Introduction

In April and May, 1999, a team of researchers visited twelve schools in the KCMSD: Lincoln College Preparatory Academy and Southeast High School; J. A. Rogers Middle School and Kansas City Middle School of the Arts; and George Washington Carver, Foreign Language K-8 Academy, James, Ladd, McCoy, North Rock Creek/Korte, and Volker Elementary Schools. At each of the schools, researchers interviewed the principal or another school administrator, observed in classrooms, and talked informally with teachers and students.

The purpose of these visits was to gather data that would provide information about four issues: the implementation of the Core Curriculum, the implementation of the KCMSD Professional Development Plan, and the interrelated issues of teacher expectations and student achievement. More particularly, the study sought to address the following questions:

1. To what extent is the Core Curriculum being implemented in schools in the KCMSD?

2. To what extent is the KCMSD Professional Development Plan being implemented in schools?

3. How are schools addressing the issues of raising teacher expectations, improving student achievement, and closing the achievement gap between minority and non-minority students?

The Core Curriculum of the KCMSD represents a shift in curriculum paradigm for teachers in the school district, from a view of curriculum as a scope and sequence of content learning, to the more holistic view of curriculum as a guide that sets larger expectations for student learning, both content and process, aligned with the State of Missouri’s Show Me Standards and with standards set by national professional organizations such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the National Council for the Social Studies, and the National Council of Teachers of English. This document also implies a theory of learning that views learners as active participants in that learning, engaging in learning that is both hands-on and experiential, that values and builds on students’ prior knowledge and experience, that involves social interaction, both with teachers and other students, that helps students to make connections between and among traditional curriculum areas, and that requires student reflection on their experience.

On their visits, researchers found a wide variation among schools and classrooms. Interviewees at all of the schools reported a variety of activities that have been conducted to support teachers’ implementation of the Core Curriculum. These activities included schoolwide workshops; grade level and departmental meetings, as single events in some schools, and as on-going, regularly scheduled activities in others; the designation of quarterly classroom level objectives drawn from the Core Curriculum; redesigning lesson planning in some schools that requires explicit references to the Core Curriculum; and collaborative work with other schools where a school theme, such as the African-Centered theme, common to the schools had to be infused with the Core Curriculum.

In one of the schools, the observer noted that all teachers observed seemed to view learners as active participants in their own learning. In that school, students in every classroom were observed engaged in active learning, reading, writing, interacting with other students as they constructed meaning from text and other learning activities. In that school, teachers engaged in the learning process as well, both with their students, and with each other as they sought to implement more fully the intent of the Core Curriculum.

In all other schools, researchers found that there were some classrooms where teachers clearly viewed learners as active participants in the learning process, and where students were engaged in experiential, meaningful learning. Students in these classrooms could articulate what they were supposed to be learning from the activities in which they participated. In these schools, there were also teachers who expected students to be passive receivers of information, and where the learning activities consisted of exercises in isolated, basic skills or discrete bits of information with no big idea or authentic context that would make the skills or learning meaningful, and where students were not engaged in making connections or meaning. Students in those classrooms did not articulate a meaningful purpose for the lessons in their classrooms, and in many of the classrooms, students were not engaged in the lessons observed.

Schools visited seem to be in various stages of implementation of the Core Curriculum, with some schools farther along in the process than others. In the school where there was evidence of the implementation of the Core Curriculum in every classroom, all teachers also appeared to embrace the view of the learners and learning implied in the Core Curriculum. In other schools, where there was less consistent implementation of the Core Curriculum, teachers seemed to hold similarly inconsistent beliefs about learners and learning.

The KCMSD Professional Development Plan provides for the adoption of the Principles for Learning as articulated by the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh, with the focus in the 1998-1999 school year on the principles of read-aloud, accountable talk, and organize for effort. For many teachers in the KCMSD, these principles represent a wide departure from the practices they have traditionally used in their classrooms.

In keeping with the research on professional development findings that modeling and coaching with feedback are necessary parts of professional development if teachers are actually to adopt new teaching strategies and to change their beliefs about teaching and learning, the Professional Development Plan also includes the provision of Instructional Coaches at the schools. These coaches are responsible for providing that classroom-based modeling and coaching.

Interviewees at all of the schools visited reported commitment at their schools to implementation of the Professional Development Plan, and they similarly reported a variety of professional development efforts at the schools aimed at teachers using read-alouds, accountable talk, and organize for effort. All administrators interviewed also acknowledged the value of the instructional coach in modeling those practices in classrooms. Researchers noted, however, that evidence in classrooms of those practices varied from classrooms where there was none at all to classrooms where read-alouds were observed and there were high levels of accountable talk. There were also teachers who reported that, even though they were expected to read aloud, reading aloud was not appropriate at their level or in their subject area.

Teachers in some classrooms were observed to be skilled at read-alouds, engaging students actively in the listening, and inviting and providing opportunities for students to respond to the reading and reflect on it. Many of them were equally adept at asking questions that helped students to extend and expand their responses and reflections and to build on and respond to other students’ responses and reflections. Some of these teachers also extended the notion of accountable talk far beyond the read aloud to all or nearly all of the learning activities in their classrooms. In these classrooms, teachers communicated the expectation that learning was a reflective process, and that talking about the experience was a valued part of the learning.

In some other classrooms, teachers were observed to conduct read-alouds with some measure of accountable talk, but without understanding the value of accountable talk for engaging students in learning. Once the read-alouds were finished, students in these classrooms were discouraged from responding to or interacting verbally about the content of the lessons. In a few classrooms, researchers observed teachers actually tell students that their responses and reflections were out of line.

The effectiveness of the instructional coach also varied from school to school. In some schools, the coach was accepted and trusted by the teachers as a member of the school community who could help them to improve their teaching and their students’ learning. In a few others, the instructional coach was not accepted or trusted, or had spent most of the year establishing a working level of trust, with little time left for modeling or coaching. In still others, it was not clear that the instructional coach had had an on-going, full-time role in professional development at the school. In a few schools, the instructional coach seemed to serve the role of assistant to the principal, dealing with all sorts of issues other than providing modeling and coaching in classrooms. It was not always clear to the researchers whether the person designated as instructional coach held that title officially, or whether there was a point person in that role. It was also unclear where there was a relationship between the effectiveness of instructional coaches and their status as instructional coach or point person. In one school, however, where there was a point person, but not an instructional coach per se, modeling and coaching were provided by a team of staff members, headed by the principal, and there was clear evidence of the effects of coaching in classrooms in that school.

Several interviewees reported that the professional development provided to instructional coaches had not been particularly effective, and some even reported feeling that the professional development provided to the coaches by the KCMSD had not adequately addressed the issues of building trust and the politics of working with teachers in classrooms.

The overall goal implied in the KCMSD Core Curriculum is the improvement of student achievement in general, with its accompanying goal of closing the gap between minority and non-minority achievement. These goals are consistent with what educational researchers and theorists describe as necessary for education for our society at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. According to Linda Darling-Hammond (1997), “the challenge of the twenty-first century is creating schools that ensure for all students in all communities a genuine right to learn (p. 5). Darling-Hammond argues that meeting that challenge will require school districts to “[develop] capacity among schools and teachers to be responsible for student learning and to be responsive to student and community needs and concerns (p. 6).

The two issues of raising teacher expectations and improving student achievement are critical to ensuring the right to learn to all students. The two are inseparable, with one depending upon the other. Improving student achievement requires that teachers view all their students as learners and hold consistent expectations for all students to meet high standards of learning.

Interviewees at all the schools visited reported efforts to raise teacher expectations and to improve student achievement. Efforts to raise teacher expectations included involvement in the New Standards project, observation of teachers at other schools, and scoring student responses to performance assessments. To raise student achievement, schools looked to communicating curriculum standards and expectations to parents, providing additional instruction both outside the regular school day and inside through tutoring and more focused instruction, adding course requirements such as reading at the middle school level, and improving student attendance.

Researchers noted again varying levels of teacher expectations across the schools and classrooms they visited. Except for the one school where teacher expectations were consistently high, teachers communicated a wide variety of expectations to students. In some classrooms, teachers expected students to engage in meaning-centered activities that required using strategies, explaining, justifying, thinking, creating, and reflecting—communicating the expectations that students were competent to engage successfully in such high level tasks. In others, teachers expected students to fill in blanks on worksheets, to calculate the one correct answer, to respond to knowledge-level questions, and to memorize information—communicating the expectation that students were not capable of thinking or making connections.

When asked about the achievement gap, nearly all administrators interviewed were optimistic about narrowing and eventually closing the gap. Some teachers stated that they did not see a gap in performance in their classrooms; rather, they believed, the gap was related more to how students viewed standardized tests. Others who said they believed that the gap does exist, argued that improving instruction could narrow the gap. There were still others, however, who shared the belief that some students’ home background and socio-economic status could not be overcome.

From their observations, researchers would make the following recommendations to the KCMSD and the schools in the district:

• Work to ensure stability and consistency in the KCMSD and in schools so that the direction to improve teaching and learning continue in the school district and the schools. Many teachers in the KCMSD still believe, based on their experience in the school district, that if they wait long enough, these new things will go away. Staying the course will communicate to the entire community the commitment of the KCMSD to improving teaching and learning.


• Fully staff schools so that all teaching positions are held by full time, fully certified teachers. In at least one school, several classrooms and other key instructional positions (such as reading teachers) were staffed by full-time substitutes who have no accountability for student success.


• Continue the current efforts toward full implementation of the Core Curriculum. Teachers and schools are at various stages of implementation, but they have all made some efforts in that direction. Beginning with the assumption that teachers and schools began the process of implementation at varied levels of readiness, and that, for some, the Core Curriculum represents a monumental change in belief about teaching and learning, some schools and some teachers will need more time and more support to make that change.


• Continue the school-level and classroom-level focus of professional development that has begun with the current professional development plan. Research on professional development has found that school-level and classroom-level professional development is more effective than efforts outside the school to improve teaching and learning.


• Continue to implement the Principles of Learning of read aloud, accountable talk, and organize for effort, with attention to helping teachers understand how to apply them across the entire curriculum, and extend professional development efforts to the implementation of additional principles.


• Institutionalize the position of instructional coach in the KCMSD and the role of the coach in the professional development process. In schools where instructional coaches, whether official or point persons, actually have worked in classrooms with teachers, they have been effective in helping teachers to implement new teaching strategies and to begin to rethink their expectations.


• Make full use of the demonstration sites as professional development resources for the school district, and add sites at the middle school and high school levels.


• Provide additional opportunities for teachers to raise their expectations for student learning, through observation in classrooms where teachers hold high expectations and through demonstrations in their own classrooms that show teachers how their students perform when high expectations are communicated.


• Hold principals and teachers accountable for implementation of the Core Curriculum and the instructional practices it implies, as well as the Principles of Learning, for raising expectations, and for improving student achievement.

The following are case studies that describe observations of the researchers relative to the research questions at each of the schools that were visited.

Foreign Language Academy K-8

The Foreign Language Academy provides Spanish immersion, Kindergarten through grade 8, and French, grades 4 though 8, supplemented by language arts and science in English, as well as foreign language classes that are not immersion classes. Two observers spent a day at the Foreign Language Academy, interviewing the principal, observing in classrooms, and talking informally with teachers and students. Although the observers made several attempts, the instructional coach was too busy to talk with them, and a few teachers were visibly uncomfortable with the observers in their classrooms.

Hallways at the school hold many displays of student work, much of it writing and much in Spanish or French. Displays represent work across the curriculum--writing, social studies, science, mathematics, art, keyboarding, and so on.

Implementation of the Core Curriculum

The principal reported that, although there had been some resistance by French teachers, the implementation of the Core Curriculum is proceeding. One of the difficulties has been finding materials to support the implementation for the foreign language classrooms; there are many more materials available in Spanish than in French. Teachers offered disparate views of the Core Curriculum, with a few saying that it was nothing new to them, one reported that it was "fair as a goal" but there had not been the follow-through that she expected, and another saying that it was not appropriate at all for what that teacher expected students to learn. Several said they use the Core Curriculum as a guide in lesson planning.

As observers visited classrooms, they noted that there was great variation among classrooms in active student engagement. Many of the classrooms had desks arranged in rows, with students facing one direction and the teacher, facing the students, presenting a lesson. Other classrooms were arranged for more student interaction and active learning. In still others, students moved their desks to accommodate the activity going on.

In some classes, students were engaged in tasks that required them to engage actively and to think analytically. One of these was an English language arts class, where students used Venn diagrams to compare and contrast two stories as a prewriting activity. The teacher led the students through a review of Venn diagrams; during the review, the students explained what a Venn diagram is, and together the class made a Venn diagram that compared a teacher with a student, and a second one that compared a kiwi with a strawberry. He then explained that the story they were about to read was similar to Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters. Working in pairs, students read the story, took notes, and made a Venn diagram together in preparation for writing about the two stories the next day.

In a French immersion class, students worked individually on research projects. As they worked, they used a variety of resources, in English and French, and, the observer noted, there was a high level of student interaction during the work, as students used one another as resources, as well. In the classroom, the teacher showed the observer samples of research projects the students had created earlier in the year. The projects were all high quality, and integrated photos from the Internet, as well as information available in books and on-line.

Students in a science lab were observed beginning a lab on growing plants. Students began the class with reflective writing that provided the opportunity for them to recall prior experience with planting seeds and growing plants. Each student wrote the reflection in a lab folder that was organized by a table of contents. After a short explanation by the teacher about procedure, students wrote hypotheses and a procedure in their folders, and constructed a data table that they could use during the 9 days of the lab to record their results. Then the students planted seeds and recorded the information in their data tables.

These examples of active, engaged learning were contrasted by students in a few classes where there was little active involvement. In a science class, the teacher and students spent the class period reading from a science book about what could have been an engaging demonstration or lab.

Implementation of the Professional Development Plan

Teachers reported having had a variety of professional development opportunities, including workshops and coaching, that focused on developing rubrics, writing throughout the curriculum, using the Internet, and other content specific to their particular teaching assignment. The principal reported that the instructional coach is certified as a professional developer, and that she has been very helpful in implementing the professional development plan. Some teachers noted that the coach has weekly meetings with teams of teachers, while others did not acknowledge having been assisted by the instructional coach.

The focus on writing was evident in the work displayed in the hallways; there were examples of poetry, narrative, and expository writing. It was clear to the observers from the amount and quality of writing displayed that writing is valued at the school. One set of poems posted were labeled "Two-toned poems." The following is an example:

Two Toned Poem

Most days I'm red

hot like fire

content and satisfied

wild, happy

wishing that my days

would never end

But other times I'm lime green

bright as the sun

sweet like candy

respectful, powerful

joyful and full of things

Some days I'm black

like when all

the lights go out

mean wanting to be

by myself, bored

with a big attitude

According to the principal, the elementary teachers and the middle school language arts teachers were most comfortable with read aloud; she also noted that there is more accountable talk in elementary classrooms than in middle school classrooms. One observer noted several read alouds. One of these that included accountable talk was observed in a first grade classroom, where the teacher read a Magic Schoolbus book in Spanish. Students responded in Spanish to the story, first by processing with their partners and then sharing with the class.

No read alouds were observed in middle school classes, and one middle school teacher dismissed the whole notion of read alouds and accountable talk with, "Not this year." But there were many opportunities to observe accountable talk. In a French class, students were observed preparing for a debate on Proposition B, the concealed weapons proposition. Students worked in two small groups to research and plan their positions for the debate. As they worked, they discussed not only the content of their arguments, but also strategies for debating. In the science lab described above, student talk was nearly all related to the curriculum, as they discussed with other students their hypotheses and procedures for the lab, and as they shared their reflective writing.

Raising Teacher Expectations and Improving Student Achievement

The principal reported that the major achievement gap observed at the Foreign Language Academy was related to vocabulary, and that she had high expectations that the Accelerated Reader program could help to bridge the gap. Several teachers reported that there was little or no gap in classroom performance among their students. A math teacher said that she believed that race was not the issue in achievement, and explained that although the school's team this year for Math Counts was all white, last year's team was all African-American. Both teams had placed at the regional level.

The principal also described teacher expectations as critical to high student achievement. Schoolwide, there are some expressions of high expectations. All students, for example, are expected to complete and display a science project in the school's science fair; the school provides materials to ensure that all students are able to participate. This year the school had several winners. Students also participate in a schoolwide curriculum fair.

In most classrooms, observers noted that teachers expected all students to participate and held all students accountable for the same standard of work. But in a few classrooms, teachers did not encourage all students to participate in the learning activities and in some, even ignored students who did not participate. In a lower grade Spanish classroom, for example, the teacher did not move from her position at the front of the classroom. Students seated near her participated in the lesson, but other students were playing with crayons or otherwise not engaged. During the observation, the teacher made no effort to include those students in the lesson.

The principal's vision to help improve student achievement is to offer AP classes in language arts next year, and in biology the following year, both to provide additional learning opportunities for students, and to prepare students to compete in high school with those from other middle schools who have already have such opportunities.

Summary

Foreign Language Academy K-8 has the challenge of a staff that is probably more diverse, not only culturally, but in teacher preparation and experience, as well, as any other school in Kansas City. While most of the teachers are committed to organizing their work around the Core Curriculum and implementing the active, experiential learning implied in the Core Curriculum, a few others believe that the Core Curriculum does not apply to their classrooms and students. Helping all these teachers to understand how to integrate their foreign language focus with the content and instructional intent of the Core Curriculum is critical, if the Core Curriculum is to be fully implemented at the school.

Professional development, among a staff so diverse, is also a challenge. Teachers need to understand that they are accountable for the Principles of Learning, whether they conduct their classes in English or another language. The position of instructional coach at a school such as the Foreign Language Academy is particularly critical; demonstrating a strategy in an immersion class might require that the demonstration be conducted in the language of the classroom, making it necessary for the instructional coach to be fluent in the language. At Foreign Language Academy, it would require the instructional coach to be fluent in more than one language other than English, or that teachers in each language work together to coach one another.

Most teachers at the school seem to hold high expectations for student learning, but it is unclear whether the expectations are consistent from grade level to grade level, or between language areas, since there seems to be little articulation or continuity between and among the foreign language teachers at the school.

Foreign Language Academy seems to be a loosely organized confederation of independent programs, rather than one program unified around a single mission, curriculum, and set of expectations. The principal's strong leadership seems to be the one unifying factor in the school. To fully implement the Core Curriculum and the KCMSD professional development plan at the school will require removing the barriers between the individual programs to become one unified program, with all staff members committed to the mission and goals of the KCMSD.

J. A. Rogers Academy

J. A. Rogers Academy is a middle school, serving more than 850 students (an increase of 100 students over the previous year) in grades 6, 7, and 8. Two observers visited the school, interviewing the principal, observing in classrooms across the curriculum and across the three grade levels served, and chatting informally with teachers and students.

Formerly a magnet school, Rogers has become a neighborhood school this year, presenting a number of challenges. The principal reported that the student population of the school has changed significantly, with many new students at the school from the housing projects; not as many seventh and eighth grade students returned as they had hoped. The mobility rate at the school has tripled or quadrupled, according to the principal, and new students enter the school nearly every day. Attendance has been a problem this school year, and staff members have been making home visits to address the problem. There has also been an increase in the number of students trying to bring drugs into the school.

The transition has been difficult for some parents, as well. Rogers administrative team members from the school visited homes of new students to welcome them and their families to the school last August before school began. Although parent conferences and school family reading nights have been well-attended this year, finding a new SAC chair was difficult, and there is less parent involvement in the SAC.

Involuntary transfers took staff members from the school. Class size is much larger than was promised in the plan to become a neighborhood school, jeopardizing the school's block schedule, and the school has been reorganized twice during the school year, losing staff members each time. (A student approached an observer to share his view that there were too many students in his classes. This year, he said, there are about 30 in each of his classes, compared with 24 last year.) At the time of the visit, five positions were unstaffed, and permanent substitutes staffed an MR, a science, a band, and two reading positions. The school registrar position was also not staffed, increasing the workload of administrators, and with the new student population, it has also been necessary for administrators to help with cafeteria duty.

The principal reported that the school staff was committed to providing the same quality program as a neighborhood school as they had provided as a magnet school. But initially it was a constant battle not to "dumb down the curriculum" or to lower expectations. The first semester was very difficult for the school, and that it was not until the beginning of the second semester that they began to "turn the corner."

The school itself is light and attractive, and displays of student work decorate hallways and common areas of the school. One display showed a series of 27 student technology projects, 25 of which won awards.

Implementation of the Core Curriculum

Teachers at the school develop quarterly curriculum overviews, drawn from the Core Curriculum document, that are communicated to parents so that parents will know what the expectations are for their children. The process of developing the curriculum overviews includes review of the teachers' drafts by administrators, feedback to teachers from the administrators, and revisions by teachers before the overviews are published and shared with students and parents. Teachers also designed quarterly assessments based on the Core Curriculum.

Observers noted several classrooms where lessons involved active participation of students in meaning-centered learning and, in some cases, real life contexts. In a sixth grade language arts class, students were observed in a lesson on adjectives. The whole class played a game to find adjectives about characters in the novel they were currently reading, Bridge to Terabithia. To play the game, students were divided into teams, with each team seated together at a table. The teacher gave each team a character card, a card on which the name of one character from the book was written. Then the teacher distributed several adjective cards randomly to the various tables. Team members walked around the room and collected at least three adjectives that described their character; back at their tables, each team wrote a sentence about their character using the adjectives they had gathered. The reporter from each team shared the sentence and gave the other teams an opportunity to guess who the character was and to justify their guesses with evidence from the book. Tying the adjective lesson to the current novel provided a context of meaning for the learning, and making it a team game added the novelty and activity needed to engage these young adolescents.

In an eighth grade "special projects" class, students were observed working independently on a variety of projects. The teacher explained that the "special projects" is the place where students can work on projects that connect all their learning in their other classes, as well as do something that is personally important. During the observation, some of the students worked on community service projects they had planned to help the school community, while others worked on research on such topics as Corvettes, basketball, and Egypt. The classroom walls held attractively displayed projects that students had already completed.

Students in a seventh grade language arts class were observed working on a paragraph that expressed an opinion. The topic for the paragraph was whether Michael Jordan should have retired when he did. Students clearly had strong opinions on the topic, and they had no difficulty expressing them in writing.

Probability and statistics was the math topic in an eighth grade math class. There, students were preparing to analyze part of a survey of eighth grade students. The survey had been administered to all the eighth grade students, and each student in this class selected a question to analyze. During this particular class period, the students were writing predictions about what the results of their analysis would be. The teacher suggested the possibility of making a prediction about girls' responses, boys' responses, and the total responses. The entire project, described by the teacher, included the statistical analysis, a comparison of their predictions with the outcomes, representing the information in graph form, and a written paper describing the analysis. Using choice and the authentic context of their own class provided both meaning and motivation for students to practice what they had already learned about probability and statistics.

Students in an eighth grade social studies class had been studying what it was like to travel on the Oregon Trail. As they had studied, they had drawn the trail on a U.S. map from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon. As a follow-up assignment, students were asked to research and write a paper comparing what they had learned about the Oregon Trail with how they would travel to Oregon today. They were to compare the route, places they visited along the way, what they would need to take with them, and so on.

Additional activities beyond the classrooms provide the context for high levels of learning about economics and politics, as well, at Rogers School. Eighth grade students annually participate in an activity called Rogerdelphia, in which the entire eighth grade simulates the operation of a town, similar to Exchange City. The principal reported that a group of eighth graders had also worked with the Kauffman Foundation and Junior Achievement to create a plan for a small business.

At the same time, there were classrooms where lessons provided for no active involvement, personal connection, or meaningful context. Such lessons included a sixth grade mathematics class where the teacher was explaining to students how to multiply fractions. During the entire observation (about 20 minutes) the teacher talked about how to multiply fractions. Students were expected to copy from the overhead what the teacher had written. There was no student talk, no explanation of when multiplication of fractions might be used in the real world, no manipulatives or visual representation that might have provided some meaning for students.

In other classrooms, students completed worksheets, participated in science lessons that involved reading a textbook rather than investigating, and practiced test taking skills.

Implementation of the Professional Development Plan

Rogers Academy began the year with one instructional coach who was reassigned to the Central Office; a teacher from the school was moved into the position later. This position is not new to Rogers; as a magnet school implementing ITI, there was a position with responsibility for professional development, including coaching teachers in classrooms.

Only two read alouds were observed during the visit. In a seventh grade classroom, the teacher integrated a read aloud into preparation for the MAP. In the sixth grade language arts class described above playing the adjective game, the class continued reading the novel after the game. Students could choose to read by themselves, read with a partner, or listen to the teacher read aloud. Five students chose to participate in the read aloud, and the teacher provided many opportunities for the students to interact with the text.

Some accountable talk was observed, but as the principal had explained, teachers do need more support and professional development to provide opportunities for high levels of accountable talk. In most classrooms, communication was predominantly directed by the teacher. The flow of communication was from teacher to student, student to teacher, with little student to student talk related to the curriculum. Even in classrooms were lessons engaged students actively, there was little student initiated talk about the learning. And in a few classes, as in the sixth grade mathematics class described above, there was no student talk at all!

The school has continued to use the ITI model, according to the principal; she views the Principles of Learning as extending rather than conflicting with ITI. Becoming a demonstration site for the Institute for Learning will enhance the professional development already in place at the school. Next school year, the Rogers staff has also planned to investigate the literature on resilience, to learn some strategies for supporting students in becoming more resilient and more focused on academic success.

Raising Teacher Expectations and Improving Student Achievement

With the change in student population, keeping teacher expectations as high as they had been, especially for sixth grade students, has been a challenge for the school.

Teachers have made efforts to communicate expectations for learning the content of the Core Curriculum. As was already stated, they developed quarterly overviews that were shared with students and parents. In many classrooms in the school teachers had rubrics or criteria posted for projects and assignments. And in one sixth grade classroom, the teacher was observed explaining to students how credits accrue, and that they would need seven core credits and eleven credits in all, to go on to seventh grade. He explained how grades in his class were calculated, and then he reviewed with each student the grades s/he had earned so far this quarter, the assignments that were missing or incomplete, and how to make up for grades that were not as good as they would like. He also averaged the grades with the student to show whether s/he was on track to pass the class.

Rogers Academy is using Accelerated Reader to improve students' reading comprehension, and they have also added reading as a class for all students. Having two of the reading positions staffed by substitutes, however, must have an adverse effect on the anticipated reading improvement.

Students at Rogers participate in STAR testing, MAP at all three grade levels, and, this year, ITBS at the eighth grade level. According to the KCMSD accountability plan, this spring 1999 testing should be the last administration of the ITBS. The principal and several teachers expressed concern that, with the change in student population at the school, this year's test scores will be lower than they have been in the past. The interviewees worried about the negative consequences of comparing the scores with scores from the previous year and publishing the comparison.

Summary

Administrators and teachers have worked very hard to provide a positive and productive school year for the students at J. A. Rogers in spite of the many challenges that threatened to interfere.

The school has worked to implement the Core Curriculum, with the development of quarterly curriculum overviews and assessments aligned with the Core Curriculum. In many classrooms, it is obvious that teachers are focused on ensuring that, as implied in the Core Curriculum, learning is active, experiential, and personally meaningful to the students. In other classrooms, even if the content of the Core Curriculum is enacted, teachers need to focus on making the learning activities meaning-centered and active.

Teachers at Rogers are open to learning new teaching strategies and to having classroom- based professional development. Becoming a demonstration site for the Institute for Learning will provide additional focused professional development on the Principles of Learning that is needed at the school to help all teachers master the implementation of the Principles in their classrooms. The notion of accountable talk is particularly important to providing opportunities for students to process information actively, to interact with one another relative to the curriculum, and to take responsibility for their learning. It can also be a great tool for assessment, as it gives teachers insight into how students are processing learning.

Teachers at J. A. Rogers have resisted lowering expectations as they welcomed a different student population to the school. They added programs such as reading instruction and Accelerated Reader to help improve students' reading, although two of the reading positions were unstaffed. They are planning to learn about resilience research during the next school year to learn additional strategies to support high levels of learning for their students. What they need is support from the KCMSD to, at a minimum, provide certified teachers for all the positions at the school.

James School

One researcher spent a day at James School, interviewing the principal, observing in classrooms at each grade level, and chatting informally with the vice principal, teachers, and students. The school building itself is attractive, and it is further enhanced with student work beautifully displayed in classrooms and in hallways of the school. In hallways, the office, and in classrooms, adults and children interacted in ways that were positive and supportive. Throughout the school, the adults looked and acted as if they enjoyed children and were truly happy to be there!

The principal explained that with the shifts in magnet and neighborhood schools at the beginning of the 1998-1999 school year, the population of James School had changed considerably, from its previous minority population of about 70 percent, to a current minority population of about 50 percent, and adding fourth and fifth grades to the school. She explained further that the school now serves a significant population of bilingual students, necessitating employing a bilingual paraprofessional both to assist students and to provide translation for parents who don't speak English.

According to the principal, it has been a challenge for the James staff to get to know so many new students and to help their families feel welcome and a part of the school community. The school began reaching out to families by inviting parents and others in the neighborhood to "adopt a route," walking children to school in the mornings and home in the afternoons. In addition, the James "Care" team has worked to make the school a community center through keeping the school open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. four days a week, holding GED classes two nights a week and providing parenting classes, counseling, and sports for children.

The principal also described ongoing efforts to improve attendance and to empower teachers to make decisions about scheduling, professional development, and team planning. Currently, the principal and counselor work together to address attendance issues; the principal reported that viewing attendance as a problem to solve jointly rather than as solely a parent responsibility has had positive results; having the assistance of Caring Communities to address some of the underlying issues has also contributed to improved attendance.

Teachers at James School have been visiting and talking with teachers at other elementary schools to observe how they have implemented departmentalization and block scheduling for intermediate grades, and how they schedule team planning time. In the 1999-2000 school year, teachers at James will have team planning time, and fifth grade classes will have block scheduling.

Implementation of the Core Curriculum

The principal and teachers reported that one of their efforts toward more fully implementing the Core Curriculum this school year has been to identify from the Core Curriculum quarterly objectives for each grade level. These objectives are shared with students and parents. Several teachers reported also using the Core Curriculum document as a guide in deciding what to teach and in planning lessons.

The observer noted that the document was visible in every classroom visited, and that the quarterly objectives were posted in classrooms and hallways of the school. In most of the classrooms, lessons observed were clearly related to the posted quarterly objectives.

In most classrooms, students were actively engaged in activities that were meaning-centered, in keeping with the instructional focus implied within the Core Curriculum. In one fifth grade classroom, students were observed doing "board work" at the beginning of the school day. Unlike many classrooms, where Daily Oral Language involves solely a focus on grammar, spelling, and punctuation, in this particular classroom the sentences children were correcting formed a paragraph that reviewed information that students had been studying the previous day about Native Americans in the Southwest. The sentences were composed so that students would have to construct meaning to find and correct the errors in writing conventions. Instead of simply identifying the errors, students discussed additional information related to that in the paragraph on the board.

In a third grade classroom, students were observed working on letters to their pen pals. The students were in various stages of the writing process, writing, editing, rewriting, and illustrating. The current theme in this classroom was the coral reef, and much of the room was decorated in keeping with the theme. One bulletin board, labeled "Mysteries of the Deep," displayed students' reports on sea creatures. There were many books in this classroom in a variety of genre and about a many topics; there was a large collection of books about the coral reef.

Students in another upper grade classroom were observed rereading aloud part of a story in their basal reader, with all other students seeming to be following in their own books. After the reading, the teacher asked the students to write answers to two questions in a workbook. The questions asked students to describe two of the characters in the story. The teacher reminded students to proofread their responses and to consider the rubric they were using for written responses. When the students were finished, the teacher asked them to share the traits they had identified for each character and to justify them with information from the story. Another lesson this teacher had planned for later in the day required the students to compare and contrast carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores in a Venn diagram and to write a paragraph explaining the diagram.

Carnivores Herbivores

Omnivores

Students in a primary classroom were observed completing "Easter cards" for their families as the teacher met with individual students to edit and provide feedback on letters students had written to pen pals. In this classroom, there were many samples of student writing displayed, as well as a display of guitars constructed from a variety of paper and other materials as an at-home family project.

While most classroom activities observed reflected a commitment to active learning and thinking, not all did. In a Kindergarten classroom, a mathematics lesson was observed. The lesson focused on completing a worksheet on patterning. Students were to circle a shape that would come next in a given pattern. The teacher began the lesson by drawing a pattern on the board, asking the class to "read" the pattern ("triangle, square, triangle, square, blank"), and then asking what would come next in the pattern. After repeating the process on the board, she then invited students to complete the worksheet and color the shapes. Little time was spent on the children verbalizing or explaining the concept of patterning. What could have been a hands-on lesson with manipulatives, and particularly at this early level where experiential learning is so critical to concept formation, seemed to be just an activity that took up time rather than a real opportunity for learning.

Implementation of the Professional Development Plan

Throughout James School there was evidence of the KCMSD Professional Development Plan being implemented, in student work displayed, in the activities that were in progress in the classrooms, and in the materials available and accessible to students. Nearly every classroom held many, many books for students, most arranged in baskets and readily accessible. Student writing and rubrics for judging it were displayed in nearly every classroom and throughout the common areas of the school.

Administrators and teachers described a wide variety of professional development activities aimed at instructional improvement in general, as well as the school district "Year of the Reader" and the district-specified Principles of Learning: read aloud, accountable talk, and organize for effort. Teachers described professional development at the school as being more worthwhile than in the past and aimed at the classroom level, with a focus on reading and writing. They reported having had opportunities for observation of other teachers in their own school and "walk-throughs" at Gladstone and Scarritt Schools, as well as workshops on reading, writing, and technology. The activity planned for the next professional development day, according to teachers and administrators, was a staff trip to Barnes & Noble bookstore to purchase additional trade books for their classrooms.

At James School, the concept of "Instructional Coach" is one that has been well-accepted; it is not a new concept to the school. Currently the vice principal serves as instructional coach, but there is a mathematics teacher who has been at the school for a number of years who has conducted demonstration lessons and coached teachers in strategies for teaching mathematics, as well. Teachers reported that both the vice principal and the mathematics teacher have taught demonstration lessons in their classrooms this school year and have been available for coaching.

In classrooms, students were observed writing; in those classrooms, students seemed comfortable and confident about their writing. When asked about their writing by the observer, students readily shared, either by reading aloud, by telling the observer what they were writing about, or by inviting the observer to read the writing.

One teacher explained that they had always read aloud to their students, but "read-alouds" were a totally new approach. She said that it was a learning process for her as well as for her students, and that "at the beginning kids didn't like it, but now they enjoy it." In two classrooms, read-alouds were observed. Both involved a great deal of accountable talk that represented a high level of analytical thought by the students.

One of those classrooms was a first grade, where the teacher read aloud a book titled, A Knock at the Door, a picture book about the Holocaust. The teacher provided additional background information during the reading of the story, and the children focused their talk on connections between the pictures and the text. The discussion included talk about Kosovo, with children sharing what they had heard on the news and how the story was similar.

In a third grade classroom, children actively listened to Cendrillon, a Caribbean version of the Cinderella story. The read alouds in this classroom had already included several other versions of the Cinderella story, and the children readily compared and contrasted this new version with the others. The teacher joined in the discussion with comments and/or questions, sometimes for clarification, that were always open-ended and led to additional discussion among the students. Cendrillon, the main character in the story, has a chaperone at the ball, and the teacher asked if the students knew what a chaperone was. One replied, "She makes sure she behaves and acts like a young lady." Another commented, "She makes sure she follows her curfew." When the teacher read that Cendrillon and her chaperone had to leave the ball before midnight, a student commented, "That's like all the other Cinderella stories." The students also had a lively discussion about what true love is. Later another student asked, "If the shoe belonged to the dress, why doesn't it disappear, too?" The teacher said, "I've always wondered that, too," and several children suggested reasons.

Another teacher summed up the results of the school's efforts to increase accountable talk: "They [the students] can all tell you why they're doing what they're doing."

The school staff has also organized several activities across the school that focus on literacy. One of these, the "book of the month," involves all children in the school either reading or having read aloud to them a specific trade book. This provides the opportunity for students across the grade levels to come together to discuss a particular story.

The principal and teachers explained that they had learned much about literacy this school year and looked forward to expanding on that learning next year as they worked more directly with the model sites.

Raising Teacher Expectations and Improving Student Achievement

The principal and teachers described a number of efforts at James School this year aimed at improving student achievement. The staff held workshops for parents to help them understand the Core Curriculum and the academic expectations for students, and they sent copies of the quarterly objectives to parents. They sent letters to parents with mid-quarter grade reports and met individually with parents of children for whom the staff had concerns. The principal and counselor have met with parents of children to address attendance problems. The staff has prepared packets about MAP to share with parents so that they have an understanding of what the state assessment is about.

When asked about an achievement gap, teachers said that the difficulty this school year was in ensuring that students whose first language is not English were successful. Most teachers reported that students were learning well and accepting some responsibility for their learning. One teacher said, "In this classroom, there is no gap."

Several staff members expressed concern about comparing the school's overall student achievement with that of previous years, since they have had such a large turn-over of students this school year.

Summary

James School seems to be a place where children and their learning come first. Nearly all teachers at the school reported adopting new teaching strategies and making real efforts to implement the core curriculum. Most also seem enthusiastic when discussing the professional development they have had this school year to support the changes in instruction. In their classrooms, James School teachers were implementing some new strategies and reporting that the strategies were working with their students. And most teachers reported looking forward to adding new strategies and refining the ones they had adopted this school year.

Kansas City Middle School of the Arts

Kansas City Middle School of the Arts serves nearly 600 students in grades six and seven. The school shares a campus with Paseo High School for the Performing Arts, where the eighth grade students are served. In addition to the basic curriculum, the Middle School also provides classes in the visual arts, music, drama, and dance.

One researcher spent a day at the school, interviewing the principal, observing in classrooms at both grade levels and across the core subjects of language arts, social studies, math, and science, as well as classes in reading, dance, and computers, and talking informally with students and teachers in those classes.

As the researcher arrived, the principal was outside the school greeting students as they entered the building. She seemed to have a positive rapport with the young adolescents who attend the school, understanding and accepting their high level of energy and their need to belong and feel welcome.

Implementation of the Core Curriculum

The principal reported that teachers at the school have participated in "lots of workshops and inservices on the Core Curriculum," as well as walk throughs of the building. Resources for implementing the Core Curriculum have been provided by both the principal and the instructional coach.

In some classrooms, there was observable evidence that the active, experiential learning implied in the Core Curriculum was going on. In a social studies class where the current theme was migration, students were observed working on a portfolio of their family's migration to Kansas City. The portfolios would include an essay describing the migration, a map detailing the route of migration, a fact sheet about the state the family had migrated from, artifacts of the family's migration, and a table of contents. Students in the class were all engaged in working on their portfolios, and several shared what they were doing with the observer. Besides using information from parents, grandparents, and other people outside the school, students had also used resources from the library and the Internet.

Students in a science class were observed reviewing for a science test. The students worked in varying sized groups of their own choosing to develop a study guide based on questions provided by the teacher. Even though there was a great deal of information for the students to study, the questions required that students deal with the information in a meaning-centered way. For example, rather than just define the words in a vocabulary list, the students were to write sentences that showed how a set of words were related (one of the sets included adaptation, organisms, natural selection, reproduce, and environment). Other questions asked students to organize information into a table and to prepare to apply their knowledge of diversity to an imaginary situation. In this class, as in the previous one described, students were all participating, contributing to their group's effort to prepare for the test.

In another science class, described in more detail below, the teacher took a rubber band from a student who was playing with it and used it to demonstrate kinetic and potential energy and to check for students' understanding. Rather than reprimand the student for playing with the rubber band, she included him in the learning by commenting, "You didn't know you were doing something scientific, did you?"

In contrast, lessons observed in several other classrooms dealt with isolated skills and information. In an English class, for example, a teacher led students through an exercise in which they were to identify adverb phrases from a grammar book published in 1977. The teacher read a sentence and asked a student to identify the prepositional phrase in the sentence. The teacher directed the students to write the phrase identified, and then asked them to underline the preposition and circle the object. Several students in the class did not open the book or make any attempt to participate in the lesson. Some seemed not to have pencils or paper; others simply looked away. During the lesson the teacher made no attempt to engage these students. As the lesson proceeded, the teacher allowed students to go on to complete the exercise on their own. When students asked if their answers were correct, the teacher made no attempt to teach, telling them the answers instead, and leading the observer to wonder if the point of the lesson was to complete the exercise or to know something about adverb phrases.

Implementation of the Professional Development Plan

Teachers at the school have participated in workshops on the Principles of Learning, according to the principal. Every Friday during second hour, all teachers are expected to do a read aloud. A few teachers, however, shared with the observer that although they do read aloud, they haven't had help to understand how to connect it with the content of their curriculum and that it doesn't seen to make sense in their classes. No read alouds were observed on the day of the visit.

The principal reported that she viewed the instructional coach position as a good idea, but that it had not worked out as well as it could have. First, the coach for the school was not assigned until October, and then the coach did not have what the principal considered to be adequate training. The major issue at this school seemed to be one of establishing trust among the teaching staff. The instructional coach at the school also developed health problems and was out of school on medical leave for much of the second semester. Teachers had varying opinions of the effectiveness of the coach, with a few reporting that the coach was helpful until she left, and others stating that the coach was ineffective, provided them with little assistance.

In some classrooms the observer noted that there were high levels of accountable talk, and that students had a clear understanding of what they were expected to learn from the activities they were doing. In a math class, for example, when asked, students explained that they were working with circle graphs. One said he was "writing about how and when you use circle graphs," and another "interpreting circle graphs."

In the reading class visited, the observer noted that students were reading. The class began with silent reading, with students all reading books of their choice. After silent reading, the teacher invited students to share what they were reading with the class, and several students did. At the end of each student's talk about the reading, the teacher invited the student to make a prediction about what would happen next. Several students were reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and they began a discussion about squid, which included what squid looks and tastes like.

Students in the science class where the topic of the lesson was kinetic and potential energy asked questions and initiated discussion about energy. After spending some time defining kinetic and potential, the students brainstormed a list of examples. The following exchange was typical of the discussion:

Student (to teacher): What about your computer?

Teacher: What about the computer?

Student: Does it have stored energy inside it?

Teacher: What do you think? Does it have another source of energy?

Students discussed with the other students at their lab tables, with the groups agreeing that the computer doesn't have energy on its own.

By contrast, the observer visited an English class where no purpose was set for the lesson and there was little student engagement. In this class the teacher showed a video of The Secret Garden. A few students watched the video, while others did homework for other classes, and still others slept. When asked why the class was watching the video, a student shrugged and another said "we wanted to."

Raising Teacher Expectations and Improving Student Achievement

The principal reported a variety of efforts teachers and administrators at the school have engaged in to improve student achievement. According to the principal, students all do SSR (sustained silent reading) daily. And there were efforts to begin a Title I program, for which the school was eligible this year. (The principal expressed frustration that the program was late getting started, and when they decided to use a Sylvan Learning Lab, "red tape" had interfered, postponing its opening indefinitely.)

Although test scores had not been a problem in the past ("they're not the lowest in the district"), the school, according to the principal, has worked to ensure that students would be prepared to take the MAP and actually be there to take it. Saturday School provided opportunities for students to practice test taking skills that would be needed for the MAP, and incentives were offered to students to attend school during the test. The result, according to the principal, was that all but one student had taken the MAP.

The observer noted that teacher expectations varied from classroom to classroom. In some, teachers communicated high expectations for student learning. In these classrooms, students were engaged in activities that had the potential for high levels of learning, as in the social studies class described where students were developing the portfolios of migration and the science classes learning about energy and diversity. Other teachers, by expecting students to work at tasks that represented isolated knowledge and skills, as in the English class on adverb phrases, communicated that students were capable only of low levels of learning. In some classes, teachers clearly expected all students to learn and made efforts to engage all students, as in the science class where the teacher brought a student into the lesson by using the student's rubber band to illustrate the concept being discussed. Other teachers ignored students who chose not to participate at all, communicating that they expected no learning from them at all.

Summary

The quality of curriculum and instruction experienced by students at Kansas City Middle School of the Arts was observed to vary from classroom to classroom, teacher to teacher. In some classrooms learning activities engage students in thinking, in experiencing, in discovering relationships between and among ideas and concepts, and in making personal connections to the curriculum. In others, students are expected to be passive receptors of impersonal information, or allowed not to engage at all.

There is little evidence that the intent of the professional development plan is being implemented at the school. In several of the classrooms where accountable talk was observed, for example, the observer noted that the same teachers supported accountable talk during earlier visits to the school. No evidence of read aloud was observed, and the school's relegation of read aloud to Friday demonstrates to this researcher that the teachers do not understand the potential of read aloud as an instructional practice.

Teacher expectations also vary from teacher to teacher, most likely resulting in varying levels of student achievement. While efforts to ensure that students have the skills necessary for taking tests and ensuring that students actually are in attendance to take the test are a beginning, raising teacher expectations and improving the quality of instruction is critical to raising student achievement. Teachers should expect that all students can and should learn well the high level curriculum articulated in the Core Curriculum document. And students should be able to expect the same high quality learning experiences in every classroom that they now experience in some. Until expectations and instruction are consistently high, student achievement will remain far below its potential at the school.

George Washington Carver Elementary School

George Washington Carver Elementary School serves 370 students in Kindergarten through fifth grade. One observer spent a day at the school, interviewing administrators and teachers, and observing in classrooms.

The school, which was formerly a Latin Grammar magnet school, has become a comprehensive, neighborhood school for the 1998-1999 school year, with no busing except for special education students. Staff members of the school reported that the change to neighborhood school has brought better community involvement to the school.

Students at the school wear uniforms, color coordinated to the light, attractive building. Student work was displayed throughout the building, in hallways and in classrooms. One display that was particularly inviting also represented some high level thinking. In a fifth grade classroom, there was a bulletin board that displayed exaggerations that students had written. They included: Her arms are so skinny you could use them as toothpicks; and My house is so small my address is next door.

The school was being wired for Internet service on the day of the visit, opening up the potential for the computer lab and classrooms to be connected. The school’s commitment to literacy was underscored by the many boxes of trade books that were being unpacked the day of the visit. The books had been ordered to increase collections of books available in classrooms at the school.

According to interviewees, the school has focused a great deal of effort on the implementation of the Core Curriculum. First, the school was involved in its development, providing feedback as drafts were developed. Teachers at the school participated in district-wide in-service which allowed them to dig into the Core Curriculum, to develop understanding of the rationale for the Core Curriculum, the sequence of the document, and strategies for using the document. They have also participated in in-service at the building level on the Core Curriculum. And they have both informed parents about and sought their input into the Core Curriculum.

The observer noted some examples of the hands-on, experiential, connected learning that is implied in the Core Curriculum. One of these was in a second grade classroom where the teacher was leading a read aloud of a Tomie De Paola book. One of the characters in the story is the mayor. When the teacher asked children to talk about who the mayor is, one responded, The man who runs the city. The teacher led the children to expand their definition of mayor by asking about the current mayor of Kansas City. Many of the children knew her name, and they realized that the definition should expand to include women. In that classroom, the environment supported students being independent and developing confidence in themselves and their learning. The students gave the observer a tour of the classroom, showing her various areas of the classroom and explaining their work to her.

In other classrooms, it was evident that teachers were making efforts to change how they teach to facilitate students making connections. One teacher tried to have students compare some images from a text, but the comparison did not make sense to the students (or the observer). In still others, though, students were expected to complete worksheets with little or no meaning. A student in one such classroom, when asked about a question that required her to write the big idea that the worksheet was about, told the observer that she was just supposed to guess something for the worksheet.

Carver School has begun a professional library for staff members to use, as part of their commitment to the improvement of teaching and learning. A room off the library has been set aside, and the school has ordered professional journals and other professional development materials for teachers to use. The overall goal of Carver School is literacy, with staff focused on ensuring that all third graders being able to read. Professional development has also focused on this goal, and interviewees reported that the instructional coach has conducted model lessons in each classroom. The instructional coach also reported meeting at least monthly with grade level teams.

Interviewees reported that the professional development process at the school involves the following steps: workshops to develop teacher awareness of new teaching strategies, modeling of new strategies in classrooms by the instructional coach, teachers implementing the strategies with the instructional coach observing and giving feedback, and teachers having opportunities to observe in other classrooms. To ensure that all teachers have time for professional development, release time has been provided, with the principal, assistant principal, reading teacher, and paraprofessionals at Carver covering classrooms.

Professional development at the school this school year has focused on read-alouds with accountable talk and conducting running records. Interviewees reported that teachers need more work with running records so that teachers see the value of using them as part of the teaching and learning process. Interviewees also noted that some of the best professional development at the school this year was the opportunity that teachers had to score performance assessments in reading and mathematics. During the scoring teachers were surprised at how much they could learn about students from the performances.

The observer noted two examples of read-alouds with accountable talk during the visit. In a Kindergarten classroom, the teacher was observed reading If You Give a Mouse a Cookie to the children. Throughout the story, the teacher asked the students to predict what the mouse would want next, and at the end of the story, the teacher provided the opportunity for children to retell the story using pictures. A student asked the teacher if they would act out the story, and the teacher responded that they would the next day.

The other read-aloud observed was in the second grade classroom described above. There, students initiated much of the talk about the story. A student wondered, How would Big Anthony eat the whole spaghetti? It covered the whole town! Another commented, He’d better say stop! The teacher provided time throughout the story for students to predict, explain, guess, and so on, about the story with partners.

Interviewees reported that teachers at Carver do read-alouds daily.

Carver School is working to improve student achievement and raise teacher expectations. They use a variety of tools to assess student learning, including running records, MAP, and ITBS, although interviewees noted that they hope this will be the last year for using the ITBS at the school. To involve parents in student achievement, teachers prepare weekly progress reports for each child. They described the weekly progress report as a mini report card shared with parents so that they are continually aware of student progress. Teachers at the school have also been developing and using performances as assessments, developing rubrics, and beginning to involve students in rubric development, which will eventually lead to student self-assessment.

The observer noted that teachers in some classrooms communicated high expectations for student learning, while others did not. In the second grade class described above, the observer noted that the teacher expected students to think, to make connections to their own city and community, to draw from their own experience in understanding the story, to make inferences and draw conclusions. In that classroom, the teacher asked students to give the observer a tour of the classroom, communicating to the students the expectation that they were knowledgeable about their own classroom.

In another classroom, by contrast, the teacher asked only knowledge level questions throughout a science lesson. The observer noted several students who seemed not to be engaged in the lesson, but when the teacher specifically called on them, they provided answers that went far beyond what the teacher had asked. The teacher responded by telling them to just answer her question, and that additional information was not required. This teacher was communicating to students that thinking and making connections was not expected, or even, in this case, welcome.

Much of the student work displayed in the school was accompanied by rubrics or lists of criteria for the work. Student writing, in particular, was displayed in many places in the school, communicating an expectation to all students about the value of student writing. Some of the criteria or rubrics that were displayed, the observer noted, represented high expectations, while other rubrics or criteria did not.

George Washington Carver Elementary School seems to be a place where teachers and students are focused on learning and success for students. The observer noted that both teachers and students seemed happy to be at the school, and the general school climate was comfortable and calm.

Staff members at the school have made efforts to implement Core Curriculum, and those efforts are evident. Much more needs to be done, however, to ensure that all teachers understand the Core Curriculum, the content described by it, and the instructional practices implied by it. The observer noted, that while some teachers understand and implement the active, experiential learning the Core Curriculum implies, others see the Core Curriculum as a scope and sequence, providing passive learning experiences such as worksheets or teacher presentations of information.

Carver staff members have worked to implement the KCMSD professional development plan, providing opportunities for teachers to adopt new teaching strategies with support, coaching, and feedback. The professional library that has begun at the school is further evidence that staff members are serious about providing teachers the support they need to make changes to their teaching. The process (awareness, modeling, coaching and feedback) that has been in place at the school this year is consistent with research on effective professional development. Teachers will continue to need support and coaching as they refine read aloud and accountable talk and as they are expected to learn additional new teaching strategies.

Student achievement is a priority at the school, and the weekly progress reports demonstrate teachers’ commitment to share their expectations and communicate student progress with parents. The observer noted that there is wide variation in the expectations that teachers at Carver communicate with students, however. Some of those expectations are high, communicating teachers’ beliefs that students are competent learners, capable of thinking, predicting, inferring, making connections to the real world, making connections across the curriculum, and drawing conclusions. These kinds of expectations are also evidenced by students who have confidence about their learning. Other teachers, however, communicate expectations, either verbally or through the work that they expect their students to do, that students are not capable of thinking, predicting, inferring, or making connections. Part of professional development at the school needs to focus on raising teacher expectations so that they give consistent messages to students about their learning capabilities. Continued opportunities for teachers to observe other teachers, particularly those who hold high expectations, and modeling and feedback from the coach, could be a part of raising those expectations.

Carver School seems to be a good place for both students and staff. Continuing their efforts at improvement in teaching and learning should provide positive results in student achievement.

Ladd School

Ladd School is a neighborhood school that serves children in Kindergarten through grade five. The school has adopted an African-centered theme, and throughout the school, there are murals and other artwork that portray the African heritage of the students in the school. One observer visited the school for a day, interviewing the principal, the instructional coach, and the coordinator of Caring Communities at the school. The observer also visited classrooms at all grade levels in the school.

Ladd is a school that has had many problems, not the least of which is the lack of stability in the principal's office. There have been several new principals in the past several years, and the current principal has been there just since November, 1998. Teachers at the school, many of whom have taught there for more than a few years, have learned that if they just wait, they won't have to implement whatever the current principal expects; he or she will be gone soon. Unfortunately, according to the current principal, this attitude has resulted in a large number of students who can't read, and generally low student achievement overall.

When the principal arrived, the morale of the teaching staff was low; the teachers took no responsibility for their own problems and issues. The principal reported that one of her goals for the school is for teachers to begin to take some responsibility. She said that in the beginning, teachers wanted to discuss the problems and issues and then leave them for the principal to solve. It has taken a great deal of effort and relationship-building to get the teachers to the point where they have begun to find solutions to their problems that they can take responsibility for.

The principal noted that there is the possibility of reconstituting the school. While reconstitution may initially be disruptive to the school community, the principal looks forward to hiring teachers who know how to teach reading and who are willing to commit to improving student achievement.

The school also traditionally has had an adversarial relationship with parents. When the current principal first arrived, it was typical for parents to come into the school and approach staff members disrespectfully, yelling and cursing. It took several months, but the relationship with parents is beginning to change, and the tone of dialogue with parents is changing to positive. The principal had a parent table moved to the front hallway of the school, and someone is there to greet parents as they enter the building.

Caring Communities has taken a very active role in the learning process at Ladd School. The extended day program at the school is coordinated by Caring Communities; the emphasis of the extended day program is academic tutoring. They also provide a Saturday program for children in third through fifth grades; the program offers additional instruction in reading and math and is staffed by two teachers from the school. Caring Communities has established relationships with several organizations whose members volunteer at and make contributions to the school, including the USDA, Kappa Alpha Psi, and the Men of Bethel who together provide about 100 men who tutor at the school, and the W.E.B. Dubois Learning Center which participates in the Saturday program. There is also a Parents As Teachers program at Ladd, which operates out of the Caring Communities office.

Implementation of the Core Curriculum

Teachers at Ladd have had two workshops this school year on implementing the Core Curriculum, but according to the principal and the instructional coach, much more work still needs to be done. The principal worked with teachers to help them learn to work with standards, and in weekly grade level meetings the principal and instructional coach have continued to address curriculum issues. The principal also has planned for curriculum work to be done by teachers in a summer workshop and throughout the next school year.

In a few classrooms at the school, there was evidence of implementation of the Core Curriculum. Students in a first grade classroom were observed retelling through acting out their revision of the story of "The Three Little Pigs." They had rewritten it to be "The Three Little Elephants." In "The Three Little Elephants," the elephants lived in Africa, built huts instead of houses, and had to deal with the "big bad lion." Three different groups of children acted out the roles of the three elephants, the elephants' mother, the people with straw, sticks, and bricks, and the lion. Because the groups did not include enough students to play all of the roles, groups either "borrowed" actors from the other groups, or had their members play multiple roles. This classroom held displays of children's work, including writing, and had a wide variety of materials, including games, puzzles, math manipulatives, and books available and accessible to children. Teacher-made and commercially prepared posters and other motivational material were posted on the walls, and there was a beautiful display of African artifacts. The teacher-student interaction in this classroom seemed relaxed and friendly; they laughed and seemed to enjoy being in this classroom.

When the observer entered a fourth grade classroom during their lunch break, the teacher was in the room with a few students. The students, who had eaten lunch with the teacher, were learning how to play a game so that they could teach the rest of the class. When the whole class returned, student pairs selected books and read together, with the teacher asking the students to discuss information about the characters and the main idea of their stories as they read, in preparation for writing a newspaper story about their book. As children selected books and settled in with partners, the teacher selected a small group of students . She read with the small group, modeling, thinking aloud, and coaching students to read and find appropriate information. In many more, there was little or no evidence of the Core Curriculum.

Except for in these two classrooms and the classroom where the read aloud described below were observed , where students were actively engaged in their learning, all other activities observed were teacher directed, and students were, if engaged at all, passively participating. There were no other lessons observed that involved active, experiential learning, no lessons that required students to think, to make personal connections to the content, or to interact with one another,

In the other classrooms, students were observed working on worksheets or copying from the board, with several students in each classroom choosing not to participate in the activity. The content of these activities could be considered isolated basic skills; there was no context that would provide meaning for the activities, and in most cases, even in classrooms where student desks were grouped, students worked individually to complete the worksheets and student interaction was discouraged. In a fourth grade classroom, for example, students were completing a variety of different worksheets. The teacher seemed to be helping three of the students at her desk. When the observer asked some children what they were doing, their responses were, "my work," and "finishing this worksheet." Two girls did say they were working on "division of fractions." After the observation, the observer stood outside the classroom to read student writing displayed in the hallway; the teacher asked a student to close the door and reprimanded students, raising her voice, for their behavior while the observer was in the classroom.

In a fifth grade classroom, students were copying a list of vocabulary words from the board that they would use to complete a worksheet. In that classroom, the teacher and two boys argued loudly about the boys' behavior, and the teacher had the boys use his cell phone to call home. There was no active involvement in learning in this classroom, and the atmosphere was uncomfortable and not conducive to learning.

Implementation of the Professional Development Plan

The principal at Ladd School has had experience training instructional coaches in other school districts, and she is comfortable with the role of coach. Teachers at Ladd, however, have found the coaching role to be a new concept. There has been work at the school toward implementing the three Principles for Learning, read aloud, accountable talk, and organize for effort, that are KCMSD priorities for this school year. But according to the principal, those principles are not visible in all classrooms. One of the teachers interviewed reported, contrary to the report of the principal, that , while there had been talk about read alouds, accountable talk, and organizing for effort, there had been no coaching or feedback in her classroom.

The principal described one of the volunteers from the W.E.B. Dubois Learning Center working side by side with fourth and fifth grade teachers in teaching children to think, process, and problem solve in math. He has also provided feedback to the teachers. The principal reported that the school expects to see evidence of this work in the students' test scores this year. In addition to professional development at the school level, the principal reported providing opportunities for staff members to attend such national conferences as ASCD and Successful Schools.

During the visit, only one read aloud was observed. A teacher read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day aloud to a fifth grade class. The teacher did actively engage students in making predictions about the story before she began reading, and she stopped periodically for students to confirm or disconfirm their predictions. She also invited students to tell about their "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days." But little of the talk was student initiated; most of it was in response to questions asked by the teacher, and there was no student to student talk about the story or talk that directly connected students' personal experience with that of the characters in the story. Clearly the teacher was making an effort to do a read aloud. With some coaching and feedback, this teacher could learn to make the read aloud an opportunity for students to learn about accountable talk.

Accountable talk was noted in the classroom where students read with partners. There, students responded to the stories as they read, stopping to make comments and to respond to their partner's responses. In other classrooms, student talk was allowed only to respond to a teacher question, and talk initiated by students was clearly discouraged.

Raising Teacher Expectations and Improving Student Achievement

Many teachers at Ladd School clearly hold low expectations for their students' learning. Those expectations were most evident in the work students were doing during the observations, in the student work that was posted in these classrooms, and in the general level of student achievement at the school. While a few teachers, in whose classrooms students were expected to think and to actively engage in worthwhile content, had higher expectations, the low expectations that teachers communicated were borne out by student engagement and performance.

Although some efforts have been made by the academic staff to improve student achievement (one teacher reported working with students after school on reading and math), much of the effort to help students succeed academically seems to have been made by Caring Communities rather than the teaching staff of the school. The principal reported that there are many activities planned for next year to address student achievement through professional development, but little seems to have been done this school year that was specifically aimed at such improvement.

Summary

Ladd School is sorely in need of stability of leadership, which it has not had for several years. The current principal says she is committed to staying the course at the school, and the KCMSD would do well to support her in doing so. She has experience in curriculum, instruction, and professional development, and she also knows what a quality school is like. She also has high expectations for teaching and for learning. With leadership that is stable, consistent, and knowledgeable, improvement throughout the school might be possible.

There is little joy at Ladd School--little joy in learning, little delight in children, little excitement about what is happening in the school and in classrooms, With a few exceptions, classrooms are dreary and uninviting, and although there are attractive African murals and artifacts displayed in hallways, children's work is not displayed in ways that celebrate it or show that it is valued.

Currently, the Core Curriculum is not being implemented at Ladd School. Implementation of the Core Curriculum, with the high expectations for active, experiential learning that it implies, has the potential to improve the educational experience of students at Ladd School.

The Professional Development Plan is similarly not being implemented. High quality professional development, as envisioned in the KCMSD Professional Development Plan, is sorely needed at the school, as are high expectations for teachers to adopt effective teaching practices, and accountability for their doing so.

At the same time, ALL teachers must begin to view children as capable learners, expect them to learn, and provide learning experiences that engage them actively, that expand their range of experience, and that clearly demonstrate to children the value of learning. The school also must change its expectations of parents, viewing them as partners in the educational process, and helping them to understand and hold appropriate expectations for their children's learning, as well as support that learning outside of school.

Providing for the academic success of all students should be the responsibility of the entire school, with the role of Caring Communities as support for high quality teaching and learning in classrooms.

Children deserve much more than the experience they currently have at Ladd School!

McCoy School

McCoy Elementary School is a neighborhood school with a diverse student population of whom about 35 percent are Hispanic, 30 percent African-American, and 30 percent white. Between 40 and 50 percent of the students speak a language other than English as their first language. One observer spent a day at the school, interviewing the principal, touring the school with the instructional coach, and observing in classrooms. The observer also chatted informally with teachers and students throughout the school.

The school, a demonstration site for the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh, has a strong focus on literacy and active student engagement in learning. A poster entitled Balanced Literacy Program, displayed in the principal’s office, visually underscores that focus for visitors to the school, and the many books and student writing throughout the school continue to remind visitors that this is a reading and writing place.

McCoy is also a Comer School, with that model’s focus on family and community, and the principal reported that staff, students, and parents share a sense of family and community at the school. The principal reported having written several successful grant proposals that have funded the school’s involvement in other projects that complement KCMSD initiatives. The school has a relatively low rate of staff turn over, an indication that teachers at the school are happy there.

The school selects quarterly themes that teachers use to plan content around. The third quarter school-wide theme was "Kansas City, our hometown," and the fourth quarter, the theme was "Nature." Teachers also select a book each month that is included in every classroom as a read aloud, with student responses to that read aloud posted in the hallways.

The observer noted that the building is attractive and inviting. Children’s work is displayed throughout the school, in hallways and in classrooms, in ways that show that the work is valued.

Teachers at McCoy School have developed quarterly objectives from the Core Curriculum that they communicate to parents, as well as utilize in lesson planning. The staff developed a new format for weekly lesson planning, available to teachers on the computer. The format facilitates aligning daily and weekly planning with the objectives derived from the Core Curriculum. (See Exhibit 1 for an example of the lesson planning format.)

In all classrooms visited, there was a clear focus on learning and on literacy. The observer noted that in every classroom there were baskets of books. The baskets were labeled in various classrooms by genre, by author, by difficulty, or used combinations of those labels. In some classrooms, students each had their own basket of books. Every classroom also had a word wall, and the observer noted the presence of a word wall even in the gymnasium. The gym word wall included such words as amateur, archway, aerobic, vocabulary related to physical education.

Classroom walls held examples of KWL charts, charts of story elements, Venn diagrams, charts of "strategies for readers," rubrics for a variety of learning tasks, and samples of student work. Student desks were arranged in groups to facilitate interactive learning, and students were encouraged to work collaboratively and cooperatively in many of the lessons observed.

Throughout the school, students were observed engaged in activities that involved them actively in reading, writing, listening, and speaking, whatever the content of the lesson. All lessons observed at the school clearly met the intent of the Core Curriculum in terms of student active engagement in meaningful learning activities.

On the day of the visit, several classes went to the library to select RIF books. In one fifth grade classroom, students were observed discussing the books they had selected. The discussion centered on the author of the Goosebumps series of books and on the difficulty of some of the books. Students in that classroom clearly viewed themselves as readers, and reading as a developmental process. When one student commented that a book was too hard to read, another responded, "You’re just not ready for it yet."

Students in a third grade classroom were observed working cooperatively with small groups on solving an open-ended math problem. Students seemed confident and competent in working cooperatively. When the teacher asked what kinds of things she would look for as she observed the children working together, they explained what cooperative learning should look like. In the process of problem solving, the teacher circulated around the room, listening to each group and encouraging divergent thinking.

In another third grade classroom, students were observed participating in an activity that was preparation for MAP. The teacher used a review of the QAR (Question-Answer Relationship) strategy, with which the students seemed very familiar, to help prepare the students for the assessment. Using that strategy, students classify questions before answering them by identifying sources of information for responding to questions. Questions in the "In the text" category can be further classified as requiring the student to find an answer explicitly in the text, "right there," or to "think and search." Questions in the "In my head" category are further delineated as requiring them to put together what they already know with the information provided by the author, "Author and me," or to think outside the text entirely, "On my own."

First graders were observed writing in their journals. All the students in the classroom wrote, with, the observer noted, confidence about their ability to do so.

All professional development at the school, according to the principal and instructional coach has been focused on literacy. In addition to modeling and coaching by the instructional coach, teachers all have opportunities to observe in other classrooms. They also have had opportunities to work with teachers from District 2 in New York City, both in their classrooms in New York and in classrooms at McCoy School. Teachers at McCoy also have participated twice a week in a study group that has read and discussed Word Matters, a book about teaching guided reading.

The observer noted evidence of read-alouds in every classroom, and observed several actual read-alouds during the visit. Interviewees reported that art and music teachers also do read-alouds in their classrooms. In a fifth grade read aloud of Seedfolks, students sat "knee to knee" to discuss their responses with partners before sharing with the whole group. Students listened to each other as they shared their responses ("[Another student] and I thought . . . " and "We thought . . .") and responded with their own ideas. They worked together to construct meaning from the text and from what other students were thinking. One student said, "I’d like to disagree with all of them. . . ." And another said, "I’m going to add on to what B. said."

A read aloud of Little Penguins in a first grade classroom led to a discussion of fiction and non-fiction. Students, clearly engaged in the story, made comments that demonstrated that they were making connections. "That’s like that other penguin we read about." Throughout the read aloud, the teacher encouraged student talk by responded to students with such questions as, "Can you say more, please?"

In a second grade classroom, a read aloud of Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge led to a discussion about what it means to be precious and to be rich. Students responded to the teacher’s question about whether there were ways to be rich without a lot of money with asserting that you can be rich because you are loved or because you "have brains."

Throughout the school, the focus on making meaning was evident, and teachers helped students make connections between and among lessons and curriculum areas. A fifth grade class, for example, was observed in a lesson that used the content of social studies, the "westward movement," as a context for mathematics problem solving, as students calculated numbers of people involved in the movement from data provided in the social studies lesson.

In every classroom and in every lesson observed, the observer noted that students engaged in accountable talk. They initiated talk related to the activities going on, and teachers welcomed and encouraged students to respond to the activities, to raise questions and issues, and to engage one another in such talk.

Teachers at McCoy School clearly hold an communicate high expectations for student learning. The principal reported that the school’s participation in the New Standards Project and the professional development provided through the Institute for Learning had both helped to raise teachers’ expectations and helped them to change how they communicated those expectations to students.

In classrooms, the observer noted that teacher interaction with students communicated the expectation that students think at high levels and express their thoughts. Teachers also communicated high expectations in the lessons and learning activities that they planned for students. Every lesson observed engaged students in a meaningful way, and even the phonics lessons observed included active learning and meaning-making. In a lesson on digraphs, for instance, a student used the word "champion" as an example, and the class defined and discussed the use of the word as part of the lesson. Students at the school also communicated the same high expectations to one another through engagement in accountable talk.

The observer also noted the use of rubrics to judge student writing throughout the school. Teachers at McCoy have developed rubrics for many activities, and those rubrics are displayed in classrooms. There are also checklists and criteria for performance posted in classrooms. In one classroom, where students had "reading buddies" from another classroom, there was even a rubric for working with reading buddies. Such rubrics also help teachers to communicate expectations for learning and for performance.

McCoy School has made great strides in implementing the Core Curriculum and the KCMSD professional development plan. Staff at the school have worked to create a community of learners at the school, and to demonstrate that they themselves are part of that community. Their quest to find and adopt new strategies to facilitate learning, their efforts to incorporate the Principles of Learning in their school and classrooms, and their participation in study groups are all examples of how they view themselves as learners.

McCoy School is also a community. Teachers and students clearly have a common purpose—that of developing literacy—that is evident throughout the school, represented in lessons and learning activities in all classrooms including art, music, and physical education; interactions between teachers and students and between and among students; and displays of student work. The school’s involvement in the Comer process also demonstrates their commitment to involve families and the larger community in the McCoy School community.

Teachers communicate high expectations for learning, in the activities they plan for students and in the way they communicate with students. McCoy School students seem to respond accordingly.

All these efforts by the McCoy School community seem to be focused on and have the potential to lead to improving student achievement, and eventually, closing the achievement gap. The challenge for McCoy School is not only to maintain the outcomes they have already achieved, but also to continue to stretch and learn, to reflect critically on current practices, and to investigate and adopt new practices that can help them to continue to improve.

McCoy is a demonstration site for the Institute for Learning. As such, the school has much experience to share with other schools in Kansas City that are committed to implementing the Core Curriculum, the KCMSD Professional Development Plan, and the Principles of Learning.

Exhibit 1.                     McCoy Elementary School 

Teacher				Weekly Lesson Plan		From
to	-------------------	Room # ------------	      ---------          ---------


Communication Arts


Strands that apply:	Reading:  Interaction with Multicultural Literature
				Writing Process Approach:  Creative and Expository
				Oral Communication

Core Curriculum Objectives:

  Reading:  Research
  Writing:  Conventions, Grammar and usage; Suggested Forms, Expository
  Oral Communication:  Active Listening

Word Study:

beautiful		little		jump		quit		song
jungle (making words)

Reference Skill(s):

Using a Table of Contents, Alphabetical Order

Daily Read-Alouds

1.  Sun and Moon					4.  The Shaman’s Apprentice
2.  The Wolf Who Cried Boy				5.  Rain Forest
3.  Who’s the Beast					6.  I Love You, Little One

Performance Indicators "Students should be able to . . .

  Locate, gather and organize information and represent an understanding of it in a variety of written, visual and oral formats.
  Use nouns, verbs, subject/verb agreement, adjectives and pronouns when editing and revising.
  Use a variety of forms to communicate expository information.
  Determine the meaning of what is heard and seen in media presentations.


Strategies:

guided reading

  Monday:  group reading of The Boy Who Cried “Wolf!”
  Tuesday:  rereading of The Boy Who Cried “Wolf!”
  Wednesday:  partner reading of The Boy Who Cried Wolf (from reading series)
  Thursday:  class reading of The Lion and the Mouse (a play)
  Friday:  group reading of The Lion and the Mouse (a play)

shared reading
 
  selections from non-fiction rain forest books (strategies for reading non-fiction)

independent reading

  self-selected books			    leveled-books used during guided reading

assessment

  individual conferences

homework

  daily reading and responding in reading journals	    daily writing in Writer’s Notebooks
 
Projects/Publishing

  Reader’s Theater
 
Accelerated Reader - Current Class Total

  223 tests passed
 

Lincoln College Preparatory Academy

Two researchers spent a day at Lincoln College Prep Academy observing in classrooms, interviewing the principal, and chatting informally with teachers and students. The researchers felt welcomed by the principal, the students, and most of the teachers they encountered. The researchers visited math, science, language arts, social studies, and foreign language classrooms across the grades, with several of the classes observed being AP or IB courses.

Implementation of the Core Curriculum

The principal reported that implementation of the Core Curriculum is proceeding, and that the document should be visible on all teachers' desks. Professional development, both building-wide and at the department level, has focused on the implementation of the Core Curriculum. There is alignment among the Core Curriculum and AP and IB content. According to the principal, with the IB curriculum building on and extending the content of the Core Curriculum.

Observers did note that the Core Curriculum document was visible in most classrooms, and while much of the content observed may have been aligned with the Core Curriculum, not all of the teaching and learning observed was consistent with the active learning and higher level engagement implied in the Core Curriculum document.

One class where students were observed engaging in content actively and far beyond the knowledge and comprehension levels was a tenth grade English class. Students were currently reading Candide (the teacher reported that several of the students had read Candide previously in French). In the class session observed, students were working in small groups to identify elements of satire (exaggeration, understatement, and irony) in the book, with each group responsible for one of the first four chapters of the book. Each group had a recorder and a reporter, and they shared the groups' responses with the whole class. The observer noted that as each response was shared, it was also justified, either with an explanation or a reference to the text of the book. A lively discussion of the humor in Candide ensued in response to the teacher's questions, "Do you like the book? Do you think it's funny?" Students noted that the humor wasn't based on something nice, but on misfortunes. One student observed, "Most things are funny when it's not you." Students discussed how Voltaire treats murder and intrigue sarcastically and referred back to their earlier discussion on satire. The teacher explained that that dark kind of humor is called "gallows humor." The discussion in the classroom was so lively and engaging that all students were involved; one young woman who seemed to be asleep at her desk raised her head several times and contributed to the discussion.

Another example of high student engagement and active learning was noted in an AP physics class. Students in the class were observed involved in a lab activity on the reflection of light. Students worked with partners at lab tables on a variety of experiments with a light ray box, while the teacher circulated among the students, asking questions and making suggestions, coaching and drawing out from the students knowledge they were synthesizing from this lab experience. Interaction among the students could be characterized as accountable talk: "Why did you do it that way?" and "Prove it."

But in other classes, there was little active student participation and little engagement in high level content material observed. In one biology class, the teacher turned on a video (asking first if students had viewed it before). During the video, while a few students did watch and take notes, others slept, worked on assignments for other classes, and carried on conversations unrelated to the content of the video. The teacher never stopped the video to clarify the content, check for student understanding of the content, engage the students in discussion related to the video, or even remind them to watch.

In a College Algebra and Trigonometry class observed, there was also little active participation of students. The teacher began the class by announcing that there would be a quiz later in the class period. He read the answers for the previous day's homework assignment and asked students if they needed him to work any of the problems. One student asked for number 36, and the teacher worked it on the board with no explanation. This observation was contrasted with that of another College Algebra and Trigonometry class where the students were working on the same content, but were actively engaged. In the second class, the class began with students working a problem that the teacher had written on the overhead. After a few minutes, the teacher asked for student participation in solving the equation, and the students and the teacher described and explained two different strategies for the solution. No homework checking was necessary in this class, the teacher explained, because the students should have been able to check their answers with those provided in the book. The teacher asked the students which problems they needed help with, and after they had generated a list, the teacher asked students to work the requested problems on the board and be prepared to share their strategies with the class. While students copied their work on the board, the teacher circulated among the students, responding to their individual questions and looking at their homework. The students who had put the problems on the board explained their solutions and responded to questions from other students.

Implementation of the Professional Development Plan

The KCMSD Professional Development Plan has been implemented at Lincoln College Prep, according to the principal. She described the focus of professional development at the school this year as articulation with the middle school, with much of the work being conducted at the department level. Examples she described were the English department having developed a writing stylebook to be used for students in both the middle and high schools; the social studies department focusing on strategies for reading in the content areas; the science department focus on inquiry and alignment of content and labs with IB, AP, and MAP; and vertical articulation in mathematics.

While the principal did describe having an instructional coach, teachers who were asked about the role of the instructional coach in professional development seemed not to know that there was an instructional coach. Instead, teachers reported having participated in professional development related to preparation for the ACT test and a variety of department-level activities such as preparing a "linkage paper" for IB writing, as well as district-sponsored professional development required for new teachers.

No evidence at all was observed of the implementation of the "read aloud," and while there was evidence of "accountable talk," there were several classes where the official communication was teacher to student, student to teacher, with little communication of substance initiated by students, and very little, if any, student to student communication relative to the content of the course. In some of the classrooms where the communication could be characterized as "accountable talk," one observer noted that she had observed in these same classrooms on a previous visit and found that high levels of student engagement in classroom discourse to have been present during the earlier visit, as well.

Indeed, in more than half of the classrooms visited, student desks were arranged in rows, with students all facing the teacher, who spent the class period at the front of the classroom, facing the students. In these classrooms, the arrangement of the furniture and the physical position of the teacher seemed to underscore the teacher's role as presenter of information, the students' as receivers, and the content as information and facts to be memorized. In one IB biology class observed, for example, the teacher was conducting a review for the IB exam. All students faced the teacher and the board as the teacher "gave" the students information about angiosperms that they were expected to put in their notes. There was no interaction among students and no active student engagement in the content other to take notes.

In classrooms where the students were seated so they could see one another's faces, there seemed to be more student to student communication and more student responsibility for the classroom discourse. In a French class observed, for example, students were seated in a U-shape which seemed to facilitate their interaction. In that class, the students discussed a poem by Jacques Prevert. After a reading by the teacher, students worked in pairs to reconstruct the meaning of the poem from the words that they could recognize. As they did this, they also predicted, based on the context and their previous knowledge of Prevert, the meaning of the words they could not readily translate. Together as a class they put their predictions together and reconstructed the meaning of the poem. The discourse in this classroom was both student- and teacher-initiated, and included high levels of student-to- student communication related to the content. All students were actively engaged throughout the class.

Raising Teacher Expectations and Improving Student Achievement

The principal described a multitude of ongoing efforts at LCPA to both raise teacher expectations and improve student achievement. Her vision is that LCPA become a "college level" school, rather than a "college prep" school. She reported that the school now offers more AP and IB courses and requires students to take more of them. In contrast to suburban high schools, where the best students take AP and IB courses, at LCPA all student are required to take them. Several teachers, however, reported that there are insufficient funds available for students in AP and IB classes to take the AP and IB exams.

The principal also described the commitment of the school to implementation of the "Principles of Learning," active participation, and in-depth learning. Observers noted, as illustrated in the examples provided above, varied implementation within classrooms, with little change from previous visits.

Observers noted that some teachers communicated consistently high expectations for their students and demonstrated those expectations in the high levels of work and discourse that were the norm in their classrooms. Many of these teachers displayed students work on the walls of their classrooms and provided feedback to students that would help them to improve their level of work.

In one such literature and composition class, students began the class with 12 minutes of silent reading (The Great Gatsby). After the reading, the teacher asked the students to identify themes in the book; they identified love and wealth. Students discussed the theme of love, defining it in a variety of ways and giving examples. The teacher then led the class in writing a reflective piece about love. She structured the writing activity and provided coaching throughout so that all students could be successful. First, she asked them to write a topic sentence or controlling idea statement. As they completed their topic sentences, the teacher asked them to add a sentence that explained their first sentences. The next step was to write an illustration or example, and then to add a quotation from the book that supported the topic sentence. The teacher provided a few minutes for students to read their paragraphs and edit for content. Students shared their paragraphs, and other students rated them on a rubric provided by the teacher and provided feedback. The teacher's facial expression and body language during the sharing clearly communicated her appreciation for and value of the students' writing. She smiled, nodded as they read, and thanked them for reading.

Other teachers communicated that they did not expect all students even to participate, much less learn at high levels (see the above description of the biology class). Another example of low expectations being enacted was observed in a Spanish class, where no students spoke Spanish during the class, and the majority of students simply did not participate in the activity the teacher planned for them.

Summary

A great deal of planning, reorganization, and curriculum development and articulation (on paper) have clearly gone on at LCPA since the researchers' previous visit. The principal provided a large number of documents that have been developed as a result of such activities. Improvements have been made in staffing (the physical education program, foreign language program, counseling, clerical), and all courses were staffed at the beginning of the current school year. Upper level course offerings have been increased, and all students are expected to enroll in AP and/or IB classes.

This work, however, does not seem to have had a large impact on enacted curriculum and on teaching practices at the school. There remains a significant amount of basic skills curriculum and mediocre instruction. While some excellent instruction was observed in some classrooms, they were mostly classrooms where excellent instruction was observed on previous visits. Even in some upper level courses (IB/AP), the course content seems to be at the knowledge level, with students expected to memorize large amounts of information with little connection or real world application.

There is no evidence that the KCMSD professional development plan, and particularly the expectation for an instructional coach, is being implemented at LCPA. Teachers asked were not even aware of the instructional coach position, and little change in instructional delivery was noted by the observers. No read aloud was observed, and while in some classes high levels of student accountable talk was observed, in general these teachers had been observed to expect accountable talk on previous visits to the school. In other classrooms observed, students were expected to be passive receivers of information with little active engagement either planned for or expected.

The increase of students participating in AP and IB courses is commendable. But unless these courses truly represent high levels of student engagement in active learning, their AP or IB label alone do not ensure high levels of learning of content that is worth learning. The quality of these courses was observed to vary, in teacher expectation, in content, in instruction, and in student engagement.

On a previous visit, teachers expressed concern about how teachers were selected to teach AP and IB classes. When asked about this, some AP and IB teachers said that, because of the increase in such courses, all teachers who were interested in teaching the high level courses could. But that does not address the issue of whether all teachers are prepared to teach AP and IB courses. Several teachers reported that professional development for teaching AP and IB has been provided for some teachers this year. But with the increase of AP and IB courses, it was not clear that all teachers who are teaching them have participated in such professional development. Teachers who teach AP and IB courses should have high expectations for student learning, be able to demonstrate that they understand the content of the courses, demonstrate ability to plan and facilitate instructional strategies that engage students in high levels of active and reflective learning, and further, are committed to doing so.

Teachers also reported that funds are not available for all students who enroll in AP and IB classes to take the AP and IB tests. The observers wondered about the level of student engagement in these courses for students who knew they would not be able to take the exams and receive AP or IB credit for the courses.

Some improvements at LCPA have been made, but many more are needed for the school to be recognized as a program that prepares all of its students for success in post-secondary education. The improvements that have been made are ones that have the potential to support high levels of learning, but the improvements that still need to be made (consistent high teacher expectations, effective instructional strategies, high levels of student engagement in active learning) are the ones that can ensure improvement in student achievement and preparation for success in post-secondary education. Until these changes are made, LCPA's potential cannot be reached.

North Rock Creek Korte School

North Rock Creek Korte School serves about 580 children in Kindergarten through fifth grade, with four sections of each grade. One observer spent a day at North Rock Creek Korte School, interviewing the Vice Principal and the Instructional Coach, observing in classrooms at each grade level, and chatting informally with teachers and students. On the day of the visit, students in the third and fourth grades were testing, and the DARE officer was working with fifth grade students.

Classrooms and hallways in the school were observed to be light and attractive. Hallways throughout the school displayed student work of all kinds, and many classrooms housed plants and animals in keeping with the school's focus on nature. Even the cafeteria was decorated attractively, and the observer noted that the workers there provided a friendly and kind atmosphere for students as well as adults.

The feeling tone throughout the school was a positive one. Adults and children were observed interacting in ways that could be characterized as friendly, and nearly everyone seemed genuinely happy to be at the school. The friendly atmosphere was evident in most classrooms, as well, with children and adults interacting in ways that were relaxed and informal. In most classrooms, student desks were arranged in groups, and in several classrooms, the arrangement of the desks facilitated cooperative learning activities observed.

According to interviewees, a large proportion of students in the fourth and fifth grades were new to the school this school year, bringing the challenge of helping the students and their families become part of the North Rock Creek Korte school community.

Implementation of the Core Curriculum

Teachers at North Rock Creek Korte School use the Core Curriculum document as a resource, according to interviewees. Grade level teams select content from the Core Curriculum that they translate into quarterly objectives that are used to plan for instruction. The objectives are posted in hallways and classrooms, and shared with parents. Quarterly objectives were observed to be posted in the hallways.

Observations in classrooms showed that most teachers are making efforts to implement not only the content of the Core Curriculum, but also the student-centered, active learning that the Core Curriculum implies. In one first grade classroom, students had read "The Tortoise and the Hare." They were working in pairs to make maps of the story's race course, labeling the bear's house, mouse's house, the tree, and the start and finish lines. As they worked on the maps, students retold the story to check the accuracy of their work. The teacher invited several pairs of students to present their maps to the group and retell the story. The active learning in this classroom was contrasted by what was observed in another first grade classroom where students had also read "The Tortoise and the Hare." In that classroom, students worked individually to complete a worksheet about the characters in the story.

In a fifth grade classroom, students worked in small groups to apply their knowledge of writing elements to a poem they had copied from the board. First, the groups discussed what the main idea of the poem was, with a "speaker" from each group sharing the group's idea with the class and using an example from the poem to justify their response. Then the teacher "challenged" the groups to "put head together" to find one cause and effect relationship in the poem. Students identified several different cause and effect relationships, explaining their responses.

Students in a fourth grade classroom were observed studying lines and line relationships. Each student used two pencils as manipulatives to represent parallel, intersecting, and perpendicular lines. Students verbalized definitions of "parallel," "intersecting," and "perpendicular," and then quizzed one another, using the pencils to show the relationships.

But in another fifth grade classroom, students were working to reduce fractions to their simplest form in a way that did not engage them actively in making meaning. It was clear to the observer from students' questions and their errors that they did not understand the meaning of what they were expected to do, but instead of finding a way to demonstrate the meaning, the teacher showed the procedure repeatedly on the board. In addition, the language the teacher used might actually have interfered with students' understanding, as she referred to the process as "making it [the fraction] smaller." There was also no reference during the lesson to when it might be appropriate and necessary in the real world to reduce a fraction to its simplest form.

In addition to lessons observed, student work displayed throughout the school demonstrated higher level learning and active engagement. One fourth grade classroom had a display of student writing related to current events. The teacher explained that students select a news article that they explain in writing and orally to the class. Students are expected to go beyond the text of the article to include reflection. The displayed work included such reflections as "If I was older, I would . . ." and "I don't get it. How did he know . . .?" and "He wasn't kind to his wife."

In a lower grade classroom, where there were many, many books available and accessible to students, there was a list of books about frogs on the board. The teacher explained that students had made the list of story books they had read. Next to the list was another list labeled "Story Frogs." Students had brainstormed characteristics of story frogs that showed they were not real: They talk. They can sing and dance. They wear clothes and shoes. They can dance. They can grow hair and beards. They eat regular people food. They can get embarrassed. They can be magical. They walk like people. They can kiss.

At the same time, there were a few other classrooms where, even though they were attractive and inviting, no student work was displayed, providing no evidence of the kinds of learning activities that took place in the classroom. In a first grade classroom, where the walls were covered with displays of commercially-prepared and teacher-made materials, not one student product was displayed.

Implementation of the Professional Development Plan

According to interviewees, the school has begun to implement the professional development plan, but there is "a lot to be done." The instructional coach, formerly a science teacher at the school, reported meeting weekly with teachers during their team planning time. She has also spent significant amounts of time in each classroom this school year, demonstrating read aloud and other instructional strategies. In addition, she has facilitated a study group of teachers investigating and implementing strategies for guided reading.

Implementing the Sunshine Test, interviewees believe, has been one of the best professional development activities at the school this school year. While teachers initially were not enthusiastic about spending the time and work the test requires, they have embraced the test both for the wealth of information they have gained about students' literacy progress and for how it has changed their views of literacy and their students. One experienced teacher reported knowing more about her students' reading development than she ever had before and believing that that knowledge has helped her to provide reading instruction that is more effective and better matched to her students' learning needs.

Developing rubrics for assessing student work has also been a focus of professional development at the school. Some teachers at the school have even engaged students in developing rubrics. In most classrooms, rubrics for writing were posted, and in some classrooms, other rubrics were displayed. One classroom, for example, displayed a "buddy rubric" for peer editing.

Teachers are implementing read alouds with accountable talk. In a first grade classroom, a read aloud was observed. The teacher read from a book titled Allison's Grandfather, a book about the death of the narrator's friend's grandfather. As the teacher read, students clearly were thinking and making connections with the story: "That's a funny name for a horse, Nugget," said one child. The teacher provided opportunities for students to make connections, at one point asking them to talk with their "reading buddies" about a time when they'd had a Grandpa or Grandma pass away. The teacher invited them to share their experiences with the group.

A read aloud was also observed in a Kindergarten classroom. There, the teacher had been reading a "chapter" book, and students initiated talk about the story, as well as answered the teacher's questions about the story. They had a discussion about the definition of "hitchhiker" and made predictions about the story with a partner. When the teacher had finished reading the story, she invited students to recount their favorite parts of the story. The students retold several parts of the story, with other students adding details and sharing in the retelling.

In other classrooms, where read alouds were not observed, they were indicated on the day's schedule. And in most classrooms in the school, many books were available and accessible to students, and student writing was displayed. In the upper grades, student writing related to both science and social studies was displayed, indicating that teachers were helping students learn to write for a variety of purposes and in a variety of genres.

Raising Teacher Expectations and Improving Student Achievement

Interviewees reported a building-wide focus on student success at North Rock Creek Korte. They believe that it is possible to close the achievement gap, but that there is no easy formula for doing so. Teachers have engaged in an on-going discussion of the meaning of learning and what is good for learners, and trying to determine, as well, what is culturally appropriate for the children at the school. The instructional coach reported that teachers have used a variety of strategies to build students' experience base (reading, presentations, guest speakers, field trips, the school's nature center) and then to connect content learning to student experience. Some teachers have also focused on hands-on and process skills, using projects and authentic learning that provide for more active involvement in learning.

Observations in some classrooms showed evidence of teachers having high expectations for students to think analytically and to engage in content worth learning. In a first grade classroom, students had read three stories, Klippity Klop, The Gunnywolf, and Strange Bumps. Students were writing about their favorite story of the three, explaining why they had made their particular choices. All of the students were writing, and the teacher provided support for students in sounding out words. In this classroom, all children were writing, seemingly with confidence.

In a third grade classroom, where students had participated in selecting themes that would be central to their learning, the current theme was multicultural fairy tales. The teacher led the students in a discussion of the characteristics of fairy tales and identifying their "very most absolute favorite fairy tale." With no prompting from the teacher, students in this classroom provided examples from fairy tales when they identified characteristics and justification and support when they shared their favorites. Students had selected "Mysteries of the Deep" as the next theme for their classroom study.

Lessons observed in a few classrooms, however, did not represent these high expectations. Such activities as completing worksheets or participating in a math lesson that has no meaning to students do not provide for or require students to think or to apply knowledge in real world contexts. Even when students do complete the task at hand in such lessons successfully, they probably learn very little that they will be able to use as a basis for further learning.

Summary

The school has worked to organize instruction around the content of the Core Curriculum, as well as to communicate the expectations of the Core Curriculum to children and parents. In most classrooms in the school, teachers have also worked to implement the active, meaning-centered, experiential learning implied in the Core Curriculum.

Several teachers reported trying new teaching strategies, and they continue to investigate additional strategies through such professional development practices as coaching, team meetings and planning, and their guided reading study group. The professional development that was provided for the administration and scoring of the Sunshine Test was also effective in raising teachers' awareness of the reading process and children's literacy strengths and needs. The instructional coach at North Rock Creek Korte School reported spending her time coaching, and several teachers noted that her coaching and support has truly helped them to try some new strategies in their classrooms. There is evidence in many classrooms of the schoolwide focus on learning success, and many children at the school clearly have confidence in themselves as readers and writers.

North Rock Creek Korte School has an atmosphere that is positive and conducive to learning, for teachers, as well as for students. This atmosphere, along with the professional development activities and support that have begun and are ongoing, have the potential to greatly improve learning for all students.

The challenge for North Rock Creek Korte will be to ensure that all students have access to the same high levels of engagement in active, meaning-centered learning experiences, that all teachers at the school be committed to facilitating such learning experiences for all students, and that all teachers at the school view themselves as reflective practitioners, assessing their own practice against the results of student learning.

Southeast High School

Southeast High School was visited by two observers for one day, totaling two days of observation time. The observers interviewed a team of administrators, including the instructional coach prior to visiting classrooms, and then had lunch with the administrators and discussed what had already been observed. The administrators accompanied the observers as they visited classrooms in English, science, social studies, and health occupations.

Southeast High School was virtually a new school during the 1998-1999 school year, with only 75 students returning from the previous school year, and 1200 students who were new to the school. Probably the biggest challenge the school faced this school year was creating a cohesive student body from students who had come from ten different high schools, as well as bringing together a staff that had doubled from the previous year.

An additional challenge related to so many new students was that the school had little data relative to student achievement. About 800 of the entering students had not completed or taken the MAP or TAP the previous year, so school staff had to rely on grade point averages to make decisions about placement and instruction. Further, many of the students had records of previous low achievement: 600 of the entering students had grade point averages of less than 2.0, and many qualified for Title I services.

Observers noted that efforts to bring the school together were, at least to the outside observers, successful, and students seemed in general to have become part of Southeast High School. Observers also noted that as they walked through the hallways and into classrooms with the principal, he addressed each student by name. His interactions with students were positive and personal, and students responded respectfully.

Southeast High School is an African Centered school, and has been working with Chick, Ladd, and King Schools to infuse the seven principles of Nguzo Saba throughout the workings of the school. Although the African Centered theme had begun prior to this school year, because of the new staff and student body, the school began the theme over in the fall.

Implementation of the Core Curriculum

Professional development, according to administrators, at Southeast High School has focused this year on infusing African Centered philosophy with Core Curriculum and implementing read alouds and accountable talk. The instructional coach concurred, reporting that her work has centered on helping teachers implement the Core Curriculum, the African theme, and the Principles of Learning of read aloud and accountable talk.

Teachers and students have had opportunities to visit the other African Centered schools, and teachers and students from the other schools have visited Southeast. The schools have held Harambee together, and African story-tellers from Chick School and dancers from Ladd have presented assembly programs at Southeast. Students from Southeast High School have participated in a role model day with students from the other African centered schools. Besides helping teachers and students understand the African theme, these activities are intended to build "the village." The African theme was in evidence in most classrooms visited; a principle of Nguzo Saba was included in the objectives for the day, and African artifacts were displayed throughout the school.

In some of the classrooms at Southeast High School, observers noted examples of active learning that connected to real life issues for students. In a health careers class, for example, ninth grade students were observed in a lesson on vocabulary related to health care. Students worked in small groups to write stories, raps, and poems that used 30 words that each group selected from the vocabulary list. Not only did the students do the writing, but they also "performed" their pieces, including a nursery rhyme, "Twinkle, twinkle, little bruise."

In an economics class, the students learned about credit and finance through a discussion of buying a car. In addition to some economic concepts, students also compared buying a car from a dealer and from an independent used car lot. In this classroom, all students were actively engaged in the discussion, sharing personal experience and experiences of friends to illustrate the issues they raised.

Students in a history class were discussing the beginning of World War II. When the teacher connected the Nuremberg Laws with Jim Crow laws, a student compared the situation in Europe at the start of World War II to what was happening in Kosovo. Throughout the discussion, the teacher encouraged students to find support for their statements in the history text and to restate the text in their own words.

In other classrooms, however, lessons did not engage students actively. In a history class observed, for example, the teacher assigned text-based worksheets. She had allotted 15 minutes for the worksheets, but after 45 minutes several students had still not completed the work. The teacher led the students through checking the worksheets, and then she lectured to the class about nationalism. There were no opportunities for active engagement in or personal connections to the content of the lesson. Students in this class found many ways to engage themselves, from visiting with friends to playing with a hand-held video game, and the teacher made no attempt to bring them into the lesson.

Students in several other classrooms visited were preparing for the MAP test, so little instruction was observed in those classrooms. Since classrooms visited were selected by administrators, it was not possible to determine whether the classrooms visited were representative of the school as a whole.

Implementation of the Professional Development Plan

The school is also committed to implementing the KCMSD professional development plan, according to administrators. The instructional coach at Southeast High School, they reported, has been invaluable in implementing the professional development plan, as well as the Core Curriculum and the African Centered theme. Besides working in classrooms, according to the instructional coach, she meets regularly with teachers during their planning periods.

A teacher reported that professional development has been better this school year than ever before, and that he has learned a great deal from the coaching he has received. He said that the instructional coach models caring about students and matching instruction to students' needs. Other teachers said that in addition to coaching in their classrooms, they have had opportunities to observe other teachers.

According to administrators, staff at the school initially thought read aloud to be "a little unusual" at the high school. But after seeing them in classrooms, they have realized that read alouds can serve several purposes: they are models of good reading for students, they provide opportunities for students to interact with text, and, when they are selected carefully, they provide opportunities for students to see themselves in literature. No read alouds were observed during the visit to the school, but several teachers reported their use of read aloud.

The instructional coach reported that accountable talk fits well with the school's commitment to increasing student engagement in learning. Some teachers also spoke about accountable talk, and accountable talk was noted by the observers in several classrooms. One notable example was seen in the history class described above, where students initiated the discussion comparing the Kosovo situation with the beginning of World War II. Accountable talk was also observed in the economics class, when students shared their own experience relative to the issue of credit and finance.

The KCMSD Year of the Reader has been observed at Southeast High School, according to several interviewees, with an increased emphasis on reading and writing across the curriculum. A few interviewees noted the February Read In, explaining that at Southeast High School, students participated by reading African American literature. Students in many of the classes observed were writing, and in one English class, where students were writing in response to a prompt in preparation for MAP, some students shared their writing with the observer. While not all of the writing was outstanding, several students were in the process of writing some interesting pieces. One young man in the class, who was not responding to the prompt, was working on a piece of historical fiction that he had obviously spent a great deal of time on. The piece included flashbacks and letters from one of the characters that were used as effective devices to provide background information for the action of the piece.

There was evidence in the most of the classrooms observed of the implementation of the professional development plan. But it is impossible to know how representative those classrooms were of the entire school.

Raising Teacher Expectations and Improving Student Achievement

Many of the teachers observed at Southeast High School clearly held high expectations for students to participate in class and to learn. Several of the classes were engaged in high level content that could represent high expectations for student achievement. Most interviewees reported that the strategies of read aloud and accountable talk were helpful to students and that the instructional coach had helped them to learn additional instructional strategies to meet students' learning needs.

In a few classes, however, the teachers' failure to provide content and activities that were meaningful and engaging to students, or the teachers' failure to require students to participate may represent that they do not expect students to participate and learn.

For student achievement to improve at Southeast High School, a concerted effort on the part of all teachers to hold and communicate high expectations for student learning, including participation, must occur.

Summary

Southeast High School faced several challenges during the 1998-1999 school year--the adoption of the African-Centered theme, the new student body made up of students from high schools across the city, and the doubling of the teaching staff. Their first priority was bringing together the new students and staff to create a school community, a task that seems, at least on the surface, to have been accomplished.

The school also focused on implementing the African-centered theme, and infusing it with the Core Curriculum. While African artifacts and decorations were displayed in several of the classrooms visited, and principles of Nguzo Saba were posted along with learning objectives, few references to those principles were noted in classrooms. But the cross-school projects with Chick, Ladd, and King Schools could facilitate further infusion of the theme.

The administrators and most teachers spoke highly of the professional development plan and particularly the role of the instructional coach. They noted having learned new teaching strategies and the role of the coach as being instrumental in that learning. But even in the classrooms observed, there were teachers who did not use teaching strategies that engaged students. Perhaps next year, the instructional coach can focus efforts more directly toward teachers who need assistance to provide effective learning environments and activities for students.

Now that the school community has been created, Southeast High School can move on to other priorities. With so many students whose performance, as represented by the grade point averages reported to the observers, raising teacher expectations and increasing student achievement must become a priority for the school. It will be interesting to see how the administration of the school addresses the challenge of teachers holding consistently high expectations for student learning and for increasing student achievement next school year.

Southeast High School has a unique opportunity to make significant changes in the culture of the school, in the learning environment, and in student learning. Because it is basically a new school, it is not bound by "what has always been." Instead, the school has a clean slate on which to create a new notion of what will always be at the school. How the school recreates itself will say much about what the administrators and teachers value and how effectively they communicate those values to the students.

Volker School

Volker School serves children in the fourth and fifth grades, most of whom attended Swinney School in the primary grades. One researcher visited the school for one school day, interviewing the principal, observing in most of the classrooms (except where there were substitute teachers), and chatting informally with classroom teachers, the LD teacher, and students.

In addition to classroom teachers, the staff includes a Title I teacher who also serves as the computer teacher, a librarian, an LD teacher, and a science teacher. The small size of the school, four classrooms of each grade, facilitates team planning and a sense of collegiality among the staff, as well as shared responsibility for students. The school also has a cadre of parent volunteers, many of whom work in classrooms on a regular basis, assisting teachers and students.

The principal, who is in his first year at the school and who previously served as vice principal at Swinney School, reported his primary role at the school as change agent with the goal of changing teachers', students', and parents' belief systems about teaching and learning, particularly of minority students. He believes that changing belief systems takes time, but it is only through changing belief systems that real change takes place in a school.

This older building, attractively renovated, is made even more attractive by the displays of student work throughout the school. Student writing and other work related to the curriculum is displayed in classrooms and in hallways, along with such motivational schoolwide bulletin boards as perfect attendance.

Implementation of the Core Curriculum

According to the principal, implementation of the core curriculum has been a focus of professional development at the school this year. The staff has tied the Core Curriculum into lesson planning, and teachers themselves use the Core Curriculum document as a monitoring tool; they keep track for themselves which items they've covered, and which items they still need to cover. Teachers also reported that they work to include the Core Curriculum in lessons and units they have always taught; experienced teachers said that they view the document is more important for less experienced teachers.

Classroom observation showed some teachers to be providing instruction that fulfills the active learning, high quality content of the Core Curriculum. In one fourth grade classroom, students were observed working on a part of a unit on pioneers. These students participated in a simulation that required them to be "decision-makers" for a family of four going West on a covered wagon. The students, working in small groups, were to decide which supplies and how many of them to take on the journey. They were given a list of possible supplies, a measure of the amount of space and weight each of the supplies required, and a total amount of space and weight the wagon could hold.

In another fourth grade classroom, where the students were also working on the same pioneer unit, students had contributed a number of items to a "Pioneer Museum" set up in the classroom. The exhibit included such items as animal pelts, a yoke for oxen, and lanterns. Students there were observed in a reading lesson. Students were reading silently at their desks, while one student read aloud and conferenced with the teacher. Integrating a mathematics concept into the reading lesson, the teacher was selecting students in a pattern and students were determining the pattern. As the teacher selected a student, she asked, "Does anyone see a pattern yet?" One student responded, "You're picking someone, skipping two people, then picking the next person." When the students identified the pattern, the teacher would change the pattern. The students were reading Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder, a text that connected to the pioneer unit, evidence of the teacher reported curriculum integration in their unit approach.

In a fifth grade classroom, students were reviewing how to make a timeline. To provide an authentic context for the timeline, the teacher distributed a list of events from her life; she began the lesson by modeling the beginning of the timeline on the board. The teacher did a "think aloud" through the process, reviewing for the students spacing the dates evenly on the timeline and simplifying the statements to a few words that would fit on the timeline.

Other teachers, however, focused on basic skills without connection to application of the skills within a context. In another fourth grade classroom, the teacher was leading a review of long division. The posted objective for the lesson was "know the terminology, be able to talk about division problems using correct terminology." The teacher wrote definitions for quotient, divisor, and dividend on the overhead, and students were to copy them. One student asked, "I still don't understand why you have to put ." The teacher responded, "That's just a symbol." Another student asked, "How do you check it?" The teacher said, "We're about to go over that." The teacher then wrote on the overhead:

1. 1 digit divisor

2 digit dividend

no remainder

7 42

The teacher led the students through the steps to find the answer, and then she said, "I'm finished." A student said, "No, you're not." Another student said, "When you check it, you know you're sure." The teacher reminded students to take careful notes so that they could review the information at home. While the lesson was aligned with the objective, there was no reference at any time during the lesson to the meaning of division or when division might be applied in a real life situation.

In a fifth grade classroom, students were observed copying words from the board and writing definitions as the teacher wrote them on the board. This lesson involved adding prefixes and suffixes to a base word. After copying the words and definitions, the teacher distributed a worksheet for students to complete. While the concept is one that is necessary for students to understand, research shows that children don't build their vocabularies by copying definitions.

Implementation of the Professional Development Plan

The principal reported that professional development at the school has been a process of inquiry related to student learning, modeling in classrooms, and providing feedback to teachers. Teachers reported that the professional development at the classroom level has been the most effective, with that provided by the district at Bartle Hall to be relatively ineffective.

Instead of coaching being the responsibility of one person within the school, the principal has formed a "reading cadre" of four staff members, the LD teacher, the computer teacher/librarian, the science teacher (who is the "point person" for the school's professional development) and the Title I teacher. This team visits classrooms weekly to work with students, modeling what equitable teaching is. The principal also demonstrates teaching strategies in classrooms, reported by some teachers to be especially helpful to changing how they teach. One teacher noted that the reading cadre coordinates with the classroom teacher so that their work with students connects to and supports the regular instruction of the classroom.

The principal at Volker School is truly an instructional leader and a lead teacher. He has taught in all the classrooms of the school; on the day of the site visit, he spent the afternoon teaching in a classroom. One of the teachers reported that when she was experiencing difficulty with teaching a particular concept, the principal offered to reteach it to her students. She said that she had learned many new strategies from observing the principal working with her students, as well as an appreciation for his competence as a teacher and his knowledge of students.

Teachers also described team planning and observing in other classrooms as professional development, and having workshops on writing, developing and using rubrics, and aligning classroom instruction with MAP. They have also worked with the staff of Swinney School to articulate curriculum between the two schools.

The principal reported that teachers seem comfortable with the "read aloud" but less so with "accountable talk." Teachers reported feeling comfortable with "read aloud" as well, although no "read aloud" was observed during the visit, and some clearly have implemented accountable talk in their classrooms. The principal noted that "accountable talk" requires a shift in belief, with some teachers not there yet.

Examples of "accountable talk" were observed. In the classroom where students were planning for a journey West, the student talk was clearly "accountable talk." Students there negotiated the items and the number of them to take on the journey, clearly using what they had learned previously about traveling across the country in a covered wagon.

Raising Teacher Expectations and Improving Student Achievement

According to the principal, the challenge at Volker School is to close the achievement gap, which requires first closing a teacher, parent, and student perception gap. Majority and minority cultural views of school differ, and the principal believes that it is those views that must be addressed first.

One strategy that Volker School has used this year to include parents in improving student achievement is to have teachers send weekly newsletters to parents so that they are continually updated about what is going on in classrooms and what the expectations are for student learning.

At Volker School, there are two classrooms where there historically has been no achievement gap. The principal reported that the school has looked at what those teachers do and the kinds of activities that go on in those classrooms.

Teachers also cited the work of the reading cadre as an effort to closing the achievement gap. Besides their work in classrooms, the cadre members also work with individual and small groups of students to provide preteaching of concepts, additional teaching, and additional learning time for students who need it, all with the goal of students being successful in their classrooms.

Summary

At Volker School, the implementation of the Core Curriculum and the professional development plan are in progress, with teachers at a variety of levels of successful implementation. Several effective measures are in place to support teachers as they try new strategies and include them in their repertories, as well as to support students in higher levels of learning and academic success.

Accountability for improvement is shared by the staff; they review the school's progress regularly and actively participate in improvement efforts.

The principal's commitment to improvement is evident both in what he says and what he does. He is truly an instructional leader and has the potential to lead Volker School to becoming the quality school he envisions and the students deserve.

Phyllis Wheatley School

Phyllis Wheatley School serves approximately 260 children in Kindergarten through fifth grade. The school also houses a special education program for hearing impaired children. One researcher visited Wheatley School for two half days, observing in regular classrooms at every grade level, interviewing the principal and the instructional coach, and chatting informally with teachers and students.

This school year has presented a number of challenges to the Wheatley school community as they made the transition from a magnet school to a neighborhood school, and as they moved to a staging site while the school was renovated and then returned to their refurbished building in January.

The transition to a neighborhood school meant that the majority of the students at Wheatley were new to the school this school year. Administrators have focused much of their efforts at bringing students and their families together as a school community, establishing relationships with the families and the neighborhood, and building a feeling of connectedness both within the school and in the community. One strategy for bringing the school together was noted by the observer. The school regularly began its day with an assembly in the gymnasium. On one of the days of the visit, the entire school, led by a student, recited the Pledge of Allegiance, sang the national anthem, and then recited the Wheatley Pledge. Because it was poetry month, classes were taking turns reciting poetry. On this particular day, a fourth grade class recited a poem entitled, "Born to Win," as well as a poem by Sojourner Truth, "Ain't I a Woman."

The renovation of the school included redecoration, and the classrooms are strikingly attractive. The colors that were used--fuschia, purple, and apricot--on the walls, countertops, and the floors are bright and beautiful. The principal reported that the colors were selected for their soothing effect. Besides the beautiful colors, some of the classrooms were decorated with attractive displays of student work, books, posters, plants, and so on, that made them inviting places for students. But several others had few displays of either student work or other materials.

In a tour of the school prior to observing in classrooms, the observer noted that the school has made effective use of a number of spaces other than regular classroom. The renovated computer lab seems to be well-used, with children developing multimedia projects and using the Internet as a resource for their research. The library is also very attractive with its new furnishings. Another room at the school serves as the school store, where children can use "money" they receive as rewards to purchase school supplies, books, puzzles, and so on.

Just outside the school store, there was a bulletin board that displayed pictures of students who had read 100 books or more during the school year. This Reading and Beyond program offered the reward of attending a banquet for students who met the 100 book mark.

Interviewees reported that with the challenges of becoming a neighborhood school, the renovation, and all the initiatives that have been instituted by the school district, Wheatley school staff members have been nearly overwhelmed. Establishing a school community has been the priority for the school, and other initiatives have not received the attention necessary to institutionalize them at the school.

Implementation of the Core Curriculum

Interviewees reported that the teachers at Wheatley School have changed the way they write lesson plans to include references to the Core Curriculum to document that the Core Curriculum is being implemented. The school has also investigated the relationship between the Core Curriculum and the state standards in an effort to ensure that students would be prepared for MAP. The observer noted that in most classrooms, learning objectives for the day or the week were posted on the board.

But there were only a few classrooms where active, hands-on learning was observed, where the content had clear applications in real life, and where there was student engagement beyond rote learning of facts and information.

In one of those classrooms, a fifth grade, students were engaged in raising tadpoles that they had found in a stream, and in the process, they had conducted library and Internet research about the life cycle of amphibians, the kind of tadpoles they had found, their natural habitat, diet, and so on. These students not only investigated for themselves, they also shared some of the tadpoles and their developing expertise with students in a first grade classroom.

Students in a kindergarten classroom were observed playing a game called "Tap and Trade" that involved both literacy skills and social skills. The rules of the game included asking politely, "Will you please trade with me?" and "There is no NO in this game." When two students had a disagreement about a trade, the teacher reminded them that "sometimes you're going to have a disagreement, but we just have to work it out."

In a first grade classroom, students were observed writing. They were currently studying owls and had just read the book, Owl at Home. For this particular writing, students began their writing with a prompt, "Owl was scared at night. When I am scared, I . . ." All students in this classroom were writing with confidence, and, the observer noted, they seemed to be competent writers for first grade. A rubric was posted on the wall, and when the researcher asked a student about the rubric, the student explained the rubric and how she applied it to her own writing.

But many more examples of traditional, passive learning were observed. Several classrooms began the morning nearly an hour of "board work" which required students to copy arithmetic examples or spelling words from the board, copy sentences for DOL, and so on.

In an upper grade classroom, students were observed reviewing for a science test about the solar system. The teacher asked the students to identify or define a series of items. The content consisted solely of facts and information, and the teacher told the students, "If you memorize all this information, you'll get A's on the test."

Some teachers reported trying new strategies, such as cooperative learning, but it seemed to the observer that they were not yet comfortable with the new strategies and that they will need additional professional development and support to use the strategies effectively and further expand their repertories of hands-on, active learning strategies.

Implementation of the Professional Development Plan

The instructional coach reported having worked with most teachers in their classrooms, but observations showed little evidence that the Principles of Learning were being implemented.

Rubrics were posted in most classrooms, and some of them were creatively written and attractively displayed. In several lower grade classrooms, a writing rubric that used corn popping as a metaphor was displayed. For each level of performance, there was a paper pan of pop corn. At the "really popping" level, the corn in the paper pan was completely popped; at the "starting to pop" level, some kernels were popped and others not; and at the "not yet" level, no kernels were popped. Under each "pan" was a list of characteristics of writing that could be described as "really popping" and so on. Another writing rubric that was observed had four levels, "The Bomb," "Tight," "Cool," and "Tripping." A third rubric noted also had four levels labeled gold, silver, green, and red stars.

Unfortunately, the indicators for several of these writing rubrics had little to do with writing, and much more with grammar, spelling, and handwriting. In the rubric where the highest level of performance is labeled "The Bomb," the indicators are "I used the lines. My writing is neat. My sentences have punctuation. I began with a capital letter." None of these is related to expressing a meaningful thought or an idea. Using rubrics helps students to assess their own work, as in the first grade classroom described above. But when the rubric does not address what is most important in the writing process, the expression of meaning, students learn that writing is not about making meaning but observing conventions.

One indicator of the Year of the Reader in the KCMSD is the availability of books and other print materials. In some classrooms many print materials were available and accessible to students. Some had baskets of books on student tables or desks; others had books displayed on bookshelves and countertops. But others had no collections of books visible to the observer.

During the observations at Wheatley School, one teacher was observed reading aloud. But the teacher read from beginning to end, with no opportunities for students to engage in accountable talk, to make and confirm predictions, and to make connections with what they already knew or had experienced.

Nearly all communication in most classrooms was teacher to student, student to teacher, and teaching initiated. In a few classrooms, students were observed to initiate talk related to the curriculum. In one classroom a teacher was observed demonstrating some new software that children could use to find information and write and illustrate stories about animals. The teacher "thought aloud" as she demonstrated the software, and students asked real questions about the software and how to use it. In the upper grade classroom that had the tadpoles, students invited the observer to look at the tadpoles and told her about them. In most classrooms, however, except for responding to teachers' direct questions, or volunteering an answer, student talk did not seem welcome.

Raising Teacher Expectations and Improving Student Achievement

In a few classrooms described above, teachers communicated high expectations for student achievement through the active learning activities they engaged their students in, but in many more, teachers communicated expectations for low levels of student performance. When teachers ask students to work only at the knowledge level, without opportunities to apply learning to real life contexts, they communicate to students that that is what they are capable of doing.

A visual example of low expectations could be seen in much of the student work displayed throughout the hallways of the school. Most of the work displayed was students' writing, accompanied by a "rubric" or set of criteria for the assignment. Some of it was creative work, done to high standards. Other writing samples were formulaic, completed without a clear focus on meaning. Few of the rubrics or criteria posted with the work represented high standards. One example of such criteria was posted with a set of poems about the month of May. The criteria were: 1. Discuss the month of May; 2. Work is neat; 3. Sentences are complete; and 4. Writing is legible. The "poems" all rhymed, but many of the rhymes were forced and did not make sense.

To improve student achievement at Wheatley School, most teachers must engage students in tasks that require thinking, creating, and communicating, all within contexts of meaning. Without a clear focus on thinking and making meaning, students may memorize information but they are not really learning.

Summary

Wheatley School has had a number of challenges to confront this school year, including helping a student body mostly new to the school form a school community and the move to a staging site and back. Understandably, these issues have been priorities at the school. But now that the earlier challenges have been addressed, the issues of implementation of the Core Curriculum and the KCMSD professional development plan must become highest priority at the school. They are key to raising teacher expectations and student achievement.

The instructional coach at the school has participated in the professional development provided to coaches, and she can be a tremendous resource in supporting and coaching teachers in trying and adopting new strategies. Wheatley School has a few classrooms where teachers seem to be learner- and learning-focused, and where students are engaged in active, authentic, and meaning-centered learning. These can also be viewed as resources, places where other teachers can observe such teaching and learning in action. In addition, there are several schools in the KCMSD that are now demonstration sites for the Principles of Learning; Wheatley School teachers can visit those schools, observe in classrooms there, and talk with teachers about the teaching and learning in their classrooms.

Without the commitment to changing teachers' views of their students, their own teaching, and their students' learning, raising the level of student achievement at Wheatley School does not seem very likely.