff and programs are to succeed, it must be clear what success entails. A clear
statement of vision and leadership and planning toward that vision provides a shared
workspace for everyone engaged in supporting student learning.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
Gabriel and Farmer (2009) provide an excellent model for the development and
implementation of a vision for educators. This model, available online from ASCD1, engages
teachers and leaders in agreeing upon a vision that all can support; one that, if realized, will
create real effectiveness in educational programs.
1See
Google Searches for “Chapter 2. Developing a Vision and a Mission” from How to Help Your
School Thrive Without Breaking the Bank by John G. Gabriel and Paul C. Farmer
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Successful districts engage staff in the effort; first by helping staff identify the need for a change
of direction and then by establishing that new direction. This work recognizes the importance
of staff engagement in the effort to ensure that the vision is a valued and valuable direction for
the organization rather than an exercise that meets outside requirements but fails to provide
real guidance in decision making and prioritization.
These districts also provide the needed time to work on the vision statement and to
contemplate both intended and unintended impacts that may stem of the resulting vision
statement. Good vision statements provide a clear, concise statement of values and direction for
the organization and a measure against which all efforts can be evaluated to determine their
contribution to the district’s intended results; measures that can be used before hand to decide
whether something should be undertaken and afterward to evaluate the impact of a new effort.
Visions developed using the model presented by Gabriel and Farmer (2009) are based on data
describing where the district is and where the district falls short in meeting the values of staff
and the community. Such a vision is a powerful tool and can unify the efforts of staff at the
school and district levels. By sharing the vision broadly, posting it where staff and visitors can
see and remember it, and including it in publications and other communications, the vision can
become real for staff and the community.
Finally, districts that make effective use of visioning revisit the vision on a frequent basis. This
ensures that the vision properly reflects the current needs and efforts of the district. Beyond
being current for the district, the vision must remain current for the staff. A vision developed
ten years ago by staff who are largely no longer present in the district will serve more as a
reminder of what was than a vision of what should be. Visions should be reevaluated and staff
must have the chance to buy in anew or to revise the vision as needed.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):
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school district vision and mission statements
leadership vision
Chapter 2. Developing a Vision and a Mission - ASCD
Research (links use scholar.google.com):
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school district vision and mission statements
vision leadership school district
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Indicator DDSC1.5
The district has developed a unified, comprehensive, systemic and equitable
approach for addressing barriers to learning and teaching designed to re-engage
disconnected students that includes: supporting transitions, increasing home
involvement and engagement, creating a caring and safe learning environment,
increasing community involvement, and facilitating student and family access to
effective services and special assistance.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
Supporting Transitions
Students often lose ground academically during periods of transition from one school or
program to another. Their anxiety over the change can overwhelm their concern for their
academic success (Williamston, 2010). A failed transition can lead to declines in achievement
and/or increased likelihood of dropping out, suspensions, or expulsion. Alternatively, successful
transitions contribute to improved academic outcomes and relationships with peers and school
staff.
Increasing Home Involvement and Engagement
The involvement of parents and family in this indicator is independent of the larger work
outlined in the area of Family and Community Involvement found in indicators DFC2.1 through
DFC2.5. In this area, home involvement and engagement describes involvement in the schooling
of the student rather than in the school. That is, involvement in meetings regarding services to
and progress for individual students. These might include meetings that support: 1) the formal
development of an individualized education program (IEP), 2) the creation or revision of the
student’s individual plan and profile, 3) less formal discussions of the student’s short term
educational goals, or 4) concerns regarding academic challenges, potentials for retention, or
course or program placement. Beyond this, however, is the discussion and documentation of
any physical or mental health concerns.
The children of parents engaged in their schooling see higher academic
achievement, higher graduation rates, higher expectations on the part of teachers,
cultural bridges between home and school provided by parents, lower rates of
antisocial or restricted behaviors, stronger and more successful relationships with
school staff, and improved transitions among buildings and programs (La Fuente
Consulting, 2012).
Creating and Caring and Safe Learning Environment
The reference in this indicator to a safe learning environment is not associated with the
reference to safety (i.e., a safe, drug free educational environment) found in Indicator DDSC1.3.
Here, the phrase “a caring and safe learning environment” refers more to comfort or belonging
than to physical safety. This is not to diminish the importance of this type of safety; indeed
students attending schools where safety concerns have led to significant, restrictive physical
security measures report that these measures result in an environment less “safe” for learning.
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According to Beck and Malley (1998), “Students who exhaust their energies attempting to meet
a deficiency in belonging have no reserves left for higher level connotative and cognitive
functions (Introduction section).”
Increasing Community Involvement and Facilitating Access to Services
Finally, community involvement and access to services and assistance, often referred to as
wraparound services, provide for meeting the balance of the needs of students beyond the
safety and security of belonging. Wraparound services include those needed social and
healthcare (both physical and mental/emotional) that will support retention in the school
setting and improved outcomes for the student.
All of the issues addressed in this indicator are personal and individual. That is, while programs
can be established that will provide for these supports, the nature of the supports for any one
student will be tailored to meet individual needs and to support the student in their inclusion in
the district’s instructional programs.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
In addressing this indicator, it is necessary to define the work of district staff as opposed to that
of school-level staff. Although services and programs of the type described in this indicator are
delivered at the school level, there is advantage in the efficiencies found when such programs
are arranged by district level staff. Similarly, the district has a role in establishing expectations
for schools through policy and administrative rule.
Districts where this indicator is successfully addressed have policies that call for the
engagement of responsible adults in decisions of consequence to the education of their children.
Districts with a commitment to and policies supporting family engagement in this decisionmaking provide training for school staff and families that facilitate this process. These districts
also examine both policies and practices that may present unintentional barriers to fully
engaging family members in their child’s education.
Transfer practices evident in these districts include ongoing communication between staff at
feeder and receiver schools. This would include periodic meetings where staff discuss the needs
of transferring students as a group and, to the extent necessary, any individuals with needs for
particular or specialized supports. Additionally, students are invited to visit informally in their
destination schools, teachers in feeder schools talk about the positive aspects, both of
promotion to higher grade levels and of the receiver school in particular. This would include
encouragement for students that, while the work will be progressively more challenging, the
students are well prepared and the students can expect to succeed at the receiver school. Often
transition experiences include a “day in the life” event where individual students in each school
are paired so that students transferring in can get an idea of what life is like at the new school.
Districts with high levels of success in this indicator do not depend upon such programs and
practices developing spontaneously but provide direction, policy statements, and appropriate
training and supports to school staff in implementing the practices.
In Beyond the Bake Sale: A Community-Based Relational Approach to Parent Engagement in
Schools Warren, Hong, Leueng, and Uy (2009) focus attention on three elements of relationship
building for family and community engagement. Their research argues for efforts to build
relationships among families and educators, development of parent leadership skills, and
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cultural and power equalization between families and educators. This is certainly important in
the area of Family and Community Involvement but applies equally here. Again, the
implementation of this relationship building will occur at the school level but can be
encouraged through policies and training arranged and led at the district level.
Success with this indicator is found in more comfort and a perception of self-efficacy among
students, higher levels of family participation in decision-making and supports, and in
sophisticated partnerships with local social service agencies. The impact of these additional
inputs into schooling is evident in improved outcomes for students including higher academic
achievement, increased attendance rates, better retention in school, stronger views of selfefficacy among students, increased high school graduation rates, and improved attitudes
toward schooling and the community.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):
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positive district culture and practices
building school culture district engagement
transitions among school buildings
increasing home involvement and engagement
creating a caring and safe learning environment
wraparound services public schools
Research (links use scholar.google.com):
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positive school district culture and practices –language
building school culture district engagement
transition from middle school to high school
transition from elementary school to middle school
increase family involvement and engagement in schools
caring and safe learning environment school -health
making classrooms safe comfortable
wraparound services public schools
mental health support school
social services support school
beyond the bake sale
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Oregon’s District Improvement Indicators:
District and School Structure and Culture
Indicator DDSC1.6
The district’s mission and goals reflect high expectations for equity by developing
awareness of the cultural diversity among students, staff, and community that is
reflected in the shared vision at both the district and school levels.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
Over the past twenty years, researchers have increasingly called for an awareness and
understanding of cultural diversity. Zhao (2010) describes an established and growing need for
educators to address cultural diversity in their classrooms in preparation for an increasingly
globalized economy. Zhao argues that, given the differentials in salary among developed and
developing countries, there will be increasing pressure on American workers to be prepared to
function in an internationally diverse culture. Indeed, he goes so far as to argue:
As a social institution, education has been mostly a local entity … preparing workers
for the local economy, and passing on local values. The idea of a local community has
already become something of the past. We all live in a globally interconnected and
interdependent community today. We can be certain that our children will live in an
even more globalized world. Their lives will be even more affected by others who
live in distant lands, belong to different local communities, and believe in different
gods or in no god at all. Education, the traditionally local social institution, thus faces
a number of significant challenges to prepare our children to live in the global
society (p. 423).
Other authors approach this issue somewhat differently by addressing the diversity within
individual schools. Elmore, for instance, says, “[E]very school has substantial racial, ethnic, and
cultural diversity, even when the student population is predominantly of one race or ethnicity.
Most schools have substantial diversity of social class (1997, p. 4).” The issue of differentials in
social class as cultural diversity is taken up by Bowman (2013) when she argues that the socioeconomic differential among students and between teachers and some of their students leads to
significant variation in expectations of students. That is, despite the only limited differentials in
ability of students, those from more affluent homes, teachers and students alike, have and
express lowered expectations of students living in poverty.
Whether the cultural diversity within a school district or an individual school is broadly evident
in racial/ethnic/linguistic diversity or more obscurely represented merely in the diversity of
family income, diversity is present in the educational experience of students. This diversity can
lead to variable expectations which can lead to variability in the educational delivery within the
classroom and in the learning opportunities students are afforded. The differential in
educational experience can and does result in stifling both academic and affective outcomes for
students. If every student is to reach his or her potential, this variability in opportunity must be
eliminated.
Beyond the responsibility to maximize the learning and achievement of students, districts have
an obligation to prepare students for life beyond school. The authors cited above have argued
that, regardless of the homogenous nature of any particular student’s school, their life beyond
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that school will require an appreciation of the value of cultural diversity in its many forms. Few
students will remain within such isolated and isolating experiences as they move through life.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
The US Department of Health and Human Services (2012) offers the following definition of
Cultural Competence derived from multiple sources, including the National Center for Cultural
Competence at Georgetown University:
Cultural Competence [is] a set of values, behaviors, attitudes, and practices within a
system, organization, program, or among individuals and which enables them to
work effectively cross culturally. Further, it refers to the ability to honor and respect
the beliefs, language, inter-personal styles and behaviors of individuals and families
receiving services, as well as staff who are providing such services. At a systems,
organizational, or program level, cultural competence requires a comprehensive
and coordinated plan that includes interventions at all the levels from policy-making
to the individual, and is a dynamic, ongoing, process that requires a long-term
commitment. A component of cultural competence is linguistic competence, the
capacity of an organization and its personnel to communicate effectively, and
convey information in a manner that is easily understood by diverse audiences
including persons of limited English proficiency, those who are not literate or have
low literacy skills, and individuals with disabilities.
Regarding the principles of cultural competence, an organization should value
diversity in families, staff, providers and communities; have the capacity for cultural
self-assessment; be conscious of the dynamics inherent when cultures interact, e.g.
families and providers; institutionalize cultural knowledge; and develop adaptations
to service delivery and partnership building reflecting an understanding of cultural
diversity. An individual should examine one‘s own attitude and values; acquire the
values, knowledge, and skills for working in cross cultural situations; and remember
that every one (sic) has a culture (p. 219).
This definition describes not only what cultural competence is but also what effectively
pursuing cultural competence requires both of an organization and of individuals within that
organization.
In districts where cultural competence is valued, diversity is seen as strength rather than a
burden to district programs and staff. Staff in these districts receive training to help them
identify any biases endemic to the district and those common among educators. Staff are also
encouraged to reflect on their own practices in an ongoing effort to identify any variability in
treatment among their students that is not based on legitimate educational needs.
Realizing that cultural differences exist both among staff and between staff and
students/families, effective programs supporting cultural competence include careful
consideration to means and mode of communication with families and with staff internal to the
district. District policies and practices target multiple modes of communication and give careful
consideration to providing information access that is as nearly universal as can be
accommodated.
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Similarly, district policies address the interactions of staff with students where cultural
differences might be reflected in expectations, instruction, grading, assessment, or course
access. These policies reflect a vision of maximizing opportunity and expectations for all
students regardless of race/ethnicity, socio-economic, or other cultural status.
These policies describe the values and practices of district staff at all levels. To operationalize
policy documents related to cultural competence, leadership in the district models appropriate
practices and behaviors acknowledging the legitimacy and value of all cultures represented
within the district and beyond. The values reflected in the policy are the subject of trainings for
staff and are reflected in recruitment materials and candidate selection. These are not merely
passing references to cultural competence in conversations, staff meetings, and recruiting
materials but conscious actions that promote and advance the cause of cultural competence
throughout the district and diminish the negative consequences of personal and organizational
biases.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):

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developing awareness cultural diversity
cultural diversity students equity
implementing cultural diversity in the classroom
achievement gap language minority
achievement gap ethnic minority
Research (links use scholar.google.com):
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developing awareness cultural diversity school
cultural diversity students equity
implementing cultural diversity in the classroom
achievement gap language minority
achievement gap ethnic minority
"opportunity to learn" ethnic minority
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Indicator DDSC1.7
The district collaborates with community members and pre-kindergarten providers
to ensure that students enter kindergarten ready to learn.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
Kindergarten readiness is widely recognized as a precondition to success in elementary school
and beyond. In the article, “A Village Route to Early Childhood Education: An Iowa District
Partners with its Community to Improve Kindergarten Readiness” (Almanza, Reynolds, Schulte,
& Long, 2009), the authors argue:
Early childhood education is essential to ensuring students are ready to learn when
they enter kindergarten and are able to achieve success as they progress through
school and life. With early childhood education, students learn more, teachers
accomplish more and taxpayers get more for their education tax dollar.
…
Working with our partners, we have created a sustainable, successful model for
quality early childhood education in our area and created economies of scale that
allow us to maximize our resources and staff development opportunities.
This point touches on both of the issues incorporated into this indicator, 1) kindergarten
readiness is important to educational success and 2) collaborative relationships across the
community strengthen and enhance the impact and sustainability of programs designed to
ensure readiness.
The impact of these programs is evident from the first day of school when students with
appropriate preschool experience move quickly and deftly into the classroom while their less
prepared peers need time and direction to achieve the same level of success (Almanza,
Reynolds, Schulte, & Long, 2009). This difference is evident in curriculum-based measures of
literacy, as well, with students coming from preschool outscoring students without preschool
experience by 20 points using DIBELS subtests.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
Districts working to ensure kindergarten readiness can do so through any of several paths.
Some districts take responsibility for establishing and managing preschool programs that
prepare students for entry into kindergarten. Others rely on established preschool systems
within their community. In either case, district staff work to maximize the value of programs
that send students into the district.
In the case of a district-run preschool, the system is designed to standards that put students on
track for entry into the kindergartens in the district. This requires an articulated curriculum
and well-defined expectations. These districts also work to measure the effectiveness of these
programs to ensure that the content and practices at the preschools are achieving the desired
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outcome of delivering students to the school door ready to learn and participate effectively in
the classroom.
As an alternative, the district may identify existing programs serving potential students and
collaborate to maximize the impact of these programs. This could include providing training for
teachers and aides in the programs and collaborative planning that sets an appropriate
trajectory for the students so that the move into the school district is as seamless as possible.
Regardless of the model used in the district, the best designed programs are of little value if
students are not able to participate. Successful districts establish programs for identifying
students who should be included in the programs and work to remove potential barriers to
participation. Typical barriers include lack of funds, language challenges, cultural preferences of
families, and a host of others. Although these are common barriers found in schools across the
state and nation, it is certain that staff in each district will identify a number of barriers unique
to their context and situation.
All of this effort is enhanced by proper engagement of community partners. Social service and
healthcare agencies can assist with identifying families with preschool age children. They can
also work with the district to secure funding from sources in their network. Similarly, local
employers and community and fraternal organizations can assist with communication and
funding as elements of their community service programs. The available partners in a particular
district will vary depending on location and population. It remains important, however, that
district staff maximize this engagement so that the burden on the district can be minimized.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):
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
ready to learn
ready to learn oregon
oregon community foundation ready to learn
community preschool collaboration
community preschool collaboration -vermont
build community partnership preschool
Research (links use scholar.google.com):
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ready to learn preschool kindergarten
preschool kindergarten community partnerships
community partnerships kindergarten readiness
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Indicator DDSC1.8
The district coordinates the goals and strategies across improvement plans being
implemented including but not limited to the following plans: District Improvement;
School level Comprehensive Achievement Plans (CAPs); Educator Effectiveness;
Talented and Gifted; English Language Learners (ELL); ESEA Title III (if applicable);
Perkins/Career Technical Education (CTE); the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act (IDEA).
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
The federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA Title I. Section 1112(a)(1))
requires that school districts have an approved plan before receiving funding. The plan must
coordinate programs under ESEA including Title I Improving the Academic Achievement of the
Disadvantaged, Title II Part A Improving Teacher Quality, Title III Language Instruction for
Limited English Proficient and Immigrant Students, and other federal programs and must
describe how services will be integrated and coordinated with programs for preschool children
and special populations to increase effectiveness and eliminate duplication in instructional
programs.
This coordination of programs serves to improve efficiency and enhance the goals of individual
programs. Without careful coordination, funds can be misspent while appropriate funds remain
available. Similarly, districts and schools may believe that funds are not available when an
alternative source may remain untapped.
Beyond issues of efficiency, coordination is important because many of these programs provide
multiple services to single student populations. That is, migrant students served under ESEA
Title I-C are also often served in programs for non-native English speakers (Title III). Nonnative English speakers are frequently served both under Title III and Title I Part A (services to
economically disadvantaged students). Coordination of these programs is not merely efficient
but avoids counterproductive efforts that may lead students’ educational services in multiple
directions.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
Successful coordination of programs requires first that the district determine the extent of
multiply served students in the district. Analysis of student records can assist with this work
and can provide the information to determine the level of needed coordination.
To the extent that students are multiply served under these related programs, multiply funding
staff working in these programs is reasonable and encouraged. That is, the Title I Part A
coordinator at the district level or within individual schools might be funded both by Title I Part
A funds and Title III funds at levels indicating their engagement in these programs.
Recording services to students in a single, coordinated data set supports decision-making and
provides insight into missing or duplicated services for these students. Such data management
also supports planning for improved services and measurement of outcomes for these students.
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Such data analysis provides insight into shortcomings in programs and services for students
within and across multiple programs.
Coordinated planning also provides the opportunity for the assignment of paraprofessionals
and careful coordination of their efforts in support of student learning.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):


coordination of federally funded education programs
coordinate education federal funding
Research (links use scholar.google.com):

esea coordinate "Title I" "Title II" "Title III"
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Family and Community Involvement
2.0 Family and Community Involvement
Effective family involvement efforts bring families and educators together to
collaboratively work to support student achievement.
In Beyond the Bake Sale: The Essential Guide to Family-School Partnerships, the authors offer 5
benefits of effective family and community involvement in schools (Henderson, Mapp, Johnson,
& Davies, 2007). These include:
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Partnership and student academic achievement are closely linked…
Partnerships help build and sustain public support for the schools…
Families and the community can help schools overcome the challenges they face.
Teachers can benefit from parent and community partnerships…
The No Child Left Behind Act [sic] provides partnership opportunities that can help
schools met the requirements of the law (pp. 2-9).
These benefits, which accrue primarily at the school level, can be facilitated and encouraged by
effective district policies and practices. Henderson et al (2007) call for the development of
“partnership schools” where family input is not only accepted and honored but actively
solicited as opposed to “open door schools” where families are made to feel that they are
welcome visitors with a bona fide interest in what happens in the school but little input or
influence over school programs.
This focus on the benefits of family and community partnerships in schooling echo in
“School/Family/Community Partnerships: Caring for the Children We Share” (Epstein, 2010)
when the author asserts, “[T]he main reason to create such partnerships is to help all
youngsters succeed in school and in later life.”
Important to this discussion is the distinction drawn by some authors between family
involvement and family engagement. For many authors and discussants of this topic, the terms
are held synonymous. In his article, “Involvement or Engagement”, author Larry Ferlazzo
(2011) describes clearly different activities on the part of schools striving for family
involvement from those working on family engagement. Ferlazzo says:
To create the kinds of school-family partnerships that raise student achievement,
improve local communities, and increase public support, we need to understand the
difference between family involvement and family engagement. One of the dictionary
definitions of involve is "to enfold or envelope," whereas one of the meanings of
engage is "to come together and interlock." Thus, involvement implies doing to; in
contrast, engagement implies doing with.
A school striving for family involvement often leads with its mouth—identifying
projects, needs, and goals and then telling parents how they can contribute. A school
striving for parent engagement, on the other hand, tends to lead with its ears—
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Family and Community Involvement
listening to what parents think, dream, and worry about. The goal of family
engagement is not to serve clients but to gain partners.
It's not that family involvement is bad. Almost all the research says that any kind of
increased parent interest and support of students can help. But almost all the
research also says that family engagement can produce even better results—for
students, for families, for schools, and for their communities (Ferlazzo & Hammond,
2009) (p. 10).
Indicator DFC2.1
The district school board and leadership employ advisory structures and collaborative
processes that are representative of the district demographics to implement an effective
communication and decision-making system that involves families, students, teachers, school
employees and community in data-driven decision making for determining goals, creating
policy, reviewing budgets, evaluating school reform initiatives, and in creating safe learning
environments.
Indicator DFC2.2
The district policies, procedures and systems facilitate communication with families where staff
implement and monitor frequent two-way communication with families regarding learning
standards, their children’s progress toward meeting those standards, K-12 instructional and
extra-curricular options and the families’ role in their children’s success in school including
preparation for post-secondary education and careers.
Indicator DFC2.3
The district has systems in place to support schools’ activities and processes to educate families
on opportunities to be involved in the school and at home to support student learning.
Indicator DFC2.4
The district promotes and supports school environments that demonstrate cultural proficiency
and integrate cultural values that represent the students and community.
Indicator DFC2.5
The district creates connections between schools and the broader community to support
student learning and career related learning opportunities.
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Indicator DFC2.1
The district school board and leadership employ advisory structures and
collaborative processes that are representative of the district demographics to
implement an effective communication and decision-making system that involves
families, students, teachers, school employees and community in data-driven
decision making for determining goals, creating policy, reviewing budgets,
evaluating school reform initiatives, and in creating safe learning environments.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
In her seminal article on family and community involvement in schools, School/Family/
Community Partnerships: Caring for the Children We Share, (2010), Joyce Epstein describes six
types of caring. Among these six she includes decision making which she describes as a planned
effort to “Include parents in school decisions, developing parent leaders and representatives (p.
85).” In many schools this type of family involvement is limited to the parent teacher
organization and a somewhat informal model for supports for school activities. In schools
where parent engagement is undervalued, these organizations can be relegated to planning
fundraisers and endorsing the planning done outside the group by the professional educators at
the school.
Epstein argues that this sort of expected consent is not enough to truly engage families in the
education of their children and may well alienate many parents who are hoping for more
opportunity to shape policy and practices in the school. Research done by Epstein and others
suggest that family engagement in policy development will result in a greater awareness of
policies, an understanding of student rights, and benefits specific to the policies resulting from
this decision making effort. The increased ownership and investment in education by families
and collaborative relationships developed both with school staff and other families will lead to a
more supportive attitude toward the school and improved outcomes for students. Similarly,
educator awareness of family perspectives will improve school/family relationships and
student outcomes.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
Commonly, even in situations where families are effectively involved in their children’s
education, the bulk of family engagement occurs at the school rather than district level. There
are opportunities for engaging families and other community members in decision making
regarding budgeting and policy development at the district level. Developing an effective
system of advisories supporting budgeting and policy development ensures that community
values and interests are represented in the outcomes of this effort.
Districts successful in integrating parent and community members in the work of leading the
district establish both ad hoc and standing committees to oversee aspects of the district’s
operation as necessary. While such committees nearly universally include school board
members, effective use of this model for parent and community involvement requires
participation from parents, community members, teaching staff, district administrators,
students, and others with an interest in the outcomes of schooling in the district.
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Standing committees might include:

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Budgeting and Finance
Curriculum and Textbook Selection
Program/Initiative Evaluation
Library Materials Selection
Athletics and Activities
Calendar
Communications
Student Safety
School Health Advisory
Ad hoc committees are formed as needed with fixed missions and time frames. Examples of
these committees at various districts include:




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

Labor Negotiation
College Readiness Planning
Technology Acquisition and Planning
Student Rights and Responsibilities
Parent and Community Involvement Policy Development
Common Core Implementation
Student Data Management Solution Selection
Each of these ad hoc committees would meet for a fixed term, conduct investigations, reach
consensus on a course of action, and prepare and submit an advisory report to the district’s
school board. These reports typically provide recommendations rather than direction to district
staff.
Shorewood School District, Shorewood, Wisconsin, includes guidelines for ad hoc committees
on the district website specifying, “Each ad hoc committee appointed will receive a set of
guidelines from the Board which:





List the specific charge to the committee and the services the Board wishes the
committee to render;
Include a clarification of the committee’s limitations, any policies or procedures
governing committee work, and the relationship of the committee to the Board;
List the staff and resources that will be available to or provided to the committee;
List an approximate timeline for progress reports and completion of tasks; and
List the procedures for communicating committee information to the Board and to the
public (Shorewood School District, 2013).”
Notably, ad hoc committees have a clear charge, parameters for operations, fixed resources, a
timeline for task completion, and explicit deliverables. When the work of an ad hoc committee
is complete, the committee is disbanded.
Incorporation of representatives from across the spectrum of community members can ensure
that policy decisions reflect the cultural breadth of the community served by the district.
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What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):



collaboration with parents and community
school district standing committees
school district ad hoc committees
Research (links use scholar.google.com):


education parent participation home and school
education parent participation home and school policy -health
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Oregon’s District Improvement Indicators:
Family and Community Involvement
Indicator DFC2.2
The district policies, procedures and systems facilitate communication with families
where staff implement and monitor frequent two-way communication with families
regarding learning standards, their children’s progress toward meeting those
standards, K-12 instructional and extra-curricular options and the families’ role in
their children’s success in school including preparation for post-secondary education
and careers.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
In her capstone article School/Family/Community Partnerships: Caring for the Children We
Share, originally printed in Phi Delta Kappan in 1995 and reprinted in 2010, Joyce Epstein
presents a framework of parent and community involvement. Her framework, widely relied
upon as a resource in structuring family and community involvement, postulates that family
and community engagement is critical to academic success for students. This framework calls
for family support of student engagement in schools. It stresses the critical nature of
collaborative, common communication across the three spheres of influence. These spheres
include the family, the school, and the community (2010). She suggests:
[T]hey might conduct many high-quality communications and interactions designed
to bring all three spheres of influence closer together. With frequent interactions
between schools, families, and communities, more students are more likely to
receive common messages from various people about the importance of school, of
working hard, of thinking creatively, of helping one another, and of staying in school
(p. 82).
The key, according to Epstein’s research, is to keep the student the center of communication
and to maintain consistent messaging across each of the spheres; that is:
The inarguable fact is that students are the main actors in their education,
development, and success in school. School, family, and community partnerships
cannot simply produce successful students. Rather, partnership activities may be
designed to engage, guide, energize, and motivate students to produce their own
successes. The assumption is that, if children feel cared for and encouraged to work
hard in the role of student, they are more likely to do their best to learn to read,
write, calculate, and learn other skills and talents and to remain in school.
…
Students are often their parents’ main source of information about school. In strong
partnership programs, teachers help students understand and conduct traditional
communications with families (e.g., delivering memos or report cards) and new
communications (e.g., interacting with family members about homework or
participating in parent/teacher/student conferences). As we gain more information
about the role of students in partnerships, we are developing a more complete
understanding of how schools, families, and communities must work with students
to increase their chances for success (pp. 82-83).
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While not acknowledged specifically in Epstein’s work, the student plays an even more critical
role in communication between school staff and non-native English speaking or non-English
speaking parents. This role of communicator is enhanced when the student values the outcomes
of effective, accurate transmission of information.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
In Epstein’s framework for involvement, six types of engagement are identified:

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


Parenting
Communicating
Volunteering
Learning at Home
Decision Making
Collaborating with Community
For each of these six, Epstein presents sample practices, barriers and redefinitions, and
expected outcomes. Districts with effective parent involvement policies use those policies to
direct interactions among schools, parents, and the community to maximize the positive impact
of school and district staff in each of these areas.
Policies include direction on how to support parents in their role as a supporter of their
children’s education. As outlined in Beyond the Bake Sale: The Essential Guide to Family-School
Partnerships (2007, p. 15), district policies would direct schools toward:





relationship building with family centers with valuable resources, home visits by school
staff, culturally honoring activities, open and inviting facilities offered for community
use with social services appropriate to the community.
family activities directed toward curriculum content, review of student work and
progress involving both parents and teachers, community supported enhancement and
extension programs, clear communication of student progress with scoring information.
culturally appropriate supports including translators whenever necessary, use of
instructional materials including represented cultures, parent groups that are inclusive,
community support for outreach.
frequent, regular contact between parents and teachers to discuss student progress.
parents and families are involved in decisions regarding academic achievement and
programming rather than focusing on classroom supports to teachers.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):




parent engagement
parental decision making in schools
parental engagement in schools
culturally responsive schools
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Research (links use scholar.google.com):

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


parental decision making in schools
parental engagement in schools
culturally responsive schools
culturally responsive teacher
family school relationship
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Family and Community Involvement
Indicator DFC2.3
The district has systems in place to support schools’ activities and processes to
educate families on opportunities to be involved in the school and at home to
support student learning.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
The District of Columbia Public Schools provides information on the importance of parental
supports to student learning (2013). This site highlights the importance and valuable impact on
student learning of regular attendance, parental encouragement, and parents’ knowledge of the
planned content and instruction. In support of this position, the site goes on to communicate
the information parents need to support these areas.
In “Helping Your Child with Homework” (US Department of Education, 2005), the value of
parental engagement in learning is further supported. The Department of Education suggests,
“When family members read with their children, talk with their teachers, participate in school
or other learning activities and help them with homework, they give children a tremendous
advantage (p. 4).”
Harris and Goodall (2008) state this position quite emphatically in their article “Do Parents
Know They Matter? Engaging all Parents in Learning”:
Without doubt, parental engagement in children’s learning makes a difference and
remains one of the most powerful school improvement levers that we have.
However, effective parental engagement will not happen without concerted effort,
time and commitment of both parents and schools. It will not happen unless parents
know the difference that they make, and unless schools actively reinforce that ‘all
parents matter’.
For districts with a focused intent on improving both academic and affective outcomes for
students, there is clear evidence supporting the importance of parental involvement in the form
of encouragement and oversight of student academic effort outside school.
It is important that district and school staff address the differential of power in the familyschool relationship as they craft policies and plans for engagement. This differential is inherent
in the professional to lay person relationship but is also found among parents within the district
and individual schools. Many parents perceive that others have more power than they and that
those with the power have no particular advantage that justifies this difference.
There are multiple sources for this differentiation. The greatest and most obvious differential is
not, as one might speculate, issues related to migrant or immigrant status or even issues
resulting from language acquisition among non-native English speakers. The greatest
differential in school engagement, just as with student achievement, is the income gap among
families. Beyond the commonly identified gaps in student achievement, this income disparity
results in a power gap as parents struggle to work with school staffs (Lareau & Shumar, 1996).
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How does this look in a district when well implemented?
Districts that effectively support family engagement of this type establish and maintain policies
that direct school staff on procedures that encourage and facilitate families working with
schools in developing family friendly practices.
The following national standards are presented by the National PTA (2009, p. 6):
1. Welcoming All Families into the School Community
Families are active participants in the life of the school, and feel welcomed,
valued, and connected to each other, to school staff, and to what students are
learning and doing in class.
2. Communicating Effectively
Families and school staff engage in regular, two-way, meaningful
communication about student learning.
3. Supporting Student Success
Families and school staff continuously collaborate to support students’
learning and healthy development both at home and at school, and have
regular opportunities to strengthen their knowledge and skills to do so
effectively.
4. Speaking Up for Every Child
Families are empowered to be advocates for their own and other children, to
ensure that students are treated fairly and have access to learning
opportunities that will support their success.
5. Sharing Power
Families and school staff are equal partners in decisions that affect children
and families and together inform, influence, and create policies, practices,
and programs.
6. Collaborating with Community
Families and school staff collaborate with community members to connect
students, families, and staff to expanded learning opportunities, community
services, and civic participation.
These standards outline school-level practices but provide greater guidance for policy
establishment. Districts that successfully engage parents and families establish policies, making
clear the district’s expectations and the resources available to support schools in implementing
these policies.
Policies in districts where family engagement is particularly effective include opportunities for
families to become engaged in decision making and planning for the district. These policies
establish guidelines for communication and timing of events to maximize families’
opportunities to participate in planning sessions as opposed to reacting to developed
documents.
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Successful districts provide resources both in print and through public meetings for families to
become familiar with curriculum guides and instructional materials, state and local standards
for instruction and for student behavior, and planned and budgeted professional development
for district staff. Beyond merely informing families of these matters, engagement requires that
parents have the opportunity to participate in the establishment of these plans from the outset.
Family engagement policies establish clear lines of communication and dispute management
procedures, ensuring that families are comfortable advocating for their child and
communicating their needs to school staff. These policies support a collaborative rather than
merely communicative relationship in support of learning for both individual students and the
student body as a whole.
Such policies take into account issues of cultural diversity and encourage engagement by
families who might otherwise feel that they have no role in the schooling of their children but
prefer to defer to the perceived professional educators and experts in the schools.
Example plans are available online from the Ohio State Board of Education (2013), the
Washington State Board of Education (2013), and a number of other sources through the links
below.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):




district family engagement policy
parental supports for student learning
curriculum of the home
student affective outcomes parent involvement
Research (links use scholar.google.com):





school district family community engagement policy
engaging parents in student learning
student affective outcomes parent involvement
"curriculum of the home"
homework hotline
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Family and Community Involvement
Indicator DFC2.4
The district promotes and supports school environments that demonstrate cultural
proficiency and integrate cultural values that represent the students and
community.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
The first step in creating an environment of cultural proficiency is to establish a common
understanding of the term. In Cultural Proficiency: A Manual for School Leaders (Lindsey, Robins,
& Terrell, 1999) the authors offer the following description:
Cultural proficiency is a mindset; it embodies a worldview. For those who commit to
culturally proficient practices it represents a paradigmatic shift from viewing others
as problematic to viewing how one works with people different from one's self in a
manner to ensure effective practices (p. 21).
As a counterpoint to this view of diversity as an asset and in attempting to illuminate the need
for a broader view of desirable culture perspectives, CampbellJones, CampbellJones, and
Lindsey argue:
This moral position [the conceptual basis for the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001
(NCLB)] springs from the knowledge that prior efforts in public education provided
educational rigor for a few and sorted out the rest into a predetermined lower
societal class. Moreover, schools overtly participated in establishing and
maintaining a tradition of societal elitism and poverty along the lines of race,
gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, and ableism...
[W]e understand and acknowledge that educators are the products of our societal
context, hence shaped by the education they received. We further understand that
without critical self-reflection on the values and beliefs that define our morality,
teachers and school leaders are inclined to continue in unquestioning fashion the
educational traditions they received (2010, p. ix).
It is not uncommon for teachers to suggest that differential student performance in school can
be attributed to the students’ race or ethnicity, disabling conditions, or even gender. There is
evidence that the variability is due more to differences in levels and types of engagement in the
classroom rather than attributes inherent in the students themselves (CampbellJones,
CampbellJones, & Lindsey, 2010).
CampbellJones et. al. point out that there is a well-documented achievement gap between white
students in the US and their African-American and Hispanic counterparts on a school-by-school
basis. This gap is evident throughout data from both the National Assessment of Education
Progress (NAEP) and more recently from statewide achievement assessments mandated by
NCLB (2010). These authors argue that this cannot be overcome by simply modifying the
curriculum and enhancing teacher behaviors targeting teacher practices that serve the interests
of the mainstream culture. Instead, a modification of teachers’ values and beliefs is central to
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this effort to better address the needs of all students regardless of the students’ backgrounds
and how these values and beliefs might differ from those of the teaching staff.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
Lindsey and Daly offer a description of becoming culturally proficient as:
[R]aising the awareness of, and closing the gap between, a person’s and/or school’s
expressed values and how he/she and the school are actually perceived and
experienced by colleagues and the school community…[cultural proficiency
focusses] teaching and learning on the responsibility of educators and adults in the
community to teach all students (2012, p. 152).
The culturally proficient teacher does not merely tolerate or even celebrate cultural differences.
These teachers incorporate those differences into the classroom as an inherent, desirable, and
unavoidable aspect of bringing students from various backgrounds together in an educational
setting (CampbellJones, CampbellJones, & Lindsey, 2010). This change in the functioning of the
classroom, school, and district requires nothing less than a shift in values for many educators
and the parents and children they serve.
While cultural proficiency is a personal matter, it can be driven by district policies. One-off or
even long-term programs of professional development cannot lead toward cultural proficiency.
Professional development and professional learning are necessary but insufficient efforts to
change classroom practices. While learning can change the individual’s attitude, the practices
that are needed to fully engage in cultural proficiency cannot be managed at the individual level
(CampbellJones, CampbellJones, & Lindsey, 2010; Lindsey & Daly, 2012).
Divergent
Approaches to
Stduent
Diversity
Approaches to
Diversity in the
Classrom
Assessing Ones
Own Cultural
Knowledge
Valuing Diversity
Dealing with
Conflict
Institutionalizing
Cultural
Knowledge
Adapting to
Diversity
Cultural
Tolerance
Diversity as a
Problem
Tolerance of
Other Cultures
Avoid Conflict
Add Policies to
Overcome
Diversity
Practices to
Reduce Reports
of Conflict
Cultural
Proficiency
Diversity as an
Asset
Esteem and
Respect for All
Cultures
Manage and
Leverage
Conflict
Integrate
Diversity across
Policies
Accountability to
Respond to
Conflicts
Adapted from Lindsey, R. B., Robins, K. N., & Terrell, R. D. (1999). Cultural Proficiency: A Manual
for School Leaders. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, p. 155.
As shown in the diagram above, districts working toward cultural proficiency do not merely
tolerate and accommodate “other cultures” but instead value all cultures and acknowledge the
value that diversity adds to the classroom. These districts establish both policies and practices
that incorporate the “funds of knowledge” found in this diversity and enhance the education of
all by including alternative perspectives and values into instruction (Moll, Amanti, Neff, &
Gonzalez, 2001). This approach eliminates the common concern of students lacking experience,
particularly those students living in poverty. Instead, the culturally proficient teacher values the
experiences the students have and is empowered to work from this positive point of view
rather than from a deficit model. Cultural proficiency acknowledges the value of the student’s
experience and capitalizes on that value to advance educational goals.
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Districts working to achieve cultural proficiency in staff establish policies that encourage first
the change of attitude necessary and then the changes in practices that accompany that change
in attitude. These districts start with a vision of educational services that encourages teachers
to value the cultural differences among the students and families served by the district. This
vision then drives the change needed in the district.
The vision supports a sequence of staff development needed to create the cognitive dissonance
necessary to encourage change in staff. Parallel to this staff development are changes in policies
that encourage and facilitate the engagement of culturally diverse groups in the functioning of
the district; this includes inclusion in such things as the selection of texts and other
instructional materials, development of curriculum, and selection and planning for cultural
events in the district. This effort does not simply engage families but takes advantage of the
funds of knowledge that are inherent in their diversity of both culture and experience.
The vision also is reflected in the recruitment of staff into the district, both in a preference for
culturally proficient individuals and in an effort to fill positions with individuals representing
the breadth of cultures found within the district.
All of this is done with an emphasis on student achievement of the state standards. Cultural
proficiency does not preclude the need to fully address the standards. Instead, it allows
teachers the opportunity to increase their effectiveness by taking into account the background
and experience of their students and, given this alternative starting point, more appropriately
address students’ needs.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):






cultural proficiency
cultural competence
inclusive classroom
guiding principles of cultural proficiency
continuum of cultural proficiency
essential elements of cultural proficiency
Research (links use scholar.google.com):




cultural proficiency +education -health -military
cultural competence +education -health -military
inclusive classroom
continuum of cultural proficiency
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Family and Community Involvement
Indicator DFC2.5
The district creates connections between schools and the broader community to
support student learning and career related learning opportunities.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
Schools are located in communities, but often are islands with no bridges to the
mainland. Families live in neighborhoods, often with little connection to each other
or to the schools their youngsters attend. Nevertheless, all the entities affect each
other, for good or bad. Because of this and because they share goals related to
education and socialization of the young, schools, homes, and communities must
collaborate with each other if they are to minimize problems and maximize results
(Taylor & Adelman, 2000, p. 298).
There are many forms for this collaboration and multiple reasons, as well. These arrangements
can be formal (as memoranda of understanding or contracts) or informal through verbal
agreements or ad hoc arrangements. These collaborations are established to enhance student
services, improve programs or to support systemic reforms. They can be ongoing partnerships
supporting continuing programs or short-term alliances during the creation and
implementation of a new program (Taylor & Adelman, 2000).
One aspect of these collaborations that has shown promise is career exploration and Career
Technical Education (CTE). Career exploration has been shown to increase student motivation
in academic courses as well as their preparation for the world of work beyond school (Smith,
2000). Students who see an active connection to their own lives or to potential careers are more
engaged, have lower rates of absenteeism and obtain higher grades in their academic subjects.
Partnerships in support of student learning and career related learning opportunities may
involve local employers, labor unions, trades and technical schools, and community colleges or
other post-secondary education providers. These partnerships provide the opportunity for
students to learn about and experience aspects of a career before making a significant
commitment or expenditure.
These career-related experiences, whether in the workplace or the classroom, can deepen the
learning of students who may have difficulty finding application for the academic content of
school. As Ken Kay of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (Fliegler, 2008) says:
Kids today are told to take four years of math, four years of science, four years of
English, but the workforce is saying we need critical thinkers, good collaborators,
globally experienced students. It's not clear how the subject matter relates to the
skills employers are looking for (Skills for All).
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
This area represents a break from past models for what has been known as vocational
education. Recent developments recognize the value of career exploration and career technical
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education (CTE) for all students as they move through middle and high school and move on
toward post-secondary work.
A 2010 report from the Association for Career and Technical Education, the National
Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium, and the Partnership
for 21st Century Skills details the value to be found in an emphasis on incorporating careerrelated skills into students’ school experience. The report goes on to provide guidance on what
conditions must be in place for this to occur and be effective.
Districts implementing community connections in support of career related learning establish
policies that support partnering with area employers, post-secondary institutions, labor
organizations, and others who can help to develop and implement programs that integrate
academics, work skills, and technical knowledge and skills. Policies should also encourage and
facilitate partnership skills consumers need to confirm that performance assessments and
credentials earned by students reflect the skills needed in the job market or in preparation for
further study.
District policies also support professional development and professional learning communities
that foster collaboration among all educators including CTE professionals. Such policies
encourage comprehensive programming that coordinates instruction across academics and
career related skills.
Professional learning programs in these districts support educators in integrating academics,
job skills, and technical knowledge and skills. These experiences also include exposure to the
full range of employment opportunities so that educators are better prepared to support
students in their career choices and preparation.
Finally, these districts establish and maintain coordinated programs of job shadowing, careerrelated presentations, and internships so that students can experience directly the careers
under investigation.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):




school-to-work learning information
career exploration k-12
high school apprentice program
high school apprenticeship advantages
Research (links use scholar.google.com):




school-to-work learning information
cte business partnership
high school apprentice program
high school apprenticeship advantages
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

connecting high school career
career exploration
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Oregon’s District Improvement Indicators:
Technical and Adaptive Leadership
3.0 Technical and Adaptive Leadership
Effective leaders create a professional learning community.
Heifetz and Laurie, in their groundbreaking article The Work of Leadership (1997) describe the
natures of technical leadership and adaptive leadership. Technical leadership, according to this
article and significant subsequent writing, is the ability to apply existing knowledge to
overcome problems. Adaptive leadership, on the other hand, requires that new and unknown
options be identified and, through experimentation and review, narrowed to a solution
appropriate to the context.
With these definitions, a mismatch between the number of texts and the number of students in
a classroom would be a technical problem requiring technical leadership. The question to be
addressed can be narrowed to, “Where can we get more textbooks?” It would be the rare school
district where this question did not have a clear answer.
A similar but adaptive problem might be a mismatch between the language of many of the
students in the classroom and the language of both the textbooks and teacher in the classroom.
The question in this case cannot be significantly narrowed but would be reflected in, “How do
we best meet the needs of a linguistically diverse population as our student body changes to
include greater diversity?” and may include, “What is to be done to accommodate the several
languages spoken by students in my classroom and their lack of knowledge of English?”
The adaptive problem described here cannot be resolved with simple technical approaches.
Indeed, addressing this problem, like nearly all adaptive problems, will likely require changes in
attitudes and values among some members of the instructional staff. There is likely to be strife
associated with this change as teachers who felt themselves fully competent in an alternative,
no longer existent context, find themselves significantly challenged by the needed changes. It is
not uncommon for leaders to face significant resistance and resentment to needed change as a
solution is sought and various options are tried and abandoned.
Adaptive leadership demands a clear understanding of the problem, an effort to empathize with
colleagues as they process change that often includes significant loss, and an ability to maintain
a clear perspective on both the problem and the effectiveness of each attempted solution.
Indicator DTAL3.1
The district publishes policies and procedures which clarify the scope of site-based decision
making to allow school leaders reasonable autonomy to implement district and school
improvement plans.
Indicator DTAL3.2
The district has a plan and process established to develop staff leadership across the system
and reviews the plan on a frequent basis to ensure that it continues to meet the needs of the
district.
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Technical and Adaptive Leadership
Indicator DTAL3.3
The superintendent, central office administration and school principals ensure the use of a
process for data-driven improvement planning that includes research-based programs,
practices and models for school improvement and student learning outcomes.
Indicator DTAL3.4
District and school leaders actively promote a shared vision for equity and high expectations for
the success of all students.
Indicator DTAL3.5
The district ensures that the change agent in each school (typically the principal) is skilled in
motivating staff and the community, communicating clear expectations, and focusing on
improved student learning.
Indicator DTAL3.6
The district has appropriate policies and procedures in place to ensure that all teachers are
highly qualified in the content areas in which they teach.
Indicator DTAL3.7
The district has a clear and collaborative process for reviewing operations and programs to
achieve efficiencies through coordination of federal, state and local resources in an effort to
make more effective use of resources to support student achievement.
Indicator DTAL3.8
District staff systematically monitors the implementation of school-level Comprehensive
Achievement Plans (CAPs) and school progress on a regular basis, providing feedback, followup to school staff, enabling the coordination of available resources to meet school needs and
intervening early when a school is not making adequate progress.
Indicator DTAL3.9
The district provides schools with the technology resources (including adequate infrastructure
and connectivity), technical assistance, and professional development for school staff to
integrate technology into teaching and learning, and for assessments, data collection, data
analysis and reporting.
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Indicator DTAL3.1
The district publishes policies and procedures which clarify the scope of site-based
decision making to allow school leaders reasonable autonomy to implement district
and school improvement plans.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
Technical leadership provides proven answers to clear questions. Little autonomy is needed in
applying technical solutions to these problems because the response is the same regardless of
who was responsible for leading the effort. Technical responses are common for matters such
as:


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This year, because of expansion in housing on the west side, we have fifteen new
families that are not on any of our bus routes.
As we start this year, our anticipated 70 new kindergartners turned out to be 103. We
don’t have the needed teachers or the space that this will require.
Mrs. Johnson will be retiring at the end of this school year and we’ll need a new middle
school math teacher as well as someone to take over her duties as department head.
We’ve suddenly got head lice surging through the school again and lots of parents are
very upset.
These are the sort of issues that school leaders deal with regularly. They can be addressed by
competent managers in much the same way each time and can be overcome. This is not to say
that the solutions are simple or easy to implement. Implementation can be quite challenging but
the expertise for the solution is readily available and can be tapped.
Adaptive leadership, on the other hand, requires significantly more willingness to innovate and
therefore more opportunities for flexibility. Such problems are likely to significantly disrupt life
in the school, at least for some students and staff, and may require some experimentation
before a solid solution is found. Beyond that, the solution best suited to the school may well be
different from the solution needed in another school where the context is different. Matters
requiring innovation include:




Over the course of the last three years, our fairly small non-native English speaking
population (≈ 4% three years ago) has mushroomed to nearly 30% this school year. Our
staff is not prepared for this shift.
Because of last weekend’s fire, the school is unusable; we need instructional and
administrative space while a new building is funded and then constructed.
Despite our best efforts to maintain an award-winning dramatics program, costs
combined with revenue shortfalls have forced us to think about letting it go. Now, with
Mr. Ramirez retirement at the end of the year, it seems to be the ideal time to eliminate
drama from our extracurricular offerings.
Students at two of our schools are scoring in the lowest 10% among schools statewide
and we are under pressure from the federal government, state department of education,
and local parents to improve academic outcomes across all subgroups of students.
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Problems like these occur frequently in education but are not the sort that individual leaders
deal with on a regular basis. They require adaptive rather than technical solutions. While it is
tempting to say that each of these can be addressed by applying known, common solutions
because none are unique to the school or district, some staff are likely to respond negatively to
these needed changes and proposed solutions. Such changes will require strong and competent
leadership with the necessary authority and opportunity to implement proposed changes.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
According to the Education Commission of the States (2013):
The rationale behind SBM [site-based management] is that those closest to the
student are most capable of making important decisions that will lead to change and
improvement. Creating school autonomy and empowering teachers, principals,
school administrators, parents and other community members through
participatory decision making are central tenets of site-based management (SiteBased Management).
This rationale supports the adaptive leadership model described above and offers adequate
authority to the local school to accommodate problem-solution identification. While it is not
required that districts establish full site-based management within schools, specifying the
authority of central office staff and of school-based staff helps to clarify relationships and
responsibilities.
To effectively implement school improvement plans, whether in schools working on continuous
improvement or in those working on rapid improvement plans under state direction, school
and district personnel need to understand their roles, authorities, and responsibilities. In
effective districts, this is explicitly stated in published policies rather than negotiated on an
ongoing basis among staff at various levels.
Clearly delineating the authority of district personnel, school administrative personnel, and
other staff throughout the district, as well as any advisory committees or the schools’ 21st
Century Schools Council (1998), commonly known as the site council, will make clear where
decisions are to be made and speed implementation of the process.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):



site-based management education
how much authority site-based management
authority of school principal
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Research (links use scholar.google.com):
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education site-based management
site-based decision making education
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Indicator DTAL3.2
The district has a plan and process established to develop staff leadership across the
system and reviews the plan on a frequent basis to ensure that it continues to meet
the needs of the district.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
At the core of managing [the school] is the school principal who is expected to
manage both a multi-million dollar facility and a multi-million dollar roster of
executive, professional, and clerical personnel. The principal also is expected to
ensure the safety and the physical and social well-being of several hundred young
people, as well as serve as an iconic educational leader in the school’s greater
community. Moreover, this already beleaguered professionally trained
administrator is further expected to function as a leader of instruction. General and
sustainable school improvement is directly related to the quality of instructional
leadership a principal performs or permits. (Jenkins, Zimmerman, & Jenkins, 2004,
p. 3)
The quote above highlights the significant challenges faced by principals working not only to
manage and maintain a school but to improve the outcomes experienced by students attending
that school. The authors argue that this burden can best be accommodated by a shared model of
school leadership that takes advantage of the innate leadership skills found in the instructional
staff in the school.
It has become nearly cliché to suggest that the individuals closest to the problem are most
qualified to identify and enact a solution (Deming, 1986; Heifetz & Laurie, 1997; Jenkins,
Zimmerman, & Jenkins, 2004). This is strongly supported in the teacher leadership literature.
Indeed, Sacks (2012) suggests that teachers represent a unique perspective that has for too
long been left out of decision-making, a significant aspect of school leadership. She goes on to
suggest that the inclusion of teachers in the leadership of schools has shifted the lead question
from “What is teacher leadership?” to “What kind of teacher leadership is worthwhile for me?”
suggesting that teachers must be careful to select areas in which their particular skills and
ambitions can be combined to greatest utility to the school and to the personal/professional
development the teacher seeks.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
Sacks (2012) offers a brief list of how teachers are commonly misused in the development of
teacher leadership programs. She argues that teachers should guard against serving as:


A mouthpiece for others (e.g., school or district administrators or state office personnel)
- Teachers may find themselves working with colleagues and explaining that,
while the project or effort undertaken may be inappropriate to the school’s
context, it is what someone in authority has directed.
A token
- Despite being invited into conversations, the efforts or inputs of teachers are not
reflected in final products.
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
An unpaid consultant
- Teachers may be asked to take on significant additional duties without
additional compensation or adequate release time and other needed resources.
Each of these illustrates an aspect of what districts should avoid in implementing teacher
leadership. Each has a positive opposite that should be present in supportive programs
intended to integrate teachers into the leadership of the school and to alleviate and distribute
some of the burdens of leadership borne by the principal and, to an extent, by district office
staff. That is, while teachers may be called upon to serve as a mouthpiece for those in authority,
true integration into leadership provides teachers the opportunity to serve as a representative
spokesperson for their colleagues. In some schools or districts, a teacher may be included in the
leadership of a project as a token but in effective leadership development efforts they are
listened to, respected, and valued as a full contributor to the project or product. Finally,
teachers have significant and valuable expertise and should be willing to contribute fully to the
effort undertaken but should expect suitable compensation and recognition for their
contribution.
In districts where teacher leaders are used effectively, teachers are truly empowered and
supported in making decisions and following through with implementing those decisions.
Teachers are encouraged to engage in leadership and coaching among their peers and are
provided the resources necessary to complete the work. These resources include time, financial
support, and personal compensation appropriate to the task undertaken.
Effective programs of teacher leadership are driven by established and formalized policies at
the district level. These policies outline the responsibilities, authority, and resources for
instructional coaches; for established teacher stakeholder committees on various topics; and for
ad hoc engagement of teachers in short-term work to address emergent challenges.
In some districts, teacher leadership policies provide a formal pipeline for development of
school administrators. This provides a clear career path from the classroom into administration
in these districts. While this is a perfectly reasonable approach to meeting the district’s needs
for qualified and prepared administrative staff, districts making effective use of teacher leaders
do not see administrator preparation as the limit of such policies.
Teacher leadership should provide an opportunity for successful teachers who want to remain
in the classroom opportunities to contribute to the profession and to enhance their own skills
by working closely with colleagues. Districts with effective teacher leader programs establish
these opportunities as part of the vision and policies for enhancing student outcomes and
teacher professional growth opportunities.
A set of standards, developed by a consortium of teachers, teacher representatives, and teacher
educators, was released in 2011 and provides guidelines for establishment of a teacher
leadership program in districts (Teacher Leadership Exploratory Consortium, 2011). A
publication outlining these standards is available online and can be downloaded at
http://www.teacherleaderstandards.org/downloads/TLS_Brochure.pdf.
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What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):





teacher leadership
teacher leader model standards
teacher leader network forum
teacher leadership pipeline
enhance teaching profession leadership
Research (links use scholar.google.com):
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teacher leadership
teacher leadership student achievement
teacher leadership pipeline
enhance teaching profession leadership
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Indicator DTAL3.3
The superintendent, central office administration and school principals ensure the
use of a process for data-driven improvement planning that includes research-based
programs, practices and models for school improvement and student learning
outcomes.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
Wayman (2005) points out that teachers typically rely extensively on their professional
expertise in evaluating the effectiveness of techniques they employ in the classroom. He
suggests:
As professional educators, teachers rightly consider their judgment to be an
important piece of knowledge, so they are likely to resist any initiative that ignores
this judgment. Thus, it is important for school leaders to include teachers’
professional judgment as a component of the information process— a data point,
alongside such quantified data as assessments (p. 303).
This reliance on professional judgment is not to be discounted. Teachers do have expertise in
evaluating student progress and the effectiveness of their own teaching. Successful teachers
complement this effort with effective use of data in support of their judgments.
The press toward data use in educational decision making has been in place for well more than
a decade and causes consternation and challenges for some educators especially when coupled
with the implementation of federal accountability measures found the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act (ESEA). In Data-Driven to Distraction (2006), Shirley and Hargreaves
point out:
Right now, data-driven instruction, results-oriented improvement, and evidencebased education are the watchwords. They show up everywhere—from state
education department Web sites to principals’ and superintendents’ job
descriptions—insisting that instructional practices should be driven by the analysis
of student-achievement data as measured by prescribed standardized tests (p. 32).
The authors’ focus on state testing reflects a fairly typical, narrow view of the concept of datadriven decision making. While state testing can provide screening information indicating where
academic achievement problems can be found within a school or district, few accomplished
data users would argue that this screening can identify the source(s) of those problems.
Such standardized tests can, for instance, identify differential performance between two groups
of students but cannot provide indication of what might be causing the problem or provide
indication of an appropriate solution. This screening data can, however, provide a valuable
starting point.
Once an achievement gap between groups within the school or perhaps overall low
achievement among students in specific grades has been identified, further diagnoses helps to
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determine what the particular concern might be and provides a foundation for possible
interventions.
These diagnostics must be far more targeted and less generalized than the screening provided
by standardized tests. Diagnostic efforts using a broad selection of data targeting the area of
concern can provide significant insight into the challenges faced by the school. If, for instance,
the school is investigating a broadening achievement gap between African-American males and
white males, investigating attendance rates, discipline rates, and teacher attitudes and
expectations may go further to overcome the problem than instituting a new curriculum that
students may not be exposed to because of chronic absenteeism. Similarly, given the broad
brush with which standardized testing paints a picture of the school, in schools with relatively
small numbers of students in a single subgroup, only a few students may be responsible for
markedly shifting average performances. Inquiry into group performance provides only a
pointer to a problem area. It cannot substitute for targeted identification of challenged
individuals.
Investigating data to identify specific problem sources rather than broad areas of challenge
provides insights that skilled and thoughtful educators can apply to narrow the search for a
solution from among many possible, evidence-based options.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
There are a number of components essential to any effort to move toward a data-driven
decision making model in schools. In their analysis of research into successful data
implementation, Marsh, et. al. (2006) identify five factors that districts must address. These are:
Providing focused training on analyzing data and identifying and enacting
solutions…
Allocating adequate time for educators to study and think about the data available
to them, to collaborate in interpreting data, and to collectively develop next steps
and actions.
Partnering with organizations whose mission is to support data use…
Assigning individuals to filter data and help translate them into usable knowledge…
Planning for appropriate and user-friendly technology and data systems that allow
educators easy access to data and appropriate options for analyzing, summarizing,
organizing, and displaying results (p. 10).
Successful programs of data use in decision making establish conditions supportive of teachers
and administrators in these efforts. These districts make effective use of computer applications
that present data that teachers and administrators need as a basis for curricular and
instructional decisions. This would include not only state collected data such as statewide
assessment data, attendance data, graduation rates, and the like but also locally implemented
common formative assessments and information that local educators have identified as useful
and necessary.
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All of these data are presented in accessible, networked computer systems and in a format of
which educators can make quick use. There is certainly no shortage of data in schools but the
key is in making the right data accessible and interpretable to teachers and other decision
makers.
District staff benefit from central processing and analysis of data that presents those data in
ways that support interpretation by instructional staff and others involved in decision making
whether at the individual student level or the program level (Datnow, Park, & Wohlstetter,
2007). If this expertise is not present in the district, these services may be more appropriately
provided by outside organizations with staff specializing in data support (Marsh, Pane, &
Hamilton, 2006). Such analysis can provide consistency in the data and aids interpretation by
those less skilled in statistical procedures.
Beyond access, districts also provide training to teachers and administrators in the use of these
applications via multiple channels and formats to ensure that staff know how to access, retrieve,
and present data in ways that support decision making. There is evidence that this is best
supported by individuals who serve as onsite mentors rather than through large group,
intensive training or concentrated expertise at the district level (Wayman, 2005).
Finally, districts where staff make effective use of data in supporting decision making are
provided the needed resources. While this certainly includes data that has been analyzed and
displayed in ways that can be easily interpreted and that highlight the information needed for
the decisions at hand, the greatest resource for this purpose is the time and collaborative
environment necessary to make sense of and base decisions on the available data, and to
identify data that would further illuminate the discussions (Marsh, Pane, & Hamilton, 2006).
The best and most valuable programmatic decisions are those arrived at by skilled educators
applying both their professional knowledge and evidentiary data in a collaborative
environment.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):




data driven decision making education
evidence-based practice education
data-driven evidence-based education
using data effectively in schools
Research (links use scholar.google.com):
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data driven decision making education
using evidence-based practices in education -care
data-driven evidence-based education
using data effectively in schools
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Indicator DTAL3.4
District and school leaders actively promote a shared vision for equity and high
expectations for the success of all students.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
No less esteemed a commentator than former US Secretary of Education William Bennett has
referred to district level staff and school board members as being part of the public education
“blob,” a resource drain that produces little beyond stalwart resistance to change and
innovation (Waters & Marzano, 2006). In refuting this position, Waters and Marzano (2006), a
meta-analysis of research into the impact of district leadership and staffing on student
achievement, found that district leadership had a statistically significant impact on student
outcomes.
In this article, the authors point out that solid leadership has shown to contribute directly to
higher performance on measures of student academic achievement by providing vision and
goals for staff to work toward and by following that visioning and goal setting with monitoring
and guidance toward achieving the stated goals.
Waters and Marzano’s findings are supported by Bottoms and Schmidt-Davis (2010) when they
argue:
Districts matter.
The vision and actions of system leaders and school board members frequently
determine whether principals can be effective in leading school improvement.
Districts cannot necessarily make weak principals succeed, but we have seen too
many districts create conditions in which even good principals are likely to fail (p. i).
…
Few principals have the capacity to rise above a school district’s lack of vision and
clear purpose. If district leaders cannot see beyond “test-prep” — if they expend
most of the system’s time, attention and energy on getting kids to pass low-level
tests and meet minimum standards — then even the most capable principals will
likely find themselves trapped in caretaker roles, presiding over schools and
faculties that lack the direction, the goals and the belief in themselves necessary to
create a powerful learning experience for all their students (p. ii).
District leaders represent a significant investment of capitol. Districts can, however, see a solid
return on that investment when those in a leadership role work to provide direction and much
needed leadership to staff districtwide.
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How does this look in a district when well implemented?
Bottoms and Schmidt Davis (2010) describe how district level staff should support schools:
The district — including the school board, the superintendent, key staff and
influential stakeholders in the community — must have the capacity to develop and
articulate both a vision and a set of practices that send a clear message of what
schools are to be about. This is a message not only for educators, but for the
community at large. This message creates public understanding of what the school
system is trying to do to prepare more middle grades students for challenging high
school work and to graduate more students from high school prepared for the next
step. The authenticity of this message is affirmed through the district’s development
of a strategic plan that manifests the vision — and then by district actions that
establish the conditions necessary for principals and teacher leaders to create a
different kind of school. These conditions include aligning all policies and resources
to the plan; creating a collaborative and supportive working relationship with each
school; expecting and supporting the principal to become the school’s instructional
leader; and communicating the vision and strategic plan to the public in a highly
visible way that provides the context for principals to make decisions supported by
parents and the larger community (p. iii).
Their research, focused on high schools but generalizable throughout K-12 education, suggests
that district leaders must:
1. Broaden accountability indicators beyond minimum academic standards…
2. Develop a system of incentives for the recognition and reward of schools
that show significant improvement in meeting new accountability indicators
3. Pursue policies that recognize a broader definition of academic rigor
4. Offer a vision of best practices — based on research and a wide range of
evidence — that will improve low-performing high schools if implemented
properly
5. Ensure that principals have autonomy
6. Ensure that every district has a comprehensive vision, strategic plan and
system to help principals lead their schools and to hold schools accountable
for achieving results (p. vi)
This supports Waters and Marzano’s (2006) findings that in successful districts:
The superintendent involves board members and principals in the process of setting
goals.
Goals for student achievement and instructional program are adopted and are based
on relevant research.
Board support for district goals for achievement and instruction is maintained.
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The superintendent monitors and evaluates implementation of the district
instructional program, impact of instruction on achievement, and impact of
implementation on implementers.
Resources are dedicated and used for professional development of teachers and
principals to achieve district goals.
The superintendent provides autonomy to principals to lead their schools, but
expects alignment on district goals and use of resources for professional
development (pp. 15-16).
This represents a set of actions that will create, implement, and oversee the impact of a clear
vision for education in the school district.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):



importance of vision statement in school districts
importance of vision in school districts
leading school district with vision
Research (links use scholar.google.com):
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importance of vision statement in school district
importance of vision in school district
leading school district with vision
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Indicator DTAL3.5
The district ensures that the change agent in each school (typically the principal) is
skilled in motivating staff and the community, communicating clear expectations,
and focusing on improved student learning.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
Eventually, after years as a principal, I realized that even though my efforts had been
well intentioned—and even though I had devoted countless hours each school year
to those efforts—I had been focusing on the wrong questions. I had focused on the
questions What are the teachers teaching? and How can I help them to teach it more
effectively? Instead, my efforts should have been driven by the questions, To what
extent are the students learning the intended outcomes of each course? and What
steps can I take to give both students and teachers the additional time and support
they need to improve learning?
This shift from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning is more than semantics.
When learning becomes the preoccupation of the school, when all the school's
educators examine the efforts and initiatives of the school through the lens of their
impact on learning, the structure and culture of the school begin to change in
substantive ways. Principals foster this structural and cultural transformation when
they shift their emphasis from helping individual teachers improve instruction to
helping teams of teachers ensure that students achieve the intended outcomes of
their schooling. More succinctly, teachers and students benefit when principals
function as learning leaders rather than instructional leaders (DuFour, 2002, p. 13).
DuFour’s point in the above quotation is the central point of this indicator. By focusing on
teaching, schools can become mired in the techniques and approaches that have been shown to
work with “populations like ours” while a focus on learning adjusts the perspective to what
works for our population.
This emphasis on student learning outcomes rather than on the inputs of education, according
to DuFour, changes the perspective of staff on their work. That is, the emphasis shifts from a
focus on teaching to one on learning. This change in perspective redirects staff toward
providing students the supports needed to meet the desired outcomes rather than simply
teaching the content in a way that should be expected to work.
Alfie Kohn describes the teaching focused effort as embodied in the statement, “I taught a good
lesson even though the students didn’t learn it (2008, p. 32).” He goes on to describe student
centered educational settings as those in which teachers are more likely to ask, Why aren’t the
students doing as well as I had hoped and what should I do differently to improve outcomes?
Not surprisingly, Kohn suggests, “It’s easier to concern yourself with teaching than with
learning, just as it’s more convenient to say the fault lies with people other than you when
things go wrong. It’s tempting, when students are given some kind of assessment, to assume the
results primarily reveal how much progress each kid is, or isn’t, making – rather than noticing
that the quality of the teaching is also being assessed (p. 32).”
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How does this look in a district when well implemented?
The National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) (2008) in its publication
Leading Learning Communities: Standards for What Principals Should Know and Be Able to Do
offers the following synopsis of the skills needed for leading a school:
Effective principals look at data and analyze trends, gaps and insights. And yet they
know that their role goes beyond the actuarial; instead they must be aspirational.
Principals must set, sustain and encourage a shared vision for school communities—
a vision that prepares children for a continuously changing society.
Effective principals understand the job requires new levels of public relations and
better marketing of school goals and achievements. Today principals must be civic
leaders, coordinating services with other community agencies. Principals who are
respected in the community play a visible role in making the case for quality
education—locally, statewide and sometimes nationally.
Effective principals create conditions and structures for learning that enable
continuous improvement of performance not only for children, but for adults in the
school community as well. They provide opportunities for staff to participate in
learning communities inside and outside of schools. Effective principals know that
such learning groups are necessary to further instructional practices and to develop
innovative and effective approaches to education.
Effective principals must be the lead learners in their schools. They are constantly
reading, forecasting scenarios, and analyzing data to assess gaps and possibilities
for continuous improvement.
Effective principals are caring advocates for the whole child. They support learning
communities in which all children reach their highest potential (p. 2).
This is made possible, according to NAESP, if districts:
Build principals’ capacity to provide instructional leadership. Principals must have
time and resources to develop the knowledge and skills they need to lead highperformance schools, as well as the resources to function effectively as instructional
leaders in their buildings.
Provide support, funding and flexibility for alternative leadership arrangements. For
principals to perform their instructional leadership functions effectively, they need
to share the management functions of the school.
Improve working conditions. Principals need autonomy over budgets and hiring to
create and maintain school programs that match school goals, and financial support
from districts to serve their student populations effectively.
Improve salaries and pay structures. States and districts should establish incentives
for principals to meet standards and should provide rewards, such as sabbaticals,
advanced training and international exchanges, for successful leaders.
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Assess principals fairly. Evaluations of principals should consider a range of
measures of their performance, not just standardized test scores. Attention must be
paid to defining and disseminating what we know to be effective in the profession
and to championing the “whole school leader (p. 4).”
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):




principal instructional leader
principal learning leader
learning community principal
what principals should know and be able to do
Research (links use scholar.google.com):



principal instructional leader
principal learning leader
learning community principal
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Indicator DTAL3.6
The district has appropriate policies and procedures in place to ensure that all
teachers are highly qualified in the content areas in which they teach.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
The federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) requires that all teachers teaching
in core academic subjects be highly qualified. In §9101 of ESEA, Highly Qualified is defined as:
(23) HIGHLY QUALIFIED-The term ‘highly qualified’ –
(A) when used with respect to any public elementary school or secondary school
teacher teaching in a State, means that—
(i) the teacher has obtained full State certification as a teacher (including
certification obtained through alternative routes to certification) or passed the
State teacher licensing examination, and holds a license to teach in such State,
except that when used with respect to any teacher teaching in a public charter
school, the term means that the teacher meets the requirements set forth in the
State’s public charter school law; and
(ii) the teacher has not had certification or licensure requirements waived on an
emergency, temporary, or provisional basis;
(B) when used with respect to—
(i) an elementary school teacher who is new to the profession, means that the
teacher—
(I)
holds at least a bachelor’s degree; and
(II)
has demonstrated, by passing a rigorous State test, subject knowledge
and teaching skills in reading, writing, mathematics, and other areas of
the basic elementary school curriculum (which may consist of passing
a State-required certification or licensing test or tests in reading,
writing, mathematics, and other areas of the basic elementary school
curriculum); or
(ii) a middle or secondary school teacher who is new to the profession, means that
the teacher holds at least a bachelor’s degree and has demonstrated a high level
of competency in each of the academic subjects in which the teacher teaches
by—
(I) passing a rigorous State academic subject test in each of the academic
subjects in which the teacher teaches (which may consist of a passing
level of performance on a State-required certification or licensing test or
tests in each of the academic subjects in which the teacher teaches); or
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(II)
successful completion, in each of the academic subjects in which the
teacher teaches, of an academic major, a graduate degree, coursework
equivalent to an undergraduate academic major, or advanced
certification or credentialing; and
(C) when used with respect to an elementary, middle, or secondary school teacher
who is not new to the profession, means that the teacher holds at least a
bachelor’s degree and—
(i) has met the applicable standard in clause (i) or (ii) of subparagraph (B), which
includes an option for a test; or
(ii) demonstrates competence in all the academic subjects in which the teacher
teaches based on a high objective uniform State standard of evaluation that —
(I)
is set by the State for both grade appropriate academic subject matter
knowledge and teaching skills;
(II)
is aligned with challenging State academic content and student
academic achievement standards and developed in consultation with
core content specialists, teachers, principals, and school
administrators;
(III) provides objective, coherent information about the teacher’s
attainment of core content knowledge in the academic subjects in
which a teacher teaches;
(IV) is applied uniformly to all teachers in the same academic subject and
the same grade level throughout the State;
(V)
takes into consideration, but not be based primarily on, the time the
teacher has been teaching in the academic subject;
(VI) is made available to the public upon request; and
(VII) may involve multiple, objective measures of teacher competency.
All of this to say that teachers should be qualified for the work that they do. Jennifer Rice King
points out that “Arguably, this set of qualifications can be seen as a floor. In fact, some have
argued that the qualifications identified in the NCLB legislation are more reflective of a
minimally qualified teacher than a highly qualified teacher (Rice, 2008, p. 155 Note 5).”
Rice notes that current research is heavily focused on teacher quality (as opposed to teacher
qualifications) pointing out:
We know that teachers are the single most expensive and the single most important
resource provided to students. A quality teacher in every classroom is clearly a
cornerstone for providing an adequate education for all students. However, not all
students have access to effective teachers, and the current distribution of teachers
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poses serious problems for the equity, adequacy, and effectiveness of public
education (p. 151).
So, if teacher quality matters and teacher qualifications do not guarantee quality, it is
incumbent on school and district leaders to ensure that each classroom is staffed by a high
quality teacher as defined by ongoing, contemporary research.
One issue that makes this more challenging is the clear indication in research that high quality
teaching is extremely context sensitive. That is, a teacher who is very good at teaching in one
environment may be challenged to perform equally well in a dissimilar context. Matching the
teacher to the assignment can be difficult but the return on this effort is considerable (Boyd,
Lankford, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2003).
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
Minimally, ESEA requires that teachers hold a state certification appropriate to their placement,
a bachelor’s degree, and documented success on a test of content knowledge. Because the state
receives Title I Part A moneys under ESEA, this requirement applies to every teacher in public
schools statewide.
This serves primarily as the minimally required qualifications, however, without describing
what schools and districts should be doing to ensure that the most appropriate teachers are
serving students.
Highly effective districts have in place processes and policies ensuring that 1) every teacher is
ideally placed to maximize their effectiveness, 2) any needed replacements or expansion of
teaching staff are recruited to meet the identified needs, 3) the best teachers are retained
within the district, and 4) any needed professional learning is available and participation
encouraged so that these teachers retain the quality that made them the right choice for the
students they serve. This means that those serving students with special needs are not only
properly credentialed for the work but are familiar with current research and best practices for
these students. Similarly, the teachers working with students who are English language learners
or who live in poverty are those most qualified for the needs of these special populations.
Regardless of the special conditions within the district, teachers are assigned in a way that best
matches the needs of students.
Districts should ensure teacher qualification but carry the effort further to the point of ensuring
teacher quality, as well.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):



highly qualified teachers recruiting and retaining
highly qualified high quality
what makes a good teacher?
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Research (links use scholar.google.com):




what makes a good teacher?
highly qualified high quality
highly qualified teacher recruitment
recruit retain teachers
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Indicator DTAL3.7
The district has a clear and collaborative process for reviewing operations and
programs to achieve efficiencies through coordination of federal, state and local
resources in an effort to make more effective use of resources to support student
achievement.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
“Budget your plan, don’t plan your budget.” appears on a banner in the fiscal offices of a large
school district in Oregon. This motto speaks to the desire to place the mission of the district first
and to allocate funds to meet needed services. Unfortunately, this is not always the practice in
school districts.
In a 2003 study comparing funding strategies in high performing districts to strategies
employed by similarly sized but less successful districts, the authors determined that there
were distinct differences in how districts in each category allocated funds (Pan, Rudo,
Schneider, & Smith-Hansen). They found that high performing districts spent more available
resources on instruction, core expenditures, and teachers while spending less on general
administration and administrative staff (p. 2) when compared to similar districts.
In a corollary study, these same authors found that districts showing marked improvement in
student outcomes were not only spending more in these areas than similar districts, they were
also increasing spending in these areas faster than other districts. Their conclusion was that
spending on instruction and instructional supports makes a difference (Pan, Rudo, Schneider, &
Smith-Hansen, 2003).
Interestingly, in the improvement districts, fiscal decisions were rarely based on data in the way
that instructional decisions have become. These districts also appeared not to take advantage of
resource-needs assessment techniques or cost-benefit analysis in the way that other budget
planners commonly do.
The federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, formerly NCLB) has numerous
references throughout that direct school districts (referred to as local education agencies in the
legislation) to coordinate programs supported by federal funds. In Title I Part A, this is found in
§1112(a):
SEC. 1112. Local Educational Agency Plans. (a) Plans Required- (1) Subgrants- A
local educational agency may receive a subgrant under this part for any fiscal year
only if such agency has on file with the State educational agency a plan, approved by
the State educational agency, that is coordinated with other programs under this
Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the Carl D. Perkins Vocational
and Technical Education Act of 1998, the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act,
and other Acts, as appropriate.
In Oregon, the plan referred to in the legislation is created, submitted and reviewed through
Indistar®. While this section of the law lists specific federal programs, some of which no longer
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apply, throughout ESEA similar references are made to a host of federal programs covering the
gamut of services to students.
While the coordination called for in the legislation is required of school districts receiving
federal funds under ESEA and these districts are compelled to coordinate planning and funds
use, the best reason for undertaking this coordination is that it will enhance outcomes for
students by optimizing the use of funds for program support and by ensuring that programs are
not competing for resources.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
Districts where programs are effectively coordinated ensure that all program staff at the district
and school level understand the desired outcomes for student learning and collaborate to the
greatest extent possible. Individual programs are not reviewed or evaluated on their
independent merits but on the contribution each makes to student learning and performance
on outcome measures.
These districts do not establish programs or seek funding based on available resources. They,
instead, identify resources needed to meet established goals and seek program and funding
resources that will support that effort.
Effective coordination not only strengthens outcomes for all but also provides rationale and
incentive for what has been termed planned abandonment, a concept championed by
management expert Peter Drucker. In her chapter on transformational leadership in Drucker’s
book The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask about Your Organization: An Inspiring
Tool for Organizations and the People Who Lead Them, Frances Hesselbein offers the following
admonition under the header “Challenge the gospel:”
There should be no sacred cows as we challenge every policy, practice, procedure,
and assumption. In transforming themselves, organizations must practice “planned
abandonment”—discarding programs, policies, and practices that work today but
have little relevance to the future and to the organization we are building to meet
that future (1993).
Proper coordination and evaluation of programs can help to determine which are contributing
to positive outcomes for students and which are not. With this information district leaders can
begin to eliminate those programs that no longer contribute to the mission of the district.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):



align school district programs
coordinated education planning esea
coordinating perkins idea esea funds
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Research (links use scholar.google.com):


coordinated education planning +esea
coordinating perkins idea esea funds
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Indicator DTAL3.8
District staff systematically monitors the implementation of school-level
Comprehensive Achievement Plans (CAPs) and school progress on a regular basis,
providing feedback, follow-up to school staff, enabling the coordination of available
resources to meet school needs and intervening early when a school is not making
adequate progress.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
In the book Collaborative School Improvement: Eight Practices for District-School Partnerships to
Transform Teaching and Learning2 (Kaufman, Grimm, & Miller, 2012), the authors suggest that a
true partnership between those working in the district office and those in individual schools
can result in outcomes superior to each of these people doing their absolute best independently.
This seems intuitive but knowing that a collaborative effort is valuable and knowing how to
achieve such a collaborative effort are two separate issues.
As shown in the table below, significant portions of the K-12 expenditures in Oregon and the
nation are spent on education. As in most states, education represents the largest single
element of Oregon’s statewide budget at 54% for the 2009-11 state budget biennium (Mandate
Oregon, 2014). These expenditures represent a burden to taxpayers and should be continuously
evaluated to determine that the return on the investment is optimal.
Total K-12 Expenditures from both State and Federal Sources
(2011 data shown in billions of dollars)
Support
Services
All other
functions
$ 3.3
$ 2.1
$ 0.2
$ 5.6
38.2%
$ 316.3
$ 178.7
$ 27.1
$ 926.3
35.5%
Instruction
Oregon
US Totals
Total
Expenditures
Percent Noninstructional
Source: Dixon, M. (2013). Public Education Finances: 2011 (G11-ASPEF). Washington, DC: US Census Bureau.
Kaufman, Grimm, and Miller (2012, pp. 5-7) suggest that achieving this optimal return can
depend on district and school staff collaborating to:
1. Adopt an Inquiry Cycle – collecting and reviewing information to measure and evaluate
effectiveness
2. Clarify Roles and Create Teams – establishing a partnership that makes clear the roles
and responsibilities of individuals at all levels
ODE recognizes Portland Public Schools as one of three school districts from across the US
featured in the case studies in this book and demonstrating improved outcomes attributed to
this change in practice.
2
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3. Team Effectively – creating and maintaining teams that take advantage of both human
and capital resources to drive improvement
4. Narrow the Focus – placing improvement emphasis on a few high-impact efforts that
will result in real improvement in outcomes without splintering leadership or support
5. Lead with Purpose – directing the work of staff toward improving specific outcomes for
students
6. Connect Teams – facilitating and encouraging the free exchange of ideas among staff so
that good ideas are spread and less successful efforts are not replicated
7. Leverage Expertise – planning for maximized impact and sustained results from expert
consultative services
8. Reflect and Refine – reflecting on new programs with an eye toward what works and
what might provide improved outcomes can be very valuable.
With these eight practices, the authors suggest that a partnership between district-level and
school-level staff can be established that leads to continuous improvement and a fluid,
collaborative relationship.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
Districts effectively supporting school improvement efforts, whether for schools identified as
being in Priority or Focus School status or schools simply making efforts toward continuous
improvement, act as fully engaged partners in the work of improvement. This partnership calls
on district staff to support school staff in identifying programs or interventions expected to
have a positive impact on student outcomes. District staff then assist in the implementation,
monitoring, and evaluation of those programs and interventions, helping school staff to
determine the fidelity of implementation and the resulting outcomes.
Beyond monitoring and reporting on progress, the district provides leadership in arranging
meetings of staff from various schools, the district office, and outside experts as necessary to
ensure that the efforts in each school are as effective and targeted as possible toward identified
challenges for each individual school. These ongoing support meetings offer opportunities to
take advantage of expertise within and outside the district and to optimize the impact of
programs on student outcomes.
While all of this should be reflected in district policies regarding school improvement, the
efforts seen are not merely policy response but a sincere effort to support teachers and
paraprofessionals as they work to improve outcomes for students.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):



district role “school improvement”
do districts matter in school improvement
why do we have school districts
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Research (links use scholar.google.com):



district role “school improvement”
monitoring school improvement
district policy "school improvement"
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Indicator DTAL3.9
The district provides schools with the technology resources (including adequate
infrastructure and connectivity), technical assistance, and professional development
for school staff to integrate technology into teaching and learning, and for
assessments, data collection, data analysis and reporting.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
Planning for the use of technology requires two things of educators. First, a clear understanding
of what technology is in the context of schools and classrooms and second, knowledge of the
advantages and likely positive outcomes of the integration of technology into classroom
environments.
Koehler and Mishra (2009) provide a succinct definition of technology in the context of
education that addresses common challenges in delineating what is, and what is not, included in
this discussion:
[T]he word technology applies equally to analog and digital, as well as new and old,
technologies. As a matter of practical significance, however, most of the technologies
under consideration in current literature are newer and digital and have some
inherent properties that make applying them in straightforward ways difficult.
…
Digital technologies—such as computers, handheld devices, and software
applications … are protean (usable in many different ways); unstable (rapidly
changing); and opaque (the inner workings are hidden from users). On an academic
level, it is easy to argue that a pencil and a software simulation are both
technologies. The latter, however, is qualitatively different in that its functioning is
more opaque to teachers and offers fundamentally less stability than more
traditional technologies. By their very nature, newer digital technologies, which are
protean, unstable, and opaque, present new challenges to teachers who are
struggling to use more technology in their teaching (p. 61).
This definition limits the technologies of concern and provides a reason for the disruptive
nature of these technologies in the classroom. The attributes of these technologies present a
challenge to teachers in integrating these tools into an educational paradigm developed in the
absence of these tools.
Given this definition of the what of classroom technology, educators are in need of a why for
these tools. In his article The Ten Fundamental Reasons for Technology in Education (2013), John
Page described the following reasons that technology not only should but will be infused in
schools.
1. Expansion of time and place—Access to educational resources expands to every waking
hour and any site where technology is available.
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2. Depth of Understanding—New technologies can display and communicate concepts in
ways media common in the classroom cannot.
3. Learning vs. Teaching—Technology can support students in their effort to learn
independently from teacher delivered instruction as a supplement to regular classroom
learning.
4. New media for self-expression—Technology supports students in organizing and
presenting ideas in ways that support student growth.
5. Collaboration—Collaboration has long been a skill used by expert learners. New
technological tools including cloud-based computing and inexpensive synchronous and
asynchronous communication can better support this effort.
6. Going Global—New modes of communication available through technology support not
only collaboration but access to experiences and expertise unavailable within the
typical classroom.
7. Individual pacing and sequence—Technology can make available the sort of
personalization of learning that has long been advocated. This means not only that
recordkeeping and progress monitoring are enhanced but the resources needed by the
learner are more readily available.
8. Weight—Print materials are simply heavier and more difficult to transport than are
computer delivered materials.
9. Personal Productivity—The tools of personal productivity, common across nearly all
occupations, are the same tools that improve the productivity of learners.
10. Lower Cost—Creation, collation, printing, and delivery of print materials is
tremendously more expensive than technological alternatives.
These reasons are not entirely centered on growing technological literacy among students. Most
focus, instead, is on the practical realities that will change the classroom in the same ways they
have changed the workplace. This list offers a far better answer to the question, “Why
classroom technology?” than merely “Because they will need these skills someday.” Page argues
that they need these tools today.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
The clear first step in addressing technology use in the classroom is access. Districts with
effective technology integration efforts provide needed technology to the classroom and
establish and maintain policies supporting the continued availability and frequent updating of
classroom technologies as needed to enhance student learning.
In many districts, there is movement away from providing technology resources toward
authorizing the use of student-owned devices. Often, the devices students own and can carry
with them every day to school are more current and operationally superior to those schools can
provide. Additionally, these devices are eminently more familiar to the student and present a
more transparent tool requiring less technical training and a greater focus on academic content.
Accommodating student-owned devices within a district is done through a “bring your own
device” policy that addresses allowed and restricted uses during school time and provides
guidance to parents in purchasing suitable devices.
Beyond access to technology, districts provide professional learning to teachers in the use of
technology within the curriculum and in support of the content in the standards. By integrating
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the technology into the curriculum with a continued focus on course content, the use of these
technologies becomes transparent just as writing has shifted from pencils and paper to
typewriters and then to computers. Most writers use computer-based word processing as a
means to an end without heavy regard for the technology itself. Similarly, technologies can be
integrated into the classroom without significantly disrupting the students’ experience to the
extent that the teacher keeps the focus on the content through effective pedagogy. This “just in
time technology” approach provides real-world experiences with technology rather than
isolating the tools from the uses of those tools.
Koehler and Mishra (2009) suggest that effective integration depends on teachers acquiring
specific knowledge and skills, referred to as technical pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK),
that supports the use of technology within the teacher’s pedagogical expertise and content
knowledge. Districts can make this happen by providing professional learning opportunities
where teachers plan together for the use of technology in support of the existing pedagogy and
content teachers bring to their work.
These authors argue that professional learning by teachers should move from a focus on how to
make these tools work to how to make use of these tools in the classroom. This is exemplified in
their diagram (below) describing how technical knowledge can be added to the intersection of
pedagogical knowledge and content knowledge already present in teachers to create an
integration of the three.
Integrating Technical Pedagogical Content Knowledge
Reproduced by permission of the publisher, © 2012 by tpack.org.
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Districts working to support the effective use of technology can plan for and direct professional
resources toward programs supporting that intersection. In these districts, staff recognize that
professional learning that focuses on any of these independently of any combination that does
not include all three is less effective than an integrated program.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):




why classroom technology is important
classroom technology use
professional learning classroom technology
school bring your own device policy
Research (links use scholar.google.com):





professional learning classroom technology
importance classroom technology
advancing technology use classroom
teacher staff development technology integration
school “bring your own device” policy
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Educator Effectiveness
4.0 Educator Effectiveness
Effective educators promote the success of every student.
Justice Potter Stewart is often quoted from his concurrence with the Supreme Court’s majority
opinion in the case of Jocobellis v. Ohio, writing, “I shall not today attempt further to define the
kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description… But I know it
when I see it… (Stewart, 2013)” While Justice Stuart was not talking about educator
effectiveness in this writing, educators often seem similarly challenged when asked to describe
an effective teacher.
It is not uncommon for those evaluating teachers to provide evaluations based more on
intuition or preconceptions than on solid observations of activities that define effective
teaching. In their report on teacher evaluation and its impact on staff development, recruitment
and retention, staff at the New Teacher Project argued:
The characteristics [of teacher evaluation] are exacerbated and amplified by cursory
evaluation practices and poor implementation. Evaluations are short and infrequent
(most are based on two or fewer classroom observations, each 60 minutes or less),
conducted by administrators without extensive training, and influenced by powerful
cultural forces—in particular, an expectation among teachers that they will be
among the vast majority rated as top performers.
While it is impossible to know whether the system drives the culture or the culture
the system, the result is clear—evaluation systems fail to differentiate performance
among teachers. As a result, teacher effectiveness is largely ignored. Excellent
teachers cannot be recognized or rewarded, chronically low-performing teachers
languish, and the wide majority of teachers performing at moderate levels do not get
the differentiated support and development they need to improve as professionals
(Weisberg, Sexton, Mulhern, & Keeling, 2009).
Significant research has been conducted in recent years helping to define teacher effectiveness
in terms of actions, evidence, and observable behaviors. The Oregon Framework for Teacher and
Administrator Evaluation and Support Systems (Oregon Department of Education, 2013) is
designed to help districts design evaluation systems grounded in standards of practice and that
rely on multiple measures of evidence for determining educator effectiveness.
Indicator DEE4.1
The district implements short-term and long-term professional development plans based on
indicators of effective teaching, school performance data, district goals and needs identified
through the district’s system of educator evaluation.
Indicator DEE4.2
A districtwide system ensures that all educators recognize the unique differences of learners
who bring differing personal and family backgrounds, culture, skills, abilities, perspectives,
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talents and interests and use research-based instructional strategies and services delivery to
empower students intellectually, physically, socially, emotionally and politically.
Indicator DEE4.3
All educators in the district have high expectations for each and every learner and implement
developmentally appropriate, challenging learning experiences within a variety of learning
environments that help all learners meet high standards and reach their full potential.
Indicator DEE4.4
All teachers in the district are actively engaged in professional learning and collaboration
resulting in the discovery and implementation of stronger, research-based practice to improve
teaching and learning.
Indicator DEE4.5
Professional learning for all staff throughout the district (as appropriate to job description) is
ongoing and embedded, research-based instructional practice that is aligned to adopted state
standards across all curricula (including but not limited to Common Core, Science, English
Language Proficiency, Oregon Social Studies, Technology, and CTE Skill Sets).
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Indicator DEE4.1
The district implements short-term and long-term professional development plans
based on indicators of effective teaching, school performance data, district goals
and needs identified through the district’s system of educator evaluation.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
School districts nationwide spend, on average, between two percent and five percent of the
districts’ total operating budget on staff development activities (Killeen, Monk, & Plecki, 2002).
Since 2002, the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, formerly NCLB) has
required challenged schools (those now identified as Priority or Focus Schools) to spend at
least 10% of the school’s Title I allocation on staff development. These expenditures amount to
a significant portion of school district funds. The cost becomes even more significant given that,
as a result of the recent economic downturn, discretionary funds at school districts have been
severely restricted (Oliff & Leachman, 2011).
Given this impact on school finances, effective use of the funds is imperative. Unfortunately, a
study directed by the U.S. Department of Education found that:
Of the more than 1,300 studies identified [in 2007] as potentially addressing the
effect of teacher professional development on student achievement in three key
content areas, nine meet What Works Clearinghouse evidence standards… (Yoon,
Duncan, Lee, Scarloss, & Shapley, 2007).
This indicates that very little true evaluation of the impact of staff development on student
learning is reflected in the literature. It does not, however, indicate staff development is
ineffective or unimportant; merely that staff development is not thoroughly evaluated.
The Oregon Framework for Teacher and Administrator Evaluation and Support Systems (Oregon
Department of Education, 2013) offers guidance in planning for this effort. The Model Core
Teaching Standards included in the Framework (pp. 13-14) “outline the common principles and
foundations of teaching practice necessary to improve student learning (p. 14)…” Examination
of teacher practices against these standards provides a basis for development and delivery of
staff development addressing teacher needs. The results can be taken in the aggregate to plan
for district or schoolwide staff development and reviewed specific to each staff member to
develop individualized plans.
The following graph shows the results of a national survey of educators invited to respond to
the question, “How much of your school's/district's professional development is being driven
by information from your teacher evaluation and observations?” As shown, only 53% of
respondents indicated that some to all of the professional development in the school/district
are based on evaluations or observations. While this survey does not represent a random
sample of educators, national online surveys of this type have shown significant reliability.
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How much of your school's/district's professional development (PD) is
being driven by information from your teacher evaluation and observations?
We are not doing PD
1.1%
None of our PD
Little of our PD
24.5%
Some of our PD
28.7%
Most of our PD
53.0
%
18.4%
All of our PD
0.0%
47.1
%
21.5%
5.9%
5.0%
10.0%
15.0%
20.0%
25.0%
30.0%
Percent of Respondents
Source: ED Pulse (2013, 11). ASCD SmartBrief. Retrieved from
http://www2.smartbrief.com/servlet/encodeServlet?issueid=8FCEA2C4 -03D6-4981-A4833
6D4E976BF1E6&sid=72e5fcc9-9761-4abc-b8a0-b4defa0444b3 November 7, 2013 .
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
In establishing the conditions necessary to meet individual and group needs, the district must
take advantage of a system that identifies professional learning needs of both individuals and
groups within the staff. This involves:
1. selecting a differentiated performance rubric aligned to standards for teacher practice,
2. identifying measures to evaluate teacher performance across professional practice,
professional responsibility, and student growth,
3. developing a common understanding across all staff in the district of what proficient
practice looks like,
Online surveys do not provide a random sample, as participants are self-selected, meaning
that a margin of sampling error cannot be calculated or quoted. In addition, the population and
sample are limited to those with access to computers and an online network. However, online
surveys have been shown to produce results that have proven to be reliable predictors of
outcomes, including election results.
3
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4. training everyone involved in the components of the evaluation system, and
5. using the resulting collection of evidence describing individual teacher performance to
inform plans for professional learning.
The indicators within the Model Core Teaching Standards provide a level of specificity that can
support a targeted professional development plan. These skills may be developmentally
appropriate lesson planning, lesson plan differentiation, knowledge or application of course
content, or any of several other skills that educators need to do their jobs.
From the evidence collected by the evaluation system, both short-term and long-term staff
development plans can be developed. Short-term plans can target skills easily acquired or of
great consequence while longer term plans can support acquisition of more complex skills or
those skills which are of lower priority in providing an equitable, effective program of
instruction to all students.
The most effective plans target the individual skills needed by teachers rather than applying a
broad program of staff development intended to have a positive impact regardless of individual
needs. Of course, many districts will find there are benefits from economies of scale in
clustering the training but consideration should always be given to individual needs in creating
a plan.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):




professional development needs assessment
conducting needs assessment professional development
create professional development plan teachers
evaluate professional development plan teachers
Research (links use scholar.google.com):
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create professional development plan
evaluate professional development plan teachers
effective professional development planning
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Indicator DEE4.2
A district wide system ensures that all educators recognize the unique differences of
learners who bring differing personal and family backgrounds, culture, skills,
abilities, perspectives, talents and interests and use research-based instructional
strategies and services delivery to empower students intellectually, physically,
socially, emotionally and politically.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
To learn effectively, students must be able to be honest about themselves, both in who they are
and in identifying their strengths and challenges. This depends on an honest, caring, and
welcoming environment that acknowledges all strengths as strengths and all challenges as
shared challenges to be addressed and overcome jointly.
It is not uncommon for individuals to find that they need to “cover” in their relationships with
colleagues in the business community. This, according to Kenji Yoshino, includes diminishing
aspects of their appearance (e.g., differences in hair texture), affiliations (e.g., avoiding
behaviors that might reinforce negative stereotypes), advocacy (e.g., downplaying membership
in less desirable clubs or groups), or association (e.g., avoiding contact with gay acquaintances
to avoid open association with a group of which they are a member) (Yoshino & Smith, 2013).
In Uncovering Talent: A New Model of Inclusion, Yoshino and Smith report their research
indicating that 75% of their subjects across all groups reported covering to avoid negative
identification in corporate settings. This included 50% of straight, white men, a group
commonly viewed as having no reason to monitor or modify their behavior in this way.
Covering in various ways is far more common among minority group members with 94% of
African Americans reporting such behaviors.
This effort to cover begins early and is quite evident in school as students attempt to be more
like their peers. Gifted students refuse to answer questions. Students living in poverty struggle
to dress like students with more available funds. Students with Tourette syndrome or autism
spectrum disorder work to minimize their overt behaviors. The list of students who may see
themselves as outsiders in school includes those who are overweight or underweight; those
assisted by a wheelchair or crutches; those disinterested in athletics; those challenged to speak
fluently in class whether because of an accent unfamiliarity with the dominant language, a
speech impediment, or simply nervousness; those challenged to perform well in one class or
another; all this in addition to the more obvious challenges found in differences in race,
ethnicity, gender, religious or political affiliation, or sexual orientation.
Teachers should be aware of the challenges that these perceived differences present and work
to manage uniqueness or difference as a strength so that students can feel included rather than
alienated.
The most obvious of these differences include ethnic or racial minority status and poverty.
Oregon has, over the last fifteen years, seen an average growth in minority student population
of more than 1.25% annually (see graph below). This has led to an approximate doubling of the
portion of students with minority backgrounds in Oregon schools (Oregon Department of
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Education, 2012). While this new population is not evenly spread across all schools in the state,
the increase in the state’s minority population has impacted schools statewide to varying
extents.
Percent of Oregon Students who are non-White
40.0%
35.0%
32.5%
30.0%
27.6%
28.9%
33.7%
34.7%
29.8%
25.9%
25.0%
23.0%
20.0%
16.3%
17.1%
18.1%
19.2%
20.4%
24.4%
21.4%
15.0%
10.0%
5.0%
2011-12
2010-11
2009-10
2008-09
2007-08
2006-07
2005-06
2004-05
2003-04
2002-03
2001-02
2000-01
1999-00
1998-99
1997-98
0.0%
Source: Oregon Department of Education (2012) Statewide Report Card: An Annual Report to the Legislature on
Oregon Public Schools 2011-2012. Salem, OR: Oregon Department of Education.
The poverty rate in Oregon has followed the economy for the past eight years, dipping to a low
in 2007 just prior to the recession of 2008, with unemployment and underemployment growing
over the years since. This has led to a growing number of students living in poverty in a state
with an already high rate of poverty.
In recent years, significant research has been conducted on techniques for addressing the
differentials in backgrounds and cultures and the resulting variability among students found in
classrooms. Homogeneity is no longer the norm in classrooms in the state and teachers need to
be prepared to address this variability in their lesson planning and delivery. This can be
addressed either by tailoring lessons to a demographic different from that found in the
classroom in the past or by differentiating instruction to meet widely varied needs among
students in classes.
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Percent of Oregon Families with Children under Age 18
Living in Poverty
25.0%
20.1%
20.0%
20.0%
18.2%
16.3%
15.9%
14.8%
15.0%
15.5%
14.3%
10.0%
5.0%
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
0.0%
Source: US Census Bureau (2005-12) American Community Survey. Washington, DC: US Census Bureau.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
To an extent, the district’s role in addressing this aspect of educator effectiveness is grounded in
the professional learning of educators district-wide. Districts planning for professional learning
should include in its needs assessment an evaluation of teachers’ readiness to deal effectively
with the unique patterns of diversity found within individual classrooms. To the extent that this
readiness is lacking, the district has a responsibility to plan for and deliver professional learning
opportunities to strengthen teachers in this area. This could include training on equity, on
differentiated instruction, and on the inclusive classroom.
A national survey conducted on behalf of ASCD asked educators to indicate their level of
interest in training on multiculturalism with the question, “How interested are you in
multicultural competency training, that is, training on how to interact effectively with people of
different cultures, for the classroom?” The results indicate a real interest in such training
nationally.
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How interested are you in multicultural competency training,
that is, training on how to interact effectively with people
of different cultures, for the classroom?
Not at all interested; this
training is not needed in my school
Not at all interested, but this
training is needed in my school
Somewhat interested, although
this training is not needed in my school
19.13%
3.19%
10.14%
Somewhat interested; this
training could be useful in my school
Very interested, although this
training is not needed in my school
22.61%
6.67%
Very interested because this
training is needed in my school
38.26%
0.00% 5.00% 10.00% 15.00% 20.00% 25.00% 30.00% 35.00% 40.00%
Source: ED Pulse (2013, 11). ASCD SmartBrief. Retrieved from http://www.smartbrief.com/poll/11/21/13/how4
interested-are-you-multicultural-competency-training-training-how-interact#.Uo5AAVOjbAk December 5, 2013 .
This chart presents interestingly bifurcated data. On the one hand, the data can be read to show
that more than three quarters of respondents (77+%) would be somewhat or very interested in
participating in training in multicultural competency. This presents a positive view educators’
desire to learn to improve interactions with people of different cultures.
Online surveys do not provide a random sample, as participants are self-selected, meaning
that a margin of sampling error cannot be calculated or quoted. In addition, the population and
sample are limited to those with access to computers and an online network. However, online
surveys have been shown to produce results that have proven to be reliable predictors of
outcomes, including election results.
4
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On the other hand, nearly 36% of respondents believe that this training is not needed in their
school. This figure suggests that district leadership may need to manage perceptions of staff
before the training can be fully effective.
Beyond the effort of training staff in equitable practices, the district has the additional
responsibility of supporting teachers in their use of data to make decisions regarding student
needs. This means that district policies and practices should address the selection and use of
assessment instruments that screen for barriers to student learning and diagnose student needs
where screeners identify challenges. Policies and practices must also be established that
support the identification of gifted and talented students across all students regardless of
cultural or language differentials that may mask exceptional abilities.
Finally, the district must provide the data in a form that is useful to teachers as they plan for
and deliver instruction suitable for all students in their classroom. This may mean direct access
to data through a desktop dashboard that identifies students and their needs. It may mean
provision of customized and effectively designed reports that convey the information needed in
a form teachers find accessible.
Regardless of the means by which the data are provided to teachers, care should be taken to
ensure needed data are provided on time and in a form that enhances educator effectiveness
rather than presenting a time burden diminishing its effectiveness.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):







how students struggle to fit in with peers
empowering diverse learners
meeting the needs of culturally diverse learners
diverse gifted learners
differentiated lesson planning
determining learning profiles
social supports for diverse learners
Research (links use scholar.google.com):
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struggle fit in peers school
empowering diverse learners
meeting the needs of culturally diverse learners
diverse gifted learners
ell gifted learners
differentiated lesson planning
determining “learning profiles”
social supports for diverse learners
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Indicator DEE4.3
All educators in the district have high expectations for each and every learner and
implement developmentally appropriate, challenging learning experiences within a
variety of learning environments that help all learners meet high standards and
reach their full potential.
The association between teacher expectation and student performance is well-documented in
education literature (Rubie-Davies, Hattie, & Hamilton, 2006). Psychologists describe
expectation effects commonly found in classrooms; the Golem effect (negative expectations
resulting in negative outcomes), the Galatea effect (positive expectations on the part of the
individual resulting in positive outcomes), and the Pygmalion effect (positive expectations of an
individual on the part of an authority figure resulting in positive outcomes) (Difference
between Galatea Effect and Pygmalion Effect, 2013).
Rubie-Davies, et. al. indicate that, in the teacher-student relationship, these three effects are
typically described as dependent upon social status. That is, students living in poverty are
viewed both by the student and the teacher as less likely to succeed and therefore faced with
lower expectations than students living in middle or upper economic strata. This is challenged
by more recent research indicating that socio-economic status may be a proxy for ethnic
minority status. That is, because ethnic minorities are more likely to live in poverty than their
majority peers, socio-economic status may accompany and mask minority status.
Alternatively, the basis for inappropriately low expectations of an individual student may be the
student’s own past behavior. Students who have had difficulty with attendance, relationships
with other students, or academic work in the past may be viewed inappropriately as having
ongoing behavioral issues when those challenges were based on some situation in life that has
passed. Unfortunately, this may affect future relationships with teachers and peers (RubieDavies, Hattie, & Hamilton, 2006).
While the actual cause of differential expectations is not yet definitively established and may
vary from one teacher-student relationship to another, the outcome is clearly indicated in social
science research (2006). In fact, the research in K-12 education has led to an adoption of these
concerns and training relative to them among human resources professionals (Difference
between Galatea Effect and Pygmalion Effect, 2013) and those in management fields (Rowe &
O’Brien, 2002).
The expectations teachers hold for students have an impact on the outcomes for those students.
These impacts are most commonly felt in what is termed a self-fulfilling prophecy (Rowe &
O’Brien, 2002). That is, a teacher behaves as though the student will be challenged in some way
by school and, given the conditions this creates; the student demonstrates the expected
behavior. In cases of the Golem effect, the student comes to believe that this outcome is both
appropriate and inevitable.
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As described above, these effects may be the result of individual teacher-student relationships
whether by pattern or based on a particular student. As Noguera points out, this can also be an
institutional issue:
To the degree that White or Asian children are disproportionately placed in gifted
and honors classes, the idea that such children are inherently smarter may be
inadvertently reinforced. Similarly, when African American and Latino children are
overrepresented in remedial classes, special education programs, or on the lists for
suspension or expulsion, the idea that these children are not as smart or as well
behaved is also reinforced (2003, p. 444).
Overcoming this impact requires that teachers hold appropriately high expectations for all
students. Noguera relies on the research of others in identifying the common features of
effective schools:
Researchers who have studied effective schools have found that such schools
possess the following characteristics: (a) a clear sense of purpose, (b) core
standards within a rigorous curriculum, (c) high expectations, (d) a commitment to
educate all students, (e) a safe and orderly learning environment, (f) strong
partnerships with parents, and (g) a problem-solving attitude (Noguera, 2003, p.
450).
Among these seven characteristics, all relate to or are supported by a commitment to high
expectations on the part of teachers for the outcomes students will achieve.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
The Golem, Galatea, and Pygmalion effects result from many sources. In schools, the two
sources that are most evident and most deserving of efforts at control are teacher bias and
uneven application of administrative practices. Individual teacher biases may artificially lower
the outcomes for some students and raise the outcomes for others (Babad, Inbar, & Rosenthal,
1982). Often these biases go unnoticed even by the teachers involved.
Alternatively, these effects can be the result of unevenly applied administrative systems such as
those for discipline, placement into gifted or advanced studies programs, placement into special
education services, course tracking, or other practices that result either from
reviewer/evaluator bias or from biases inherent in the assessment tools selected for the
purpose.
Identifying these biases is central to eliminating their effect on students. Districts where this
issue is appropriately addressed not only establish policies against bias in grading and placing
students but also encourage open discussion regarding the nature and types of bias that may
find their way into these practices. These discussions of expectations among teachers and
administrators help to identify both known and unknown biases and to plot a course toward
their elimination.
Districts also collect information from teachers, either through surveys or other tools, to
identify biases that may be covert but which may impact grading and placement. These data are
collected not so that teachers can be judged but as a basis for professional learning either
through workshops or through professional learning communities.
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Similarly, biases can be identified in administrative practices by examining placement and
discipline data to determine any unintended inequity in the outcomes of these programs and to
help identify factors that may lead to biased outcomes. Tracking information about discipline
referrals as is accomplished within behavioral support systems can not only identify locations
within the school that might warrant attention but also patterns in these referrals that could
indicate uneven application of the discipline system.
Similarly, review of placements in various school-wide programs can reveal unintended
patterns that might indicate bias in identification instruments or practices that should be
addressed to enhance equity in access and opportunity for students.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):



teacher expectations
pygmalion galatea effect
bias in grading
Research (links use scholar.google.com):

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


teacher expectations school
pygmalion galatea effect
bias in grading
gender bias expectations school
race bias expectations school
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Indicator DEE4.4
All teachers in the district are actively engaged in professional learning and
collaboration resulting in the discovery and implementation of stronger, researchbased practice to improve teaching and learning.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
In their review of the research on factors that improve the effectiveness of professional
development efforts, Darling-Hammond and Richardson assert:
Professional development is more effective when schools approach it not in
isolation (as in the traditional one-shot workshop) but rather as a coherent part of a
school reform effort. To avoid disparities between what teachers learn in
professional development work and what they can actually implement in their
classrooms, schools should seamlessly link curriculum, assessment, standards, and
professional learning opportunities…
Research on effective professional development also highlights the importance of
collaborative and collegial learning environments that help develop communities of
practice able to promote school change beyond individual classrooms (2009, pp. 4748).
While this information appears to target professional development rather than teacher
collaboration, per se, the point presented is professional learning must be expanded and
imbedded into a larger program that includes collaborative planning time and an openness to
discussion both of the context in which the school functions and the classroom practices
common across the school or district.
The authors argue that the most impactful professional learning efforts engage teachers in
collaboration, modeling, and extensive practice and reflection on the quality of their efforts and
the impact on student learning. This “active learning” approach is not significantly different
from that supported by contemporary research on engaged learning for students.
In a study of the impact of teacher collaboration on student achievement, as measured by
student performance on standardized tests, Goddard, Goddard, and Tschannen-Moran (2007)
found there is clear evidence that teacher collaboration can raise student scores on these
measures. They found:
When teachers collaborate, they share experiences and knowledge that can promote
learning for instructional improvement. From the perspective of organizational
theory, collaboration is a form of lateral coordination that can improve
organizational performance… Such learning can help teachers solve educational
problems, which in turn has the potential to benefit students academically (p. 891).
Typically such studies have focused on outcomes for teachers such as “improved affect,
heightened efficacy, and improved knowledge base (Goddard, Goddard, & Taschannen-Moran,
2007, p. 881).” These studies have found that collaboration has a positive impact on student
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behavior, allowing teachers to use time for instruction that might otherwise be used for
classroom management. Collaboration also lessens feelings of isolation among teachers
improving job satisfaction. Effective collaboration can improve teacher knowledge of both their
own student performance and the performance of students in other classes and can help each
teacher understand the differences between their own teaching behaviors and the teaching
behaviors of colleagues.
The benefits common to teachers from this collaborative reflection are equally valuable to
principals in their own professional growth and development. Collaboration across a cohort of
principals within a single district or, where necessary, across similar schools within multiple
districts, can enhance learning and growth for those principals, as well (Miller, 2012).
These outcomes for educators are valuable and, by extension, are likely to lead directly to
improved student achievement. We must keep in mind that, ultimately, student outcomes are
what matters to each school’s mission.
As Buffum, Mattos, and Weber (2010) point out:
Our schools were not built so educators would have a place to work each day, nor do
they exist so that our government officials have locations to administer high-stakes
standardized tests each spring. If we peel away the various layers of local, state, and
federal mandates, the core mission of every school should be to provide every
student with the skills and knowledge needed to be a self-sufficient, successful adult
(pp. 13-14).
There is evidence that effective collaboration among education professionals in each school
building can facilitate this transformation to a “self-sufficient, successful adult.”
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
Effective, sustained collaboration requires several key district-wide practices:




Participants receive instruction on how to collaborate.
- Simply placing teachers in groups does not guarantee collaboration.
Group norms are established and maintained.
- Agreement by all participants on how the group functions and how members
interact promotes efficient use of collaborative time.
Data drives decision-making and instruction.
- Meeting time is focused on examination/review of student data for the purpose
of improving instruction and outcomes for students.
Collaboration is monitored.
- A system-wide process or protocol for monitoring the effectiveness of
collaborative teams helps maximize the impact on student learning.
Teacher professional collaboration and professional learning efforts require coordination and
resources. Both of these are best managed at the policy level (American Federation of Teachers;
Council of Chief State School Officers; National Education Association; National Staff
Development Council, 2010). In this 2010 study of professional learning across six states, this
national coalition found that:
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High-quality professional development can occur as a result of strong district or
school leadership, but it is far more likely to be sustained if incorporated into policy
language and collective bargaining agreements that drive day-to-day operations of
schools and districts. While good professional development programs exist in
schools and districts without supportive policy language, … comprehensive
professional development systems are best supported through explicit state or
district policies — policies that can guide and sustain professional learning and its
implementation (pp. 19-20).
Clearly, effective programs can be managed exclusively at the building level but a thorough
review of district policies may well reveal barriers that impede collaboration and collective
professional growth. Provisions found within collective bargaining agreements may also get in
the way of using teachers’ time in this way. To the extent that these barriers can be identified
and eliminated, the work of developing an effective teaching staff will be facilitated.
As a follow-up document, this same group of organizations commissioned a workbook for
improving policies with the intent of improving the practice and outcomes of teacher and leader
professional learning. Professional Learning Policy Review: A Workbook for States and Districts
(Killion, 2013) provides a structure for evaluating the context and conditions in the district and
for optimizing conditions for professional collaboration and professional learning.
The district’s role in establishing collaboration among school personnel both within and across
schools starts with communicating an expectation for educator behavior. This does not mean
mandating collaboration time but rather providing encouragement and opportunity to
collaborate. District staff should encourage sharing of all kinds realizing that teachers
collaborate in many ways, both formal and informal. These might include casual conversations
regarding individual students or challenging instructional points, formal, regularly scheduled
meetings with discipline or grade-level teams, or ad hoc committee work for curriculum or
improvement planning. Any and all of these experiences enhance teacher professionalism and
have been shown to improve student learning outcomes.
These experiences require that district policies and practices accommodate such interactions.
Beyond providing time and content for discussions, district staff should consider the climate of
the district and how it may be affecting teacher interactions. Goddard, Goddard, and
Taschannen-Moran (2007) found:
[L]ow levels of collaboration may indicate teachers’ unwillingness to take personal
risks, especially those teachers who have worked in isolation for many years.
Collaboration, on the other hand, encourages teachers to move beyond reliance on
their own memories and experiences with schooling and toward engagement with
others around important questions of teaching and learning (p. 892).
Collaboration calls for interactions beyond a limited circle of deeply trusted friends to include
the larger population of colleagues throughout the school. This can be a daunting change to
established practices. Districts with effective collaboration as a norm work to minimize the
perception of risk and isolation and strive to support teachers in their adoption of a new norm.
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What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):



professional learning community
teacher professional collaboration
collaborative research-based practice
Research (links use scholar.google.com):



professional learning community
teacher professional collaboration
collaborative research-based practice -health
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Indicator DEE4.5
Professional learning for all staff throughout the district (as appropriate to job
description) is ongoing and embedded, research-based instructional practice that is
aligned to adopted state standards across all curricula (including but not limited to
Common Core, Science, English Language Proficiency, Oregon Social Studies,
Technology, and CTE Skill Sets).
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
The Oregon Department of Education’s Oregon Framework for Teacher and Administrator
Evaluation and Support Systems directs that, “District priorities, school goals and classroom
goals should be aligned, wherever possible (Oregon Department of Education, 2013, p. 22).”
This alignment involves goals for measures of all types that are used to evaluate the progress of
students toward academic standards and of educators, both teachers and administrators,
toward success in their role. It is important to note that individual goal setting is a collaborative
effort between teachers and their evaluator.
A careful alignment of measures provides clear points of intervention and supports for teachers
in advancing their professional learning. As the Framework points out:
The focus of the evaluation system is on improving professional practice and
student learning. To that end, linking evaluations with high quality professional
learning is key. Aligned evaluation systems inform educators of strengths and
weaknesses and provide opportunities to make informed decisions regarding
individual professional growth. High quality professional learning is sustained and
focused and relevant to the educator’s goals and needs. All educators must have
opportunities for professional growth to meet their needs, not only those whose
evaluation ratings do not meet the standard (p. 33).
Note that these personalized professional growth opportunities are not merely for the educator
not meeting the standard but should be available for all teachers. Alignment among the
district’s/school’s goals, the state academic content standards, the core teaching standards, and
available professional learning opportunities will optimize teacher staff development and
maximize the positive impact on student learning. As Hill, et. al., argue, “We firmly believe that
by creating an educator development system that includes high-quality practice standards,
growth opportunities and supports, and a credible performance review system, we can engage
and support educators across the career continuum and ultimately improve student learning
(2010, p. 14).”
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
District policies do not merely encourage but direct the use of multiple measures in
determining areas of need for individual teachers. The educator evaluation system serves to
identify these needs through the collection and evaluation of evidence from multiple categories.
Once the needs of individual teachers and system wide needs have been identified, plans are
developed that will address these needs in ways that best fit the educators involved. The key is
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that professional learning must be tied to the identified areas of challenges to the education
system in order for teachers to be effective in impacting student learning.
This may include group instruction as is common in traditional staff development programs
with group activities, readings, and peer interactions that provide opportunities for staff to
acquire identified skills. Alternatively, it may be in the form of individualized mentoring and
direction that addresses the particular needs of a single educator with an identified challenge
best met one-on-one. Between these two options lies a significant range of approaches, any of
which may be well suited to a particular situation.
These approaches may include:


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


attendance at a professional conference where the needed learning is highlighted,
short-lived study groups that target a particular topic over a prescribed period,
ongoing professional learning communities that address a series of needs at a pace
suited to the participants,
peer observation and coaching,
lesson studies, or
any of a large number of approaches or combinations that are effective across a range of
professional growth and learning.
Central to this effort is customization of the training to ensure that the needs of each individual
are met. District policies support the flexibility needed to accommodate various approaches
including needed resources of time, money, and materials. Flexibility in scheduling is also
available to support educators in their professional interactions with and support of colleagues
and their participation in training opportunities.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):

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intasc standards
Oregon educator evaluation
standards aligned professional learning
connect professional learning to state standards
Research (links use scholar.google.com):
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ongoing, embedded professional development curriculum alignment academic
standards
connect professional learning to curriculum standards
intasc standards
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5.0 Teaching and Learning
Effective teaching and learning relationships are supported by the district.
Teaching and learning are arguably the justification for the existence of schooling and the
balance of the indicators exist to support this effort. Without an effective effort in teaching and
learning, district and school structure and culture, family and community involvement, technical
and adaptive leadership, and educator effectiveness are not valuable or necessary. Without success
in teaching and learning, the mission of schools fails.
As Peter McPhee states in his forward to A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher
Education : Enhancing Academic Practice (2009):
[A]cross much of the globe, the world of teaching and learning in higher education is
being shaped by similar phenomena: a larger, more demanding and more diverse
student body, a pervasive language of quality and accountability, rapidly changing
technological possibilities yet uneven levels of student familiarity with them, more
demanding arrangements with governments, and expectations by students and
employers that graduates will be equipped for rapidly changing and globalising
workplaces (p. xviii).
While McPhee restricts his comments to higher education settings, they apply equally well to
the current K-12 environment across the US. The issues identified by McPhee in this quote are
nearly identical to those enumerated in the indicators created by Oregon educators.
Indicator DTL5.1
The district has rigorous, standards-based curricula which includes but is not limited to vertical
alignment across all grade levels (PreK–20), horizontal alignment across all classrooms, and
high levels of rigor in content areas including mathematics, English language arts, social studies,
science, technology, the arts and career and technical skill sets.
Indicator DTL5.2
All educators in the district differentiate instruction, adapt content and utilize digital tools and
resources to create personalized learning opportunities to meet the diverse needs of all
students.
Indicator DTL5.3
All students in the district have access to and develop proficiency in utilizing technology to
enhance their preparation for college and career.
Indicator DTL5.4
Teaching and learning outcomes at each level of the system are driven by standards providing
students with the academic, career and technical skills necessary for successful post-secondary
transitions to college or career. Those standards may include but are not limited to: Common
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Core, Science, English Language Proficiency, Oregon Social Studies, Technology, and CTE Skill
Sets.
Indicator DTL5.5
The district provides all students and staff in each school with equitable access to a
comprehensive library program which provides instruction in information literacy and
research proficiencies, promotes integration of digital learning resources, advances reading
engagement, and creates collaborative learning opportunities with teachers.
Indicator DTL5.6
The district ensures that all students and staff in each school have equitable access to a
professionally-developed and well-managed school library collection of current and diverse
print and electronic resources that supports teaching and learning, college and career
readiness, and reading engagement.
Indicator DTL5.7
The district has a balanced assessment system aligned to the district curricula which include
formative, interim and summative measures that are rigorous and cognitively demanding.
Indicator DTL5.8
The district ensures planning for teaching and learning focuses on a variety of appropriate and
targeted instructional strategies to address diverse ways of learning, to incorporate new
technologies to maximize and individualize learning, and to allow learners to take charge of
their own learning and to do it in creative ways. Research-based instructional resources,
strategies and programs are coordinated and monitored for progress in closing the
achievement and opportunity gaps.
Indicator DTL5.9
The district works with schools to provide early and intensive intervention for students not
making progress.
Indicator DTL5.10
The district provides all English learners in the district with learning opportunities to ensure
that they will become proficient in and writing English in order to meet the requirements of
obtaining an Oregon Diploma.
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Indicator DTL5.1
The district has rigorous, standards-based curricula which includes but is not limited
to vertical alignment across all grade levels (PreK–20), horizontal alignment across
all classrooms, and high levels of rigor in content areas including mathematics,
English language arts, social studies, science, technology, the arts and career and
technical skill sets.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
The federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, formerly NCLB) calls for an
alignment of curriculum (in the form of standards) to achievement testing conducted by the
state. This requirement has resulted in the development of several tools and techniques to
measure the alignment of standards to tests. Researchers have seen this as an opportunity to
expand this effort to include not only state standards and state tests but to evaluate the
alignment of curriculum (as defined in the standards but also beyond those standards) to
testing (including state achievement tests but also local formative and summative assessments)
and instruction as practiced in the classroom (Porter, Smithson, Blank, & Seidner, 2007). This
alignment may also include a review of print materials, texts, and online instructional resources
to ensure that those materials meet the needs of instructional staff in supporting aligned
instruction. Porter, et. al., point out that an alignment of these elements prepares students not
only for the tests they will face but also for the experiences intended in the standards. Fully
aligning these aspects of educational delivery addresses concerns for opportunity to learn and
equitable services.
Curriculum alignment from grade-to-grade and across classrooms within a grade provides a
seamless instructional experience that limits both redundancy and gaps in instruction.
Alignment (or articulation) of instruction across grades offers a continuous and deliberate
progression of instructional content while alignment within a grade ensures students will have
an equitable experience and an opportunity to learn the planned content regardless of the
particular teacher or classroom to which the students is assigned.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
Aligning standards, instruction, materials, and assessments requires broad involvement of
instructional staff and leadership across the district. District-level staff establish an expectation
of alignment of instructional content to the standards as a first step in this effort. This typically
includes a policy directing teachers to clearly state the content standards addressed in a
particular lesson plan and the ways in which the lesson will contribute to mastery of the
standard. With that statement in place, teachers evaluate the content of the lesson and the
materials used to support instruction to ensure further alignment. Similarly, any locally
developed or purchased assessments, whether common across classrooms or used within a
single classroom, are checked for the extent to which levels of performance on the assessment
indicate levels of the knowledge and skills called for in the standard.
This effort gets at the need for alignment within the classroom and can enhance the outcomes
for that classroom. The alignment across grades and across classrooms within a grade requires
additional work by all staff to review standards, determine the sequencing of instructional
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content, and establish guidelines for when and by whom that content will be taught. Such an
effort can be daunting but has proved quite effective in confirming the good work of teachers
and in lightening individual loads by eliminating redundant instruction and unidentified gaps.
There are a number of techniques for achieving this cross-grade and within-grade alignment.
Several of these are summarized in the article Evaluating Alignment between Curriculum,
Assessment, and Instruction which highlights the importance of this effort (Martone & Sireci,
2009).
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):

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aligning curriculum instruction and assessment
k-12 curriculum articulation
techniques curriculum alignment
Research (links use scholar.google.com):
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aligning curriculum instruction and assessment
k-12 curriculum articulation
techniques curriculum alignment
techniques curriculum alignment -college -university
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Indicator DTL5.2
All educators in the district differentiate instruction, adapt content and utilize digital
tools and resources to create personalized learning opportunities to meet the
diverse needs of all students.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
In the national education technology plan, Transforming American Education: Learning Powered
by Technology (US Department of Education Office of Educational Technology, 2010), the US
Department of Education offers the following definition:
Personalization refers to instruction that is paced to learning needs, tailored to
learning preferences, and tailored to the specific interests of different learners. In an
environment that is fully personalized, the learning objectives and content as well as
the method and pace may all vary (so personalization encompasses differentiation
and individualization) (p. 12).
The plan goes on to argue that technology can serve as an effective mediator of education and
can provide a customized educational experience for individual students.
Redding (2013) expands this definition to make it somewhat more personal and, in doing so, to
eliminate the requirement of (although not the usefulness of) technology in mediating the
experience.
[P]ersonalization refers to a teacher’s relationships with students and their families
and the use of multiple instructional modes to scaffold each student’s learning and
enhance the student’s motivation to learn and metacognitive, social, and emotional
competencies to foster self-direction and achieve mastery of knowledge and skills.
Or more simply, personalization ensues from the relationships among teachers and
learners and the teacher’s orchestration of multiple means for enhancing every
aspect of each student’s learning and development (p. 6).
Redding suggests that personalization does not merely tailor instruction and content to areas in
which the student has an expressed or latent interest. Personalization in this conceptualization
is instead tailored in a way that suits the student’s best interest (or benefit/advantage). While
the definition proposed by the US Department of Education is closely related to the mastery
learning or programmed learning models of the 1970s and ’80s, Redding’s definition is more
closely related to the philosophy propagated by John Dewey (1897) when he wrote:
The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in
the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which
shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences. …
I believe that the teacher's business is simply to determine on the basis of larger
experience and riper wisdom, how the discipline of life shall come to the child (n.p.).
The challenge with addressing the interests of the students, according to Redding, is that they
may not have an interest in content that is required by the standards and valuable to their
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future. Additionally, children’s interests are somewhat transient and may not remain in place
long enough to build an educational system. Alternatively, it is the teacher’s job to pique
students’ interest in topics and content in which the student may not express an immediate
interest. This is best done through an interpersonal relationship between the teacher and each
individual student.
Teaching in ways that personalize both the relationship between student and teacher and the
approach for each student can have a significant impact on student learning and on the
students’ overall experience and readiness for life beyond school. All of this goes to the
students’ motivation to learn the material selected for presentation and their concomitant
ability to retain the material.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
Redding (2013) offers “A Comprehensive Model of Personalized Learning (2013, p. 7).”
Relational Suasion and
Modeling
Motivation to Learn
Metacognitive Competencies
Self-Direction
Mastery of Knowledge and
Skills
Social and Emotional
Competencies
Individualized, Differentiated,
and Varied Instruction
Given these needed inputs, districts working to personalize instruction for students implement
a package of professional learning and resource allocation that support teachers in their efforts.
Teachers participate in professional learning addressing:
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teacher modeling of (rather than merely stating) appropriate classroom behaviors,
models for motivating students based on contemporary theories,
explicit demonstrations of metacognitive strategies that support students in
strengthening their intellectual approach to content,
the role of social and emotional learning acknowledging that social behaviors and
emotional control can be learned in tandem with academic content, and
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
differentiation of instruction (including classroom activities, breadth of content, and
homework practices) to support the variety of approaches and prior knowledge
students bring to the classroom.
Beyond providing these supports for professional learning, districts where personalized
learning works monitor and support its integration into the classroom. Successful integration of
personalized learning is a challenge for educators. Its implementation requires leadership and
encouragement from all levels throughout the district.
These districts also ensure that safeguards are in place, guaranteeing equitable access to
personalized models throughout implementation. Examples can be found where students are
expected to succeed in more traditional models before they are granted the freedom inherent in
the personalized model described here. This is counterproductive in that it is the very students
at risk of failure in the traditional model who have the greatest chance of benefit under
personalization. Districts have a responsibility for monitoring the development and
implementation of such models to ensure that personalization is an educational opportunity
rather than a reward (Darling-Hammond & Friedlaender, 2008).
Darling-Hammond and Friedlaender go on to point out that these practices should be based on
quality research and should result from effective, supportive policies rather than one-off
experiments and intuitive approaches to education. Responsibility for ensuring this is true and
for monitoring the effectiveness of these programs lies with the district.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):




personalized learning
differentiated instruction
technology personalized learning
adaptive technology instructional tracking
Research (links use scholar.google.com):
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personalized learning elementary secondary
differentiated instruction
technology personalized learning
adaptive technology instructional tracking
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Indicator DTL5.3
All students in the district have access to and develop proficiency in utilizing
technology to enhance their preparation for college and career.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
Many sources are available describing the technology skills and knowledge students should
have when leaving high school. A succinct list is included in the article The Top 10 Tech Skills
Your Teen Needs Now (Donaldson, 2013):
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Typing
Word processing
Spreadsheets
PowerPoint
E-Mail “netiquette"
Electronic calendar
Social networking sites
Basic computer upkeep
Using Internet searches properly for research
Database use
Such lists are commonplace and seem variable depending to an extent on the source and the
interest that source brings to the list creation. The International Society for Technology in
Education (ISTE) has published the National Educational Technology Standards for Students
(NETS-S) outlining a set of 24 skills for students to acquire. There are four in each of these
categories (International Society for Technology in Education, 2013):
1. Creativity and Innovation
Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop
innovative products and processes using technology.
2. Communication and Collaboration
Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work
collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and
contribute to the learning of others.
3. Research and Information Fluency
Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information.
4. Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making
Students use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage projects,
solve problems, and make informed decisions using appropriate digital tools and
resources.
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5. Digital Citizenship
Students understand human, cultural, and societal issues related to technology and
practice legal and ethical behavior.
6. Technology Operations and Concepts
Students demonstrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and
operations.
The ISTE NETS-S standards are not merely a list of technology skills that students should
acquire during schooling but are more representative of a quality education supported with
technology. The position espoused by ISTE is that technology should not be taught
independently of other aspects of a student’s education. This position holds that by integrating
technology into the educational process, students will master these tools in a transparent and
generalizable way.
Technology serves as a tool for enhancing productivity. This is reflected in both of the lists
provided, and of nearly all other lists of needed skills for the workforce of the future. Where the
list provides generic skills, those skills can be enhanced through technology. Where the list
includes specific technology skills, those skills are useful to the extent they enhance
productivity.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
In its description of the essential conditions for technology for learning (International Society
for Technology in Education, 2013), ISTE describes elements of an effective integration policy.
These include a leadership vision driving a clear and supported plan for the use of technology
with funding adequate to support both the acquisition of needed technologies and the
professional learning that must support its integration into the classroom. Importantly, this
document endorses the implementation of an integrated use of technology in a solid, studentcentered program addressing a curriculum framework that highlights content knowledge. This
approach, rather than a curriculum in technology use, offers just-in-time learning that can make
productivity tools transparent in their use.
Successful districts provide leadership on the use of productivity tools and other technologies
in support of content learning. Funding and policies support the acquisition of needed tools and
professional learning that advances the use of technology in the schools.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):


why students need technology skills
iste nets-s
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technology skills for elementary students
technology skills for high school students
Research (links use scholar.google.com):
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iste nets-s
what technology skills do students need
technology supported learning
learning to use technology
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Indicator DTL5.4
Teaching and learning outcomes at each level of the system are driven by standards
providing students with the academic, career and technical skills necessary for
successful post-secondary transitions to college or career. Those standards may
include but are not limited to: Common Core, Science, English Language Proficiency,
Oregon Social Studies, Technology, and CTE Skill Sets.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
In Oregon, schools were for a time required by HB 2220 (Oregon Legislative Assembly, 2014),
passed in 2011, and by Oregon Administrative Rule 581-022-1670 (Oregon Department of
Education, 2014) to inform students and parents of students’ progress toward acquiring the
knowledge and skills included in the Oregon academic content standards.
These two documents together required two things of schools:
1. At least one time each year, provide parents with a report indicating their student’s
achievement measured against Oregon State standards at the student’s grade level.
2. Base this report solely on the student’s academic performance without influence by student
behavior.
These reqirements were eliminated with the passage of HB 4150 during the 2014
legislative session. HB 4150 allows schools to use standards-based reporting on a voluntary
basis but does not require its use. HB 4150 also removed the restriction against the use of nonacademic ratings in evaluations allowing behavior, homework, and other factors to be included
in assignment of student grades.
With the passage of HB 4150, districts intending to use standards-based reporting, whether in
print or via conference, are limited to three standards in each content area (as defined in ORS
329.045). Those districts planning to use more than three standards in a single content area are
required to seek input from an advisory committee prior to implementing the planned
reporting.
The intent of the law and of ODE policy is to encourage reporting based on the standards not to
require a shift toward abandonment of traditional grade reporting in favor of standards-based
reporting.
There is clear evidence, however, that such grade reporting as an alternative rather than
supplement to more traditional grade reporting has a positive impact on student performance.
Current literature on the subject is calling for an isolation of various elements of student
performance and behavior and a focus on reporting standard by standard (O'Connor &
Wormeli, 2011; Scriffiny, 2008; Guskey & Jung, 2014). Guskey and Jung argue that:
[T]raditional letter grades have two major drawbacks. First, to assign a single letter
grade to students for each subject studied, teachers must combine evidence from a
multitude of diverse sources into that one mark…A standards-based report card
allows teachers to report on the adequacy of students’ academic achievement, as
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well as their attitudes, efforts, participation, and work habits. It provides parents
with a more detailed picture of their child’s academic performance in school, as well
as their school-related behaviors (2014, p. Challenge 3).
Standards-based reporting can improve communication to parents and students regarding
student mastery of standards, preparedness for next steps (whether next courses in sequence,
next level of education, or transition to career), and student response to assessment results (as
reflected in performance on latter assessments). This improved communication can have a
positive impact on subsequent outcomes and on overall student resilience (O'Connor &
Wormeli, 2011; Stiggins, 2007).
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
Scriffiny (2008), writing from her perspective as a secondary mathematics teacher, asserts that,
“Although many districts adopt standards-based grading in addition to traditional grades,
standards-based grading can and should replace traditional point-based grades. [emphasis in
original]” Her position holds that continuing to report progress using traditional grading
systems and standards-based systems is confusing and ineffective. Districts implementing a
standards-based grading system convert all grading to this standards-based system and
eliminate traditional course-based grading altogether.
O’Connor and Wormeli call for a grading system that is, “accurate, consistent, meaningful, and
supportive of learning (2011, p. 40)” arguing that the current system is imprecise, inconsistent
(not only across schools and teachers but within individual classrooms), confusing, and entirely
summative where formative uses would be preferable.
Current systems of grading rely heavily on teacher perception and incorporate confounding
information including student behavior toward both the teacher and the content, averages of
early performance prior to mastery, missing or late assignments for which the student was
penalized in some way, and other issues which may vary from teacher to teacher within a single
school and throughout the district (O'Connor & Wormeli, 2011). Establishing standards-based
grading provides a consistent measure of student performance across all classrooms
throughout the district. This consistency supports comparison of student and teacher successes.
Districts with standards-based systems do not eliminate grading for behavior, attendance, or
participation from the grading system but merely separate it from student performance ratings
relative to the standards. That is, performance in math class relating to the standards is
assigned a rating or grade and behavior, attendance, and timeliness in math class are given a
separate, equally important rating (O'Connor & Wormeli, 2011; Scriffiny, 2008). These can be
combined or individual ratings depending upon the deliberations within a single district. Some
districts find that combining behavior ratings across courses makes sense given their work with
PBIS or similar behavior monitoring systems.
Regardless of how grading/rating is managed, districts with standards-based systems provide
consistent rating against easily applied scales across schools in the district. These scales are not
necessarily identical across disciplines. That is, math teachers may use a somewhat different
scale than language arts or science teachers. The scales should be comparable, however, to
avoid confusion among those using the data and to support professional learning among
teachers (O'Connor & Wormeli, 2011).
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As educators consider the needs of the various audiences, school and district staff working
toward a standards-based system engage representative members of each audience in
developing systems for creating and communicating grades. Given the departure from known,
traditional grading methods, these changes also demand a significant and well-planned
communication model.
This work cannot be accomplished exclusively at the school level. It is the result of a
coordinated, district led program resulting in a change in teacher perceptions of the role of
grading and the teacher’s responsibility to the consumers of this information. Where this has
succeeded, the district has led the way, directing a collaborative of educators from across
schools or even across districts toward a consensus system for assessing and evaluating student
learning.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):




standards based grading
standards-driven student outcomes
college and career readiness measures
Oregon standards-based report cards
Research (links use scholar.google.com):



standards based grading
standards-driven student outcomes
college and career readiness measures
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Indicator DTL5.5
The district provides all students and staff in each school with equitable access to a
comprehensive library program which provides instruction in information literacy
and research proficiencies, promotes integration of digital learning resources,
advances reading engagement, and creates collaborative learning opportunities
with teachers.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
Over the past several years, schools have been eliminating school librarians in response to the
continued decline in available funding (American Library Association, 2012) according to the
report The 2012 State of America's Libraries. The report goes on to lament this because schools
with certified librarians and extended library hours have been shown to positively impact
student outcomes on measures of academic success and college readiness. Post high school
evaluations have shown that high schools that provide certified school librarians have been
shown to have a positive outcome on college readiness and subsequent student success
(Smalley, 2004).
Librarians fill two needed roles in public schools. Librarians are trained to locate and evaluate
sources of information and to support students in making effective use of that information to
advance their learning. Librarians also bring skills in the interpretation and evaluation of
sources that support the selection of materials suitable for research citation.
In one of their roles, librarians provide support and encouragement to readers/writers across
all purposes, providing access to both fiction and non-fiction materials to increase access to
information (Morris, 2012). In an article entitled Educating Students to Think: The Role of the
School Library Media Program (Mancall, Aaron, & Walker, 1986) the authors described the
importance of the library and librarians in developing critical thinking skills and metacognition
in students in preparation for their life after school. These are the very skills called for in the
Common Core State Standards (Morris, 2012). Indeed, Julien and Barker suggest that,
“Information literacy skills are critical for full participation in contemporary Western societies;
accessing and evaluating information are basic skills required for success in work and personal
contexts (Julien & Barker, 2009, p. 13).”
In the second role, librarians provide the “third leg of the stool” in a triad with content teachers
in science/social science and with English teachers in developing research projects for students.
This role calls upon librarians’ skills in information management and access to support students
in researching and writing papers on topics within the content areas.
Unfortunately, “A weak economy paired with a national push to improve reading and math as
well as other core subjects has left an important skill behind in K12 classrooms—digital media
literacy (Pascopella, 2010).” Pascopella calls upon the research of Eszter Hargittai, a researcher
at Northwestern University in noting that “… some new literacy skills are always morphing,
such as how information is spread. Twitter and other social media did not exist a few years
ago,” she says, “so teachers will have to be updated often on the changes.”
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In their article of more than twenty-five years ago, Mancall, Aaron, and Walker (1986) make no
mention of the now contemporary technologies of the library. The words Internet, web, or even
computer appear nowhere in the text. The target skills described by the article, critical thinking
and metacognition, are identical, however, to those described in the Common Core State
Standards (Morris, 2012). This protean nature of contemporary information processing
resources, offering the promise and challenge of rapid change and unpredictability (Kay, 1984),
makes the effort to maintain currency for all staff in a school district extremely difficult. While
this responsibility is often left to district/school technology specialists, staff in the role of
technologist may be better suited to managing technical aspects of hardware and software.
Librarians can provide an important contribution to schools/districts as they coordinate and
collaborate on projects for both students and staff making use of contemporary media sources
to enhance learning for all.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
The Oregon Association of School Libraries has published standards for school library
operations that, like standards in other fields, offer guidance to shape an effective program.
These standards, online at https://sites.google.com/site/oregonschoollibrarystandards/,
address the librarians’ role in information literacy, reading engagement, social responsibility,
and technology integration. While full implementation of these standards would challenge
many school districts, they set a worthy target for effective integration of the school librarians’
work into each school’s instructional program.
Successfully integrating school librarians into the instructional program of schools requires
deliberate, conscientious leadership. School librarians are most valuable when they serve in
collaboration with instructional staff on projects integrating research, content, and writing.
These projects should be a collaborative effort of the school’s librarian, one or more content
teachers in science or social science, and one or more English teachers coaching the writing
process.
Districts that make effective use of school librarians provide opportunities and guidance for
collaborative time among staff. This is supported by policies directing the use of content-based
projects for students at multiple grade levels.
Further, the school librarians in these districts are provided the opportunity and resources to
maintain the print and electronic sources available to students. They are also provided the
opportunity and strongly encouraged to advance their own professional learning and, in turn, to
support the professional learning of their colleagues related to the use of various and
appropriate media in the classroom to deliver standards-based instruction.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):

librarian common core state standards
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

librarian critical thinking
information literacy library
Research (links use scholar.google.com):



information literacy library
library "common core state standards"
critical thinking librarian k12
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Indicator DTL5.6
The district ensures that all students and staff in each school have equitable access
to a professionally-developed and well-managed school library collection of current
and diverse print and electronic resources that supports teaching and learning,
college and career readiness, and reading engagement.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
The article Something to Shout About: New Research Shows that More Librarians Means Higher
Reading Scores, (Lance & Hofschire, 2011) presents the results of a study of the impact of school
librarians on fourth grade reading scores controlling for other changes in schools. Using results
from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the authors demonstrate that
fourth grade reading scores between 2004 and 2009 in states where librarians became more
common rose or remained stable while those in states losing librarians remained stable or fell.
This advantage is shown across nearly all subgroups but most prominently among poor and
minority students. Quoted in the article, Connie Williams, President of the California Library
Association explains, “If you factor in the fact that for students in poverty the school library is
most likely the only access to books, instruction, and reading advisory that they have, then yes,
the school librarian can be shown to be a direct influence on student achievement. (n.p.)”
While English language learners (ELLs) did not fare as well as other minority students in states
where school librarians were maintained or expanded, they showed no loss. In states where
librarians were cut back, ELLs saw a significant decline in performance.
These data, while preliminary and at the state rather than building level, show that a qualified
school librarian has a significant, positive impact on student learning. This is amplified among
minority students and those students living in poverty. An equitable distribution of qualified
library staff will optimize this value for students.
As shown in the chart below, when considering students enrolled in a school, there appears to
be almost no relationship between percent of students living in poverty, the percent of nonwhite students, or the percent of students who ever received ELL services when compared to
full-time equivalencies of either certified librarians or paraprofessionals working in school
libraries. There is a moderate association between the number of students enrolled at the
school and the likelihood of services by a paraprofessional.
Pearsons r Correlation of
Student Characteristics to Library Staffing
% Poverty
% Non-white
% Ever ELL
Enrollment
Certified FTE
0.00
0.04
0.04
0.04
Paraprofessional FTE
0.01
0.08
-0.03
0.40
Source: Oregon Department of Education: Staff Position Collection (2012 -13) December 16, 2013.
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These data suggest that equity in the assignment of library personnel is not a significant
problem in Oregon. Access is, however, not universal with an average of 0.1 certified FTE per
school and the average of 0.5 paraprofessional FTE per school. Throughout the state, just over
1000 schools report no certified library staff and nearly 475 report no paraprofessional staffing
for the library. Approximately 300 schools report no library staffing.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
As districts are coming out of the recession and seeing an increase in funding from multiple
sources, district policies and practices on staffing of school libraries should be reviewed. Many
districts have moved away from certified staff in libraries and have hired paraprofessionals to
staff libraries full or part-time. The evidence is clear that district policy and hiring practice
should favor placing a full-time, certified school librarian in each school library.
It is important to realize that there are three primary responsibilities in the library; 1) clerical
duties around maintaining and distributing the library collection, 2) professional
responsibilities regarding materials selection and acquisition in support of the curricular needs
of the classroom, and 3) collaboration with instructional staff to design and implement
instructional activities. Staff should be appropriately assigned so that, while all three are
covered, emphasis is properly prioritized. Non-instructional tasks are essential to smooth
operation of the library but school leadership should ensure that these tasks do not place
unreasonable demands on the time certified staff may need for professional duties in support of
instruction.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):


school librarian impact
value school librarian
Research (links use scholar.google.com):


school librarian impact
school librarian value
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Indicator DTL5.7
The district has a balanced assessment system aligned to the district curricula which
include formative, interim and summative measures that are rigorous and
cognitively demanding.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
Measures of Student Learning
Garrison and Ehringhaus (2013) offer clear distinctions between the concepts of formative
assessment and summative assessment. Distilled, their definitions are:


summative assessment: assessments used to evaluate student knowledge/skills
conducted following instruction; grades or scores are assigned to students following
summative assessment.
formative assessment: assessments used to evaluate instructional effectiveness and
success conducted during the course of instruction; no grading or scoring of students is
associated with formative assessments.
Interim assessments are not clearly distinct from formative and summative assessments. While
summative and formative assessments serve alternative roles from one another, an interim
assessment can be either summative or formative depending upon the use of resulting data. If,
for instance, the instructional program is adjusted or modified for students based upon the
results of an interim assessment, it serves a formative role. If, on the other hand, these data are
used to evaluate student progress or as a predictor of performance on a statewide assessment,
the interim assessment serves a summative role. In fact, if an interim assessment is used for
formative purposes, its power in predicting summative outcomes is lost.
Most of the assessments used in our education system are summative assessments. This is
evidenced by the fact that scores are recorded and evaluated following these assessments and
are assigned as grades. Any assessment used to assign grades serves a summative purpose and
therefore is a summative assessment.
This applies equally well to any in-class or homework assignment as it does to any formal or
informal testing of students. If student performance on daily homework in a mathematics class
is incorporated into grading for that class, the homework serves a summative purpose. If
homework is intended as practice and is not intended to reflect student mastery but rather the
current, not yet fully developed mastery of the content, course grades should not be based on
student performance on those tasks. Instead, these assignments should be considered as
teachers evaluate student progress toward mastery so that adjustments can be made to
instruction prior to summative assessments.
Garrison and Ehringhaus offer an analogy that illustrates the difference between formative and
summative assessments based on learning to drive:
What if, before getting your driver’s license, you received a grade every time you sat
behind the wheel to practice driving? What if your final grade for the driving test
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was the average of all of the grades you received while practicing? Because of the
initial low grades you received during the process of learning to drive, your final
grade would not accurately reflect your ability to drive a car. In the beginning of
learning to drive, how confident or motivated to learn would you feel? Would any of
the grades you received provide you with guidance on what you needed to do next
to improve your driving skills? Your final driving test, or summative assessment,
would be the accountability measure that establishes whether or not you have the
driving skills necessary for a driver’s license—not a reflection of all the driving
practice that leads to it (2013, p. 2).
Defining Rigor
Beyond making a clear distinction between formative and summative assessments, this
indicator requires that these assessments be “rigorous and cognitively demanding.” While the
terms rigor and cognitive demand may sometimes be viewed as synonymous, it is important to
have a clear understanding of the concepts the two terms describe.
Often, rigor has been used to describe simply more rather than different curriculum and/or
instruction (Washor & Mojkowski, 2007). This may mean four years of English in high school
rather than merely three or a requirement that all students take at least one Advanced
Placement Course to qualify for graduation. In this case, Washor and Mojkowski observe:
We see such expectations as falling far short of the true rigor students need.
Curriculum developers, teachers, and even students often construe rigor narrowly.
Their constructions of rigor reflect neither the processes of authentic academic
work nor the kind of environment students need to do such work. These
misunderstandings unduly constrict strategies for promoting intense, focused
learning in schools, and they underestimate how discipline and cross-discipline
knowledge and skills can be applied in real-world contexts (2007, p. 84).
These authors and others suggest rigor is found not in doing more of the same work or even
harder work in the same topics but rather in doing real, relevant work. That is, when educators
talk of more rigor, they should be talking about having students do work that is 1) relevant to
students current lives and experiences and 2) real in that there is no fixed and known solution
and the problem is solvable but open-ended.
This is also reflected in a chapter written by James Gee (1998). Gee draws a distinction between
knowledge we learn and knowledge we acquire. He suggests learning is the result of deliberate
teaching and can provide significant knowledge about a subject. Acquisition, on the other hand,
is a result of experience and can even be indeliberate and incidental. Gee goes on to argue,
however, that nothing is truly mastered without acquisition while things can be mastered
without learning given these definitions. Using the example of learning to drive as an
illustration, Gee points out, while we almost certainly have a learning (or taught) experience
involving either formal or informal teaching, it is unimaginable someone might master the task
of driving without significant experience or acquisition of skill. He goes on to suggest this is true
of much of what is taught in school; experience allows us to acquire knowledge and through
that experience we achieve mastery but no amount of learning can lead us to mastery without
supporting experience.
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The impact of effort and repetition on mastery is reflected in Malcolm Gladwell’s (2008)10,000
hour rule positing that mastery demands 10,000 hours (nearly seven years at four hours per
day) of practice. This has been amended by Daniel Goleman (2013) to include that this practice,
if it includes continued practice of the wrong things, cannot lead to mastery. He suggests
mastery demands practice but also coaching from an expert who can identify missteps and help
to redirect efforts.
Rigor, then, is significant time spent on real and relevant experience guided by a knowledgeable
coach with goals for improvement. Rigor in instruction cannot be reflected in measures of
memorization just as rigorous testing cannot be used in instructional programs that focus on
content that is not real or relevant to the students.
Defining Cognitive Demand
In a report to Congress intended to inform the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act, Wood, Darling-Hammond, Neill, and Roschewski (2007) offer the following
definition of higher order thinking skills:
Higher order thinking and performance skills refer to the abilities to frame and
solve problems; find, evaluate, analyze, and synthesize information; apply
knowledge to new problems or situations; develop and test complex ideas; and
communicate ideas or solutions proficiently in oral or written form (p. 11).
Classroom exercises that engage these higher order skills are sometimes referred to as
cognitively demanding. While this use of the term may be appropriate, it is important to know
that generically cognitive demand is present at all levels of intellectual endeavor. The
differences among exercises and activities are in the level of cognitive demand not in its
presence or absence.
Stein, Smith, Henningsen, Silver, (2009) describe cognitive demand typical of mathematics
instruction to include memorization, procedures without connection, procedures with
connections, and doing mathematics. These are not all higher level skills as described by Wood,
Darling-Hammond, Neill, and Roschewski but rather represent a range of thinking skills with
“doing mathematics” the most demanding of these skills and memorization the least.
In both cases, these authors assert that higher order, cognitively demanding assessments
demand activities that integrate various skills and, while requiring a certain amount of
memorization for success, push students to demonstrate skills well beyond that level.
In her article, Measuring Skills for the 21st Century (2009), Elena Silva describes one such
measure (the College Work Readiness Assessment):
It consists of a single 90-minute task to which students must respond using a library
of online documents, from one page newspaper editorials to 20-page research
reports. Facing such problems as a city beset by pollution from a now-defunct
factory or a community health clinic struggling to serve a growing immigrant
population, students must grapple with real-world dilemmas; make judgments that
have economic, social, and environmental implications; and articulate a solution in
writing (p. 632).
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Anyone would suggest that the assessment described would be intellectually challenging (read
cognitively demanding) and would require the integration of a number of skills across several
disciplines. These sorts of assessments truly challenge students; provide real-world, relevant
experiences; and demonstrate the academic rigor called for by contemporary writers on
education.
A final term that is not present in the indicator but is inherent in the design of any assessment
system that will be used to compare outcomes either for individual students or for instructional
programs is “standardized.” This term often has the pejorative interpretation of the “low-level,
multiple choice assessments” perceived as common in statewide testing systems. This is not
how the term is used among assessment professionals.
Standardized tests are tests that are created and administered to ensure comparable results.
That is, any test prepared and administered in the same way across student populations,
courses, and instructional programs is a standardized test.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
An assessment system that is “balanced [and] aligned to the district curricula which include
formative, interim and summative measures that are rigorous and cognitively demanding” as
called for in this indicator creates a challenge and a number of opportunities for school districts.
Districts where this indicator is well implemented have brought teachers together into
professional learning communities (PLCs) to develop, administer, review, and evaluate student
work on common assessments across the same or similar courses throughout the district. These
districts have policies that provide time and other resources needed to support these PLCs in
their work.
Additionally, policies in these districts require that teachers make use of these assessments and
engage fully in these assessment activities at all levels from development through evaluation.
These activities provide participant teachers with the opportunity to clearly define the
outcomes for instructional programs and evaluate the impact and success of their teaching in
helping students to meet these outcomes.
These policies and practices are requisite in a number of the indicators included among the
district indicator set. They should also prove useful in still others. These include:





DDSC1.1—clear goal setting. This should be based on the results of quality assessments
called for here.
DDSC1.2—appropriate and complete data sets resulting in part from the assessments
called for in this indicator.
DTAL3.2—a plan and process to develop staff leadership. Engagement in the effort
included here to develop and make use of assessments could easily be a part of this
leadership development.
DTAL3.3—use of data resulting from these assessments in improvement planning.
DEE4.3—high expectations. These could be based on and would certainly be reflected in
the assessments developed to meet this indicator.
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





DEE4.4—professional learning and collaboration will be necessary both to
develop/select these assessments and to make effective use of the data resulting from
them.
DEE4.5—professional learning that is ongoing and job-embedded. The development and
maintenance of these assessment systems are, by their nature, appropriate to this type
of professional learning. The resulting data can also inform additional professional
learning decisions.
DTL5.1—rigorous, standards-based curricula. Appropriate assessments are a necessary
part of the design and implementation of such curricula.
DTL5.2—differentiated, adapted instruction. Without the information provided by
formative assessments, differentiation and adaptation are not possible.
DTL5.4—standards-based learning outcomes. Such outcomes are codified in the
assessments used to measure them. If the assessments do not appropriately reflect the
rigor and content of the standards, the results of those assessments will not, either.
DTL5.9—early and intensive intervention for students not making progress. Such
interventions would necessarily depend upon the data from an assessment system first
to identify students who are challenged and then to identify the challenges they face and
interventions appropriate to their needs.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):





formative summative assessment
what is academic rigor
rigor and college readiness
are ap courses rigorous
higher order cognitive demand
Research (links use scholar.google.com):



formative summative assessment
rigor assessment school -health -business
cognitive demand in testing and instruction
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Indicator DTL5.8
The district ensures planning for teaching and learning focuses on a variety of
appropriate and targeted instructional strategies to address diverse ways of
learning incorporating new technologies. Research-based instructional resources,
strategies and programs are coordinated and monitored for progress in closing the
achievement and opportunity gaps.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
I'm convinced [an education system designed for the 21st century] must meet at
least three challenges.
It would differentiate between children by meeting each child where he or she is in
early childhood, giving that child the educational opportunities needed to be
successful at each stage of education, finally to emerge with some measure of
postsecondary education and ready for meaningful employment and citizenship in
the 21st-century economy…
Secondly, the new system would close gaps in students' health and well-being,
making it possible for each child to attend school daily and to be fully attentive and
supply motivated effort when in school. Physical-health, mental-health, and humanservice supports would need to be more fully integrated into the functioning of the
educational system so student and family needs could be more efficiently met…
Finally, the new education system would have to greatly increase access to out-ofschool learning opportunities—like summer school, camp, tutoring, lessons, sports,
and the arts—for disadvantaged students because these opportunities are every bit
as responsible for achievement gaps as anything that happens inside schools
(Reville, 2014).
In his review of current education improvement efforts and movements, Reville describes a
system to address the needs highlighted in this indicator. He is not calling merely for
personalized learning as is described in Indicator DTL5.2. His goal is nothing short of a
paradigm shift in how schools are designed and established to meet the needs of a range of
student backgrounds, experience, and accomplishments.
Differentiating Instruction
Indicator DTL5.8 addresses—not the need to provide instruction that is differentiated based on
student need and individual characteristics as in Indicator DTL5.2—but rather the necessity to
effectively plan for accommodation to student needs to happen in the classroom and in the
design of schooling. In her article, Differentiated Instruction: Reaching All Students, Basia Hall
(2009) offers three elements of the curriculum for differentiation:
1. Differentiating the Content - The content refers to the knowledge and skills that
students are to learn. Differentiating the content requires that students are pretested so teachers can identify students who do not require direct instruction.
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Those students who demonstrate understanding of the majority of the concepts
are not required to participate in direct instruction and may instead use
different textbooks with different reading levels, or proceed to apply the
concepts to problem solving and enriched or accelerated study.
2. Differentiating the Process - The process is the performance task that enables
students to practice and make sense of the content. Differentiating the process
provides students with alternative paths to explore the concepts. Students may,
for example, create a graphic organizer to illustrate their comprehension of a
particular concept. By modifying the complexity of the graphic organizer for
certain students, the teacher can provide multiple levels of cognitive processing
for those with varying abilities.
3. Differentiating the Product - The product is the outcome of the lesson—an
assessment or project. Differentiating the product varies the complexity of the
medium that assesses students’ mastery of the concepts. For example, students
may be offered a choice of projects and those working above grade level may be
required to produce work that requires more complex thinking (p. 2).
Clearly, modifying instruction in such broad and significant ways would greatly benefit from
careful planning. Changes of this type made on-the-fly during instruction may not serve an
effective purpose and may be perceived intrinsically unfair by other students because of the
lack of clear context.
In describing lesson planning Panasuk and Todd (2005) offer:
Planning a lesson involves teachers' purposeful efforts in developing a coherent
system of activities that facilitates the evolution of students' cognitive structures.
The quality of those decisions and efforts depends on the creativity of teachers and
on their ability to apply learning and instructional theories (p. 215).
Teachers who work from a thorough lesson plan find it easier to be flexible and accommodating
in lesson delivery (Bilash, 2014). This greater flexibility results first from planning for and
anticipating needed accommodations but also from eliminating the need to be constantly
envisioning what comes next. Without a thorough plan, teachers are forced to apply their own
cognitive efforts toward guiding ongoing development of the lesson rather than addressing the
needs of the moment. With a plan, this cognitive effort can, instead, target accommodations or
modifications necessary to support the unanticipated needs of individuals or groups of students
as the lesson progresses.
Well-planned lessons alleviate the cognitive demand for teachers by transferring much of the
work outside instructional delivery and into the planning session. According to Nouha Jamali
(2013) a thoroughly planned lesson:





provides a coherent framework for smooth efficient teaching.
helps the teacher to be more organized.
gives a sense of direction in relation to the syllabus.
helps the teacher to be more confident when delivering the lesson.
provides a useful basis for future planning.
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

helps the teacher to plan lessons which cater for different students.
Is a proof that the teacher has taken a considerable amount of effort in his/her teaching
(n.p.).
Incorporating New Technologies
This indicator specifically mentions “incorporating new technologies” as an expectation of
educators. The challenge presented lies in identifying the technologies best suited for
optimizing learning and necessary to the classrooms in the district.
BusinessDictionary.com defines technology as “The purposeful application of information in the
design, production, and utilization of goods and services, and in the organization of human
activities (Technology, 2014).” Notice that there is no mention of switches or power cords in
this definition. When talking of educational technology most educators assume computer-based
or other electronic resources. Using the definition of technology above allows us to consider not
only those items commonly regarded as technology and maintained by information technology
(IT) staff but also a much broader range of technology for enhancing the student experience and
the outcomes of schooling.
These broader technologies might include assistive technologies used by students as
accommodations and personally-owned devices like smart phones and tablets. Beyond these
devices, however, when broadly interpreted, incorporating new technologies could include
using Marzano’s techniques for aligning curriculum to standards, using word clouds to
illuminate major concepts in a text, implementing a flipped classroom approach, or any of a
broad host of other applications of information to the improvement of instruction.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
Aligning Lesson Plan Objectives to Standards
As with each of these indicators of district practice, the challenge is to find the points of
influence and additive value presented to district staff. Lea (2013) suggests planning to address
the standards for a particular course or sequence represents the science of teaching. She goes
on to suggest that creating objectives for the standards and creating a plan to address those
objectives represents teaching’s art.
Harris and Hofer (2011) argue:
K–12 teachers’ planning must occur at the nexus of curriculum requirements,
students’ learning needs, available technologies’ affordances and constraints, and
the realities of school and classroom contexts (p. 211).
This suggests that support for the implementation of this indicator requires clear
understanding of:


the standards to be addressed (curriculum requirements)
the diverse and varied approaches students bring to learning and the context within
which students live and learn (students’ learning needs)
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

technological supports and approaches available and appropriate to the content (new
technologies)
current research on effective approaches showing promise in similar situations
(research-based instructional resources)
Pickard (2007) adds an element to this analysis as she suggests there are four questions to be
answered with these answers together providing a structure for lesson planning:
What should be taught? How should it be taught? How should learning be
measured? Who are the learners? Because instructional time is limited, decisions
must be made concerning what to teach and what to delete from the curriculum.
The activities and experiences depend on what materials and equipment are
available as instructional resources. The curricular goals and objectives are
described in terms of the activities and experiences that can be provided to the
students (p. 51).
Pickard goes on to suggest that, while standards present broad, course level outcomes,
narrower outcomes (objectives) are needed to provide a target toward which teachers can plan.
These objectives provide substance and meaning to teachers and students in the classroom.
While the standards certainly provide a valuable target for instruction, they do not provide the
specificity required for planning individual or brief sequences of lessons. Effective lesson
planning requires that teachers identify what students should know and be able to do and break
that into manageable objectives for instruction (Jackson, 2009). This “unpacking of the
standards” can provide significant insight into the activities both teacher and students should
engage in to master the content and processes in the standards.
Time is the great barrier to this effort. In a study of teachers struggling to incorporate
technology into their instructional efforts, Lim and Chai (2008) found that teachers who
expressed a preference for constructivist lesson delivery, “where learning is perceived as an
active construction and reconstruction of knowledge and teaching as a process of guiding and
facilitating learners in the process of knowledge construction (p. 808)”, nonetheless used the
more traditional teacher-centered approach in most of their lesson development and delivery.
This was explained as a response to “the need to complete the syllabi according to stipulated
schedules so as to get the students ready for examination (p. 807).”
Whether lesson planning targets each hour of instruction or represents an overall plan for a
broader sequence of instruction, effective planning targets primarily the objectives of the
planned instruction. In the absence of this planning, teachers often are activity driven and
target not the intended learning but the activities students will engage in during instruction
(Jackson, 2009; Milkova, 2014). The district has a responsibility to provide leadership and
direction to teachers in both how and why planning should be done. Lesson planning
represents the logical next step after teachers have identified the salient content in standards.
District policy, practice, and leadership should support teachers in the hard work of creating
effective plans for lesson delivery.
Addressing the Needs of Diverse Students
Addressing diversity in the classroom requires advance planning and deliberate effort on the
part of teachers. Anderson (2007) describes several techniques addressing both instruction and
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assessment that can accommodate the needs of students of widely diverse backgrounds and
experiences. These include opportunities for student selection among a variety of leveled
options any of which will move students toward the course objectives while addressing the
alternative approaches and resources of students. All resulting from appropriate analysis and
planning by teachers.
Shumm, Vaughn, and Leavell (1994) describe an approach to the needed analysis that depends
upon consideration of a number of factors arriving at a leveled approach to meeting student
needs within the context of the classroom. They provide a planning pyramid that relies on
teachers consideration of the classroom context and topic to be taught, the needs of students
both within the context of the classroom and relative to the desired outcomes of the class as
defined by standards, and associated instructional objectives in determining what instructional
practices available to the teacher will most effectively meet the identified need.
Source: (Schumm, Vaughn, & Leavell, 1994, p. 610)
Given the diversity within most classrooms, the result of this analysis is a stratified
instructional plan addressing three levels of student learning (see diagram). These are: 1) what
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all students should learn, 2) what most but not all students will learn, and 3) what some
students will learn. Level 1 is matched to applicable standards; level 2 represents what students
actually can and will learn, still somewhat stratified within this level; level 3 includes more
challenging content for students who are able to master the content in the standards and are
able to learn beyond that content (Schumm, Vaughn, & Leavell, 1994).
Schumm, et. al., suggest that the resulting instruction cannot be relied upon to simply occur.
Effective instruction demands effective planning that takes into account all of these aspects of
the classroom experience.
Districts can facilitate this by first establishing a clear policy that all instruction should be the
result of careful planning rather than, as sometimes is the case, simple identification of
objectives and reliance on past experience. Beyond merely requiring effective planning among
teachers, district policy should provide the time needed for appropriate collaboration and
planning among staff, including mentoring of novice staff as needed. In effective districts, this is
integrated into teachers’ work schedule rather than an uncompensated expectation.
Effective districts also provide staff development planned and implemented with attention to
current research in adult learning and contemporary educational theory. This requires that staff
development is high quality as described in Reviewing the Evidence on how Teacher Professional
Development Affects Student Achievement (Yoon K. S., Duncan, Lee, Scarloss, & Shapley, 2007):

It is sustained, intensive, and content-focused—to have a positive and
lasting impact on classroom instruction and teacher performance.

It is aligned with and directly related to state academic content standards,
student achievement standards, and assessments.

It improves and increases teachers’ knowledge of the subjects they teach.

It advances teachers’ understanding of effective instructional strategies
founded on scientifically based research.

It is regularly evaluated for effects on teacher effectiveness and student
achievement (pp. 1-2).
Such staff development prepares teachers to plan instruction that best meets the needs of their
students.
Finally, these districts make the effort to evaluate the impact of all programs implemented in
the district and to measure the impact each has on the desired outcomes. This evaluation is
challenging but critical to the continued effectiveness of programs and appropriate stewardship
of scarce resources.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
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Teaching and Learning
Resources (links use google.com):




planning for teaching and learning
instructional planning for diverse student populations
collaborative planning for teaching and learning
teacher collaboration
Research (links use scholar.google.com):




planning teaching -university
collaborative planning for teaching and learning
differentiated instruction
lesson planning diverse
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Indicator DTL5.9
The district works with schools to provide early and intensive intervention for
students not making progress.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
Buffam, Mattos, and Weber (Buffum, Mattos, & Weber, 2010) offer a number of questions that
specifically highlight the reasons schools might institute an intervention program for students
struggling to learn. Their article specifically addresses response to intervention (RTI) but can be
applied to any intervention program. They suggest that the wrong (but common) questions
asked by school staffs include:




How do we raise our test scores?
How do we “implement” RTI [or other intervention program]?
How do we stay legal?
What’s wrong with this kid?
The right questions, according to this article, are instead:



What is the fundamental purpose of our school?
What knowledge and skills will our children need to be successful adults?
What must we do to make learning a reality for every student?
The second set of questions focus on modification of teacher/administrator behaviors while the
first set focus on modifications of student behaviors or characteristics.
Schools focused on the second set of questions are working to improve outcomes, not on
measures of academic achievement or compliance issues, but instead those relating to ongoing
quality of life issues. These schools are acting on the spirit rather than the letter of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) or the Individuals with Disabilities Education
Act (IDEA). The intent of each is that students be provided with the highest quality education
preparing them for continued education and life beyond school. Full compliance with these laws
will not guarantee success in that effort.
Well implemented, appropriate targeted interventions will prepare students for future learning
and for success in life.
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
Districts where the approach to systems of intervention addresses the right questions as
identified above work to insure that students are learning as they should rather than what they
should. School staff in these districts are constantly asking why the program of study offered by
the school is failing to meet the needs of individual students and what might be done to address
those needs (Buffum, Mattos, & Weber, 2010).
For this approach to be effective, supports from the district include training in using data to
identify students who are challenged to accomplish the tasks inherent in the standards,
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opportunities for collaborative efforts to interpret needed data, and coordination of these
efforts so that school staff can be assured that they will not constantly struggle to identify likely
interventions and to determine their effectiveness once implemented.
While the primary work of managing any system of intervention is at the school level, district
staff should work to provide the knowledge and skills needed to ensure success and to optimize
the efforts of school staff to achieve economies of scale that cannot be achieved at the school
level. Among these efficiencies is the opportunity district staff have to first fully understand and
communicate the elements of an intervention system and second to assist with identifying
interventions that can be implemented within that system that fit the context of the district
considering the community, student population, resources available, and other variables most
obvious from the perspective of the district.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):



student-level intervention
intervene at-risk students
intervene struggling students
Research (links use scholar.google.com):



student-level intervention
intervene at-risk students
intervene struggling students
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Indicator DTL5.10
The district provides all English learners in the district with learning opportunities to
ensure that they will become proficient in reading and writing English in order to
meet the requirements of obtaining an Oregon Diploma.
Why does this matter to our success as a district?
English Learners as a Portion of K-12 Students
in Oregon’s Schools
600,000
14.0%
Count of K-12 Studnets
10.0%
400,000
8.0%
300,000
6.0%
200,000
4.0%
100,000
Percentage of All Students
who are English Learners
12.0%
500,000
2.0%
-
0.0%
2006-07
2007-08
2008-09
2009-10
2010-11
2011-12
2012-13
School Year
Native English Speakers
English Learners
Percentage
Source: Oregon Department of Education (2006-2013) Fall Enrollment and English Learner [LEP] data collections.
As shown above, the portion of Oregon’s K-12 students has varied somewhat over the past
several years remaining in the 10% to 12% range. This figure is consistent with national
averages of 9% to 10% (US Department of Education, 2014)in recent years. The rate in Oregon
has declined slightly over the last few years as has been true nationwide. This has been
attributed to the recent recession with new arrivals to the US peaking in 2007 and holding
steady over subsequent years (Pew Research Center, 2014). This Pew Research Center study
indicates that the recent trend toward decline is likely to reverse and may have done so already.
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Regardless, the decline in English learners as a percentage of Oregon students is somewhat
attenuated by an in-country migration from other states into Oregon by individuals from across
the US.
With the rate of non-native English speakers ranging between 10% and 12% statewide and
with much higher concentrations in some of the state’s districts, the policies and practices
established by districts statewide will have an impact on approximately 60,000 students each
year. That is a number markedly in excess of the total enrollment of the largest school district in
the state.
These students face challenges in many areas but two are most frequently cited, both in the
popular media and in research. These are: 1) lower performance on statewide assessments
characterized as an achievement gap with the larger student population and 2) higher dropout
rates especially among those who continue to be challenged to learn English into their high
school years (National Education Association, 2008).
How does this look in a district when well implemented?
It must be recognized that the content of this indicator pushes the district to accomplish two
things at once. First, the district is responsible for supporting students in their acquisition of
English. This alone requires districts to support students in two areas as they acquire both oral
language skills and academic English skills adequate to both learn and practice the disciplines
necessary for acquisition of academic content. Second, the district is responsible for providing
educational experiences that allow students who are acknowledged to be lacking in the skills
needed to acquire that content in English (National Education Association, 2008).
These two challenges compound the effort needed to educate more than 10% of Oregon’s K-12
students. While research on each of these is advancing apace, significant research is complete
and can provide the basis for program development in districts. Not surprisingly, those
elements that offer the most promise for students generally also apply for English learners. In
their extensive meta-analysis of research on services to English learners, Genesee, LindholmLeary, Saunders, and Christian (2005) found effective programs for English learners had five
characteristics in common:
1. A positive school environment…
2. A curriculum that was meaningful and academically challenging, incorporated higher
order thinking…, was thematically integrated…, established a clear alignment with
standards and assessment…, and was consistent and sustained over time…
3. A program model that was grounded in sound theory and best practices associated with
an enriched, not remedial, instructional model…
4. Teachers in bilingual programs who understood theories about bilingualism and second
language development as well as the goals and rationale for the model in which they
were teaching…
5. The use of cooperative learning and high-quality exchanges between teachers and
pupils… (p. 376)
Not surprisingly, these same elements offer the most promise for students throughout the
population.
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It is notable that item 4, teachers who understood theories, goals, and rationale for the model in
which they were teaching, is included here. Districts with effective programs provide
professional learning for teachers not only in the practical application of program elements but
also in their theoretical basis for those practices. This knowledge can provide grounding for
teachers in the why of their efforts and can provide them with a basis for predicting the impact
of deviating from the program’s defined practices. Teachers who understand how a program is
expected to work are far more likely to maintain fidelity of that program than are those who are
trained only on their expected behaviors (Genesee, Lindholm-Leary, Saunders, & Christian,
2005).
To meet the needs of English Learners, districts provide a program that is:







consistent across schools,
clearly described to parents and students in the district,
designed to meet needs specific to the local English learner population,
delivered by staff trained in both practical and theoretical aspects of the program,
the target of ongoing, high quality professional learning both for those responsible for
English language acquisition and for content instruction to English learners, and
of adequate duration to ensure that students have developed a mastery of academic
English before transitioning out of the program,
drawn from quality research.
Such a program is presented with fidelity and is monitored for effectiveness in meeting both
needs for English learners, i.e. language mastery and acquisition of content across disciplines.
What are practicing educators and researchers doing to achieve this?
Note: These are example searches only and can be supplemented using alternative search
terms.
Resources (links use google.com):



meeting needs English language learners
district policy English language learners
best practice English language learners
Research (links use scholar.google.com):



meeting needs English language learners
district policy English language learners
best practice English language learners
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References
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