Making Achievement Happen Innovative Strategies that move Schools Forward Despite the Obstacles Facing Today’s Schools Erik Feinberg Kinoshita Elementary School Capistrano Unified School District

Background  Kinoshita Elementary School in CapoUSD was PI Year 3  New administrator in  API increased 93 points in two years  Exited program improvement in those two years  Percent of students advanced or proficient improved school wide during that time

How Did it Happen? Culture Shift  Curriculum was solid but despite hard work, the school was considered unsuccessful  Began to explore how we taught and what we used to evaluate success or failure  Implemented benchmark exams to evaluate successful practices and areas in need of improvement

How Did it Happen? Action Learning Systems  Comprehensive professional development company providing comprehensive and coherent solutions for district and school level issues of quality improvement and student achievement  Contracted with Capistrano to provide ELA and mathematics benchmark assessments customized to curriculum pacing and focus standards  Developed a PD plan to rollout assessments, clarify purpose and support teachers and administrators in analysis of benchmark data and subsequent instructional modifications

How Did it Happen? Teachers Analyzing Data AND Planning Instruction  Closely examined standards and determined context vs. content issues to pinpoint student weaknesses specifically where learning deficits occurred and where our instruction was least effective  This led to discussions on what was working with what was not working  Teaching became less about what we felt was working and more about student performance  An authentic PLC was the result

Next Steps… Underscore HOW we teach and WHAT students learn  Focus on student engagement  Increase student to student, student to teacher and teacher to student interactions

We Learn…  10% of what we read  20% of what we hear  30% of what we see  50% of what we both hear and see  70% of what is discussed with others  80% of what we experience personally  95% of what we teach to someone else

Next Steps… Clear expectations for all  Communicated clear expectations for student learning including standards-based goals and objectives  Identified common assessments to evaluate progress along the way  Publicly displayed data in common areas around the school to celebrate success and provide public forum for goal setting

The Results  Exiting PI after 5 years of failure in two years  Sustained cultural shift of high quality, engaging, data-driven decision making school-wide from the administration to the classroom teacher to the librarian  A failing school is now thriving

Can it be Duplicated? Obstacles remain  Creating a cultural shift without the culture “consuming” the strategies  Less funding has caused the need for greater creativity when funding interventions and little to no room for error