Source:District Performance Practices

Anatomy of School System Improvement:

Performance-Driven Practices in Urban School Districts

By Lisa Petrides and Thad Nodine with Lilly Nguyen,Anastasia Karaglani, Robin Gluck, The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management of Education for NewSchools Venture Fund, April, 2005

Another Study Urban District Reform
WestEd Central Office Inquiry
Superintendent's Perspective on Improving District Performance

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Many recent efforts at educational reform at the national, state, and local levels share a common and unifying theme: holding districts responsible for their student achievement results. In short, the intentions of many of these accountability efforts are focused less on regulation and compliance and more on performance. Meanwhile, educational systems are facing two significant new challenges during the first decade of the twenty-first century: to educate an increasingly diverse population and to help all students attain higher levels of learning than ever before.

Within this context, many school districts are responding by seeking to adopt performance driven practices that are explicitly directed toward increasing student achievement. Districts are embracing these practices in order to create both instructional and administrative change; they seek to improve the extent to which teachers, administrators, and staff as well as organizational processes and systems are focused on the district's ultimate goal, which is to increase learning outcomes for all students.

Performance-driven practices can be identified as those that encourage and build upon the monitoring of performance in order to change practice in ways that will improve outcomes. Within school districts, such efforts include promoting:

• Clear and rigorous student achievement goals. A clear understanding among all staff, teachers, and administrators of the district's performance goals concerning student achievement, and the alignment of organizational processes and systems to meet those goals.
• Efforts to gather and assess information. The implementation of processes and behaviors to discuss and effectively measure performance against those student achievement goals at frequent intervals.
• Action plans based on performance results. The use of performance results to inform organizational practices, policies, strategies, and behaviors to maximize student achievement and other district goals.
• Ongoing feedback loop. The ongoing evaluation of programs and processes to improve their effectiveness in increasing student achievement.

This study is the first in a series of three that seeks to examine how urban school districts across the country have begun to adopt performance-driven practices that aim to raise student achievement levels. Working on behalf of NewSchools Venture Fund, the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) studied 28 medium and large urban school systems. The districts selected all have relatively high poverty rates and relatively large populations of English Language Learners, and were identified by others in the education sector as having used performance-driven decision making within their organizations. Thus, we deliberately sampled school systems that were perceived to be ¡°ahead of the curve¡± in thinking about and implementing performancedriven practices, in order to get a sense of how public education can improve. The primary mode of data collection was through individual interviews with superintendents and three other senior-level administrators from each district (112 interviews total).

In exploring the cultural and practical shifts that these school districts have encountered in adopting performance-driven practices, this study found a wide range of significant patterns, promising practices, and barriers. We describe these findings in cross-functional ways (see Chapter 2, Performance-Driven Practices Today: Overall Findings ), and then by functional area (see Chapter 3, Findings by Function). We then examine issues relating to organizational culture in light of gathering, monitoring, and analyzing information (see Chapter 4, Becoming a Performance-Driven Organization). Next, we explore three representative districts in depth in order to examine the kinds of challenges that specific districts have faced, the achievements and trade-offs they have made, and the processesthey have embraced in adopting performance-driven practices (see Chapter 5, Performance-Driven School Districts: Three Case Studies.) We offer a road map that summarizes the kinds of paths that districts have taken, by functional area, in adopting performance-driven practices (see Chapter 6, Synopsis of Common Practices). Finally, we suggest implications for school districts, recommendations for the broader policy community, and some next steps for research (see Chapter 7, Conclusion: Implications and Recommendations for Change).

Overall Findings

This study confirmed our original hypothesis that the districts interviewed are in fact attempting to implement performance-driven practices in a wide variety of ways throughout their organizations at varying stages of implementation and with varying degrees of success. Some districts are further along than others in this pursuit, and many have made great strides in specific functional areas, but all the districts still have much work to do in shifting their people, processes, and tools from a mode of compliance to one focused on performance.

In addition, the study identified six overarching findings about the adoption of performance driven practices in the districts studied:

1. Becoming a performance-driven organization has as much to do with managing people and processes shaping the culture and practices of the organization as it does with the particular goals, policies, and systems that the organization implements or has in place. The key factor, in most cases, is how much districts know about and explore the effectiveness of their own practices.
2. Adopting performance-driven practices is a district-wide effort, across functions and hierarchies. The successful adoption of performance-driven practices in one functional or hierarchical area depends upon the eventual cross-functional adoption of performance-driven practices in other functional areas.
3. Professional development is a crucial tool in the adoption of performance-driven practices, because it is the primary means that organizational leaders have to engage people in change. Districts are transforming professional development from an activity centered on seat time to one that focuses on support a transformation from a compliance-based to a performance-driven system.
4. In adopting performance-driven practices, there appears to be a dynamic balance between district oversight and direction, and site-based leadership. What is interesting about this phenomenon is that it appears not to be a simple swing back and forth between centralized district control and decentralized, site-based fiefdoms. Rather, it appears to be a thoughtful move toward maintaining district oversight and direction, while infusing it with site-based participation and involvement.
5. External factors such as No Child Left Behind and state assessments have had a role in encouraging many districts to focus more on student achievement outcomes, and in motivating them to reflect on their own practices to improve performance. However, in many cases poor state management and inconsistency of state testing regimes have inhibited some district's abilities to develop sustained performance-driven practices. The findings of this study revealed many examples that illustrated the extent to which districts have reflected on and shaped their own practices based on external influences.
6. Districts face significant hurdles in adopting performance-driven practices. For example:
• Discontinuity of leadership imperils district's progress in their reform.
• Fragmentation and lack of coordination among functions and departments are commonplace.
• Lack of technology infrastructure and lack of access to timely data inhibits the ability of well-intentioned administrators, staff, and teachers to effectively assess student achievement results.
• The organizational culture of many school districts has not traditionally been geared toward the sharing and analysis of student achievement results in order to improve instruction and programs. Transforming this culture toward one that is more inquiry-based throughout the organization is difficult and complex but crucial.
• Fiscal constraints considerably limit the ability of districts to support their reform efforts.

Implications and Recommendations

There are many practical actions that school districts can take to adopt performance-driven practices throughout their organizations. These include:

• Developing and monitoring rigorous district-wide goals for student achievement.
• Matching financial and human resources to these goals.
• Promoting instructional leadership.
• Developing effective assessments and using student data to inform instructional decisions frequently (not just annually when test scores are posted) from classrooms up to administrative offices.
• Embedding professional development in everyday practices.
Building an organizational culture that values inquiry and that is actively engaged in reviewing and improving performance through a variety of means.

The development of an organizational culture that values inquiry involves active monitoring of practices through systematic gathering, assessment, and use of information to improve results. It also includes using performance-driven evaluations and other means to promote ownership of outcomes.

If those in the policy community including state elected officials, national and state foundations, education think tanks and business leaders wish to support this transition to performance-driven practices, we offer the following recommendations:

• Use the budgetary process to leverage the adoption of performance-driven practices.
• Increase school district's flexibility in managing financial and human resources.
• Offer support, consultation, and collaboration in the development of robust information systems at the district level.
• Design state assessment regimens to ensure compliance and facilitate improved performance.
• Provide school districts with the means to make data available and motivate educators to use it.
• Improve training of teachers and leaders around performance-driven practices, including the use of data.

One of the limitations of this study is the lack of available comparable student achievement data for school districts in different states. More work needs to be done at the policy level, with support from foundations, to investigate and establish methods for obtaining comparable student performance data across states, so that further research can determine whether these performance-driven practices are truly effective in improving student achievement, by comparing student achievement data over time. In addition, states and districts need to allow greater transparency and availability of existing student performance data, so that researchers can draw valid conclusions about the factors that contribute to student achievement.

The performance-driven practices identified in this report offer states useful insights as they engage in rigorous improvement efforts that are connected to statewide standards but are driven by local context. They offer school districts ways to engage their teachers, staff, and administrators in comprehensive yet targeted strategies to bring about improvement. They offer administrators a framework for aligning resources such as programmatic interventions and professional development to better meet student needs. And they offer teachers an approach for analyzing, understanding, and improving student learning.

The challenge of performance-driven practices, however, lies in the extent to which each district and to some extent, each school must work to create an organizational culture that evaluates its own performance, creates action plans, and assesses its own results regularly.

There are many teachers, principals, and district administrators seeking the means to create change within their districts. Providing these leaders and educators with the tools to do so will accelerate reform efforts and ultimately improve student outcomes.

Source:Cross City Campign for Urban School Reform

A Delicate Balance: District Policies and Classroom Practices

July, 2005

Lessons Learned

• District-wide instructional policies and mandates had little impact on improving classroom instruction.
• The districts’ rhetoric about improving instruction did not match the reality of their relentless focus on increasing standardized test scores.
• Teacher voice and expertise were excluded from policy development and implementation discussions.
• The districts failed to provide the kind of support and capacity building that school staff needed to achieve the districts’ ambitious goals.
• Principals had multiple responsibilities that often worked at cross purposes with their role of instructional leaders.
• Professional development was fragmented and not directly tied to district initiatives.
• Principal leadership was an important determinant in how district-wide policies were implemented.

Recommendations

1. Superintendents need to have a vision of good instruction.
2. Central office policies and mandates should be evaluated based on how they help principals and teachers improve instruction and student learning.
3. Districts should be responsible for providing a plan, a realistic time-line, and sufficient resources to build staff capacity when new instructional policies are adopted.
4. Student academic needs should drive the district’s policy agenda.
5. Professional development should be school-based and embedded in teachers’ daily work.
6. If teachers and principals are to truly focus on instruction, central office demands need to be drastically reduced.

Source:WestEd Central Office Inquiry

Central Office Inquiry:

Assessing Organization, Roles, and Functions to Support School Improvement

By: Kim Agullard, Dolores Goughnour, August, 2006

Schools working to raise student achievement need the help of an organized, focused central office. Yet many districts lack unified direction, agreement on the central office role in supporting school improvement, and coherence and alignment between goals and strategies. Drawing on the findings of a three-year study of several districts focused on improving their schools, this book is intended to help central office leadership and staff examine their organizational arrangement, their enacted roles, and their day-to-day activities, critically questioning both their theories of action and how their work is concretely helping the schools they serve.

Chapter I explores the constraints under which districts operate, addressing the impact of local context, federal and state policy, a district’s governing board, and local and national organizations. Chapter II deals with how districts can move forward, developing a cohesive central office theory of action with aligned roles and functions. Chapter III turns to the topic of supporting school improvement through implementation of aligned structures. The book includes exercises and activities designed to engage staff in this inquiry process.

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Last modified: July 29, 2005

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