TWS_Prioritize_Time_According_to_Focused_Learning_Goals.pdf

7/30/2019 TWS_Prioritize_Time_According_to_Focused_Learning_Goals.pdf

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Successful, Expanded-Time Schools

2 Prioritize Time According toFocused Learning Goals

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With a longer school day or year, someschools can be tempted to create awide range of new activities andinitiatives for their students. With

excellent intentions, teachers and administratorswill envision tremendous possibilities for newprograms and curricula and new uses for theadditional time. However, despite the lure of newinitiatives, high-performing, expanded-timeschools display a singularity of purpose and an

intensity of focus that are striking. The leadersat these schools consider the time they have withstudents their most valuable resource, and theyinvest it carefully based on clear goals for whatthey hope to accomplish.

For most of the schools in this study, rigorousacademic instruction is the unmistakablepriority; while many of these schools offer a widerange of exciting extracurricular opportunities,academics come rst. The academic rigor can bepalpably felt as fth-graders debate and discussliterature or as high-school students workthrough advanced placement biology courses

or prepare for a college-level calculus exam.Students often take not just one math class buttworeviewing, practicing, and applying mathconcepts until they show mastery. Further, thegoal for students is not just prociency on stateexams. Teachers are working students hard toprepare them for success in top-performinghigh schools and colleges. At some schools, thecurriculum and pace often mirrors that of honorsor advanced track programs at some of the bestsuburban or private schools.

The emphasis on academics is clear in studentschedules: Across the 30 schools studied,

schools spend more than 28 hoursalmostan entire week at schools with conventionalschedulesjust on academic instruction. Thismeans time spent just on academic subjectsat these expanded-time schools is almost

equivalent to the amount of time students inconventional schools spend on academics andeverything elseincluding homeroom, lunch,PE, transitions, etc. Additionally, at many of theschools in this study, some or all students stayafter school for additional instruction, attendschool on Saturdays, or participate in specialsummer academic programming. In all, as manyas 25 of the 30 schools studied offer some sort ofacademic programming outside of regular school

hours for some or all of their students. Further,students spend considerable time on homework.While homework policies vary from school toschool and by grade level, on average, students atelementary schools in this study spend one houron homework per night and middle and highschool students spend two hours on homeworkper night. At some schools in this study, thesegures are twice as high.

Moreover, the substantial time devoted toacademic instruction is carefully plannedand allocated based on clear goals for studentachievement and an assessment of student

needs. For example, rather than assigning allgrade levels equivalent amounts of time oneach subjecta scheduling convention in manymiddle and high schoolseducators at MasteryCharter Schools Thomas Campus, in Philadelphia,designed their schedule by comparing theirincoming students skill decits and knowledgegaps to the standards and content studentswould need to master to be successful incollege. Our students come in incredibly lowin ELA and math, says Matt Troha, the schoolsprincipal. For these students, we focus on mathand reading, providing double blocks in earliergrades, so that by tenth grade, all the students

should be caught up, and we can begin to getthem ready for college.

Similarly, educators at Roxbury PreparatoryCharter School in Boston, Massachusetts, havecreated an academic schedule now emulated atseveral other schools in this study. (See sidebar:

Curriculum Planning Based on Focused LearningGoals at Roxbury Prep) The schedule and theacademic content of each Roxbury Prep classare based on a careful assessment of the skillsand content students will need to succeed ina rigorous, college-preparatory high school.Throughout a three-week planning period

during the summer, every Roxbury Prep teacher,alongside his/her department chair, builds acourse guide and set of assessments based onvery specic goals addressing areas they wantstudents to master by the end of the year. Thisplanning and goal-setting determines how classtime is used.

Likewise, students at Achievement First CrownHeights in Brooklyn, New York, receive doubleblocks of both language arts and math each day.Wells Blanchard, the school leader, explains theprecision with which these blocks are planned:

When we make decisionsabout anythingwhetherits scheduling, stafng,

curriculum, or programmingwe always ask ourselves,Is this helping our studentsachieve their goal?

Matt Troha,Principal, Mastery Charter Schools Thomas Campus

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We like to have separate periods for readingand writing. Often times, if reading and writingare combined, one of the two is lost. In math, ifthe objective for the day is difcult, then thesecond math period is an extension of the rst

period. On other days, the double blocks of mathallow us to cover more than one objective. JulieKennedy, the school leader at WilliamsburgCollegiate Charter School, also in Brooklyn,describes how the school has prioritized mathinstruction to both catch students up and evenpush them ahead: We have 125 minutes of mathevery day and 85 on Wednesdays. That helps uscover more of the curriculum, and we nish thescope and sequence before the year is over, andgo into next years curriculum. Our eighth-gradestudents are learning a combination of eighth-grade and ninth-grade math.

Some schools, particularly schools converting toan expanded schedule rather than originatingwith a longer day and year, have found itparticularly helpful to prioritize one particularinstructional area as the focus of their redesignefforts. At Jacob Hiatt Magnet School inWorcester, Massachusetts, for example, facultyand administrators engaged in a collaborativeeffort to create a school-wide instructional focus.After looking at student data, they chose to focuson improving students ability to read critically

and answer questions in writing about what theyread. The educators set very clear and explicitgoals for improving student performance in thisfocus area. This school-wide instructional focusbecame the anchor of Hiatts expanded learning

time school design, which features a two-houruninterrupted literacy block at all grade levels.Student learning time, as well as time for teacherprofessional development and collaboration,is aligned with this school-wide focus. As anExpanded Learning Time School, we have the giftof additional time. The instructional focus workallowed us to make the extra time that we havethat much more valuable, because were able tolook much more closely at students strengths andweaknesses and zero in on exactly what studentsneed, explains Mary Labuski, the assistantprincipal at Hiatt. (See sidebar: School-wideInstructional Focus at Jacob Hiatt Magnet School)

A smaller number of schools in this study investheavily in areas other than academics, howeverthese schools are similarly goal-oriented andfocused in their approaches. For example, BostonArts Academys mission is to provide a rigorousarts education alongside a rigorous academiceducation, and therefore the school devotesnearly 10 hours of instruction per week to artsclasses. Similarly, Brooklyn Generation Schools


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Usedatatoidentifyprioritiesandgoals

Keepthefocusonthegoals

Monitorprogresstowardgoals

mission includes exposing students to careersand the workplace. Students at the school spendas much as two months of the school year in

Intensivestheme-based classes that teachstudents about specic career paths.

Rather than seeing the expanded schedule asan opportunity to relax efforts to plan for andstructure classes, teachers and administratorsat highly successful schools develop clear goals

that drive how all learning time is used. Weobserved three specic strategies that helphigh-performing, expanded-time schools ensurethat time for academic instruction remainsrigorous and focused on clear goals for studentachievement:

Use data to identify priorities and goals

To identify school-wide academic priorities,schools must rst meticulously analyzetheir students performance data. At JacobHiatt, for instance, teams of teachers, led byan instructional leadership team, pored overstudent data and narrowed in on one underlying

skill gapanswering questions in writing abouttexts they have readthat then became theirschool-wide instructional focus. Team membersrealized that this particular skill gap wasimpacting their students academic performancein all areas and was the most important matterfor them to focus on collectively. Teachers atFrank M. Silvia Elementary School in Fall River,Massachusetts, engaged in a similar process anddeveloped an instructional focus on improvingreading comprehension and writing. (Seesidebar: Focusing Improvement Efforts atFrank M. Silvia Elementary School) At MasteryThomas and Roxbury Prep, the student schedules

are based on data that showed many of thestudents entering the school were several gradelevels behind their peers.

Keep the focus on the goals

Unless goals are clearly and repeatedlycommunicated across an entire school, they willrarely take root and impact decision-making.Goal-oriented schools utilize hallway banners,data wall displays, community nights forparents, school assemblies, and teacher planningmeetings to continuously communicatetheir goals to staff, students, and parents. AtHiatt, each class begins with students recitingthe school-wide literacy goal, which is theinstructional focus: Jacob Hiatt Magnet Schoolstudents know how to see it, read it, write it, sayit, prove it. Give me ve. Many schools includedin this study adopt a common vocabulary intheir classrooms to continually reinforce theschool-wide goal of preparing students forcollege. At KIPP Heartwood, teachers in all gradesand content areas remind students each day to

climb the mountain to college, and stress thatthere are no shortcuts to academic success.

Monitor progress toward goals

Monitoring student progress toward schoolwidegoals helps educators adjust curriculumand programming throughout the year, and alsoreminds staff of the continual focus on theseachievement goals. All Mastery Charter Schoolsschedule data days after each of the networkssix yearly benchmark assessments. Data daysallow teachers to analyze and plan around theassessment results while students are out of thebuilding. For each teacher, Masterys benchmarkdata reports also predict whether each studentis making adequate progress throughout theyear, based on an algorithm designed by theMastery network. At Hiatt, during grade level

team meetings, teachers monitor progresstoward their goals for student literacy skills andopen-response writing by discussing studentwork and assessment data.

KeystoSuccess

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School-wide Instructional Focus atJacob Hiatt Magnet School / Worcester, MA

Two years afterconverting to anexpanded-timeschool, leaders

at Jacob Hiatt MagnetSchool in Worcester,Massachusetts, guidedthe entire school facultythrough a collaborativeprocess aimed atdeveloping one school-wide instructional focus.The specic goal of theinstructional focus work

was to prioritize anddirect the schools effortsto strengthen instructionand improve studentperformance. Ratherthan trying to improveeverything at once, facultymembers decided to cometogether around a very

clear goal in one area, learning to work togetherto strengthen instruction and improve studentachievement in a very targeted way.

Working with Focus on Results, an educationalconsulting group hired by the district to workwith multiple schools, Hiatts teachers andadministrators analyzed student performancedata to understand the key areas where studentswere showing particular weaknesses. Almostimmediately, faculty recognized that studentswere scoring very poorly on open-responsequestions. These teachers and administratorsalso recognized that open-response writingand the skills associated with it (analyzingtext, making claims, identifying evidence) cutacross all subject areas and are fundamentalsfor academic success. For this reason, facultymembers decided on a school-wide instructional

focus on open-response writing and crafted thefollowing instructional focus statement that isclearly posted throughout the school:

Working together to establish goals for studentimprovement in this area, the Hiatt educatorscreated data displays for each classroom thatwould reect how students were progressing.They also settled on three school-wide bestpractices for teaching open-response writingand have worked to ensure that all teachersimplement these practices every day, in everyclassroom.

The current focus on writing drives how timeand resources are deployed at Hiatt. Additionaltime was added to the daily schedule forliteracy and writing, including a daily, two-hour,uninterrupted literacy block. Open-responsewriting is woven into other core subject areasmath, science, and social studiesso studentsunderstand that writing isnt just an isolatedactivity in English class, but is actually at the coreof academic success. Even Hiatt specialty teachers(in art, music, PE, and technology), along withcommunity partners, are familiar with the focusand best practices, so they can integrate a writingcomponent into enrichment classes using thesesame teaching strategies. Hiatts instructionalleadership team also has organized teachercollaboration and professional developmentaround the school-wide instructional focus andteam members use the time to improve eachteachers ability to implement the identiedschool-wide practices. By establishing a school-wide focus, and using it to guide their newschool day over the past several years, Hiatt hasseen signicant improvement in the quality ofstudent writing across grade levels, as measuredby school and district interim assessments andMassachusetts Comprehensive AssessmentSystem (MCAS) scores.

Jacob Hiatt Magnet SchoolPrincipal: Patricia E. Gaudette

School schedule: 7:50am3:35pm

Additional time compared tosurrounding district: 80 min/day

Student PopulationGrades served: PK6Number of students: 456Qualify for free/reduced lunch: 71%

Students Scoring At or Above Profcienton the Massachusetts ComprehensiveAssessment System Test in 2010(difference compared to surroundingdistrict)

ELA: 59% (+14%)

Math: 59% (+17%)

Instructional Focus Statement

All Jacob Hiatt Magnet School students will show measurable growth in their ability to read and respond toopen-response questions, using details and relevant information from all text for support. Teachers will implement

writing strategies for open-response questions to support our instructional focus. Success will be measured bystudent performance on MCAS 4-point rubric and school performance-based writing.

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Focusing Improvement Efforts atFrank M. Silvia Elementary School/Fall River, MA

In 2008, a yearafter becominga MassachusettsExpanded Learning

Time school, FrankM. Silvia ElementarySchool embarkedupon a comprehensiveinstructionalimprovement effort.To lead this effort, theprincipal formed aninstructional leadershipteam (ILT) and also

formed a smaller datateam devoted to theexamination of school andstudent-level data.

As a rst step in their worktogether, these teamsled the Silvia facultyin a careful analysis ofstudent results on teacher-

developed assessments and the most recentMassachusetts Comprehensive AssessmentSystem (MCAS). Through this process, Silviateachers and administrators realized thatstudents needed to strengthen their readingcomprehension skills, and so the faculty decidedto adopt a school-wide instructional focus onimproving students reading comprehension

across the curriculum.

Anchored by thisclear, school-widefocus, these educatorsscheduled more timeto teach valuableskills in this arena.The ILT and datagroup helped eachgrade-level team set

student achievementgoals in readingcomprehension andalso redesignedthe professionaldevelopment andplanning time tosupport teachers inmeeting these goals.To keep everyone

focused on the focus,

the ILT worked with staff to post student datainside classrooms and created grade-level databoards in the schools more public spaces. Thedata displays became a daily reminder of theschools goals and allowed staff to quicklyvisualize the progress students were makingtoward attaining these aims. Further, to makecertain that the additional time for readingcomprehension would be used effectively, theILT also identied a set of School-wide BestPractices and used the redesigned commonplanning and professional developmentmeetings to help teachers master these practices.

Over the years, as the instructional focus becamemore infused into all aspects of their teacherdevelopment and classroom instruction, Silviaeducators recognized that the assessmentinstruments used to determine student progresswere inadequate. Consequently, they developednew reading comprehension assessmentsand rubrics to evaluate student work. As theyemployed these new assessments, Silvia teachersand administrators realized that students hadimproved in reading comprehension but werenow struggling to demonstrate their skills inwriting. During the 2011-2012 academic year,Silvias leadership decided to expand the originalschool-wide focus also include helping studentsto communicate in writing and answer open-response questions. To support this broaderschool-wide instructional focus, school leadersdivided the schools additional learning time intotwo separate periods: a literacy period focusedon strengthening reading comprehensionskills and a separate writing period focused onimproving their ability to communicate theirthoughts through writing.

Silvia has begun reaping the benets of thisfocused approach to expanding learning time.Students at each grade level have shown markedimprovement in the annual ELA MCAS since

the instructional focus was implemented. Incontrast, during this same period, prociencyrates have stagnated across other districtelementary schools. Silvias methods for teachingelementary school students how to competentlyand condently answer open-response questionsare now being adopted by all other elementaryschools in the district.

Frank M. Silvia Elementary SchoolPrincipal: Denise Ward


Additional time compared tosurrounding district: 110 min/day

Student PopulationGrades served: PK5Number of students: 637Qualify for free/reduced lunch: 66%

Students Scoring At or Above Profcienton the Massachusetts ComprehensiveAssessment system Test in 2010(difference compared to surroundingdistrict)

ELA: 58% (+23%)

Math: 58% (+25%)

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Curriculum Planning Based on FocusedLearning Goals atRoxbury Prep / Boston, MA

Since the schoolsfounding in1992, RoxburyPreparatory Charter

Schools mission has beento prepare its middleschool students to enter,succeed in, and graduatefrom college. Each year,the school sends nearly allof its students to highlyselective private andpublic college preparatoryhigh schools. Nearly 80

percent of Roxbury Prepsrst four graduatingclasses are enrolled in,and graduates of, collegesand universities acrossthe nation.

Recognizing the real-world challenges faced bymany of their studentsnearly three-quarters ofwhom qualify for free

and reduced lunch, with many entering theschool several grade levels behind in math andreadingRoxbury Preps founders created an8-hour-and-45-minute school day that providesa combination of rigorous academic instruction,engaging enrichment programs, and social andemotional development classes. The scheduleand the academic content of Roxbury Prep classeshave been carefully planned to ensure that everystudent graduates middle school, prepared forsuccess in highly competitive high schools.

Each day, Roxbury Prep students receive foursections of literacy and mathtwo for eachsubject. When we looked at what we wanted ourstudents to learn in literacy, recounts PrincipalGreg Woodward, we decided that there were

really two skills involved: comprehension andcomposition. Rather than one class that attemptsto do both, we separated them out. Math followsa similar structureevery day, students receiveone period of math procedures and anotherperiod devoted to math problem-solving. Inorder to know the steps to actually solve theproblem and then apply those steps in theabstract, such as in word problems, we neededtwo distinct periods of math, says Woodward.

Over the years, Roxbury Preps school leadershave honed in on a clear set of standards andexpectations for each course at each gradelevel. We dont have any textbooks, explainsWoodward. All our teachers create their owncurricula. For three weeks each summer, everyRoxbury Prep teacher and their curriculumchair identify content to teach throughout theschool year, drawing from standards speciedby the Massachusetts Department of Education,standards from other states, and curriculadeveloped by previous teachers. During thisthree-week planning period, Roxbury Prepteachers determine when, and the amount of

time needed, to teach each standard, and theycreate three assessments to be administered atthe end of every trimester. Each set of standardsand skills is then entered into what the schoolcalls a curriculum alignment template. Itdoesnt make a whole lot of sense to be decidingwhat youre going to teach, or when youre goingto teach it, as you progress through the year,says Woodward. We want our students to knowwhat theyre going to need to master at the startof the year, and let them know that these are theskills that are going to prepare them for the roadahead.

Teachers use the curriculum alignment templateto track student progress in mastering keystandards. Once every two weeks, teachersreview data to monitor the progress studentshave made, and every three weeks, studentreports are sent home, including updates onstudent performance relative to the specicstandards. Each trimester assessmentcalled a

comprehensive at Roxbury Prepis also alignedto the standards, so that teachers and studentsare able to track performance on specicstandards throughout the year.

Teachers are expected to become specialists. Forthis reason, core academic teachers only teach

one grade and subject, and literacy teachersonly teach comprehension or literacy, and mathteachers only teach procedures or problemsolving. By having each teacher teach only oneset of content to four different classes each day,says Woodward, they can focus solely on thatlesson and plan their year-long curriculum foronly one class in one grade.

Roxbury PrepPrincipal: Greg Woodward


Early Release: 7:30am1:25pm (Fri.)

Additional time compared tosurrounding district: 145 min/dayand 8 days/year

Student PopulationGrades served: 68Number of students: 258Qualify for free/reduced lunch: 74%

Students Scoring At or Above Profcienton the Massachusetts ComprehensiveAssessment System Test in 2010(difference compared to surroundingdistrict)

ELA: 77% (+26%)

Math: 69% (+33%)

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TWS_Prioritize_Time_According_to_Focused_Learning_Goals.pdf