Improvement Strategy: Superintendent's plan

"laser-like focus" on improvement in the past year, according to Superintendent Boone
"to go deeper into this work, as well as accellerate our progress"
Joe Columbo from Focus on Results is going to presenting
"instruction for best practices"
understand and share...all of us have to have a focus on student improvement in the district

Columbo now speaking:
take what are already very good schools and figure out how to make them better than before
"to provide and support high quality teaching and learning in every classroom, for every student, every day"
(Boone told the story of the janitor at NASA who said his job was to get a man on the moon; everyone needs to be involved)
What does this look like?

1. Identify a schoolwide instructional focus (you've seen these on the boards outside the schools); the schools did this internally themselves.
2. Teachers get time in the school day to collaborate to improve teaching and learning. (wow, there's one that costs money!); there's also a school-based leadership team of teachers
3. Evidence-based teaching practices to meet the needs of each students (identify, learn, and use); consistent throughout the school (but, hmm, not even the focuses are throughout the district, and with a high mobility rate...)
4. Targeted professional development that builds on best practices
5. Re-align resources to support focus (money, staff, time, energy)
6. Engage families and community in supporting the instructional focus
7. Internal accountability system growing out of student goals to promote measurable gains

Demonstration of how this works out within the various schools so that students are understanding the school focus and how it applies to them: photos in the PowerPoint

Contrast between a results system and a non-aligned system, with an emphasis on internal control and a minimal number of focuses (so that it isn't scattered).

And what's happened so far?

MCAS has grown in 10 out of the 14 grades the past year

first growth in 8 years in gr. 3 reading

This year: increase urgency (to get out of priority district status), discipline of execution, relentless communication (both internally and externally)

The Mayor asks here about priority schools and priority districts (for those who might be watching and not know how this works)