1. Pilot Florida Implementation Network
Ben
Carnegie Foundation Summit on Improvement in Education
March 29, 2017

2. Great Teaching Is at the Core of What We Do
TNTP's mission is to end the injustice of educational inequality by providing excellent teachers to the students who need them most and by advancing policies and practices that ensure effective teaching in every classroom.
Great Teaching Is at the Core of What We Do
Ben
For those of you who don’t know TNTP, we’re a national nonprofit focused on ending educational injustice in schools, districts, states and across the country.
Our work falls largely into three big buckets:
Rigorous Academics
Talented People
Supportive Environments
Rigorous Academics
Talented People
Supportive Environments
Are students studying challenging, engaging and relevant content?
Are educators in the right roles with the right skills to help students thrive?
Are policies, systems and communities supporting great schools for all?

3. The Pilot Florida Implementation Network consists of five districts working together to address the challenges of effectively implementing the Florida Standards.
Ben
We have a growing footprint in FL. We’ve supported a number of districts across the state, include the six districts involved in the pilot implementation network:
Brevard
Broward
Duval
Highlands
Pasco
Pinellas
In total, this amounts to 900+ schools, $6Billion in expenditures, and more than 41,000 teachers

4. Assessment of Common Core Implementation
Our work with these districts began with a series of diagnostics that set out to assess the effectiveness of common core implementation.
Systems and Policies
Site Visit
Surveys
Analysis & Reporting
Assessment of Common Core Implementation
Landscape
Analysis
Classroom
Observations
Teacher
Surveys
Leader
Interviews
Student Work
Analysis
Leader
Surveys
Curriculum
Review
Focus
Groups

5. To assess if…. …instruction and student work are aligned, we use…
We rely on nationally-vetted tools, written by authors of the Common Core State Standards, to guide our analysis and build a common language.
To assess if….
…instruction and student work are aligned, we use…
…instructional materials are aligned, we use…
Educators Evaluating Quality Instructional Products (EQuIP) Student Work Protocol: Tool for reviewing student work samples for alignment with standards.
Educators Evaluating Quality Instructional Products (EQuIP) Rubric for Lessons and Units: Tool for reviewing lessons and units for alignment with standards.
Instructional Practice Guides: Tools for observing lessons and whether they make the instructional shifts required by standards.
Instructional Materials Evaluation Tool (IMET): Tool for supporting leaders to make decisions about purchasing materials, evaluate materials to make modifications, and build understanding of what aligned materials look like.

6. Our diagnostic review of hundreds of classrooms in multiple districts led to four key findings:1
Florida teachers are not yet adjusting their instructional practices to meet the demands of the Florida Standards. 2
Teacher and leader confidence in their ability to teach the Florida Standards doesn’t match up with reality observed at schools. 3
Districts lack a clear definition of excellent instruction and a strategy to achieve it. 4
Teacher instructional materials, evaluations and professional development opportunities are not well-aligned, and do not help teachers raise the rigor of their instruction.
Questions:
Do these findings surprise you?
Where else do you see districts struggling with these findings?

7. What may be leading to these perceptions?
Many school leaders and educators think that classroom practices are aligned with the shifts necessary to teach the FL Standards.
70%
of school leaders* are confident in their ability to lead teachers to shift instruction
70%
of teachers** believe their school is prepared to shift to the new standards
What may be leading to these perceptions?
This confusion plays out when we ask teachers and school leaders whether they feel like they’ve “got it.” Most school leaders and teachers believe they’ve made the changes they need to—however, the kinds of activities we just practiced at the beginning of this session are not in all classrooms. Only 32% of the teachers we observed when we conducted diagnostics were demonstrating even some of the shifts and only 27% of students met the expectations of the standards in their assignments.
Teachers and school leaders express confidence in their understanding of the standards, but there is limited evidence that their knowledge is translating to changes in practice.
Note: Data are averages across districts
*n= 972 total administrator survey respondents; **n= 16,970 total teacher survey respondents

8. Despite the perception that teachers had made the instructional shifts required of the new standards, few lessons reflected those changes.
Teachers are making attempts to implement instructional strategies to align to Common Core, but lack a clear vision of what aligned practice looks like in action, so their attempts fall short. This is a strong foundation from which to build. Teachers are willing to try new things and are eager to help students meet the expectations of the standards. At one school we saw three classrooms teaching the same basic lesson, but each was executed very differently, which is evidence of the lack of a clear vision for what instruction should look like.
n = 303 lessons

9. Most students meet expectations for their assignment, but the lack of rigor in tasks means students aren’t meeting the expectation of the standards.
n = 1,350 student work samples collected

10. Let’s examine an ELA assignment from a 4th grade classroom—what is being required of this student?
The Girl Who Loved Spiders – 4th grade Journeys
This student didn’t need to read or understand the text to understand that this is first person—merely picked out pronouns.
The 4th grade standard relating to POV is actually about comparing and contrasting the POV of different stories.

11. Now compare this with a sample task from a different 4th grade Florida classroom. What do you notice?
My Librarian is a Camel is an exemplar from Appendix B of the CCSS as a 4-5 text. Here, students are not only writing down information about the country, but are citing evidence about the challenges specific countries have with literacy and how they are addressing them.

12. Our theory of action is guiding our work toward one big goal: ensuring more teaching and learning that is aligned with the Florida Standards.
These five districts have all agreed that there are four key things that they would like to work on together:
Districts need a clear definition of what great, FL Standards-aligned instruction is.
Districts need instructional materials that are aligned to the standards (many are not)
Leaders, including principals, need to know what to look for when they are in classrooms
The data and feedback from this work should inform continuous improvement

13. Individualized District Work
To meet our big goal, the Network is engaged in a variety of shared supports, as well as individual district efforts.
Network Goals
Leadership Cohort
Curriculum Cohorts (K-5, & 6-12 ELA, K-5 Math)
Goals for the network
Pathways to Adoption
Shared Work
Brevard
Broward
Duval
Highlands
Pasco
Individualized District Work
Ben
Network Communication
Progress Monitoring
Technical Assistance
Knowledge Management
Convenings
TNTP as the “Hub”

14. Setting and Monitoring Expectations for Success
Our work with TNTP began in the Winter of 2014, with the district diagnostic that provided invaluable information related to our system. This partnership offered us the opportunity to answer a few key questions: Are we where we want to be, relative to the standards? Are we working smart rather than hard? Are the curricular resources and professional development getting us the result we expect? Is this the data we need to help us move forward?

15. What we learned from TNTP
Our students were not consistently engaged with rigorous content.
Our curriculum resources (both purchased and created) were not fully aligned to the standards.
Our PLCs had a strong structure, but were not always focused on the “right work”.
The implementation of our teacher evaluation system had not focused on rigorous, standards aligned instruction.

16. TNTP Recommendations
Develop a unifying definition of instructional excellence that shapes the district’s overall strategy.
Revise curricular resources to fully align with the intent and demands of the standards.
Build deep knowledge of the standards with all stakeholders.
Leverage our PLC structures to become a vehicle for raising the rigor of instruction and student work.

17. Our Mission and Vision

18. Vision of Instructional Excellence

19. We focus on three priorities to guide our work
High impact instruction:
All student learning experiences match the rigor of the standards.
Data Driven Decisions: Increase systems to support students.
Collaborative Culture: Increase staff and student engagement.

20. Challenges we encountered
There were multiple definitions of rigor throughout our county.
We invested time into building a deep understanding of the standards with our central office leaders.
We used that learning to improve
The curricular resources we were developing and providing to schools.
The alignment of the professional development we provided.
There were multiple tools used for monitoring in our county.
We focused everyone on using the Instructional Practices Guides to monitor implementation of the standards, the instructional shifts and ultimately, our goal for High Impact Instruction.

21. Focusing on Monitoring Tools: Further clarifying our Vision of Instructional Excellence.

22. Focusing on Monitoring Tools: Further clarifying our Vision of Instructional Excellence.

23. Aligned Progress Monitoring
Operationalizing the Vision of Instructional Excellence
Collecting and Utilizing System Data
Guiding district resources
Informing professional development needs

24. Meaningful Data! What we learned in ELA:
Instructional Materials Matter Classrooms using our core adopted resources focused on text that was at the right complexity and worth reading.
Professional Development Must be Data-Driven
Teachers need support implementing the standards an shifts in service of the text.

25. Responding to the Data
Leadership Conference: Focused school administrators on the importance of using our aligned instructional resources.
Summer Learning Symposium: Supported teachers and leaders in using all instructional resources to support the standards and shifts.

26. Finding Success and Supporting the Network
Instructional Monitoring Data
Professional Development
Curriculum Resources
Notable Progress
Clarity around instructional expectations
Widespread utilization of common monitoring tools
Systems coherence around Vision of Instructional Excellence
Sharing Progress and Learning
Curriculum Cohorts
Elementary Mathematics
Secondary English Language Arts
Leadership Cohort
Common instructional expectations
Shared professional learning

27. In a short time, we have demonstrated significant progress in ensuring that students are engaging with the right content (Core Action 1).
n = 56 observed lessons (37 ELA and 19 math), September 2016,
61 observed lessons (33 ELA and 28 math), March 2015

28. Progress continued this year as we built capacity in our teachers to leverage the instructional shifts and engage students in the work of the lesson.

29. One big goal: Ensuring more teaching and learning that is aligned with the Florida Standards.
These five districts have all agreed that there are four key things that they would like to work on together:
Districts need a clear definition of what great, FL Standards-aligned instruction is.
Districts need instructional materials that are aligned to the standards (many are not)
Leaders, including principals, need to know what to look for when they are in classrooms
The data and feedback from this work should inform continuous improvement