National Forum Focuses on

Successful Districts

By Rhonda Barton

Angela Hernandez-Marshall Sarah Archibald Betsy Rogers

From left to right: Angela Hernandez-Marshall, Council of Chief State School Officers; Sarah Archibald, Consortium for Policy Research in Education; Betsy Rogers, 2003 National Teacher of the Year.

The experiences of three school districts in Washington, Kansas, and Colorado offered valuable insights to participants at the National Forum on Comprehensive School Reform. The two-day conference in San Diego, California, on March 10–11, 2005, focused on Building District Capacity To Support High-Quality Teaching and Learning. A diverse audience—teachers, district and state officials, researchers, and external service providers—homed in on designing and implementing districtwide reform; motivating staff to change; supporting high-quality teaching and learning; and using fiscal and other resources effectively.

While the forum is part of NWREL's national leadership work in re-engineering schools, the event represents a partnership among a number of organizations. All of the following participated in planning, organizing, and sponsoring the conference: the Consortium for Policy Research in Education; Southwest Educational Development Laboratory; Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning; Council of Chief State School Officers; American Association of School Administrators; National Association of Elementary School Principals; and National Association of Secondary School Principals.

A team from Highline School District, located south of Seattle, Washington, presented the forum's first case study. Highline serves a highly diverse population scattered over five municipalities: its 18,000 students come from 79 countries and speak 59 different languages. The district has invested heavily in leadership and literacy training. There are full-time literacy coaches in each of its 30 schools and all principals and administrators undergo extensive professional development in literacy strategies. Principals and district officials are required to spend two hours a day in the classroom, observing and offering feedback on instruction.

"District leadership works shoulder-to-shoulder with people in the schools," commented University of Washington researcher Chrysan Gallucci, who is studying Highline. "They share a common vision and the same specific language around 'the work.'" These strategies have contributed to a steady increase in Highline's Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) scores.

Pueblo School District 60 in Pueblo, Colorado, has also focused its resources on literacy. More than half of the district's 17,500 students are Hispanic and there is a high rate of free and reduced-price lunch eligibility. The district received national recognition for closing the achievement gap, which it attributes to its use of the Lindamood-Bell reading model. Teachers are extensively trained in this multisensory approach, which teaches struggling readers to visualize words and their meanings. As students' reading and comprehension have improved, so has performance in other content areas. In Pueblo's 37 schools, 98 percent of students meet adequate yearly progress goals.

Geary County Unified School District in Junction City, Kansas, used extensive professional development and parental involvement to successfully implement a districtwide mathematics program. The district, which includes Ft. Riley military base, is atypical of Kansas in its ethnically diverse makeup. It serves a highly mobile and low-income population. In adopting a radically different elementary mathematics curriculum—Everyday Mathematics—administrators and teachers researched a number of options and developed rubrics to guide their decision. Institutes for teachers, teacher support groups, notes to parents, and Family Math nights were all part of the district's plan to obtain staff and community buy-in. Geary County has been recognized by the state for its achievement and nationally for its mathematics program.

In addition to panels on the three districts' strategies, forum participants also heard from a series of researchers. NWREL's Deanna Woods provided an overview of research on improving learning and emphasized the affective and social components of education. Thomas Good of the University of Arizona discussed the dozen best teaching practices, drawing on his extensive research in the field. Sarah Archibald of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison spoke on resource allocation. She said that professional development, which is largely driven by state and federal policy, must be embedded and must provide ongoing feedback in order to be effective.

In the concluding keynote speech, the 2003 Teacher of the Year reflected on her personal journey. Betsy Rogers is firmly committed to the idea that the strongest teachers must be recruited to the neediest schools. Frankly and poignantly, she described the reality of teaching first and second grade in one of Alabama's poorest schools.

Bob Blum, NWREL's deputy executive director, opened and closed the two-day forum. He commented that "we all have something to learn from each other" and called on participants to use the forum to strengthen relationships, gain insights into their own work, and add to the common knowledge base.

The last forum in the series, to be held in October 2005, will examine what the states need to do to support districts in improving teaching and learning.

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