Cycle of Inquiry Pitfalls

Developed in collaboration with Bay Area Reform School Collaborative(BASRC)

1. Pitfalls when identifying a problem statement that includes an area of academic focus and a target group of students.
• You have selected a focus that is too broad.
• You have focused on "all students" instead of identifying a target group.
• The problem you have identified is not based upon what the data say, but upone the assessments available to you, or the focus of the district.
• You have elected to focus on a non-academic subject area.
• You have not identified skill gaps for target students.
• You have selected a "dual focus".
• You have chosen to focus on an academic area that isn't high-leverage (e.g.spelling).
• You have not identified the teacher practice gaps related to student achievement gaps.
2. Pitfalls when posing your inquiry questions.
• Your student achievement question doesn't identify or address the skill gaps of the target students.
• You already know the answer to the student achievement question.
• The answer to the student achievement question will not reveal the skill gaps of the target students.
• Your teacher practice question doesn't identify or address the skill gaps in teacher practice.
• Your teacher practice question doesn't constitute an attempt to address the achievement gap identified in the student achievement question.
• Teachers at the school aren't familiar with the student achievement and teacher practice questions, nor how they might inform their own practice.
3. Pitfalls when setting goals and define measures for school, grade levels and/or departments.
• You have not devised a timeframe within which to reach goals or benchmarks.
• You are relying solely upon on CAT-6 to measure progress; you aren't the assessments appropriate to measure the stated goal.
• You haven't set a good teacher practice goal, or you have set one but don't know how to measure it.
• Your measurable goals are not consistent with your area of focus.
• You have set goals for the improvement of all students, rather than for the accelerated achievement of the target group. You believe that setting goals exlcusively for target groups means you are ignoring the achievement of other students.
4. Pitfalls when building a concrete workplan that responds to your problem statement and will help each school meet their goals for both student achievement and teacher practices.
• You have not chosen high-leverage strategies based upon strong research or experience.
• Your strategies are not targeted to address the achievement gap identifed in the studnet acheivement question.
• You have taken on too many diverse strategies instead of one or two high-leverage strategies.
• you have not established relationships with support providers and/or outside experts.
• You do not have the time or capacity to plan and carry out the strategies.
• You have designated jsut one person to be responsible for all the work planned.
• Your timelines are vague or unrealistic. You haven't developed a system of monitoring implementation or impact.
• Your workplan does not lay out your plan to hold each other accountable for the execution of the work.
• Your workplan fails to address articulation between levels (grade, department and school).
• You lack the systems necessary to manage the change process.
5. Pitfalls when implementing the workplan.
• You spend so much time talking about what you're going to do that you never do it.
• You are not implementing your strategies in every classroom, grade level, and department.
• You aren't providing teachers with the support they need from outside experts to learn and implement new strategies.
• You have no plans to provide teachers with the colloboration time they need as they implement new strategies.
• Cycles of inquiry at classroom, grade and department levels are not consistent with each other.
• You do not have a system of ongoing data collection to inform practice on a daily basis.
• Leadership at your school is not distributed (i.e. it rests with the principal).
• You lack the infrastructure to take action (i.e. time, communication systems, skills, leadership, data and assessment systems).
6. Pitfalls when analyzing the data to answer the questions about student achievement and teacher practice.
• You don't have access to data and can't get the information teachers need.
• You don't provide the teachers with training on data analysis or forums in which to reflect upon the implications of data.
• You have neither the systems in place nor the time necessary to come up with agreements and make decisions based upon data.
• You have not defined what you mean by "improvement".
• You lack communication between grade levels (i.e. information about students is not passed from grade to grade).
• You do not assess or analyze the quality of teacher practice.
• School culture or union dynamics prevent the school from engaging in an honest examination of teacher practices.
• You are afraid to share results with your community, or you don't know how to go about doing so.
• You refuse to let go of practices because they have become habit, even though the data suggest that they should be discontinued.

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Last modified: May 13, 2004

Disclaimer: This website is the sole responsibility of Mike McMahon. It does not represent any official opinions, statement of facts or positions of the Alameda Unified School District. Its sole purpose is to disseminate information to interested individuals in the Alameda community.