Teachers help call the shots on curriculum
in the Milton-Freewater School District.
As a result, math scores are on the rise.
From the
Bottom
Up
By Joyce Riha Linik
MILTON-FREEWATER, Oregon—A few years ago,
curriculum planning in the Milton-Freewater school district was “fairly
dysfunctional,” says Steve Carnes, principal of Central Middle School
and curriculum director for the district. Though Carnes had been the principal
for several years, he had just assumed the added responsibility of overseeing
district curriculum and was taking stock of the situation before planning next
moves. What he saw was a process in desperate need of overhauling.
“A small group of us met at the beginning of each
year,” he says, “and had this battering of a meeting.”
He explains: “For years, I’d been trying to do curriculum
alignment with staff, and every time, it was painful. We’d end up
with a product that staff usually just put on a shelf. When I asked my most
productive teachers how useful it was, almost unanimously, they said it was a
waste of time. So, I was looking for a model of curriculum alignment that would
be helpful to staff, wouldn’t be so painful, and would involve all
district staff, not just a small district committee.”
Enter Ginger Redlinger, Oregon Department of Education
mathematics specialist. When Carnes, a former math teacher himself, shared his
quest for a better process of curriculum alignment with Redlinger, she offered
to help.
Redlinger visited Milton-Freewater, bringing a wealth of
information and expertise to the district. Piecing together elements from two
noted curriculum planning models, as well as added components from educational
research, Redlinger helped district staff construct a new approach to
curriculum planning, one that advocates shared responsibility for curriculum
between administrators and teachers.
The two primary source models included Heidi Hayes Jacobs’s
curriculum mapping model and Fenwick English’s curriculum audit
model. Leadership strategies were taken mainly from Jacobs’s work, as
well as from other research on shared or balanced leadership. A collaborative
led by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) shared models for
engaging schools in dialogue about school improvement, data review, and policy
analysis, as well as a new approach to analyzing the effectiveness of
curriculum. “As to other resources,” says Redlinger, “Knowing
and Teaching Elementary Mathematics: Teachers’ Understanding of
Fundamental Mathematics in China and the United States by Liping Ma; Adding It
Up from the National Research Council; and the NCTM Principles and Standards
2000 served as guides for tackling issues specific to mathematics—also,
Using Data and Getting Results by Nancy Love.”
The result, says Carnes, is “a districtwide model
that is teacher-driven from the core to the end. It’s all about
teachers and using their expertise. And because it’s driven by
teachers, I knew it had great potential to be what we needed.”
It seems Carnes’s hunch was right. In the two
years since the new process was instituted with an initial focus on mathematics
curriculum, there have been sizable gains in student performance. At the high
school level, the number of students meeting standards in mathematics rose from
18 percent in spring 2002 to nearly 60 percent in spring 2005. At the middle
school level, students meeting standards jumped from around 40 percent to the
60 percent mark.
A Three-Tiered Approach
The model has three tiers: a district cabinet, a district
curriculum council, and a system for all teachers in the district to be
actively engaged in analyzing and using data to inform their practice.
The cabinet comprises one teacher from each of the district’s
five schools (three elementary schools, one middle school, and one high
school), as well as a primary school administrator, a secondary school
administrator, and a representative from the school board. The group meets four
times a year to make recommendations on district curriculum and instruction.
Teachers, appointed by school principals, are chosen because “they
are leaders, strong in curriculum, and forward-thinking,” says
Carnes. He adds, “This group of teachers and administrators is making
all the big decisions about district curriculum alignment, adoption, data
analysis, everything.”
The district curriculum council is made up of two teachers
from each building—10 members in all—who meet monthly to
analyze K–12 curriculum and identify areas in need of further research. “Teachers
volunteer for this committee,” says Carnes, “and it involves
a lot of data analysis.” While the cabinet provides direction, “the
council’s basic job is to pull together data from three sources—state
assessments, Surveys of Enacted Curriculum, and curriculum mapping reports—and
do it in such a way that it can then be sent to the cabinet and out to
buildings to be used effectively.”
The third component involves all teachers in the district,
who are given release time every month to electronically map and reflect on
curriculum, examine data, and collaborate on questions they or the council have
raised regarding student achievement.
Looking at Data
Analyzed data extend far beyond state test scores. While the
scores can be broken down by strands, the data are not always sufficient to
make broad-based curriculum decisions. For example, you can see if students are
low in the geometry strand or algebraic relationships and identify schoolwide
trends, but the data may not be accurate enough to look at individual students.
Carnes notes, “Sometimes, there are only two or three questions on a
test regarding that strand and you don’t want to make huge decisions
based on that.” As a result, the district starts with test data,
uncovers concerns, and then looks at two other key pieces of data to inform
curriculum decisions.
The second piece of the data analysis is a yearlong
curriculum mapping process. Using a database designed by the local education
service district, Milton-Freewater teachers record their planned curriculum
each month, note any changes in actual practice from the previous month’s
curriculum plan, and reflect on these changes. In addition to helping teachers
analyze their curriculum plans and make adjustments when necessary, the
database provides the district council with another useful tracking tool.
Surveys of Enacted Curriculum (SEC) provide a third crucial
piece of data. Teachers take the online survey—developed by a
collaborative led by CCSSO—at the end of the school year. The surveys
track the amount of time spent in certain content areas, time spent teaching each
of the standards, and the kinds of strategies used in the classroom. “It
doesn’t just get at the ‘what,’ it gets at the ‘how,’”
says Carnes. “[The survey provides] a measurement tool for how well
your curriculum and instruction are aligned to the state standards. It measures
that alignment for every topic and every subtopic.” (For more
information on SEC, visit www.ccsso.org/projects/Surveys_of_Enacted_Curriculum/Collaborative/ or www.seconline.org)
Combined, these three pieces of data help the district
council identify places where curriculum may need adjustment. “So, if
you get a picture where three pieces of data are all saying the same thing,
then a report is sent on to both the cabinet and the teachers involved,”
reports Carnes. “And then they’ll start raising questions.
Our whole goal is to determine where there are spots we know we can develop,
and that leads us to professional development in a teacher-collaborative way,
not a top-down way.”
Administrators now serve as “facilitators and
supporters” in the process, adds Carnes. “The culture that
we’ve established is one where data are used to raise questions and
to research. There’s nothing evaluative about it. We don’t
use it to point fingers. The whole purpose is to help all kids reach high
standards.”
Seeing Results
So far, the new approach seems to be working. Teachers are
communicating with each other, analyzing curriculum, and making adjustments to
their practice, reports Alexis Bergevin, high school mathematics teacher and a
member of both the cabinet and council. Instructors are looking at standards,
working together, and making shifts to ensure that all necessary material is
covered, she says. When areas for improvement are identified, changes are made.
At the high school, Bergevin reports, the math department
analyzed data and then decided to drop a low-level review class where students
weren’t exposed to high school standards they would later be tested
on. Teachers also tweaked pre-algebra classes to include a unit on geometry
after they discovered that many students enrolled in pre-algebra and algebra as
their two required high school math classes and did not acquire geometry
knowledge required in the state standards.
When a group of math teachers from various grade levels in
the district sat down to replace their non-state-sanctioned textbooks, they
reviewed all selections on the state adoption list and chose a basal series
from that list for district use. The middle and high schools adopted the new
materials two years ago; the elementary schools made the switch last year.
At the district level, Carnes says they are just getting to
the point where they can make decisions regarding districtwide needs and plan
related professional development.
“It’s a work in progress,”
observes Carnes. “Our goal is that teachers become data people. Part
of their daily lives is now watching the data. I give them the example, ‘If
I want to lose weight, I’m weighing myself every day. And if you
really want to pay attention to a group of kids, you assess them on a regular
basis; you monitor what you’re doing on a regular basis.’”
That’s one of the great things about the new
approach, adds Carnes. “It’s dynamic. It’s
adjusting what we do continuously, based on the kids in front of us. It’s
not curriculum on a shelf. We’re continually looking at the process
and trying to improve it.” 
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