Leading Education Associations Propose Comprehensive Approach to Measuring School...

Leading Education Associations Propose Comprehensive Approach to Measuring
School Turnarounds

Alliance Says More Complete Measures of Success will Ensure Sustained Change
and Improvement

WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, a partnership of 17
major national education associations released principles for tracking efforts
to turn around the nation's lowest-performing schools. Principles for
Measuring the Performance of Turnaround Schools outlines how education
agencies and communities can determine whether turnaround efforts are leading
to both swift improvement and sustained change in persistently struggling
schools.

The Learning First Alliance (LFA) principles offer a framework to help
federal, state and local education stakeholders align turnaround efforts with
a vision of school quality. The proposed principles can help policymakers,
educators and communities identify schools in need of turnaround, reliably
gauge the progress and staying power of turnaround efforts, and guide
effective improvement strategies.

"We applaud Secretary Duncan for committing to turn around the nation's
lowest-performing schools," said Bill Bushaw, LFA Board Chair and Executive
Director of Phi Delta Kappa International. "It is critical that we accurately
measure the progress of these efforts to ensure that turnaround schools are
truly preparing their students for long-term success."

The LFA statement outlines five principles for measuring the performance of
schools involved in turnaround efforts:

-- Measure Progress Toward a Broad Vision of Student Success.
-- Measure the Conditions for School and Student Success.
-- Ensure that Measures are Clear and Available to all Stakeholders.
-- Track Progress Over Time.

-- Include Experts' Qualitative Judgment When Measuring Turnaround
Progress.

"The need to turn things around in our nation's lowest-performing schools
could hardly be more urgent," said LFA Executive Director Claus von Zastrow.
"With the right measures in place, we can gauge the success of our efforts,
offer schools support when they need it, and ensure that communities have the
information they need to get involved."

Alliance members called for intensive collaboration among policymakers,
educators and communities to develop effective performance measures for
turnaround schools. They committed to helping create and implement these
measures.

This statement is available at
http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/sites/default/files/assets/LFAPrinciplesMeasuringTurnaroundSuccess.pdf

The Learning First Alliance is a permanent partnership of 17 leading education
associations with more than 10 million members dedicated to improving student
learning in America's public schools. Alliance members include: the American
Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, American Association of School
Administrators, American Association of School Personnel Administrators,
American Federation of Teachers, American School Counselor Association,
Association of School Business Officials International, Council of Chief State
School Officers, National Association of Elementary School Principals,
National Association of Secondary School Principals, National Association of
State Boards of Education, National Education Association, National Middle
School Association, National School Public Relations Association, National
Staff Development Council, National PTA, National School Boards Association
and Phi Delta Kappa International. The Alliance maintains
www.publicschoolinsights.org, a website that features what's working in public
schools and districts across the country.

Principles for Measuring the Performance of Turnaround Schools

Learning First Alliance, September 2009

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has announced an ambitious goal: Turn
around the nation's lowest-performing schools. For the students, families and
communities served by persistently struggling schools, the need to turn things
around could hardly be more urgent. Low academic achievement places severe
limits on the lifetime opportunities of the overwhelmingly low-income students
who attend such schools. Every child has a right to attend an excellent public
school that prepares students to participate in our democracy and to lead
satisfying, productive lives. The Learning First Alliance, a permanent
partnership of 17 major national education associations representing over 10
million parents, educators and policymakers, stands ready to support school
turnaround strategies that advance this vision for success.

To create both swift improvement and sustained success, turnaround efforts
must follow clear and actionable principles for measuring school performance.
Such principles are necessary to identify schools in need of turnaround,
reliably gauge the progress and staying power of turnaround efforts, and guide
good decision-making.

The Learning First Alliance proposes the following principles for measuring
the performance of schools involved in turnaround efforts:

Measure Progress Toward a Broad Vision of Student Success
Successful schools expose students to a breadth of knowledge and skills to
give them every opportunity for success in the 21st century. While state
assessment results in reading, writing and mathematics are essential measures
of schools' and students' progress, they are by themselves insufficient.

Strategies for identifying and turning around struggling schools should also
consider evidence of student performance in other core academic content areas.
They should also track multiple measures of student success, such as capstone
projects and other examples of student work. In addition, judgments about
school performance should take into account indicators such as graduation
rates, student participation and performance in advanced courses, and data on
staff, family and student satisfaction. Such broader indicators of performance
are necessary to determine if schools are truly preparing their students for
long-term success.

Measure the Conditions for School and Student Success
Successful schools strive to meet their students' diverse needs by addressing
the root causes of poor student performance. Outcome measures alone do not
provide schools the guidance they need to do so effectively

Therefore, school turnaround efforts should measure the conditions necessary
for school success--such as school working conditions, investment in
professional learning, student learning conditions, teacher retention and
transfer rates, student mobility rates, student attendance, school safety and
student discipline information, the availability of support staff, the quality
of facilities, and appropriate and stable financial investments.

In addition, turnaround initiatives should track essential school improvement
processes--such as progress in aligning strong, comprehensive curriculum and
professional learning with state standards; creating sound formative
assessment strategies to highlight and address student learning needs;
implementing intensive systems to support struggling students and teachers;
fostering school-wide collaboration among staff; promoting shared leadership
from staff and administrators; and strengthening staff professional
development. Turnaround efforts should also gauge the effectiveness of
strategies to promote parent and community engagement, and to strengthen links
between schools and social service agencies. They should also measure the
external supports available to students in a community--such as access to
excellent health care, early childhood education and appropriate out-of-school
enrichment opportunities. A focus on these foundational issues can support
staff and community capacity to serve students' needs. It can also highlight
the kinds of supports schools need--both within and beyond schools--to mount
and sustain effective improvement strategies.

Ensure that Measures are Clear and Available to all Stakeholders
Clear, widely understood and widely available performance measures are
critical to promoting stakeholders' confidence in the process of identifying
and supporting turnaround schools. Measures should be reported in different
media and languages. Such clarity and accessibility help stakeholders follow
the progress of school turnaround efforts, which is a prerequisite to
effective family, community, district, staff and student engagement in those
efforts.

Track Progress Over Time
Turnaround efforts that ultimately produce dramatic and sustained improvements
in students' performance often take more than a year or two to meet their
performance goals. The success of turnaround efforts should therefore be
measured against ambitious yet attainable goals for improvement over time. In
the case of individual students' performance on state assessments, for
example, evaluations of turnaround efforts should measure individual students'
academic growth over time.

Include Experts' Qualitative Judgment When Measuring Turnaround Progress
Quantitative measures of school improvement are critical, but by themselves
they do not offer enough information to guide the improvement process. Schools
would also benefit from the judgments of informed observers who witness
turnaround efforts first hand. Site visits to schools by trained teams of
state and local educators and community leaders are essential to identifying
which schools need to be turned around, what strategies should be used to turn
them around, and whether turnaround schools and their students are making
progress towards clearly-established goals for improvement. Well-designed site
visits prompt school staff, communities and outside experts to collaborate on
identifying and addressing school and student needs.

Site visits can help identify causes of insufficient progress and promote
mid-course corrections in the turnaround process. They can also provide an
important check against manipulation of quantitative measures through
strategies such as excessive test preparation or manipulation of school
climate data. Site visits should be designed first and foremost to support the
turnaround process rather than to shame or punish struggling schools.

The development of reliable performance measures for turnaround schools will
require intensive collaboration among policymakers, educators and communities.
The 17 members of the Learning First Alliance look forward to assisting in the
creation and appropriate implementation of these measures.

-- American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education
-- American Association of School Administrators
-- American Association of School Personnel Administrators
-- American Federation of Teachers
-- American School Counselor Association
-- Association of School Business Officials International
-- Council of Chief State School Officers
-- National Association of Elementary School Principals
-- National Association of Secondary School Principals
-- National Association of State Boards of Education
-- National Education Association
-- National Middle School Association
-- National PTA
-- National School Boards Association
-- National School Public Relations Association
-- National Staff Development Council

-- Phi Delta Kappa International

SOURCE Learning First Alliance

Claus von Zastrow of Learning First Alliance, +1-202 296-5220 x115