1. Identifying and Learning From High Performing Systems:
Designing New Systems of Support to
Make high standards and powerful learning
opportunities available to ALL students
Pedro A. Noguera, PhD.
Center for the Transformation of Schools
UCLA

2. The challenge:
Pursuing Excellence and Equity at a time of growing inequality – 1 out of 5 children in poverty
Turning around under-performing schools and providing tangible help to districts
Moving from compliance driven practice to capacity building
Learning from successful schools by making good practice transparent

3. Lessons from A Generation of Reform:
Reforms as fads – not enough alignment between remedy and need, not enough follow through or evaluation
Too much focus on assessment for ranking, not enough on assessment to guide teaching and learning
Top down accountability - insufficient “buy-in” and input from school staff
Insufficient attention to school culture
Insufficient attention to social needs of students
Insufficient attention to real examples of success

4. ESSA Allows states to create a New Accountability Framework
Five Questions from Ed Trust:
Does the state set ambitious goals?
Does the plan communicate how each school is performing?
Does the state have a coherent plan for school improvement?
Does the state shine light and address resource inequities?
Does the state address educator equity?

5. Narrow vs. Broad Approach
Use pressure to foster accountability
Focus exclusively on achievement
Use assessment to rank students, teachers and schools
Hold students, teachers and principals accountable
Treat parents as consumers
Punitive approach to discipline
Encourage competition among schools
Focus on learning conditions
Focus on “whole child”
Use assessment to diagnose learning needs
Hold all stake holders accountable
Build professional capacity
Treat parents as partners
Use discipline to develop character
Promote cooperation between and among schools

6. Discussion
Where is your state on the Broad vs Narrow continuum?
How will you know if your state’s strategy is working?
How will you avoid allowing politics to derail progress?

7. The goal should be to eliminate barriers to learning for ALL students
Barriers Gone
EQUALITY – giving everyone the same, regardless of whether it is what they need or not EQUITY – giving everyone exactly what they need, when they need it.
The goal should be to eliminate barriers to learning for ALL students
You will have seen this image showing the difference between equality and equity.
What I am talking about goes further. It tells the truth about the realities for children in our education systems who are not from the dominant culture.
 and takes deliberate action to remove the barriers – caused by generations of systemic failure. That’s authentic critical, culturally sustaining pedagogy, that is about freedom.
THAT should be the norm for all our children, and all our efforts, and all our professional development has to genuinely target dismantling that fence, — which we put there, and seem to be happy to maintain.
If we can do that, then that’s a collaboration I might become more interested in.
I wish you all the best in identifying your White spaces.
Kia ora tatou.

8. Equity Must Be Embraced and supported by Policy
Addressing the needs of all students
Academic, psychological, emotional, social
Leaders must recognize and respond to differences in needs created by inequity; compensate for disadvantages, and mitigate harm
Policy must not punish schools for serving high need students but must provide guidance on how to serve them well.
Policy must focus on outcomes – academic and developmental

9. Learning from Success in Toronto
Strategic actions to build coherence at every level of the system— classroom, school, district and provincial levels
Using multiple overlapping strategies to learn from within the system during implementation.
Sharing ideas about what works best in practice relative to each priority.
Leadership from the middle’: districts develop greater intra-district capacity, inter-district networks of learning, and become better partners to schools.
Investment of resources targeted to address areas of strategic importance.

10. A culture of professional collaboration
A small number of ambitious goals
A focus on leadership and capacity building related to effective pedagogy: developing school principals as lead learners
A new unit within the Ministry of Education focused on Literacy Numeracy Secretariat (LNS) and the Student Success branch that included a number of skilled practitioners.
Utilizing data and intervening in a non-punitive manner, establishing principles of trust, transparency and urgency, monitoring progress at every level of the system.

11. Sustained progress in Ontario

13. What Doesn’t work Punitive accountability Standards by themselves
Compliance driven cultures
Silver bullet fixes and programs
Solutions based on a view that teachers cannot change
Systems in which teachers get little feedback
The absence of mechanisms for teachers, schools and districts to learn from each other,
Competition where there are only a few winners,

14. Reflection:
What should be the focus of your state’s accountability system?
How will you ensure transparency in performance without penalizing districts that serve large numbers of “high need” students?

15. AN Equity Centered approach to System improvement:
Capacity Building - a process that requires sustained focus on developing
Focus areas for improvement
A coherent instructional guidance system
Development of the professional capacity of faculty
Strong parent-community-school ties
A student-centered learning climate
Leadership that drives change

16. AN Equity Centered approach Needs Qualitative Measures to monitor performance:
School climate surveys
Parent surveys
School quality reviews
Student evaluations of teachers – Teacher Empowerment Network

17. How do we identify schools that are improving?
LPI Report:
Methodology: Math and English language arts (ELA) results for three racial/ ethnic subgroups (African American, Hispanic, and White) for 2015, 2016, and 2017.
Six measures of socioeconomic characteristics for families with children attending public school.: American Community Survey’s (ACS) Education Demographic and Geographic Estimates (EDGE). median income; unemployment rate; SNAP rates; proportion of parents with a bachelor’s degree or higher; proportion of households with children age 5 to 17 in poverty; and proportion of households headed by single mothers.

18. How do we identify schools that are improving?
Key Finding: Qualified Teachers Make a Difference
Districts that have been able to retain fully prepared teachers are much more likely to produce strong student achievement for all students.

19. Building school capacity requires an understanding of how to:
Build partnerships between schools, local government and CBOs in response to:
Health and social needs of children – PS 188
Extended learning plan aligned to the academic plan - PS 28 Brooklyn, NY;
Provide professional development for teachers based on student needs – Serving ELLs at Edison Elementary School in Portchester, NY, Multicultural HS
Ability to create conditions in schools that promote great teaching and powerful learning opportunities
Literacy across the curriculum at Brockton HS

20. The State must engage in collaborative problem solving with school Districts
Helping schools to identify measurable problems to focus on
Identifying high leverage interventions to further improvement
Utilizing guidance to empower principals
Developing leadership through mentorship
Promoting an equity vision and concrete plans with support from school board

21. A Framework for Pursuing Equity
Child Development – a holistic approach to learning (social and emotional factors) and the need for differentiation
Neuroscience – elasticity of brain requires the use of strategies to promote cognitive development and mitigate harmful factors in the environment
A Framework for Pursuing Equity
Relationships – Understanding and responding to the way students are affected by family, peers, community, and society

22. Time to focus on supporting highly effective teaching and measurable evidence of learning

23. High Quality Leveled Reading Programs Achievement Partners, David LibEn
Mini-lesson on text structure comprehension strategies, standards, genre or any other construct of text.
Students look for focused construct in their leveled readers.
Foundational skills taught predominantly in context as needed with leveled readers.,
Some include stand alone phonics program usually “Fundations”
THE MOST WELL KNOWN BY FAR IS CALLED, “FOUNTAS AND PINNELL” THIS IS WHAT THE OTHER 50% OF THE COUNTRY USES

24. What’s Makes a High-Quality ELA Curriculum?
Research-based foundational skills: Structured Phonics
Close reading of quality, complex text including read alouds in K-2
Academic language
Volume of reading (on conceptually related topics) to grow knowledge and vocabulary including read aloud in K-2
Volume of (evidence-based) writing
Fit to district and school
THE GREEN INDICATES THE CONSTRUCT THAT COMES NEXT

25. Systematic Phonics
Phonics patterns taught in context and out of context.
Words containing taught phonics patterns in decodable or mostly decodable texts. Though does not have to be limited to only these.
Abundant materials for students who need more work and students who need far more work including materials that can be done independently.
minutes a day depending on differentiation needs.
RAN AND PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSING DEFICIENCY AND DOUBLE DEFICIT
NOT CONNECTED TO INTELLIGENCE
99% CAN DECODE READ WITH FLUENCY

26. High Quality ELA Programs Ed Reports
EL Education K–8 distributed by OUR
Great Minds “Wit and Wisdom” K–8 from Great Minds (the Eureka Math people)
American Reading Company (ARC) K–12 from ARC
Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) K–5 from Amplify Publishing
“Bookworms” K–5 distributed by OUR
“OUR” IS OPEN UP RESOURCES THE NON-PROFIT THAT DISTRIBUTES OPEN ACCESS FREE CURRICULUM. REMEMBER THOUGH THAT ELA REQUIRES BOOKS SO IS NOT REALLY FREE

27. Susquehanna Township School District, PA
Susquehanna Township Middle School
ACTION 100 Implementation
Percentage of Middle School IEP Students Scoring Proficient or Above Doubles
Special Education Cohorts Reading Pennsylvania System of State Assessments Scores vs. Prior Year
2010–2011 Percentage of Students Scoring Advanced or Proficient

28. Students engaged in learning at Hollenbeck Middle School, LA