We Must Push The Push Down Approach

As with the importance of selecting a highly qualified principal to help raise test scores and closing achievement gaps, the selection and support of staff is also critical. Gregory F. Branch, Eric A. Hanushek, and Steven G. Rivkin’s 2013 study “School Leaders Matter” examined the effectiveness of many principles’ leadership and the effect they had on student achievement ratings. “A primary channel through which principals can be expected to improve the quality of education is by raising the quality of teachers, either by improving the instruction provided by existing teachers or through teacher transitions that improve the caliber of the school’s workforce” (Branch, pg.4). A principal must be able to continually seek out professional development, to research best practices and new educational theories to support their staff and students. If principals are to close the achievement gap, they must be willing to inform and instruct their staff on new teaching strategies. Mr. Canada, from his TED talk, “Our failing schools. Enough is enough!”, states: “You go into a place that has failed kids for fifty years and say: ‘so what’s the plan?’ And they say: ‘Well, we are going to do what we did last year, this year’. What kind of business model is that?” (TED, 2013). The principal willing to venture into new, uncharted waters may succeed or fail, but at least they

Achieving a school district’s mission and vision requires the commitment of its stakeholders. In order to involve them in the process, it is necessary for educational leaders to “motivate staff, parents, students, board and community members” (Educational Leadership Constituencies Council, 2002, p. 4). The transformational leadership theory emphasizes the importance of educational leaders acting as role-models in order to motivate and inspire the school community. This approach has the potential to involve all stakeholders, leading to increased student success (Bush, 2007). The Assistant Director of Special Education in Northwest ISD directly supervised the school district’s assessment staff. Her education, experience, and passion set an example for her subordinates, stimulating them to achieve more, leading to her promotion to Executive Director of Student Services.

According to Michael Fullan (2016) in his book, The New Meaning of Educational Change, successful organizations that demonstrate change followed principled concepts of change. The reason for their success if that there is tangible proof of alignment in keeping components of actions. Fullan (2016) stated that successful change incorporates five factors. In this essay, three of the five factors will be discussed and an example of an organization using components of the change be revealed. Often when organization shave to go through the process of change it means either they have gone through change to repair broken areas or they are going through change as a reflective exercise before embarking on a larger scope of practice perhaps to expand into new growth within their organization. In either course, the larger concern is that organizations must embrace change and engage in meaningful constructed ways to promote the best growth with the fewest steps to reach accomplishment. A key decision factor to change is whether an organize will change because they adopt a model and see a better way or whether they want to save their resources. Fullan (2016) suggested that the reason for the change is largely to work is because, the organizations, “Define closing the gap as the overarching goal,” “Assume that lack of capacity is the initial problem and then work on it continuously,” and “Stay the course through continuity of good direction by leveraging leadership,” (Fullan, 2016,

Our professional development sessions are conducted weekly in a variety of subject areas, and the monthly school-wide session, using interactive reform activities, align with the Danielson Framework for Teaching (Danielson, 2013) to showcase best practices of teachers and to develop grade-level performance tasks, looking at students’ work to provide individual feedback that is aligned with the teaching rubric in order to show academic progress and growth in the target areas of ELA and Math.

Identifies skills, theories of change, program designs, partnerships, and ways of building schools where students achieve.

Since 1997, the primary tool for teacher evaluation was the Professional Development and Appraisal System better known as PDAS. Due to significant efforts to enhance both teacher effectiveness and “student learning and growth,” the Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System (T-TESS) was elaborated (TEA, 2016, p. 3). The T-TESS was designed by educators to support continuous improvement by focusing on “feedback and support,” “moving the mindset away from compliance” (TEA, 2016, p. 3).

“The transformation model requires replacement of the school principal, strengthening of staffing, implementation of a research-based instructional program and new

There are many different levels of professional need and growth, especially in the area of ELA which is the basis for all academics. Some people need training on the basics of running a classroom. Many educators still view diverse learners as already having deficits, which is not necessarily true. Others need more time on analysis, co-teaching, collaboration with others, how to identify students with needs or gaps in their learning. Questions that I have asked is: How do you increase achievement with children living in poverty? How do we use current data to close gaps these gaps? If you want to close the socioeconomic achievement gap in your school, what is my first step? Teachers need to learn about diversity. We need to learn about classroom strategies and how to give all students the opportunity to learn. Believe it or not, we need to learn about how to reflect on our teaching, something that was done almost daily during our internships. We need to understand the reasons for achievement gaps, not just what it looks like. Professional development is designed to provide additional support for teachers, both new and seasoned. If the quality

A vital individual when it comes to initiating change is the person willing to take action in order to construct something different. A person willing to own the outcome and lead the change is the critical element in producing change. Without the leader of change stepping up and accepting responsibility, all others have is an awareness of the problems that exist, therefore, change doesn’t transpire. There are countless people who are constantly eager to share all of the items which they believe need to change, with anyone who will listen. There are far fewer who are willing to step up and lead that change. Teacher leaders have the vision to generate change in their schools, and are a vital asset to change. Catalytic leaders are needed throughout schools in order to make change happen. Leaders with an expertise in the area of change are authentic, initiative, and influential.

A civic engagement program similar to SPR outside of Duke University is Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR). The CEPR is a partnership amongst school districts, foundations, states, and university researchers that assists in leveraging the large amount of new data about schools, teachers, and students to address “intractable policy questions in education.” Similar to SRP, the goal is to improve educational outcomes for all students; however, the CEPR attempts to achieve this by building a network amongst teachers around the country instead of just locally. Both organizations strive to engage the social scientists on what does and does not need to change. The CEPR claims to have “an irreplaceable role to play in

Some may argue that we should introduce this new system into all of our schools. While there is a slight chance that using this new method in our school system may benefit us, there would be many shortcomings that would outweigh the good things about it. Although I believe that we should be persistent with our current system, there are minimal changes that could be made to enhance it. Any of the alterations that could be done to improve our system would be minor,

An effective school leader possesses skills to create, implement, evaluate, improve and share a staff development plan. I met with Ben Rhodes, Sandy Creek Middle School’s principal, to interview him on the specific elements of his yearly staff development plan. We began with the design process focusing on the district and school goals. District goals include improving literacy across the content areas in reading and writing, Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum (GVC). Guaranteed and Viable Technology (GVT), and Closing the Achievement Gap (Equity in Excellence). Using a variety of assessments to focus on specific needs, Ben Rhodes and Mary Sonya, our Pupil Achievement Specialist, examined CSAP, Explore, MAP, and RAD data. They use the

According to the authors of this article (Donaldson, Marnik, Mackenzie, & Ackerman, 2009), principals need to concentrate on the development of skills and behaviors in order to be successful in motivating, leading, and changing the direction of a school. The successful principal understands that there exists a fine balance of caring for others and the need to accomplish specific tasks (Donaldson, Marnik, Mackenzie, & Ackerman, 2009).

As we review and synthesize data of a district for planning school improvement, the following information is needed to access and determine the needs of a school. First, a thorough analysis of performance data must be reviewed to see how school districts measure up with state and federal accountability. During this process, it is very important that schools focus the performance indicators that will guarantee growth and success. School teams must refer to the districts mission and vision to guide the planning process. The performance indicators will provide data that will be beneficial in creating improvement strategies. So, after careful evaluation of the data, the next step would be to plan effective methods and strategies that will improve student achievement. Moreover, this plan should include needs, demographics and opportunities for students to be successful. Additionally, the baseline data is important information to include in the improvement plan.

This case study addresses issues associated with change management via a needs analysis in an effort to identify and implement new instructional approaches to improve a middle school math course in a K-12 setting.