Engaging District and School Leaders in Continuous Improvement: Lessons from the 2nd Year of Implementing the CORE Improvement Community (original) (raw)
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Over the past two decades, many different models for continuous improvement have been advanced that hold promise for K-12 education. Notably, research-practice partnerships (RPPs) have drawn considerable attention. However, research shows RPPs come in many shapes and sizes, and do not work right out of the box (Coburn & Penuel, 2016). Meanwhile, little research has shown how RPPs function to improve discipline-specific education goals (Weddle et al., 2021). To this end, we analyze early findings from the Collaborating around Systems, Processes, and Instructional Routines (CASPIR) project, an NSF-funded project in which researchers and professional developers from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) have formed RPPs with several school districts to improve math teaching and learning. Focusing on two CASPIR schools districts that formed an RPP with UIC, we describe particular structures and routines that evidence suggests can be implemented as part of a scalable model for discipline-specific continuous improvement.
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Teaching mathematics is complex work. Effectively implementing the Common Core State Standards-Mathematics (CCSS-M) requires teachers to engage students in meaningful learning in which students make sense of mathematical ideas and representations, and communicate and reason mathematically. Teachers must also ensure that they are providing mathematical access to all of their students. Instead of expecting teachers to implement the large-scale changes called for in the CCSS-M overnight, change may be more likely and more sustainable if teachers are encouraged to shift their practice incrementally in a continuous improvement model (Star, 2016; Hiebert & Morris, 2012; Stigler & Hiebert, 2004).Accordingly, the expectation should be for small yet powerful changes that teachers can implement relatively easily in their instruction (Star, 2016). For example, teachers may initially implement manageable new ideas that make sense to them, such as:- Math talks to support students to conceptualiz...
Can schools meet the promise of continuous improvement?
Phi Delta Kappan, 2017
Continuous improvement is “an embedded behavior within the culture of a school that constantly focuses on the conditions, processes, and practices that will improve teaching and learning.” The phrase has been part of the lexicon of school improvement for decades, but real progress is rare. Based on its observations of about 5,000 institutions a year, AdvancEd Improvement Network has found that there are strong relationships between effective continuous improvement practices and the following characteristics of high-performing schools: a clear direction, healthy culture, high expectations, impact of instruction, resource management, efficacy of engagement, and implementation capacity.
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Idb Publications, 2002
process involves, among other things, heavy investments in professional development for teachers and principals that are focused on introducing and supporting specific instructional practices in literacy and mathematics, coupled with system-level and school-level accountability processes designed to assure high quality instruction in all schools and classrooms. As this process has evolved, it has grown more extensive and complex, while at the same time maintaining its central focus on high quality instruction. In this respect, District #2 is an atypical public school system in the U.S. Typically, local school systems do not engage in long-term improvement processes, much less processes that involve the depth, consistency, and instructional focus of District #2. In most local school systems, continuity stems from structures and routines for meeting the operating demands of keeping schools running-staffing schools with teachers and principals, assuring that students have classrooms to go to, allocating budgets to schools, assuring that textbooks and instructional materials arrive in schools, transporting students to and from schools, and the like. Instructional improvement activities, if they occur at all, do not contribute to continuity. They typically take the form of special Continuous Improvement in District #2