How Can You Tell If Your School Has "Turned Around?

There are many components of school turnaround - suspension and referral rates, student achievement measures, attendance, parent involvement, staff turnover, and school climate to name a few. With so many moving targets, how can anyone ever know if their school has really "turned around?"

Even the idea of "turnaround" is somewhat of a misnomer. Moving a school from significantly underperforming to achieving takes time. It's not as if there is a magic wand that can take a school from one end of the spectrum to the other overnight. When we talk about school turnaround, we are really talking about significant school improvement and being able to see improvement in the terms of any of the indicators previously listed is an amazing thing to see.

There are many voices in the school turnaround debate. Advocates range from strategies that involve closing schools and re-opening them with new leadership, new staff, and new curriculum to strategies that involve supporting the whole child through addressing the issues of high poverty. No matter what the approach to school turnaround, the research supports the need for strong, visionary leadership in implementing a school turnaround plan that yields results.

This is my third year as a turnaround principal. My school has made significant gains in reducing suspensions and referrals, in improving student achievement, in improving attendance rates, in engaging parents and families, in reducing staff turnover, and in creating a school culture that is a productive learning environment and values achievement. This week, New York State released the Demonstrable Improvement Index for schools in receivership. This score indicates an overall improvement rating based on metrics that were selected for that school. Schools were given points based on meeting the targets set for each metric. The school I lead scored a 92 out of 100. Maybe I should say that in a little different way - how's this?

92 out of 100!!! That's amazing!!!

This acknowledges and underscores our hard work and improvement efforts. We are working tirelessly to make greater gains in student achievement and to continue toward being a model school in school turnaround. To read more about our demonstrable improvement index, our metrics, out turnaround efforts, and our school community, click here.

When Thinking is Visible

How do we know that there is really deep thinking, measurable learning, and significant growth happening in our classrooms? If you have followed any of my previous posts, you know that I am pretty passionate about classrooms where there is a high level of rigor, real life engagement, and deep thinking. I love thinking about rigor as "cognitive demand" - in simplest terms, who is really doing the thinking and the work?

This past weekend, I attended the NYSRA Conference in Rochester, New York. One of the most interesting sessions that I attended was by Maureen Boyd, a professor at University of Buffalo, which focused on classroom talk (find her book here). Although the idea of classroom talk seems simple, when you think of classroom talk as visible thinking, it takes on a different shape. Dr. Boyd talked about the power of the "third turn." The initial question is the first turn. The student response is the second turn. The power comes in the third turn - what the teacher does in response to the student response. The teacher can either elevate the thinking in this third turn by asking an additional question or asking for additional student responses, or the teacher can stop the thinking in the third turn by simply saying "okay, good." If the teacher's response ends the thinking, then the student only responds for the purpose of answering the question and getting a correct response - that is definitely not visible thinking. If you really want to learn about what students know or understand, you have to be willing to listen to student responses and all that they show you about what students do, and do not, think.

As School Leaders, it is our responsibility to know the kind of questioning, discourse, and thinking that is being asked of our students in our classrooms. When we see instruction that does not push our students' thinking and learning, it is our responsibility to have the hard conversations with our staff that will help them to think about pushing the thinking of our students. This idea of "the third turn" provides us with a clear strategy that can immediately change the level of questioning and discourse in our classrooms. Our classrooms must be vibrant places, full of cognitive demand and supportive relationships that help our students see their true potential. In this video from PS 359 in the South Bronx, you see exactly that - students who are given opportunities to show their thinking, explain their understanding or misunderstanding, and to take risks that will lead them closer to mastery of the standards. As leaders, we must push for our classrooms to engage our students in this kind of visible thinking in order to ensure that they are thinking deeply and authentically engaged in rigorous thinking.


Making Thinking Visible from NYC Public Schools on Vimeo.

Extended Learning Time

I have just returned from the Promising Practices Conference in Albany where we presented our approach to Extended Learning Time (see agenda here). There are many approaches to Extended Learning and our model centers on investing in both teachers and students through Collaborative Team Planning for teachers and Embedded Enrichment for students.

The research supporting extended learning time, particularly in urban schools, is convincing. In a recently published Hechinger Report, they outline the significant defecits thatchildren in poverty experience before they even start school. This research supports the need for extended learning time, and it also supports the importance of enrichment for children in poverty. Extending the school day for teachers without enriching the curriculum for students only addresses half of the need. 

Leadership in a school with extended learning time and embedded enrichment requires a clear vision (let's be real here, leadership always requires a clear vision) and a belief in the value of enrichment for students and the investment in teacher development through collaboration. The work we are doing in both areas is resulting significant growth in our school.