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OnPoint eNewsletter

 

 

January-March 2010

From the Desk of Merrill Vargo

Founder and Executive Director


Dear Friends,Merrill Vargo

“Unprecedented…”
“Daunting…”
“Challenging…”
“Fiscal emergency…”
“Crisis…”

We’ve heard words like these so often to describe the situation of public schools that our minds can get numb. Some of us can just change the channel—but school and district leaders have no choice but to cope. What are they doing? Are there really opportunities in the midst of this crisis, as we’ve been told?

What follows is a description of how three very different leaders used one aspect of the current crisis as a catalyst for change. This is leadership magic: transforming crisis into opportunity, opportunity into strategy, and strategy into tactics that real people can implement and that make a difference for students. We’ve chosen these three because we believe that the crises they’ve embraced and the strategies they’ve chosen are also available to others.

In Alameda, Superintendent Kirsten Vital transformed the crisis of declining enrollment and falling resources into the opportunity to re-imagine the relationship between the district and the community. We believe that the necessity to be more competitive can spark creative new programs and approaches in many districts. In the Central Valley, Superintendent Kevin Silberberg used one-time ARRA dollars to invest in people’s knowledge and skills. We think that “invest in your people” is a tried-and-true change strategy—and a good use of stimulus dollars. And in Fremont, Principal Teresa Bonacorrsi translated the pressure of accountability into the opportunity to collaborate in new ways.

Time and again, we see strong leaders leverage accountability pressure to spark change. Read on for more about how these leaders did it—and what they think about the process.

As Always,

Merrill Vargo
Founder and Executive Director


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Leading in Turbulent Times: Three Snapshots

Public education today is facing unprecedented challenges: smaller budgets, continued pressure to meet improvement goals, and policy changes that appear to be re-writing the rulebook. How do leaders find a path through these storms? What strategies are they pursuing? And how are they translating strategies into practical tactics that can be carried out even as resources shrink? The answers to these questions can be as varied as the districts themselves, but all are focused on the same goal: improving education for all students.

For some districts, a key strategy is to begin with the willingness to reinvent themselves. In Alameda Unified in the Bay Area, new Superintendent Kirsten Vidal reached out to Pivot Learning Partners and connected with Steve Jubb, Director of the District Redesign Workshop, to help conduct an extensive study of the district, which like many was losing students as well as resources.

Superintendent Vital said, "I had to find a way to help the Alameda community understand that we just couldn't cut our way to solvency. We needed to be courageous and innovative and come up with something both inspiring and credible that would keep us moving forward." Aided by Pivot Learning, Vital and her team conducted a “listening campaign” to understand community needs and used the data collected to develop a master plan that took a hard look at what the district needed to do to be competitive and to stabilize the district’s enrollment. "We hit a lot of barriers along the way, but I had faith in the process, in my team, and in the leadership and support we got from the Pivot [Learning] team," adds Ms. Vital. “Not only did [the Pivot team] help us create a blueprint for the future, but it also brought the community together in ways that have never happened before.”

However, not all districts begin with a strategy that involves making dramatic change. Standard Elementary School District in the Central Valley is a small, rural district facing the same pressures to improve as larger, urban districts. But with few resources and much of its population living in poverty, the leadership in Standard needed to make do with what it had. Thanks to federal stimulus funds, Standard had more monetary support towards improvement, but according to Superintendent Dr. Kevin Silberberg, “We were going to invest in people, but not in the normal way. A lot of districts use funds like these to pay for salaries. We wanted to invest in the current people and kids that we have.”

Looking inward the district focused on professional development and coaching for its administrators and teachers, calling on Pivot Learning Partners to provide these services. “I knew that if I ever ran a district, it would make so much sense to invest in the front-line school level administrators,” said Silberberg. While budget constraints prevented Standard from filling important administrative positions, the district’s partnership with Pivot Learning still allowed access to dedicated coaches and experienced education professionals, who often worked so closely with district staff, they become cost-effective fill-ins for key positions. “[Pivot Learning] coaches help our principals not only with the ‘big three’ [curriculum, assessment, and instruction],” remarks Dr. Silberberg. “They also are so embedded in our district that they are in effect like a hired position within the district.”

But improvement work doesn’t stop at the district office: most of it happens at school. When Durham Elementary in Fremont Unified School District found itself designated PI (or Program Improvement) after student test scores continued to miss target goals, it was a difficult thing to face in this high-performing district. In response, new principal, Teresa Bonaccorsi decided to make her tenure there about getting the entire school on-board and united behind improvement. “The whole staff – not just teachers, but custodians, para-professionals, librarians, yard duty supervisors, and office staff – revisited the NCLB targets [the federal No Child Left Behind mandated standards] and the repercussions of being in PI status.”

Bonacorrsi drove home the fact Durham’s students were everyone’s responsibility and that it was up to the entire school’s staff to help them improve. Bonacorrsi’s approach began with a clear goal. “We showed them data that reaching Safe Harbor [a provision in NCLB that forgives PI schools if test scores show improvement] is attainable this year and that is only by working together that this will happen.” Once the goal was clear, two strategies emerged. One was to build a sense of community, connecting Durham with other Title I schools so that no one felt they were isolated and alone. The second was to focus on the use of data and the process that Pivot Learning calls the Cycle of Inquiry. As Bonacorssi put it “This is the strategy that both research and experience tell us works to improve results for students. ”

The challenges facing education leaders are daunting, perhaps more so than ever before. But Kirsten Vital of Alameda expressed the sentiment of all her educational peers: “We can do this. We will do this, because we must."

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Donor Spotlight
The Stuart Foundation

Pivot Learning Partners recognizes the Stuart Foundation for their support of our work to build the capacity of school district leaders.

The Stuart Foundation is dedicated to the protection, education and development of children and youth. It works toward ensuring that all children grow up in caring families, learn in vibrant and effective schools, and have opportunities to become productive members of their communities. The Foundation focuses its investments on projects, programs and organizations making an impact in California and Washington.

By partnering with selected organizations, the Foundation seeks to develop and disseminate innovative programs and practices, contribute to effective public policy to improve conditions for children and youth, and support and develop the potential of young people. The Foundation also believes that investments in leadership will enhance teaching quality, improve academic achievement, and create supporting learning environments for all students.

Pivot Learning Partners is deeply grateful to the Stuart Foundation for its generous support of our leadership capacity building program for school districts. We look forward to the work ahead of us and our partnership with the Stuart Foundation.

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Other News

"From Observation to Insight" by Jim Hollis

Director of Technology Jim Hollis takes an indepth look at using everyday electronic devices as powerful data collection tools. He demonstrates how, with a specialized program or app, a smartphone can be used to gather and report out classroom observation results faster and more efficiently.

From the Jan/Feb Issue of the ACSA Leadership Magazine.

Read the full article HERE.

Also, be sure to look for another article from Pivot Learning Partners, "Investing in People: Leveraging a One-Time Investment for Sustainable Improvement," in the next issue of Leadership Magazine.

Pivot Learning Partners offers a selection of technology tools for education leaders.
Learn more about tech tools.

What Does District Redesign Look Like?

Pivot Learning Partners is working closely with Alameda Unified through our District Redesign Workshop. By rethinking the structures and strategies, Pivot Learning is helping districts take a systematic approach towards improvement on all levels and create a system that can stand in place and adapt to the needs of the district.

Some of the core strategies AUSD employed developing their master plan includes:

  • A community "listening campaign" that included meetings managed by external community volunteers and surveys that elicited feedback from all Alameda community members on potential master plan strategies
  • A series of meetings that informed school-site administrators of potential master plan strategies, encouraging dialogue and suggestions for change
  • A series of school-site meetings managed by school-site administrators that informed school communities of potential master plan strategies, allowing opportunity for conversation and recommendations for improvement
  • Quantitative research that analyzed school-site academic data including data from all subgroups; school-site and whole district educational plans; school-site and whole district financial data; facilities plans and central office efficiency among other indicators of success

To learn more about the District Redesign workshop, please contact Allison Carter.

Leadership Training Programs from Pivot Learning Partners
Teacher Leadership Series – New offering!

School districts today face unprecedented pressure to cut costs.

To meet the needs of these overburdened districts, Pivot Learning Partners is offering a new professional development opportunity for teacher leaders, and is making this program available to our partner districts.

Learn more about our District Partner programs

Teachers who are directly engaged with their peers in high-quality collaboration to improve instruction can have a profound effect on student learning. The quality of teacher collaboration improves when teacher leaders have clearly defined roles and the knowledge and skills to support their colleagues in developing “communities of practice”.

Why Participate?

  • Build a Professional Learning Community of Teacher Leaders in your district
  • Accomplish your district or site improvement goals with Teacher Leader support
  • Expand Teacher Leadership capacity through new skills and tools
  • Begin to create a leadership pipeline that leads from the classroom to site leadership and beyond

Who should attend:

  • Teacher Leaders, including Department Chairs, Leadership Team Members, Grade Level Team Leaders, Teachers on Special Assignment, Teacher Coaches
  • District or Site Staff who support Teacher Leaders

Duration:        Six sessions (2–3 hours each)

Flexible scheduling options (below)

Session 1 – Introduction and Orientation: What does it take to be a Teacher Leader?
Session 2 – Facilitation: Planning and Leading Meetings
Session 3 – Classroom Cycle of Inquiry
Session 4 – Using Data About Student Achievement
Session 5 – Using Data on Teacher Practice to Improve Instruction
Session 6 – Assessing and Improving the Power of Our Work

Balanced ELA

Balanced ELA is a specialized Reading/Language Arts training program for classroom teachers. The program is also an introduction to the Houghton Mifflin Medallion Edition series, which expands on the current Houghton Mifflin adoption and content.  The training is designed to raise ELA achievement while addressing the varied learning needs of all K-6 students, from English Learners to special education.

Districts can choose from a variety of topics to meet their time schedules and particular needs with a flexible two- to four-day training model.

Modeled after our highly acclaimed Pivot Balanced Math program for Harcourt California HSP Math and Houghton Mifflin California Math, in which over 1,000 California teachers have already been trained.

Learn more about Balanced ELA

Contact Tim Browne for more information or call (415) 348-5523

 

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