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Teachers help call the shots on curriculum in the Milton-Freewater School District. As a result, math scores are on the rise.

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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.”