1. 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

2. Background  Kinoshita Elementary School in CapoUSD was PI Year 3  New administrator in 2007-08  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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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